Clerical Culture Research Articles

Double agents: women and clerical culture in Anglo-Saxon England

Obviously a part of the social fabric of Anglo-Saxon England, women are nevertheless accorded an obscure and slender role in the textual archive of masculine clerical culture. What can this record of patriarchy, Clare Lees and Gillian Overing ask, contribute to the history of women? Double Agents explores the meaning and implications of women's absence and presence in the partial history of Anglo-Saxon culture.Rather than recovering the details of exceptional women's lives, Double Agents concerns itself with the formation of the cultural record itself, and with women's relation to its processes of production and reception. By revisiting many familiar issues within the scholarly tradition -- orality and literacy, documentation and authenticity, sources and analogues -- and by looking at some of the core authors of the period -- Bede, Aldhelm, and AElfric, who continue the intellectual traditions of the early Church fathers -- Lees and Overing address woman's entry into the patristic symbolic, the order which authorizes the record itself.

The bishop's palace: architecture and authority in medieval Italy

This lavishly illustrated book looks at the art and architecture of episcopal palaces as expressions of power and ideology. Tracing the history of the bishop's residence in the urban centers of northern Italy over the Middle Ages, Maureen C. Miller asks why this once rudimentary and highly fortified structure called a domus became a complex and elegant palace (palatium) by the late twelfth century. Miller argues that the change reflects both the emergence of a distinct clerical culture and the attempts of bishops to maintain authority in public life. She relates both to the Gregorian reform movement, which set new standards for clerical deportment and at the same time undercut episcopal claims to secular power. As bishops lost temporal authority in their cities to emerging communal governments, they compensated architecturally and competed with the communes for visual and spatial dominance in the urban center. This rivalry left indelible marks on the layout and character of Italian cities. Moreover, Miller contends, this struggle for power had highly significant, but mixed, results for western Christianity. On the one hand, as bishops lost direct governing authority in their cities, they devised ways to retain status, influence, and power through cultural practices. This response to loss was highly creative. On the other hand, their loss of secular control led bishops to emphasize their spiritual powers and to use them to obtain temporal ends. The coercive use of spiritual authority contributed to the emergence of a persecuting society in the central Middle Ages.

The Engaged Spectator: Langland and Chaucer on Civic Spectacle and the Theatrum

The Engaged Spectator: Langland and Chaucer on Civic Spectacle and the Theatrum Lawrence M. Clopper Indiana University sPECTACULA ARE PROBLEMATICAL in a numb" of ways foe medi­ eval people, for they are the sites ofsocial, political, and religious strain. Spectacles assert the power and dominance of their sponsors and partic­ ipants; they evoke social relations and create hierarchies. They are lay rather than clerical; indeed, clerics used the Latin term spectacula to refer to the obscene entertainments and the theatrum of the ancient world. Within clerical culture, spectacula were considered to be worldly and thus forbidden to clerics, for spectacula were thought to be conducive to pride, lechery, gluttony, and sloth; they were wasteful and superfluous. The way to control spectacula was to ritualize them-as in Corpus Christi processions. But civic and royal spectacles contended with cleri­ cal ritual for their own spaces in order to legitimate lay identity and prestige. Thus far I have stressed the division between lay and clerical cultures with regard to spectacle. Now I want to move into the more equivocal space of practice in order to see how we might read instances of spec­ tacles as statements about social relations. Recent scholarship on medieval civic spectacle has emphasized the ideological content of mayoral and Corpus Christi processions.1 On one This essay is dedicated to Martin Stevens, mentor and friend. Parts of this paper were presented at the Ninth and Tenth International Congresses of the New Chaucer Society at the University of Dublin (Chaucer) and the University of California at Los Angeles (Langland) in 1994 and 1996, respectively. 1 Charles Phythian-Adams, "Ceremony and the Citizen: The Communal Year at Cov­ entry 1450-1550," in Peter Clark and Paul Slack, eds., Crisis and Order in English Towns (London: Routledge, 1972), pp. 57-85; MervynJames, "Ritual, Drama and Social Body in the Late Medieval English Town," Past and Present 98 (1983): 3-29; Sheila Lin115 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER side of this debate are scholars such as Charles Phythian-Adams and Mervyn James who emphasize the utopian agendas of these spectacles: the processions are said to contain an image of the whole body of the city or of the mystical body of Christ. Sheila Lindenbaum, on the other hand, points to the dysutopian consequences of elitist productions; for even though a Corpus Christi or civic procession is intended to create an image of unity, the procession itself is made up of discrete units ar­ ranged in hierarchical fashion, which as a consequence makes a state­ ment about lesser and greater degrees, and distinguishes the feet from the head of the body.2 And then there are those nonparticipants who are excluded from the procession altogether. These spectacles have been made to speak about the relationship not only between audience and participant but also among participants, though usually only in general­ ized ways, that is, in terms of groups, the producers and their intended audiences. Because we have few eyewitness accounts of late-medieval spectacles, we can only imagine the diversity of reception that Claire Sponsler has suggested we should look for in any evaluation of public spectacle.3 Langland and Chaucer are diverse witnesses whose testimony has been little used as registers of the problematics of public spectacle. Both give us powerful representations of London spectacle, yet both narrate these events in ways that suggest they were conscious of the clerical critique of spectacle, and, in Chaucer's case, of the theatrum. Langland reports two spectacles, Richard II's coronation procession and the 1366 Pageant of the Lady of the Sun. The first of these is presented approvingly be­ cause it is edificatory, yet it is interesting to note that the poet focuses not on the spectacle, which presumably was costly, but on the words denbaum, "The Smithfield Tournament of 1390," Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 20 (1990): 1-20, and "Ceremony and Oligarchy: The London Midsummer Watch," in Barbara A. Hanawalt and Kathryn L. Reyerson, eds., City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), pp. 171-88; many of the other essays in City and Spectacle; and Gordon Kipling, Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy, and Ritual...

