pre-Reformation Period Research Articles

Economics of Faith: Reforming Poor Relief in Early Modern Europe by Esther Chung-Kim

<i>Economics of Faith: Reforming Poor Relief in Early Modern Europe</i> by Esther Chung-Kim

ВКЛАД Л. КРАНАХА СТАРШЕГО В РАСПРОСТРАНЕНИЕ РЕФОРМАЦИОННЫХ ИДЕЙ МАРТИНА ЛЮТЕРА (ПЕРВАЯ ПОЛОВИНА XVI В.)

By the example of the “Christ and the woman the work of taken in adultery” (“Christus und die Ehebrecherin”) painting, the article considers the role of German painter Lucas Cranach the Elder and his workshop in spreading the Reformation ideas. The choice of that specific artwork stems from the painter’s frequent usage of that biblical plot and from many variations which have survived to the present day. The authors intend not only to compare the different periods of Cranach’s creative activity but also to reveal, with the help of the iconological method, the context and the main motives which influenced the transformation of his works. To characterize one of the most important factors – the religious context of the early Modern times – the authors refers to the quotations from the Lutheran interpretation of the biblical story about an adulteress, based on Martin Luther’s sermon of 1531. They also do not overlook the third-party sources of inspiration, that belong to the pre-Reformation period or have no connection with the Reformation at all. Therefore, the article tries to define the peculiarities of Cranach’s works of art and to find the intersection point between the well-established canons of art tradition and the visualization of the new protestant principle of the “sola gratia” (“only grace”).

ГРАФИКА БЫТОВЫХ СТАРООБРЯДЧЕСКИХ РУКОПИСЕЙ В АСПЕКТЕ КОНФЕССИОНАЛЬНОГО ТРАДИЦИОНАЛИЗМА

The article substantiates the introduction of the problem of graphics into linguistic research. The research material was two diaries of Tomsk Old Believers written by a man (in 1915-1923) and a woman (in 1956-1975) in the late semi-uncial. These texts have graphic and content archaic elements. They use a specific chronology, the September year, the overnight boundary (the generally accepted 6 p.m.). These and some other features are considered as symbols of confessional traditionalism. The material confirms the high significance of the late semi-uncial, which follows book samples of the sacred texts of the late Old Russian writing, for Old Believers. Notes in this script, with all its graphic variation, are much neater than the rare cursive inserts, extremely sloppy and hardly readable, in the analyzed texts. This indicates the priority of the semi-uncial script for this confessional community. The texts reflect such traditional features of the late semi-uncial as the alphabetic numeral system, frequent concatenation, various abbreviations, diacritics, simplified punctuation, broken geometry principle of writing, proportionality of graphemes, their angularity, the absence of hyphenation and some letters (k and re), changes in writing letters. The comparison of graphics from the diaries written in different time periods showed its simplification in the woman's diary. The woman is inconsistent in the use of the final hard sign; she uses superscripts rarely and inconsistently, etc. All these features show us the influence of the cursive on the late semiuncial because some graphemes in her texts are clearly comparable to the civil cursive. The influence of the civil script and the erosion of the tradition of the semi-uncial one is the evidence of the poorly differentiated use of graphic doublets, the significantly greater functional load of the civil versions of the letters, errors in the titling of words, as well as the absence of the Yat letter in the woman's alphabet. The use of the semi-uncial in domestic texts is the marker of the confessional significance of the handwriting and texts of the genre. It allows clarifying the development of the chronicle genre, which flourished in the pre-Reformation period and which Old Believers consider an exemplary one. This can be proved by the prevalence of such diaries in the Old Believers' environment, the beginnings of records typical for chronicles, the cliched nature of the records, as well as the graphic design of the text.

