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

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.

Author(s):  
Peter Coss

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.


Author(s):  
Carolyn Muessig

Chapter 1 traces the patristic and early medieval exegesis of Galatians 6:17. It assesses how language and imagery were appropriated and developed by eleventh- and twelfth-century monastic theologians (especially Peter Damian) into a soteriological system of penance and redemption that focused on Christ’s wounds. Significantly, it looks at examples of stigmatization before Francis of Assisi. These cases vary in their form; they gradually move from stigmata being almost exclusively associated with the sacerdotal order in the early Middle Ages to being linked to the laity by the early thirteenth century as with the cases of Peter the Conversus and Mary of Oignies.


2007 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 298-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean L. Field

Three vernacular religious biographies were written by women about other women around the year 1300: Agnes of Harcourt's FrancienVie d'Isabelle de France(ca. 1283), Felipa of Porcelet's ProvençalVida de la benaurada sancta Doucelina(begun ca. 1297), and Marguerite of Oingt's Franco-ProvençalVia seiti Biatrix virgina de Ornaciu(between 1303 and 1310). Although a limited number of similar texts had been composed in Latin dating back to the early Middle Ages, and a few twelfth-century women such as Clemence of Barking had refashioned existing Latin lives of early female martyr-saints into Anglo-Norman verse, the works of Agnes, Felipa, and Marguerite are the first extant vernacular biographies to have been written by European women about other contemporary women. Just as strikingly, after the three examples studied here, few if any analogous works appeared until the later fifteenth century, with most writing by women about other religious women in the intervening period instead being found in “Sister Books” and convent chronicles.


2013 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-68
Author(s):  
Carolyn Muessig

Francis of Assisi's reported reception of the stigmata on Mount La Verna in 1224 is widely held to be the first documented account of an individual miraculously and physically receiving the wounds of Christ. The appearance of this miracle, however, in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, is not as unexpected as it first seems. Interpretations of Galatians 6:17—“I bear the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ in my body”—had been circulating in biblical commentaries since the early Middle Ages. These works posited that clerics bore metaphorical and sometimes physical wounds(stigmata)as marks of persecution, while spreading the teaching of Christ in the face of resistance. By the seventh century, the meaning of Galatians 6:17 had been appropriated by bishops and priests as a sign or mark of Christ that they received invisibly at their ordination, and sometimes visibly upon their death. In the eleventh century, Peter Damian articulated a stigmatic spirituality that saw the ideal priest, monk, and nun as bearers of Christ's wounds, a status achieved through the swearing of vows and the practice of severe penance. By the early twelfth century, crusaders were said to bear the marks of the Passion in death and even sometimes as they entered into battle. By the early thirteenth century, “bearing the stigmata” was a pious superlative appropriated by a few devout members of the laity who interpreted Galatian 6:17 in a most literal manner. Thus, this article considers how the conception of “bearing the stigmata” developed in medieval Europe from its treatment in early Latin patristic commentaries to its visceral portrayal by the laity in the thirteenth century.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-31
Author(s):  
Anna McKay

Over the past two decades, medieval feminist scholarship has increasingly turned to the literary representation of textiles as a means of exploring the oftensilenced experiences of women in the Middle Ages. This article uses fabric as a lens through which to consider the world of the female recluse, exploring the ways in which clothing operates as a tether to patriarchal, secular values in Paul the Deacon’s eighthcentury Life of Mary of Egypt and the twelfth-century Life of Christina of Markyate. In rejecting worldly garb as recluses, these holy women seek out and achieve lives of spiritual autonomy and independence.


Traditio ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 63-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland J. Teske

William of Auvergne became a master of theology in the University of Paris in 1223 and was appointed bishop of Paris by Gregory IX in 1228. William governed the church of Paris until his death in 1249, while continuing to write the works which constitute his immense Magisterium divinale et sapientiale. Despite the fact that he was the first of the thirteenth-century theologians to appreciate the value of the Aristotelian philosophy that poured into the Latin West during the last half of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century, his writings have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. Étienne Gilson has sketched well the impact of the influx of Greek and Arabian philosophical works into the Christian West: Up to the last years of the twelfth century, when the Christian world unexpectedly discovered the existence of non-Christian interpretations of the universe, Christian theology never had to concern itself with the fact that a non-Christian interpretation of the world as a whole, including man and his destiny, was still an open possibility.


1992 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Harris

Among the ten celebrations of the Mass of St Basil in the Orthodox Church during the year are the conclusions to the three Vesper services immediately before the three major feasts of Christmas, Epiphany and Easter. Two of these Vesper services – those for Christmas Eve and the Eve of Epiphany – are of particular musical interest since they contain psalms with troparia or antiphons, for both of which the entire music can be transcribed from thirteenth-century manuscripts, so that these two services can be celebrated with what are, almost certainly, the oldest known complete examples of Byzantine psalm singing. From a recent paper of mine on these psalms, it can be gathered that they are examples of what is known as ‘responsorial psalmody’, the psalm itself being sung by a soloist, and the attached troparion by a choir of trained singers or psaltae. In both services they occur as punctuations of a series of readings, appearing in each case after the third and the sixth reading. On the Eve of Epiphany we should perhaps expect to find further psalms after the ninth and twelfth readings, since the series extends to thirteen readings in modern service books and to twelve in the early Middle Ages; yet no such psalms appear now or seem ever to have been sung at this point. And similarly, on Holy Saturday, when according to the ancient Jerusalem cursus twelve readings were given, to be extended in Constantinople to fifteen, no equivalents seem to have been performed at any point.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aigul Kosanova

Іn this article, the author examines the scientific heritage of the great thinker and philosopher of the East, Abu Nasir al Farabi. The contribution of the word is analysed. Abu Nasr Muhammad Ibn Tarkhan Ibn Uzlag al-Farabi (870-950) was born in the city of Farab (Otrar) on the territory of the modern South Kazakhstan region. In the early middle ages, Otrar was called Farab. The city of Otrar was the second major cultural, commercial, political and scientific center, the center of the ancient culture of Kazakhstan and Central Asia. The most famous of his scientific works is" treatise on the views of good citizens "("views of good citizens"). "The scientist divides the city leaders into "benevolent and ignorant". At that time, there was a city-state. When will its inhabitants be happy? According to the scientist, this depends on the mayors of the cities. If the mayor is educated, fair, and clean-minded, all citizens will be happy. And if the mayor of the city is ignorant and lies, then the people of the city will be unhappy. Al-Farabi says that in order to achieve true happiness, a person must constantly seek. Human behavior should also be good," Zhakypbek Altayevich says in the documentary "Al - Farabi-philosopher of civilization". In addition, Al-Farabi's work "the great treatise on music" has been translated into many languages of the world.


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