Marquard von Lindau and the Challenges of Religious Life in Late Medieval Germany: The Passion, the Eucharist, the Virgin Mary

Abstract

Reviewed by: Marquard von Lindau and the Challenges of Religious Life in Late Medieval Germany: The Passion, the Eucharist, the Virgin Mary Salvatore Calomino Marquard von Lindau and the Challenges of Religious Life in Late Medieval Germany: The Passion, the Eucharist, the Virgin Mary. By Stephen Mossman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. 318 pages. $120.00. Described as the “most productive German Franciscan writer of the Middle Ages,” Marquard von Lindau is treated here both for significance during his lifetime in the fourteenth century and for his influence on “intellectual history of the later Middle Ages” (1–2). Stephen Mossman devotes an introductory segment of his book to historical information on Marquard’s life and his potential responses to the Avignon papacy. Mossman considers further the variety of Marquard’s works, in German and in Latin. He responds to Nigel Palmer’s comprehensive list of these works by attempting a categorization of Marquard’s œuvre by type. Five major categories proposed include 1) Latin treatises dealing with theological issues, 2) lengthy, allegorical treatises, in both German and Latin, dealing with an approach to or union with God, 3) works in the vernacular on pragmatic issues of Christian life, 4) Marquard’s Latin treatise on philosophy and theology composed as a commentary on John 1: 1–14, and 5) a series of sermons, all written in German, dealing with “contemplative life and mystical union” (24). The diversity and the ambiguity of the intended audience for many of these works lead to a subsequent discussion on Berndt Hamm’s term “Frömmigkeitstheologie” as this concept can be applied to much of Marquard’s output. Since the term “popular piety” has proved to be both unwelcome and inaccurate when used in reference to the work of Marquard and his contemporaries, Hamm’s concept is deemed by Mossman a [End Page 268] more fitting assessment for a canon defined as “a literary and theological genre of its own, occupying a position between Latin Scholasticism and vernacular catechesis at a lower level” (29). As this body of texts is more closely evaluated, the development of German and its increasing importance as an “intellectual language” becomes a topic in reference to theological literature produced in the late fourteenth century. Marquard’s efforts from around 1370 and after are presented here as an innovative reaction to “existing intellectual traditions on particular issues” (36). Such topics, including the depiction of Mary and interpretive understandings of Christ’s suffering in the Passion, are examined in individual chapters in the main sections of this investigation. Mossman’s extensive discussion on the Passion considers first the topics of narrative and contemplative texts in circulation prior to Marquard’s versions. In the following section especially the vernacular works by Marquard are examined yet several of his Latin treatises, with a focus on De reparatione hominis and De perfectione humanitatis Christi, are shown to contain “theological background” vital to the German texts (43). Mossman is able to demonstrate that Marquard’s Passion texts have as their focus primarily the imitation of Christ rather than further narrative additions to the sequential presentations given by his contemporaries. As an illustration of such theses on Marquard the German treatise De anima Christi is examined in considerable detail. Not only the religious tenets deriving from Latin models but also the modified application of these in the German treatise form the basis of Mossman’s presentation. Since De anima Christi is divided into three parts detailing the poverty, humility, and suffering of Christ, the concept of imitation from the initial two segments translates logically as a theme into the final part. Mossman sets up a carefully structured presentation on this third part in which he is able to conclude that the “interior, mental sufferings of Christ” predominate over any of the physical details traditionally associated with the Passion (50). Indeed writers contemporary to Marquard tended to expand on the exterior descriptions of flagellation and defilement, whereas Marquard maintains a consistent adherence to Scriptural authority. In his discussion of related German and Latin treatises on the Passion, Mossman formulates guidelines for analyzing Marquard’s attitudes toward text as well as his reaction to non-Scriptural accretions. Both his vernacular...