The Historically Changing Notion of (Female Bodily) Proportion and Its Relevance to Literature

Abstract Futabatei Shimei (1864-1909) was an early modern Japanese novelist, translator, and critic. He wrote what is now generally conceived of as the first Japanese ‘modern’ novel, Drifting Clouds (1887-89). He translated works by Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Garshin, Gorky, and others. He also published a number of critical essays, treatises on literary theory, political papers, and so forth. His early translation of Turgenev’s short stories: Aibiki (Rendevous, 1888) and Meguriai (Three Trysts, 1889) were extremely influential on the contemporary literati, who were amazed at the fresh, poetic prose used in stark contrast to the traditional Japanese fiction in the pre-Reformation period. These translations, seen in the light of the present-day readers, were unique in what we might term today ‘foreignizing translation’. Lawrence Venuti in Invisibility of the Translator argues that the ideal of (English) translation has been to conceal itself as a translation, i.e. to present itself as an original text (chap I and passim). In that sense, Futabatei’s translations, scandalously presenting itself as a translation, that is to say, as an alien text, is extremely ‘foreignizing’.

Cosmo Innes and the Defence of the Scotland’s Past, c. 1825–1875 by Richard A. Marsden (review)

Reviewed by: Cosmo Innes and the Defence of the Scotland’s Past, c. 1825–1875 by Richard A. Marsden Peter C. Grosvenor (bio) Richard A. Marsden, Cosmo Innes and the Defence of the Scotland’s Past, c. 1825–1875 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), pp. xi + 365. $144.95/£80. Scotland commanded the world’s attention during the country’s independence referendum in September 2014. Despite the 55 percent to 45 percent rejection of independence, it has retained that attention with the Scottish National Party’s sweep of 56 out of 59 Westminster parliamentary seats in the May 2015 UK general election. [End Page 433] Yet political nationalism of the separatist variety is a recent phenomenon in Scottish history, with no concerted and sustained challenge to the Anglocentric Union until the 1930s and no significant political breakthrough until the late 1960s. There has been a major scholarly effort to explain the relative historical lateness of Scottish nationalism’s emergence. Much of that effort has been concentrated on the historiography of Scotland in the mid-nineteenth century, a time when political nationalisms were ascendant elsewhere in Europe, as manifested in the revolutions of 1848. The established view within this scholarship is that Scotland failed to continue Sir Walter Scott’s project of countering the anglicizing forces of the Enlightenment by asserting Scottish distinctiveness within the context of the Union. This is held to be particularly evident in absence of a robust and distinctively Scottish national history, as is argued in Marinell Ash’s seminal text The Strange Death of Scottish History (1980). Dr. Richard A. Marsden, who teaches in the School of History, Archaeology, and Religion at Cardiff University, has entered this historiographical dispute with a meticulous study of Scottish antiquary Cosmo Innes (1798–1874). An advocate and judge by profession, Innes was a prolific editor of Scottish historical documents, with an emphasis on the medieval period, whose work earned considerable respect in both Scotland and England. Marsden’s study places Innes “at the forefront of a small group of antiquaries and historians who sought to make their fellow Scots more aware of and thus more appreciative of their own history” (297). The ideological framework provided by the Enlightenment produced a Scottish historical scholarship in which Scotland’s history was presented as a story of progress from the inferior and more primitive conditions of the past to the celebrated achievements of the present. The past, in other words, was something from which to escape. In particular, the pre-Reformation period was denigrated for a backwardness that was explained in terms of the constraints of Catholicism. Marsden demonstrates that Innes, whose political sympathies lay with the Whigs in politics, worked within this Enlightenment framework. At the same time, he was influenced by the early nineteenth-century resurgence of interest in Scottish distinctiveness and by a resistance to assimilation into English culture. By mid-century, these trends were manifesting themselves in the National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights, which in turn prefigured the campaign for a Secretary of State for Scotland in the 1870s and, ultimately, the movement for Home Rule within the United Kingdom in the 1880s. While accepting the essential Englishness of the British Constitution, Innes set about establishing the Scots as something more than North Britons. His philosophy of history acknowledged historical specificity: the recognition that different peoples had different needs at different points in the past. Consequently, past institutions and practices were to be presented [End Page 434] not as historical blind alleys but as crucial and indispensible steps towards Scotland’s modernity. In this way, Innes attempted to reconcile progressivist and romanticist historical scholarship. This text is a valuable addition to the study of nineteenth-century Scottish historiography and adds to our understanding of the character of Scottish national awareness and political nationalism. Marsden supplies chapters which examine in detail Innes’s work on Acts of the Scottish Parliament, burgh sources, ecclesiastical cartularies, university records, family papers, manuscript facsimiles, illustrations, and photography. The appendix of “Innes’s Periodical Contributions” will be of particular interest to readers of VPR. Innes was a frequent contributor to periodicals during the 1850s and 1860s. The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals attributes to...

