scholarly journals Conflict and Authority: William of Saint-Thierry and Peter Abelard as Readers of Origen

Open Theology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 531-554
Author(s):  
Carmen Angela Cvetković
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Peter Abelard ◽  
Cistercian Monks ◽  
Latin West ◽  
Clear Point ◽  
The Way

Abstract This study compares how two prominent twelfth-century Latin authors and theological opponents, namely the monastic author William of Saint-Thierry (c. 1080–1148) and the school master Peter Abelard (1079–1142), variously understood the authority of the controversial yet influential Greek author Origen (c. 184–253) in their works. Modern scholars who study the reception of Origen in the twelfth-century Latin West have, to this point, spoken of an Origenian revival in this period, concluding that Origen was especially popular in the cloister, among Cistercian monks, such as Bernard of Clairvaux and his followers, like William of Saint-Thierry, based on the assumption that as monks they found his writings more relevant. This study seeks to challenge this scholarly narrative by focusing on two authors who are perceived as typifying two different strands of theology, one of a contemplative character developed in the cloister (William) and one making use of dialectics and developed in the emerging schools (Abelard). By demonstrating that the schoolmaster Abelard drew on Origen to a greater degree and in a more transparent manner than his monastic opponent, this study will show that Origen’s popularity in the cloisters was not, as such, a clear point of distinction between them and schools in the way that has usually been claimed by modern scholarship.

The Exorcism of the Salt Ponds at Xie

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barend J. ter Haar
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Southern China ◽  
Ritual Practice ◽  
Salt Ponds ◽  
The South ◽  
New Type ◽  
The Way

The historical Guan Yu came from a village in Xie Prefecture (modern Yuncheng) in the south of the modern province of Shanxi, close to one of the main salt producing sites of traditional China. From the early twelfth century onwards a new type of worship for Lord Guan was transmitted throughout southern China by Daoist exorcist specialists, which was motivated by a story about his successful defeat of a demon causing mishap in the salt ponds of Xie. The Daoist connection of the deity was much stronger than the Buddhist one, but this was the Daoism of ritual practice, rather than the philosophical approaches as some may construct them from the Book of the Way and the Virtue that is ascribed to Laozi. A substantial numbers of temple foundations in southern China in particular can be explained through this Daoist connection.

Peter Abelard, Heloise and Jewish Biblical Exegesis in the Twelfth Century

2010 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-19
Author(s):  
CONSTANT J. MEWS ◽  
MICHA J. PERRY
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Biblical Exegesis ◽  
Peter Abelard ◽  
Jewish Scholar ◽  
1 Samuel

This paper revisits the question of the influence of Jewish biblical exegesis on Christian scholars in twelfth-century France, by focusing in particular on Abelard's response to a question of Heloise in herProblemataabout questions raised by1 Samuel ii.35–6 (=1 Regum ii.35–6)concerning ‘the faithful priest’ prophesied as Eli's successor, the meaning of ‘will walk before my anointed’ and the nature of the offering his household should make. Abelard's discussion of the views of an unnamed Jewish scholar illustrates a consistent movement evident in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries for certain Christian exegetes to approach Jewish scholars to resolve problems posed by the text of the Old Testament. While the passage in1 Samuelwas traditionally interpreted in a Christocentric fashion, Heloise implicitly supports a more historical reading of the text in the question she puts to Abelard. The Jewish scholar's interpretation reported by Abelard is very close to that of Rashi's twelfth-century disciples.

William of Auvergne and the Manichees

Traditio ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 63-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland J. Teske
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Latin West ◽  
The World ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Universe ◽  
The Church ◽  
Scholarly Attention

William of Auvergne became a master of theology in the University of Paris in 1223 and was appointed bishop of Paris by Gregory IX in 1228. William governed the church of Paris until his death in 1249, while continuing to write the works which constitute his immense Magisterium divinale et sapientiale. Despite the fact that he was the first of the thirteenth-century theologians to appreciate the value of the Aristotelian philosophy that poured into the Latin West during the last half of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century, his writings have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. Étienne Gilson has sketched well the impact of the influx of Greek and Arabian philosophical works into the Christian West: Up to the last years of the twelfth century, when the Christian world unexpectedly discovered the existence of non-Christian interpretations of the universe, Christian theology never had to concern itself with the fact that a non-Christian interpretation of the world as a whole, including man and his destiny, was still an open possibility.

