Matthew Parker and the Practice of Church History

2019 ◽  
pp. 116-153
Author(s):  
Madeline McMahon
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Church History ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Manuscripts ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church ◽  
Complete Process

The Elizabethan archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker is best known for his efforts to collect medieval manuscripts, which had changed hands or been repurposed after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and to construct from these sources a new history of the church in England. This essay looks at the complete process by which Parker and his circle collected, used, and printed books for their historical project. It argues that Parker’s work was not as pointedly confessional as it has typically been seen, in part because of the shifting sands of early modern religious discourse and in part because of how Parker engaged with the medieval sources he encountered. He learned from what he read—perhaps especially from late medieval historians. His practices in constructing church history reveal the extent to which he viewed himself in a continuous historiographical tradition, even as he sought to reform an ecclesiastical one.

Thomas Fuller

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. B. Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Church History ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
Biographical Dictionary ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

Long considered a distinctive English writer, Thomas Fuller (1608–1661) has not been recognized as the important historian he was. Fuller’s The Church-History of Britain (1655) was the first history of Christianity from its planting in ancient Britain to the mid-seventeenth century. Fuller’s History of the Worthies of England (1662) was, moreover, the first biographical dictionary in England. It seeks to represent noteworthy individuals in the context of their native counties. This book, Thomas Fuller: Discovering England’s Religious Past, highlights the fact that Fuller was a major contributor to the flowering of historical writing in early modern England. It provides a biography of Thomas Fuller, an account of the tumultuous times in which he lived, and a critical assessment of the origins, growth, and achievements of a new kind of history, a genre to which he made significant and lasting contributions. Memory is a central theme. Widely known for his own memory, Fuller sought to revive the memory of the English people concerning their religious and political past. By means of historical research involving records, books, personal interviews, and travels, he sought to discover his country’s religious past and to bring it to the attention of his fellow English men and women, who might thereby be enabled to rebuild their shattered Church and nation.

Reading the Church: William Durandus and a New Approach to the History of Ecclesiology

Ecclesiology ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-49
Author(s):  
Stephen Mark Holmes
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Church Building ◽  
History Of ◽  
Spiritual Exegesis ◽  
The Church

AbstractIn the study of ecclesiology it is often said that the first treatises on the Church were written during the controversies around the bull Unam sanctam (1302) of Pope Boniface VIII. These works and their successors provide a political and institutional ecclesiology determined by the author's attitude to the papal claims. Before the bull, however, a friend of Boniface, William Durandus of Mende, wrote a commentary on the liturgy that summarised a very different ecclesiology which has its roots in the New Testament and the Fathers. The first book of his Rationale divinorum officiorum draws on previous tradition and uses the methods of spiritual exegesis of the Bible to provide a balanced ecclesiology from a 'reading' of the church-building. The wide circulation of the Rationale in late medieval and early modern Western Europe ensured that this traditional ecclesiology was quietly handed on, but modern writers have ignored it. A study of Durandus's interpretation of a church enables us to retrieve this tradition and suggests a new narrative for the history of ecclesiology.

Naughty Printed Books

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Scott Kastan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Scholarly Discussion ◽  
The Church

TheIndex librorum prohibitorum, first issued in 1559, the Roman Catholic Church’s official effort to ban certain books, is often contrasted with John Milton’sAreopagitica, so often claimed the foundational text of a modern notion of freedom of expression. But the opposition is more a function of a modern desire than of historical fact. The two texts do not so much display this reassuring opposition as their unnerving similarity. This article examines and attempts to undo some of the oppositions that have structured most of the scholarly discussion on the subject of censorship: Catholic versus Protestant, state versus individual, repression versus freedom. All of these play their role in an undeniably appealing history of liberty and toleration, but it is not a history that has much purchase in early modern England, as may be shown by a consideration of the efforts of the Church and authorities in England to prevent the circulation of what they called “naughty printed books.”

At the Edge of Reformation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Linehan
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Black Death ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Portuguese Society ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

This book springs from its author’s continuing interest in the history of Spain and Portugal—on this occasion in the first half of the fourteenth century between the recovery of each kingdom from widespread anarchy and civil war and the onset of the Black Death. Focussing on ecclesiastical aspects of the period in that region (Galicia in particular) and secular attitudes to the privatization of the Church, it raises inter alios the question why developments there did not lead to a permanent sundering of the relationship with Rome (or Avignon) two centuries ahead of that outcome elsewhere in the West. In addressing such issues, as well as of neglected material in Spanish and Portuguese archives, use is made of the also unpublished so-called ‘secret’ registers of the popes of the period. The issues it raises concern not only Spanish and Portuguese society in general but also the developing relationship further afield of the components of the eternal quadrilateral (pope, king, episcopate, and secular nobility) in late medieval Europe, as well as of the activity in that period of those caterpillars of the commonwealth, the secular-minded sapientes. In this context, attention is given to the hitherto neglected attempt of Afonso IV of Portugal to appropriate the privileges of the primatial church of his kingdom and to advance the glorification of his Castilian son-in-law, Alfonso XI, as God’s vicegerent in his.

