Medieval Darkness, a Dim Renaissance

2021 ◽  
pp. 95-112
Author(s):  
Kathleen Wellman
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Commercial Development ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Early English ◽  
Christian Nation ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
The Catholic Church

In these textbooks, the Middle Ages is a dark period when Christianity was perverted into Catholicism. They read the Reformation backward, showing that the Catholic Church rejected Lutheran theological tenets long before his time. They appreciate the Anglo-Saxons and medieval figures who challenged the Catholic Church as proto-Protestants. They vilify the French as their antithesis. The early English prepare the way for the Reformation and, ultimately, a Christian nation in the New World. The textbooks also use the Middle Ages to initiate some of their economic arguments, connecting early commercial development to incipient Anglo-Saxon Protestantism and then to post-Reformation Protestantism. The Renaissance, however, was an unfortunate flourishing of humanism. These interpretations of the Middle Ages have historical roots in white nationalism and anti-Catholicism, which have characterized American evangelicalism in the past and have become more prominent in recent public discourse.

scholarly journals Prosper Guéranger O.S.B. (1805-1875) and the Struggle for Liturgical Unity

1999 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 333-344
Author(s):  
Peter Raedts
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Historical Continuity ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Unbroken Line ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
The Catholic Church

One of the strongest weapons in the armoury of the Roman Catholic Church has always been its impressive sense of historical continuity. Apologists, such as Bishop Bossuet (1627-1704), liked to tease their Protestant adversaries with the question of where in the world their Church had been before Luther and Calvin. The question shows how important the time between ancient Christianity and the Reformation had become in Catholic apologetics since the sixteenth century. Where the Protestants had to admit that a gap of more than a thousand years separated the early Christian communities from the churches of the Reformation, Catholics could proudly point to the fact that in their Church an unbroken line of succession linked the present hierarchy to Christ and the apostles. This continuity seemed the best proof that other churches were human constructs, whereas the Catholic Church continued the mission of Christ and his disciples. In this argument the Middle Ages were essential, but not a time to dwell upon. It was not until the nineteenth century that in the Catholic Church the Middle Ages began to mean far more than proof of the Church’s unbroken continuity.

Roman Catholicism and Europe

2021 ◽  
pp. 436-457
Author(s):  
Petr Kratochvíl
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The Political ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Global Nature ◽  
The Church ◽  
Hostile Attitude ◽  
The Catholic Church

This chapter explores the complex relationship between the Catholic Church and Europe over many centuries. It argues that the Catholic Church and Europe played a mutually constitutive role in the early Middle Ages and one would not be conceivable without the other. However, the Church gradually disassociated itself from Europe and vice versa. Since the Reformation, but even more strongly in the last two centuries, the Church’s attitude to Europe has become markedly more ambivalent, due to the rise of the European state, the hostile attitude of the Church to modern European social and political thought, Europe’s ongoing secularization, and the increasingly global nature of the Catholic Church. While the tension between the Church and Europe persists, the process of European unification marked a watershed in the Church’s relationship to Europe, given that integration is a key area in which the Church strongly supports the political developments of the continent.

The Usurer and the Merchant Prince: Italian Businessmen and the Ecclesiastical Law of Restitution, 1100–1550

1947 ◽  
Vol 7 (S1) ◽  
pp. 104-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin N. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Return On Investment ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Business Enterprise ◽  
Ecclesiastical Law ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
The Catholic Church

Since the time of Ashley at least, it has not been possible to charge the Catholic church of the Middle Ages with having intended to throttle business enterprise by its doctrine of usury. Very few medieval writers, certainly after the early thirteenth century, wished to outlaw profit when it was a legitimate return on investment. To authoritative theologians and jurists there was a world of difference between usury, that is profit openly demanded or secretly hoped for in a contract of loan (mutuutn), and justifiable returns derived from partnerships, where there was a sharing of the risk and venture of the capital. The doctors operated with distinctions of Roman law by which the mutuum, explicitly referred to in the Vulgate at Luke 6:35, was clearly marked off from other transactions, such as the consensual contracts of partnership (societas), letting and hiring (locatio conductio), and purchase and sale (emptio venditio).

The Virgin Mary in the Hymns of the Catholic Church

2019 ◽  
pp. 245-264
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Marian Devotion ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
The Catholic Church ◽  
Catholic Liturgy

This study presents images of the Virgin Mary as found in the hymns of the Catholic Church—from the patristic to the post-Vatican II period. Marian hymns flourished in the Middle Ages, but after the Council of Trent (1545–1563), the Catholic liturgy contained, with few exceptions, only the Scriptural and euchological texts in Latin. The vernacular congregational hymn contributed to the flourishing of Marian devotion apart from the official liturgy. Vatican II integrated the Virgin Mary into the ‘Mystery of Christ’ celebrated in the liturgy and presented a Scriptural and ecclesial image of Mary. Suggestions are given for Marian hymns and for their place within the liturgy.

