The Word Eclipsed? Preaching in the Early Middle Ages

Traditio ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 77-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Emmet Mclaughlin
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The City ◽  
Aesthetic Preferences

The modern interest in and study of medieval sermon literature was first driven by a combination of confessional acrimony and professional scholarship. L. Bourgain, Albert Lecoy de la Marche, Richard Albert, Rudolf Cruel, Anton Linsenmayer, and G. R. Owst combed through the archives to uncover the written remains of medieval preaching, and what they discovered came as a surprise to those who had been raised on the Protestant black legend of a mute medieval Church. For quantity and variety the period from the twelfth century to the Reformation must count as one (or several) of the great ages of pulpit activity. In fact, on the eve of the Reformation there was some concern that too much was being preached too often. For example, as a result of complaints by laity and clergy alike, in 1508 the Bishop of Breslau ordered a limit on the number of sermons preached in the city. To be sure, modern judgments concerning the quality of that preaching in both style and content vary with the confessional stance and aesthetic preferences of the individual scholar. But of the late medieval dedication to preaching in season and out there can be no doubt.

Parochial Conformity and Voluntary Religion in Late-Medieval England

1991 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 173-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gervase Rosser
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Church Building ◽  
Late Medieval England

Much evidence has been brought to light recently to demonstrate the vitality of religious life among the English laity on the eve of the Reformation. Attention has been drawn to the fact that, in the period before the advent of Protestantism, lay men and women evinced a high degree of commitment to their church. The religious changes of the sixteenth century are as pressing a historical problem as ever; moreover, they provide a valuable litmus with which to test the qualities of the late-medieval church. Nevertheless, there is a danger that the fascination of the Reformation question, together with the bias of documentary sources on lay religion towards the latter end of the medieval period, may impoverish our appreciation of the ways in which, for a thousand years, Christians in Britain had been shaping their religious lives. To take a long view of religious voluntarism may help to put the developments of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in a proper perspective. There has also been a tendency, in discussion of lay religious life in the late middle ages, to accept the institutional framework as given. Yet in practice that framework was both adjustable and expressive of a wide range of lay initiatives in religion. That men and women were prepared to lend material support to a variety of religious institutions is apparent from any medieval collection of wills or set of churchwardens' accounts. But what, exactly, was expressed by such support? This is not an easy question to answer. Any assessment calls for an understanding of the medieval parish, not as a legal abstraction, nor yet as a supposedly ‘natural’ community of inhabitants, but as a more or less adaptable framework shaped by, and in turn shaping, the lives of the members. The evidence of religious activity, from processions to church-building, is, so far as it goes, not hard to find. But what of the parochial structure which gave meaning to these gestures, and which could in turn be modified by them?

Bastard Feudalism and the Framing of Thirteenth-Century England

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Coss
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Great Work ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

In the introduction to his great work of 2005, Framing the Early Middle Ages, Chris Wickham urged not only the necessity of carefully framing our studies at the outset but also the importance of closely defining the words and concepts that we employ, the avoidance ‘cultural sollipsism’ wherever possible and the need to pay particular attention to continuities and discontinuities. Chris has, of course, followed these precepts on a vast scale. My aim in this chapter is a modest one. I aim to review the framing of thirteenth-century England in terms of two only of Chris’s themes: the aristocracy and the state—and even then primarily in terms of the relationship between the two. By the thirteenth century I mean a long thirteenth century stretching from the period of the Angevin reforms of the later twelfth century on the one hand to the early to mid-fourteenth on the other; the reasons for taking this span will, I hope, become clearer during the course of the chapter, but few would doubt that it has a validity.

Aachen — the Second Rome: a City as a Symbol of Power in Poetic Carolingian Texts

Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9 (107)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Maya Petrova
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Poetic Tradition ◽  
Narrative Poetry ◽  
The Third ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
The City

The paper deals the construction of Aachen as a symbol of the power of Charlemagne (742/4 — 814). It discusses the poetic Carolingian texts, which played an important role in the formation of the medieval ideology of the unity of the City and the power of its creator. It is shown that the most striking example of the statement of such a worldview is the third book (v. 1—536) of the anonymous epic poem (not fully preserved), known in the early Middle Ages under the title “Charlemagne and Pope Leo” (Karolus Magnus et Leo Papa). It is noted that this text, containing a description of the construction of the Second Rome — Aachen, influenced the subsequent Carolingian poetic tradition, serving as a turning point in the development of narrative poetry during the reign of Charlemagne.

