Lay Piety Research Articles

Latin Lay Piety in an Islamic Context: The Development of the Third Order Community of St. Mary's of Mt. Sion in Mamluk Jerusalem

Latin Lay Piety in an Islamic Context: The Development of the Third Order Community of St. Mary's of Mt. Sion in Mamluk Jerusalem

A Widower’s Lament: The Pious Meditations of Johann Christoph Oelhafen by Ronald K. Rittgers

Reviewed by: A Widower’s Lament: The Pious Meditations of Johann Christoph Oelhafen by Ronald K. Rittgers Glenn K. Fluegge A Widower’s Lament: The Pious Meditations of Johann Christoph Oelhafen. Translated by Ronald K. Rittgers. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2021. 318 pp. “O living God and consoler of all the sad-hearted, I have lost my most beloved treasure on earth, for you have torn away a piece of my heart” (57). With these heart-wrenching words, Johann Christoph Oelhafen (1574–1631) begins his Pious Meditations, a personal journal of lament recording his year-long journey (1619–1620) through the grief and anguish caused by the death of Anna Maria, his beloved wife of eighteen years and the mother of his eight children. The loss of “my dear AMICO” (122)—the pet name he gave his wife, made up of their joint initials—left him “a sad and miserable widower” (57) and his children as “poor orphans” (59). History books often speak broadly of trends, controversies, and developments. Stories of individuals, if they are included, are often told from a distance. That is not the case here. Here one encounters in first person rhetoric a man from four hundred years ago from Nuremberg revealing his heart with haunting candor as he cries out to God in prayerful sorrow, despair, repentance, faith, and hope. The entries vary widely. Some appear measured, while others are obviously marked by raw emotion. Johann Christoph was a rather skillful song writer and several entries are hymns composed of multiple verses addressing God. In one poignant entry, on the day of their wedding anniversary, he composed a song with the verses arranged in the form of a dialogue with his precious AMICO in heaven: “[Verse 1:] AMICO, beloved darling, where have you gone? . . . Speak or cry out, and help me lessen my heart’s sorrow. [Verse 2:] In this world, ICO, you shall not find me . . . for I am, praise God, without pain, in the hall of joy; so now let your worry completely pass away.” (124) [End Page 438] Rittgers’ translation of Johann Christoph’s Pious Meditations is much more than a mere devotional for those today confronted by personal tragedy and sorrow. Indeed, it is rare to find a book like this that can be used for personal devotions (as this reviewer did), while at the same time serving as an invaluable primary source for academic research into early modern lay spirituality in the midst of suffering. In this regard, it is an important complement to Rittgers’ earlier work The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany (Oxford University Press, 2012). This is no mere translation. Yes, Rittgers has prepared a fluent translation that maintains the flow and rhythm (and color!) of the original text. But he has also prefaced it with a well-researched introduction including copious annotations situating the work within the wider context of current research on early modern “piety theology” (Frömmigkeitstheologie), consolation literature, the ars moriendi, evangelical lament literature, Lutheran funeral sermons, the Protestant duty of self-consolation, the place of self-narratives in historiography, an intriguing possible connection to the Unio Christiana brotherhood (an evangelical revival group found in surrounding cities), and much more. Useful translation notes are located conveniently at the end of each journal entry, including specific dates, biblical references, translation conundrums, possible interpretations, and connections and allusions to existing hymns, songs, poems, and liturgical ordinances. While studies of seventeenth-century Lutheranism have grown in recent years, a dire need persists for “micro-historical narratives” to clarify, adjust, and augment the existing and, at times, less than accurate “macro-historical narrative” of this time. This book does precisely that. It is an exceedingly rare and valuable find precisely because it allows a glimpse into lay spirituality. Although surely not a common villager, Johann Christoph was also not an academic theologian, like Johann Gerhard, who wrote copious volumes of loci theologici, nor was he a pastor, like Johann Arndt, exhorting his parishioners toward pious faithfulness. His is a lay perspective, and yet his Pious Meditations are exceedingly rich with Reformation theology, deeply rooted in Luther’s evangelical re-discovery...

