Medieval Religion Research Articles

Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378-1417

Reviewed by: Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378–1417 Nancy Bradley Warren (bio) Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378–1417. By Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2206. 256 pp. $45.00 Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski's Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378–1417 constitutes a valuable addition to the vibrant field of scholarship on later medieval religion. Although Blumenfeld-Kosinski clearly discusses the complex history of the Schism, her focus is neither on papal politics nor on ecclesiastical history. Rather, by exploring texts (primarily from France and Italy) produced by prophets, visionaries, and poets, she explores what she calls the imaginaire of the Great Schism, a term that "refers to the ideas, conceptions, and even prejudices that informed the creation of texts and images in a given period" (13). Her method is to take "the Great Schism as a problem to illuminate medieval thought processes" (12), in order to examine contemporary experiences, understandings, and interpretations of the Schism. Poets, Saints, and Visionaries consists of six chapters, an introduction, and a conclusion. After providing a historical overview and setting out her methodology in the introduction, Blumenfeld-Kosinski's first chapter, entitled "A Twelfth-Century Prelude: Hildegard of Bingen, Elisabeth of Schönau, John of Salisbury, and the Schism of 1159," addresses this earlier schism as a precursor, taking it as an opportunity to set up issues and problems that will be of interest throughout the book. In discussing John of Salisbury's writings about the papal election of 1159, Blumenfeld-Kosinski introduces the theme of emotional responses to political events. One of the strengths of the book throughout is that she takes seriously the historical and cultural importance of emotion as experienced by individuals inhabiting a variety of social positions. Though John of Salisbury wrote directly and passionately about the schism of 1159, as did Elizabeth of Schönau, Hildegard of Bingen spoke of it only evasively, "more implicitly than explicitly" (26). However, her connection of schism, apocalyptic language, and ecclesiastical reform does foreshadow later prophecies. Blumenfeld-Kosinski observes that none of the three figures discussed in chapter one were laypeople, though many of the visionaries and prophets of the Great Schism were. Indeed, her focus in subsequent chapters on a range of figures including non-aristocratic laypeople provides a welcome addition to our understanding of historical events often approached solely through considerations of popes, cardinals, and kings. Chapters two and three are linked, treating saints and visionaries in the first instance from the 1360s through the beginning of the Great Schism and in the second instance from the later years of the Great Schism. In chapter two Blumenfeld-Kosinski [End Page 116] discusses revelations concerned with the papacy's return to Rome from Avignon, noting that revelations are "a privileged site for an explanation of the medieval imaginaire" (33). She concerns herself with the three "most influential voices" (35) advocating for the return to Rome (Pedro of Aragon, St. Birgitta of Sweden, and St. Catherine of Siena), analyzing their "major themes and strategies" (36). All were passionately devoted to the Roman papacy, and they were willing to take substantial personal risks, and even (especially in St. Catherine's case) to undergo intense suffering, to achieve it. Pedro and St. Birgitta received straightforward divine messages concerning the necessity of the papacy's return to Rome and the dire consequences (death, the dispersal of papal lands) that would follow should the pope refuse to go back to Rome and remain there. Gregory XI did return to Rome, largely through the influence of St. Catherine of Siena, who wrote "forceful" letters to persuade him (43), though she could not foresee his untimely death soon after his return to Rome. Unlike Birgitta, she did not employ threats; rather, she appealed "to the pope's political reason and sense of obligation" (46). In chapter three, Blumenfeld-Kosinski begins by considering a figure quite different from the aristocratic Pedro and Birgitta, or the well-connected Catherine of Siena. Constance of Rabastans, whose lineage is unknown, had "dramatic visions between 1384 and 1386" (62). Though she came from a Clementist region of France, she supported...