Visions and the Image of Ecclesiastical Dignitaries in the Pre-Reformation Period

Late medieval pictorial legends included images of visions, which were closely associated with ecclesiastical dignitaries. When they appeared in the painting as visionaries, the vision mostly served to underline their exceptional status. These events, depicted at altar retables, frequently happened at the altar during the liturgy, reinforcing the existing social hierarchies and supporting the cult. The exceptional case of St Elizabeth shows how a vision of the princess could transform the basic structure to express the new power of laity in the cities. Sometimes, the saints appeared in the visions of other people, to illustrate their power over the consciousness of other people, even earthly rulers.

Tonus Peregrinus: The History of a Psalm-tone and its use in Polyphonic Music (review)

Tonus Peregrinus: History of a Psalm-tone and its use in Polyphonic Music. By Mattias Lundberg. Farnham, U.K.: Ashgate, 2011. [xiv, 323 p. ISBN 9781409407867. $124.95.] Music examples, bibliography, index. In his preface to Tonus Peregrinus: History of a Psalm Tone and Its Use in Polyphonic Music, Mattias Lundberg recognizes the distinctive, and challenging, approach that he undertakes in this volume: The chronological ambit [of this monograph] exceeds 1,000 years, taking in around 100 works but only a single melody (or, better, family of melodies). I realize, of course, that a typical music monograph would have exactly the reverse proportions: if not a single year, then at least a single shorter historical period, around 100 works and over 1,000 melodic items (p. vii). Lund berg's Tonus Peregrinus traces the history of polyphonic settings of the ninth psalm tone, the tonus peregrinus, over more than 1,000 years and throughout Western Europe, with a particular focus on compositional employed in setting it. As Lundberg explains, the tonus peregrinus existed in several variants delineated primarily by geographic region. But in all its permutations, the tonus peregrinus-or wandering tone-is distinguished by the fact that its reciting tone changes from one half-verse to the next. Of particular import for Lundberg's study is the ways in which this distinctive psalm tone presented compositional challenges for the composer both melodically and harmonically as well as structurally. Lundberg does an admirable job of identifying and analyzing a large body of works over a wide chronological period: consider the challenge, for example, of analyzing the same melody set polyphonically within the modal system of the fifteenth century, the emerging major/minor tonal system of the seventeenth century, and the same tonal system as established in the eighteenth century (Lundberg helpfully references several tonus peregrinus settings in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but does not analyze them). He states in chapter 1 that the book is centered on the analysis of compositional procedures (p. 2), and he dedicates most of the volume to description of individual compositions. He treats a wide variety of compositional voices, all charging themselves with the same task, a polyphonic setting of the ninth psalm tone. In discussing polyphonic settings of the tonus peregrinus, Lundberg naturally discusses as well several key liturgical texts in the Western Christian tradition, particularly Psalm 113 (Vulgate numbering; Psalms 114 and 115 in most other versions and translations) and the Magnificat (the Song of Mary, Luke 1:46-55), as well as several other psalms and canticles. While focusing on compositional techniques, Lundberg provides valuable reference to how pieces fit within the liturgy of the Christian church, especially the Vespers service, and how liturgical usage of the tonus peregrinus changed over time and in different geographic regions and different Christian traditions. For example, it appeared most often to the text of Psalm 113 in the pre-Reformation period and in later settings for the Roman Catholic Church, but was most closely associated with the Magnificat in the German Lutheran tradition and with the Benedicite and other canticles in England. Tonus Peregrinus: History of a Psalm Tone and Its Use in Polyphonic Music is a reworking of Lundberg's doctoral dissertation, The Tonus Peregrinus in the Po lyph - ony of the Western Church (Ph.D. diss., University of Liverpool, 2007), and in many ways still, unfortunately, comes across as a dissertation. This problem is evident from the very first chapter, in which Lundberg lays out his research methodology and process in such a way that seems important for a dissertation but not for a monograph. And Lundberg does not include in the monograph an introduction or opening chapter to frame his study and argue for its significance; Lundberg's research goal seems to have been to discover and describe all polyphonic settings of the tonus peregrinus, but his larger purpose for the volume remains unclear. …