The Means to Rebuild the Church: Franco-Italian Networks, Lay Piety, and Religious Patronage in Counter-Reformation France

The Means to Rebuild the Church: Franco-Italian Networks, Lay Piety, and Religious Patronage in Counter-Reformation France

The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany by Ronald K. Rittgers

The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany by Ronald K. Rittgers

Shenoute’s Feast: Monastic Ideology, Lay Piety, and the Discourse of Food in Late Antiquity

In the fourth and fifth centuries c.e., food provides a dense and value-laden web of meaning which lay and monastic Christians use to negotiate their identity with the culture at large, but also vis-à-vis each other. The works of Shenoute of Atripe are a valuable source of insight into the workings of this discourse in a Christian community, since they embrace both internal monastic instruction (the Canons) and public sermons (the Discourses). The first half of this paper constructs Shenoute’s ideology of the Christian meal in terms of the larger discourse of food in which it participates. He draws on traditional Greco-Roman values of hospitality and patronage, communal assembly and ritual eating, and food production and distribution to create a holistic definition of the Christian meal as one that embodies charity, social mutuality, gratitude to God, ritual correctness, obedience to spiritual authority, and transparent labor practices. The second half of the paper looks at Christian festivals, martyr feasts, and lay-sponsored Eucharists, of which Shenoute is invariably critical, through the lens of this definition. Although Shenoute tries to use his authority and sense of monastic uniqueness to enforce distinctions between lay and monastic meals and between ritual and social meals, the discourse of food on which his ideology depends resists tidy division along such lines.

Anne of Bohemia and the Making of Chaucer

Anne of Bohemia and the Making of Chaucer Andrew Taylor University o f Saskatchewan In 1382 the young Anne ofBohem;a a,c;ved ;n England to marry King Richard II as part ofan alliance designed to promote his imperial ambitions. 1 Poor-she brought no dowry and was accompanied by an impecunious train of courtiers who probably spoke as little English as she did-and by many accounts not beautiful, she was the object of scorn. As the Westminster chronicler remarked: De ista regina sic quidam scripsit metrice: Digna frui manna datur Anglis nobilis Anna; set scrutantibus verum videbatur non dari set pocius emi, nam non modicam pecuniam refundebat rex Anglie pro tantilla carnis porcione. [About this Queen somebody wrote the verse: Worthy to enjoy manna, To Englishmen is given the noble Anna; but to those with an eye for the facts it seemed that she represented a purchase rather than a gift, since the English king laid out no small sum for such a small piece of flesh.]2 From this unpromising beginning, Anne went on to exercise a notable influence in the kingdom, interceding with the king on numerous occa­ sions and gaining a reputation for prudence, charity, and the devout 1 Constantin Hofler discusses the diplomatic negotiations behind the marriage; "Anna van Luxemburg," Denkschriften der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historischen Classe, 20 (Vienna, 1871), pp. 89-240, esp. pp. 123-38. 2 L. C. Hector and Barbara F. Harvey, eds., The Westminster Chronicle, 1381-1394 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), pp. 24-25. I have used their translation except for the last line, which they soften to "to secure this tiny scrap ofhumanity." 95 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER reading of Scripture. She is one of the women Susan Bell terms "arbiters of lay piety and ambassadors of culture," while Agnes Strickland, in her history Queens of England, goes so far as to call Anne the first of "the nursing-mothers of the Reformation."3 This influential queen, Anne the Good or Anne the Wise as the chroniclers eventually called her, was also allegedly a patron of Chaucer's and is widely held responsible for im­ posing upon him the task of writing The Legend of Good Women as an amends for his depiction of Criseyde. It is the intersection of these two figures, the historical queen and the censorious patron figured in Alceste, the consort of the God of love, that is my topic. I wish to advance two arguments: first, that although we cannot have anything approaching di­ rect access to Anne, and although she herself could only exert her cul­ tural influence indirectly and through heavily predetermined social nar­ ratives, at the point of triangulation of these various formations there lay a real woman of significant cultural authority. The second is that the re­ pudiation of Anne and her authority has been closely tied to the con­ struction of Chaucer as a self-sufficient author. Since my second argu­ ment claims that the literary tradition denies the social conditions of its inception, I wish to begin by considering what we can know of the his­ torical Anne of Bohemia before turning to Chaucer's poems. One possible means of recapturing the cultural power of the histori­ cal Anne, or indeed of many other medieval women, would be to look for traces of the books they owned or commissioned. Thus Bell argues that while women writers in the Middle Ages are few and hard to find, "as readers of vernacular literature, as mothers in charge of childhood ed­ ucation, as literary patrons who commissioned books and translations, and as wives who married across cultural and geographical boundaries, women had a specific and unique influence."4 Recognizing this influence is not just a matter of doing fresh research; as Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski argue, it requires a reassessment of cultural authority itself along the lines of recent feminist scholarship, "which broadens the conventional understanding of power to include new forms of power and 3 Agnes Strickland,Lives ofthe Queens ofEngland, 2d ed., 6 vols. (London, 1880), 1:416. 4 Susan G. Bell, "Medieval Women Book Owners: Arbiters of Lay Piety and Ambassadors of...

