Lateran Council Research Articles

Adoring and Eating: Reception of the Eucharist in the Theology of Albert the Great

Adoring and Eating: Reception of the Eucharist in the Theology of Albert the Great Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski O.P. (bio) The thirteenth century was a time of Eucharistic contrasts. Eucharistic devotion blossomed, as expressed by the emergence of the elevation of the host at Mass. Yet the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 had to command yearly communion. Mass attendance was common, but reception of the sacrament was rare. The relation between these two trends has been read with various emphases. In one reading, focus on the visible in the liturgy was largely superstitious. Emphasis on the “holy matter” made at Mass eclipsed the laity’s recognition of themselves as the body of Christ, so that receiving communion became irrelevant or frightening, something belonging to the priesthood and no longer the people.1 A contrasting reading identifies a genuine Eucharistic awe, which engendered both the desire to gaze upon Christ at the elevation as well as a (perhaps exaggerated) fear of receiving him unworthily.2 The analysis is made even more complex by further [End Page 213] considerations that need to be integrated into either reading. For example, strong penitential customs surrounding accidental misuse of the sacrament may have played a part in contributing to reluctance to receive the sacrament.3 Feudal awareness of the corporate body, which underlined the difference between people and priest, may have meant that the people found their identity as the body of Christ affirmed in their very distinction from the priest.4 Laity may have thus satisfied their genuine desire for union with Christ by making a “spiritual communion” as they saw the priest as the representative or “mouth” of the people receiving Christ.5 The writings of Albert the Great, Dominican preacher, theologian and (for a short time) bishop need to be seen against the background of this tapestry of interpretation and experience. Albert lived from around 1200 to 1280, his life spanning most of the thirteenth century in a vocation that required him to ponder and comment upon the religious practice and doctrine of his time.6 It is always illuminating to consider the thoughts of a saint on theological questions: the saints were citizens of their times, influenced by the pattern of life and thought into which they were born but with a lived experience of the light of God found at the very heart of things. Albert’s understanding of Holy Communion for the laity was touched by the practice and legislation of the Middle Ages and by his own substantial Eucharistic piety.7 [End Page 214] Albert’s theological teaching emphasizes both the substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the role of the Eucharist as food for the people of God. In his teaching on the frequency of communion he explains the reasonableness of the received Church legislation (communion once a year, minimum) while presenting a theological vision that ultimately is in tension with the practice of infrequent communion. I. Theological Works The four most important works for studying the thought of Albert on frequency of communion straddle Albert’s time of active theological work. Two date from the beginning of his theological career, and two from the end. The early works are his De sacramentis and his Commentary on the Sentences.8 De sacramentis was written during the early 1240s during Albert’s time as a Master of Theology at the University of Paris. It is significant for its emphasis on the sacramental nature of the Eucharist as food.9 De sacramentis follows the general structure of theological inquiry in Lombard’s Sentences. It complements Albert’s Commentary on the Sentences, but is much more succinct.10 Albert’s Commentary on the Sentences was begun in Paris but finished at the end of the 1240s during his assignment at the Dominican house in Cologne.11 It contains his most detailed and thorough treatment of Eucharistic theology. Some of Albert’s language about modes of receiving the sacrament shifts between De sacramentis and the Sentences commentary. [End Page 215] The two other important works are the pair De mysterio missae and De corpore domini. These were written in the 1270s, near the end of Albert...

Die Collectio Cheltenhamensis: eine englische Decretalensammlung. Analyse beruhend auf Vorarbeitung von Walther Holtzmann ed. by Gisela Drossbach

