scholarly journals Religious Poverty, Mendicancy, and Reform in the Late Middle Ages

2003 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 457-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Kingdom Of God ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Material Wealth ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Urban Spirituality ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Ideal

The idea and the ideal of religious poverty exerted a powerful force throughout the Middle Ages. “Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff,” Christ had commanded his apostles. He had sternly warned, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for someone who is rich to enter into the kingdom of God.” And he had instructed one of the faithful, who had asked what he needed to do to live the most holy sort of life, “if you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give your money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” Beginning with these biblical injunctions, voluntary poverty, the casting off of wealth and worldly goods for the sake of Christ, dominated much of medieval religious thought. The desire for a more perfect poverty impelled devout men and women to new heights of piety, while disgust with the material wealth of the church fueled reform movements and more radical heresies alike. Often, as so clearly illustrated by the case of the Spiritual Franciscans andfraticelliin the later thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the lines separating devout believer from condemned heretic shifted and even reversed themselves entirely depending on how one understood the religious call to poverty. Moreover, the Christian ideal of poverty interacted powerfully with and helped to shape many major economic, social, and cultural trends in medieval Europe. As Lester Little demonstrated over two decades ago, for example, developing ideals of religious poverty were deeply intermeshed with the revitalizing European economy of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries and did much to shape the emerging urban spirituality of that period.

The church in the West Highlands in the late middle ages

2003 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-46
Author(s):  
A. D. M. Barrell
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Church

Who Were the Scribes of Latin Manuscripts?

2020 ◽  
pp. 704-710
Author(s):  
Alison I. Beach
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Gender Education ◽  
The Status ◽  
Written Word

This chapter discusses scribes from antiquity and the early Christian era through the late Middle Ages: their professions, class, gender, education, religion, age, etc. The status of scribes varied dramatically from period to period, reflecting changes in literacy and respect for the written word. The author discusses monastic attitudes towards writing, the influence of different monastic orders and reform movements on ideas about scribes, and the place of scribal activity in Universities and secular bureaucracies.

scholarly journals “Making the face beautiful”(feature on medieval beauty products)

2020 ◽  
pp. 73-79
Author(s):  
Radivoj Radic
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Medieval Medicine ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Face ◽  
Bad Breath ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship ◽  
The Church ◽  
Beauty Products

In the Middle Ages, people had an ambivalent relationship to the beauty products: some were fully supportive of the attempts to beautify oneself, while the others, first and foremost the representatives of the church, frowned upon this notion. This feature represents a show?case of the advice and recipes for beautification from two medical collections created in the late Middle Ages. These are the Byzantine medical treatise (dating from 11th to 14th century) and the collection of Serbian medieval medicine, the so-called Hodoch Code (dating from the end of the 14th or beginning of the 15th century). The treatise is focusing more on the practical advice than theoretical knowledge, and its greatest part is dedicated to pharmacology. Hodoch Code (Hodoski zbornik) is in fact a therapeutic collection, and it consists of diverse medical texts. These collections contain the advice how to make one?s face white, hair black or blond, but most certainly rich in volume, as well as recipes for treating facial lines, warts, freckles, cracked lips or bad breath.

scholarly journals Luther and Economic Questions

1910 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 131-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Alfred Faulkner
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Kingdom Of God ◽  
The Other ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Special Knowledge ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Church

There are two facts to be borne in mind in regard to Luther's whole attitude to social and economic questions. The first is that ordinarily this was a territory to be confined to experts, in which ministers should not meddle. He believed that a special knowledge was necessary to deal with some of these matters, and that they had better be left to those to whom Providence had assigned them, whether the jurists, those clever in worldly knowledge, or the authorities. The other fact is that the Church after all has social duties, and that Church and clergy must fight flagrant abuses and try to bring in the Kingdom of God on earth. The Church must use the Word of God against sin and sinners, and so by spiritual ministries help the needs of the time. The authorities on their part shall proceed by strict justice against evil doers. But there is another fact here which it is necessary to mention to get Luther's whole attitude, viz., that the State's function is not simply to administer justice, but to secure the general weal. They shall do the very best they can for their subjects, says Luther. “The authorities shall serve their subjects and use their office not petulantly [nicht zu Mutwillen] but for the advancement of the common good, and especially for the poor.” The princes shall give laws which shall limit as far as possible social misery and national dangers. They should listen to the proposals of the Church to this end, and on the ground of wise counsels of churchmen, do away with old laws and make new ones.