The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany. By Ronald K. Rittgers . Oxford Studies in Historical Theology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. xiv + 482 pp. $82.00 hardcover.

The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany. By Ronald K. Rittgers . Oxford Studies in Historical Theology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. xiv + 482 pp. $82.00 hardcover.

Asceticism, Dissent, and the Tudor State: Richard Whitford's Rule for Lay Householders

Richard Whitford's A Work for Householders constructs a model of household governance organized around the contemplative life of the lay householder and his pastoral command over his familia. A Work for Householder's companion text, A Daily Exercise of Death, centers on willed self-negation, teaching the householder monastic ascetic practices that emphasize rejection of the world and direct obedience to God. Together the manuals, which circulated widely during England's violent 1530s, work to interrupt the absorption of the Christian pastorate by secular state power. They do this by describing the household as a distinct locus of spiritual counsel, a self-enclosed unit that has only generalized interactions with other sites of religious authority. Lay piety in these texts does not aim to shelter its audience from the turmoil of surrounding events. Instead, the contemplative turn in Whitford's compilation explicitly absorbs the political, using it as fodder for potentially activist and resistant praxes.

The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany. Ronald K. Rittgers. Oxford Studies in Historical Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. xiv + 482 pp. $78.

The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany. Ronald K. Rittgers. Oxford Studies in Historical Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. xiv + 482 pp. $78. - Volume 69 Issue 4

Lay piety in Visigothic Iberia: liturgical and paraliturgical forms

While it is appropriate to remember that clerical and monastic elites form part of the whole which practices popular religion, it is clear that their spiritual habits were different from the rest of society. If ordinary Christians’ piety was less intense, less educated, and less documented than that of religious elites, it does not mean we should neglect this aspect of daily life. The leading bishops in post-imperial Iberia exhibited a clear concern to shape the laity's piety not only in terms of orthodoxy but also in vibrancy. Liturgical texts and related writings from the Visigothic and early Mozarabic periods, including hagiographic material, provide a view of religious practices of the masses and ways in which the episcopate endeavored to direct devotion. Taken together the evidence suggests a surprising range and depth of lay religious experience, notwithstanding the errors of common Christians frequently suggested in ecclesiastical texts.

Ronald K. Rittgers, The Reformation of Suffering. Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany. (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology.) Oxford/New York/Auckland, Oxford University Press 2012

Ronald K. Rittgers, The Reformation of Suffering. Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany. (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology.) Oxford/New York/Auckland, Oxford University Press 2012

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Ronald K. Rittgers. The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany.

