Editors’ Introduction

Abstract

We are delighted to present this special issue of the Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures.Instead of the usual set of scholarly articles, this issue brings together new editions and translations of primary texts with new research guides, ranging from well- to little-known figures from the medieval religious world. First, Ana Rita Parreiras Reis offers an edition of the heretofore unedited Treatise Against Fleshly Affections, an anonymous fifteenth-century Middle English text found in London, British Library, MS Royal 17 C xviii, which may have originated at Syon Abbey. Second, Andrew Fogleman translates Jean Gerson’s Sermon on Angels, a text that reveals some of the origins of Gerson’s later (and better-known) thought on the discernment of spirits. Next, Clarck Drieshen’s article explores manuscript evidence that suggests that a visionary text from Hampole Priory may in fact be an English adaptation of Continental sources, rather than an original production of the Priory, and suggests new areas of comparative material research in medieval women’s visionary texts. Finally, Andrew Halpin and Claudio Peri provide an extensive bibliographic survey on Jacopone da Todi, highlighting the importance of international scholarship to a fuller understanding of his poetry.While each piece collected here is concerned with distinct texts and is not inherently related to the others, all suggest exciting new opportunities for research into later medieval Christianity, in particular on areas that have long been the subject of study: Syon Abbey, discretio spirituum, the presumably English origins of the Hampole revelation, and Jacopone da Todi’s mystical verses. Reis speculates that the Treatise may have been affiliated with Syon Abbey, which would offer new insights into that community; Fogleman’s translation illuminates Gerson’s well-known thoughts on the validity of visionary experience; Drieshen challenges received assumptions regarding the source of a visionary text; and Halpin and Peri argue for the inclusion of both European and Anglophone scholarship in the study of a well-known Italian mystic. Alongside these new editions, translations, and approaches, we are pleased to present our inaugural special review essay: in “Denying Sameness, Making Race: Medieval Anti-Judaism,” Samantha Katz Seal surveys several new books focused on different aspects of medieval Judaism, illuminating emerging work in an important area of medieval religious culture. Additional book reviews survey new theoretical approaches, new interdisciplinary readings of visual culture, and new work on religious literatures and cultures from Ireland to Iceland. With this special issue dedicated to new bibliographic, editorial, methodological, and translation work, we aim to expand the JMRC’s offerings to medieval studies, making room for considerations of method alongside new scholarship, and inspire new approaches to all areas of medieval religious cultures.