Hagiographical Works Research Articles

Medieval Saints and Modern Screens: Divine Visions as Cinematic Experience by Alicia Spencer-Hall (review)

Reviewed by: Medieval Saints and Modern Screens: Divine Visions as Cinematic Experience by Alicia Spencer-Hall Anthony Ballas Alicia Spencer-Hall, Medieval Saints and Modern Screens: Divine Visions as Cinematic Experience, Amsterdam University Press, 2018. ISBN: 9789462982277, 304 pages, Hardback, €95,00. It is not every day that one finds medieval scholarship, film theory, popular culture and theology braided together in an accessible and provocative volume. In Alicia Spencer-Hall's Medieval Saints and Modern Screens, the author accomplishes just this; the book is a melding of medieval hagiography, mysticism, media and fandom studies, taking the reader through often surprising parallels between these and other disciplines. For Spencer-Hall, modern cinema and computer screens share an aesthetic similar to the divine visions of medieval female saints, bridging the vast temporal divide between these two forms of media. As Spencer-Hall quotes Bruno Latour, "[w]e do have a future and a past, but the future takes the form of a circle expanding in all directions and the past is not surpassed but revisited, repeated, surrounded, protected, recombined, reinterpreted and reshuffled" (59). It is within this "polytemporal context" that Medieval Saints operates, offering a seamless juxtaposition of pre-modern and postmodern media. The book explores at length the parallels between modern cinema and computer screens and the lives of the Holy Women of Liege as accounted in their vitaes—the hagiographic works written about them and their divine visions. At the root of Medieval Saints lies a pedagogical imperative, as Spencer-Hall "maintain[s] that medieval mystical episodes are made intelligible to modern audiences through reference to the filmic—the language, form, and lived experience of the cinema" (11). Although, as Spencer-Hall claims, cinema offers the spectator an "agape-ic encounter"—a "transcendent experience," that "is functionally identical to the episodes of ecstasy which are the mainstay of medieval hagiography"—the author does not simply reduce the transcendent properties of mysticism or cinema to one another (11). In this way, Spencer-Hall conceives of "hagiography as cinematic media" (12) and "film as divinity" (16), while also maintaining the independence of the two. By bringing these two forms of media together, Spencer-Hall expands the definitions of both, and thereby opens them up anew through comparative analysis. It is worth mentioning the two key points in the introduction upon which the author's argument later hinge: firstly, the insistence that "hagiographic media fuse textual, visual, and the haptic both in diegesis and in their respective modes" (13), and secondly, a critique of the typically gendered interpretation of Agape, opting instead for a definition as "'equal regard' between all humans and between humanity and divinity" (14). On the latter point, the dyad "seeing/being seen" does not rely on the male gaze, but rather "the agape-ic encounter offers a counter point, and means to move beyond, earlier theories of film spectatorship which pivoted on the notion of film spectatorship as ineluctable objectifying, particular to women," thereby contesting Laura Mulvey's "insistence on the 'male gaze'" (15). It is in the relation between spectator and screen, writes Spencer-Hall, that "we perceive (feel and see) ourselves being seen, and thus we are looked and felt into being" (16, my emphasis). The figure who most influences Spencer-Hall's reading of spectatorship is Vivian Sobchack, whose formula "transcendence in immanence" is foundational to Medieval Screens (16); by focusing on the fact of being tethered to the body while also transcending its material borders, the screen has a similar propensity as extasis (ek-stasis), or the standing aside of the spectator in their own body. This theme is revisited throughout the work, particularly in chapters Two and Three. [End Page 87] Spencer-Hall dedicates a large portion of Chapter One to an examination of photography and divinity. "Photography was hailed as an 'apparitional technology', allowing spirits and mystical forces to be made visible," explains the author, who goes on to observe how "the tradition of [nineteenth and twentieth century] spirit photography lives on in the twenty-first century in the form of tribute photography" (67). Spencer-Hall asserts that "the 'truth claim' that underpins photography's ability to produce proof of the divine and...

Osmanlı Edebiyatında Bir Ayna Olarak İnsan Bedeni

Recently, scholars of Islamic studies have become increasingly interested in the human body. Yet, the literary appearance of the body in different genres has not been studied in detail yet. The present article aims to demonstrate that the Islamic tradition has employed the human body as a mirror that reflects visually and physically various concepts and aspects of human characteristics. This article scrutinizes various genres and written formats with a specific focus on the body as it appears in legal and literary texts that became best sellers in the Ottoman Empire, including hagiographical works, heroic narratives, physiognomy books, and romances. This includes not only the texts originally produced in Turkish, but also the widely known and read texts translated from Arabic and Persian into Turkish. These texts demonstrate the various ways that the body was used as a platform on which, and through which, certain values could be displayed. As we have seen, while legal texts understand the body as a mirror that reflects one’s piety and/or sinfulness in both this world and hereafter, for literary genres the human body is a mirror through which one’s good or bad personal traits, faith, sanctity, and heroism, as well as depth of love and capacity for sexuality, could also be physically witnessed.