Reviewed by: Die Collectio Cheltenhamensis: eine englische Decretalensammlung. Analyse beruhend auf Vorarbeitung von Walther Holtzmann ed. by Gisela Drossbach Uta-Renate Blumenthal Die Collectio Cheltenhamensis: eine englische Decretalensammlung. Analyse beruhend auf Vorarbeitung von Walther Holtzmann (†). Edited by Gisela Drossbach. [Monumenta Iuris Canonici, Series B: Corpus Collectionum, vol. 10.] (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. 2014. Pp. 304. €60,00. ISBN 978-88-210-0925-9.) Papal decretals, in every case “a response from the centre to a consultation or appeal,”1 were the most important element in the formation of the new law, the ius novum, that next to Gratian’s Decretum (c. 1140) dominated the teaching and practice of law at universities and courts prior to 1234, when Pope Gregory IX issued the Liber Extra. The process of collecting these papal decretal letters began in the form of appendices to the Decretum but quickly evolved into what seems myriad individual, independent collections. The impetus to analyze and/or edit many of the almost ninety decretal collections is linked primarily with the names of Walther Holtzmann (†1963), Stephan Kuttner (†1996), Charles Duggan (†1999), and Peter Landau. Gisela Drossbach, who recently coedited with Landau an analysis of the French collection known as Collectio Francofurtana,2 now presents the analysis of the English Collectio Cheltenhamensis, a name derived from the castle of Cheltenham—the home of Sir Thomas Phillipps, who owned the manuscript that is preserved today at the British Library with the signature Egerton 2819. The analysis includes, as usual, incipit and explicit of a text, its identification (where possible), calendar entries (if available), as well as the place of publication of the decretal (p. 25). As in the case of the Francofurtana, Drossbach has also included references to other decretal collections that contained the same decretal, as well as notes and comments whenever applicable, including references to secondary literature. The Cheltenhamensis is particularly noteworthy because it combines English and continental influences, deriving its original nucleus from a source also used by the “Worcester” tradition, but also adding in different stages material from the French Bamberg and Frankfurt collections (p. 19). Drossbach suggests, quoting Charles Duggan, that the Cistercian abbot Baldwin of Ford, in 1180 bishop of Worcester and in 1185 archbishop of Canterbury (†1190), could have inspired the collection (p. 21) and that the Egerton manuscript actually belonged to Ford or his circle, adding that “it was probably written in a monastery in the vicinity” (p. 22). According to Drossbach, the manuscript was completed in its final form in the two decades after 1193 (p. 12). Evidently, the archbishop cannot have owned the extant copy of the Cheltenhamensis. [End Page 598] Given the limitations of an analysis, designed to precede an eventual edition and still less than complete in some respects, a user will not necessarily be bothered by a certain vagueness in the introduction that leaves room for later precision. It should be noted, however, that the author concluded surprisingly and without convincing proof that the text of the canons of the Third Lateran Council of 1179, found on folios 11ra–16rb of the Egerton manuscript as well as in many other decretal collections, were not part of the Collectio Cheltenhamensis (p. 28). The connection between the Third Lateran and the decretal collections is an intriguing issue. Based on Holtzmann’s notes and following Kuttner, Landau insisted that the canons from 1179 cannot be considered an independent section “but instead constitute the first title of the collection.”3 As proof for this assertion, Landau cites a contemporary gloss he edited to c.7 of Lateran III = Chelt. 1.11. This gloss—in the same hand C as other glosses found in the codex—refers to five later sections of Chelt. with a simple infra. Drossbach, who referred to Landau’s respective article, seems to have arrived at her contrasting conclusion simply because the hand of the relevant fascicle differed from that of the scribes A, B, and C whom she identified in other sections of the Egerton codex with the assistance of Michael Gullick and Martin Brett (p. 11n14). She concluded that the compilers must have decided to acquire the 1179 texts from another scriptorium and to “place the quire...

Bona fides presumitur in classical Canon Law

AbstractIn 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council settled a controversy between theologians and jurists with regard to the duty to make restitution. This moral duty was not always recognized at law because of the limitation of claims, which the jurists derived from Roman Law (C. 7.39.3) and which they termed as longissimi temporis praescriptio. Hence, correcting a statute that cannot be observed without peril to one’ soul, the council required that the person who prescribes, must not know at any time that the object belongs to someone else. The effect in legal practice may have been minor, for the canonists presumed the possessor’s ignorance after thirty years of uncontested possession. It was to the other party, the claimant, to disprove this presumption. Even if, by exception, there was a presumption to the contrary, the defendant invoking prescription could avoid proving his good faith by oath, for the presumtion then derived from the combination of the lapse of time and a proper cause (titulus) of his possession

Sorcery, Heresy, and the Authority of the Church

This paper argues that there were multiple forms of heresy implemented by the Church to control opposing ideas and knowledge in the Middle Ages. The term “heresy” shift meanings for its original conception to include all beliefs that were opposed to official Church doctrine, including magic and sorcery. The inquisitorial process was implemented as a response to the laity’s attempts to interpret Church doctrine for themselves alongside their traditional beliefs. As he concept of heresy changed, so too did the Church’s view of magic, sorcery, and witchcraft. Before the inquisitorial process became widespread, magic was considered an error that could be fixed through a penitential process. By the time of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, the church had decided on what constituted heretical behaviour, and who had the right to punish heretics.

