Funeral Sermon Research Articles

TOWARDS AN ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION OF BUXTEHUDE'S FUNERARY COUNTERPOINTS

Journal Article TOWARDS AN ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION OF BUXTEHUDE'S FUNERARY COUNTERPOINTS Get access DAVID YEARSLEY DAVID YEARSLEY Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Music and Letters, Volume 80, Issue 2, May 1999, Pages 183–206, https://doi.org/10.1093/ml/80.2.183 Published: 01 May 1999

Funeral Sermons and Assurance of Salvation: Conviction and Persuasion in the Case of William Lord Russell of Thornhaugh

The sermon became an increasingly important element of the English funeral during and after the Reformation. The chief explicit purpose of funeral rites was instruction of the living, not intercession for the soul of the dead. The sermon played a central part in this process. Preachers tended to present or interpret the behaviour of many godly Protestants, especially puritans, as a triumph over the pains of illness and the terror of death, a triumph which signalled to witnesses their elect status. This essay focuses on a narrative of a godly deathbed in which the last communion and confession of sins played an unusually large part. William Walker's sermon on his patron William Lord Russell of Thornhaugh contains one of the most dramatic of early Stuart deathbed narratives.

William Henry Harrison: a bibliography

Introduction and Acknowledgements Chronology of the Life of William Henry Harrison Manuscript and Archival Resources Writings and Speeches of William Henry Harrison Biographical Publications Family Background and Early Development Early Military Career, 1791-1798 Territorial Official, 1798-1812 The War of 1812 and Its Aftermath Political Activities, 1816-1834 Presidential Campaign of 1836 Presidential Campaign of 1840 Presidency, March 4, 1841-April 4, 1841 Funeral Sermons, Eulogies, Orations, and the Memorial Fast Associates of William Henry Harrison Private Life Historiographical Materials Iconography Visual Media Author Index Subject Index

Robert Boyle by Himself and His Friends (review)

~44 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 35: ~ JANUARY 1997 tered many times over Leibniz's thought on the nature of individual substance, freedom and contingency, and pre-established harmony. Again, tbis repetition will only be noticed by those who read the entire work, and those who pick and choose articles within the volume will actually be aided by the fact that each author has done an excellent job in explaining his or her particular subject. BRANDON LOOK University of Kentucky Michael Hunter, editor. Robert Boyle byHimselfand His Friends. London: William Pickering , 1994. Pp. cvii + 188. Cloth, $75.oo. For over two hundred and fifty years the biography which Thomas Birch wrote for the first complete edition of Boyle's Works (x744) has been the definitive statement of Boyle's life. In that biography, Birch relied heavily upon the details Boyle had presented in his youthful autobiography and on Bishop Gilbert Burnet's funeral sermon, as well as upon papers found among Boyle's manuscript remains and papers which were prepared in connection with two earlier but never completed projects for a biography of Boyle (one by Burnet himself, and the other by William Wotton, author of the celebrated Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning, published in a694). Now, Michael Hunter has gathered together and published in full all of these documents in one convenient volume, revealing the extent to which Birch's selective inclusion of some excerpts from the documents (and his silent exclusion of others) resulted in a one-sided and considerably oversimplified portrayal of the interests and concerns of the great natural philosopher and lay theologian. There are nine documents in all, only two of which have previously been published in full: Boyle's youthful Account of Philaretus and Burnet's funeral sermon (Evelyn's correspondence is a partial exception; see the comments below). One of the new documents is related to a later attempt at autobiography on Boyle's part--a set of biographical notes which he dictated to his amanuensis, and which, when contrasted with the account in Philaretua, provides insight into Boyle's later reflections on his earlier attempt at autobiography and clues as to how, in his maturity, he wished to be perceived by the public. Another document is more revealing of Boyle's private rather than his public personality--a memorandum made by Burnet (one of Boyle's confessors and intimates) based on an interview (or interviews) with Boyle. As Hunter rightly comments, "in many ways this is the single most significant biographical source relating to Boyle" (xxvii). It includes a number of previously unknown facts about Boyle's life; the most striking thing about it is that approximately half of the text is devoted to his interest in and concern about the legitimacy of spirit-contact. In addition, Hunter has included Sir Peter Pett's notes on Boyle, notes which Pett compiled to assist Burnet in the latter's plan to write a biography of Boyle. Scholars who have been intrigued by the opening pages of this manuscript (which are in a neat scribal hand) yet unable to decipher the remainder (which are in Pett's almost unreadable hand) will appreciate the pains to which Hunter has gone to transcribe the whole. BOOK REVIEWS 145 Pett's intention, apparently, was to enrich Burnet's rather general funeral sermon with a wealth of circumstantial details about Boyle's life, some of which he entrusted to Burnet confidentially, expecting Burnet to use his own discretion as to which details were fit for public knowledge. Although Burnet never published the intended biography , Birch himself exercised his own discretion as to what should be silently deleted, as he did in the case of thc Burnet memorandum as well. The remaining documents are related to Wotton's attempt at Boyle's biography. In addition to the sole extant section of a chapter from Wotton's biography--significant if for no other reason than because it was arguably the first attempt at intellectual biography in England--there are letters to Wotton written to aid him in his efforts by John Evelyn (Evelyn's copies have been published in his own correspondence; Hunter's texts are from the...