The Use and Importance of Biblical References in Vita Antonii

Abstract Athanasius the Great succeeded with his Vita Antonii to create a new literary genre, the „biography of a saint“. Through his approach, shaped by his impressive theological knowledge and familiarity with the biblical text, Athanasius unlocked an immense amount of cultural knowledge. The Archbishop of Alexandria structured this hagiographic work on the father of monasticism in a way that allowed the reader to understand and perceive the peculiarities of Saint Anthony in accordance with the Orthodoxy of the Church. The present study examines how Athanasius the Great used about four hundred direct and indirect biblical references to represent a personality of his time, who corresponded to the highest Christian ideals. The main topics of our study are: the importance of the Holy Scripture, how it is highlighted in the Athanasian text; the biblical portrait of Anthony the Great; the speech of the great Anchorite, which accounts for more than a third of this hagiographic work; the representation of the last days of Antonius.

Introduction

The seven articles in this thematic issue address written responses to different periods of turmoil that impacted Muslim and Christian societies in the western Mediterranean from the ninth to the sixteenth centuries. By highlighting the complexities of the literary artifacts produced in Sicily, al-Andalus, and North Africa, it offers new perspectives on the interactions between Islam and Christendom at a time of traumatic transition from one political and religious hegemony to another, as reflected in a variety of genres: apologetic and hagio-graphical works, interreligious polemics, military and diplomatic dispatches, historiography, travel narratives, and romance. These analyses reveal a cultural panorama in which "internal otherness" and religious rivalry are both generative forces within a Mediterranean of fungible linguistic and social boundaries, where traditional genres are inflected and re-invented and new vernacular forms arise from multicultural and multi-confessional encounters.

Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines: Interfaith Relations and Social Power in Medieval Iberia by Simon Barton

Reviewed by: Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines: Interfaith Relations and Social Power in Medieval Iberia by Simon Barton Theresa Earenfight KEYWORDS Muslims, Interfaith Marriage, Sexual Ethics, Women, Concubines, Reconquista, Medieval Iberia SIMON BARTON. Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines: Interfaith Relations and Social Power in Medieval Iberia. U of Pennsylvania P, 2015. 264 pp. The complex dynamics of interfaith relations has occupied scholars of medieval Spain for decades as they try to understand how Jews, Christians, and Muslims managed to live in close proximity for seven centuries. Although we may not all agree on what to call this relationship—convivencia (as Américo Castro argued), conveniencia (Brian Catlos) cultural hybridity (Maria Rosa Menocal), or simply getting along with ambivalent neighbors whose existence was an uneasy equilibrium punctuated by violence (David Nirenberg)—one thing we all can agree on is that people living in medieval Spain worried about sex. A lot. The anxiety of Jews, Christians, and Muslims spills out in the legal documents, historical narratives, polemical and hagiographic works, poetry, music, and visual art of all three religions. Spanish Christians were not alone in their concern about Christian women having sex with non-Christian men. But, unlike Christians elsewhere in medieval Europe, physical proximity and a long war against Muslims made the concern quotidian and far more acute for Spanish Christians. In this new book, Simon Barton "seeks to elucidate why interfaith sex mattered greatly to secular and religious lawmakers" (4). To do this, he focuses on the [End Page 119] Muslim-Christian relationship and links changing attitudes towards female sexual purity with the political and military events that tipped the balance of power. Barton ultimately argues that sex, or to be precise, protecting Christian women from having sex with Muslim men, was a central feature of a masculine "national" political identity that developed in the later Middle Ages. Barton's study ranges from 711 to 1492, but his argument is centered primarily on the twelfth century and most of his sources are from the Christian perspective. His strengths as a political historian of the reconquest period are evident in his skillful synthesis of a wide range of materials. Much of this will be familiar to scholars of medieval Spain: the legendary, but fictional, payment of 100 maidens (cien doncellas) as tribute to a Muslim emir; Subh, the Christian concubine of al-Hakam in the tenth century; King Alfonso VI and Zaida. We all have our own transcriptions of archival material and heavily annotated copies of Olivia Remie Constable's collection that introduced undergraduate students to sources such as the fueros, chronicles, treaties, art, architecture, and poems that document life in a multifaith society. Barton's book treads familiar ground in a field that, since the pioneering work of Robert I. Burns, has documented the rich and complex society of medieval Spain. Scholars have plundered the rich archives of Spain and edited, translated, interpreted, analyzed, and theorized the political and cultural significance of marriages and other sexual encounters between Christians and Muslims. Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines encompasses this richly interdisciplinary zone of religion, politics, social dynamics, culture, art, architecture, and literature. For many Hispanists, this book will be an easy read. But just because you may already have read many of the works on the extensive bibliography does not mean you should ignore it, skim it, or simply recommend it to colleagues who study other parts of Europe. The value of the book is its vantage point. Barton pulls together this wide body of work, plus his own research, and then steps back from the fine-grained studies that take a singular literary work, legal document, or art object. He integrates all of this into a coherent political narrative that hinges on the politics of the shift in the balance of forces during the reconquista in the twelfth century. That century, he argues, was the pivot point that changed the rhetoric of the relationship between military conflict and sexual violence. The four chapters of the book follow a roughly chronological trajectory from the early to the late Middle Ages. Chapter one, "Sex as Power," examines the practice of sexual mixing in which Christian women—through marriage, concubinage, or slavery—were fundamental elements of...

