LEST THE KEYS BE SCORNED: THE IMPLICATIONS OF INDULGENCES FOR THE CHURCH HIERARCHY AND THIRTEENTH-CENTURY CANONISTS’ RESISTANCE TO THE TREASURY OF MERIT

Traditio ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 76 ◽  
pp. 247-287
Author(s):  
ETHAN LEONG YEE
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Popular Piety ◽  
Good Works ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Church Hierarchy ◽  
Mendicant Orders ◽  
The Church ◽  
Public Forums

Recent scholarship on indulgences has focused on the shared concepts theologians and canonists drew on to explain these remissions and advantageous effects of indulgences on popular piety, the mendicant orders, and the papacy. A closer examination of the work of thirteenth-century canonists reveals an uncertainty about the mechanism by which indulgences worked and concerns that diverged from those of theologians. While the treasury of merit was a popular theological explanation, it was generally ignored by most canonists, who preferred explanations based on jurisdiction, the power of the keys, and suffrages. A key distinction between suffrages, good works done with the intent of spiritually benefitting others, and the treasury of merit is that the former burdens the living while the latter does not, since it draws on merit stored from already completed actions. Since it makes granting indulgences burdensome, the suffrage theory offers a disincentive to granting indiscrete or excessive remissions. Abuse of indulgences underlined the tensions between the authority of God and the church, the penitential and public forums, and the overlapping jurisdictions of prelates. Unlike the suffrage theory of indulgences, the treasury of merit theory offers little incentive for restraint. This may explain its relative absence in the writings of thirteenth-century canonists.

True Church, National Church, Minority Church: Episcopacy and Authority in the Restored Church of Ireland

2016 ◽  
Vol 85 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Rose Sawyer
Keyword(s):  
First Principles ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The People ◽  
Church Hierarchy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Church Of Ireland ◽  
The Face ◽  
Political Realities ◽  
The Church

The Church of Ireland in the later seventeenth century faced many challenges. After two decades of war and effective suppression, the church in 1660 had to reestablish itself as the national church of the kingdom of Ireland in the face of opposition from both Catholics and Dissenters, who together made up nearly ninety percent of the island's population. While recent scholarship has illuminated Irish protestantism as a social group during this period, the theology of the established church remains unexamined in its historical context. This article considers the theological arguments used by members of the church hierarchy in sermons and tracts written between 1660 and 1689 as they argued that the Church of Ireland was both a true apostolic church and best suited for the security and salvation of the people of Ireland. Attention to these concerns shows that the social and political realities of being a minority church compelled Irish churchmen to focus on basic arguments for an episcopal national establishment. It suggests that this focus on first principles allowed the church a certain amount of ecclesiological flexibility that helped it survive later turbulence such as the non-jurors controversy of 1689–1690 fairly intact.

Peter of Bruys, Henry of Lausanne, and the Façade of St.-Gilles

Traditio ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 451-460
Author(s):  
Marcia L. Colish
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Free Standing ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
The Church

The romanesque façade of the abbey church of St.-Gilles in the diocese of Nlmes has been a subject of debate among art historians for many years. This controversy has been centered on the design of the church's façade [Fig. 1]. In addition to a series of colonnettes supporting archivolts that surround the tympana over its three western doorways, the St.-Gilles façade also possesses two free-standing columns flanking the central doorway that support nothing, a peculiarity which has led scholars to conclude that the plan of the façade was changed during the remodeling of the church in the twelfth century. The debate has focused on the dating of this change. A number of dates have been suggested, based on the façade's sculptural style, on dated inscriptions in the crypt, and on documents dealing with the church fabric. The art historians of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries dated the redesigning of the façade between 1116 and the middle of the thirteenth century, though the tendency of more recent scholarship has been to narrow the range of dates to between 1116 and the 1140s.

