The Bible in the Fourteenth Century: Some Observations

1985 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Courtenay
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Precise Understanding ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Biblical Commentaries ◽  
English Group

One of the most pressing needs in the field of medieval biblical studies is for an adequate historical overview of developments in the late Middle Ages. One of the pioneers, the late Beryl Smalley, never fully achieved the intended sequel to her magisterial Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, although her English Friars and Antiquity was an excellent beginning, particularly for the early fourteenth-century English group. Other surveys end with Nicholas of Lyra, skip from the thirteenth century to the Reformation, or give only the most cursory attention to the late medieval period.2 And yet the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were rich in biblical commentaries, and scholars, have long considered a more precise understanding of developments in that period to be essential for an adequate appreciation of the character and significance of biblical commentaries in the early sixteenth century.

Martin Luther's Practice of Old Testament Commentary

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Maxfield
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Justification By Faith ◽  
University Professor ◽  
History Of ◽  
Biblical Commentaries ◽  
The Many

Scholarly analysis of biblical interpretation and commentary in the history of Christianity has become an important subfield in history as well as biblical studies and theology. From the Reformation and into the modern era, Martin Luther has been appreciated first of all as an expositor of the Bible and a confessor of its teachings. His vocation as a theologian called to teach in the University of Wittenberg was especially focused on the exposition of scripture, and his development as a theologian and eventually as an evangelical reformer was deeply tied to his experience in interpreting the Bible in his university classroom, in the Augustinian cloister, and in his household. His interpretation of scripture was the basis of his “Reformation discovery” of justification by faith, and his conflict with the papal church was largely the result of Luther’s conviction that the message of scripture, in particular “the gospel,” was being overwhelmed in the theology and churchly practice of his time by “human teachings” not supported by and contradicting scripture. As a result, Luther and other evangelical reformers of the 16th century appealed to scripture alone (sola scriptura) as the highest authority in shaping their theology and proposals for reform. Luther’s teachings and leadership in the Reformation were shared and celebrated not only through his doctrinal and polemical treatises and catechetical writings, but also through the many sermons, biblical commentaries on both Old and New Testament books, and prefaces on the books of the Bible that were published in his lifetime and thereafter. Old Testament commentary was an especially important genre of Luther’s published works, as it encapsulated much of his work as a university professor of theology and evangelical reformer.

scholarly journals Wielopoziomowe relacje między literaturą religijną Tatarów Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego a przekładami Biblii na języki narodowe

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-206
Author(s):  
Joanna Kulwicka-Kamińska
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
The Bible ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Religious Writings ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Grand Duchy Of Lithuania ◽  
National Languages ◽  
Selection Of

The article presents the genesis and the features of the Renaissance religious writings of the Tatars of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the context of the translations of the Bible into national languages. An analysis was performed on a Tatar tefsir, which – according to the most recent research – is a translation of the Qur’an into a European language – the third translation of this kind in the world. Due to the fact that in the 16th century a Polish and even a European Qur’anic translational tradition did not exist, this translation makes reference to the Biblical-psalter literature of the Middle Ages and to the translations of the Scripture of the Reformation, inter alia as far as the selection of the methods and the ways of translation or the adoption of specific translational solutions is concerned. Thus the translation belongs to the translational tradition of sacred books and to the most important trends of Polish and European culture. In this context, a medieval tradition (a continuation of the achievements of translation studies of the 15th c.) and the innovation of the Renaissance overlap. There is an analogy with the 16th-century Biblical printed texts, which also represent a transitional stage – they make reference to a medieval tradition and they also take advantage of the benefits of humanist Biblical studies.

The Virtues of Economy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. Palmer
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Subsequent Development ◽  
Political Society ◽  
Future Role ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City ◽  
Distinct Role

The humanist perception of fourteenth-century Rome as a slumbering ruin awaiting the Renaissance and the return of papal power has cast a long shadow on the historiography of the city. Challenging the view, this book argues that Roman political culture underwent dramatic changes in the late Middle Ages, with profound and lasting implications for the city's subsequent development. The book examines the transformation of Rome's governing elites as a result of changes in the city's economic, political, and spiritual landscape. It explores this shift through the history of Roman political society, its identity as an urban commune, and its once-and-future role as the spiritual capital of Latin Christendom. Tracing the contours of everyday Roman politics, the book reframes the reestablishment of papal sovereignty in Rome as the product of synergy between papal ambitions and local political culture. More broadly, it emphasizes Rome's distinct role in evolution of medieval Italy's city-communes.

