scholarly journals The Ordinary Gloss on Jonah

PMLA ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 128 (2) ◽  
pp. 424-438
Author(s):  
Ryan McDermott
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Divine Comedy ◽  
Religious Literature ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
John Wyclif

THE ORDINARY GLOSS WAS THE MOST WIDELY USED EDITION OF THE BIBLE IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES AND WELL INTO THE SIXTEENTH century. Medievalists know the commentary element as the Gloss to which theologians as diverse as Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, John Wyclif, and Martin Luther habitually referred. As the foremost vehicle for medieval exegesis, the Gloss framed biblical narratives for a wide range of vernacular religious literature, from Dante's Divine Comedy to French drama to a Middle English retelling of the Jonah story, Patience.

Thomas Aquinas's Quodlibetal Questions

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Public University ◽  
Sacramental Theology ◽  
The Public ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
The University

Thomas Aquinas was one of the most significant Christian thinkers of the middle ages and ranks among the greatest philosophers and theologians of all time. In the mid-thirteenth century, as a teacher at the University of Paris, Aquinas presided over public university-wide debates on questions that could be put forward by anyone about anything. The Quodlibetal Questions are Aquinas’s edited records of these debates. Unlike his other disputed questions, which are limited to a few specific topics such as evil or divine power, Aquinas’s Quodlibetal Questions contain his treatment of hundreds of questions on a wide range of topics—from ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of religion to dogmatic theology, sacramental theology, moral theology, eschatology, and much more. And, unlike his other disputed questions, none of the questions treated in his Quodlibetal Questions were of Aquinas’s own choosing—they were all posed for him to answer by those who attended the public debates. As such, this volume provides a window onto the concerns of students, teachers, and other interested parties in and around the university at that time. For the same reason it contains some of Aquinas’s fullest, and in certain cases his only, treatments of philosophical and theological questions that have maintained their interest throughout the centuries.

The Tsene-rene and Purim Plays

2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-67
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Veidlinger
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
Hebrew Scripture ◽  
Canonical Text ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Scholarly Attention

This article addresses some of the ways that Eastern European Jews in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries accessed the Bible. It argues that reading the Hebrew Scripture itself was just one of many ways that common Jews became acquainted with biblical stories, and suggests that historians place greater scholarly attention on the extra-canonical sources Jews commonly used to access biblical narratives. Jewish audiences also heard biblical stories through interpretations, popular retellings, and dramatic performances. The article discusses the most popular Yiddish interpretive retelling, the sixteenth-century Tsene-rene, and demonstrates how some of its variances from the canonical text may have influenced Jewish notions of time and redemption. The article concludes with a discussion of some Purimshpils (plays performed during the holiday of Purim) and how they reinforced the ideas of the Tsene-rene.

Heresy and Humanism

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Cole
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
Middle English Literature ◽  
Religious Literature ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Considerable Debate

A controversial idea associated with religious culture in the late Middle Ages is that anyone who considers himself a part of mainstream religion must know his difference from heretics. A religious writer in this period who does not hew closely to orthodox teachings may be accused of being a heretic in his lyrical or prosaic musings about Church hierarchies, the Scripture, or the sacraments. This notion has become a subject of considerable debate among some specialists in Middle English literature. This article considers other paradigms that may broaden our notions about religious literature in fifteenth-century England. In particular, it proposes a paradigm that includes bishops rather than heretics, in part because bishops are mainly responsible for innovations that are neglected in a focus on Wycliffism. It also explores the critically neglected innovations within what it calls ecclesiastical humanism, some of its features, and how it emerged during the fifteenth century. It argues that the prevailing cultural obsession with the Wycliffite heresy had largely disappeared between the 1430s and the 1480s and was replaced, in part, by attempts to promote ecclesiastical institutions as centers of patronage and humanist literary culture.

A Singular Example of the Wrath of God: The Use of Sodom in Sixteenth-Century Exegesis

2005 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Elwood
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
The Public ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Wrath Of God

What did the Reformation do for sodomy? The more or less established view, developed by social and cultural historians and contributors to the history of sexuality, is that it did relatively little. The evidence of the normative discourses of theology and law suggests that definitions and understandings of sodomy after the Reformation movements of the early and middle sixteenth century differed little from what had been proffered in the legal and moral writings of the medieval period. According to these defi nitions, which varied in their particulars, sodomy was a sin of unnatural lust which included, but was often not limited to, sexual contact between persons of the same sex. It was a sin whose origins could be traced to the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, whose inhabitants' penchant for unnatural sex led directly to their destruction in a hail of sulfur and fire—a dramatic event that was to stand as a warning both to those tempted to indulge in this vice and to those innocent of that particular sin who would nonetheless tolerate it in their neighbors. This view is found reflected in a wide range of writings from homiletic, exegetical, and penitential productions of late antiquity and the early, high, and late Middle Ages. And, indeed, while Protestant reforming ideas and practices changed many things in Europe of the sixteenth century, they seem to have left untouched this conception of the sin of the Sodomites. Confessions divided on many theological issues appear to have had no quarrel over what sodomy was, where it had come from, and what ought to be done about it. Definitions, then, remained more or less the same through the course of the Reformations; what changed was the capacity of local and regional jurisdictions to enforce legal proscriptions. And so, if the Reformation movements had any impact on the public discourse on sodomy, that impact was limited to the contribution the reforms made to the development of instruments of moral discipline and their facilitation (in some instances) of harsher responses to persons accused and convicted of the crime of sodomy.

