The Tithe-Heresy of Friar William Russell

1976 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Craig A. Robertson

The growth of subjectivity in the religious life of the later Middle Ages, in discipline and worship as well as doctrine, both without and within the corporation of the clergy, was an important motif in the history of the Church in England. A more personal interpretation of religious obligations affected even matters of bedrock importance to the life of the organized church, such as the duty of tithing. Of particular interest in this connection in England was the cause célèbre created in London in the 1420's by a maverick Franciscan, William Russell, who preached that under certain conditions lay persons might devote their personal tithes at will to any pious or charitable use. Russell's sermon led to his condemnation as a heretic. But the reasons for the extraordinary controversy that he stirred up become clear only when one recognizes the place of his sermon in a long dispute between the parish clergy of London and their parishoners about the precise obligation of personal tithes in the city.The prosecution of William Russell before Archbishop Henry Chichele and the Convocation of Canterbury was an odd affair and, in spite of their prolixity, its records leave unsolvable riddles for medievalists. The process against Russell comprises the longest trial in Archbishop Chichele's register—perhaps in that of any medieval Archbishop of Canterbury. Minutes of the prosecution and wordy ancillary documents fill all or parts of twenty-six folio pages of the register (fifty-two printed pages in the splendid printed edition of E.F. Jacob). Yet in reading this material one gathers hardly more than a crabbed impression of the learned proofs and literary citations that Russell mustered in defense of this teaching on personal tithes. What is most striking to a reader of this transcript is the vehemence with which Archbishop Chichele and his clergy in the Convocation prosecuted this errant friar, in whose sermon they saw a clear and present danger to the endowment of London parish churches.

Author(s):  
Ioan Chirilă

"The church has had to accept the national division of Europe since the Middle Ages and adapt to this situation. This issue is relatively unclear in the case of Tran-sylvania. N. Iorga stated about the Orthodox Christian consciousness that “it was so strong that it hindered the creation of a strong national consciousness”, and this would allow us to see in the ecclesiastical organization a form of expression of uni-tary organization of Romanian ethnicity in Transylvania. The time of Transylvani-an principalities and voivodeships shows us that most often the ecclesiastical leaders were also the political leaders (see the case of Prince Andrew Báthory who was Archbishop of Warmia – Poland); so, the two concepts of ethnicity and confession reflected the same historical reality during those times. The two concepts will be-come separated only later, after the emergence of confessions other than the Eastern rite. In support of our statement, we have the correspondence between the Hungar-ian kings and officials and the papacy. Before dealing with these perspectives, we shall pin down the terminology to grant the reader the possibility to understand the historical situations through a kind of thinking marked by the imprint of the Holy Scripture. Keywords: ethnicity, people, confession, dynamic status, national consciousness, Transyl-vania, the church. "


1986 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 85-96
Author(s):  
Richard MacKenney

Perhaps the most striking features of the history of Renaissance Venice are its highly commercialised economy and its precocious sense of secular state sovereignty. These characteristics owed much to the city’s independence of and isolation from rural and seigneurial influences in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. However, the high level of business activity and the confident awareness of statehood could also be related to the weakness of ecclesiastical influence in economic and political affairs. This was the case long before the spectacular conflict of 1606 when Venice was placed under the Interdict. The location of the Cathedral had always been a telling symbol of the place of the Church in Venetian life. It stood at San Pietro di Castello in an isolated area of the city. It is easy to overlook the fact that the centre of religious life, Saint Mark’s, was the Doge’s private chapel: a constant reminder of the intimate relationship between religious and political power, a material manifestation of the divine favour attached to Venice’s wealth and authority, both of which were unmistakably worldly.