The Cult of St Thomas Becket in the Plantagenet World, c. 1170–c. 1220 ed. by Paul Webster and Marie-Pierre Gelin

Reviewed by: The Cult of St Thomas Becket in the Plantagenet World, c. 1170–c. 1220 ed. by Paul Webster and Marie-Pierre Gelin Hugh Thomas The Cult of St Thomas Becket in the Plantagenet World, c. 1170–c. 1220. Edited by Paul Webster and Marie-Pierre Gelin. (Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, an imprint of Boydell & Brewer. 2016. Pp. xviii, 252. $99.00. ISBN 978-1-78327-161-0.) Sometimes medieval writers left us so little information about specific medieval saints that we can study only their cults rather than the saints themselves. Not so in the case of Thomas Becket. Because contemporaries recorded so much about him shortly after his death and because he was such an important political as well as religious figure, the scholarship on him abounds. As a result, study of the saint has tended to overshadow scholarship on his enormously important cult. This collection of articles, which includes pieces by two of the most important Becket specialists now active in the field, shifts attention from the man to the early decades of devotion to him. The collection begins with a deeply researched and highly informative overview of the cult by Paul Webster. It provides an excellent introduction to the subject of the book along with an extensive account of the existing scholarship. One relatively minor aspect of Webster’s piece that nonetheless stood out to me is his discussion [End Page 161] of material culture related to the cult, including ampullae, badges, vestments, and Limoges caskets. Collectively, these objects give an idea of the scope of the cult and provide a sense of how it was spread in ways other than the spoken or written word. The second article is also an overview, in this case by Anne Duggan, who brings to bear her deep knowledge of the writings surrounding Becket. She discusses reasons, including some quite subtle ones, why Becket, who was by no means the only bishop murdered in the period, became such an important saint. Duggan provides an especially thoughtful discussion of the early liturgy related to the saint. Subsequent essays are more specialized. Marie-Pierre Gelin provides a fascinating picture of how the monks of Christ Church Canterbury connected Becket, largely an outsider to the community even as archbishop, into the traditions of their church. In particular, they sought to tie Becket to Dunstan and Alphege, two of his predecessors who had previously been the two major saints of the community. The monks did so not only by emphasizing the similarities of Becket to his precursors, especially Alphege, who had been murdered by the Danes, but also by treating Dunstan and Alphege as visual prefigurations of Becket in the depictions of them in stained glass windows. Elma Brenner discusses the surprisingly large number of leper houses in Normandy dedicated to Becket, including some founded or refounded by men who had been foes of the saint in his lifetime, most notably Gilbert Foliot and Henry II himself. Michael Staunton, who has written so ably on the hagiographical works on Becket, systematically discusses the appearance of Becket in chronicles and other writings. Colette Bowie and José Manuel Cerda argue that after Henry II embraced the cult of his former friend, then enemy, his daughters, Matilda and Leonor, had a crucial role in spreading the cult to the lands of their husbands, Duke Henry the Lion of Saxony and King Alfonso VIII of Castile. Webster, in a second article, compares the Becket controversy to John’s dispute with Innocent III over the election of Stephen Langton and shows the impact of the Becket controversy on the later dispute. Alyce A. Jordan uses post-colonial theory and extensive prosopographical work to analyze windows dedicated to Becket at Angers and Coutances, and though I was not convinced by all her specific arguments, I found her methodology intriguing. Overall, the collection provides a wealth of interesting information and ideas about the cult of St. Thomas Becket in its first half century. Hugh Thomas University of Miami Copyright © 2019 The Catholic University of America Press