Signs of Devotion: The Cult of St Aethelthryth in Medieval England, 695-1615

This monograph traces the cult of St Æthelthryth of Ely from its inception in the eighth century to the pre-Reformation period by analysing a number of its texts and artefacts; however, the rationale behind the selection of material is not stated explicitly. The first chapter examines passage by passage Bede's prose account of Æthelthryth (HE IV.16 [18]) and his abecedarian, epanaleptic hymn in her praise (HE IV.17 [19]), and provides a gendered interpretation of the saint's representation in these pages. It is not possible to address here the many points in Blanton's arguments which call for comment in this and in the ensuing chapters, but one may give an impression of the author's line of reasoning. While no one will contradict a statement such as ‘For Bede, Æthelthryth's importance rests in her virginity, tested by at least one amorous husband, and sustained through God’ (p. 27), one might have doubts about its corollary, namely that Bede is not interested in Æthelthryth's ‘promotion of the church’ or in her role as abbess, teacher or miracle worker (pp. 27–8, 38–9). The question as to whether or not he had information on these points should at least be raised. Consider also a (typical) statement such as: ‘[Bede] establishes Æthelthryth's chastity as a cultural sign for his audience by presenting a narrative in which the physical body is inscribed with a multivalent mark. The result is a textual body, one whose virginal signs can be read and imitated’ (p. 31). The information conveyed here simply is that Bede interprets Æthelthryth's virginity (confirmed by her incorrupt body and the healed wound) as a sign of her sanctity, and implies that her life can be imitated. Is this really a novel insight? And how would professional psychoanalysts react when confronted with popularised Freudianisms such as ‘the scar [on Æthelthryth's neck!] also operates as an indication that Æthelthryth's body is sealed, that the vaginal opening is forever closed’ (p. 45, repeated p. 52; cf. also p. 51, n. 77)?

