Human Nature Is the Bride

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
Daniel Cere
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Devotio Moderna ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
The Erotic

Abstract Recent scholarship has accented the impact of evolving forms of bridal mysticism on late medieval popular spiritualities of the Low Countries. Under the laicizing impulses of Devotio Moderna, these narratives were extended as models for the spiritual life of the laity as well as the consecrated religious. A number of Bosch’s key works appear to engage and explore the themes of bridal anthropology, as well as advance perspectives on bridal eschatology. These intersections between the Boschian imagination and the evolving tradition of bridal mysticism shed light on the puzzling play of the religious and the erotic in his work.

Religieuze literatuur tussen het Middelnederlands en het Frans

2020 ◽  
Vol 136 (3) ◽  
pp. 99-129
Author(s):  
Anna Dlabačová ◽  
Margriet Hoogvliet
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Religious Literature ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Devotional Texts

Abstract Making use of ideas and concepts from Barbara Cassin’s philosophy of translations and of l’histoire croisée, this essay explores the shared cultures of religious reading between the Dutch and French languages in the late medieval period. While religious literature disseminated in both Dutch and German has received a fair amount of attention in recent scholarship, religious and devotional texts that were available to readers in both Dutch and French have remained understudied. By providing an overview of the most important religious literature that was translated from French into Dutch and the other way around, and of texts originally composed in Latin in the Low Countries and translated into both vernacular languages, we argue that textual mobility between the two languages was frequent and reciprocal. Casestudies of two texts – Pierre Michault’s La Danse aux aveugles and Gerrit van der Goude’s Boexken vander Missen – further indicate that changes – or the lack thereof – in texts that moved between the two languages point to shared cultures of religious reading on equal terms.

Gerard Groote and the beginnings of the ‘New Devotion’ in the Low Countries

1952 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. F. Jacob
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Life ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Rightful Place ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Local Movement ◽  
Devotio Moderna

Until comparatively recently the origins of the movement known as the devotio moderna attracted curiously little attention in this country. It was judged too medieval and too orthodox in character to have had much influence upon the course of reform, and the Anglican habit of relating all reforming movements to the Reformation did not allow it its rightful place in the history of the Christian spiritual life; from another angle, the sarcasms of Erasmus in his Compendium Vitae cast doubts about the disinterestedness of its teaching, and raised among humanists suspicions that its aims and methods were ultimately obscurantist. Its reforming activities were mainly associated with the efforts of a single wing of, or group within, the movement that aimed at reforming the religious houses along the lines of the Augustinian convents of Agnetenburg and Windesheim, and small attention was paid to its appeal to the laity and its attempt to combat self-satisfied materialism among the prosperous middle classes in the towns. And the fact that it was, at any rate in its beginning, essentially a local movement, confined in the main to the western part of the ecclesiastical province of Cologne, still further confined its appeal.

Catholic Piety from Ruusbroec and the Devotio Moderna to the Legacy of Pierre de Bérulle

2017 ◽  
pp. 576-594
Author(s):  
Rik van Nieuwenhove
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Christian Spirituality ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Devotio Moderna ◽  
Mystical Theology

This chapter examines some of the main figures of Catholic piety from the Low Countries and France from the fourteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. The chapter begins with the mystical theology of Jan van Ruusbroec and then considers some of the figures associated with the Devotio Moderna. Later figures such as Francis de Sales and Pierre de Bérulle are then treated. Overall, the chapter chronicles the transition from a late-medieval exemplarist Christian spirituality to a more experiential variety of mysticism as we encounter it in the Modern Devotion and early-modern French spirituality. The chapter also notes ways in which these traditions were important for the later development of Catholic spirituality.

Thomas à Kempis (1379/80–1471)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kent Emery
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Imitation Of Christ ◽  
Devotio Moderna ◽  
Popular Work ◽  
Spiritual Movement

Thomas Hemerken was born in Kempen, Germany. He spent his life in foundations of the Modern Devotion (Devotio Moderna), a spiritual movement of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that originated in the Low Countries and spread throughout northern Europe. In 1406 he entered the monastery of Mount Saint Agnes in Windesheim (St Agnietenberg, the Netherlands), the origin and centre of a reformed congregation of Augustinian Canons Regular, which disseminated the Modern Devotion in the Low Countries and Germany. Thomas was ordained a priest in 1413, and was the novice master in the monastery for many years. He is generally recognized as the author of De imitatione Christi (The Imitation of Christ), perhaps the most popular work on the spiritual life ever written.

