Augustinianism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark D. Jordan
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Medieval Philosophy ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Third ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Face ◽  
Principal Author

The influence of Augustine on Western philosophy is exceeded in duration, extent and variety only by that of Plato and Aristotle. Augustine was an authority not just for the early Middle Ages, when he was often the lone authority, but well into modern times. He was in many ways the principal author in contention during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, and in France alone he was variously received by authors as diverse as Montaigne, Descartes, Malebranche, Arnauld and Pascal. The breadth of Augustine’s influence makes it difficult to give precise sense to the term ‘Augustinianism’, even when considering only a single period. Historians of medieval philosophy use the term ‘Augustinianism’ to describe three rather different relations to the thought of Augustine. The first relation is a comprehensive dependence on Augustine both for philosophical principles or arguments, and for instruction in the topics and procedures of ancient philosophy. Augustine serves as the trustworthy guide to philosophy as a whole. The second kind of relation is a defence of specific Augustinian teachings in the face of rival teachings, most especially those of Aristotle. These Augustinian teachings include the function of divine ideas in knowledge, the unity of the human soul’s essential powers, and the unfolding of potential intelligibilities in material substances. The third relation is the reappropriation of Augustinian principles, especially those of his later writings, to address quandaries newly formulated with the tools of nominalist semantics and the mathematics of continuities. Among these quandaries are the contingency of future human actions and the certainty of human cognition. These three relations to Augustine can be found in texts throughout the medieval period. They are not neatly correlated with particular centuries, but one or another does tend to be predominant at different times. Thus the first relation, of comprehensive dependence, is seen in the great majority of Latin writers on philosophic topics through the twelfth century. The second relation, of topical defence, appears prominently during the thirteenth-century contest between so-called ‘Augustianians’ and ‘Aristotelians’. The third relation, of reappropriation in reaction to newly formulated quandaries, is found particularly in writings of the fourteenth century and beyond.

Notes On Persons's “Memorial for the Reformation Of England” (1596)

1959 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.H Clancy
Keyword(s):  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Face ◽  
Imperfect Knowledge ◽  
The Church ◽  
Insight Into

The late Harold Laski, in a letter to O. W. Holmes, characterized Persons’s Jesuit’s Memorial as “the most cold-blooded plot for exterminating opponents known outside St. Bartholomew.” On the face of it, this tends to confirm the suspicion which was expressed by Holmes in this very correspondence, and which reviewers have voiced since the letters were published, that Laski often wrote about books of which he had a very imperfect knowledge. And yet there is a sense in which the Jesuit’s Memorial is cold blooded, iust as the whole Counter-Reformation was in a certain sense cold-blooded. Whenever the Church is faced with a new challenge she must tighten up her lines of discipline and ruthlessly prune certain: venerable practices and customs or at least establish an order of priority among them. Many view with distaste the mentality engendered by the Council of Trent. It would be well, however, to try and see what the Counter-Reformation was trying to do before we condemn it. And for a real insight into the Counter Reformation spirit few books can equal the Jesuit’s Memorial.

Resistance to Tithes in the Middle Ages

1962 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giles Constable
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Income Tax ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Middle Ages

The system of compulsory tithes in the Middle Ages has long been used by protestant and liberal historians as a stick with which to beat the medieval Church. ‘This most harassing and oppressive form of taxation’, wrote H. C. Lea in his well-known History of the Inquisition, ‘had long been the cause of incurable trouble, aggravated by the rapacity with which it was enforced, even to the pitiful collections of the gleaner’. Von Inama-Sternegg remarked on the growing hatred of tithes in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, especially among the small free landholders, ‘upon whom the burden of tithes must have fallen most heavily’. Gioacchino Volpe said that tithes were ‘the more hated because they oppressed the rich less than the poor, the dependents on seigneurial estates less than the small free proprietors to whose ruin they contributed…. At that time tithes were both an ecclesiastical and secular oppression, a double offence against religious sentiment and popular misery’. G. G. Coulton, writing before the introduction in England of an income tax at a rate of over ten per cent., proclaimed that before the Reformation tithes ‘constituted a land tax, income tax and death duty far more onerous than any known to modern times, and proportionately unpopular’.

