Antiochene Exegesis in Western Europe During the Middle Ages

1947 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. L. W. Laistner

The outstanding importance of allegorical interpretation to the medieval scholar engaged on interpreting the Scriptures is well known. The method, which had originated in the East and was older than Christianity, became well established in the West during the Patristic age; in its application there was a good deal of variety. Ambrosiaster in commenting on the Pauline epistles combined orthodoxy with an unswerving adherence to the historical sense. Tyconius, on the other hand, laid down no less than seven rules whereby to interpret the prophecies in the Old Testament. Augustine went further in finding allegorical meaning in passages of Holy Writ than Jerome, who always maintained a certain balance in expounding the literal and the spiritual sense. The latter is more pronounced in his earlier commentaries when he was still consciously under the influence of Origen. In his later works allegorical interpretation becomes noticeably less; but it is not wholly absent even from his unfinished commentary on Jeremiah. To Gregory the Great the sensus spiritalis and particularly the sensus moralis were of such paramount significance as almost to oust the literal meaning. His influence on Bede and through Bede, as well as directly, on later expounders of the Bible was enormous.

Author(s):  
Norman Kretzmann ◽  
Eleonore Stump

Aquinas lived an active, demanding academic and ecclesiastical life that ended while he was still in his forties. He nonetheless produced many works, varying in length from a few pages to a few volumes. Because his writings grew out of his activities as a teacher in the Dominican order and a member of the theology faculty of the University of Paris, most are concerned with what he and his contemporaries thought of as theology. However, much of academic theology in the Middle Ages consisted in a rational investigation of the most fundamental aspects of reality in general and of human nature and behaviour in particular. That vast domain obviously includes much of what is now considered to be philosophy, and is reflected in the broad subject matter of Aquinas’ theological writings. The scope and philosophical character of medieval theology as practised by Aquinas can be easily seen in his two most important works, Summa contra gentiles (Synopsis [of Christian Doctrine] Directed Against Unbelievers) and Summa theologiae(Synopsis of Theology). However, many of the hundreds of topics covered in those two large works are also investigated in more detail in the smaller works resulting from Aquinas’ numerous academic disputations (something like a cross between formal debates and twentieth-century graduate seminars), which he conducted in his various academic posts. Some of those topics are taken up differently again in his commentaries on works by Aristotle and other authors. Although Aquinas is remarkably consistent in his several discussions of the same topic, it is often helpful to examine parallel passages in his writings when fully assessing his views on any issue. Aquinas’ most obvious philosophical connection is with Aristotle. Besides producing commentaries on Aristotle’s works, he often cites Aristotle in support of a thesis he is defending, even when commenting on Scripture. There are also in Aquinas’ writings many implicit Aristotelian elements, which he had thoroughly absorbed into his own thought. As a convinced Aristotelian, he often adopts Aristotle’s critical attitude toward theories associated with Plato, especially the account of ordinary substantial forms as separately existing entities. However, although Aquinas, like other medieval scholars of western Europe, had almost no access to Plato’s works, he was influenced by the writings of Augustine and the pseudo-Dionysius. Through them he absorbed a good deal of Platonism as well, more than he was in a position to recognize as such. On the other hand, Aquinas is the paradigmatic Christian philosopher-theologian, fully aware of his intellectual debt to religious doctrine. He was convinced, however, that Christian thinkers should be ready to dispute rationally on any topic, especially theological issues, not only among themselves but also with non-Christians of all sorts. Since in his view Jews accept the Old Testament and heretics the New Testament, he thought Christians could argue some issues with both groups on the basis of commonly accepted religious authority. However, because other non-Christians, ‘for instance, Mohammedans and pagans – do not agree with us about the authority of any scripture on the basis of which they can be convinced… it is necessary to have recourse to natural reason, to which everyone is compelled to assent – although where theological issues are concerned it cannot do the whole job’, since some of the data of theology are initially accessible only in Scripture (Summa contra gentiles I.2.11). Moreover, Aquinas differed from most of his thirteenth-century Christian colleagues in the breadth and depth of his respect for Islamic and Jewish philosopher–theologians, especially Avicenna and Maimonides. He saw them as valued co-workers in the vast project of philosophical theology, clarifying and supporting doctrine by philosophical analysis and argumentation. His own commitment to that project involved him in contributing to almost all the areas of philosophy recognized since antiquity, omitting only natural philosophy (the precursor of natural science). A line of thought with such strong connections to powerful antecedents might have resulted in no more than a pious amalgam. However, Aquinas’ philosophy avoids eclecticism because of his own innovative approach to organizing and reasoning about all the topics included under the overarching medieval conception of philosophical Christian theology, and because of his special talents for systematic synthesis and for identifying and skilfully defending, on almost every issue he considers, the most sensible available position.