Warsztat pisarski Jana Długosza w świetle Żywotu św. Stanisława

Jan Długosz’s literary skills. The case of Life of St. StanislausThe purpose of the study is to describe Jan Długosz (1415–1480) as a writer and hagiographer on the basis of his Life of St. Stanislaus (1460s, BHL 7839). In the first part of the article author presents a rhetorical division of the analysed source: (1) literary topoi contained in the prologue, (2) hagiographic topoi (with comparative examples derived from lives written by Jerome, Sulpicius Severus, and the Golden Legend), (3) argumentative parts throughout the whole Life (genus inartificiale probationum; genus artificiale probationum: loci a persona, loci a re, exempla, signa; congeries, incrementum, comparatio, ratiocinatio), as well as (4) two epilogues. Then author describes theory of three styles applied in the Life and shows figurae verborum, figurae sententiarum and rhetorical devices used in it. Next, the narrative technique is described. Długosz used in the Life many metaliterary phrases, e.g. to focus his reader-audience on presented events or to underline his own opinion on the presented subject. He also played with oratio obliqua and oratio recta while describing how Bishop Stanislaus rebuked King Boleslaus. In this part it is also shown in what manner Długosz prepared speeches in oratio recta on the basis of statements contained in the Vita maior by Wincenty of Kielce/Kielcza (13th c.). Subsequently, the author presents rhetorical periods and prose rhythm (cursus) applied in the Life. The second part of the study is devoted to the investigation to what extent Długosz wrote the Life independently from the Vita maior. Author shows that Długosz in his work presented information already described by Wincenty, but in the Life he put them in other places to build tension of the quarrel between the bishop and the king. In his conclusion the author states that Długosz’s literary skills were on a high level. Despite the fact that the Life observes the rules set by a literary convention of medieval hagiography. Długosz remained individual: (1) contrary to the hagiographic tradition, he placed in the Life four documents in extenso, (2) he also unconventionally put there seven dates, (3) moreover, in his hagiographic work he mentioned political issues motivated by historical arguments. These points are also reasons for the author’s argument that Długosz wrote all his various works employing the same principles.

"[Ne] com Unlaf mid scipum": A Summary of the Current State of Research with Regard to Olaf Tryggvason's Assumed Presence at the Battle of Maldon

Over the last several dozen years, the issue of assumed presence of Olafr Tryggvason in the battle of Maldon has been discussed repeatedly, predominantly by the British and Scandinavian researchers. However, it should be noted that the analyses were usually perfunctory, or even marginal, and thus they functioned merely as a more or less essential supplement to the subject matter discussed in a particular publication. Among the assumed participants of events from August 991, except for the future ruler of Norway, there is a mention of King of Denmark Sweyn Forkbeard and otherwise unknown Jostein and Guðmund. Since the presence of Sweyn in the battle of Maldon has been disputed by the vast majority of historians, Olafr remains the only historical figure among the assumed leaders of the Scandinavian invaders, which unfortunately is the reason why some historians – and also researchers in literature of the Middle Ages following them – see in him, though quite unreasonably, a leading Viking figure. The present paper therefore attempts to provide a comparison of the sources (apart from the Old English alliterative poem known as “The Battle of Maldon,” those are mainly different versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, as well as various historical or hagiographic works), and their critical confrontation with the above opinion.

ПРОТИВОПОСТАВЛЕНИЕ ОБРАЗОВ АВТОРА И АДРЕСАТА КАК КОМПОЗИЦИОННЫЙ ПРИЕМ В ЖИТИЙНОЙ ЛИРИКЕ ГОНСАЛО ДЕ БЕРСЕО

The article deals with the peculiarities of the composition of Gonzalo de Berceo’s hagiographic works connected with the opposition of author’s and addressee’s images. The techniques that provide еру mobility and dialogueness of the analysed works, namely, the opposition of author’s and addressee’s views, their change or combination, are ascertained. The analysis of the composition peculiarities of Gonzalo de Berceo’s hagiographic lyrics with due regard to the positions of author and addressee makes it possible to conclude that the antithesis under consideration forms a secondary plot stratum, partially remaining outside the texts, but playing a certain role in creating their emotional colouring.

РЕЛИГИОЗНЫЕ ИНТЕНЦИИ В РУССКОЙ БАТАЛЬНОЙ ПРОЗЕ

В статье реализована попытка осмыслить развитие религиозных интенций в батальной прозе. К анализу научной проблемы привлечен обширный материал, прослежен долгий путь развития художественного показа батальных событий от древнерусских текстов до литературы о Великой Отечественной войне, рассмотрена ценностная доминанта защиты родной земли, поведение человека в минуту опасности. Утверждается мысль о заметном влиянии религиозной философской мысли на отношение к войне и осознание ее духовного смысла. The paper reviews the main trends of battle prose from Old Russian texts to the literature of the Great Patriotic War and early postwar period. The research focuses on the patriotic values in the context of history and literature and looks into dynamics of religious and philosophical views of Russian writers on war from axiological perspective. This approach accounts for the relevance and novelty of the study. The author explores historical and literary processes changing with time to define traditions and innovations in depicting battle scenes in Russian literature in different historic periods. The analysis is based on works of different genres: battle stories of ancient Russia which first made the link between religious symbols and military themes explicit hagiographic works which feature motives of protection of the warriors by the Mother of God and consider the conflict between the earthly and the heavenly, selfpreservation and duty. The first literary work to try and interpret war and its aftermath religionwise as an eternal conflict between war and humanity was the collection of stories Milestones(1909). Along with it, perspectives on war by E. Trubetskoy, N. Berdyaev, I. Ilyin are also given prominence to. The author addresses N. Berdyaevs ideas of eschatological problems of war and salvation of humanity reviews V. Korolenkos critique of the revolution and the war from the angle of Biblical principles. It is argued that despite persistent efforts aimed to abolish Christian traditions, Soviet literature on war is entwined with religious undertones. Another avenue of research is the language of military discourse (with a particular focus made on new lexemes, Church Slavonicisms, emphatic intonation). New Soviet concepts embracing spiritual features of the Russians as a nation are examined through Stalins public addresses. The message of battle prose is seen in the idea of Soviet people unity in the face of external threat. Its stylistic features are contingent on image of the protagonist seeking and gaining the sense of Homeland through an individual story unfolding against a historic backdrop. The imagery of the prose involves sacral symbols: HomeWorldGenus. The paper also explores a new form of sermon, new patriotic prayer, prayer for salvation, memorial prayers and ethicalreligious prayers.