The Power of Books and the Practice of Mysticism in the Fourteenth Century: Heinrich of Nördlingen and Margaret Ebner on Mechthild'sFlowing Light of the Godhead

In 1345 a manuscript accompanied by a letter arrived at the Dominican convent of Maria Medingen in southern Germany. The sender, a secular priest named Heinrich of Nördlingen, and the primary recipient, the Dominican visionary nun Margaret Ebner, had already enjoyed an extended correspondence, interspersed with a few intense face-to-face visits in the convent. Because the manuscript arriving that day was a thirteenth-century woman's mystical treatise (the beguine Mechthild of Magdeburg'sFlowing Light of the Godhead), and because Margaret and her sisters in the convent Maria Medingen used this woman's text in what could initially seem peculiar and dynamic ways, this manuscript and these letters can tell us much about the authority and performance of women's mysticism in medieval religion. Mechthild's and Heinrich's texts serve as key examples, which reveal how women's mystical texts were authoritative in the history of Christianity. Namely, medieval audiences assessed mystical authority on the basis of the text's ability to produce the experience in them, and mystical texts required proper performance in order to unleash their generative power.

Medieval Religion: New Approaches

Medieval Religion: New Approaches

The foundations of medieval English ecclesiastical history. Studies presented to David Smith. Edited by Philippa Hoskin, Christopher Brooke and Barrie Dobson. (Studies in the History of Medieval Religion.) Pp. xii+236 incl. frontispiece. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005. £50. 1 84383 169 4; 0955 2480

<i>The foundations of medieval English ecclesiastical history. Studies presented to David Smith</i>. Edited by Philippa Hoskin, Christopher Brooke and Barrie Dobson. (Studies in the History of Medieval Religion.) Pp. xii+236 incl. frontispiece. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005. £50. 1 84383 169 4; 0955 2480

The Foundations of Medieval English Ecclesiastical History: Studies Presented to David Smith (review)

The Foundations of Medieval English Ecclesiastical History: Studies Presented to David Smith. Edited by Philippa Hoskin, Christopher Brooke, and Barrie Dobson. [Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, vol. 27.] (Rochester, New York: Boydell Press. 2005. Pp. xii, 235. $90.00.) The economics of the publishing world make the publication of Festschriften much rarer than used to be the case; however, this volume shows a great combination of personal tribute to an eminent scholar and a pioneering archivist, on the occasion of his retirement from the directorship of the Borthwick Institute, University of York. It is a focused and interesting collection of essays, the subjects of which reflect the breath and scope of David Smith's work. The first two contributions in the book, by Christopher Brooke and Christopher Webb respectively, present the scholarly work of David Smith as the editor of the British Academy's English Episcopal Acta series, general editor of the Lincoln Record Society, and editor of many volumes of other medieval ecclesiastical documents from the York diocese as well as director of the Borthwick Institute, which under his leadership became one of the most important repositories of documents related to the ecclesiastical and regional history of northern Britain as well as an active research center and training ground for new generations of archivists. Julia Barrow's contribution, Why Forge Episcopal Acta? Preliminary Observations on the Forged Charters in the English Episcopal Acta series argues that forgeries were produced primarily by large Benedictine monasteries and cathedral priories and to a lesser degree by other ecclesiastical institutions in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The most active in this field were post-Conquest foundations at Gloucester, Rochester, Durham, and Norwich, and the charters were produced to assert the right to numerous parish churches or tithes granted in the late eleventh century, which was a low point in the production of private charters as well as an attempt to secure freedom from various demands of episcopal officials.This article contains also a useful list of forged episcopal acta and beneficiaries of these documents. The next essay, by Nicholas Bennett, Pastors and Masters: The Beneficed Clergy of North-East Lincolnshire, 1290-1340, argues for a less gloomy picture of lower clergy in later medieval Britain, which has traditionally been seen as dominated by absenteeism and lack of care for parish duties. Using the example from the registers of the bishops of the dioceses of Lincoln, he finds many examples contradicting this view. Then, Janet Burton elucidates how another type of sources-so called cause papers-concerning payments of ecclesiastical dues, matrimonial cases, defamation, and testamentary wills can be used to explore complex relationships between religious houses in Yorkshire and their lay neighbors. …

Norwich Cathedral Close: The Evolution of the English Cathedral Landscape &lt;I&gt;Studies in the History of Medieval Religion&lt;/I&gt;, vol. 26

Norwich Cathedral Close: The Evolution of the English Cathedral Landscape &lt;I&gt;Studies in the History of Medieval Religion&lt;/I&gt;, vol. 26

Philippa Hoskin, Christopher Brooke, and Barrie Dobson, eds., The Foundations of Medieval English Ecclesiastical History: Studies Presented to David Smith. (Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, 27.) Woodbridge, Eng., and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell and Brewer, 2005. Pp. xii, 236; 1 black-and-white figure. $90.