Aufklärung und Skepsis: Studien zur Philsophie und Geistesgeschichte des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts: Festschrift für Günter Gawlick (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 145 Pett's intention, apparently, was to enrich Burnet's rather general funeral sermon with a wealth of circumstantial details about Boyle's life, some of which he entrusted to Burnet confidentially, expecting Burnet to use his own discretion as to which details were fit for public knowledge. Although Burnet never published the intended biography , Birch himself exercised his own discretion as to what should be silently deleted, as he did in the case of thc Burnet memorandum as well. The remaining documents are related to Wotton's attempt at Boyle's biography. In addition to the sole extant section of a chapter from Wotton's biography--significant if for no other reason than because it was arguably the first attempt at intellectual biography in England--there are letters to Wotton written to aid him in his efforts by John Evelyn (Evelyn's copies have been published in his own correspondence; Hunter's texts are from the letters Wotton actually received), Thomas Dent, and James Kirkwood. As important as the documents are themselves, Hunter's masterful hundred-page introduction is at least as significant an addition to Boyle studies. In it, Hunter has placed these documents in the context of Boyle's life as a whole, in the context of the history of biography and autobiography in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England , and in the context of twentieth-century interpretations of Boyle. He has woven the whole together into a complex tapestry which reflects his remarkable ability to combine smoothly a plethora of facts with astute analyses and interpretations. When all is said and done, the Boyle who emerges from these pages reveals a personality far more convoluted and complex (and hence far more human) than Birch's very selective account has led generations of scholars to believe. Hunter has employed his usual sophisticated editorial practices here, keeping footnotes to the documents themselves to a minimum by consigning minor changes in the manuscripts to a separate section and by providing both a biographical guide to persons mentioned frequently and an outline of the principle events in Boyle's life. The volume is not only a significant and welcome addition to Boyle studies and one which will alter dramatically our conception of Boyle, but is also of wider interest in terms of the history of intellectual biography in general. JAN WOJCIK Auburn University Lothar Kreimendahl, Hans-Ulrich Hoche, and Werner Strube, editors. AufkMrung und Skepsis: Studien zur Philosophie und Geistesgeschichte des 17. und t8. Jahrhunderts. Festschriftfftr Giinter Gawlick. Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1995. Pp. 326. Cloth, DM 198.oo. This volume is a Festschrift for Giinter Gawlick, longtime scholar of Cicero and Ciceronianism , Nicholas of Cusa, Spinoza, English and German deism, Hume and Hume's reception in Germany, and related matters. The bibliography at the end of the volume is a convenient guide to his work (some of it in English), which should be familiar to everyone working in these areas. Oswald Bayer, author of numerous recent articles on Hamann, provides a rare 146 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 35:1 JANUARY i997 clear exposition of Hamann's "Metacritique" of Kant. David Berman expands on his understanding of "theological lying" in Hume and Collins, Ulrich Dierse explores the late, enlightened physico-theology of G. F. Meier, just before it fell to Kant. Klaus Dfising contends that Kant's theory of schemata and imagination served as a refutation of skepticism. Jean Ecole brings out the relationship between essence and existence in Wolff. Eva Engel canvasses Mendelssohn's early writings for his appreciation and vindication of Spinoza. Norbert Hinske contrasts those who received Kant as the All.szenr~Imer of rational religion with the early Kantian Protestants at Jena who focussed on his destruction of scientific determinism in noumenal matters, thus creating room for religious faith or belief. Hans-Ulrich Hoche applies a Humean "skeptical solution" to "skeptical doubts" about the unity of the self and of others. Malte Hossenfelder gives us a deduction of the principal demands of a liberalism based on natural right (Naturrecht), expanding on Kant. Lothar Kreimendahl, coauthor with Gawlick of the major study, Hume in der deutschen Aufkliirung (Stuttgart, 1987), adds a substantial chapter...