Margaret Mead Answers

Margaret Mead ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 145-166
Author(s):  
Elesha J. Coffman
Keyword(s):  
Social Ethics ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
Major Theme ◽  
Good Sense ◽  
Book Collections ◽  
Margaret Mead ◽  
Slow Evolution ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Shed Light

Mead reached her largest audience through her monthly column in Redbook magazine, which ran from 1962 to Mead’s death in 1978. Examining the Redbook columns gives a good sense of Mead’s spiritual life and social ethics in her prime years. Religion was not a major theme in the columns, but it cropped up in surprising ways. The Redbook pieces also shed light on Mead’s relationship with Rhoda Metraux, who co-authored them and edited the three book collections drawn from the columns. Additionally, looking at the letters Mead received during these years shows the impact she had on her audience. By 1970, she was getting fifteen pounds of mail every day. People believed that they knew her through her media presence, and they trusted her enough to ask her practically anything. In some ways, she came to function almost as a clergywoman, making prophetic pronouncements, receiving confessions, and dispensing pastoral advice. Ironically, she came only late and reluctantly to acceptance of the idea that women could be clergy, and the slow evolution of her thinking on this subject is most clearly seen in one of the Redbook columns.

سؤال العلاقة بين الفطرة والشريعة: قراءة معرفية (The Question of the Relationship between Shariah and Human Nature/fitrah: An Epistemological Review)

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-42
Author(s):  
المختار الأحمر
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Interconnected Systems ◽  
Evolutionary Aspect ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Evolutionary Aspects ◽  
Shed Light

الملخّص يتناول البحث علاقة الفطرة بالشريعة في التفكير الإسلامي، وما تطرحه هذه العلاقة سواء على مستوى بيان الجوانب المتعلقة بخَلْق الإنسان وما فُطِر عليه ابتداء، وهذا البعد يمثّل الجانب التكوني في مفهوم الفطرة، أو على المستوى المتعلق بالشريعة وفطريتها، أي أنها جارية وفق ما يدركه العقل وتشهد به الفطرة، وهذا البعد يمثّل الجانب التشريعي الذي يطرحه مفهوم الفطرة. لقد زخرت أغلب الكتابات بتناول جانبا واحدا مما يتيحه أو يعكسه مفهوم الفطرة، لكن البحث في العلاقة التناسبية بين الفطرة والشريعة، وما يتيحه هذا النظر المتلازم بين المفهومين على مستوى الإمكانات المتعلقة بقدرات الإنسان الفطرية في فهم وتعقّل الخطاب الشرعي والأحكام التكليفية، والوقوف على غاياته ومقاصده، يبقى في حاجة إلى البحث والاستقصاء. ولذلك تأتي هذه الدراسة لتسليط الضوء على الجانب التشريعي والتكويني في علاقة الشريعة بالفطرة، باعتبارهما نظامين متلازمين يتيحان فهم طبيعة الشريعة وأحكامها ومقاصدها من جهة، وتحديد جوهر وماهية الإنسان الفطرية وإمكاناته في تعقّل هذه الشريعة من جهة ثانية.                  الكلمات المفتاحية: الفطرة، الشريعة، الدين، التكاليف، العقل. Abstract This research addresses the relationship between premordial human nature (fitrah) and Islamic law (SharÊÑah) within the frame of Islamic thought, while exploring the questions it raises at two levels. The first level explains the aspects related to the creation of man and what has initially been bestowed upon him, which represents the evolutionary aspect of the concept of fiÏrah. The second level is related to SharÊÑah and its nature, which evolves according to what is percieved by reason and witnessed by fiÏrah; this represents the legislative aspect presented by the concept of fiÏrah. The majority of studies to date address a single aspect of the illustrations of the concept of fiÏrah. However, research on the dialectic relationship between fiÏrah and SharÊÑah and what its relevant concurrent view provides at the level of potentials related to human innate capacities in understanding and realizing SharÊÑah discourse and mandatory provisions as well as understanding its objectives  remains scarce and requires further research and investigation. Therefore, this study intends to shed light on the legislative and evolutionary aspects of the relationship between SharÊÑah and fiÏrah as two interconnected systems that allow for the understanding of the nature of SharÊÑah, its provisions and purposes, as well as identifying the essence of human innate nature and its potential in perceiving SharÊÑah. Keywords: human nature (fiÏrah), Islamic law (SharÊÑah), religious mandates (TakÉlif), religion, intellect (ÑAqal).

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