THE ORIGINS AND GENESIS OF THE UKRAINIAN PEDAGOGICAL SCIENTIFIC BIOGRAPHY FORMATION (IX CENTURY– THE MIDDLE OF THE XIX CENTURY)

The study of pedagogical personalities is one of the priority directions of the development of modern historical and pedagogical science. The article analyzes the work of researchers who lived and worked in Ukraine and made the first attempts to study the biographies and creative heritage of prominent figures in education and pedagogy. During this period there is a complex and to some extent a contradictory process of Ukrainian pedagogical biography science formation. The article reveals the origins and genesis of the formation of Ukrainian pedagogical scientific biography in the 9th - the middle of the 19th century. Its symbolic beginning (the appearance of the work «The Instruction of Vladimir Monomakh» (1116, 1118) and the contingent stages of development – chronicle (XII – XVIII centuries, with interruptions), hagiographic (XI – XVII centuries), «source study» (XV – 60s of the 19th century) – are defined; the sights of Old Russian writing (chronicles, life, hagiographic works, etc.) which constitute an important source of pedagogical scientific biography and the history of Ukrainian pedagogy are analyzed. The need for their subject research from the specified positions is updated. The authors consider the ancient Russian chronicle biographical tradition, which is represented by princely biographies and obituaries, as a valuable informational source of historical and pedagogical scientific biography. In this context, the following literary monuments are analyzed: «The Instruction of Vladimir Monomakh», «The Tale of Past Years», «Volyn Short Chronicle», Cossack Chronicles of ХVII – XVIII centuries, etc. For six centuries, the Ukrainian hagiographic tradition had been passing a number of stages and accumulated unique written sources, which constitute a separate page for the formation of pedagogical scientific biography. The figure of Theodosius of the Pechersk – one of the first humanistic and socially oriented teachers and educators in Rus – is underlined. It is noted that the Ukrainian hagiographic tradition can become a separate subject of research as a component of the development of pedagogical scientific biography and history of pedagogical thought.

The Monasteries Founded by the Thirteen Syrian Fathers in Iberia

A new step in the history of Christian monasticism in eastern Georgia is associated with thirteen Syrian monks, led by John, who came to Iberia (K‘art‘li) in the mid-sixth century C.E. They were the bearers of a Syrian tradition that implied the combination of an heroic ascetic endeavor and an apostolic mission. They came as spiritual heirs of St. Nino, a Cappadocian virgin who converted Georgia to Christianity in the beginning of the fourth century. Their vitae were first composed by a certain hagiographer named John-Martyrius, but this work does not survive. In the tenth century, the head of the Georgian Church and the distinguished ecclesiastical writer Arsenius II (955–980) depicted their lives and deeds based on different oral and written sources. Later, other unknown authors also wrote additional hagiographical works about these Syrian ascetics. At the beginning of their ascetic and ecclesiastical careers, the thirteen Syrian monks settled on Zedazeni mountain with their spiritual supervisor, John. John later sent them to different corners of the Iberian kingdom in opposition to paganism and Zoroastrianism. They founded monasteries and became influential religious leaders during the second half of the sixth century. Through their vitae, composed by Arsenius and other unknown authors, it is possible to trace the process of transforming the small ascetic communities established by Syrian monks into great feudal organizations. These monasteries had an important impact on the Georgian social and cultural landscape during the Middle Ages.

За Mатей Граматик и говоримия български език през XVI век

The paper examines some peculiarities of Matthew the Grammarian’s language. The famous representative of the Sofia Literary School from the 16th century is the author of an unique work – The Life of St. Nicolas the New of Sofia. The author proposes lexical-semantic classifications of word groups. The basic aim of the paper is to prove that – contrary to popular opinions about Matthew’s strong rhetoric character and distance from the spoken language – his hagiographic work contains visible signs of vernacular language. In addition, the final passage with the miracle of the saint, which has not been included in the most popular new Bulgarian version, is reproduced in original and translation together with commentaries about one rare appellation of disease.