Jeremiah in Art

2021 ◽  
pp. 578-609
Author(s):  
Mary Chilton Callaway
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Dynamic Process ◽  
Medieval Manuscripts ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
Artistic Representations ◽  
The Way

The story of Jeremiah in art reveals a dynamic process of traditional tropes that signaled the ancient prophet blended with contemporary features mirroring the viewer. This interplay made artistic representations of Jeremiah at once familiar, yet also at times unsettling in the way they contemporized the prophetic message. The chapter explores the developing image of Jeremiah through the centuries in five media: painted images on ancient frescoes, stone statues in medieval cathedrals and monasteries, illuminations in medieval manuscripts, woodcuts in early modern printed books, and various forms in modernity. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim images of the prophet together display a process in which historically contingent tropes gradually became timeless markers of the prophet. At the same time, these images show the power of Jeremiah to speak prophetically in new circumstances.

scholarly journals Historiese teologie in ʼn veranderende konteks

2016 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wim A. Dreyer
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Church History ◽  
Church Polity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Missions History ◽  
History Of Theology ◽  
Historical Theology ◽  
History Of Biblical Interpretation ◽  
The Church ◽  
Precarious Situation

In this contribution, the author reflects on historical theology as theological discipline. After a short introduction to the precarious situation of church history as a theological discipline in South Africa and the question of faith and history, the contribution presents an analysis of Gerhard Ebeling’s 1947 publication on church history in which he proposed that church history should be understood as a history of Biblical interpretation. Based on some of the principles Ebeling delineated, the author proposes that historical theology could be applied to five areas of research: prolegomena, history of the church, history of missions, history of theology and church polity. The point is made that historical theology, when properly structured and presented, could play a major role in enriching the theological and ecclesial conversation and in assisting the church in the process of reformation and transformation.Keywords: Gerhard Ebeling; Hermeneutics; Church History

scholarly journals Jesuit Sanctity: Hypothesizing the Continuity of a Hagiographic Narrative of the Modern Age

2022 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Franco Motta ◽  
Eleonora Rai
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Society Of Jesus ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
History Of

Abstract The introduction to this special issue provides some considerations on early modern sanctity as a historical object. It firstly presents the major shifts in the developing idea of sanctity between the late medieval period and the nineteenth century, passing through the early modern construction of sanctity and its cultural, social, and political implications. Secondly, it provides an overview of the main sources that allow historians to retrace early modern sanctity, especially canonization records and hagiographies. Thirdly, it offers an overview of the ingenious role of the Society of Jesus in the construction of early modern sanctity, by highlighting its ability to employ, create, and play with hagiographical models. The main Jesuit models of sanctity are then presented (i.e., the theologian, the missionary, the martyr, the living saint), and an important reflection is reserved for the specific martyrial character of Jesuit sanctity. The introduction assesses the continuity of the Jesuit hagiographical discourse throughout the long history of the order, from the origins to the suppression and restoration.

Past Belief

2019 ◽  
pp. 13-40
Author(s):  
Anthony Grafton
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Saint Augustine ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Royal Road ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Church

This chapter examines the centrality of early modern ecclesiastical history, written by Catholics as well as Protestants, in the refinement of research techniques and practices anticipatory of modern scholarship. To Christians of all varieties, getting the Church's early history right mattered. Eusebius's fourth-century history of the Church opened a royal road into the subject, but he made mistakes, and it was important to be able to ferret them out. Saint Augustine was recognized as a sure-footed guide to the truth about the Church's original and bedrock beliefs, but some of the Saint's writings were spurious, and it was important to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. To distinguish true belief from false, teams of religious scholars gathered documents; the documents in turn were subjected to skeptical scrutiny and philological critique; and sources were compared and cited. The practices of humanistic scholarship, it turns out, came from within the Catholic Church itself as it examined its own past.

New Romanian Publications on the Church History of Central Europe and Byzantium

2012 ◽  
pp. 364-366
Author(s):  
Christian Gastgeber ◽  
Ioan-Aurel Pop ◽  
Oliver Jens Schmitt ◽  
Alexandru Simon ◽  
Ana Dumitran ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Church History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church
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