Lay Religiosity, Piety, and Devotion in Scotland c. 1300 to c. 1450

In recent Scottish historical research on issues of ecclesiastical renewal and reform, the chief academic focus has rested on three strands: the radical restructuring of the twelfth century, popular devotion in the immediate pre-Reformation period, and the dramatic events of the sixteenth-century Reformation. This does not mean that other aspects of medieval Church history have been neglected, for there has been much new research into its institutions, personnel, and properties. Access to papal records, published as the Calendars of Papal Letters and the Calendars of Scottish Supplications to Rome, has not only shed light on issues of papal provision to benefices, clerical celibacy, illegitimacy and education, and the continuing role and nature of lay patronage and benefaction of the secular and regular Church but has transformed scholarly understanding of the operation of the secular Church in Scotland, the organization and functioning of its governmental structures, and the exercise of canon law, and has given fresh insight into the influence which the clergy wielded over the lives of the lay population. Research founded on these and earlier papal record sources has borne much fruit in the last twenty years, with major studies of Scoto-papal relations and the government of the Scottish Church by, for example, Paul Ferguson for the pre-1286 period, Andrew Barrell for the mid-fourteenth century, and Donald Watt for the period down to 1472 stimulating a general reassessment of interactions between the Scottish clergy and the papal curia and offering insights into the development and functioning of the legal and judicial structures and mechanisms which characterized the later medieval Church in Scotland. More recently, both Irene Furneaux’s and Jennifer McDonald’s doctoral research into the Scottish material in the records of the Sacred Penitentiary has begun to be published. The full impact of their research is yet to be felt, but the evidence which they present for the level of ecclesiastical influence on routine aspects of the daily lives of both clerical and lay populations in the period after 1470, the volume of communication between Scotland and the Sacred Penitentiary, and fundamental elements of religious practice and belief will undoubtedly trigger a radical reassessment of sacred and profane behaviour and belief among the lay population and the composition, character, and quality of the clergy.

'So Strange a Monster as a Jesuite': The Society of Jesus in Sixteenth-Century Scotland (review)

Reviewed by: 'So Strange a Monster as a Jesuite': The Society of Jesus in Sixteenth-Century Scotland Jane E.A. Dawson 'So Strange a Monster as a Jesuite': The Society of Jesus in Sixteenth-Century Scotland. By Michael J. Yellowlees. Pp xi, 228. ISBN 1 899863 88 5. Isle of Colonsay: House of Lochar. 2003£18.99. This is the story of the Jesuit mission in Scotland and of Scottish Jesuits in the sixteenth century. Copious details of individual Jesuits who came to Scotland or who were born here are combined with a discussion from the Jesuit perspective of the preservation of Roman Catholicism within Scotland following the Reformation. The twin themes of the book make it difficult to focus clearly on either of them and occasionally blur the overall picture. This volume fills a gap because there has been no specific study of the Jesuits in Scotland. The author has brought together manuscript material from the Jesuit archives in Rome and those of the British Province and drawn upon the recently published Monumenta Angliae of the Society of Jesus. The maps of places in Scotland and in Europe are helpful, with the Scottish map demonstrating clearly that the Jesuit mission was to be found in certain regional pockets, the significant Perthshire/Dunkeld one, the area dominated by the earl of Huntly around Speyside, and Dumfries and the immediate environs linked to Lord Maxwell, as well as the area close to Seton associated with that Lord and a few others spots in the Central Belt. Curiously, the interesting map made by William Crichton in 1595, which adorns the cover and one of the plates and is transcribed in Appendix 6, is under utilised and not fully explained. Dr Yellowlees is at his strongest when describing individuals, and especially those who formed the 'Crichton' circle who all had some connexion to the diocese of Dunkeld and Perthshire and to the Crichton family who had provided the bishops for that diocese in the pre-Reformation period. This builds upon his doctoral work on Dunkeld and on his previously published articles. The 'Crichton' group was seven strong; led by William Crichton (1535-1617); Edmund Hay (c.1534-93); James Tyrie (c.1543-97); Robert Abercrombie; James Gordon (1541-1620); John Hay; and William Murdoch (1539-1616). One [End Page 350] member, James Gordon, the fifth son of the 4th Earl of Huntly, was drawn from the Scottish peerage, the rest from the level of middle-ranking lairds. Their social origins were significant because, although Roman Catholicism retained important aristocratic adherents, such as the earls of Huntly, or converts, such as Lord Maxwell, Jesuit recruitment came predominantly from the lower nobility rather than from the aristocracy. Their relatively inferior social status made the mission's goal of gaining influence at the royal court and attempting to convert the King and high-ranking courtiers that bit harder. As the Crichton group demonstrated so well, personal and kin links were crucial to recruitment and to the Jesuits' functioning within Scotland. Although family support usually brought benefits, it also had its drawbacks within the small world of the Catholic nobility. The personal tensions between William Crichton and Lord Seton, the most steadfast of the Catholic nobles, had a direct impact upon the achievements and smooth running of the whole mission. That mission also had to contend with the obstacle that at various points during the later sixteenth century neither the General of the Order nor the Pope were convinced that a Jesuit presence in Scotland would actually help Scottish Catholics. Such scepticism at the highest levels meant that the drive and resources needed to sustain the mission were not always forthcoming. At times it is not easy to navigate one's way through the maze of detail concerning the Jesuits themselves to the analysis of the aims and structure of the mission and their chances of success. In this context the brief comparison with the Jesuit campaign in Poland, where the royal family and significant sections of the nobility were converted to Roman Catholicism, could usefully have been expanded. The main achievement of the Jesuits' mission was their contribution (along with those from the other regular orders...