Embodying the beloved: embodiment, (homo)eroticism, and the straightening of desire in the hagiographic tradition of Fakhr al-Dīn ʿIrāqī

ABSTRACTModern treatments of Sufi love theory have had a pronounced tendency to disembody and “straighten” Sufi eroticism in various ways. Focusing primarily on a series of anecdotes from the hagiography of the thirteenth-century Persian poet and profligate Sufi lover, Fakhr al-Dīn ʿIrāqī, the author argues that the centrality of bodies and embodied textual performances of Sufi love theory in Sufi hagiographic works not only militates against efforts to reduce this form of desire to a disembodied or philosophical love of “beautiful forms,” but it also helps us to re-embody a particular type of beloved: a same-sex beloved who often gets obscured and metaphorized out of corporeal existence in much modern scholarship. Medieval Sufi eroticism, the author concludes, should not be viewed as a rejection of the body and sexuality, but rather an effort to harness the considerable affective potency inherent in these phenomena for spiritual ends.

The Roman de Troie by Benoît de Sainte-Maure by Glyn S. Burgess and Douglas Kelly

Reviewed by: The Roman de Troie by Benoît de Sainte-Maure by Glyn S. Burgess and Douglas Kelly Cristina Politano Glyn S. Burgess and Douglas Kelly, The Roman de Troie by Benoît de Sainte-Maure (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer 2017) viii + 475 pp. The goal of this study is to offer an updated translation and recontextualization of one of the most widely-circulated romances of twelfth-century France, Benoît de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie, a medieval retelling of the Trojan War. Loosely assimilated with the "Matter of Rome," a subgenre of the romans antiques that appropriates the literature of antiquity to a medieval framework, Sainte-Maure's vernacular adaptation of Latin sources on the Trojan War prevails as a subject of literary study, due not only to its distinctive merits but, also, to the sizable influence that it had on late Medieval and Renaissance texts across western Europe; Boccaccio's Il Filostrato, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, Robert Henryson's Testament of Cresseid, and William Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida all borrow plots, themes, and structure directly from Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie. With this in mind, Burgess and Kelly's new translation is certain to prove a useful and appropriate text for medieval, Renaissance, and early modern scholars across disciplines. Given the importance of the Roman de Troie in its context, it comes as somewhat of a surprise that Glyn Burgess and Douglas Kelly should be the first to attempt a project of this nature. Robert Kay Gordon's Story of Troilus (Toronto: Medieval Academy of America, 1978 [1934]) compiled all the major medieval versions of Troilus and Criseyde and included a rare English translation of Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie. This sole English version of the twelfth-century Trojan war story, first published in 1934, was incomplete and in need of an update. Given the eminence of each scholar's background in medieval studies, the scope of their critical work, and the nature of the previous [End Page 229] texts that they had offered for translation, both Burgess and Kelly emerge as the most suitable scholars for the task. Douglas Kelly's vast output spans courtly literature and romance in medieval France, while some of Burgess' more recent contributions include a collaboration on the first English translation of Wace's Roman de Rou (St. Helier 2002), as well as his hagiographical works (Leiden: Brill, 2014). Each scholar brings a set of veteran eyes to the project, along with a panoramic view of the literature of the French Middle Ages. Before delving into the translated material, Burgess and Kelly supply an introduction and note on the translation, as well as an outline of the Roman. Their translated text is based on Léopold Constan's edition of the Roman de Troie. The primary text contains a Prologue, an Overview of the Plot, then proceeds to Part One (Causes and Effects), Part Two (The Trojan War), and Part Three (Settling Scores and Surviving), totaling nearly four hundred pages and over thirty thousand lines of translated text. The romance is followed by two appendices, a "Note on Some Common Words in the Roman de Troie," "Manuscripts of the Roman de Troie," an extensive bibliography, and indices of both personal and geographical names. These contain no known omissions, no small feat considering the lengthy and circuitous nature of the plot. It is the introduction and appendices that the advanced reader will deem the edition's most compelling contribution. The appendix on the common words assumes no prior knowledge of Old French, and yet it still contains edifying interventions for the advanced scholar. The appendix on manuscripts provides valuable information for those readers pursuing independent study in the archives. As a result, this volume contributes to the growing body of academic discourse on the romans antiques of the French Middle Ages, particularly as these texts dialogue with issues of Old French morphology, philology, and manuscript studies. Notwithstanding its more sophisticated interventions, this volume is well-suited to the undergraduate student. The translation balances fidelity to the Old French text with readability, thereby availing it to a wide Anglophone audience. The introduction, appendices, and extensive bibliography are...

