Bernard of Clairvaux

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Patrick McGuire
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Spirit ◽  
The People ◽  
Historical Figure ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
Saint Bernard Of Clairvaux ◽  
Saint Bernard ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

This intimate portrait of one of the Middle Ages' most consequential men, delves into the life of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux to offer a refreshing interpretation that finds within this grand historical figure a deeply spiritual human being who longed for the reflective quietude of the monastery even as he helped shape the destiny of a church and a continent. Heresy and crusade, politics and papacies, theology and disputation shaped this astonishing man's life, and this book presents it all. Following Bernard from his birth in 1090 to his death in 1153 at the abbey he had founded four decades earlier, the book reveals a life teeming with momentous events and spiritual contemplation, from Bernard's central roles in the first great medieval reformation of the Church and the Second Crusade, which he came to regret, to the crafting of his books, sermons, and letters. We see what brought Bernard to monastic life and how he founded Clairvaux Abbey, established a network of Cistercian monasteries across Europe, and helped his brethren monks and abbots in heresy trials, affairs of state, and the papal schism of the 1130s. By re-evaluating Bernard's life and legacy through his own words and those of the people closest to him, the book reveals how this often-challenging saint saw himself and conveyed his convictions to others. Above all, the biography depicts Saint Bernard of Clairvaux as a man guided by Christian revelation and open to the achievements of the human spirit.

scholarly journals The Laws of the Temple and the Proper Sleep in Biblical and Rabbinic traditions

2018 ◽  
pp. 12-32
Author(s):  
Svetlana Babkina
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
The Third ◽  
The People ◽  
Bed Form ◽  
The Temple ◽  
The Middle Ages

This article deals with the idea that the bed should be placed north to south and not from west to east formulated in B. Berakhot 5b. As the later tradition says, this rule stays actual during the middle ages and till these days. According to the commentators this rule is based on the idea, that the Shekhinah lays from west to east, so this direction became sacred. There are three reasons to avoid this position during the sleep. All of them are connected to the ritual impurity. The first is nocturnal emission, which can happen to a man or a woman and which make that person impure. The second reason is the connection of sleep to death, which is the «father of fathers of impurities». The third is the vulnerability of the human being from the side of the different kind of night demonic creatures, who can kill the people (and make them ritually impure). All the ideas have deep biblical roots, but were combined only in rabbinical period when the prescription to put the bed form north to south first appeared. The problem is, that the practice could be very much older than the rabbinic tradition. This the rule formulated in Talmud can serve as a good example of adaptation of popular beliefs toward the official religion. From the other side this example shows that inside the monotheistic tradition there always was a place for ideas rooted in archaic societies: here we can see the clearly formulated idea, that by the manipulation sleeping space one can influence prosperity.

Festbankett oder Henkersmahl? Die zwei Gesichter von Jes 25:6-8

2014 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-464
Author(s):  
Michael P. Maier
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Universal Salvation ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
The People ◽  
Mount Zion ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

Biblical scholarship generally considers Is. 25:6-8 one of the most universal salvation oracles. Nevertheless, not only the old translations, but also Jewish exegetes of the Middle Ages understood it as an announcement of doom. A fresh look at the intertextuality of some of the key words, gives new credibility to this interpretation. In fact, a banquet may be occasion of judgment, oil can hint to extravagant ointment, new wine may intoxicate, the covering which is pulled away is sometimes a metaphor for military protection. After the exegesis, the hermeneutical problem of diverging interpretations is discussed. The two faces of the oracle are seen as the result of the different readings of Israel and the Church. For obvious reasons, Jewish readers identified with the people living on mount Zion, Christian readers with the nations climbing up to it. In order to bridge the abyss, it is necessary to recognize these contrasting receptions and to acknowledge the distinct, but intimately connected roles of Israel and the Gentiles.

Stages in Diplomatic Production

2020 ◽  
pp. 610-618
Author(s):  
Olivier Guyotjeannin
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter examines administrative documents of the Middle Ages and the major scholarly studies of them. It surveys the number of preserved documents and the problems surrounding the lack of documents in different periods and places. The author discusses the role and influence of the Church in the increased production and preservation of documents beginning in the eleventh century, leading to an enormous increase in the production of documents during the last three centuries of the Middle Ages.

Papal Legates against the Albigensians: The Debts of the Church of Valence (1215–1250)

Traditio ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 259-276
Author(s):  
D. Dudley Stutz
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Detailed Treatment ◽  
Northern Portion ◽  
Rhone Valley ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