Better Living through Dread: Medieval Ascetics, Modern Philosophers, and the Long History of Existential Anxiety

PMLA ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 130 (5) ◽  
pp. 1285-1301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Megna
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Devotional Literature ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Prime Mover ◽  
Existential Anxiety ◽  
Jean Paul ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ex Nihilo

Intellectual historians often credit S⊘ren Kierkegaard as existential anxiety's prime mover. Arguing against this popular sentiment, this essay reads Kierkegaard not as the ex nihilo inventor of existential anxiety but as a modern practitioner of a deep-historical, dread-based asceticism. Examining a wide range of Middle English devotional literature alongside some canonical works of modern existentialism, it argues that Kierkegaard and the existentialists who followed him participated in a Judeo-Christian tradition of dread-based asceticism, the popularity of which had dwindled since the Middle Ages but never vanished. Following medieval ascetics, modern philosophers like Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre cultivated and analyzed anxiety in an effort to embody authenticity. By considering premodern ascetics early existentialists and modern existentialists latter-day ascetics, the essay sees the long history of existential anxiety as an ascetic tradition built around the ethical goal of living better through dread.

Preaching, Pastoral Care, and Sola Scriptura in Later Medieval Ireland: Richard Fitzralph and the use of the Bible

1985 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 251-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Pastoral Care ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Simple Solution ◽  
Literal Sense ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Medieval Ireland ◽  
The Middle Ages

In the preface to the third edition of The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages Beryl Smalley pointed out the dilemma posed by the apparently simple solution contained in the mature teaching of Thomas Aquinas, whereby the literal sense of biblical interpretation was all that the sacred writer intended. Her question as to what should be included under ‘all’ preoccupied many medieval students of Scripture.

scholarly journals Religious Doctrines Versus Economics in the Antiquity and the Middle Ages

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 16-28
Author(s):  
Włodzimierz Wójcicki
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Ethical Principles ◽  
Ethical Attitudes ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Ethical Norms ◽  
Religious Aspects ◽  
Social Persuasion

Abstract Summary Subject and purpose of work: The work presents the participation of religious ideas in shaping ethical attitudes in business. Its purpose is to indicate the need to consolidate ethical principles in economics with the use of various possibilities of social persuasion. Materials and methods: The research was based on literature studies, including religious, philosophical and historical literature. In particular, the method of induction was employed - from rules to conclusions. Attention was paid to the considerations of the method itself. Results: The development of research on the method required the recognition of the role of reason - autonomous with respect to faith. Findings of St. Thomas Aquinas (distinction between act and possibility, forms and matter, recognition of the causal linkage between events, negation of the dual truth about the same event) and W. Ockham (entities are not to be multiplied without necessity) are still valid today. Conclusions: Religious ideas support economic activity by propagating ethical norms of behaviour. This, in turn, evokes the view of J.M. Keynes about the important role of ideas as such. The significance of the Bible goes far beyond religious aspects.

scholarly journals Is Astrology a Type of Divination? Thomas Aquinas, the Index of Prohibited Books, and the Construction of a Legitimate Astrology in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-74
Author(s):  
H Darrel Rutkin
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Summa Theologiae ◽  
Historical Dynamics ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Middle Ages

Abstract What is the relationship between astrology and divination? In particular, is astrology a type of divination, as is often asserted or assumed? In both astrology and divination, knowledge and prediction of the future are primary goals, but does this warrant calling astrology a form of divination? I approach these questions by exploring the response of Thomas Aquinas, which was to be extremely influential for many centuries. First I analyze in some detail Thomas’s answer in his Summa theologiae 2-2.92–95; then I discuss two significant sixteenth-century examples of its influence: the 1557, 1559, 1564, and later indexes of prohibited books; and Pope Sixtus V’s anti-divinatory bull, Coeli et Terrae Creator (1586). In this way, we can explore some of the complex historical dynamics at play in the construction of a legitimate astrology in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Insular Books

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Medieval Manuscript ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Nuanced Understanding

This volume aims to rethink critical assumptions about a particular type of medieval manuscript: the miscellany. A miscellany is a multi-text manuscript, made up of mixed contents, often in a mixture of languages; such a volume might be the work of one compiler or several, and might have been put together over a short period of time or over many years (even over several generations). Such variety proves problematic when attempting to form critical judgements, particularly in terms of terminology and definitions. These issues are explored in the introduction, and the fifteen essays that follow discuss a great number of manuscript miscellanies produced in Britain in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. Some of the chapters offer new insights into very well-known miscellanies, whilst others draw attention to little-known volumes. Whilst previous studies of the miscellany have restricted themselves to disciplinary or linguistic boundaries, this collection uniquely draws on the expertise of specialists in the rich range of vernacular languages used in Britain in the later Middle Ages (Anglo-French, Middle English, Older Scots, Middle Welsh). As a result, illuminating comparisons are drawn between miscellany manuscripts that were the products of different geographical areas and cultures. Collectively the chapters in Insular Books explore the wide range of heterogeneous manuscripts that may be defined as miscellanies, and model approaches to their study that will permit a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the production of these assemblages, as well as their circulation and reception in their own age and beyond.

scholarly journals Vernacular Translations of Scripture in England and Lithuania before the 17th Century

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-94
Author(s):  
S.C. Rowell
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Religious Literature ◽  
General Survey ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
Holy Writ ◽  
Broad Outline

This article gives a general survey of the development of a need among Lithuanian Catholics at the end of the fifteenth century for access to religious literature and especially Scripture in the vernacular (for sake of convenience, in Ruthenian translation). The work of Francis Skorina is examined in this context as a distant forerunner of Chylinski’s first published translation of the Bible into Lithuanian. The development of vernacular translations of parts of Holy Writ into Anglo-Saxon, Anglo- Norman and English are presented in very broad outline, culminating in the Roman Catholic and Anglican versions of the English Bible in the late sixteenth century and 1610. A reminder is given that merely having a text in the vernacular does not mean that such a text is available to all and understood by all.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document