Perspective istoriografice privind spațiul sacru al Sibiului în evul mediu

Transilvania ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 43-58
Author(s):  
Maria Crîngaci-Țiplic
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval Art ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
Urban Hierarchy ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Industrial Age ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
South Eastern Europe ◽  
First Time ◽  
The City

This paper presents an overview of the historiography that describes and investigates the components which compose the sacred spaces of Sibiu in the Middle Ages. It is well known that Sibiu had a preeminent position in the urban hierarchy of medieval Transylvania and of the south-eastern Europe. The city was attested for the first time in 1191 as an ecclesiastical center of the Transylvanian Saxons and was home to numerous places of worship and sacred sites (churches, monasteries, chapels, cemeteries, hospitals etc.). However, with the advent of the Reformation in the 16th century and the noticeable changes that occurred during the industrial age and the communist dictatorship (the 19th and 20th centuries), the medieval sacred building and their neighborhoods have been deeply transformed and medieval ecclesiastical topography became unrecognizable in modern day Sibiu. The recreation of the ecclesiastical topography and even more of the sacred spaces could be recreated through analyses and research of different type of sources from charters and town chronicles of the 16th-18th centuries to the most recent archaeological studies or papers on medieval art, architecture, or historical urban evolution. With this in mind, the study aims to provide references on the topic and establishes the main periods of the historiography and their relevant ideological and theoretical changes during over 400 hundred years of debates or research.

Kings and Knights at Play in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teofilo F. Ruiz
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Early Modern Spain ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Courtly Culture ◽  
To Come

This chapter examines tournaments. The origins of tournaments in Western Europe can be traced back to classical sources and to a sparse number of references to events that looked like tournaments in the Central Middle Ages. While these early mentions provide interesting glimpses of the genealogy of fictitious combat, it was the twelfth century that truly saw the formal beginnings of these traditions of artificial warfare that would hold such a powerful grip on the European imagination for many centuries to come. Closely tied to courtly culture and in a symbiotic relationship with the great outburst of courtly literature that took place in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, the tournament sank deep roots in England, France, the Low Countries, and parts of Germany during the twelfth century, and then developed elaborate rules of engagement and pageantry in succeeding centuries.

Latency and Topicality: Communication of Threats in Medieval Theatre Latenz und Aktualität: Bedrohungskommunikation im mittelalterlichen Schauspiel

2020 ◽  
Vol 149 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-497
Author(s):  
Klaus Ridder
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Medieval Theatre ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Production Techniques

The twelfth-century 'Ludus de Antichristo' already contains a number of the threatening scenarios (Ottoman Expansion, Heresy, Antichrist, etc.) that maintain a presence in the theatre up until the sixteenth century. This essay aims to investigate which scenarios of religious threat are dominant in the dramas of the later Middle Ages and Reformation, and what kinds of dramatic and production techniques are used in order to perform these scenarios on stage. Three levels of dramatic staging may be distinguished (Latency, Presence, Topicality), and these will be analysed here on the basis of three exemplary plays published before and after the Reformation (Hans Folz, 'Der Herzog von Burgund' / 'The Jewish Messiah'; Niklaus Manuel, 'Vom Papst und seiner Priesterschaft' / 'Of the Pope and his Priesthood'; Thomas Naogeorg, 'Pammachius' / 'Pammachius'). Bereits im 'Ludus de Antichristo' (12. Jh.) findet sich ein Großteil der Bedrohungsszenarien (Osmanische Expansion, Häresie, Antichrist etc.), die im Schauspiel bis ins 16. Jh. präsent bleiben. Der Aufsatz fragt danach, welche religiösen Bedrohungsszenarien im spätmittelalterlichen und reformatorischen Schauspiel dominant sind und auf welchen dramatischen Darstellungstechniken deren Wirkung in der Aufführung beruht. Drei Ebenen der theatralen Inszenierung von Bedrohung (Latenz, Präsenz, Aktualität) werden analytisch unterschieden und anhand von drei Schauspielen vor und nach der Reformation (Hans Folz, 'Der Herzog von Burgund'; Niklaus Manuel, 'Vom Papst und seiner Priesterschaft'; Thomas Naogeorg, 'Pammachius') exemplarisch beschrieben.