2019 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kateřina Voleková

Old Czech Summaries in Fifteenth-Century BiblesThis article focuses on some non-biblical texts accompanying Old Czech Bible translations in the Middle Ages. The oldest translation of the entire Bible into Old Czech, which comes from the 1350s, included a particular type of non-biblical texts: prefaces to biblical books. The following Old Czech revisions and new translations of the Bible were provided, to varying degrees, with other textual aids, such as the lists of Mass readings. In this paper, we focus on the so-called capitula, summaries of individual chapters of particular biblical books. In the Middle Ages, the capitula were an aid providing orientation in the text for the study of the Holy Writ in Latin. During the revision of the Czech biblical translation at the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, chapter summaries in Latin were also translated. However, they are only preserved in their entirety in one manuscript, the second volume of the Litoměřice-Třeboň Bible. Other Old Czech Bibles included biblical summaries only exceptionally and selectively; the Old Czech chapter summaries survived in nine biblical manuscripts, mainly before individual chapters of selected books of the Old Testament. They were primarily intended to familiarise readers with the content of the text. The biblical summaries deserve a critical edition and further research, especially for their Old Czech vocabulary, reflecting the formation of biblical language and style in the late Middle Ages. Staroczeskie streszczenia w piętnastowiecznych tłumaczeniach BibliiNiniejszy artykuł jest poświęcony tekstom towarzyszącym staroczeskim przekładom Biblii z okresu średniowiecza. Pierwszy staroczeski przekład całej Biblii, pochodzący z lat pięćdziesiątych XIV wieku, zawierał również szczególny rodzaj tekstu: przedmowy do poszczególnych ksiąg. Zarówno jego zmodyfikowane wersje, jak i nowe przekłady, były (w różnym stopniu) zaopatrzone w teksty pomocnicze, na przykład listy czytań mszalnych. Przedstawiona analiza omawia tzw. capitula, czyli streszczenia poszczególnych rozdziałów ksiąg biblijnych. W średniowieczu stanowiły one jedyną w swoim rodzaju pomoc, umożliwiającą orientację w treści łacińskiego tekstu Pisma Świętego. Podczas modyfikacji czeskiego przekładu Biblii na przełomie XIV i XV wieku przetłumaczono również łacińskie streszczenia; zachowały się one w całości tylko w jednym manuskrypcie – drugim tomie Biblii litomierzycko-trzebońskiej. Inne biblie staroczeskie zawierały takie streszczenia tylko w wybranych rozdziałach; zachowały się one w dziewięciu manuskryptach, gdzie w większości przypadków poprzedzają poszczególne rozdziały wybranych ksiąg Starego Testamentu. Ich głównym celem było zapoznanie czytelnika z treścią tekstu biblijnego. Streszczenia, o których mowa, zasługują na krytyczne opracowanie i dalsze badania, zwłaszcza ze względu na staroczeskie słownictwo, odzwierciedlające formowanie się języka i stylu biblijnego w okresie późnego średniowiecza.


1980 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard L. Rudolph

The experience of Russia is examined to establish whether the area underwent a process of proto-industrialization comparable to that found in Western Europe. It is argued that the process did take place in this region, even with unfree labor, and served as the basis for much later industrial development. It is also argued that the Russian case differed a good deal from that found in the West. The major factors operating to make the pattern different include the previous existence of the “non- European” marriage pattern, marked differences in family and household structure, the relative immobility of labor, and the degree to which there were half-peasant, half-manufacturing households that dominated much of manufacture.


1948 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-73
Author(s):  
R. Stuart Louden

We can trace a revival of theology in the Reformed Churches in the last quarter of a century. The new theological interest merits being called a revival of theology, for there has been a fresh and more thorough attention given to certain realities, either ignored or treated with scant notice for a considerable time previously.First among such realities now receiving more of the attention which their relevance and authority deserve, is the Bible, the record of the Word of God. There is an invigorating and convincing quality about theology which is Biblical throughout, being based on the witness of the Scriptures as a whole. The valuable results of careful Biblical scholarship had had an adverse effect on theology in so far as theologians had completely separated the Old Testament from the New in their treatment of Biblical doctrine, or in expanding Christian doctrine, had spoken of the theological teaching of the Synoptic Gospels, the Pauline Epistles, the Johannine writings, and so on, as if there were no such thing as one common New Testament witness. It is being seen anew that the Holy Scriptures contain a complete history of God's saving action. The presence of the complete Bible open at the heart of the Church, recalls each succeeding Christian generation to that one history of God's saving action, to which the Church is the living witness. The New Testament is one, for its Lord is one, and Christian theology must stand four-square on the foundation of its whole teaching.