The Rhetorics of Life-Writing in Early Modern Europe: Forms of Biography from Cassandra Fedele to Louis XIV

Lives as lived and lives as written are never one and the same. To turn the first into the second one must introduce fiction into the fact of the actual existence; this is never more true than during the Renaissance, when multiformity was the rule. The Rhetorics of Life-Writing in Early Modern Europe explores the ways in which authors and their subjects constructed images for themselves, and some of the ways in which those images worked.The volume is especially timely in light of the growing interest in microhistory, and in the histories that are emerging from nonliterary documents. Chapters consider numerous genres, including hagiography, epistolary and verse biography, and less familiar forms such as parodic prosopography, life-writing in funeral sermons, and comic martyrology.Contributors to the volume come from history, art history, and literature, and they include F.W. Conrad, Sheila ffolliott, Robert Kolb, James Mehl, Diana Robin, T.C. Price Zimmerman, and Elizabeth Goldsmith and Abby Zanger, among others.Thomas F. Mayer is Associate Professor of History, Augustana College. D. R. Woolf is Professor of History, Dalhousie University.

Barzillai Frost's Funeral Sermon on the Death of John Thoreau Jr.

The death of Henry David Thoreau's brother, John Thoreau Jr., on 11 January 1842 was sudden and tragic.1 John had cut himself on New Year's Day while shaving and he rapidly developed lockjaw. He was only twenty-six years old at the time. Henry was devastated: he was unable to write in his journal for weeks and he even developed a sympathetic case of lockjaw that had friends worried about his own health. Eventually he memorialized John in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), his first book.

Between Death and Judgment: Conflicting Images of the Afterlife in Late Seventeenth-Century English Eulogies

One of the more troublesome issues facing Protestant reformers after the abolition of the Roman Catholic purgatory in the early sixteenth century was the need to explain the status of body and soul in the interim between death and resurrection. Eager to identify the precise destination of the whole person after bodily expiration but before the general judgment, preachers sought to bring comfort to bereaved survivors of the recently departed by formulating an acceptable counterpoise to the centuries-old Roman Catholic geography of the other world. Unlike the authors of learned theological treatises on the nature of the soul and body, eulogists faced the unenviable task of interpreting the experience of death and its sequel to an audience that often lacked the sophistication required for the rigors of sustained exegesis. The task of the eulogist was to attempt to make plain the contours of postmortem existence in a manner designed both to warn and to reassure. In their efforts to define an emotionally satisfying alternative to the Roman Catholic story, however, English Protestants formulated an increasingly wide variety of disparate—and sometimes contradictory—accounts of life after death, each of which was normatively based upon a personal understanding of scripture. By the late seventeenth century, even as English funeral sermons that treated the afterlife began to reflect a broad consensus regarding the separate destinations of body and soul, there remained much confusion over the precise condition of those eternal partners before Christ's promised return. The failure to resolve this dilemma in a satisfactory manner and the inability to arrive at an acceptable consensus on a matter of central concern to believing Christians contributed to the growth of mortalist and annihilationist theories by the close of the century. Conceptual disarray within the orthodox camp, then, provided an opportunity for more innovative thinkers to step forward, persons whose understanding of eschatological time, anchored in their own unique interpretation of the Christian scriptures, negated any need for continued debate about a putative “middle place”.

Alchemy, magic and moralism in the thought of Robert Boyle

At some point during the last two years of his life, Robert Boyle dictated to his friend, Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, some notes on major events and themes in his career. Some of the information he divulged in these memoranda has become quite widely known because Burnet used it in the funeral sermon for Boyle that he delivered a month after his death, at St Martin's in the Fields on 7 January 1692. In addition, these notes were cited several times by Thomas Birch in the ‘Life of the Honourable Robert Boyle’ that he prefixed to his edition of Boyle's collected works of 1744: he there describes his source as ‘Mr.Boyle'smemorandums of his own life, dictated by himself to BishopBurnet’.2 What has hitherto been virtually overlooked is that the manuscript of these notes, which is in Burnet's hand, survives among the Birch Papers in the British Library: it is this document—and particularly a substantial component of it which was publicized by neither Burnet nor Birch—that forms the starting point for this paper.