Brother-Making in Late Antiquity and Byzantium: Monks, Laymen, and Christian Ritual by Claudia Rapp

Reviewed by: Brother-Making in Late Antiquity and Byzantium: Monks, Laymen, and Christian Ritual by Claudia Rapp Albrecht Diem Claudia Rapp Brother-Making in Late Antiquity and Byzantium: Monks, Laymen, and Christian Ritual Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016 Pp. viii + 349. $69.00. Claudia Rapp returns to the debates caused by John Boswell's book, Same Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (1994). Boswell argued that the rituals of adelphopoiesis (brother-making) that could be found in various Byzantine [End Page 342] liturgical handbooks indicated that the Byzantine church recognized same-sex partnerships and developed rituals that placed them on the same level as marriages. Instead of simply criticizing Boswell's thesis as the product of a targeted reading and a misinterpretation of his source material, as many historians did, Rapp revisits the texts brought to light by Boswell and analyzes adelphopoiesis both in its liturgical context and its manifestation in narrative and legal sources. She develops two main theses: Adelphopoiesis played a crucial role in Byzantine society as an important social networking strategy; it is, both in its ritual and as a social practice, rooted in the late antique and early medieval forms of monastic life in small groups and in committed relationships between two monks bound in spiritual brotherhood. Rapp approaches adelphopoiesis from a variety of perspectives. Chapter One places spiritual brotherhood within a broad spectrum of kinship and social relationships and their legal and theological ramifications, ranging from marriage and synteknia (godparenthood) to religious and secular confraternities, friendship relationships and committed same-sex relationships. As such, this chapter provides a highly accessible introduction to the social fabric of Byzantine society. Chapter Two focuses on the material Boswell had brought to the attention of the scholarly world: rituals of brother-making that can be found in a large number of Byzantine liturgical handbooks, produced between the late eighth and the fifteenth centuries. Based on the manuscript dissemination, Rapp shows that liturgical confirmation of spiritual brotherhood was practiced throughout Byzantine history in all parts of the Empire. An analysis of the liturgical form and the place of adelphopoiesis disproves Boswell's thesis that brother-making received a significance analogous to marriage. Beyond the scope of the ritual itself, Chapter Two could serve as an introduction to Greek Orthodox liturgy and the history of liturgical handbooks. Chapter Three, the center part of Rapp's monograph and almost a book in itself, forms a study on small-group monasticism in the late antique world. She shows that both small-scale communities of monks and committed relationships of spiritual couples played a prominent role within the varieties of late antique monastic life. Based on an analysis of Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Apophthegmata Patrum), monastic Historiae and hagiographical texts, but also archaeological and epigraphic evidence, Rapp challenges the paradigm that late antique monastic life was determined by the two prevalent models of eremitic and of rule-based coenobitic life. She shows how spiritual brotherhood was presented through a number of recurring narrative motifs, such as doing penance for one's brother's sins, dying at the same time, or being buried in the same tomb. Besides providing a new reading of the wealth of Apophthegmata, Rapp provides access to a number of exquisite hagiographic works lesser known outside Byzantine studies, such as the Life of Symeon the Fool and the History of the Great Deeds of Bishop Paul of Qentos and Priest John of Edessa. The chapter does not only support Rapp's argument that both brotherhood rituals and the social practice of spiritual brotherhood find their roots in monastic forms of life, but also forms in itself a fundamental contribution to the history of late antique and early medieval monasticism. [End Page 343] Chapter Four shows on the basis of various narrative sources that spiritual brotherhood played an important role as an alternative or supplement to kinship relationships or as a means of connecting different groups in society, bridging socio-economic gaps or even religious boundaries on all levels of Byzantine society. This included the imperial court and diplomatic relationships beyond the boundaries of the Byzantine Empire. Brotherhood relationships could, as Rapp shows in her last chapter, develop their significance because they...

Piętnastowieczny rękopis Vita sancti Adalberti prior ze zbiorów biblioteki klasztornej w Herzogenburgu (z aneksem w sprawie niektórych lekcji kodeksu Klosterneuburg, Stiftsbibliothek 707)

Fifteenth-century manuscript of the Vita sancti Adalberti prior from the collection of the monastic library at Herzogenburg (with an annex concerning certain readings of Codex Klosterneuburg, Stiftsbibliothek 707)The last section of a collective codex (inventory no. 57) kept in the library of the Canons Regular Priory in the Lower Austrian locality of Herzogenburg contains a small legendarium in the fifteenth-century handwriting by a single scribe. The legendarium is composed of more than ten hagiographic works, which include (fols. 235v–244v) a copy of a so-called imperial (“A”) edition of the oldest life of St. Wojciech (Adalbert). This manuscript had not been taken into consideration in heretofore research dealing with the history of the text. The hagiographic collection from the codex in question was written in 1430 or somewhat later, as it follows from an annotation made by the scribe, Erhart of Weitra, probably a lay clergyman attested in the 1420s. The detailed motives of embarking upon this task, just as the original purpose of the collection, remain unknown. Nor are we familiar with the circumstances in which it found itself in Herzogenburg. A comparison of the Herzogenburg copy of Vita prior s. Adalberti with other manuscripts of this work makes it possible to ascertain that the sole prototype of the copy executed by Erhart was the manuscript preserved up to this day and known to researchers (Klosterneuburg, Stiftsbibliothek, cod. 707, fols. 107r–119v). The article’s appendices collate characteristic readings of the Herzogenburg copy of Vita prior and those distinguishing it from the Klosterneuburg version. The author has also added supplements and corrected certain information about the readings of the latter manuscript offered in the edition by Jadwiga Karwasińska.