Analecta croatica christiana. Zagreb: Kršćanska sadašnjost. - Vol. 1, Katolička Crkua u Slavoniji za turskog uladanja (The Catholic Church in Slavonia during Turkish Rule). By Josip Buturac. 1970. 240 pp. 65 ND. - Vol. 2, Katolici u Bosni i zapadnoj Hercegovini na prijelazu iz 18. u 19. stoljeće: Doba fra Grge Ilijića Varešanina (1783–1813) (Catholics in Bosnia and Western Hercegovina at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century: The Age of Friar Grgo Ilijié Vareŝanin [1783–7813c]). By Srećko M. Dżaja. 1971. 238 pp. 100 ND. - Vol. 3, Katolička Crkva na biokovsko-neretvanskom podruéju u doba turske vladavine (The Catholic Church in the Biokovo-Neretva Region during Turkish Rule). By Karlo Jurišić. 1972. xx + 310 pp. 120 ND. - Vol. 4, Andjeo dalla Costa i njegov “Zakon czarkovni” (Andjeo dalla Costa and his “Church Law”). By Stjepan Božo Vucčemilo. 1972. 219 pp. 80 ND. - Vol. 5, Misionar Podunavija Bugarin Krsto Pejkié (1665–1731) (Missionary of the Cisdanubian Area, the Bulgar Krsto Pejkić [1665–1731]). By Josip Turčinović. 1973. xvii + 199 pp. 80 ND. - Vol. 6, Bosansko-humski krstjanz i katarsko-dualistički pokret u srednjem vijeku (Bosnian-Hum krstjani and the Catharo-Dualistic Movement during the Middle Ages). By Franjo Šanjek. 1975. 216 pp. 150 ND. - Vol. 7, Mitropolitanski kaptol u Splitu (The Metropolitan Cathedral Chapter in Split). By Ivan Ostojić. 1975. 364 pp. 180 ND. - Vol. 8, Šest stoljeća hrvatskog lekcionara u skiopu jedanaest stoljeća hrvatskog glagoljašva (Six Centuries of Croat Lectionaries in the Context of Eleven Centuries of Croat Glagolitic Literacy). By Jerko Fućak. 1975. 391 pp. 240 ND.

1979 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-210
Author(s):  
Ivo Banac
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Church Law ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
The Catholic Church

The Cult of St Edmund, King and Martyr in Medieval Ireland

2018 ◽  
Vol 136 (4) ◽  
pp. 223-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Young
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
Patron Saint ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
Christ Church ◽  
Medieval Ireland ◽  
The Middle Ages

St Edmund, king and martyr (an Anglo-Saxon king martyred by the Vikings in 869) was one of the most venerated English saints in Ireland from the 12th century. In Dublin, St Edmund had his own chapel in Christ Church Cathedral and a guild, while Athassel Priory in County Tipperary claimed to possess a miraculous image of the saint. In the late 14th century the coat of arms ascribed to St Edmund became the emblem of the king of England’s lordship of Ireland, and the name Edmund (or its Irish equivalent Éamon) was widespread in the country by the end of the Middle Ages. This article argues that the cult of St Edmund, the traditional patron saint of the English people, served to reassure the English of Ireland of their Englishness, and challenges the idea that St Edmund was introduced to Ireland as a heavenly patron of the Anglo-Norman conquest.

The Venerable Bede on Prayer and Contemplation

Traditio ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 1-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott DeGregorio
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Distinctive Feature ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Good Sense ◽  
Venerable Bede ◽  
The Middle Ages

As a monk at the famous Northumbrian monastery of Jarrow, the Venerable Bede (673–735) produced a body of exegetical work that enjoyed enormous popularity throughout the Middle Ages. Something of that spirit seems to have reawakened in recent years, as Bede's commentaries are increasingly being studied and made available to wider audiences in English translation. One distinctive feature of this development is a growing awareness that Bede's reputation as an exegete is more multifaceted than has been previously realized, that it goes beyond what Beryl Smalley called “his faithful presentation of the tradition in its many aspects. Whereas earlier interpreters were content to regard Bede as a mere compiler reputed for his good sense and able Latinity, scholars are now paying homage to him as a penetrating and perceptive biblical commentator who did more than reproduce the thought of the fathers who preceded him. As I intend to show in what follows, Bede's treatment of prayer and contemplation in his exegesis attests well to this quality of his thought. The topic to date has received only minimal commentary, mainly on what Bede actually taught about prayer. My approach will be different. I begin with a discussion not of Bede's exegetical method but of his occupations and aims as a spiritual writer. Neither Bede's spirituality nor his role as spiritual writer have received the attention they deserve, and it is hoped that the reflections offered here will help rekindle interest in these neglected subjects. I then consider four prayer-related themes in his exegesis that bring his aims as a spiritual writer into view. Patristic tradition had commented widely on prayer, and Bede, we will see, did not set out to summarize this tradition in its entirety but rather to highlight and distill certain themes within it, those that best suited the needs of his Anglo-Saxon audience.

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