Fasciculi Zizaniorum I

1961 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-45
Author(s):  
James Crompton
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Latin Text ◽  
Single Source ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History Of ◽  
John Wyclif ◽  
Mendicant Orders ◽  
The Church

Fasciculi Zizaniorum. has become the bible of ‘Wycliffite’ and early protestant studies. The best known collection of materials relating to John Wyclif and his heresies, and roughly contemporary with what is described, it is the most important single source for the history of John Wyclif. The full title—Fasciculi Zizaniorum magistri Johannis Wycliff cum Tritico—is derived from the description which precedes the opening narrative in the MS. A great deal more is included in the MS. than this title would at first sight suggest. The collection also contains much about the heresies of the Oxford followers of Wyclif, about his leading opponents and the cases of many early Lollards. It also includes the Latin text of the two statutes against Lollards, De Haeretico Comburendo of 1401 and the Leicester Statute of 1414. To these Lollard materials are added the proceedings of the Council of Constance against Wyclif, John Hus and Jerome of Prague, and summaries of condemnation of heresies made by the Church before Wyclif's day, beginning with those condemned at Oxford and Paris in the thirteenth century. The other works are mostly concerned with the age-long controversies over Apostolic Poverty and the Mendicant Orders: a selection from the writings of archbishop Fitzralph of Armagh; the proceedings against the Irish Cistercian, Henry Crump, in 1392; the Protectorium Pauperis of the Carmelite, Richard Maidstone; the Defence of the Carmelite Order written in 1374 by Richard Hornby. The last two works in the MS., a sermon by John Hornby and the well known treatise against Wyclif's Trialogus by the Franciscan, William Woodford, are incomplete.

Belief and Patronage in the English Parish before 1300: Some Evidence from Roods

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 49-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Davidson Cragoe
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Architectural Patronage ◽  
Individual Giving ◽  
The Church

The late medieval English laity expressed their piety through ostentatious artistic and architectural patronage. The rood, a large-scale image of Christ on the cross, flanked by the Virgin and St John, and placed in or above the chancel arch, was a particular object of both liturgical and financial devotion in the later Middle Ages.1 One of the more interesting conclusions of recent scholarship has been the recognition that the late medieval desire to express one’s piety through donations to the church was not limited to the upper classes or to one gender. Both men and women of all social classes and ages participated to the best of their ability through collective as well as individual giving.2 Moreover, people made very deliberate choices about the types of images and architectural forms on which they spent their money.3 Scholars have argued that the roots of this very active lay patronage lie in the mid-thirteenth century when diocesan statutes first assigned responsibility for maintaining the nave and most of a church’s ornaments to its parishioners.4

Belief and Patronage in the English Parish before 1300: Some Evidence from Roods

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 21-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Davidson Cragoe
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Architectural Patronage ◽  
Individual Giving ◽  
The Church

The late medieval English laity expressed their piety through ostentatious artistic and architectural patronage. The rood, a large-scale image of Christ on the cross, flanked by the Virgin and St John, and placed in or above the chancel arch, was a particular object of both liturgical and financial devotion in the later Middle Ages. One of the more interesting conclusions of recent scholarship has been the recognition that the late medieval desire to express one’s piety through donations to the church was not limited to the upper classes or to one gender. Both men and women of all social classes and ages participated to the best of their ability through collective as well as individual giving. Moreover, people made very deliberate choices about the types of images and architectural forms on which they spent their money. Scholars have argued that the roots of this very active lay patronage lie in the mid-thirteenth century when diocesan statutes first assigned responsibility for maintaining the nave and most of a church’s ornaments to its parishioners.

The ‘Mendicant Problem’ in the Later Middle Ages

1999 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 217-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. N. Swanson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Secular Clergy ◽  
Grass Root ◽  
Fourth Lateran Council ◽  
Mendicant Orders ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

Almost from their foundation, the mendicant orders proved problematic. Their insistence on poverty, their preaching skills, and their responsiveness to contemporary spirituality challenged the Church at many levels, providing standards against which the secular clergy might be judged and found wanting. Their dependence on papal privileges which limited episcopal oversight, and their claims to a special role as confessors and preachers, threatened the Church’s current order, especially in parishes. By undermining the parish priest’s authority — jurisdictionally by offering confession and absolution, financially by encouraging burial in their houses — the friars in fact undercut some of the aims of the early thirteenth-century reformers, most notably by disrupting the demands of Omnis utriusque sexus, the decree requiring annual confession to the ‘proprius sacerdos’, issued at the Fourth Lateran Council. The most important resolution of these ‘grass root’ problems was provided in Boniface VIII’s Super cathedram of 1300, which by 1326 applied to all four of the main mendicant orders, and formally became part of canon law when enshrined in the Clementines. Unfortunately, Super cathedram seemed incompatible with Omnis utriusque sexus, and debate on the resulting discrepancy persisted throughout the Middle Ages, despite attempts at resolution such as Vas electionis of 1321.

