Ancient Pagan Research Articles

The Origins of Anti-semitism. Attitudes toward Judaism in pagan and Christian antiquity. By John G. Gager. Pp. viii + 211. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. $24.95.

The Origins of Anti-semitism. Attitudes toward Judaism in pagan and Christian antiquity. By John G. Gager. Pp. viii + 211. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. $24.95.

Hagiography and the Experience of the Holy in the Work of Gregory of Tours

The rich literature associated with the Desert Fathers provides con-vincing evidence of the important role played by charismatic figures in the transformation of Late Antiquity. In the West the Life of St Martin by Sulpicius Severus and, even more explicitly, his Dialogues (Concerning St Martin) demonstrate how quickly and completely this charismatic style infected the Latin-speaking western Empire, hardly a century after it had come to attract widespread attention in the East. Several studies by Peter Brown have done much to clarify the social processes attested to in this literature, the rise of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity, and his function as a "village patron.These great "friends of God" served as the centres around which the new Christian social order accreted, leading in the East to a revival of the urban life of pagan antiquity but in the West to a new social order — essentially the social order of mediaeval Christendom — organized around the cult of the saints, now carefully regulated by an episcopal elite largely drawn from the old Gallo-Roman aristocracy.

Some recent books on Chaucer

Nigel Wilkins, Music in the Age of Chaucer (Chaucer Studies I), D. S. Brewer, Rowman & Littlefield, Cambridge and Totowa, N.J., 1979. 172 pp. Price £ 15.00. M. Salu, ed., Essays on Troilus and Criseyde (Chaucer Studies III). D. S. Brewer, Rowman & Littlefield, Cambridge and Towota, N.J., 1979. 143 pp. Price £ 10.00. Chaucer's Boccaccio: Sources of Troilus and the Knight's and Franklin's Tales, edited and translated by N. R. Havely (Chaucer Studies V), D. S. Brewer, Rowman & Littlefield, Cambridge and Totowa, N.J., 1980. 225 pp. Price £ 15.00. Chaucer's Dream Poetry: Sources and Analogues, edited and translated by B. A. Windeatt (Chaucer Studies VII), D. S. Brewer, Rowman & Littlefield, Cambridge and Totowa, N.J., 1982. 168 pp. Price £ 19.50. A. J. Minnis, Chaucer and Pagan Antiquity (Chaucer Studies VIII). D. S. Brewer, Rowman & Littlefield, Cambridge and Totowa, N.J., 1982. 200 pp. Price £ 19.50. James I. Wimsatt, Chaucer and the Poems of ‘Ch’ in University of Pennsylvania MS French 15 (Chaucer Studies IX), D. S. Brewer, Rowman & Littlefield, Cambridge and Totowa, N.J., 1982. 136 pp. Price £ 19.50. J. Kerkhof, Studies in the Language of Geoffrey Chaucer. Second, revised and enlarged Edition (Leidse Germanistische en Anglistische Reeks van de Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden), Brill, Leiden, 1982. 503 pp. Dfl. 140,‐. C. David Benson, The History of Troy in Middle English Literature: Guido delle Colonne's Historia Destructionis Troiae in Medieval England. D. S. Brewer, Rowman & Littlefield, Cambridge and Totowa, N.J., 1980. 174 pp. Price £ 12.50.

