Autobiography and the History of Reading

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Cummings
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of Reading ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Human Subjectivity ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact

Autobiography as a concept asks deep questions about the periodization of history. It is also a scene of persistent rivalry in the construction of medieval and Renaissance models of history. Since Jakob Burckhardt’sDie Kultur der Renaissance in Italienof 1860, there has been a war of ownership over the rise of human subjectivity. This article examines the debate over the history of autobiography by focusing on St. Augustine and hisConfessions. It considers the exposure of theConfessionsto different kinds of reading during the late medieval period, including that by Petrarch. It argues that theConfessionshas been read more extensively in the twentieth century than ever before and that the Augustine of the “invention of subjectivity” is a writer of a specifically twentieth-century imagination. In this way it also assesses the impact of the Reformation on theConfessions.

scholarly journals Jesuit Sanctity: Hypothesizing the Continuity of a Hagiographic Narrative of the Modern Age

2022 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Franco Motta ◽  
Eleonora Rai
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Society Of Jesus ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
History Of

Abstract The introduction to this special issue provides some considerations on early modern sanctity as a historical object. It firstly presents the major shifts in the developing idea of sanctity between the late medieval period and the nineteenth century, passing through the early modern construction of sanctity and its cultural, social, and political implications. Secondly, it provides an overview of the main sources that allow historians to retrace early modern sanctity, especially canonization records and hagiographies. Thirdly, it offers an overview of the ingenious role of the Society of Jesus in the construction of early modern sanctity, by highlighting its ability to employ, create, and play with hagiographical models. The main Jesuit models of sanctity are then presented (i.e., the theologian, the missionary, the martyr, the living saint), and an important reflection is reserved for the specific martyrial character of Jesuit sanctity. The introduction assesses the continuity of the Jesuit hagiographical discourse throughout the long history of the order, from the origins to the suppression and restoration.

The Historiographical Legacy of Salo Wittmayer Baron: The Medieval Period

AJS Review ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-37
Author(s):  
Robert Chazan
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Impact

The impact of Salo Wittmayer Baron on the study of the history of the Jews during the Middle Ages has been enormous. This impact has, in part, been generated by Baron's voluminous writings, in particular his threevolume The Jewish Community and–even more so–his eighteen-volume Social and Religious History of the Jews. Equally decisive has been Baron's influence through his students and his students' students. Almost all researchers here in North America currently engaged in studying aspects of medieval Jewish history can surely trace their intellectual roots back to Salo Wittmayer Baron. In a real sense, many of Baron's views have become widey assumed starting points for the field, ideas which need not be proven or irgued but are simply accepted as givens. Over the next decade or decades, hese views will be carefully identified and reevaluated. At some point, a major study of Baron's legacy, including his influence on the study of medieval Jewish history, will of necessity eventuate. Such a study will have, on the one hand, its inherent intellectual fascination; at the same time, it will constitute an essential element in the next stages of the growth of the field, as it inevitably begins to make its way beyond Baron and his twentieth-century ambience.

PLAGUE, PERFORMANCE AND THE ELUSIVE HISTORY OF THE STELLA CELI EXTIRPAVIT

2010 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 1-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Macklin
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Broad Spectrum ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
History Of ◽  
Textual Features ◽  
Franciscan Order ◽  
The Impact

One of the greatest scourges of the later medieval period was plague. While there is a considerable scholarly literature tracing the impact of the dread disease on literature and art, the impermanence of performance has rendered the extension of such studies to the field of music problematic. These problems are to some extent surmountable in studying the fifteenth-century hymn Stella celi extirpavit, a Marian invocation unequivocally phrased as a plea for deliverance from illness. In this essay, it is proposed that the Stella celi is representative of the beliefs and skills shared by a broad spectrum of late medieval society in the shadow of the plague. Analysis of musical and textual features, and the contexts of performance, further suggest links with the artistic and intellectual concerns of the Franciscan Order, which may have thus enabled otherwise ephemeral music to be preserved as an enduring response to epidemic calamity.