Pope, Council, and the Filioque in Western Theology, 1274–1439

The doctrine of the Filioque was officially determined at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, at the Second Council of Lyon in 1274 the determination was clarified, and this clarification was repeated in 1439 in the formulation of the Council of Florence. Yet the Filioque was already universally accepted in the Latin West by 1100, while the clarification at Lyon was the general teaching before 1274. Rather than establish doctrine, then, Innocent iii at Lateran iv and Gregory x at Lyon ii merely codified it, offering codifications that were later incorporated into canon law under Gregory ix and Boniface viii, respectively. A survey of several dozen university treatments of the procession of the Holy Spirit between 1274 and 1439 reveals that the conciliar pronouncements under the popes played little role in the discussion, and where they appear, it is usually as a brief statement of what was official. By the late fourteenth century, some theologians doubted that the Filioque as expressed in 1215 and 1274 could be defended rationally, an indication that convincing the Greeks at Florence to accept true dogmatic union would be impossible.

Les débuts du monoénergisme. Rectifications concernant ce qui s’est passé entre Cyrus d’Alexandrie, Serge de Constantinople et S. Sophrone de Jérusalem

The article shows that St Sophronius met Cyrus of Antioch after the Union (3 June 633) between the Chalcedonians and the Theodosians had been signed. The letter of Cyrus which Sophronius brought to Sergius of Constantinople after the failure of his meeting with Cyrus cannot be identified as the Ep. ad Sergium CP (CPG 7611) as Grumel and Winkelmann considered: it was another letter, the existence of which had already been postulated by Hefele, a short extract of which is preserved in the Acts of the Lateran Council of 649. Neither can the letter forbidding all discussion of one or two operations in the two natures of Christ, which Sergius sent to Cyrus after his meeting with Sophronius, be identified as the Ep. ad Cyrum Alex. (CPG 7605).

Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800–1200

In this enjoyable, learned and persuasive book, Maureen C. Miller looks at the clothing of secular clergy in the Latin West, with an emphasis on the centuries between 800 and 1200. The chronological boundaries are flexible at either end and with good reason: most clerical vestments developed in the early church and it was in the decades following the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 that they came to be particularly intensely discussed and interpreted. Miller is concerned with how priests dressed both while officiating and outside of their liturgical functions (‘clerical street-wear’, p. 13). In fact, the distinction between the two is one of her main themes: she charts the rise of a ‘new ornate style’ of liturgical vestments—which ‘[came] into view in the mid-ninth century and [was] ubiquitous throughout Europe by the late eleventh’ (p. 145)—on the one hand and the generalized usage of a simple, long, dark closed cloak for wearing outside of sacral space on the other. This is a distinction that we know from Catholic and high Protestant churches to this day: colourful ornamented, many-layered vestments in services, simple dark clothing elsewhere, albeit with considerable room for variation in either case (think of the joyfully satirized ecclesiastical fashion show in Fellini’s Roma ).

Canon Law, Religion, and Politics: Liber Amicorum Robert Somerville ed. by Uta-Renate Blumenthal, Anders Winroth, and Peter Landau (review)

Reviewed by: Canon Law, Religion, and Politics: Liber Amicorum Robert Somerville ed. by Uta-Renate Blumenthal, Anders Winroth, and Peter Landau Stanley Chodorow Canon Law, Religion, and Politics: Liber Amicorum Robert Somerville. Edited by Uta-Renate Blumenthal, Anders Winroth, and Peter Landau. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. 2012. Pp. xix, 320. $69.95. ISBN 978-0-8132-1975-2.) Robert Somerville has spent his career tracing the gossamer threads connecting the surviving sources of medieval canon law, especially in the transmission of conciliar decrees. The work is delicate and often tentative, but Somerville has tried to give us some confidence in our knowledge. Many of those who have contributed essays to this volume honoring Somerville have used the occasion to take up shards of the medieval legal tradition and try their hand at what might be called the Somerville project. The book is a very fitting tribute to Somerville’s style and practice. [End Page 356] Somerville’s work has focused on the late-eleventh and early-twelfth centuries when the Church asserted and ultimately established its independent role in the politics of Europe. Conciliar legislation continued to regulate the life of the Church, but from this point on it also played a major role in the growth of secular institutions and in the political arena. The book is divided into three sections—Canon Law, Religion, and Politics—corresponding to the book’s title. The first section, “Canon Law,” consists of nine essays. With two exceptions, all of these pieces deal with the period that has been the focus of Somerville’s research. Bruce Brasington summarizes and edits a summula on excommunication and anathema from early in the second half of the twelfth century, and Peter Landau argues the case that the famous Ulpianus de edendo originated in Durham in the 1150s and was the first ordo iusticiarius in what became a library of such works. However, what distinguish nearly all of these essays are the knotty problems of transmission, dating, and geographical origin of the works tackled by the authors and their cautious, tentative conclusions. These are true essays, probing and testing the arguments for claims, and providing unfinished building blocks for a history of law. They will be of great value to those studying the history of particular works or traditions but not to those who seek sound foundations for works on general subjects. The second section, “Religion,” consists of two essays on theological works, Charles Shrader on the Eucharistic treatises of Heriger of Lobbes (c. 940–1007) and Martin Brett on the De corpore et sanguine Domini of Ernulf of Canterbury (1039/40–1124). Brett’s article includes an edition of the text. In the editors’ view, theology and canon law were separate subjects, although, as James Brundage notes in his essay in the third section of the book (p. 277), until the late-twelfth century practitioners did not regard canon law and theology as distinct fields of study. Nearly all of the essays in the third section, “Politics,” are by Somerville’s contemporaries—Detlev Jasper, Edward Peters, Giles Constable, Kenneth Pennington, Charles Donahue Jr., and James Brundage. Their essays tend to be more definitive than those in the earlier sections, in the sense that the authors draw conclusions from their research. Yet, several emulate Somerville in taking on topics about which conclusions are elusive. Jasper’s study of the transmission of historical examples of deposition and excommunication of emperors collected by papal partisans during the Investiture Conflict draws the tentative conclusion that a manuscript of St. Gall (Stiftsbibliothek 676) contains a version derived from two earlier lists, and Jasper edits the text from that manuscript. Pennington takes up a question raised by Somerville about a decree of the Second Lateran Council that prohibited monks and canons regular to study Roman law. He answers some, but not all, of the questions posed by Somerville in that study. Constable also deals with a subject close to Somerville: the evidence for Pope Urban II’s preaching of the first crusade. Most of the essays in the third section are contributions related to their authors’ longtime research and are useful additions to the puzzle of medieval legal...