In this book Ronald K. Rittgers examines the dramatic shifts in theological explanations of and pastoral responses to human suffering in the Lutheran Reformation. Late medieval Catholics saw suffering as salvific. Priests were advised to counsel penitents that their suffering could serve as atonement for sin. Penance and suffering endured during one's lifetime could shorten one's time in purgatory, thus bringing the joys of heaven closer. Further, “Passion devotion” was an important part of late medieval piety, and Catholics were encouraged to connect their anguish, be it corporeal or psychological, with the agony of Christ on the cross. Martin Luther rejected the notion of suffering as salvific for the same reasons he rejected the theological underpinnings of penance, good works, and indulgences. In his view, human beings were too corrupted by original sin to earn God's mercy. Rather, they were saved only through the freely given and totally unmerited grace of Christ's self-sacrifice on the cross. The Lutheran doctrines of sola fide and sola gratia rendered the Catholic view of suffering untenable. However, Luther did ascribe positive meanings to suffering. He advised his followers to understand their suffering as a punishment sent by God, but to console themselves with the knowledge that God's punishment was a sign of his fatherly love. God made human beings suffer on earth so that they would recognize their sinful nature and turn to him, thus avoiding the far greater punishments to be meted out in hell.

The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany

The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany

The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany. By RonaldRittgers. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. xiii + 461. $74.00.

The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany. By RonaldRittgers. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. xiii + 461. $74.00.

:Between Lay Piety and Academic Theology: Studies Presented to Christoph Burger on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday. Brill's Series in Church History 46

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Emma Lipton, Affections of the Mind: The Politics of Sacramental Marriage in Late Medieval English LiteratureAffections of the Mind: The Politics of Sacramental Marriage in Late Medieval English Literature. EmmaLipton. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. Pp. ix+246.

<i>Emma Lipton,</i> Affections of the Mind: The Politics of Sacramental Marriage in Late Medieval English Literature<i>Affections of the Mind: The Politics of Sacramental Marriage in Late Medieval English Literature</i>. EmmaLipton. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. Pp. ix+246.

Ulrike Hascher-Burger, August den Hollander, and Wim Janse, eds., Between Lay Piety and Academic Theology: Studies Presented to Christoph Burger on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday. (Brill's Series in Church History, 46.) Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010. Pp. xxi, 555 plus 1 black-and-white figure; black-and-white figures. $169.

Previous articleNext article No AccessUlrike Hascher-Burger, August den Hollander, and Wim Janse, eds., Between Lay Piety and Academic Theology: Studies Presented to Christoph Burger on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday. (Brill's Series in Church History, 46.) Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010. Pp. xxi, 555 plus 1 black-and-white figure; black-and-white figures. $169.PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 86, Number 3July 2011 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1017/S0038713411001333 Views: 8Total views on this site Copyright © The Medieval Academy of America 2011PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

NICOLE R. RICE, Lay Piety and Religious Discipline in Middle English Literature.

EVER since the Nicholas Watson’s pioneering work some fifteen years ago, the role of devotional literature in late medieval English culture has been a subject of growing critical attention. However, recent interest in this field has tended to focus on poetic formations of lay piety and to over-simplify the complex intersections between orthodox and heterodox belief. Placing largely overlooked works of religious guidance in conversation with more familiar reformist discourses and contemporary poetry, Nicole R. Rice’s Lay Piety and Religious Devotion in Late Medieval England is a significant addition to critical discussions about the ways that texts shaped and were shaped by late medieval religious practice and thought. In the Preface, Rice asks ‘What is the best life for a layperson in the world? How might that life take textual shape’ (xiv). However, rather than attempt a comprehensive overview of the manifest ways late medieval devotional writing responds to such enquiries, the book unfolds as a series of case studies which exemplify some of the ways that texts construct modes of lay spiritual discipline. Chapter 1 focuses on The Abbey of the Holy Ghost and Fervor Amoris, two late-fourteenth-century anonymous texts that imagine cloistered modes of discipline to regulate potentially disruptive lay spiritual aspirations and reinsert readers into existing ecclesiastical hierarchies. Chapter 2 examines The Life of the Soul, Book to a Mother, and Walter Hilton’s Mixed Life as examples of guides that operate dialogically; that is to say, that unlike the guides studied in Chapter 1, which promote awareness of and obedience to clerical mediation and authority, the guides that are the subject of Chapter 2 use dialogue and other forms of dialogic discourse ‘to model strategies for readers to engage with the world on clerical terms’ (49).

NICOLE E. RICE. Lay Piety and Religious Discipline in Middle English Literature.

NICOLE E. RICE. Lay Piety and Religious Discipline in Middle English Literature.