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 Worlds of Difference

2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-149
Author(s):  
Charles E. Butterworth
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Detailed Explanation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Early Modern Times

This is an appealing and clearly written account of how European thinkersfrom late medieval to early modern times reflected upon and explored thequestion of what to do about people of different religions and cultures. Inother words, how should their divergent opinions be understood and, eventually,what practical dispositions should be taken toward them? CaryNederman devotes the introduction and first chapter to an excellent,detailed explanation of the book’s focus and goals. Simply put, he is intentupon challenging two currently dominant views: that toleration emerged inEurope only at the time of the Reformation, and that it is ineluctably linkedwith the kind of political liberalism usually associated with John Locke. Tothis end, he calls the reader’s attention to expressions of religious, and evensomewhat political, toleration that appear early in the twelfth century andcontinue well into the sixteenth century. Unfortunately, he does not succeedin this ambitious, even appealing, stratagem as fully as he would havewished, for he admits in passing that he is content to “offer illustrations,”instead of a “comprehensive account,” of this phenomenon ...

CHRONICLING THE MEROVINGIANS IN HEBREW: THE EARLY MEDIEVAL CHAPTERS OF YOSEF HA-KOHEN'S DIVREI HAYAMIM

Traditio ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 74 ◽  
pp. 423-447
Author(s):  
YANIV FOX
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval History ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Italian Physician ◽  
History Of ◽  
Long Chain

Yosef Ha-Kohen (1496–ca. 1575) was a Jewish Italian physician and intellectual who in 1554 published a chronicle in Hebrew titled Sefer Divrei Hayamim lemalkei Tzarfat ulemalkei Beit Otoman haTogar, or The Book of Histories of the Kings of France and of the Kings of Ottoman Turkey. It was, as its name suggests, a history told from the perspective of two nations, the French and the Turks. Ha-Kohen begins his narrative with a discussion of the legendary origins of the Franks and the history of their first royal dynasty, the Merovingians. This composition is unique among late medieval and early modern Jewish works of historiography for its universal scope, and even more so for its treatment of early medieval history. For this part of the work, Ha-Kohen relied extensively on non-Jewish works, which themselves relied on still earlier chronicles composed throughout the early Middle Ages. Ha-Kohen thus became a unique link in a long chain of chroniclers who worked and adopted Merovingian material to suit their authorial agendas. This article considers how the telling of Merovingian history was transformed in the process, especially as it was adapted for a sixteenth-century Jewish audience.

500 Jahre Rezeption der Reformation in Siebenbürgen und Ungarn: Anfänge und Netzwerke von Konfessionspluralismus in der Überlappungszone von West- und Ostkirche

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Ulrich A. Wien
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Joint Effort ◽  
Influence Zone ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Reformation

Abstract This thematic issue of the Journal of Early Modern Christianity focuses on the reception of the Reformation in Transylvania and especially on the development of Protestant churches oriented towards Luther and influenced by Melanchthon. In the late Middle Ages, Transylvania had become part of the cultural influence zone of Central Europe, but throughout the sixteenth century the region became permeated by religious developments in Western Europe too. Here, a very peculiar constellation of religious pluralism and co-existence emerged, and the different contributions examine the premises and networks behind these dynamics. In this joint effort, it becomes clear how Transylvania turned into a pioneer region of religious freedom, as it witnessed simultaneously the development of Catholic, Orthodox and various Protestant confessional cultures.

Some Comments on Later Casuistry and ‘Jesuitical’ Equivocation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Corran
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Limiting Factor ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Wars Of Religion ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Reformation

This chapter discusses early modern controversies about equivocation and mental reservation in the light of medieval intellectual history. Sixteenth-century polemics on equivocation are best explained in terms of the social and intellectual developments of that period, rather than anything inherent to the medieval discussion. The Reformation, the wars of religion in the sixteenth century, the persecution of religious minorities created an urgent new need for casuistry among Catholics who found themselves endangered. In addition the Second Scholasticism sought to make pastoral teaching relevant to political leaders of their period. Nevertheless, the combination of a stable framework of casuistical questions and changing content of moral theology that emerged in the later Middle Ages is crucial for understanding its subsequent history. The framework of ideas that were established during the medieval period was a crucial limiting factor to the later quarrels about justified equivocation.