Chaucer, Lollius, and the Medieval Theory of Authorship

Chaucer, Lollius, and the Medieval Theory of Authorship Bella Millett University ofSouthampton In the smoll wodd ofEnglish stud;e, fr;, d;flicult to escape the cunent preoccupation with literary theory; even the medievalists, traditionally slower than their colleagues in responding to new developments, are beginning to show a greater concern with theoretical issues. 1 One result of this tendency has been a widespread sense ofcritical insecurity. Caught up in the struggle between conflicting theoretical approaches, literary scholars are finding themselves obliged-often reluctantly-to spend an increasing amount oftime simply defending the assumptions underlying their own critical positions. Recent research, however, has offered Chaucer critics one possible way around this problem. In the last few years there have been major advances in our knowledge oflate-medieval literary theory and in particular scholas­ tic literary theory. Since 1982, Alastair Minnis has published two impor­ tant books on the subject, Medieval Theory ofAuthorship and Chaucer and Pagan Antiquity,2 in which he emphasizes its relevance to Chaucer studies. He disapproves ofthe "fashionable" tendency to apply concepts from modern literary theory to late-medieval literature- "concepts which have no historical validity as far as medieval literature is concerned"-and sees this as a "tacit admission ofdefeat" by scholars unable to find satisfac­ tory critical tools in the medieval sources they have consulted so far, the arts of preaching and poetry. As an alternative he offers the "substantial corpus" ofliterary theory to be found in late-medieval scholastic commen­ taries. This body of theory, he argues, offers the critic of late-medieval 1 See, for instance, the articles on medieval literature and contemporary theory in NLH10 (1979); and in Donald M. Rose, ed., New Perspectives in Chaucer Criticism (Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1981). 2 Alastair Minnis, Chaucer and Pagan Antiquity (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1982); Alastair Minnis, Medieval Theory ofAuthorship (London: Scolar Press, 1984). 93 RECONSTRUCTING CHAUCER literature "a conceptual equipment which is at once historically valid and theoretically adequate."3 In the present state of critical disarray this claim has obvious attractions. A theory of literature which was actually current in Chaucer's time has an inbuilt historical advantage over any twentieth­ century approach; it seems to offer an intellectually respectable way of bypassing altogether the ideological battlefield of modern critical theory. But how far is scholastic literary theory really "historically valid and the­ oretically adequate" for the study of Chaucer? Judson Boyce Allen, who in his Ethical Poetic of the Middle Ages explores much the same territory as Minnis, takes it as axiomatic that scholastic literary theory corresponds to the literary practice of its time and that "Chaucer's intellectual and creative modus agendi" would have been "that which his contemporaries who wrote commentaries defined as nor­ mal for literary works."4 Minnis does not take his claims so far, and in his review of Allen's book he explicitly dissociates himself from Allen's use of scholastic literary theory as a master key to medieval literature in general. His own position is that "what in the hands of medieval commentators was an interpretative programme became in the hands of certain practising poets a possible literary strategy, ...a certain well-defined procedure which medieval poets could use but did not feel obliged to use";5 and, unlike Allen, he is prepared to concede that "Chaucer often reacted against the literary theory ofhis day, or exploited it in a very unusual way."6 But in practice his concentration on the links between scholastic literary theory and Chaucer's works sometimes has the effect of flattening out the dif­ ferences between them,7 and even when he points out apparent discrepan­ cies,8 he seems reluctant to explore their full implications.His conclusions on the nature ofChaucer's debt to the scholastic tradition ofcompilation, for instance, are surprisingly tentative: "So deliberate was [Chaucer] in presenting himself as a compiler that one is led to suspect the presence of a 3 Minnis, Medieval Theory ofAuthorship, pp. 1, 144. 4 Judson Boyce Allen, The EthicalPoetic ofthe Middle Ages: A Decorum ofConvenient Distinction (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), p. 105. 'Speculum 59 (1984):365. 6 Minnis, Medieval Theory ofAuthorship, p. 7. 7 E.g., Chaucer's...

Chaucer and Pagan Antiquity by A. J. Minnis

Chaucer and Pagan Antiquity by A. J. Minnis

John of Salisbury as classical scholar

John of Salisbury long has drawn the attention of scholars as a representative of medieval humanism. Many studies have been devoted to his allusions to the literature of pagan and Christian antiquity. But these studies necessarily have remained somewhat inconclusive because of our ignorance about the nature of John’s exemplars of his authors. Assessment of such matters as his interests and tastes, his working methods, his dependence on his authorities, and his originality and independence requires precise knowlege of the nature of his exemplars.