Are Thoughts and Sentences Compositional? A Controversy between Abelard and a Pupil of Alberic on the Reconciliation of Ancient Theses on Mind and Language

Vivarium ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Lenz
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Semantic Theory ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
Peter Abelard ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis paper reconstructs a controversy between a pupil of Alberic of Paris and Peter Abelard which illustrates two competing ways of reconciling different ancient traditions. I shall argue that their accounts of the relation between sentences and thoughts are incompatible with one another, although they rely on the same set of sources. The key to understanding their different views on assertive and non-assertive sentences lies in their disparate views about the structure of thoughts: whereas Abelard takes thoughts to be compositional, the opponent's arguments seem to rely on the premise that the mental states which correspond to sentences cannot be compositional in the way that Abelard suggested. Although, at a first glance, Abelard's position appears to be more coherent, it turns out that his opponent convincingly argues against weaknesses in Abelard's semantic theory by proposing a pragmatic approach.

Michael Scot in Toledo: Natura naturans and the Hierarchy of Being

Traditio ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 93-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy K. Pick
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Central Figure ◽  
Medieval Science ◽  
Latin West ◽  
Arabic Philosophy

Michael Scot was a central figure both for the transmission of Arabic philosophy to the Latin West and for the development of medieval science and astrology, yet much still remains unknown about his life and career. In part of a longer article dedicated to teasing out some of the strands of Michael Scot's influences and impact, Charles Burnett poses intriguing questions about the importance of his early sojourn in Toledo. He shows that Michael, along with Salio of Padua and Mark of Toledo, continued the translating activity begun in the twelfth century in Toledo, and he wonders whether Michael — like the twelfth-century translators Dominicus Gundissalinus, Gerard of Cremona, and John Hispanus — was closely associated with the cathedral of Toledo. Burnett hypothesizes that Toledo could have been the place where Michael first came across the works of Aristotle, Avicenna, and Averroes that he is credited with translating from the Arabic, and he notes that many of Michael's sources for his astrological treatise, the Liber introductorius (hereafter LI), were available in Toledo. Burnett suggests that by Michael's final departure from Spain to Italy, around 1220, he may have already made considerable headway in both his translating and astrological activities.

Abelard’s Rib: Dialectics of a Twelfth-Century Monastic Marriage and the Historical Epistemology of Spirituality

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-89
Author(s):  
Babette S. Hellemans
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
Peter Abelard ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Worship ◽  
To Come ◽  
Marital Love ◽  
The One

This article proposes to describe the oxymoronic aspect of twelfth-century ascetic life, as it is couched in the semantics of marital ‘love-talk.’ By extending Christian asceticism to the field of marital semantics, I hope to come closer to a more intellectual kind of spirituality, situated in the philosophical discourse of the ars dialectica. While it is commonplace to state that affective speech in the twelfth century is a constitutive element of Western ‘spirituality’—up to the point that this period is sometimes credited with being the founder of an individual love-talk—the nature of a ‘matrimonial’ love-speech firmly located within monastic walls is far from self-evident. Furthermore, there is the issue of physical desire in both Christian worship (hymns, liturgy) and reflective, religious language. This ‘incarnation’ of love inside the history of Christianity was coined by the twelfth-century reformer and intellectual Bernard of Clairvaux in the most tangible terms possible, especially in his Sermons on the Song of Songs and in his devotional texts on Mary. However, it is not a broad claim with regard to the status of ‘spirituality’ within history that dominates the present article. If anything, this contribution could be characterized as exploring the opposite of the common semantics of spirituality: the argumentative and dialectical speech on the one hand and the fragility of poetry on the other, glooming beneath the surface of a meandering Christian tradition. My analysis of the work of Peter Abelard (1079–1142)—a fierce opponent of Bernard—will demonstrate a rather radical view of ‘spirituality’ as a sometimes veiled (integementum) and sometimes shattered specimen of medieval love-talk.

Basaveswara and Thoreau: A Comparative Study of Their Religious Thought

IJOHMN ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Basavaraj Naikar
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Subjective Improvement ◽  
Social Reformer ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Social Betterment ◽  
Time Gap ◽  
The Way

That great men think alike is borne out by a comparative study of the religious thought and philosophy of Basaveswara, a twelfth century mystic and social reformer of Karnataka, India and Thoreau, a nineteenth century American Transcendentalist. Although there is a time gap of seven centuries and a spatial gap of about three thousand miles between them countries and background the ideas propounded by them are so similar that one feels that either of them must have copied from the other. But they did not know each other by any chance whatever. But they were placed in similar circumstances though not the same ones. Some of the similarities in their views may be studied at some length in the following paragraphs. Inner Purity The concept of inner purity is common to both Basaveswara and Thoreau. They insist upon the subjective improvement which automatically paves the way for objective or social betterment. Both of them attach an extraordinary importance to inner purity as they associate it with the principle of divinity in man. Inner purity should be simultaneous with the external purity. As Basaveswara says in one of his vacanas or mystic utterances: You shall not steal,

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