Inquiry and Inquisition: Academic Freedom in Medieval Universities

1989 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Courtenay
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Church History ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
Proper Training ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theological Study ◽  
American Society ◽  
Medieval Universities

The year 1988 marks not only the centennial of the American Society of Church History, it is also the anniversary of two important works dealing with the theme of religious toleration and freedom of ideas. One is the fiftieth anniversary of G. G. Coulton's Inquisition and Liberty. The other is Henry Charles Lea's History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, published in three volumes early in 1888. Coulton's work became a model for many that followed: a highly readable, consciously engaging narrative outlining the main features of one of the darker chapters of medieval church history. It covered the development of religious nonconformity, the church's response, especially through the creation and operation of the Inquistion, and the principal victims of the Inquisition: the Albigensians, Waldensians, Spiritual Franciscans, and those accused of witchcraft. Lea's earlier treatment covered those themes in a far more extensive way, and he also included, unlike Coulton, a final chapter on the problem of religious orthodoxy in the schools as viewed from the standpoint of the Inquisition. Lea, in fact, is one of the few authors writing on heresy and inquisition who attempted to place the cases of questioned orthodoxy and freedom of thought in medieval schools and universities in this larger context. Although he did not pursue the topic in any depth, Lea was aware that the character of theological study and the proper training of an educated priesthood were linked to the issue of religious orthodoxy in the schools and the threat of heresy among those charged with the preservation and dissemination of truth.

Medieval Heretics as Protestant Martyrs

1993 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 185-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Euan Cameron
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Church History ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
Church Polity ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Articles Of Faith ◽  
The Church

Two themes which figure repeatedly in the history of the Western Church are the contrasting ones of tradition and renewal. To emphasize tradition, or continuity, is to stress the divine element in the continuous collective teaching and witness of the Church. To call periodically for renewal and reform is to acknowledge that any institution composed of people will, with time, lose its pristine vigour or deviate from its original purpose. At certain periods in church history the tension between these two themes has broken out into open conflict, as happened with such dramatic results in the Reformation of the sixteenth century. The Protestant Reformers seem to present one of the most extreme cases where the desire for renewal triumphed over the instinct to preserve continuity of witness. A fundamentally novel analysis of the process by which human souls were saved was formulated by Martin Luther in the course of debate, and soon adopted or reinvented by others. This analysis was then used as a touchstone against which to test and to attack the most prominent features of contemporary teaching, worship, and church polity. In so far as any appeal was made to Christian antiquity, it was to the scriptural texts and to the early Fathers; though even the latter could be selected and criticized if they deviated from the primary articles of faith. There was, then, no reason why any of the Reformers should have sought to justify their actions by reference to any forbears or ‘forerunners’ in the Middle Ages, whether real or spurious. On the contrary, Martin Luther’s instinctive response towards those condemned by the medieval Church as heretics was to echo the conventional and prejudiced hostility felt by the religious intelligentsia towards those outside their pale.

scholarly journals Review on: Rod Dreher. The Benedict Option. A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation. New York: Sentinel, 2017

2019 ◽  
pp. 148-152
Author(s):  
Павел Великанов
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Cultural Models ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Linear Scheme ◽  
European Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western European ◽  
American Society ◽  
Christian Nation

У Рода Дреера получилась сильная, понятная и мотивирующая книга. Это настоящий эталон миссионерской (в светском значении этого слова) литературы. За ярким предисловием следует достаточно объёмный, но совсем не скучный экскурс в историю западноевропейской философии, в котором эта самая история постепенно складывается в линейную схему. Как считает автор, с позднего Средневековья и по настоящее время западноевропейское (и, как производная от него, американское) общество движется исключительно по пути моральной деградации и отхода от религии. Но это не эсхатологическая картина «охладения любви», о которой говорил Христос Спаситель (Мф. 24, 12). Речь идёт о якобы существующем кризисе одной из человеческих культурных моделей, вполне преодолимом человеческим же усилием. Rod Dreher's book is strong, clear and motivating. This is a true benchmark of missionary (in the secular sense of the word) literature. A vivid preface is followed by a rather voluminous, but not at all boring excursion into the history of Western European philosophy, in which this very history is gradually formed into a linear scheme. According to the author, from the late Middle Ages to the present, Western European (and, as a derivative of it, American) society has been moving exclusively along the path of moral degradation and departure from religion. But this is not the eschatological picture of the "cooling down of love" of which Christ the Saviour spoke (Matthew 24:12). We are talking about the alleged crisis of one of the human cultural models, quite surmountable by human efforts.