The Preacher of the Fourth Lateran Council

The Preacher of the Fourth Lateran Council Andrew W. Jones (bio) The Fourth Lateran Council held at Rome in November 1215 was the culmination of the pontificate of Innocent III (1198–1216) and focused on crusade, heresy, and the reform of the Church—the preoccupations of this pope’s reign.1 While it may not be possible to treat the Council’s canons as the personal writings of the pope, it seems that Innocent himself set the agenda.2 One area of reform that figured prominently was preaching. The Council treated the subject to an extent unprecedented in the medieval Church.3 It reiterated portions of Lucius III’s famous bull Ad abolendam (1184) that connected preaching outside of the jurisdictional structure of the Church with heresy.4 It acknowledged the importance of providing spiritual food to the laity through preaching and mandated that the bishops, if unable to preach themselves, appoint suitable men to the office.5 It condemned the practices of hiring preachers and hawking relics.6 Furthermore, it connected closely the morality and financial support of the clergy with their preaching duty.7 While historians have noted this emphasis on preaching as one component of the Council’s focus on pastoral care, the office of preaching itself as visible in the canons has not previously been examined [End Page 121] in depth.8 Who then was the ideal preacher as envisaged by Lateran IV? Of what did the preacher’s function consist? On what did he base his legitimacy and authority? And when the Council asserted the importance of preaching, to what exactly was it referring? Indeed, what did “to preach” mean? A reasonable starting place to attempt to answer these questions is the examination of the thought of Innocent III, and what we find is that preaching for Innocent was not simply instruction or exhortation; rather, it was liturgical and sacramental. And the preacher of the Fourth Lateran Council was not simply orthodox, well-educated, or eloquent; he was first and foremost clerical and Christological. Preaching was an intrinsic component of the Church’s sacramental nature. Situated within the earthly liturgy, preaching was a structural component in the bridge between heaven and the world that was the sacramental reality of the Church. Indeed, a central proposition of this article is that it is Innocent’s understanding of the Mass as the ultimate sacramental event, where the incarnate Christ and his Mystical Body, the Church, are united, that provides the hermeneutic for understanding the pope’s and Lateran IV’s “preaching.” Innocent’s emphasis on preaching in Lateran IV and throughout his reign ought to be understood as a part of the pontiff’s attempt to extend the theophany and harmony of the liturgy into the world. As with Innocent’s actions throughout his pontificate, in the canons of Lateran IV the practical and prudential were subsumed into an overarching, incarnational, and sacramental theological vision. In Vineam Domini, the letter of April 19, 1213, by which Innocent summoned the Council, he stated that its agenda was “to uproot vices and implant virtues, to correct abuses and reform morals, to eliminate heresies and strengthen faith, to allay differences and establish peace, to check persecutions and cherish liberty, to persuade Christian princes and peoples to grant succor and support for the Holy Land from both clergy and laymen.”9 This is an echo of Jeremiah 1:10, and the same imagery was commonly used by Innocent and others to describe the papal office, together with that of the episcopate, and the [End Page 122] mission of the Church in its entirety.10 To Innocent, the business of the Council was that of the Church itself. The clearest window into Innocent’s understanding of this business is provided by his sermon Desiderio desideravi, which he addressed to the assembled fathers at the opening Mass of the first conciliar session.11 The sermon is an exegesis of Luke 22:15: “With desire I have desired to eat this pasch with you, before I suffer”—a meditation on the paschal mystery. Innocent moved from a traditional scriptural exegesis of the word pasch—noting that it could sometimes mean...