The Courtly Love Tradition by Bernard O’Donoghue

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER more recognition of opposite views, to be persuasive. Because of Minnis's obvious learning and intelligence, the reader will learn much from this book about medieval ideas of pagan antiquity, but he may also be left feeling that only part of Chaucer's relation to the subject has been adequately explored. C. D. BENSON University of Connecticut BERNARD O'DONOGHUE, The Courtly Love Tradition. Literature in Context Series. Manchester: Manchester University Press; Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble Books, 1982. Pp. vi, 314. $25.00 cloth; $8.95 paper. This is an anthology of translated lyrics, theoretical writings, and excerpted romances on secular medieval amatory themes. The pas­ sages from Dante as well as all the lyrics are accompanied by the original texts, while those of other genres are not. Many of the translations are the author's; the rest include the familiar versions of Parry, Comfort, Nykl, Hatto, and Dahlberg. The texts where pro­ vided are those that have been established in editions by Helen Waddell, Istvan Frank, A. R. Press, Olive Sayce, R. T. Hill and T. G. Bergin, Carl von Kraus, S. A. Barbi, and others. Bernard O'Donoghue, who teaches English at Oxford, states his purpose in various parts of the volume, as here: "to provide readers of English with a fairly broad sample of the love poetry that comes under the heading of courtly love, to provide a background for English works which drew on that tradition." He believes that his choice of texts should "enable readers to assess the conventionalism, originality or deliberateness in the use of courtly love elements by English writers." References to Chaucer are liberally sprinkled throughout (though they are not easy to find); there is also passing mention of Gower, Malory, the metaphysical poets, Lovelace, Yeats,Joyce, and T. S. Eliot. 208 REVIEWS The volume's nineteen-page Introduction is admirably succinct, but so much so that only a little space can be given to each ofthe six sections it comprises: "The Use of the Term 'Courtly Love"'; "His­ tory ofthe Literature"; "The Background ofIdeas"; "Application to Later Medieval Literature"; "The Texts Included," and a paragraph on translations. The Introduction relies to some extent on the reader's acquaintance with the schools and quarrels that have arisen over the thorny matter of courtly love. The author maintains, however, that the term is viable insofar as it expresses "qualities in common" among continental lyrics and romances ofthe twelfth and thirteenth centuries. He does call attention to an important distinc­ tion between the two courtly styles. The one is the sly, procedural approach, often disparaging to women, that one finds in Ovid (sometimes), Andreas, andJean de Meun; the other is the exalting mystique of love that is reminiscent of the Neoplatonists and Au­ gustine and that reaches its flowering with the stzlnovisti. The distinction is cautionary for those readers who have been taught to regard the sardonic "De arte honeste amandi" as synonymous with "courtly love," an understandable error in view of its misleadingly translated title. The Introduction furthermore unravels elements in the development ofcourtly lyric: the psyche ofthe poet, the formal preoccupations, the abstraction ofideas, religiousterminology, and the naturalism, seen, for example, in the rather broad, uncourtly dorfspoesie of later German lyric. The diffusion of the several aspects ofcourtliness is attributed to the popularity ofthe Arthurian and Tristan legends, as well as to the highly procedural Roman de la Rose. Regarding courtly love, then, as "the central poetic tradition of the Middle Ages," O'Donoghue indicates what the anthology will and will not do. He is not interested in tracing the origins ofcourtly love, for these have been thoroughly explored and discussed else­ where, most notably in R. Boase's The Origins and Meaning of Courtly Love (1977). Nor does he propose to investigate courtly love as a social, feudal, economic, or religious manifestation. He takes issue with what he considers the scholarly emphasis in some quarters on too singleminded an approach: D. W. Robertson's insistence on reading courtly texts ironically, E. Talbot Donaldson's preference 209 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER for "sublimation," and C. S. Lewis's dwelling on "adultery." Music...