Philippa Hoskin, Christopher Brooke, and Barrie Dobson, eds., The Foundations of Medieval English Ecclesiastical History: Studies Presented to David Smith. (Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, 27.) Woodbridge, Eng., and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell and Brewer, 2005. Pp. xii, 236; 1 black-and-white figure. $90.

The Secular Jurisdiction of Monasteries in Anglo-Norman and Angevin England (review)

The Secular Jurisdiction of Monasteries in Anglo-Norman and Angevin England. By Kevin L. Shirley. [Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, Vol. XXI.] (Rochester, New York: Boydell and Brewer, Inc. 2004. Pp. xii, 184.) Beginning from the assumption that, for the century and a half after 1066, the honour courts of the greater English abbeys have been little studied, Kevin Shirley uses various of the better-known English chroniclers and the published editions of royal writs to advance a simple and generally convincing thesis. In essence, the idea that at some time in the pre-Plantagenet past the English abbots presided over honorial courts from which royal authority was entirely excluded is, as Shirley demonstrates, a myth. On the contrary, from a very early date, royal writs and access to the king's courts were solicited by the English abbots to support their authority over and against their tenants. Rather than representing the first real intrusion of royal authority into the relationship between the abbots and their secular tenantry, the new possessory assizes of Henry II's reign enjoyed a long pre-history. Their effect, gradual rather than revolutionary, and fiscal rather than authoritarian in intent, was to supply tenants with new leverage against landlords who previously had looked to the crown for support rather than rebuke. However, after a period from the 1160's to the 1220's in which the abbots faced the erosion of their liberties, the relatively unintrusive government of Henry III allowed a breathing space in which the ecclesiastical franchises were rebuilt and their independence and profitability buttressed against future attack. So far, so good. Shirley defends his argument, albeit somewhat repetitively, through the recital of case after case in which royal authority either was or was not invoked. In the process, he proves both his own competence in the reading of medieval legal records and his eligibility for the doctoral degree with which, one assumes, his labors were crowned. As a book rather than a thesis, however, his work has to be judged according to more stringent criteria, and here two serious faults emerge. To begin with, Shirley merely rehearses a line of argument that has been advanced with far more subtlety by previous writers, most notably, in recent years, by John Hudson. Not only does Shirley continue to cite one of his principal sources-the Abingdon Chronicle-without reference to Hudson's new edition, but he makes no use whatsoever of other recent literature. Thus Akin Boureau's interesting if controversial ideas on the monastic contribution to the development of English law go entirely unnoticed. David Bates's edition of the charters of William I is cited, but frequently confused in the footnotes with the older edition of Rufus's charters in the Anglo-Norman Regesta. The work of Emily Amt and Graeme White on the accession of Henry II, although fundamental, is apparently unknown to Shirley, as indeed are many of the more important contributions to his debates, not least the various articles by J. C. Holt and others which have called into question the reliability of the Battle Chronicle. …

Medieval Religion: New Approaches, edited by Constance Hoffman Berman

<i>Medieval Religion: New Approaches</i>, edited by Constance Hoffman Berman

Patterns of Piety: Women, Gender and Religion in Late Medieval and Reformation England ‐ by Christine Peters

<i>Patterns of Piety: Women, Gender and Religion in Late Medieval and Reformation England</i> ‐ by Christine Peters

The invention of saintliness. Edited by Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker. (Routledge Studies in Medieval Religion and Culture.) Pp. x+222. London–New York: Routledge, 2002. £65. 0 415 26759 5

The invention of saintliness. Edited by Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker. (Routledge Studies in Medieval Religion and Culture.) Pp. x+222. London–New York: Routledge, 2002. £65. 0 415 26759 5 - Volume 57 Issue 2

Opening up the ritual casket: patterns of concealment and disclosure in early and medieval chinese religion