Traditio ◽  
1977 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 65-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Goffart

The treatiseDe re militariby Flavius Vegetius Renatus was the bible of warfare throughout the Middle Ages — the soldier's equivalent of the Rule of St. Benedict. The surviving manuscripts exceed 140; there were five separate translations into French within the century following 1284, many more into other languages, and nine incunabula. In contrast to Byzantium, where a succession of authors since Urbicius (ca.500) strove to keep military literature up to date, the Latin civilization of the West was content with a single book. Vegetius, who explicitly omitted cavalry from his exposition, became the philosopher-schoolmaster of Western chivalry. Hrabanus Maurus, John of Salisbury, and Egidius Colonna copied large extracts into works of their own, and so did Machiavelli. Vegetius is among the authors whose popularity in the Renaissance more than equalled their medieval fame. The testimonials continued to mount up through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, an epoch that was perhaps the highest point of Vegetius‘ influence, and reached even to the Napoleonic age, when Marshall de Ligne (best remembered for a witticism about the Congress of Vienna) pronounced a memorable encomium: ‘A god, says Vegetius, inspired the legion, and I say that a god inspired Vegetius. It is he who by his seven orders of battle made us understand the warfare of the Ancients and taught the greatest generals of our time to imitate them.’ What other book without literary distinction was as prized in the Age of Enlightenment as it had been by Bede?


Traditio ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 357-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. R. Brown

Concentrating as he did on the office of adelphopoiesis preserved in Eastern Christian liturgical sources, John Boswell gave short shrift to the West. Although he believed that the ritual was known and practiced there, the only documentary trace of any similar ceremony he discussed was an account that Gerald of Wales included toward the end of the twelfth century in his Topographica Hibernica. Boswell did present a fifteenth-century French pact of brotherhood in translation in an appendix, but he did not consider its ceremonial significance in his text. Nor did he believe it pertinent to his topic, labeling it as he did, “an agreement of ‘brotherhood',” and terming it “[a] treaty of political union using fraternal language.” I shall discuss Gerald's account and this compact later, in the course of analyzing a variety of evidence regarding ritual brotherhood in Western Europe between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. I shall attempt to show that ties of brotherhood contracted formally and ritually between two individuals were more common in the West than Boswell believed. I shall argue that bonds of ritual brotherhood similar to those solemnized in the office of adelphopoiesis existed in many parts of Western Europe in the later Middle Ages, in areas far removed from the regions of Italy subject to Byzantine influence, where euchologies containing the Eastern ceremony were preserved.’ In dealing with the Western evidence I shall be particularly concerned with its nature, which contrasts strikingly with the Eastern sources. For the East, the most abundant documentation is liturgical, and traces of such relationships in other sources are rare — although (as Claudia Rapp shows in this symposium) not as sparse as has sometimes been thought. For the West the situation is precisely the reverse.’ The Western cases of individuals linked by ritual fraternal ties that Du Cange presented far outnumber the Eastern instances he cited, and additional Western examples have come to light since his time. However, as regards the ceremonial by which the ties were forged in the West, there is no strictly liturgical evidence. Western liturgical books contain no special prayers and offices for making brothers. Narrative and documentary sources cast fitful light on the nature of the ceremony that accompanied the unions, but they do not suggest that any uniform ritual ever existed. Why this was so is a matter for speculation, but I believe that the absence of fraternal ceremonial from the liturgy is closely related to another distinctive aspect of the institution in the West: the lack of prohibitions, ecclesiastical and secular, against the bond. I shall consider this issue after examining the various motives that seem to have underlain the Western fraternal alliances, and also the outcomes of the unions. In the end I shall propose that whatever the differences in documentation, and despite the difference in the ritual practices, striking formal and functional likenesses existed between the Eastern and Western institutions of ritual brotherhood linking two participants: in the purposes they served, the means by which they were contracted, and the gap that often existed between ideal and reality. In a final section I shall discuss the problems associated with attempting to establish whether or not — or when and how often — Western (or Eastern) rituals of brotherhood formalized relationships that involved or were expected to involve sexual intercourse between the participants.