A Philosophical Precursor to the Theory of Essence and Existence in St. Thomas Aquinas

A PHILOSOPHICAL PRECURSOR TO THE THEORY OF ESSENCE AND EXISTENCE IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS IN THIS PAPER I wish to present an important precursor, hitherto unnoticed, to the theory of essence and existence in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. It comes from an ancient pagan context and throws considerable light upon the whole problem of whether the distinction between essence and existence is real or not. I have in mind a series of passages from the Enneads of Plotinus; their principal motifs are significantly repeated in the anonymous commentary on the Parmenides attributed to Porphyry,1 and they are further systematized in the work of Proclus. Indeed too, I think, the whole context of Boethius's De Hebdomadibus in a more limited fashion owes much to Plotinus here.2 What I wish to show, however, is not simple textual correspondence, but a similar philosophical approach to a similar problem. Before coming to Plotinus, I sha11 first present the principal points of the Thomistic distinction and then attempt to relate this to the wider problems of nature and grace, natural capacity and the vision of God's essence. For the sake of simplicity and brevity I shall confine myself almost exclusively to the question of composition in either immaterial substances or created substances in general. Unlike the Spanish philosopher Avicebron and all the Neoplatonists , St. Thomas held that spiritual substances (human souls and angels) do not include matter. Instead, following 1 By P. Hadot, Porphyre et Victorinus, Volumes I and II, Etudes Augustiniennes , Paris, 1968. 2 On this see below. 219 KEVIN CORRlGAN Avicenna and St. Aihert, they are compounded. of essence, or form, and being (esse), and these elements are related to each other as potency to act. In an early work, De Ente et Essentia, Thomas argues for the distinction as follows: every essence can be understood without knowing anything about its existence. One can know, for example, what a man or a phoenix is without knowing whether or not it actually exists. Therefore existence is different from essence, unless there is something whose essence is existence, in which case this Being is one and primary. In all created things, however, existence is not contained in the notion of essence and must, therefore, come from outside the essence and enter into composition with it. Only in God are existence and essence identical (De Ente, C. VI, pp. 34, 6-35, 2; Roland-Gosselin). Is this distinction real or conceptual? In the De Veritate 3 and the Commentary on the Sentences 4 these two intrinsic principles of the creature are said to be really distinct. But in the De Ente this is not specified. What does the distinction mean? Essence refers to what is expressed by the definition of a thing; existence, or Being, indicates that the individual is and that it depends upon a prime cause. In every created spiritual substance we find a quality, the substance itself and its existence which is not the substance (quod non est substantia ejus; Contra Gent. II, 53) . Intelligence receives its existence from God, but its essence is identical with that which it is (De Ente, C. IV, p. 35, 4-6, R-G). Every creature possesses existence, therefore, by participation ; 5 and the substance that participates in existence is something other than the participated existence. Hence, the essence stands as potency to the act of existence which it receives from God. The existence is " that by which it is '', the essence " what sne Veritate 27, 1 ad 8; 1, 1 ad 3 (sed contra). ,. In I Sent.: d. 13, q. 1, a. 3. s ST, I, 61, 2, resp.: De Spir. Oreaturis, 1, 1, 14. ESSENCE AND EXISTENCE IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS 221 it is". By essence Thomas means not the abstract universal essence, even though it can be grasped abstractly, but the actual essence as found in things. Created substances, then, are composed of " quod est " and something added to them, esse, or " quo est ". Boethius 6 had ·used these terms (quod est and esse) to distinguish the concrete subject and nature in finite things (cf. De Hebdomad., PL. 64, 1311C). For him all things are good in their...