Ritual caskets—potent containers of precious stone or metal housing divinely granted treasures and esoteric texts—appear with some frequency in the literature of early medieval Daoism. These caskets reveal a rich complex of mythic narratives and ritual practices in Chinese religion as a whole. This article focuses on three aspects of religious practice involving a range of ritual caskets from the ancient to the early medieval period, including: (1) the vessels' function in the acquisition of the Heavenly Mandate tianming for imperial rulership as well as for immortality; (2) their mediating role in disclosing the revelation of sacred texts, especially from the Latter Han and into the narratives of early Daoism; and (3) their use in ritualizing expiation in early medieval Daoism through the depositing of “substitute bodies” into hidden caches and the advancing of liturgical petitions to otherworldly offices. On the most fundamental level, the ritual casket is a container that both conceals as well as reveals. We may thus see the hollow of the casket as a generative emptiness into which have been inserted a multiplicity of applications and interpretations over time, illustrating an esoteric dimension lying at the heart of the Daoist tradition.

Preaching During the English Reformation

Preaching During the English Reformation

Cities of God: the religion of the Italian communes, 1125-1325

This is a book about the religious life of ordinary laypeople in high medieval Italy. As such, it is an excursion into a mostly uncharted world, the lived experience of orthodox religion in the Italian cities. Some readers might find this characterization surprising, even shocking. Nothing could be better known than what it meant to be ‘‘Catholic’’ Christians in the Italy of Saint Francis and Dante. So historians of medieval religion have directed their gaze and research elsewhere. During my first venture into the world of thirteenth-century Italian religion, more than fifteen years ago, I was surprised to discover how little the day-to-day orthodox world had been studied. Older scholarship produced studies of papal politics and scholastic theology, but these treated only an ecclesiastical elite. In his classic study of medieval religious movements, Herbert Grundmann first suggested that high medieval heresy, the mendicants, and women’s mysticism all formed part of a single whole and deserved more attention. Subsequent scholarship focused, almost exclusively, on those three phenomena. A glance at the treatment of medieval religion in the Einaudi handbook of Italian history, itself the work of an eminent scholar, shows an odd religious landscape. Traditional scholarly divisions rule: a section on the Gregorian Reform is followed by sections dedicated to heresy and repression (pp. 609–733), the mendicant orders (pp.734–874), and the Church’s institutional crises of the 1300s (pp. 874–974). Heretics, popes, theologians, Franciscans, and saints. Where is everyone else? Among Grundmann’s areas of interest, heretics were the first to generate a scholarly industry, already vital in the 1960s. The bibliography on heresy in medieval Italy is vast and ever expanding. There is also a growing recognition that heresy cannot be understood apart from the religion it rejected. In spite of their prominence in modern scholarship, heretics represented only a tiny fraction of the medieval Italian population. Since 1980 Grundmann’s interest in thirteenth-century mysticism has been transformed, in great part by the work of Andre’ Vauchez, into a rich and expanded field of study, that of saints and holiness. But again, as in the case of heretics, saints represented only a tiny fraction, albeit an important one, of those living in the medieval Italian cities. New studies on ‘‘popular religion’’ and ‘‘lay piety’’ initially appeared to be very promising. But the religious

The Most Traversed Bridge: A Reconsideration of Elite and Popular Religion in Late Medieval Ireland

Recent years have witnessed the study of late medieval religion change and develop almost beyond recognition. In particular, the phenomenon of ‘popular’ or ‘traditional’ religion has increasingly been placed under the microscope. A succession of studies has questioned the view that an unbridgeable chasm existed between the religious sensibilities of the privileged echelons of society (the higher clergy and members of the nobility) and those of the lower social orders. The apparent sea-change in our understanding of how many expressions of belief and devotion were shared across a wide social spectrum has led, however, to more questions than answers.

Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes 1125-1325 (review)

Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes 1125-1325. By Augustine Thompson, O.P. (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. 2005. Pp. xiv, 502.) Augustine Thompson might not dissent from the proposition that the most important thing about this book is its existence. As he remarks, studies of Italian medieval religion have often focused on heresy or on institutional structures, devoting little attention to everyday religious practices that were (mostly) orthodox because the performers hardly considered any other possibility. On the other hand, standard treatments of the Italian communes have often neglected religion. Perhaps scholars in the field have been looking at medieval and Renaissance Italians in the hope of finding the ancestors of their rational, humanistic selves; they may also have been subconsciously afraid of shrinking the all-important gap between medieval Italians and their contemporaries elsewhere in Europe. Certainly that might seem to be one of this book's effects. Not its least valuable aspect is that it is, in large part, a richly documented in-depth description of the Christian faith and practice of one medieval society. How precisely did this differ from urban Christianity elsewhere in Europe? Differences emerge, or are hinted at, from time to time. The northern or central Italian cathedral acquired a distinct identity as the baptismal 'mother church' of the whole diocese that was impossible for the cathedrals of the large dioceses common north of the Alps. At least within the city, baptism created not only the Christian but the citizen; these were Christian communities in their nature. Urban political autonomy in the period under review had its religious effects: the celebration of the civic patron was used as a public demonstration of submission to the authority of the commune. Much more often than not, the cathedral was the locus of this cult, even when (as with St. James at Pistoia or the Volto Santo at Lucca) it was not focussed on the cathedral's titular saint. Bologna's manufactured civic cult of San Petronio was an exception in being located elsewhere. Presumptive higher literacy rates and, perhaps, the especially intimate involvement of the friars in Italian urban life are other areas in which one might perhaps look for an Italian difference. By 1300 both the politics and the religion of the communes were being reshaped under a variety of pressures. The lady who, albeit a practising Cathar, paid for a new roof for Orvieto Cathedral was an anomaly no longer to be tolerated; the Christianity that qualified one for membership in urban society had to stand official scrutiny, and the loosely regulated forms of lay piety that had nurtured and been nurtured by the independent commune progressively underwent the directive influence of the friars as the thirteenth century wore on. …

:The Secular Jurisdiction of Monasteries in Anglo‐Norman and Angevin England.(Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, number 21.)

:The Secular Jurisdiction of Monasteries in Anglo‐Norman and Angevin England.<i>(Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, number 21.)</i>

:Patterns of Piety: Women, Gender and Religion in Late Medieval and Reformation England

Introduction Part I: 1. Religious roles 2. Religious choices 3. The Virgin Mary and Christocentric devotion 4. The saints 5. Eve and the responsibility for sin Part II: 6. Responses to Reformation change 7. Parish religion in the Reformation 8. The godly woman 9. The Virgin Mary and the saints 10. The return to the Old Testament 11. Martyrs 12. Adam's fall 13. Godly marriage Conclusion Appendix Bibliography Index.

Many roads lead to Lanka: The intercultural semantics of Rama's quest

The Ramacaritamanas (1574 AD) of Tulsidas is at the centre of modern Hindu devotion through its use in private and public recitations, and its status in the public sphere as a result of adaptations for film and television. The popularity of this text has led the Hindu nationalist movement to adopt the epic of King Rama as the authoritative source for their ‘Hindu’ politics and morals. From a historical point of view, this privileged position is hard to defend. The Avadhi text by Tulsidas is just one of the numerous different forms in which the story of Rama has been transmitted in South and Southeast Asia. The text also bears traces of its hybrid cultural context, marked by the exchange of religious symbols and practices between Hindus and Muslims. Indeed, it belongs to a literary genre that was developed by Indian sufi poets who transformed Indian tales into mystical romances, such as the Padmavat (1540 AD) by Muhammad Jayasi, which frequently refers to the story of Rama as an intertext. This article compares the representation of Rama in Ramacaritamanas with that in the Padmavat so as to relate the former to the hybrid but also competitive context of medieval popular religion. It argues against the idealist notion of religious syncretism that has earlier been projected onto the medieval situation, and proposes to adopt a fluid and dialogic concept of religious tradition that provides a better understanding of both the real divisions and the inherent cultural dialogism of pre-modern South Asia.

Reviews of Books:Patterns of Piety: Women, Gender, and Religion in Late Medieval and Reformation England Christine Peters

Reviews of Books:Patterns of Piety: Women, Gender, and Religion in Late Medieval and Reformation England Christine Peters