God and Reason in the Middle Ages (review)

182 Reviews Parergon 21.1 (2004) although traditional, is seen as deliberately placed to make an ideological point. Ghosh points out, too, how the Mirror ‘is almost obsessively, concerned either to justify its own biblical lectio as rational, or to defend its transcendence of reason’ (161). For Ghosh, Love’s text is inscribed within the Lollard framework. Chapter 6, on the anti-Lollard Thomas Netter, illustrates how common ground can still produce divergent readings. Both men sought a determinate religious truth, but Netter finds this truth firmly in the Church and traditional hermeneutics. Ghosh also shows how Netter was defending not only the Church, as has been proposed, but academia which was now under threat. Yet Ghosh points out how Lollardy had really only highlighted the inherent tensions in latemedieval scholasticism. The reaction was not immediate, but resulted in divergent positions of orthodoxy and heresy. Nevertheless Lollardy, says Ghosh, ‘half won the battle of ideas’ (212) and because it emerged from the academic milieu it also helped to fundamentally change that milieu. The Wycliffite Heresy is a welcome book, clearly written and complex, which should provoke more research and more reassessment of the still understudied pre-Reformation period. Rosemary Dunn School of Humanities James Cook University Grant, Edward, God and Reason in the Middle Ages, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001; paper; pp. ix, 397; RRP AU$55; ISBN 0521003377. This ambitiously titled work aims to explain the function of ‘reason’ in medieval intellectual life as it developed within the university. Reason, the author explains, ‘played its most significant role in preparing the way for the establishing of a deep-rooted scientific temperament that was an indispensable prerequisite for the emergence of modern science’ (p. 3). Professor Grant is eminently qualified for such a task, having published five monographs to date dealing on the topic of science in the late middle ages. Grant explains that his book seeks to support the thesis that the eighteenth century, or enlightenment, ‘was an age of faith as well as reason and the thirteenth century was an age of reason as well as of faith’ (p. 7). In the opinion of this reviewer, he is largely successful in doing so. Grant structures the work into seven chapters. Chapter one describes the socalled ‘low point’ of European civilisation in the early middle ages, and the Reviews 183 Parergon 21.1 (2004) developments in reason and rationality which transformed European society in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Chapter two focuses on how these eleventh and twelfth-century developments in the use of reason in theology, natural philosophy and law built on, yet challenged, classical and early medieval authority. Chapter three describes the particularly Aristotelian elements of these changes involving reason, and their adoption by the universities in the thirteenth century. The next three chapters move on to ‘Reason in Action’ in the universities : one on logic in the Faculty of Arts, a second on Natural Philosophy (or physics) in the Faculty of Arts and a third on Theology in the Faculty of Theology. The final chapter, ‘The Assault on the Middle Ages’, examines the process by which historians have depicted medieval intellectual thought, and the middle ages itself, as ‘dark’, ignorant and backward-looking – that is lacking reason. It is this perception which Grant is at pains to refute. God and Reason is particularly convincing when examining fourteenthcentury natural philosophy or natural science: what we now know as physics. Here Grant is on familiar territory. His findings are paradoxical. On the one hand, medieval scientists adopted an Aristotelian tradition of empiricism which emphasised experience and observation in sciences such as mathematics, astronomy and optics. On the other, however, this medieval turn placed greater emphasis on ‘thought experiments’ than direct empirical observation or measurement (p. 79). Nevertheless, Grant argues, this latter interpretation was consistent withAristotle’s own epistemology. The detailed analyses of the treatises of figures such as John Buridan and Nicole Oresme provide a valuable corrective to those who wrongly assume that scholastics were more interested in self-indulgent logical and theological conundrums than in understanding the natural world. These findings are buttressed by the final chapter, ‘TheAssault on the Middle Ages’. Grant exposes the myth linking...