THE RECOVERY OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN THE CULTURE OF HUMANISTS AND THE COMMUNICATIVE ORIGINS OF THE REFORMATION

Traditio ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 74 ◽  
pp. 375-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
JORGE LEDO
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Common Currency ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Three Stages ◽  
Rules Of The Game

Ideas and opinions about communication and intellectual exchange underwent significant changes during the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. The rediscovery of parrhesia by the humanists of the Quattrocento is one of the least studied of these changes, and at the same time, paradoxically, one of the most fascinating. My main argument in these pages is that the recovery of Hellenistic “freedom of speech” was a process that took place from the thirteenth century through the first decade of the sixteenth century; thus it began well before the term παρρησία was common currency among humanists. This is the most important and counterituitive aspect of the present analysis of early modern parrhesia, because it means that the concept did not develop at the expense of classical and biblical tradition so much as at the expense of late-medieval scholastic speculation about the sins of the tongue and the legitimation of anger as an intellectual emotion. To illustrate this longue durée process, I have focused on three stages: (i) the creation, transformation, and assimilation by fourteenth-century humanism of the systems of sins of the tongue, and especially the sin of contentio; (ii) the synthesis carried out by Lorenzo Valla between the scholastic tradition, the communicative presumptions of early humanism, and the classical and New Testament ideas of parrhesia; and (iii) the systematization and transformation of this synthesis in Raffaele Maffei's Commentariorum rerum urbanorum libri XXXVIII. In closing, I propose a hypothesis. The theoretical framework behind Maffei's encyclopaedic approach is not only that he was attempting to synthesize the Quattrocento's heritage through the prism of classical sources; it was also that he was crystallizing the communicative “rules of the game” that all of Christianitas implicitly accepted at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Taking the three ways of manifesting the truth considered by Maffei and fleshing them out in the figures of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Celio Calcagnini, and Martin Luther just before the emergence of the Protestant Reformation could help to explain from a communicative perspective the success and pan-European impact of the Reformation.

scholarly journals Assessing and Representing Livability through the Analysis of Residential Preference

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (18) ◽  
pp. 4934 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Kovacs-Györi ◽  
Pablo Cabrera-Barona ◽  
Bernd Resch ◽  
Michael Mehaffy ◽  
Thomas Blaschke
Keyword(s):  
Urban Form ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Related Factors ◽  
Residential Preference ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The City ◽  
Measurable Factors ◽  
New Urban Agenda ◽  
Significant Factors

Livability reflects the quality of the person–environment relationship, namely how well the built environment or the available services in a city fulfill the residents’ needs and expectations. We argue that livability assessment can aid the implementation of certain New Urban Agenda (NUA) goals by providing a flexible way to assess urban environments and their quality. However, a reliable and transferable assessment framework requires the key elements of livability to be defined in such a way that measurable factors adequately represent the person–environment relationship. As an innovative approach, we determined key livability elements accordingly and asked over 400 residents worldwide to evaluate their urban environments using these parameters. Thereby, we could calibrate the livability assessment workflow by including personal aspects and identifying the most relevant livability factors through an ordinal regression analysis. Next, we performed relational-statistical learning in order to define the individual and combined contribution of these statistically significant factors to the overall livability of a place. We found that urban form and mobility-related factors tend to have the highest influence on residential satisfaction. Finally, we tested the robustness of the assessment by using geospatial analysis to model the livability for the city of Vienna, Austria. We concluded that the workflow allows for a reliable livability assessment and for further utilization in urban planning, improving urban quality by going beyond simple city rankings.

Early Latin Discussions of the Eternity of the World in the Thirteenth Century

Traditio ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 171-197
Author(s):  
Richard C. Dales
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The World ◽  
Preceding Period

Although the doctrine of the eternity of the world had evoked much concern and opposition among the Fathers of the Christian Church, it ceased to engage the attention of Latin Christian writers during most of the early Middle Ages. When interest in the question revived during the twelfth century, it was nearly always considered in the context of Plato's Timaeus or Boethius’ De consolatione philosophiae. By 1270, the issue seemed to be between the supporters and the opponents of Aristotle. Although the story of Latin discussions of the eternity of the world during the 1260s and 1270s has been quite thoroughly investigated, the preceding period from about 1230 to 1260 has been largely ignored. It is the purpose of the present study to elucidate this neglected stage in medieval discussions of the eternity of the world and to show its relationship to the earlier and later periods.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document