Parisian Theologians and The Jews: Peter Lombard and Peter Cantor

1999 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 55-76
Author(s):  
Jack Watt
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Common Opinion ◽  
History Of ◽  
Glossa Ordinaria ◽  
Distinguished Contribution

To honour the scholar whose distinguished contribution to medieval intellectual history has included examination of the early history of Parisian scholarship, I have chosen to examine an aspect of the work of two major teachers and authors in that ‘monde scolaire qui préfigure déjà le monde universitaire de demain’, the school of Notre Dame. The work of Peter Lombard and Peter Cantor makes clear that in the second half of the twelfth century, Judaism was being placed firmly and permanently on the Parisian theological agenda. Peter Lombard (d. 1160) lectured on the Psalms and the Letters of St Paul. His commentaries on these books came quickly to be received as the standard teaching texts in Paris, the magna glossatura replacing, for those books, the glossa ordinaria of Anselm of Laon and his associates. Medieval exegetes held these particular books of the Bible in esteem. For Aquinas, articulating common opinion, they contained ‘almost the whole of theological doctrine’. And thus, it might well be claimed, almost the whole of theological doctrine about Judaism.

An American Book of Chronicles

2019 ◽  
pp. 136-158
Author(s):  
Eran Shalev
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Early American ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History Of ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
The Republic ◽  
American Book

By the time Joseph Smith published The Book of Mormon, Americans had been producing and consuming faux biblical texts for close to a century. Imitating a practice that originated as a satirical literary genre in eighteenth-century Britain, Americans began producing pseudo-biblical texts during the Revolution. This essay demonstrates how the prism of pseudo-biblicism allows us to view The Book of Mormon as emerging from a larger biblico-American world. The genre demonstrates how pervasive the Bible was in the cultural landscape of the Republic and the ease with which Americans lapsed into biblical language. As this essay points out, however, pseudo-biblical discourse also sheds new light on The Book of Mormon. The similarities between The Book of Mormon and other pseudo-biblical texts provide a significant context to understanding the creation and reception of Smith’s text, the culture of biblicism in the nineteenth century, and the intellectual history of the early American Republic.

Two pre-Conquest manuscripts from Glastonbury Abbey

1987 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 197-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
James P. Carley
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
Fine Collection ◽  
Irish School ◽  
William Of Malmesbury

The earliest identified surviving manuscripts from Glastonbury Abbey date from the ninth and tenth centuries, but there are reliable post-Conquest traditions claiming that valuable books were found at the monastery as early as the reign of Ine, king of the West Saxons (688–726). By the tenth century at the latest there are reports of an ‘Irish school’ at Glastonbury, famous for its learning and books, and St Dunstan's earliest biographer, the anonymous. B., relates that Dunstan himself studied with the Irish at Glastonbury. During Dunstan's abbacy (940–56) – that is, at the period when most historians would place the beginnings of the English tenth-century reform movement – there was a general revival at Glastonbury which included a concerted policy of book acquisition and the establishment of a productive scriptorium. Not surprisingly, Dunstan's abbacy was viewed by the community ever afterwards as one of the most glorious periods in the early history of the monastery, especially since the later Anglo-Saxon abbots showed a marked falling off in devotion and loyalty to the intellectual inheritance of their monastery. Æthelweard and Æthelnoth, the last two Anglo-Saxon abbots, were especially reprehensible, and confiscated lands and ornaments for the benefit of their own kin. Nor did the situation improve immediately after the Conquest: the first Norman abbot, Thurstan, actually had to call in soldiers to quell his unruly monks. In spite of these disruptions, a fine collection of pre-Conquest books seems to have survived more or less intact into the twelfth century; when the seasoned traveller and connoisseur of books, William of Malmesbury, saw the collection in the late 1120s he was greatly impressed: ‘tanta librorum pulchritudo et antiquitas exuberat’.

scholarly journals PETER COMESTOR'S LECTURES ON THE GLOSSA “ORDINARIA” ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY IN THE TWELFTH-CENTURY CLASSROOM

Traditio ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 71 ◽  
pp. 203-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEXANDER ANDRÉE
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Gospel Of John ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
The Other ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Traditional Account ◽  
Glossa Ordinaria ◽  
The One ◽  
Alternative Understanding