Samuel Clarke and the ‘Lives’ of Godly Women in Seventeenth-Century England

When Samuel Clarke’s The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons in this Later Age was published posthumously in 1683, the ‘godly life’ was a well-established genre of Puritan literature. Clarke himself had contributed to its popularity with his various compilations of’lives’ of ministers and laity culled primarily from published funeral sermons and spiritual biographies by other authors. Today such editions would be regarded as blatant plagiarism, but in the mid-seventeenth century, before the advent of the copyright laws, they were widely appreciated, and in the Introduction to this, his last work, Clarke wrote, I have been encouraged to make this collection, and now to publish it, finding that my former labours in this kind have been accepted with the Saints, and in the Church of Christ: which is apparent, for that they have been printed four times in a few years space, and yet never less than a thousand at a time.

Musical-Rhetorical Prosopopoeia and the Animation of the Dead in Seventeenth-Century German Funeral Music

Personification was already recognized as an effective oratorical trope during rhetoric's formative years ancient Greece and Rome, and judging from Baroque rhetoric manuals, it had lost none of its persuasive force by the seventeenth century. In the Triumphus Bibliorum Sacrorum of 1625, Johann Heinrich Alsted (1588-1638), rhetorician, composer and champion of Calvinism, observes that prosopopoeia, in serious matters, for instance admonitions and vehement reproaches, is a remarkable figure (Alsted 1625: 9. 9. 483).' Johann Matthaus Meyfart (1590-1642), his Teutsche Rhetorica oder Redekunst of 1634, illustrates his definition of prosopopoeia with an example taken from the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium where the dead Lucius Brutus is invested with the ability to speak (Meyfart 1634: 1: 387). Fortyeight years later, the same example, this time the original Latin, is used to illustrate the definition of prosopopoeia given the Compendium Rhetorices of 1682 by Christoph Kaldenbach (1613-98), who at that time was active as a composer and as a professor of rhetoric at the University Tubingen (Kaldenbach 1682/1709: 137). Prosopopoeia thrived what Ferdinand van Ingen refers to as the Augenkultur (visual culture) of Baroque Germany (van Ingen 1966: 299). In his book Vanitas und Memento Mon der deutschen Barocklyrik, van Ingen examines the literary and visual arts their capacity to provide a representational nexus between the here and now and the hereafter. In the visual arts this union was achieved with dramatic effect through the realistic depiction of celestial scenes paintings typically found Baroque churches and chapels. In the ceiling frescoes particular, the eye is often beguiled by the artist's skilful handling of colour and perspective as architectural lines of the church are extended into the painting itself. Consequently, and powerful visual terms, the church becomes the median a continuum that reaches from the congregation of worshipers to the portals of Paradise. The paintings, serving more than a purely decorative function, part provided the contemplative Christian with visual stimuli to stir the imagination towards sublime thoughts of liberation and salvation, resurrection and eternal life. In the literary arts a similar effect was achieved through prosopopoeia, evoking comparable prophetic images the minds of the listeners. When personifying the dead the context of the seventeenth-century funeral ceremony, the pastor was not speaking his own behalf, but rather was acting the capacity of a medium transmitting to the congregation consolatory and admonitory messages from beyond the grave. The clearer, the more vivid the images set forth by the orator, the easier it was for him to move the affections of the audience. The success of prosopopoeia was the result of allowing rhetorical persuasion to take place simultaneously on logical, ethical and pathetic levels - the three Aristotelian means of persuasion (Rhetoric 3. I).2 Through the prosopopoeial evocation of the dead, the rhetor donned the persona of the deceased, speaking as though he were fact the deceased. In so doing, the implied premises are laid out for an effective quasi-syllogistic argument or enthymeme. Though untenable terms of strict syllogism, his rhetorical argument was logically sound nonetheless. It thus follows that if the personified voice of the deceased was actually heard to profess the reality of resurrection and the existence of eternal life, one could only deduce from the premises that the testimony must be true. By adopting the identity of the deceased the writing and delivery of a funeral sermon, the pastor as rhetor was able to strengthen the ethical side of the oration, that is, to enhance his own character the eyes of the congregation. Through animating the dead, the pastor would immediately become associated with the deceased (Rhetoric 3. …