1956 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-146
Author(s):  
Gerald Bonner

It is, no doubt, appropriate that the document which ushers in the stormy history of the African Church should be a record of martyrdom. But there is another, scarcely less significant, feature in the Acts of the Scillitan Saints—a reference to Holy Scripture. Saturninus proconsul dixit: Quae sunt res in capsa vestra? Speratus dixit: Libri et epistolae Pauli, viri justi. Biblical scholar and palaeographer alike find the reference interesting. For the one, there is evidence of the spread of the text of the Bible in North Africa at the end of the second century. For the other, there is the problem of the nature of the book-form in which the scriptures circulated. Recently, however, another aspect has been mentioned, in this Journal, by Dr. W. H. C. Frend in an article on ‘The Gnostic-Manichaean tradition in North Africa’. In this article, Dr. Frend argues that there was in the North African Church, besides the rigorist tradition which produced the Donatists, and the more inclusive and more compromising element, which constituted the strength of the Catholics, a third element, whose outlook was enshrined first in the Gnostics against whom Tertullian fulminated and later in the Manichees, from whom African Catholicism was to draw her most illustrious convert. Dr. Frend argues persuasively for the existence of an historical continuity between the Gnostics and the Manichees, one of his points being that both heretical movements relied extensively on the writings of St. Paul to support their teaching. In this connexion, he writes: ‘Rejection of the Old Testament led in Africa to an almost exaggerated respect for the Epistles of St. Paul, and also for the various Gnostic Ada of the Apostles.


The article states that, for the purpose of interpreting the Biblical topos of the Law and Grace, Hilarion refers to the genre of the word. Hilarion takes first place in the title, and then in the text of the work God brings out wisdom. By law, he believes the Old Testament, which has already fulfilled its task, and Grace - the New Testament, which outlines the existence of man, his relationship with God, gives hope for eternal life. The subject of the "Word" breaks the sermon into four fragments. In the first of them, we notice the allegorical meaning of reading the Scriptures in relation to the history of mankind. The second part is devoted to the interpretation of the image of Jesus Christ, which appears as a synthesis of God and human nature. The third fragment depicts events beyond the boundary of the Bible. It is devoted to the baptism of Rus. In the fourth fragment Prince Volodymyr is glorified. Following the best traditions of Byzantine oratory prose, the author of the Word simply pours his text into quotations from the Bible and adds to them a predominantly allegorical interpretation, emphasizing that the work is not intended for proclamation, but for reading, which enabled the author to interpret the Scriptures and in the literal, and in allegorical sense. The advantage of the New Testament over the Old Testament is embodied by the author in the images of the free wife of Abraham Sarah - Grace and his servant Hagar - Law. Laconic retelling of God-inspired text, Hilarion interprets the old-czarist images, as those that represent the new covenants at the level of allusions, presented them in the form of additional parallel antithesis. The same anti-colored color is also depicted by the images of their children. Isaac was born from a free woman, which means that he represents freedom, Ishmael is from a slave, hence his image symbolizes slavery. He who receives Grace receives goodness, love, becomes the son of God, and begins to live a new life in the Holy Spirit through which the believer is through. The overcoming of the Law and the perception of Grace means, according to Hilarion, the acquisition of spiritual freedom.