scholarly journals HISTORY AS A WAY TO THE IDEAL

2018 ◽  
pp. 18-23
Author(s):  
E. F. Kazakov ◽  
V. I. Krasikov
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Identity Crisis ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Ideal

The article examines the role of the social ideal in history according to the evolution of the Perfect Person image. The Ideal is understood as the image of the appropriate that allows one to assess the things in existence and direction of its development. The pursuit of the Ideal, the essential intention of the person required for their incarnation is one of the driving forces of history. Every historical period constructs its own image of a perfect person and strives to get closer to this image. Ideas about the Perfect Man have been shaped throughout the whole human history, which reflects the permanent dissatisfaction that is inherent to human – dissatisfaction with himself and the world around, the lack of implementation of the essence in their existence, intention to gain their own deepest identity. The first Perfect Man was a Beast. In the prehistoric period it was the Outer Beast that had to be conquered, whereas in antiquity it was the Inner Beast. That was when the first identity crisis arose as a result of inadequate self-esteem ("man as the measure of all things"). The Perfect Man of the Middle Ages was God. The Beast now belonged to the inaccessible past, while God was in the unattainable eternal. This was the second identity crisis. In modern times the Perfect Man becomes a Man. The concept of perfection (as a real possibility) within a man becomes domineering. However, depriving a Man of metaphysics leads to the third identity crisis. In modern times the Perfect Man, increasingly, appears to be a Machine as a man devoid of human weaknesses with heightened human qualities. The analogy between human and machine leads to the fourth identity crisis. The New Perfect Man will be a man as a unique result of the development of all human culture, the synthesis of the unique and the universal.

Julius Caesar and the Tyrannicide Debate

1985 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert S. Miola
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Julius Caesar ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Rich ◽  
George Buchanan ◽  
The Right ◽  
Civil Order

The rich and important debate over tyrannicide, in which Julius Caesar figures centrally, engaged the best political minds of antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance and raged with particular intensity during Shakespeare's time. The tremendous upheaval of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation ignited fiery polemics on the rights of subjects and on the nature and foundations of civil order. At various times Protestants and Catholics arose to challenge the authority of the earthly crown and to claim the right of deposition and tyrannicide. Monarchomachs like Christopher Goodman, John Ponet, George Buchanan, François Hoffman, Théodore de Bèze, the author of Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos, the Ligue, and the Jesuits Robert Persons, Francisco Suarez, and Juan de Mariana drew upon the classics (especially Aristotle), the Bible, and other works (especially those of Aquinas, Salutati, and Bartolus) to reexamine fundamental assumptions about political order.

Recepcja idei „nowego średniowiecza” w polskiej myśli nacjonalistycznej

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (247) ◽  
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Radomski
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Third Republic ◽  
Social Solidarity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Face ◽  
Civic Religion

The research aim of this article is to analyze the ideo-political reflections of the publicists andactivists connected with the young nationalists movement in the 1930s on the background of the political philosophy included in the book by a Russian thinker Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948) New Middle Ages. The fate of a man in a contemporary world, translated by MarianReutt – idealistically and organizationally connected with the nationalist formation of the1930s the research ambition of the author is to show the idea of “new Middle Ages”, accentingthe meaning of collective ethics (Decalogue ethics) as a factor of social solidarity, which isnow called “civic religion”, which means values and rules fundamental for the conceptof a national country – in a shape dictated by the publicist of the “Myśl Narodowa” in theyears of the Third Republic. The author refers to the contemporary phenomenon of ideasecularization and the atrophy of the “civic religion”, which – as Berdyaev convinces – is anopportunity to manipulate the consciousness of an entity and allows for releasing in it a stateof uncritical adaptation of the politically dangerous offers (various forms of totalitarianism).Furthermore, in the face of the progressive dechristianisation and ateisation of the society,the postulates by Berdyaev and his young nationalist successors lose the value of usefulnessand are included into the catalog of the idealist system concepts, becoming an utopian versionof the democratic system.Key words: nationalism, political theology, New Middle Ages idea

Medieval philosophy, Russian

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Farrimond
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval Philosophy ◽  
Literal Sense ◽  
The Third ◽  
Love Of Learning ◽  
The Middle Ages