THE ISLIP ROLL RE-EXAMINED

2017 ◽  
Vol 97 ◽  
pp. 231-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Payne
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
New Information ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
New Evidence

The mortuary roll of John Islip (1464–1532), Abbot of Westminster, is the finest example of its kind to survive in England. The drawings, possibly by Gerard Horenbout, afford the only views of the interior of Westminster Abbey before the Dissolution. The discovery of eighteenth-century copies of an unknown, coloured version of the roll provides important new evidence for both the circumstances of the production and the later history of both rolls. It also provides, for the first time, an authentic colour view of the interior of Westminster Abbey in the late medieval period, and new information on its decoration.

When the Mediterranean Moved West: Catalan Social Networks and the Construction of Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Uruguayan Society and Culture

2019 ◽  
pp. 326-337
Author(s):  
Thomas Harrington
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Trade Networks ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Successive Generations ◽  
Key Nodes

This essay explores how Catalan traders repurposed the commercial techniques and patterns of human deployment used to create their country’s Mediterranean merchant empire in the late medieval period, to generate important trade networks in the Atlantic basin starting in the 18th century. After explaining the dynamics of this new, but simultaneously old, transatlantic system, it zeroes in on one of the key nodes of the network, Uruguay, and explores how successive generations of Catalans shaped the development of that country’s culture in fundamental ways.

Writing the History of Merovingian Gaul

2020 ◽  
pp. 51-76
Author(s):  
Agnès Graceffa
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Political Realities

The Merovingian period has long been contested ground on which a variety of ideologies and approaches have been marshaled to debate the significance of the “end” of antiquity and the start of the Middle Ages. Particularly important to these discussions has been the role of this period in shaping national identity across western Europe; interpretations of the Merovingians have varied as political realities have changed in Europe, going back, in some cases, as far as the late medieval period. This chapter focuses mainly on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but offers examples as early as the seventeenth century as to how the Merovingian period has been harnessed for a large number of purposes and how these sometimes polemical interpretations have encouraged or stymied our understanding of this period.

Despair

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Watson
Keyword(s):  
Piers Plowman ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Divine Omnipotence ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
The Reformation

The terrain of the Christian psyche and the theological structure within which Christians directed their lives towards salvation were both reconfigured during the Reformation. William Langland’sPiers Plowmanoffers an account of despair as a phenomenon associated with the deathbed. In the late medieval period, despair was also seen as a spiritual problem affecting religious specialists engaged in contemplative living, rather than ordinary people on their deathbeds. This article explores despair as it was understood in the late medieval period and as a key concern of Protestant theology and narrative after Reformation. It considers two sets of works written in England: a series of narrative treatments of despair related to the death of the apostate Francesco Spiera in 1548 and a set of “remedy” texts that include the Augustinian Friar William Flete’sDe remediis contra temptacionesfrom the 1350s. It also examines the doctrine of “double election” proposed by John Calvin during the 1540s based on a tradition of thinking about divine omnipotence.

On the Path of the Sign

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Baranna Baker
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Medieval Philosophy ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Renaissance Humanism ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Point Of Departure

AbstractWith Medieval Philosophy Redefined as the Latin Age, John Deely has written a truly revolutionary book. Both medieval historians and semioticians alike will gain a new perspective on their subject matter upon reading Medieval Philosophy Redefined. In it, Deely traces the history of the sign by going to its roots in the writings of Augustine, and following it through to the time of John Poinsot. John Poinsot, a previously marginalized philosopher from the late medieval period, factors greatly in Deely’s book. Poinsot makes it possible to get through the “thicket” of nominalism and see beyond Renaissance Humanism. Perhaps even more remarkable is the fact that, by using the sign as the point of departure, Deely has found a constant thread that runs through the Medieval Ages, making it, the sign, a key to understanding medieval philosophy from its start to its finish.

Postscript to the English-Language Edition (2014)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claude Panaccio
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
English Version ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
Present Book ◽  
Mental Language ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Material ◽  
Made In

Especially written for the English version, this Postscript discusses a number of recently published contributions on the history of mental language in connection with the claims made in the present book. Those are divided into five groups according to whether they have to do with (1) Ancient and Patristic sources, (2) Augustine and Boethius, (3) Abelard and the twelfth century, (4) Aquinas and the thirteenth century, and (5) Ockham and the late medieval period. It is shown that quite an amount of new material is now to be added to the picture, but that nothing of importance needs to be withdrawn.

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