Das representações míticas à cultura clerical: as Fadas da Literatura Medieval

O presente artigo estuda a permanência dos mitos celtas no folclore medieval e como seus temas e motivos são assimilados pela cultura clerical do século XII em diante. O principal propósito do mesmo é analisar a dimensão simbólica dos mitos celtas e o deslocamento de seu sentido original nos textos produzidos no meio cavaleiresco.

Richard Kay, Councils and Clerical Culture in the Medieval West. (Variorum Collected Studies Series, 571.) Aldershot, Eng., and Brookfield, Vt.: Variorum, 1997. Pp. xii, 300, numbered nonconsecutively; black-and-white frontispiece portrait, black-and-white figures, and tables. $89.95.

Richard Kay, Councils and Clerical Culture in the Medieval West. (Variorum Collected Studies Series, 571.) Aldershot, Eng., and Brookfield, Vt.: Variorum, 1997. Pp. xii, 300, numbered nonconsecutively; black-and-white frontispiece portrait, black-and-white figures, and tables. $89.95.

Parody in the Middle Ages: the Latin tradition

Parody in the Middle Ages: The Latin Tradition surveys and analyzes Latin parodies of texts and documents--Biblical parody, drinker's masses, bawdy litanies, lives of saints such as Nemo (Nobody) and Invicem (One-Another), and nonsense texts--in Western Europe from the early Middle to the Renaissance. This book also sketches in the background to the canonical works of medieval literature: Chaucer's fabliaux, French comic tales such as the Roman de Renart, and medieval satire in general.Bayless' study shows with great clarity that parody was a significant and vibrant literary form in the Middle Ages. In addition, her research sheds new light on clerical culture. The clerics who composed these parodies were far from meddling guardians of somber piety; rather, they appeared to see no contradiction between merriment and devotion. The wide dissemination and long life of these drolleries--some circulated for a thousand years--indicate a taste for clerical amusement that challenges conventional views of medieval solemnity.Parody in the Middle surveys in detail five of the most common traditions of parody. It provides a complete list of all known medieval Latin parodies, and also provides twenty complete texts in an appendix in the original Latin, with English translations. These texts have been collated from over a hundred manuscripts, many previously unknown. The study brings to light both a form and many texts that have remained obscure and inaccessible until now.Parody in the Middle Ages appeals to the modern audience not only for its cultural value but also for the same reason the parodies appealed to the medieval audience: they are simply very funny. This welcome new volume will be of particular interest to students of medieval satire and literary culture, to medieval Latinists, and to those who want to explore the breadth of medieval culture.Martha Bayless is Assistant Professor of English, University of Oregon.

Christendom and Its Discontents: Exclusion, Persecution, and Rebellion, 1000-1500 ed. by Scott L. Waugh and Peter D. Diehl

Christendom and Its Discontents: Exclusion, Persecution, and Rebellion, 1000-1500. Edited by Scott L.Waugh and Peter D. Diehl. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1996. Pp. viii, 376. $59.95.) This collection provides an excellent sampling of current study of the tensions and controversies the eleventh century onward between the reviving secular and ecclesiastical rulers of Europe, on the one hand, and minorities and movements of dissent, on the other.The authors and editors dialogue intelligently with each other, and, taken as a whole, the book, and presumably the 1991 UCLA conference which was its origin, display careful organization. Unfortunately, the introduction, apparently in ignorance of a large body of criticism, accepts the late John Boswell's assertion that the treatment ofhomosexuality (an anachronistic term) shifted (p. 4) from tolerance to aggressive hostility during this period (it is the idea of an earlier tolerance which causes the greatest problems). Part I contains six articles on Heterodoxy, dissemination, and repression. In the first R. I. Moore applies to the Gregorian reform views he has long been developing, seeing in consolidation of seigneurial authority, literate clerical culture, and new communities resulting the revival of the economy, three factors central to the growth and suppression of heresy. An excellent contribution is marred by the occasional cheap shot (see pp. 23-24) and too singleminded concentration on power categories. Two fine case studies follow, the first, by Peter D. Diehl, describing how reluctance to prosecute heresy was overcome in thirteenth-century Italy; and the second, by James Given, examining the inquisition in medieval Languedoc in order to understand how the drive for conformity accommodated itself to local power structures. Mary A. Rouse and Richard H. Rouse, using Durand of Huesca as an example, trace the dissemination of sermon models the schools to preachers. Always, as Clifford R. Backman shows (but one could wish for more precision in some of the claims made) in the case of Arnau de Vilanova, pragmatic considerations influenced ecclesiastical judgments. On all sides, as Anne Hudson explains for the Lollards in a clear if not particularly theologically alert exposition, preaching was a prime tool for dissemination of ideas, and indeed the spread of preaching and of heresy were intimately connected. In the first of three essays on Women's religious aspirations, Anne L. Clark uses Elisabeth and Ekbert of Schonau to explore the relation, sometimes opportunistic on both sides, between women's aspirations and ecclesiastical hierarchy. Clark is not very sophisticated, theologically and otherwise, and uses poorly informed writers such as R. Howard Bloch for her discussion of medieval mysogyny, herself thinking in rather one-dimensional feminist power categories, though at the end seeing some of the limitations of the category misogyny itself. …