Reform in 1215: Magna Carta and the Fourth Lateran Council

Reform in 1215: Magna Carta and the Fourth Lateran Council Ken Pennington 800 years ago, in June and November of 1215, two great events took place that have shaped our imaginations about law, reform, and constitutional and individual rights to the present day: The meeting of King John of England with the magnates of his realm on the fields of Runnymede and the great church council in which the prelates of the Church gathered around Pope Innocent III in the papal basilica San Giovanni in Laterano were focused on the the great issues of the time. Both meeting produced documents that have been interpreted by scholars, read by students, and debated by everyone. By 1215 King John had lost almost all of his northern continental possessions. The core of the Angevin empire, Normandy, was lost. Anglo-French barons who still held lands in Normandy owed their primary allegiance to King Phillip Augustus, not to King John. The barons and churchmen who remained under his sovereignty chaffed under his rule. It is clear from the document that the barons forced John to sign when they met with John on Runnymede in 15 July 2015, they intended to impose reform on the king. We might sum up their objectives as being the administration of justice and defending their customary rights in what remained of the John’s kingdom. Magna Carta was a major event in King John’s reign. Because the archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, played such a significant role in the affair that took place on Runnymede, scholars have wondered about the connections canon law and its jurisprudence embedded in the Ius commune might have had in the minds of those who drafted the document.1 [End Page 97] A larger question is the relationship of the Ius commune to English common law in the early stages of its development. Charles Donahue wanted to have a word to illustrate the relationship. He chose ‘influence’. Twenty-five years ago he wrote:2 We need a word to tie the ius commune to the common law of England. The standard word is ‘influence’, and the standard meaning of the word is direct borrowing of rules and sometimes broader principles. That may seem as if it would be a statement that would evoke little controversy in the world of legal history. Nevertheless, it has. Scholarly attempts to explore the ‘influences’ that the jurisprudence of the Ius commune might have had on English common law and Magna Carta have been met with criticism, some of it rather pointed.3 In this essay I will examine possible ‘influences’ that the Ius commune may have had on Magna Carta and the relationship and possible connections between the two most significant reform assemblies in the early thirteenth century: the king, prelates, and barons who gathered at Runnymede and the pope, cardinals, bishops, abbots, and clergy who congregated in San Giovanni in Laterano. I begin at a strange place, neither in England nor in Rome, but in Rouen, France. A manuscript resides there that dates to the early thirteenth century and belonged to the lepers’ hospital of Saint Gilles in the Norman city of Pont-Audemer. It contains documents related to the hospital and its founding but also contains the canons of the Fourth Lateran Council and cheek by jowl a French translation of Magna Carta.4 James Clarke [End Page 98] Holt had examined the cartulary and published an edition of the French text in 1974.5 Holt tried to explain why Magna Carta was translated into French and why a copy of it found its way into a cartulary of a small foundation in Normandy. He noted that the manuscript copy of Magna Carta had the text of a writ addressed to the sheriff of Hampshire appended to it.6 The writ instructed the sheriff to compel people to obey the twenty five barons who had been designated by the charter to enforce its provisions.7 Bishop of Winchester, Peter des Roches was appointed the sheriff of Hamsphire in 1216.8 Bishop Peter had an unusually interesting career. Born in Touraine he rose from being the archdeacon in the diocese of Poitiers to become Lord Chamberlain...

Une tentative pontificale de reprise en main du Midi : la légation du cardinal Pietro Beneventano en 1214-1215