The Funeral Sermon as a Key to Familial Values in Early Modern Nordlingen

L'analyse des sermons funeraires prononces a Nordlingen (Baviere) entre 1589 et 1712 donne un apercu des attitudes pastorales concernant le mariage, la famille et la mort. Elle permet de mesurer l'impact de la reception de l'ethique lutherienne dans une petite ville eloignee des grands foyers intellectuels de la Reforme

Life Lived and Life Written: Donne's Final Word or Last Character

Izaak Walton's Life of Donne suggests that Donne ordinarily spent the better part of the preceding week readying each sermon: as usually preached once a week, if not oftner, so after Sermon never gave eyes rest, till had chosen out a new Text, and that night cast Sermon into a form, and Text into divisions; and the next day betook himself consult the Fathers, and so commit meditations memory, which was excellent. But upon Saturday usually gave himself and mind a rest from the weary burthen of week's meditations.' In the instance of Deaths Duell, Donne's last sermon, had particular and unusual opportunities for reflection. According Walton, Donne, weakened by fatal illness, returned London specifically preach this, his own Funeral Sermon, or as Walton explains, to discharge memory of preconceived meditations, which were of dying (75). Not surprisingly for a seventeenth-century divine, Donne seems have spent the closing months of illness meditating on holy dying, yet the extent which planned and virtually orchestrated death exceeds normal expectations. Most famous is posing for a funeral portrait in own winding-sheet, body rising from the funeral urn as if enact the resurrection of the body, head turned symbolically 'toward the East, from whence expected the second coming of and our Saviour Jesus.' 2 His preparation for the end becomes nightly meditation, and the funeral portrait hourly object (76, 78). When dies, Walton reports, he closed own eyes; and then disposed hands and body into such a posture, as required not the least alteration by those that came shroud him (82).3 Donne's sermons and Devotions indicate that had been thinking about such exemplary and symbolic gestures for a long time. Crucial among these, Deaths Duell is at once the culmination of role as a preacher and a radically verbal gesture of self-characterization. He enters words and texts

Additional Seventeenth-Century Allusions to George Herbert

Additional Seventeenth-Century Allusions to George Herbert by Allan Pritchard The great modern growth in the apprecietion of the poetry of George Herbert hes been accompanied by interest in the history of his reputation. Our knowledge of his early reputation has been much increased by such recent publications as CA. Patrides' George Herbert: The Critical Heritage end Robert H. Roy's The Herbert Allusion Book: Allusions to George Herbert in the Seventeenth Century.'1 Yet a number of allusions in the period 1640-75 appear to have remoined unnoticed by ell those who have studied the poet's reputation. These neglected references, which ere set out here in chronological order, are cumulatively interesting as additional evidence of the extent and nature of Herbert's popularity in the middle years of the seventeenth century, and they include et leost one tribute thot is emong the most striking offered to eny poet of the century. The eorliest of these neglected allusions adds e poet, the popular and prolific George Wither, to the list of those who rendered praise of Herbert. In the preface "To the Reader" of his volume of hymns, Haleluiah or, Britans Second Remembrancer (1641), Wither aligns himself with Herbert and others in the attempt to divert poetry from profane to sacred subjects. He deplores the profanation of poetry, through which it had long been made "the Baud to Lust; and abused to other improper ends" (sig. A10v), and comments: To prevent these Errors and Offences, Mr. Sandys, Mr. Harbert, Mr. Queries, and some others, have lately, to their great commendations, seriously endeavoured, by tuning their Muses to divine Strains, and by employing them in their proper work. For the like prevention, I havealso laboured according to my Talent .... (sig. A11V 38Allan Pritchard The most remarkoble of the unrecorded allusions, however, is one that comes eight years later, in a funeral sermon occesioned by the deeth of on aristocratic lady, who had found comfort in the poetry of Herbert during the Afflictions of the Civil War: Edward Rainbowe's A Sermon Preached at Waiden in Essex, May 29,h. At the Interring of the Corps of the right Honorable Susanna, Countesse of Suffolke (1649). Rainbowe was Master of Magdolene College, Cambridge, later to become Bishop of Carlisle after the Restoration. His sermon is filled with references to the "tragicall times" in which he writes, for the family of his subject hed been much involved in the conflicts of the Civil War. Susanna (born c. 1627) was the deughterof Henry Rich, first Earl of Holland, and thegrand-daughter of Sir Philip Sidney's beloved Penelope Devereux. While her father's elder brother, the Earl of Werwick, wos the commonder of the Porliamentary navy, her father himself after chenging sides several times wos found guilty of treeson by e Perliomentery court end beheeded in Merch 1649. Her husbond, Jomes Howard, third Earl of Suffolk, had for a time sided with Parliament but was later impeached for treason by the House of Commons, although the sentence was not carried out. Susanna's other afflictions included the death of her only son in infancy, and her short life ended with her death in childbirth at the age of twenty-two on May 19, 1649.3 In the sermon, which is eloquent ond moving enough to sustain his contemporary reputation as a great preacher, Rainbowe emphasizes the religious patience with which Susonne bore ell her afflictions, and describes both the spirituel comfort she brought to her loved fether before his execution end the exemplory neture of her own death-bed scene.4 He praises both her loyalty to the Church of England and her charity toward those with whose political and religious views she disagreed, in "these boysterous times" when difference of opinion had produced so much bloodshed (p. 18). Hegivesan impressive picture of her saintly character, with much detail about her devotional practices, especially her study of the Bible, and in the following passage describes her love of Herbert: Her Phancy was most Divine, and although she fed it very much with HumaneAuthors, delighting in Wit, that was Pure, end filled with ingenious ALLUSIONS TO HERBERT39 end artificiali conceit, Poetry especially, in the epprehension...