Defining Heresies: Catholic Heresiologies, 1520–50

2007 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 241-251
Author(s):  
David Bagchi
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Causal Connection ◽  
Traditional Definition ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Medieval Heresy ◽  
Traditional Understanding

Few historians nowadays would endorse a simple causal connection between the Reformation and the rise of toleration. Indeed, reformations Protestant and Catholic have become almost synonymous with ‘confessionalization’ and ‘social disciplining’. Nonetheless, the transition from the persecuting society of the Middle Ages to something approaching a pluralist society was an early modern phenomenon which has attracted renewed attention in recent years. This transition was facilitated by the breakdown of the traditional understanding of heresy. The role of Protestantism in de-stabilizing the heresy discourse of mid-seventeenth century England has been expertly delineated by Ann Hughes in her study of Thomas Edwards’s Gangraena and the responses to it. But it would be a mistake to suppose that the Catholic understanding of heresy was entirely stable during this period. As I hope to show in this survey of Catholic heresiologies from the period 1520 to 15 50, controversialists encountered difficulties when they tried to conscript patristic and medieval heresy discourses into the sixteenth-century conflict. An instability at the heart of the traditional definition of heresy – over whether heresy is primarily a doctrinal error or a moral failing – seemed at first to provide a solution to these difficulties. Ultimately and ironically, however, it made their case vulnerable to a Protestant charge of subjectivism.

‘Have you the tongues?’

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-133
Author(s):  
Liz Oakley-Brown
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Love's Labour's Lost ◽  
Mind Set

This essay suggests that, as plays produced in the wake of Henry VIII’s break with Rome and the Protestant Reformation, two early Shakespearean comedies, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (c. 1590–91) and Love’s Labour’s Lost (c. 1594–95), engage with multilingualism’s and translation’s impact on early modern English identities in striking ways. While these late-sixteenth-century texts are products of a cultural mind-set grappling with the vicissitudes of Englishness via the dramatization of deftly layered social strata and linguistic differences, ultimately, I argue that they simultaneously anticipate cultural accord. — Keywords: Shakespearean comedy; the Reformation; identity politics in Elizabethan England; social exclusion; friendship We only ever speak one language […] — (yes, but) — We never speak only one language… (Jacques Derrida 1998: 10)

The Future of Reformation Studies

2017 ◽  
Vol 97 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 310-321
Author(s):  
Vincent Evener
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Geographic Location ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Demonic

Recent scholarly trends have called into question the view of the Reformation as a singular, epoch-making event; many scholars prefer to speak of sixteenth-century “reformations,” while others regard the Reformation as a chapter within longer-running and more significant historical processes. This essay proposes viewing the Reformation as a complex, epoch-making event that was initiated and sustained by both Protestant and Catholic actors. The Reformation created an enduring reality of division that was experienced and engaged differently by Christians depending upon their ecclesial, social, and geographic location, among other factors. By relating the disciplinary motives and endeavors of the era to contestation regarding truth and falsehood, the divine and the demonic, this essay argues for taking a broader view of religious discipline and for seeking to understand the Reformation era on its own terms, rather than as a late-medieval or an early-modern event.

Pierre Viret's Ideas and Attitudes Concerning Humanism and Education

1965 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert D. Linder
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Interesting Problem ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Middle Ages

Historians for some time now have tried to solve the extremely complex and very interesting problem of whether or not the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth-century represented a reaction against or an extension of Renaissance attitudes and ideas. Debate over whether or not the Reformation was essentially medieval or modern has taken several forms. One of the methods used to approach the problem has been that of studying in detail the life and thought of certain leaders of the Protestant movement in order to ascertain whether they were basically men of the Middle Ages or individuals who contributed substantially to the making of the modern world. Pierre Viret was one of those early champions of the Protestant drive for reform, in particular of that branch of the Protestant Reformation later known as Calvinism. This study represents an attempt to demonstrate to what extent he was influenced by Renaissance attitudes and ideas.

“he is bothyn modyr, broþyr, & syster vn-to me”

2014 ◽  
Vol 94 (3) ◽  
pp. 297-315
Author(s):  
Beth Allison Barr
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Role Models ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
The Church

Examining recent claims that the early modern Bible served as an empowering force for women, this article draws evidence from English sermons designed for quotidinal lay instruction—such as the late medieval sermons of Festial, the sixteenth-century Tudor Homilies, and the seventeenth-century sermons of William Gouge and Benjamin Keach. As didactic religious texts written and delivered by men but also heard and read by women, sermons reveal how preachers rhetorically shaped the contours of women’s agency. Late medieval sermons include women specifically in scripture and authorize women through biblical role models as actively participating within the church. Conversely, early modern sermons were less likely to add women into scripture and more likely to use scripture to limit women by their domestic identities. Thus, through their approaches to biblical texts, medieval preachers present women as more visible and active agents whereas early modern preachers present women as less visible and more limited in their roles—thereby presenting a more complex story of how the Bible affected women across the Reformation.

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