John of Salisbury and the world of the Old Testament

It is likely that during the years of his exile (1163/4-70) John of Salisbury’s attachment to the bible was strengthened at the expense of his ‘classical humanism’. A glance at the index to Brooke’s volume of the later letters of John of Salisbury does much to confirm this hypothesis. As Smalley pointed out in this context, ‘the holy page reasserted her rule over the artes’. The ancient pagan sources which bulked large in his earlier writings are submerged under a flood of biblical quotations, allusions and exempla. The main topics of these later letters arc the Becket controversy, the papal schism and the empire-papacy conflict. The very nature of these themes must have influenced John’s mental processes. He was no hypocrite, and would not have recommended his exiled archbishop to study the psalms and Gregory’s Moralia had he himself not done likewise.

The idea of renewal in Girolamo Aleander’s conciliar thought

The climax of the Italian renaissance in the early sixteenth century merges almost imperceptibly and rather surprisingly with the beginnings of the catholic reformation. Within a single generation, it seems, religious and moral interests came to rival, or even to supplant, that interest in pagan antiquity which had long been the inspiration of Italian culture. The stages by which this transformation occurred have not been clearly defined, but the process can be seen at work in the case of one prominent humanist who decided to devote his career to the defence and then to the renewal of the church of Rome.

The Cult of Relics in the Letters and ‘Dialogues’ of Pope Gregory the Great: A Lexicographical Study

Late antiquity and the early Middle Ages witnessed a change in the Christian attitude toward the remains of the saints. Holy bodies came to be treated less and less as normal corpses, worthy of special veneration but still subject to many of the laws and customs which had regulated the treatment of human remains in pagan Antiquity. They came rather to be viewed as cult objects which could be moved or even divided up according to the demands of religion with little regard for earlier prohibitions of these practices. This change occurred relatively early in the Greek, eastern portion of the Roman Empire. In the mid-fourth century the Caesar Gallus translated a saint's body from one tomb to another, and less than two centuries later Justinian asked Pope Hormisdas for portions of the bodies of the apostles. Despite some outstanding exceptions such as the translations performed by St. Ambrose, the Christians of the West were more conservative in these matters. Nevertheless, by the ninth century at the very latest, western Christians had followed the lead of the eastern church in both translating and dismembering holy bodies.

Women, Society, and the Environment

Research Article| May 01 1974 Women, Society, and the Environment Stuart A. Nicholson, Stuart A. Nicholson Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Maureen Fries Maureen Fries Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar The American Biology Teacher (1974) 36 (5): 275–311. https://doi.org/10.2307/4444794 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Stuart A. Nicholson, Maureen Fries; Women, Society, and the Environment. The American Biology Teacher 1 May 1974; 36 (5): 275–311. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/4444794 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentThe American Biology Teacher Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1974 National Association of Biology Teachers Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

The influence of Christian doctrine and exegesis on Old English poetry: an estimate of the current state of scholarship

Although it is a commonplace of history that Anglo-Saxon England was receptive to Christianity and to Christian-Latin culture and that English churchmen such as Aldhelm, Bede and Alcuin made an important contribution to that culture, it is only in recent years that scholars have explored and emphasized the importance of Christian tradition to the understanding of Old English poetry, especially those poems without explicit Christian content. Increased investigation of Old English prose, which is largely Christian, and the well-known work onBeowulfby Frederick Klaeber, Marie Padgett Hamilton, Dorothy Whitelock and others, seems to have redirected ‘the search for Anglo-Saxon paganism‘ into a search – sometimes opposed – for reflections of Christianity in Anglo-Saxon poetry. While in some quarters this critical and scholarly attention has been confined to the influence of Christian doctrine, ritual and interpretation of the bible, in others it has taken into account the broader cultural influences of the church, especially its transmission of the literature and learning of pagan antiquity.