Sex Discrimination after Death: A Seventeenth-Century English Study

Funeral sermons published in England during a three-decade period (1601–1630) were examined for possible sex bias. Because London dominated the publishing business, all but four, regardless of where they were preached, were issued in that city. A clear pattern of male preference was found. A lower number of funeral sermons for women was published. Interestingly, the number of times these sermons were reprinted or reissued did not strongly reinforce this pattern of discrimination. In the text of the sermons, laudatory and idealized comments about the deceased reflected and helped to perpetuate the sex differences in society.

Joshua Moody's Funeral Sermon for Thomas Daniel as Political Jeremiad

To show how thoroughly conventional seventeenth-century American jeremiads had grown, Perry Miller felt it necessary only to observe that they had become "as fixed and stereotyped as the funeral sermon or latin oration."1 While Miller is right that without exception funeral sermons, like the deceased saints for whom they were written, appear other-worldly in their theology and biography, the ministers who delivered them did not separate—as modern readers are apt to—the changeless lessons of theology from immediate practical concerns. Especially as challenges to the New England Way mounted during the final decades of the seventeenth century, ministers carefully constructed funeral sermons to apply traditional metaphors of Protestant sainthood to the specific political or social problems facing New Englanders. A brief survey of the development of the political jeremiad in colonial funeral sermons will provide the background for an examination of Joshua Moody's funeral sermon for Thomas Daniel, The Believers Happy Change By Dying, a sermon which exemplifies especially well the rhetorical strategies of these political jeremiads.