Pascal Montaubin, A pontifical tentative to take in hand the south of France again : the legateship of Cardinal Peter Beneventano in 1214-1215 In 1213, Innocent III sought to give priority to his project of a crusade towards Jerusalem. This project implied, first of all, the pacification of the south of France that the Albigensian Crusade had profoundly destabilised. In order to contain the territorial appetites of the crusaders and to obtain the submission of the southern barons, the Pope resolved to send a legate drawn from the Sacred College to replace Arnaud Amalric, who was too favourable to Simon de Montfort. Announced in May 1213, the despatch of this alter ego of the Pope was delayed by the rebellion of Pedro II of Aragon. Innocent Ill’s choice fell in January 1214 on his faithful cardinal Peter Beneventano, a great jurist with a good experience of the affairs of the Curia. From spring 1214 to summer 1215, the legate travelled through Provence, Languedoc and Aragon, trying to limit the consequences of the battle of Muret. He worked towards the submission of the Occitan barons, in the conditions of the Roman peace, which constituted the means of protecting them from the crusaders while awaiting the pontifical judgement provided for by the Fourth Lateran Council. His success was particularly remarkable in the Kingdom of Aragon, vassal of the Apostolic See, where he preserved the interests of the young James I. His religious action was less visible than his political overtures, but the Council of Montpellier of 8th January 1215 constituted a high point of the ecclesiastical reform and manifested itself in the work of cardinal-legate Robert de Courson on the subject. But this encounter demonstrates also the solidarity of the Languedocian episcopacy with Simon de Montfort, and the legate is obliged to apply, from May onwards, a policy more favourable to the crusaders, consistent with the orders of Innocent III, who is more and more surrounded by the enemies of the Raimondins.

The Culture of Inquisition in Medieval England. Edited by Mary C. Flannery and Katie L. Walter. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2013. viii + 194 pp.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)The Culture of Inquisition in Medieval England . Edited by Mary C. Flannery and Katie L. Walter . Cambridge : D.S. Brewer , 2013. viii + 194 pp.Book Reviews and NotesAside from the crusades, there may be no phenomenon more associated with medieval religion and more disdained by modern opinion than the inquisition. Now nearly synonymous with interrogation, the mere term evokes institutional repression and persecution of scientists, free thinkers, and heretics, of anyone, in other words, who dares question church or state doctrine. Yet, as the editors and contributors to this collection make clear, the practice of inquisitio emerged from and developed within a complex set of ecclesiastical and juridical contexts in the years following the Fourth Lateran Council. And, attending to these larger cultural contexts complicates many of our long-held assumptions about inquisition. Rather than being solely a strict system ferreting out heresy and prosecuting dissenters, this book shows that inquisition was often a flexible set of practices that emphasized correction, advocated discernment, and even created new spaces theological inquiry, self-expression, and literary invention. Like confession (its more private sibling), medieval inquisition was a dialogic mode that was generative as well as restrictive, enabling opportunities personal and social identity formation. Focusing on the cultural effects of inquisitional processes in England, this collection offers an important and novel set of studies of the public and private significance of inquisition, confession, and the dynamics of religious dissent in England from the late Middle Ages through the early years of the English reformations.The book is falls into two parts. Its first three chapters examine the legal and ecclesiastic contexts in which the practice of inquisition takes shape in medieval England, with the remaining chapters building on this background to explore the ways in which Middle English literature engages, reflects upon, and appropriates inquisitional practices and modes. Henry Ansgar Kelly's impressive opening essay surveys the juridical and historical terrain of inquisition in medieval England, considering its rise in the ecclesiastical courts, its association with the prosecution of heretics, and its emphasis on prior public knowledge (publica fama ) of the accused person's crime. Edwin Craun's chapter, on the other hand, explores the practice of disclosing another's private sin to the authorities, showing that medieval pastoral writers and canonists such denunciation was an alternate way of beginning the process of inquisition, and one that aimed to move the accused to penance. The next chapter, Ian Forrest's essay on lollardy, inquisition, and English provincial constitutions, finds a revival of provincial canon law in the wake of heresy in England. Ultimately, as Forrest shows, for English churchmen, inquisition was an intellectually creative activity and an activity inseparable from their broader pastoral and judicial operations (59).As the remaining essays in this collection make clear, this creative potential extended far beyond legal culture. After establishing the historical and juridical contexts of and issues surrounding inquisition in England, the volume turns toward the literary engagements with it. …

Music in Early Franciscan Thought by Peter V. Loewen (review)