Author(s):  
Р.Г. ДЗАТТИАТЫ

В результате процессов, сопровождавших Великое переселение народов, аланы, попав в Западную Европу, были ассимилированы, оставив во Франции, Северной Италии, Испании, Англии несколько сотен топонимов, связанных с ними. Следы пребывания алан на Западе впервые были обобщены В.А. Кузнецовым и В.К. Пудовиным. Появление труда американского ученого Б. Бахраха «Аланы на Западе» сняли скептицизм по отношению к роли алан в истории народов Западной Европы. О роли алан в исторических событиях Западной Европы раннего и зрелого Средневековья было отчетливо заявлено в трудах В.Б. Ковалевской, Франко Кардини, Говарда Рида, Скотта Литлтона, Линды Малкор. Особенно замечательна объемная работа Агусти Алемани «Аланы в древних и средневековых письменных источниках». У алан было заимствовано устройство конного войска, а вместе с этим, вероятно, и экипировка всадника, важной деталью которой был воинский пояс. Пряжка со щитком такого пояса служила у алан маркером статуса: в зависимости от того, из какого материала она была изготовлена (золото, серебро, бронза), она указывала на место в социальной иерархии. Трехлепестковый орнамент в результате модификаций вполне мог стать основой или прообразом особого знака-символа – так называемой «королевской лилии». Схему трансформации трехлепесткового узора в лилию можно проиллюстрировать рисунками пряжек. Надо полагать, что аланы оставили свой след не только в топонимике, организации конного войска, но и в орнаментике, фольклоре, антропонимике и других проявлениях культуры, которые необходимо тщательно исследовать. As a result of the processes that accompanied the Great Migration of Nations, the Alans, having fallen into Western Europe, were assimilated, leaving several hundred place names associated with them in France, Northern Italy, Spain, and England. The traces of the Alans' stay in the West were first generalized by V.A. Kuznetsov and V.K. Pudovin. The appearance of the work of the American scientist B.S. Bachrach "Alans in the West" removed skepticism regarding the role of the Alans in the history of the peoples of Western Europe. The role of the Alans in the historical events of Western Europe of the early and mature Middle Ages was clearly stated in the works of V.B. Kovalevskaya, Franco Cardini, Howard Reed, Scott Littleton, Linda Malkor. Particularly remarkable is the voluminous work of Agusti Alemany "Alans in ancient and medieval written sources." The Alans borrowed the device of the horse army, and with it, probably, the equipment of the horseman, an important detail of which was the military belt. The buckle with the shield of such a belt served as a status marker for the Alans: depending on what material it was made of (gold, silver, and bronze) it indicated a place in the social hierarchy. As a result of modifications, the three-petal ornament could very well become the basis or prototype of a special sign-symbol – the so-called “royal lily”. The transformation pattern of a three-petal pattern into a lily can be illustrated with buckle patterns. It must be assumed that the Alans left their mark not only in toponymy, organization of the cavalry army, but also in ornamentation, folklore, anthroponymy and other cultural manifestations, which must be carefully studied.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 487-508
Author(s):  
Georgy T Khukhuni ◽  
Irina I Valuitseva ◽  
Anna A Osipova

The purpose of this article is to study the issue of key features of the so-called cultural words (realia) in sacred texts (the Bible is taken as an example) as well as a distinctive nature of their cross-language transfer. This problem is essential not only for the Bible translation as such but it also enables to clarify some aspects related to the representation of the vocabulary with cultural identity in the target language that is explained by the very nature of the Old and New Testaments containing a wide variety of the realia that refer directly to a religious cult and to the everyday life of Palestinian people and their neighborhood in the Bible times. The material for the present research includes versions of the Holy Writ created in different periods in a number of languages (Latin, Church Slavonic, Russian and English). While analyzing, the classical translations labelled often as “national” ones have been used (the King James Bible, Synodal Translation), as well and the versions created in the 20th and 21st centuries. The main approach applied herein is the identifying of the corresponding units in the said Bible texts, the ascertainment of the possibility of their ambivalent interpretation, the correlation within the considered versions of translation, the determination of translation strategies used for representing the realia and their comparative analysis. When considering the options presented, special attention has been paid to extra-linguistic factors, since they often play a decisive role in solving the said task. The key results of the made survey can be formulated as follows: 1) since translations could have been made from different versions of the source text, there are cases when certain realia are available in some translations but are missing in others; 2) the use of transcription / transliteration of the realia in Russian versions of the Old Testament in some cases is determined by their representation in the Greek and Church Slavonic texts of the Bible and therefore in both the Synodal and the new translations they can be presented in a form different from that available in European languages; 3) the representation of the Greek word diopetês ( fallen from heaven ) as the proper name Diopet in the Synodal Translation is usually qualified as an elementary mistake, but it could have been also provoked by an intention to follow Greek and Church Slavonic traditions; 4) the existence of the so-called ‘undefined realia’ in the source text, an exact meaning of which is not known, causes their various interpretations in the target language; 5) during the analysis of the units of the target language used in the translation of the Holy Writ, the diachronic aspect must be taken into account considering, on the one hand, the possibility of losing or changing the meaning in the course of linguistic evolution, and on the other hand, avoiding vesting the reality with the meaning that it could not have; 6) a number of translations made in recent decades are characterized by a pronounced pragmatic orientation, in some cases causing a significant neutralization of the national-cultural specificity or its adaptation to the corresponding cultural environment, the degree of admissibility of which in some cases is controversial. The above items enable to clarify a number of aspects related to the methods of translating the realia and the importance of such aspects for attaining the translation adequacy.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document