Der Katechismus — eine Textart an der Schnittstelle von Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit

There are not so many occasions providing insight into the emergence and consolidation of a text species, with all its societal and linguistic contexts. One of these relatively few instances is at stake in the present article, Luther’s »Kleiner Katechismus« (Small Catechism). After a short review of traditional, personalizing 19th century views on the Reformation (§ 2.), the treatment of the text species »catechism« in theological and historical literature on the Reformation is evaluated (§ 3.1.). Recent research on late medieval text species enables us to reconstruct the sociography of a basic transformation of communicative needs which the population, esp. lay people, experienced in the pre-Reformation and Reformation period (§ 3.2.). The Reformation is a fundamental revolution with regard to religious theory and practice, with regard to the religious knowledge system and to the personnel involved. This transformation, however, encountered serious problems concerning the accessibility of written language for large parts of the population (§ 3.3.). The text species »catechism« is interpreted as a bundle of solutions for this constellation of problems (§ 4.). Reformation means a principle-based redistribution of religious knowledge (§ 4.1., 4.2.). The medieval knowledge system is rearranged, with relatively few basic concepts right in its centre, such as Scripture as immediate primary source of religious knowledge, and the possibility of, and need for, immediate contact with the Divine (»knowledge centralization« § 4.3.). In order to disseminate the new religion among the population as a whole, new media had to be developed (§ 4.4.). The text species »catechism« is one of the main answers to this task. It provides a combination or oral and literary features to an extent which enables the »conciliation« of principalized literarity with the possibilities and scope of memory-based orality (§ 5.).

John Lingard's History of the English Reformation: History or Apologetics?