scholarly journals The birth of oppida: small towns in Hungary in the Angevin period

Urban History ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Katalin Szende
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Development Strategies ◽  
Private Landowners ◽  
Private Lands ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
The Right ◽  
Mendicant Orders ◽  
Century Development

Abstract This article revisits the origins of small towns in medieval Hungary from the perspective of their owners and seigneurs. The fourteenth-century development of small towns on the estates of private landowners resulted from the coincidence of several factors. Among these, the article considers the intersection of royal and private interests. The aristocrats’ concern to endow their estate centres with privileges or attract new settlers to their lands was dependent on royal approval; likewise, the right to hold annual fairs had to be granted by the kings, and one had to be a loyal retainer to be worthy of these grants. The royal model of supporting the mendicant orders, which were gaining ground in Hungary from the thirteenth century onwards, added a further dimension to the overlords’ development strategies. This shows that royal influence, directly or indirectly, had a major impact on the development of towns on private lands in the Angevin period (1301–87).

scholarly journals Composing Arugat ha-Bosem: How Piyyut Commentary Became Associated with Ḥasidei Ashkenaz

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Hollender
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Open Book ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
New Research ◽  
Hasidei Ashkenaz

AbstractBased on Ivan Marcus’s concept of “open book” and considerations on medieval Ashkenazic concepts of authorship, the present article inquires into the circumstances surrounding the production of SeferArugat ha-Bosem, a collection of piyyut commentaries written or compiled by the thirteenth-century scholar Abraham b. Azriel. Unlike all other piyyut commentators, Abraham ben Azriel inscribed his name into his commentary and claims to supersede previous commentaries, asserting authorship and authority. Based on the two different versions preserved in MS Vatican 301 and MS Merzbacher 95 (Frankfurt fol. 16), already in 1939 Ephraim E. Urbach suggested that Abraham b. Azriel might have written more than one edition of his piyyut commentaries. The present reevaluation considers recent scholarship on concepts of authorship and “open genre” as well as new research into piyyut commentary. To facilitate a comparison with Marcus’s definition of “open book,” this article also explores the arrangement and rearrangement of small blocks of texts within a work.

University Education and English Ecclesiastical Lawyers 1400–1650

2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Helmholz
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
University Education ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
Negative Opinion ◽  
Ius Commune ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Church ◽  
Academic Study

Most recent historians have expressed a negative opinion of the quality of legal education at the English universities between 1400 and 1650. The academic study of law at Oxford and Cambridge, they have stated, was easy, antiquated and impractical. The curriculum had not changed from the form it assumed in the thirteenth century, and it did little to prepare students for their careers. This article challenges that opinion by examining the inner nature of the ius commune, the law that was applied in the courts of the church, and also by examining some of the works of practice compiled by English civilians during the period. Those works show that the negative opinion rests in part upon a misunderstanding of the nature of legal practice during earlier centuries. In fact, concentration on the texts of the Roman and canon laws, as old-fashioned as it seems to us, was well suited for the tasks advocates and judges would face once they left the academy. It also provided the stimulus needed for advance in the law of the church itself; their legal education made available to potential advocates and judges skills that would permit a sophisticated application of the ius commune, one better suited to their times. The article provides evidence of how this happened.1

Rivalry between Presbyters and Deacons in the Roman Church

2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (5) ◽  
pp. 495-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
David G. Hunter
Keyword(s):  
Close Resemblance ◽  
Church Hierarchy ◽  
The Church

Abstract In this article I offer three brief notes on Ambrosiaster’s Q. 101, De iactantia Romanorum leuitarum. First, I discuss its relation to Letter 146 of Jerome, which also deals with the rivalry between presbyters and deacons and which bears a close resemblance to Q. 101; second, I examine the peculiar features of the church hierarchy at Rome that led the anonymous deacon to claim a superior status to presbyters; and, third, I explore some indications in Q. 101 and in Jerome, Letter 146, which point to the activity of deacons in elite households at Rome.

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