Magdalene Herbert: Towards a Topos for the Anglican Church

Magdalene Herbert: Towards a Topos for the Anglican Church by Heather Asals "Shee never diverted towards the Papist, in undervaluing the Scripture, nor towards the Separatiti, in undervaluing the Church ? In his sermon in commemoration of Magdalene Herbert after her death in 1 627, John Donne paints for us the portrait of a lady as the Anglican Church, defining the path of the "middle way." Even the manner of her dress, Donne informs us, "never eumptuou», never aordld," proclaimed the principle which directed her life: "Her rule was mediocrity." To begin by mentioning that the via madia discretion in fashion possessed by the mother of George Herbert is identical to the taste in attire demonstrated by Anglicanism ("Neither too mean, nor yet too gay") in Herbert's poem, "The British Church," is to begin with a very simple point. But attire is no simple metaphor in the poetry of the Renaissance: the garment is poetry itself Language, the stuff of the garment of poetry, is the sacred gift bequeathed him by his mother, Herbert tells us in Memoriae Metri» Sacrum, his volume of Latin poetry in memory of his mother (printed together with Donne's funeral sermon in 1627) "You taught me how to write," he comments: "That skill owes you praise."2 Her art of wr iting was her art of dressing She did not indulge in the excesses of language and of ceremony, in the overdressing of the Roman Church: she did not spend the day in "idle talk" ("language being chaos since/ The time of Babel"). Nor did she "Pile up her hair as high as pride," Herbert further comments, "but after doing up her hair/ In a simple style," she beseiged the Lord with "Sharp and fiery" prayer.3 Her method in language presents to Herbert an idea of the middle way of the condition of language itself, its paradoxical reconciliation of extremes, "this very grece of speech": "Stern winsomeness," "wit/ And wisdom mixed," "Thought and word exactly in accord."4 By providing us with a parallel set of images for the Anglican Church in the literature about her life, Magdalene Herbert presents to the literary critic a key to the ontology of Herbert's poetry itself, the poetry of "The Church," to the locus and nature of the "being" of a Herbert poem My central text in all that follows here is a three-line passage from "The British Church" which defines the "place" from which George Herbert writes (the "face" of the apologetics of Anglicanism): Heather Asáis Beautie in thee takes up her place, And dates her letters from thy face, When she doth write.5 The Church, and specifically the Anglican Church, provides an entelechy for Herbert's transcendent aesthetic. The human analogy, in turn, between the Church and an admirable but individual woman of seventeenth-century England finds its roots in a tradition which, once recognized, leads us to read Herbert's poems "Heaven", "Lent", "Marie Magdalene," and "Sepulchre" more sensitively , and it brings us to the heart of Herbert's hermeneutic, based as it is on apostolic activity. "Place." "letters", "face," central words m "The British Church," are also tepo/current in the literature about Magdalene Herbert. These topol are the very substance of George Herbert's poetic, the very basis on which "The Church" writes, "When she doth write." In Magdalene Herbert Donne finds a "place" where Church and Scripture meet and are reconciled: "the rule, tor her particular understanding of the Scripture, was the Church." It is such a "place" that Herbert's poetry in "The Church" defines and names ("Beautie in thee takes up her place"). Donne's discursive analysis of the Church "actuating" Scripture, of the Church as the "Echo" of Scripture, is of particular use to us in coming to terms with some of the major poetic transactions in The Temple. "In Scriptures you have Preeceptum. The thing it self, What," Donne observes, "In the Church, you have the Nunc. The time, When. The Scriptures are Gods Voyce; The Church is his Eccho; a redoubling, a repeating of some particular syllables, and accents of the same voice."6 This conjunction which Donne speaks of between...

8.8. Kepler and alchemy

A recently found printed funeral sermon for the alchemist and physician Martin Ruland II (1569–1611) is accompanied by an elegy by Kepler to his deceased friend Martin. This entirely unknown and unnoticed poem of Kepler's led to a closer study of his alchemical-chemical interests. The main sources for this research were Kepler's correspondence with his “alchemical friends”, especially Martin Ruland II and Joachim Tanckius. Also by considering his published scientific works it is possible to see that, although Kepler did not himself experiment in the laboratory, he was excellently informed about the experiments of the contemporary alchemists (e.g. Tycho Brahe at the Court of Rudolf II in Prague). As a strong opponent to the magical, cabbalistic currents in alchemy —e.g. Robert Fludd—Kepler's alchemical knowledge glimmers through his ideas about natural philosophy.

Protagonistas en las exequias reales de los Austrias: los predicadores del sermón fúnebre

La predicación de sermones fúnebres constituía una pieza central en la celebración de las exequias por los monarcas de la Casa de Austria. Las autoridades organizadoras, en este caso las de la ciudad de Burgos, trataron de velar siempre por la brillantez y ejemplaridad del acto. Con este fin designaban personas capacitadas para cumplir con éxito la tarea de difundir, a través de sus prédicas, mensajes enaltecedores de la monarquía que calasen en el auditorio.

Gardening or teaching?

Monthly average salary, $33. Why the drop in the third year? Vividly remembered is the conversation with a school director, a farmer who occasionally preached funeral sermons. Mr. Notats, I'd like to teach the Noskan school again. You paid me thirty dollars a month last year. I am applying at thirty-five this year. I get here early in the morning, build fires in the old stove, and I will do all the janitor work. might pay you a little more. But most of the big fellows you had won't be in school this year, just little kids. Not more'n twenty-five all told. We just don't think that's worth over thirty, and we can get a teacher for twenty-five. I was neither so useful nor necessary as I had considered myself. A capable seventeen-year-old lad was employed at thirty dollars a month for six months. The Board saved the district the thirty dollars, got the worth of their money, and no one will ever know whether the school