Music in Early Thought. By Peter V. Loewen. (The Medieval Fran- ciscans, no. 9.) Leiden: Brill, 2013. [xiii, 262 p. ISBN 9789004248175 (hardcover); ISBN 9789004248182 (e- book), $182.] Illustrations, facsimiles, bibliography, index.Music in Early Thought is an in- terdisciplinary study that examines the writ- ing and thinking of men whose works on music and related arts were widely dissemi- nated during the rise of the Order in the thirteenth century. Peter V. Loewen's principal contribution is the ar- gument that Franciscans had an immense in- fluence on late medieval ecclesiology and preaching, with music as a key part of a campaign of reform and renewal in the Church. This came as a bit of a surprise to me, and might to others, because contem- porary Franciscans' charisms are about al- most anything but music. In fact, issues of peace, social justice, poverty, and reconcili- ation are among the primary concerns of their Order in the modern age, and no I have ever known had an inter- est in music. Conversely, monastic tradi- tions of the sung Office and Mass, along with theoretical education in music, are most often associated historically with Benedictine foundations and cathedral scholae cantorum and this still holds true today. Loewen supplies the evidence that Franciscans indeed had a deep and abiding influence on the use of music as part of a larger program of preaching, teaching, penance, and evangelization.The book is ninth in the series The Medieval Franciscans, which explores discipline-specific topics. It culls from recent scholarship and interest in the Franciscan vision not only in areas of phi- losophy, theology, and spirituality, but also in its application to social, missionary and pastoral work, art, liturgy and exegesis (back cover). The series is an annual publi- cation edited by Steven J. McMichael. Other volumes in the series cover diverse and fascinating topics such as Friars and Jews in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (2004). The collection demonstrates the interdisciplinarity of its commitment to the movement from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries.Through the pages of Music in Early Thought, it becomes apparent that medieval Franciscans retained their founder's use and understanding of music, along with dance, gesture and drama, as being essential to their work in the world. These themes were taken up by the theologians-musicians-theorists to whose work Loewen dedicates chapters: Lotario di Segni (Pope Innocent III), Alexander of Hales, William of Middleton, David von Augsburg, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, Bartholomaeus Anglicus, and Juan Gil de Zamora. Loewen fluently traverses several disciplines to fashion a thought-provoking work of scholarship in medieval musicology and philosophy and demonstrates an admirable command of theological, liturgical, and art historical materials. He brings medieval sources that have not been well understood together with ones that he has brought to light.The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 opened up a place for Franciscans to preach and serve in other pastoral capaci- ties along with secular clergy. Six years later, they were required to sing the divine office according to the custom of other clerics (p. 3). The combined effect of these changes must have altered the trajec- tory of their self-understanding as street beggars witnessing to the poverty of Christ. Now they were placed among parochial clergy and practiced the daily round of sung prayer associated with confidence and monasteries, and required skills and understanding in the practice of chant, all the while maintaining their identity as mendicants.Generally speaking, as chant became less an oral tradition and more a written one, music theory became more important. But why have musicologists not previously ex- amined medieval theory? Loewen asserts that it was embedded in en- cyclopedic works that had escaped the at- tention of modern musicologists. …

IV. Die Dekretsumme ‚Tractaturus magister‘ und die Kanonistik in Reims in der zweiten Hälfte des 12. Jahrhunderts

Article IV. Die Dekretsumme ‚Tractaturus magister‘ und die Kanonistik in Reims in der zweiten Hälfte des 12. Jahrhunderts was published on August 1, 2014 in the journal Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte: Kanonistische Abteilung (volume 100, issue 1).

Teutonic Knights and Poland at the Fifth Lateran Council

Teutonic Knights and Poland at the Fifth Lateran Council

Difficulties in defending Aristotle. Thomas Aquinas on the eternity of the world

After the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 settled the question in the West whether or not the world exists from eternity, a new debate arose concerning the demonstrability of the temporal creation of the world. Thomas Aquinas, of course, also joined in the controversy, and while accepting on faith the constitution of the council, argued for the logical possibility of the eternity of the world. In doing so, he had to refute all the counter-arguments provided against the possibility of an eternally created world.

Sin in Medieval and Early Modern Culture: The Tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins, ed. Richard G. Newhauser and Susan J. Ridyard

This book presents scholarship from both a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar and the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium. It begins with Richard Newhauser’s superb overview of recent scholarship on the seven deadly sins, in which he contextualises the essays in this volume and points to areas in need of additional research. Seven essays follow, grouped together for their focus on religious, intellectual, and pastoral themes. According to James Williams, Carolingians understood acedia not in its original sense of spiritual burn-out but as failing to do manual work, which makes sense of Benedict of Aniane’s monastic reforms. Kiril Petkov explores the changing meanings of arrogance, a branch of pride. For the Carolingians, it was a political vice which obstructed the desire for centralisation, but by the 1200s, it was a sin reflective of growing anxiety about social mobility. Cate Gunn’s close reading of the manuscript treatise Vices and Virtues demonstrates that interest in pastoral guidance and preparation for confession in England predated the Fourth Lateran Council. In her marvellous contribution, Eileen Sweeney lays out Thomas Aquinas’ distinctive approach to the sins in the Summa theologiae. Aquinas rejected the monastic vision out of which the concept of the seven deadly sins emerged. Vice was a matter of disordered affections, not of struggle with a supernatural evil force; moderation, not asceticism, was its remedy. For Jean Gerson, according to Nancy McLoughlin, the seven deadly sins were used in court sermons to make political as well as pastoral arguments. A different approach to preaching is evident in the Good Friday sermon from the 1430s discussed by Holly Johnson. In it, the preacher parallels the sins with seven torments that Jesus experienced and seven diseases which Jesus cures, while also making the Passion immediate for his auditors so that they would appreciate its relevance for their lives. Newhauser wraps up this section with a critique of Morton Bloomfield’s and John Bossy’s influential arguments that the seven deadly sins tradition essentially ended in the middle ages. Looking at some English evidence, Newhauser shows the sins being used in religious polemic and social criticism even in the 1600s, and argues that their appearance on stage suggests that a taste for morality plays continued in the age of Shakespeare.