2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ferdinand Gregorovius ◽  
Annie Hamilton

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ferdinand Gregorovius ◽  
Annie Hamilton

1971 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 289-302
Author(s):  
J. H. Denton

It is a surprising fact that, despite all the energy that has been devoted by medievalists to the relations between the king and the Church, no one has attempted to answer the question: what was the extent of the king's authority in his own parish churches? Naturally the English crown, like the lay lords and like the monasteries and like the bishops, possessed the patronage of churches. How did the triangular relationship of king/bishop/pope operate in practice in the royal churches? Others have addressed themselves to the sacred nature of kingship, to the spiritual capacity of the priest-king. Some have been concerned, for example, with the changing concept of kingship, as was E. H. Kantorowicz, or with the claims that the king possessed the power of healing and could cure scrofula, as was Marc Bloch. These issues and their like pose the problem of bridging the gap between the concept or the claim and the exercise of authority or power. An examination of the history of royal churches provides abundant evidence of claims and counter-claims, but our concern in the end must be with the actual extent and nature of the king's control and jurisdiction.


Author(s):  
James A. Palmer

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.


1966 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 82-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. A. Bullough

Prefatory Note.—My interest in Pavia goes back at least to 1951 when I was elected Rome Scholar in Medieval Studies. I began seriously to collect material for the history of the city in the early Middle Ages in the winter and spring of 1953 when I enjoyed the warm hospitality of the Collegio Ghislieri, thanks to the efforts made on my behalf by the late Hugh Last, to whose memory this article is dedicated. The published proceedings of the Reichenau and Spoleto congresses on ‘The early medieval town’ in the 1950s clearly underlined the need for detailed studies of particular towns; but the lack of adequate archaeological evidence discouraged me from attempting such a study of early medieval Pavia. In 1964, however, Dr. A. Peroni, Director of the Museo Civico invited me to read a supplementary paper on this topic to the Convegno di Studio sul Centro Storico di Pavia held in the Università degli Studi at Pavia on July 4th and 5th of that year. The present article is an amplified and corrected version of that paper: I have made no substantial alterations to my account of the ‘urbanistica’ of early medieval Pavia—written for an audience of architects and art-historians as well as of historians—but have dealt more fully with the social history of the city in this period. Professor Richard Krautheimer read a draft of the revised version and made some pointed and helpful comments. I am greatly indebted to Dr. Peroni, not merely for the invitation to present the original paper but also for supplying illustrations and answering queries at a time when he and his staff were engaged in helping to repair the ravages of the Florence floods.


Antichthon ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
C.J. Mackie

AbstractThis article explores the part played by Mount Ida in the Iliad. It begins with some consideration of Ida in the early ‘history’ of Troy – the stories of Dardanus and the early line of Trojan kings. The city of Troy (Ilios) has its origins on Mount Ida, and the mountain remains very dear to the Trojans in many different ways. The rivers at Troy have their source on the mountain, and the Trojans acquire their water and wood from there. Moreover, the mountain is a central part of Trojan religious life, including the peak at Gargarus, where Zeus resides for a significant part of the poem. This article considers the two journeys of Zeus to Mount Ida from Olympus in the Iliad, and the ways that these are dealt with in the text. It raises questions about the rationale for and the effect of his visits there. It is argued that the poet uses Zeus’s absence from Olympus to ‘open up’ the cosmos, and permit new kinds of divine conduct and intervention. The article concludes with some consideration of the fact that the text offers no reference to the return of Zeus from Ida to Olympus prior to the council of the gods and Theomachy in Book 20.


Author(s):  
Monika Kamińska

The parish churches in Igołomia and Wawrzeńczyce were founded in the Middle Ages. Their current appearance is the result of centuries of change. Wawrzeńczyce was an ecclesial property – first of Wrocław Premonstratens, and then, until the end of the 18th century, of Kraków bishops. The Church of St. Mary Magdalene was funded by the Bishop Iwo Odrowąż. In 1393 it was visited by the royal couple Jadwiga of Poland and Władysław Jagiełło. In the 17th century the temple suffered from the Swedish Invasion, and then a fire. The church was also damaged during World War I in 1914. The current furnishing of the church was created to a large extent after World War II. Igołomia was once partly owned by the Benedictines of Tyniec, and partly belonged to the Collegiate Church of St. Florian in Kleparz in Kraków. The first mention of the parish church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary comes from the first quarter of the fourteenth century. In 1384, a brick church was erected in place of a wooden one. The history of the Igołomia church is known only from the second half of the 18th century, as it was renovated and enlarged in 1869. The destruction after World War I initiated interior renovation work, continuing until the 1920s.


Author(s):  
David Luscombe

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.


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