Envisioning an Order

The Lay Saint ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 242-282
Author(s):  
Mary Harvey Doyno
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Gender And Power ◽  
Religious Ideals ◽  
The Church

This chapter offers a new explanation for why and how the contemporary lay civic saint seemingly disappeared over the fourteenth century. Instead of seeing mendicant spirituality as inherently oriented toward “mystical and paramystical phenomena,” and thus as pushing lay sanctity in that direction, it argues that the stress placed on medieval gender and power norms by women's participation in the lay penitential movement as well as the cults they earned for their efforts ultimately led to the end of the contemporary lay civic saint. From the second half of the thirteenth century, hagiographers—who were increasingly mendicant friars—responded to the female lay penitents garnering saintly reputations by advocating for an ideal lay life in which visions trumped a commitment to civic issues and charitable works. This new conception of an ideal lay life was not simply an indication of the spiritual point of view of the mendicant hagiographers, but rather a means the church had adopted to solve the longstanding problem of the female lay penitent. At the heart of this chapter's argument then is the contention that gender played a crucial role in the development of new lay religious ideals in the late medieval Italian communes.

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.

scholarly journals Plague and the Fall of Baghdad (1258)

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-177
Author(s):  
Nahyan Fancy ◽  
Monica H. Green
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Epidemic Disease ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
Abbasid Caliphate ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
A Minor

AbstractThe recent suggestion that the late medieval Eurasian plague pandemic, the Black Death, had its origins in the thirteenth century rather than the fourteenth century has brought new scrutiny to texts reporting ‘epidemics’ in the earlier period. Evidence both from Song China and Iran suggests that plague was involved in major sieges laid by the Mongols between the 1210s and the 1250s, including the siege of Baghdad in 1258 which resulted in the fall of the Abbasid caliphate. In fact, re-examination of multiple historical accounts in the two centuries after the siege of Baghdad shows that the role of epidemic disease in the Mongol attacks was commonly known among chroniclers in Syria and Egypt, raising the question why these outbreaks have been overlooked in modern historiography of plague. The present study looks in detail at the evidence in Arabic sources for disease outbreaks after the siege of Baghdad in Iraq and its surrounding regions. We find subtle factors in the documentary record to explain why, even though plague received new scrutiny from physicians in the period, it remained a minor feature in stories about the Mongol invasion of western Asia. In contemporary understandings of the genesis of epidemics, the Mongols were not seen to have brought plague to Baghdad; they caused plague to arise by their rampant destruction. When an even bigger wave of plague struck the Islamic world in the fourteenth century, no association was made with the thirteenth-century episode. Rather, plague was now associated with the Mongol world as a whole.

scholarly journals Prilozi proučavanju crkve Svetog Mateja u Splitu

Ars Adriatica ◽  
2011 ◽  
pp. 67
Author(s):  
Ivan Basić
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Existing Structures ◽  
The Church ◽  
East West

The church of St Matthew, which stood next to the south entrance to Split cathedral until 1881, was constructed between the peripteros and temenos of Diocletian’s mausoleum, along its east-west axis. A large number of pre-existing structures in the church of St Matthew and their degree of preservation indicate that it was erected at the beginning of the early middle ages, when the original layout of diocletian’s building had been well preserved. The church was the original setting for the sarcophagus with the epitaph of Archbishop John from the second half of the eighth century, which can be linked to the restorer of the Salonitan archbishopric in Split, John of Ravenna, who is mentioned by Thomas, the Archdeacon of Split, in his thirteenth-century chronicle, Historia Salonitana. The analysis of the sources relevant for the burial place of Archbishop John of Ravenna (the fourteenth-century chronicle of A. Cutheis and his catalogue of the archbishops of Split) showed that the data from these records are also of early medieval origin. The chronological frame in which the formula carved on the lid of the Archbishop’s sarcophagus existed, its epigraphic features and comparisons with the deceased’s epitaph, link it with the time when the longer inscription and the decoration of the sarcophagus front were carved - the end of the eighth century, and point to Archbishop John (c. 787) as the likeliest owner of the sarcophagus.  The choice of place for the sarcophagus of prior Peter, immediately next to the entrance to the church of St Matthew, in the ninth century, as well as the decoration and its relationship with the epitaph inspired by that on the sarcophagus of Archbishop john, corroborate that the prior’s sarcophagus was later than that of the Archbishop and the church in which it stood. The description of the church’s interior by D. Farlati in the eighteenth century, together with other indications, confirms that the sarcophagus and the church were made at the same  time, and that the Archbishop’s tomb was originally envisaged within the architectural setting of this church where an arcosolium contributed to its monumentality. The iconographic variant of the crossed-lily decoration and its specific symbolism originated in early christian Ravenna, which corresponds not only to the origin of the  Archbishop buried in the chapel but to the dedication to St Matthew, also of ravennate provenance, which creatively matches the iconographic programme of the sarcophagus. Thus, the sarcophagus, the church of St Matthew and John of Ravenna are connected to John,  the Archbishop of Split in the late eighth century.