The Literary Forgery in Pagan and Christian Antiquity

The Literary Forgery in Pagan and Christian Antiquity

Classical Culture and European Identity: Pagan Antiquity in the Writings of Pope Benedict XVI

Classical Culture and European Identity: Pagan Antiquity in the Writings of Pope Benedict XVI
 The paper analyses the attitude of Joseph Ratzinger, pope Benedict XVI, towards classical culture and tradition. A careful analysis of the pope’s writings makes it obvious that he addresses Europe’s classical heritage with respect and deep understanding. A number of case studies analysed in the paper allows the reader to see a variety of perspectives on classical antiquity, present in the writings of Benedict XVI.

English Poets, Egyptian Onions, and the Protestant View of the Eucharist

The Roman satirist's attack is directed against supersition and the cruelty and barbarism that result from it. The occasion for this outburst was a recent event in Egypt involving cannibalism. The Ombites were celebrating a religious festival when their neighbors, the Tentyrites, surprised them and, being victorious, cut to pieces and ate raw the only one of the enemy who fell into their hands. Juvenal's mordant comment is that while the Egyptians eat men, they would never be so uncivilized and impious as to eat onions and leeks, vegetable deities which they grow in their gardens.2 Religion for one group has always been superstition for another, and Juvenal's Egyptian onions became a symbol for cannibalism in a religious context, to strike first at Catholic Rome, and later, at Protestant Canterbury. The background for this turn of events was the acceptance of Christianity as the official religion of the Empire, the evolution of the sacraments out of ancient pagan rites, and the adaptation of various texts to form the liturgy-all of which in combination produced a form of worship that may be dubbed Christian cannibalism.

The Beginnings of Drama in Scotland

The drama in Scotland, as in other countries of Western Europe, emerged from ancient pagan rites. Remnants of these rituals became Christianized. The extant information about these early folk entertainments, which is meager and tentative, exists mainly in ecclesiastical edicts suppressing these festivities. The sword dance, morris dance, and mummers' play all are outgrowths of dances and fertility rites associated with the four seasons. These ceremonies of pagan inspiration developed into plays of a more literary character, such as representations of St. George and of Robin Hood. Guisards, or players who performed on various holidays, were familiar figures in sixteenth-century Scotland.

New Light on the “Chaldaean Oracles”

Hans Lewy's posthumous book, the fruit of many years' devoted study, should arouse fresh interest in one of the most tantalizingly obscure of ancient Greek texts. The Chaldaean Oracles were a divine revelation in bad hexameter verse; its authors were believed to be gods (speaking through the lips of entranced mediums?), but it was given to the world, as Lobeck guessed and Bidez finally proved, by one “Julianus the theurgist,” who lived under Marcus Aurelius. It is of serious concern to historians of religion, as the last important Sacred Book of pagan antiquity, and to historians of ideas, as one of the major influences which shaped the later development of Neoplatonism from Porphyry to Psellus. Unfortunately it has come down to us only in fragments.

Physics among the Sciences

A Major necessity in Britain to-day is that men of science should vindicate the right of their subject to recognition, in the general understanding, among the humane studies. The title humane, as far as I can gather, was probably first applied to those branches of learning which threw off the irksome control of scholasticism and asserted the freedom of human enquiry against a dogmatism allegedly based on divine authority. Not unnaturally the first scholars called humanists were much attracted to the storehouse of learning offered by the ancient pagan classics, but to the study of classics has since been added that of history, philosophy and indeed practically everything save natural science.

The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature

Foreword Preface Abbreviations Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: The Dark Ages: English Literature Chapter 3: The Middle Ages: French Literature Chapter 4: Dante and Pagan Antiquity Chapter 5: Towards the Renaissance: Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer Chapter 6: The Renaissance: Translation Chapter 7: The Renaissance: Drama Chapter 8: The Renaissance: Epic Chapter 9: The Renaissance: Pastoral and Romance Chapter 10: Rabelais and Montaigne Chapter 11: Shakespeare Chapter 12: The Renaissance and Afterwards: Lyric Poetry Chapter 13: Transition Chapter 14: The Battle of the Books Chapter 15: A Note on Baroque