In 1232 Pope Gregory IX (r. 1227–41) imposed a tenth of episcopal revenues on prelates of Occitania to subsidize the church of Valence, which owed 10,000 poundstournoisto various bankers of Vienne, Rome, Lyons, and Siena. In 1865 B. Hauréau first noted the event when he edited one of the main documents in theGallia christianavolume concerning the ecclesiastical province of Vienne. With the publication of Gregory IX's register from 1890–1908 most of the facts of the tax were more widely available. In 1910 Ulysse Chevalier briefly mentioned the tax in his monograph on the long tenure of John of Bernin, archbishop of Vienne (r. 1218–66). In 1913, Heinrich Zimmermann cited Hauréau's text in a note in his detailed treatment of early thirteenth-century papal legations. Recently Alain Marchandisse reviewed eight of the eleven papal letters pertaining to the tax in his study of William of Savoy (d. 1239) as bishop-elect of Liège. These scholars provided no reason for the debt or why the papacy would take such measures to ensure payment. Perhaps they did not study this tax further because a church indebted to moneylenders is not in itself surprising. It appears that the church of Valence acquired the debt, very large compared to the church's income, when bishop-elect William of Savoy (r. 1225–39) waged war against Adhémar II of Poitiers-Valentinois, count of the Valentinois (r. 1189–1239). Struggles between bishops and the local nobility occurred on a regular basis throughout the Middle Ages, so what in this unimportant Rhone-valley diocese interested the pope enough to impose taxes on prelates of Occitania over twenty years to ensure payment of this debt? Adhémar II faithfully supported Raymond VI (r. 1194–1222) and Raymond VII (r. 1222–49) of Saint-Gilles, counts of Toulouse, throughout their struggle with the papacy during and following the Albigensian crusades. Adhémar II was also their vassal for the Diois, which borders the Valentinois on the southeast and comprised the northern portion of the marquisate of Provence. These lands had been reserved for the church in the Treaty of Meaux-Paris (1229), which ended the Albigensian crusades. Thus William of Savoy as bishop-elect of Valence defended the papacy's claims on the marquisate of Provence, which the papacy deemed part of the larger struggle between the Roman church and the counts of Toulouse. The facts on the nature of the debts and the steps the papacy took to aid the diocese show that the local struggle between the bishop of Valence and the count of the Valentinois embodied a part of the larger struggle between the papacy and the counts of Toulouse over the marquisate of Provence, which began as early as 1215.

The Maaseik embroideries

1984 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 65-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mildred Budny ◽  
Dominic Tweddle
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Form Part ◽  
The Church ◽  
Made In ◽  
The Middle Ages

Among the relics in the treasury of the church of St Catherine at Maaseik in Limburg, Belgium, there are some luxurious embroideries which form part of the so-called casula (probably ‘chasuble’) of Sts Harlindis and Relindis (pls. I–VI). It was preserved throughout the Middle Ages at the abbey church of Aldeneik (which these sister-saints founded in the early eighth century) and was moved to nearby Maaseik in 1571. Although traditionally regarded as the handiwork of Harlindis and Relindis themselves, the embroideries cannot date from as early as their time, and they must have been made in Anglo-Saxon England. Indeed, they represent the earliest surviving examples of the highly prized English art of embroidery which became famous later in the Middle Ages as opus anglicanum.

scholarly journals NATIONALHISTORIE EFTER MODERNISMEN - FOLKEBEGREBET I LYSET AF EUROPAS STORE FORTÆLLINGER

1970 ◽  
Vol 42 (117) ◽  
pp. 159-174
Author(s):  
Michael Böss
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Main Role ◽  
National History ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Middle Ages

WRITING NATIONAL HISTORY AFTER MODERNISM: THE HISTORY OF PEOPLEHOOD IN LIGHT OF EUROPEAN GRAND NARRATIVES | The purpose of the article is to refute the recent claim that Danish history cannot be written on the assumption of the existence of a Danish people prior to 19th-century nationalism. The article argues that, over the past twenty years, scholars in pre-modern European history have highlighted the limitations of the modernist paradigm in the study of nationalism and the history of nations. For example, modernists have difficulties explaining why a Medieval chronicle such as Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum was translated in the mid-1600s, and why it could be used for new purposes in the 1800s, if there had not been a continuity in notions of peoplehood between the Middle Ages and the Modern Age. Of course, the claim of continuity should not be seen as an argument for an identity between the “Danes” of Saxo’s time and the Danes of the 19th-century Danish nation-state. Rather, the modern Danishness should be understood as the product of a historical process, in which a number of European cultural narratives and state building played a significant role. The four most important narratives of the Middle Ages were derived from the Bible, which was a rich treasure of images and stories of ‘people’, ‘tribe’, ‘God’, King, ‘justice’ and ‘kingdom’ (state). While keeping the basic structures, the meanings of these narratives were re-interpreted and placed in new hierarchical positions in the course of time under the impact of the Reformation, 16th-century English Puritanism, Enlightenment patriotism, the French Revolution and 19th-century romantic nationalism. The article concludes that it is still possible to write national histories featuring ‘the people’ as one of the actors. But the historian should keep in mind that ‘the people’ did not always play the main role, nor did they play the same role as in previous periods. And even though there is a need to form syntheses when writing national history, national identities have always developed within a context of competing and hierarchical narratives. In Denmark, the ‘patriotist narrative’ seems to be in ascendancy in the social and cultural elites, but has only partly replaced the ‘ethno-national’ narrative which is widespread in other parts of the population. The ‘compact narrative’ has so far survived due the continued love of the people for their monarch. It may even prove to provide social glue for a sense of peoplehood uniting ‘old’ and ‘new’ Danes.

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