JOHN LINGARDS HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH REFORMATION: HISTORY OR APOLOGETICS? John Vidmar, O.P.* "People in the 19th century are too wise for such trash as forms Popery" {Gentleman's Magazine, 89 [April, 1819], 343). In 1819 John Lingard published three volumes of his History ofEngland .1 His would be the first attempt by a Roman Catholic in modern times to write a comprehensive history of England. Five hundred copies of these volumes, concerned with the pre-Reformation period, were sold within eight days. In 1820 and 1823, the volumes on the Reformation were published, and they have provided a battleground for historians ever since. Even recently, Lingard has attracted the attention of several critics who find his work to be too highly charged with the emancipation debate of the early 1800's, and too manipulative of the reading public. Rosemary O'Day in The Debate on the English Reformation (1986), gives Lingard a thorough and measured treatment, and contends that Lingard's motives in writing about the English Reformation were primarily political, i.e., to bring about Catholic Emancipation . This criticism, of course, begs the question whether Lingard's history is accurate or not, but it also implies that Lingard, with such political motivation, could not help but be misled by historical events or give them an inaccurate interpretation.John Kenyon complained in The History Men (1984) that Lingard was less than honest: "There is something repugnant in his willingness initially to pander to Protestant prejudice , then alter his work in subsequent editions, when the 'enemy' was off his guard."2 At the University of Canterbury Philip Cattermole seconded this with a doctoral dissertation (1984) entirely devoted to the 'Father Vidmar is an assistant professor of church history at the Dominican House of Studies, Washington, D.C. 1In the pages that follow, the terms the "Church," "Catholic Church," and "English Catholic Church," all refer to the Roman Catholic Church and should not be confused with the Church of England. John Kenyon, The History Men (London, 1983), p. 86. 383 384JOHN UNGARD'S HISTORY OF THE ENGUSH REFORMATION thesis that Lingard was a calculating apologist, " [balancing] phrases to please the Roman Catholics with those to please the Protestants."3 Thus, the main arguments against Lingard's account of the English Reformation can be grouped under two headings: that Lingard's motives were so political as to preclude the writing of good history, and that Lingard was consciously deceptive in his presentation—i.e., the real Lingard emerged in later editions only after he had established his reputation. These two arguments come together because of Lingard's Roman Catholicism, which dictated how he would approach the Emancipation debate and how (cautiously) he would approach his original audience. And these criticisms fail as a result—not because such arguments are not without validity, but because their obsession with Lingard 's religion causes them to miss the point. Lingard made mistakes, and sometimes very big mistakes, but he did not make them because he was a Roman Catholic. The understanding that Lingard was an unashamed apologist for Roman Catholicism is not new. As soon as Lingard's Reformation volumes appeared, John Allen wrote in the Edinburgh Review in 1825 to warn his readers that Lingard's History was replete with bias, and that the author's "passions are warmed whenever the honor of his Church is at stake."4 At the same time, the Eclectic Review, far more contentiously, found Lingard's treatment ofAnne Boleyn "rancorous," and this was "but a specimen (and by no means the worst) of the spirit in which Dr. Lingard 's volumes are written."5 And Thomas Babington Macaulay was mocking in his reference to Lingard as an advocate: The practice of distorting narrative into a conformity with theory is a vice not as unfavorable as at first sight it may appear. . . . We have compared the writers who indulge in it to advocates; and we may add, that their conflicting fallacies, like those of advocates, correct each other. ... A tribunal will decide a judicial question most fairly when it has heard two able men argue, as unfairly as possible, on the two opposite sides of it. . . . This is...

The grammar schools of medieval England: A.F. Leach in historiographical perspective

Leach struggled to rid his countrymen of the persistent myth that the monks had been the schoolmasters of the pre-Reformation period in England. To accomplish his goal he embarked on a program of research and publication, based on a mass of hitherto unexplored documents, to establish the great antiquity of many of the nation's Latin schools and to show that they derived from clerical, but secular, colleges of Anglo-Saxon times. Showing this would, he hoped, eliminate the persistant belief that monks had been the school-masters of pre-Reformation England. Miner argues that previous readings of Leach, which suggest that his main concern is to take issue with the Reformation and argue that this great watershed in history was - at least with regard to education - a retrograde step rather than a great movement forward, have not taken into account the full range of his publications. The aim of the present study is thus to place both Leach's achievements and his more controversial theses in historical context. A separate chapter devoted to unpublished material from the Charity Commission reveals Leach's method of work and provides an analytic survey of opinions on his work by reviewers and historians. The author supplements Leach's lack of material on the school curriculum through descriptive analysis of grammatical manuscripts from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, showing the presence of an educational Christendom of which Leach was clearly unaware.

JOSEPH ROBERTSON AND THE SCOTTISH MIDDLE AGES

The interest in Scottish history at the university level is a comparatively recent phenomenon and a useful discussion of this subject by Bruce Lenman in the Scottish Historical Review identifies a number of the areas which still await their historians. Nonetheless, it is equally true, as he remarks, that 'Scottish history and especially the history of Scotland before 1603 has never been more vigorous or more relevant.'1 It is the aim of this brief study to show that such a development had its counterpart over a century ago and that one of the most enduring contributions to the pre-Reformation period in particular was that of Joseph Robertson, a life-long friend of the historian, John Hill Burton.

Glasgow in the pre-reformation period

Glasgow in the pre-reformation period