Republican and Monarchical Religion

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurizio Viroli
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Church Community ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Political Body ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Church

This chapter focuses on republican and monarchical religion in late medieval Europe. Republican religion spread in a late medieval Europe dominated by monarchies that, from the thirteenth century on, had endowed themselves with a sacred dimension similar to that of the church. Jurists and political philosophers transferred the concept of corpus mysticum—intended to designate the church community as a body that cannot be seen by the eyes but can only be grasped by the intellect—to the state. Applied to the state, the concept of a mystical body referred mainly, but not exclusively, to the monarchy, where the king is at the head of the mystical-political body, just as Christ or his vicar on earth is at the head of the mystical body of the church. Thus, the main difference between the royal and the republican religion is that the former celebrates an individual mystical body—the king; the latter celebrates a collective mystical body—the republic.

Central Europe's Gentle Voice of Reason: Bílejovský and the Ecclesiology of Utraquism

1997 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 29-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zdeněk V. David
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Underground Resistance ◽  
Social Upheaval ◽  
The Church

The Utraquist Church of Bohemia was unique among the late medieval defections in Western Christendom from the Church of Rome in that it involved the separation of an entire church, organized on a national territory, not merely an underground resistance of relatively isolated and scattered groups of sectarians, like the Waldensians or the Lollards. Moreover, the Bohemian Reformation was linked with a major social upheaval, the Hussite Revolution, lasting from 1419 to 1434, which historians have viewed as an early specimen, if not a prototype or the first link in the chain, of the revolutions of the early modern period in the Euroatlantic world: the Dutch, the English, the American, and the French revolutions. Building mainly on the Bohemian Reform movement that had gathered momentum since the mid-fourteenth century, the Utraquists' defiance of Rome, leading to the Hussite Revolution, was sparked by the burning of Jan Hus at the Council of Constance on July 6, 1415.

The Theory of Natural Consequence

Vivarium ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 340-366
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Martin
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Natural Consequence ◽  
History Of ◽  
Connexive Logic ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Special Case

Abstract The history of thinking about consequences in the Middle Ages divides into three periods. During the first of these, from the eleventh to the middle of the twelfth century, and the second, from then until the beginning of the fourteenth century, the notion of natural consequence played a crucial role in logic, metaphysics, and theology. The first part of this paper traces the development of the theory of natural consequence in Abaelard’s work as the conditional of a connexive logic with an equivalent connexive disjunction and the crisis precipitated by the discovery of inconsistency in this system. The second part considers the accounts of natural consequence given in the thirteenth century as a special case of the standard modal definition of consequence, one for which the principle ex impossibili quidlibet does not hold, in logics in which disjunction is understood extensionally.

Between Reform and Reformation: The English Church in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries

1990 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 647-678 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Heath
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Current Version ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
The Church

Forty years ago the story of the Church in late medieval England was a simple one and not very different from the version which had prevailed half a century before that. The interpretation presented by W. Capes in 1900 had been slightly modified but largely underlined by 1950, and the Church and its development which was commonly depicted in that year would not have been strikingly unfamiliar to him. The current version was that, after the reforming efforts of the thirteenth century, which failed to achieve their end, and the advent of the friars, who even by the middle of that century were departing from their earlier zeal and purity, the Church in the following hundred years was exploited by the pope when it was not saved or oppressed by the Crown. The resulting corruption of the clergy contributed to its negligence and provoked an eruption of heresy which in due course was savagely suppressed and virtually expunged; rid of this threat, the fifteenth-century clergy were so notorious for their laxity, greed and mediocrity that a few devout members of the laity, perhaps inspired by the mystical writings, took refuge in private devotions which anticipated the individualism of the Protestant. The Reformation was viewed as the inescapable result of these circumstances.