Antonio García y García, O.F.M. (1928–2013)

Antonio Garcia y Garcia, O.F.M, died on July 8, 2013, after a decade of suffering from an agonizing form of Alzheimer's disease, in the Franciscan convent of Chipiona (Cadiz). Born in Bretona (Lugo, Galicia) on January 7, 1928, he joined the Order of St. Francis at the age of eighteen and was ordained a priest in 1952. He received his doctorate in canon law at the Pontificium Athenaeum Antonianum in Rome in 1956 and was appointed professor for History of Canon Law at the Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca in 1959, where he taught until his retirement.With the death of Professor Garcia, the profession has lost one of the last founding fathers of modern scholarship in medieval canon law. He belonged to the group of canonists led by Stephan Kuttner. These canonists were associated by friendship and pointed the way to a manuscript-based research of canon law. They were at the same time great scholars and true gentlemen. He was an amazingly prolific writer, with a scholarly output that surprises in quantity as well as in its wide range of content and interest. His oeuvre includes thirty-two books and almost 300 articles (see his bibliography published in Studia Gratiana 28,1998). The topics of his publications, which appeared in a large variety of Spanish, Portuguese, and international journals, stretch geographically from his own little hometown in Spain to Latin America and chronologically from the sixth to the seventeenth centuries. He critically investigated texts from the canons of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) to the Tractatus de legibus of Francisco Suarez (1612); he analyzed problems of legal history from the fidelity oaths in Visigothic councils to the human rights of the indigenous people of Latin America; and he discussed the history of the European universities as well as that of the colonial conquests by Spain and Portugal. Among the innumerable findings of his research, two farsighted endeavors stand out, assuring that the international community of historians will remember Father Garcia forever with respect and gratitude. First is the monumental Synodicon Hispanum, which he conceived, directed, and partly compiled. Progressing at a steady pace since 1981, it has produced eleven volumes to date and covered a large number of Spanish and Portuguese dioceses in a systematic fashion, thus placing the two Iberian countries in a leading position within the international scholarship in synodal texts. The second invaluable accomplishment of Father Garcia results from his tireless and most successful efforts to highlight the treasures of medieval manuscripts in Spain. Fifty years ago, the manuscript holdings of that country were regarded, even by native scholars, as a kind of wonderland-immensely rich, but mysterious and practically inaccessible. If this situation has definitely changed by now, at least as far as medieval legal manuscripts are concerned, this is almost entirely due to Father Garcia, who acted as a very efficient access manager to Spanish libraries, operating on two different fronts. …

Iglesia, salvación y teocracia romana en el Medievo. (Un apunte en torno al axioma "Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus")

The axiom Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus was drawn up by Cyprian of Carthage in the middle of the third century. In the Middle Ages it was essential for the pontifical theocracy with popes like Gregory VII (Dictatus papae, 1075) Inocent III (IV Lateran Council, 1215) and Boniface VIII (Bull Unam Sanctam , 1302).With the necessary adaptations and nuances (St. ThomasAquinas in the XIIIth century; the theologians of Salamanca in the XVIth century, the II Vatican Council in the XXth century) the controversy around this maxim has reached our days.

Dzieje parafii Łaszczów do końca XVIII wieku

This text presents the historical outline of the Catholic Parish of Łaszczow from the moments of its first emergence in historical records up until the late 18th century. Firstly, the geographical location of the parish is presented, its size and its place in the organizational structure of the Church. The analysis of the visitation protocols issued by the Bishops of Chelm reveals what the Łaszczow Parish church looked like and how its equipment changed in the period under analysis. A list is of 20 priests is composed, each of them connected with the Łaszczow Parish. The parsons’ benefice is also defined. The latter part of the paper is devoted to the Fraternity of the Holy Rosary, which functioned at the parish. Its financial status and forms of activity are discussed. The text also calculates – approximately – the population of the faithful and the number of the parishioners accepting sacraments in the second half of the 18th century. Also discussed is how the parsons of Łaszczow complied with the duty of launching and running schools, imposed by the Fourth Lateran Council.