The traditional account of the development of theology in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is that the emerging “academic” discipline of theology was separated from the Bible and its commentary, that the two existed on parallel but separate courses, and that the one developed in a “systematic” direction whereas the other continued to exist as a separate “practical” or “biblical-moral” school. Focusing largely on texts of an allegedly “theoretical” nature, this view misunderstands or, indeed, entirely overlooks the evidence issuing from lectures on the Bible — postills, glosses, and commentaries — notably the biblical Glossa “ordinaria.” A witness to an alternative understanding, Peter Comestor, master and chancellor of the cathedral school of Paris in the second half of the twelfth century, shows that theology was created as much from the continued study of the Bible as from any “systematic” treatise. Best known for his Historia scholastica, a combined explanation and rewrite of the Bible focusing on the historical and literal aspects of sacred history, Comestor used the Gloss as a textbook in his lectures on the Gospels both to elucidate matters of exegesis and to help him deduce doctrinal truth. Through a close reading of Comestor's lectures on the Gospel of John, this essay reevaluates the teaching of theology at the cathedral school of Paris in the twelfth century and argues that the Bible and its Gloss stood at the heart of this development.

Review of Book: The Bible and the Early History of Mankind

1947 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 395-395
Author(s):  
E. C. Messenger
Keyword(s):  
Early History ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History Of

Aelred of Rievaulx and the Nun of Watton: an Episode in the Early History of the Gilbertine order

1978 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 205-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giles Constable
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Early History ◽  
History Of

Although the story of the nun of Watton by Aelred of Rievaulx was published by Twysden in the seventeenth century and reprinted by Migne, it has never been studied in detail for the light it throws on religious life and attitudes in the twelfth century and on the history of the order founded by St Gilbert of Sempringham. This neglect has been the result less of ignorance than of the nature of episode, which was described as ‘disgraceful and fanatical’ by Dixon, ‘distressing’ by Eckenstein and by Graham, ‘painful’ by Powicke, ‘strange’ by Knowles, ‘of almost casual brutality’ by Nicholl, and as ‘curious’ and ‘unsavoury’ by Aelred Squire.

The Liber Theoreumacie (1214) and the Early History of the Quadrans Vetus

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-74
Author(s):  
C. Philipp E. Nothaft
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Critical Edition ◽  
Graphical Method ◽  
Early History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Practical Geometry

The Liber theoreumacie is a neglected work of practical geometry, written in Strasbourg in 1214, which sheds valuable light on the study and practice of astronomy in early thirteenth-century Europe. In this article, I focus on the first two chapters of Book IV, which both deal with the construction of horary instruments. The first of these chapters contains the earliest known account of the type of universal horary quadrant known as quadrans vetus, which is here given a biblical pedigree by labelling it the “sundial of Ahaz.” The second chapter describes a graphical method of inscribing hour markings on the surface of an astrolabe’s alidade, which appears to have been introduced into Latin Europe by the twelfth-century translator John of Seville. A critical edition and translation of the relevant passages will conclude the article.

Nicolas of Clairvaux and the Twelfth-Century Sequence with Special Reference to Adam of St. Victor

Traditio ◽  
1962 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 149-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
John F. Benton
Keyword(s):  
Special Reference ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
Close Connection ◽  
Modern Drama ◽  
Vast Number ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
The Way

The vast number and variety of sequences, those liturgical interpolations which in the middle ages commonly followed the repetition of the Alleluia in the Mass, and the freedom of their development, show that they were an outlet for the creative talents of musicians and poets. A sample of sequences from successive periods allows the literary historian to trace the development of rhyme and accentual meter, and a musicologist has described the sequence ‘as the parent of oratorio and the grandparent of modern drama.’ But while a view which encompasses centuries reveals to us variety and change, the compositions of any given time were largely shaped by inherited traditions. Not the least value of studies on the early history of the sequence is their demonstration of the close connection between various Alleluia melodies and their sequences and the way in which appropriate texts were fitted to melodies for specific feasts.

scholarly journals An Intellectual History of the Concepts of Premier-Presidentialism and President-Parliamentarism

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Elgie
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Academic Work ◽  
Early History ◽  
Future Application ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Over Time

Shugart and Carey introduced the twin concepts of premier-presidentialism and president-parliamentarism in their 1992 volume, Presidents and Assemblies. Based on a meta-analysis of journal articles and book publications, this article distinguishes between an early and a contemporary history of the two concepts. The period of early history runs from 1992 to around 2009. This was the time when the two concepts were entering the academic consciousness and when there was also some typological and classificatory ambiguity. The period of contemporary history begins in 2010. This era is marked by conceptual and classificatory clarity and by an increasing reference to the two concepts in academic work. In the article, we show how the concepts have been applied over time, noting a number of changes across the two periods under consideration. We conclude by pointing out some challenges to the future application of the two concepts.

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