A World without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science by David F. Noble

A World without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science by David F. Noble

A World without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science

A World without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science

Book Reviews: On the Edge: A History of Poor Black Children, the American Black Mule: His Present Status and His Future, Colored People: A Memoir, a World without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science, Battering of Women: The Failure of Intervention and the Case for Prevention

Book Reviews: On the Edge: A History of Poor Black Children, the American Black Mule: His Present Status and His Future, Colored People: A Memoir, a World without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science, Battering of Women: The Failure of Intervention and the Case for Prevention

BOOK REVIEWS

Book review in this article:Karma Lochrie, Margery Kempe and Translations of the FleshDavid F. Noble, A World Without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western ScienceJutta Schwarzkopf, Women in the Chartist MovementCatherine Hall, White, Male and Middle Class. Explorations in Feminism and HistoryEd Cohen, Talk on the Wilde Side: Toward a Genealogy of a Discourse on Male SexualitiesJune Purvis, A History of Women's Education in EnglandFelicity Hunt, Gender and Policy in English Education. Schooling for Girls 1902‐1944Andrew Davies, Leisure, Gender and Poverty. Working‐Class Culture in Salford and Manchester, 1900‐1939Andrew Davies and Steven Fielding (eds) Workers’Worlds. Cultures and Communities in Manchester and Salford, 1880–1939Jo Fisher, Out of the Shadows: Women, Resistance and Politics in South AmericaSarah A. Radcliffe and Sallie Westwood (eds) Viva: Women and Popular Protest in Latin AmericaManchester Women's History Group Bibliography Project, Resources for Women's History in Greater ManchesterClare Whiteman and Richard Storey, Women at Work and in Society. Modern Records Centre Sources Booklet No 1Michelle Perrot (ed.) Writing Women's HistoryJoke J. Hermsen and Alkeline van Lenning (eds) Sharing the Difference. Feminist Debates in HollandHillary Hinds, Ann Phoenix and Jackie Stacey (eds) Working Out. New Directions for Women's StudiesKaren Often, Ruth Roach Pierson and Jane Rendall (eds) Writing Women's History: International Perspectives

A World without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science.

Why is it that Western science evolved as a thoroughly male-dominated enterprise? As philosopher Sandra Harding has noted, have been more systematically excluded from doing serious science than performing any other social activity except, perhaps, frontline warfare. In A World Without Women, David F. Noble provides the first full-scale investigation of the origins and implications of the masculine culture of Western science and technology, and in the process offers some surprising revelations. Noble begins by showing that, contrary to the widely held notion that the culture of learning in the West has always excluded women--an assumption that rests largely upon the supposed legacy of ancient Greece--men did not thoroughly dominate intellectual life until the beginning of the second millennium of the Christian era. At this time science and the practices of higher learning became the exclusive province of the newly celibate Christian clergy, whose ascetic culture denied women a place in any scholarly enterprise. By the twelfth century, papal reform movements had all but swept away the material and ideological supports of future female participation in the world of learning; as never before, women were on the outside looking in. Noble further demonstrates that the clerical legacy of a world without women remained more or less intact through the Reformation, and permeated the emergant culture of science. A World Without Women finally points to a dread of women at the core of modern scientific and technological enterprise, as these disciplines work to deprive one-half of humanity of its role in production (as seen in the Industrial Revolution's male appropriation of labor) and reproduction as well (the age-old quest for an artificial womb). It also makes plain the hypocrisy of a community that can honor a female scientist with a bronze bust, as England's Royal Society did for Mary Somerville in the mid-nineteenth century, yet deny her entry to the very meeting hall in which it enjoyed pride of place. An important and often disturbing book, A World Without Women is essential reading for anyone concerned not only about the world of science, but about the world that science has made.

A World without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science.

A World without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science.

A World without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science.

A World without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science.

A World without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science. David F. Noble

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsA World without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science. David F. NobleEdith SyllaEdith Sylla Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 84, Number 2Jun., 1993 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/356480 Views: 2Total views on this site Copyright 1993 History of Science Society, Inc.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Clerical culture at the end of the last century

Clerical culture at the end of the last century

Clerical culture at the end of the last century

Clerical culture at the end of the last century