The medieval church

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Luscombe
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter discusses the contributions that were made by former Fellows of the Academy to the study of the medieval church. It states that the history of the medieval church is inseparable from the general history of the Middle Ages, since the church shaped society and society shaped the church. The chapter determines that no hard and fast distinction can always be made between the works by ecclesiastical historians during the twentieth century, and the contributions made to general history by other historians.

scholarly journals Literature on Church History, 1914–1920. II. The Mediaeval Church

1922 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 323-405
Author(s):  
Gustav Krüger
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Church History ◽  
Early Church ◽  
General Survey ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Middle Ages

In the introduction to my first article (Harvard Theological Review, October 1921) I have already remarked that it is neither necessary nor possible to present the literature of mediaeval church history with the fullness which is desirable for the history of the early church. In a general survey everything that has only a local interest must be omitted, and even in what remains the wheat must be winnowed from the chaff. The reviewer need not complain of lack of material; indeed what is valuable greatly exceeds in amount what is unimportant. This is especially true of those comprehensive treatises which deal either with the Middle Ages as a whole or with special periods.

The End of “The Protestant Era”?

2011 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 600-610 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Collis Greene
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Church History ◽  
Institution Building ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Society

More than fifty years after delivering the talk “The American Religious Depression, 1925–1935” to the American Society of Church History, Robert Handy is still the default authority on religion and the Great Depression. This is a tribute to his remarkable insights, but it is also an indication that the Depression merits more attention from historians of religion. A number of scholars have taken the religious history of the 1930s seriously. Yet we tend to think of the work of Joel Carpenter, Leo Ribuffo, Alan Brinkley, Beth Wenger, Kenneth Heineman, and others as primarily about fundamentalist institution-building, New Deal demagogues, or Jews and Catholics in New York and Pittsburgh, and only incidentally about the Great Depression.

Forum on Antebellum American Protestantism

2015 ◽  
Vol 84 (3) ◽  
pp. 608-609
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Address ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Church History ◽  
American Religious History ◽  
Antebellum America ◽  
Traditional Church ◽  
American Protestantism ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Society ◽  
Theoretical Developments

At the 2015 Winter Meeting of the American Society of Church History, the panel “Futures of the American Religious Past” examined two of the most provocative and influential recent analyses of antebellum American protestantism—Mark A. Noll's America's God and John Lardas Modern's Secularism in Antebellum America. In one sense, the pairing is odd. The two books appear drastically different, stylistically and methodologically. Modern's highly original monograph constructs a genealogy of antebellum American secularism, illuminating ways in which this cultural force haunted the historicity of American protestantism. His analysis interweaves the theoretical and discursive approaches of cultural studies and religious studies. Noll's book, on the other hand, constructs a more traditional, though deeply creative, history of protestant religious ideas, attentive to the agency of individual thinkers and institutions. Both books are brilliant, yet they exist at two opposite disciplinary poles in the study of American religions. Their juxtaposition embodies what Laurie Maffly-Kipp in her 2013 American Society of Church History Presidential Address called our “transitional moment” in American religious history, as theoretical developments of religious studies confront traditional church history paradigms.

The Classical Sources of Evangelical Devotion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Bruce Hindmarsh
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Church History ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Imitation Of Christ ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Catholic Tradition ◽  
Devotional Reading

For all its seeming newness, evangelicalism revived ancient ideals. Evangelical use of Scripture was especially similar to ancient patterns of devotional reading. Moreover, evangelicals routinely appealed to confessional formularies (Anglican and Reformed) and creedal standards, and to precedents in church history from the Puritans, the Reformation, and beyond, stretching back to the early church. Evangelicals’ concern for true religion meant that they were also able to assimilate spiritually edifying sources from the Catholic tradition and from the Middle Ages. The reception history of Henry Scougal’s Life of God in the Soul of Man and Thomas à‎ Kempis’s Imitation of Christ illustrate a process of simplification, naturalization, and democratization of mystical and ascetical ideals. The libraries, book lists, and church histories of evangelicals further illustrate a wide range of sources, critical to evangelical spiritual life and identity.

Medieval Jews and the Christian Past

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ram Ben-Shalom
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Church History ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
Southern France ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Literature

The focus in this book is on the historical consciousness of the Jews of Spain and southern France in the late Middle Ages, and specifically on their perceptions of Christianity and Christian history and culture. The book shows that in these southern European lands Jews experienced a relatively open society that was sensitive to and knowledgeable about voices from other cultures, and that this had significant consequences for shaping Jewish historical consciousness. Among the topics discussed are what Jews knew of the significance of Rome, of Jesus and the early days of Christianity, of Church history, and of the history of the Iberian monarchies. The book demonstrates that, despite the negative stereotypes of Jewry prevalent in Christian literature, they were more influenced by their interactions with Christian society at the local level. Consequently, there was no single stereotype that dominated Jewish thought, and frequently little awareness of the two societies as representing distinct cultures. The book demonstrates that in Spain and southern France, Jews of the later Middle Ages evinced a genuine interest in history, including the history of non-Jews, and that in some cases they were deeply familiar with Christian and sometimes also classical historiography. The book enriches our understanding of medieval historiography, polemic, Jewish–Christian relations, and the breadth of interests characterizing Provencal and Spanish Jewish communities.

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