Observant Reform in the Late Middle Ages

2020 ◽  
pp. 299-313
Author(s):  
Kathryne Beebe
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Essential Questions ◽  
Scant Attention

Observant reform is central to the religious, social, cultural, economic, and political changes fundamental to late medieval Europe. However, modern scholars have traditionally devoted scant attention to it, focusing instead on pre-1300 religious movements or the changes of the Reformation. Yet in the past two decades, more work focusing on the ‘Observance Movement’ has begun to remedy that neglect. This chapter highlights the essential questions and issues that drive recent studies, such as property, the involvement of women and the laity, and resistance to reform. It evaluates the current challenges presented by the conceptualization of an emerging field and argues that while greater collaboration between scholars and the production of basic overviews are needed, we should also strive to understand those who professed or embodied Observant ideals not just from the viewpoint of our own labels and concepts, but also to understand them in their own terms.

Knights, Cooks, Monks and Tourists: Elite and Popular Experience of the Late-Medieval Jerusalem Pilgrimage

2006 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 99-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryne Beebe
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Popular Interest ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
The Church

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the late Middle Ages was the centre of a range of pilgrimage activity in which elite and popular beliefs and practices overlapped and complicated each other in exciting ways. The Jerusalem pilgrimage, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in particular, abounded in multiple levels of ‘elite’ and ‘popular’ experience. Through the pilgrimage writings of a fifteenth-century Dominican pilgrim named Felix Fabri, this paper will explore two specific levels: the distinction between noble and lower-class experiences of the Jerusalem pilgrimage (both physical and spiritual), and the distinction between spiritually ‘elite’ and ‘popular’ conceptions of pilgrimage itself – that uneasy balance between the spiritually-sophisticated, contemplative experience of pilgrimage promoted by St Jerome and the more ‘popular’ interest in traditional ‘tourist’ activities, such as gathering indulgences or stocking up on holy souvenirs and relics to take home. However, as we will see, even these tourist acts were grounded in the orthodox spirituality of late-medieval piety, and the elite and popular experiences of pilgrimage, whether social or spiritual, were not so distinct as they may first appear.

Women, Posthumous Benefaction, and Family Strategy in Pre-Conquest England

1999 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 399-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Crick
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Land Transfer ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
The Family ◽  
Family And Marriage ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
Family Strategy ◽  
The Church

In the early Middle Ages it was men who, with their resort to armed might, were the plunderers of church property, though some among them did contribute to its increase. Women, and especially widows, were more positively involved with the church, as givers rather than as receivers.When Jack Goody put more than a thousand years into the few hundred pages of his Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe, he could be allowed a little judgmental rhetoric. The documentation from early medieval Europe, unevenly distributed across very diverse situations, may indeed yield fewer examples of female than male predation, and perhaps more examples of female than male benefaction. But, since Goody wrote, historians have been increasingly alerted to complex relationships among individuals, property, and the church, which may extend far beyond the scope of individual documents, across several generations. Goody's female “givers” take on a new complexion in an environment in which donations can be more apparent than real, where a land transfer may prove no more than a social gesture. In such circumstances, identifying the originators of grants, let alone separating male and female action, becomes a delicate process. In the following article, female involvement is considered in the context of pre-Conquest wills, a body of documents that could be interpreted as classic evidence that female “givers” literally as well as morally stood in credit with the church.The prominence of women in pre-Conquest wills has long been noted.

JACOB’s LADDER: Reason, Liberty and Science. The Contribution of Freemasonry to the Enlightenment

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-136
Author(s):  
Mădălina Calance
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Universal Human Rights ◽  
Jacob's Ladder ◽  
The Church ◽  
Church Tradition

Abstract The theme of the article relies to the particular contribution of Freemasonry in the initiation and development of modernity, focusing on science, religion and politics. We know that, during the late Middle Ages, the European society was obedient to the „Church-Tradition-Monarchy” trinity; this status-quo collapsed due to the rational way of thinking; also the establishment of the universal human rights belongs to the Enlightenment, whose theses were supported mainly by Freemasons. Many researchers have proposed to show the extent to which Freemasonry helped to build the ideals of Enlightenment. The main conclusions that can be drawn, by analyzing their tracks, are: (1) All famous leaders of the Enlightenment had connections to Freemasonry; (2) The Enlightenment tenets overlap Freemasonry tenets, and, therefore they were supported and propagated by English, French, and American lodges; (3) Freemasonry progressively turned into a transnational vehicle for liberal thinking, disseminating the concepts of property and freedom in Europe and across the Atlantic.

The Garden

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mailan S. Doquang
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Sensory Modalities ◽  
The Church

This section addresses the use of real plants in medieval churches from the Early Christian period to the Late Middle Ages. It demonstrates that living vegetation was a key aspect of the church experience, notably during the consecration rite, the Easter liturgy, and on other special occasions, such as baptisms, weddings, and the feast days of certain saints. Late medieval documents from the church of Saint-Mary-at-Hill in London reveal that live plants were a consistent expense for clerical communities. Alongside sculpted flora, real plants heightened the presence of the organic in sacred architectural contexts, while also engaging different sensory modalities.

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