The date of the Martyrdom of Simeon bar Sabba’e and the persecution of Christians in Persia under Shapur II

Abstract:The article is a contribution to the more than one-hundred-year-long discussion on the date of death of Simeon bar Sabba’e, metropolitan bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, and the beginning of the persecution of Christians in Persia during the reign of Shapur II. The author stresses the point that the main source on Simeon’s martyrdom is a hagiographical work and, as such, it should be interpreted strictly on the basis of the principles relevant to the genre. Taking some of the hypotheses formulated to date into consideration, the author holds the view that it is not possible to determine the precise date of Simeon’s death. It could only be assumed that it must have occurred somewhere between February 344 and July 345, most likely in late 344.

THE HIMYARITE KINGDOM ON THE EVE OF AND AFTER THE ETHIOPIAN DOMINANCE IN THE SIXTH CENTURY A.D. IN THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. ARETHAS AND HIS COMPANIONS AND IN THE ACTS OF ST. GREGENTIUS

Based on two important hagiographical works written in Greek, the Martyrdom of St. Arethas and his companions and the Acts of St. Gregentius, the aim of this paper is to continue my preliminary study of the countries around the Red Sea in pre-Islamic times, especially in the sixth century A.D. The most valuable information in the Martyrdom concerns the hazardous voyage of the Ethiopian army from the main port of Adulis across the Red Sea to South Arabia (ca 525 A.D.). This work illuminates aspects of that expedition which do not appear in such detail in any other source. In addition, it describes the ports of the Red Sea in the sixth century, i.e., Klysma, Bereniki, Adulis, etc., corroborating the finds of archaeology and epigraphy. Concerning the controversial Acts of St. Gregentius, the present author has tried to discuss only some vital information reflecting the social structure of South Arabia during its Ethiopian occupation until the Persian conquest of it (ca 525 A.D. – ca 570 A.D.), and attempted to trace the origin of just one law (the treatment of animals) among those supposedly imposed on the Himyarites by the so-called archbishop Gregentius.

Johnny Cash: The LifeRobertHilburn. Little, Brown and Company, 2013.

Johnny Cash: The Life Robert Hilburn. Little, Brown and Company, 2013.Robert Hilburn, longtime music critic for Los Angeles Times (1970-2006), has produced a biography of Johnny Cash is likely to be as definitive a biography of the man in black as we are to see. Hilburn knew Cash well and was only journalist present at Cash's legendary Folsom Prison concert in 1968. He knows and has interviewed many people who were close to Cash, and he has access to deeply personal letters between Cash and family members and friends. Although Hilburn deeply respects man and his music, Johnny Cash: The Life is not a hagiographical work. He gives reader Cash, warts and all. His book belongs on a shelf with Peter Guralnick's biographies of Elvis Presley and Sam Cooke.The broad outlines of Cash's life are well known to Cash fans and to many members of general public even if they are not fans of Cash or of country music. Hilburn fills in these broad outlines with often chilling details. He makes clear Cash had an addictive personality. Most notably he was addicted to cigarettes (from an early age), sex, and drugs (primarily amphetamines and more potent pain killers). In some ways, Cash's life reads like a cliche of road life of musicians. The road can be a killer, and it can lead to bad habits. Cash was not immune.Cash was married to two women, Vivian Liberto Cash and, more famously, June Carter Cash. Vivian and Johnny met in San Antonio when she was seventeen and he was about to deploy to Germany as a member of US Air Force. They married in 1954 and divorced twelve years later. Most of this time they lived apart; Johnny in Tennessee and Vivian in California. They had four daughters, including Roseanne, who would also become a country music legend. While Cash wrote I Walk Line as an assurance to Vivian, he walked over line numerous times in their marriage. A relationship with Los Angeles teenage rockabilly star Lorrie Collins (who would marry Cash's manager) and one with Billie Jean Horton, widow of both Hank Williams and Johnny Horton, were most prominent of these affairs. In Hilburn's account, Cash proposed to Billie Jean shortly after Johnny Horton's death and while still married to Vivian. Not surprisingly, Vivian and her daughters were harmed psychologically by what seemed to them to be an utter indifference on Cash's part. Cash would have estranged relationships with each of his daughters for rest of his life. Cash's marriage to June Carter is stuff of legend, and most of legend seems to be true enough. But even in this marriage, Cash could not remain faithful. Hilburn even suggests possibility of an affair with Anita Carter, June's sister. At one point, June filed divorce papers, but they were able to reconcile and renewed their wedding vows in 1980.Cash's problems with drugs are well known, but harrowing account given by Hilburn shows problems went much deeper than is commonly understood. Cash consumed pills way many people consume popcorn. In mid-1960s, there were so many overdoses and near-overdoses that everyone in touring party cited various times and places (293) when Cash had slipped into a drug-induced unconsciousness. …