The term ‘philosophy’ is itself highly problematic in the context of medieval Russia. Even in its most literal sense of love of learning, it was regarded with ambivalence, its devotees risking persecution. At the same time, Russia at any given point in the Middle Ages possessed what can best be described as a self-consciousness, a sense of its own destiny. Arising from the unusual circumstances of its Conversion in 988, this consciousness continues to draw heavily on Byzantium, with Russia at first in a dependent role but later, following Constantinople’s fall, assuming that of the proud successor. The centrality of the Christian element to medieval Russian thought is underlined by the continuing significance both of the monastic movement and of its ancient cradle, Kiev, even as Moscow was being extolled as the Third Rome.

Theologies of Salvation in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
The Third ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Book Covers ◽  
To Come

This overview chapter for the third part of the book covers the theologies of salvation in the Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation. It covers both the theology of the Reformers, in which God’s declaration of righteousness is based solely upon the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and the ensuing Catholic “Counter-Reformation,” in which salvation had happened, is happening, and is yet to come.

Literature on Church History, 1914–1920. IV. The Church in Modern Times (Part One: The Period of the Enlightenment)

1924 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-295
Author(s):  
Gustav Krüger
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Church History ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

It is a characteristic of German scholarship to see problems and to work with them in the solution of intellectual and spiritual questions. Certainly it is a praiseworthy trait in the field of history that it follows the inner relation of events and cannot rest until all the subtlest threads are discovered. Such a problem is presented in the rise of the modern world of thought and the inquiry as to the factors which have contributed to it. In von Below's book on the causes of the Reformation, referred to at the beginning of my third article (HThR, Jan. 1924, pp. 5f.), the question is discussed, among others, whether the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times is really to be found in Luther and his work.

Pyrrhonism

Philosophy ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego E. Machuca
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
Ancient Philosophy ◽  
Strong Indication ◽  
Medieval Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Movement ◽  
Pyrrhonian Skepticism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Periods ◽  
Tremendous Impact

Pyrrhonism can safely be said to be the most prominent and influential form of skepticism in the history of Western philosophy. It was an important philosophical movement in the Hellenistic and Imperial ages, made a tremendous impact on modern philosophy, and some of its arguments continue to be a central topic of discussion in the contemporary philosophical scene. This can be taken to be a strong indication of the intriguing and challenging character of the Pyrrhonian outlook. After presenting the collections entirely or primarily devoted to ancient Pyrrhonism and its presence in, or connection with, both modern and contemporary philosophy, this article deals consecutively with Pyrrhonian skepticism in the three historical periods. The reason for not including a part on Pyrrhonism in medieval philosophy is simply that knowledge of this type of skepticism was so limited in the Middle Ages that it exerted almost no influence whatsoever on medieval thinkers. Given that Pyrrhonian skepticism is essentially an ancient philosophy, the great majority of the citations concern ancient Pyrrhonism. This article focuses primarily on scholarship in English but also included are works in French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Let us finally note that when “Skepticism” and “Skeptical” are capitalized, they are taken as synonyms for “Pyrrhonism” and “Pyrrhonian.”

Contra medicos: Physicians Facing the Inquisition in Sixteenth-Century Venice

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 72-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandra Celati
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medical Profession ◽  
The Body ◽  
Disciplinary Action ◽  
Medical Activity ◽  
Problematic Relationship ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
And Control

Abstract Since the Middle Ages, ecclesiastical authorities considered medical activity worthy of their attention and control. During the Counter-Reformation, they toughened their disciplinary action, aware of the peculiarity of an ars that mixed together the cure of the body with the cure of the soul. Moreover, the authorities became increasingly suspicious of practitioners who were highly involved in the Reformation movement, and who distanced themselves from Catholicism in the epistemological premises of their work. By examining original sources from the Venetian Inquisition archive, this paper discusses the factors that put the Roman Church and the medical profession in op­­position to each other in the sixteenth century, and describes the professional solidarity put forward by physicians. It also examines the problematic relationship between doctors and the Inquisition, dealing with the former as effective agents of heretical propaganda.

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