The Discovery of an Early Bearing-Dial

1953 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 294-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl V. Sølver
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The North ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
North Western

It has hitherto been generally presumed that the division of the horizon into thirty-two points was a development of the late medieval period. Such a division, it has been said, was impossible in the pre-compass era. ‘It is questionable whether even so many as sixteen directions could have been picked out and followed at sea so long as Sun and star, however intimately known, were the only guides’, one eminent authority has declared; ‘Even the sailors in the north-western waters had only four names until a comparatively late date.’ Chaucer's reference in his Treatise on the Astrolabe to the thirty-two ‘partiez’ of the ‘orisonte’ has for long been quoted as the earliest evidence on the subject. The Konungs Skuggsjà, a thirteenth-century Norwegian work, however, refers to the Sun revolving through eight œttir; and the fourteenthcentury Icelandic Rímbegla talks of sixteen points or directions. An important discovery by the distinguished Danish archaeologist, Dr. C. L. Vebæk, in the summer of 1951, brings a new light to the whole problem and makes the earlier held view scarcely tenable. Vebæk was then working on the site of the Benedictine nunnery (mentioned by Îvar Bárdarson in the mid-fourteenth century) which stands on the site of a still older Norse homestead on the Siglufjörd, in southern Greenland. Buried in a heap of rubbish under the floor in one of the living-rooms, together with a number of broken tools of wood and iron (some of them with the owner's name inscribed on them in runes) was a remarkable fragment of carved oak which evidently once formed part of a bearingdial. This was a damaged oaken disk which, according to the archaeologists, dates back to about the year 1200.

Belief and Patronage in the English Parish before 1300: Some Evidence from Roods

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 49-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Davidson Cragoe
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Architectural Patronage ◽  
Individual Giving ◽  
The Church

The late medieval English laity expressed their piety through ostentatious artistic and architectural patronage. The rood, a large-scale image of Christ on the cross, flanked by the Virgin and St John, and placed in or above the chancel arch, was a particular object of both liturgical and financial devotion in the later Middle Ages.1 One of the more interesting conclusions of recent scholarship has been the recognition that the late medieval desire to express one’s piety through donations to the church was not limited to the upper classes or to one gender. Both men and women of all social classes and ages participated to the best of their ability through collective as well as individual giving.2 Moreover, people made very deliberate choices about the types of images and architectural forms on which they spent their money.3 Scholars have argued that the roots of this very active lay patronage lie in the mid-thirteenth century when diocesan statutes first assigned responsibility for maintaining the nave and most of a church’s ornaments to its parishioners.4

scholarly journals The Lunette with St. Thomas Becket at the Sacro Speco in Subiaco: An Unexpected Presence?

Arts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Roberta Cerone
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Formal Point

The painting with St. Thomas Becket, St. Stephen and St. Nicholas of Bari that decorates one of the lunettes in the so-called lower church at the Sacro Speco in Subiaco is an enigma from an art-historical point of view, for two reasons. First, on an iconographical level, the lunette interrupts the flow of the story of Benedict’s life unfolding systematically on all the walls of the lower church. Second, from the formal point of view, the fresco clearly presents more archaic features than the surrounding Stories of St. Benedict, dating to the end of the thirteenth/beginning of the fourteenth century, and was therefore probably executed in a phase prior to the cycle of Benedict. In the paper, therefore, I will analyse the motivations that led to the preservation of this painting when the hall was renovated and later redecorated in the late thirteenth century, and discuss the hypotheses surrounding patronage. Both aspects will help to better contextualize the reasons for the presence of the image of St. Thomas Becket in a pre-eminent position in the sanctuary of Benedict in Subiaco, a papal bulwark on the borders of the Kingdom.

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