Meister Eckhart on the Book of Wisdom: Commentary and Sermons

Traditio ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 215-235
Author(s):  
Donald F. Duclow
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Gospel Of John ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
Common View ◽  
Literal Sense ◽  
Meister Eckhart ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Historical Accuracy ◽  
Biblical Commentaries ◽  
Speculative Thought

A common view of medieval thought focuses on the separation of speculative thought from biblical exegesis which occurs with the rise of the universities. Whereas in the patristic era and the early Middle Ages theology and exegesis formed a unity, the introduction of Aristotle and the techniques of quaestio and disputatio detached theology from the study of scriptural texts. The results were twofold: theology attained a new autonomy and a distinctive form in the summa, and exegesis — free of the demands of theological speculation — could pursue a more literal and historical style of interpretation. Whatever the historical accuracy of this view, it has certainly shaped modern scholarship on medieval thought. Theologians and philosophers have focused on summae and disputed questions to such an extent that the Leonine edition of Thomas Aquinas has yet to publish his major Commentary on the Gospel of John. Since Thomas is considered first of all a theologian, not an exegete, his biblical commentaries have been accorded less interest and attention than his systematic works. In contrast, students of medieval exegesis may so emphasize literal and historical interpretation that they exclude or dismiss commentaries that are speculative or mystical. Beryl Smalley's The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages represents this trend, as it devotes little attention to Bernard of Clairvaux but concentrates on commentators like Guerric of St. Quentin, who gave ‘his attention to the literal sense first and foremost.’

Comparative Politics of Exclusion in Europe and the Americas: Religious, Sectarian, and Racial Boundary Making since the Reformation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Şener Aktürk
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Critical Reading ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Elective Affinity ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Boundary Making ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Pope Innocent Iii

Based on a critical reading of three recent books, I argue that the exclusion of Jews and Muslims, the two major non-Christian religious groups in Europe and the Americas, has continued on the basis of ethnic, racial, ideological, and quasi-rational justifications, instead of or in addition to religious justifications, since the Reformation. Furthermore, I argue that the institutionally orchestrated collective stigmatization and persecution of Jews and Muslims predated the Reformation, going back to the Fourth Lateran Council under Pope Innocent III in 1215. The notion of Corpus Christianum and Observant movements in the late Middle Ages, the elective affinity of liberalism and racism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the divergence in religious norms at present are critically evaluated as potential causes of ethnoreligious exclusion.

The Poetics of Waste: Medieval English Ecocriticism

PMLA ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 127 (3) ◽  
pp. 460-476 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleanor Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Piers Plowman ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Poetic Language ◽  
Late Middle Ages

Waste has been a recognizable socioeconomic problem since at least the late Middle Ages. In England, because of land and labor shortages, wars, famines, and especially changes in legal and penitential discourses, waste became, by the mid–fourteenth century, a critical concept. But a fully fleshed-out vocabulary for thinking through the meaning and consequences of the practice of committing waste does not yet exist. This essay argues that two fourteenth-century poems, Wynnere and Wastoure and Piers Plowman, address the lack of such a thinking through, tackling the problem of waste in all its vicissitudes. They deploy the formal resources of poetic language—from personification to episodic structure—to draw together the various ideas of waste from other discourses and to raise medieval readers' consciousnesses about the seriousness of waste's consequences. The essay calls their use of formal resources in creating this critical discourse a “poetics of waste.”

The Image of Music and the Bodies of Knowledge in the Late Middle Ages: Rhythmic Procedures as Cultural Representations

1996 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorit Tanay
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Musical Thought ◽  
Late Middle Ages

The ArgumentThe paper argues that the distinction between modernism and postmodernism can be applied metaphorically to clarify the changing image of music during the late Middle Ages. The paper discusses the scientific and rational strategies that thirteenth century musical theorists applied to revise earlier musical conceptualization. It highlights the thirteenth-century innovative affiliation of music with Aristotelian physics and argues that in a very subtle and seemingly contradictory way music theorists expressed the nascent awareness, if not tacit acknowledgment, of the mundane nature of music. It argues further that in the fourteenth century the issue of representing musical-rhythmical variability by means of a suitable language shifted to the forefront of musical theory and practice. The unprecedented emphasis on musical signs and their semantic behavior as well as the demand to demystify the discourse about rhythmical concepts — so as to question the necessity of metacategories — all point to an affinity between fourteenth century musical thought and postmodern sensibilities.

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