Spiritual Authority Research Articles

The Beguines of Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage and Spiritual Authority

The Beguines of Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage and Spiritual Authority

Conjectures on Solṭānᶜalīshāh, the Valāyat-nāme and Shiite Sufi authority

Few concepts if any are more central to Shiite Sufism (as to Shiism generally) thanvalāyat, and the current essay briefly explores its significance in and around an Iranian treatise of the early twentieth-century named theValāyat-nāme. Three perspectives frame the discussion: the modern theory of friendship generally, Christian mystical and Islamic concepts of Friendship with God, and (Sunni and) Shiite Sufi authority. It is proposed that typical Islamic formulations of Friendship with God are particularised from their mentioned Christian and secular counterparts by the Friend’s conception as an initiatory patron, which provides a basis to Sufi authority. Given that Sufi claims to patronage remain contested in Shiite spheres, where legitimacy is predicated on subordination to the Imamate, ambiguous articulations of hierarchy are crucial to understanding Shiite Sufi authority. TheValāyat-nāmeread thus sheds light on the downfall of its author, the Sufi master Solṭānᶜalīshāh (d.1909). The latter’s projection of spiritual authority unravelled on interrelated religious, economic and political grounds, in the context of the Constitutional Revolution in early twentieth-century provincial Khorasan.

The Beguines of Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage, and Spiritual Authority

The Beguines of Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage, and Spiritual Authority

Social Motherhood and Spiritual Authority in a Secularizing Age: Moral Welfare Work in the Church of England, 1883–1961

The article considers how the field of moral welfare and social work empowered religious women, and how these women met the challenge posed by Yeo (1998: 45), ‘to find ways of breaking the material, representational and psychic chains of subordination without reassembling them at the same time in a different form’. Based on an examination of the archival records and reports of these moral welfare organizations the article argues that the spiritual dimension of moral welfare work provided particular resources that empowered women and mitigated the subordinating operation of power in client relationships. These resources were, however, dependent on mutual subscription of religious doctrines, a condition that did not remain stable into the 1960s.

A Comparative Exploration of the Spiritual Authority of the Awliyā’ in the Shi‘i and Sufi Traditions

This paper aims to engage in a critical comparison of the spiritual authority of the awliyā’ in the Shi‘i and Sufi traditions in order to examine an area of Islamic belief that remains unclearly defined. Similarities between Shi‘i and Sufi doctrine have long been noted, but little research has been conducted on how and why they developed. Taking a central tenet of both, walāyah, the paper discusses several of its key aspects as they appear recorded in Shi‘i ḥadīth collections and as they appear later in one of the earliest Sunni Sufi treatises. By extention, it seeks to explore the identity of the awliyā’ and their role in relation to the Twelve Imams. It also traces the reabsorption into Shi‘i culture of the Sufi definition of walāyah via two examples: the works of one branch of the Dhahabi order and those of Allamah Tabataba’i, a popular twentieth-century Iranian mystic and scholar.

Spiritual Tyranny at Mars Hill: A Rhetorical Analysis of Mark Driscoll’s Relational Metaphors

A rhetorical analysis of the Mars Hill Church’s internal communications reveals three stages of the church leadership’s use of relational metaphors leading up to Mark Driscoll’s recent resignation from the church, which he founded. This article examines how these metaphors were an attempt at actional legitimation through spiritual tyranny. Spiritual tyranny, with roots in the concept of emotional tyranny, can be defined as the use of spiritual authority in a manner that is seen as destructive, controlling, or unjust. The essay ends with an explication of the harmful effects of Christian metaphors on congregations under the control of a spiritual tyrant.

Hildegard of Bingen and her Gospel Homilies: Speaking New Mysteries by Beverly Mayne Kienzle (review)

Reviewed by: Hildegard of Bingen and her Gospel Homilies: Speaking New Mysteries by Beverly Mayne Kienzle Julie Hotchin Kienzle, Beverly Mayne, Hildegard of Bingen and her Gospel Homilies: Speaking New Mysteries (Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, 12), Turnhout, Brepols, 2009; hardback; pp. xvi, 338; R.R.P. €70.00; ISBN 9782503517773. This is the ‘first comprehensive study’ (p. 16) of Hildegard of Bingen’s Expositiones evangeliorum, or homilies on the Gospels. Beverly Mayne Kienzle is well known for her scholarship on Hildegard as a preacher and teacher. This fine study complements her other two works on the homilies – a critical edition, with Carolyn Muessig, in Hildegard Bingensis Opera minora (Brepols, 2007) and an English translation, Homilies on the Gospels (Liturgical Press, 2011) – and makes these lesser known Hildegardian works accessible to a broader audience. The Expositiones consists of fifty-eight homilies, most of which were delivered by the magistra of Rupertsberg to her community of nuns, and four delivered to the monks of her former community at Mt St Disibod. These homilies illustrate Hildegard’s preaching, teaching, and exegesis in practice, and present an extraordinary witness to a medieval woman instructing her community during the course of the liturgical year. As Kienzle stresses, for Hildegard the responsibility of religious leaders to instruct their communities was integral to her concept of leadership. The homilies demonstrate how Hildegard put this tenet into practice for her nuns at Rupertsberg. Hildegard’s originality is evident in her homiletic approach. Kienzle refers to her exegetical method as ‘intratextual glossing’, a form of progressive commentary through which the speaker follows the Gospel text word by word, and inserts into it a running commentary that provides her spiritual interpretation of the text. The gloss constitutes a narrative in its own right, creating a ‘dramatic narrative exegesis’ on the Gospel texts. In describing the performative quality and context of the homilies, Kienzle posits that ‘the story unfolds like the acts of a drama voiced and performed by Hildegard herself as magistra, narrator, and interpreter’ (p. 152). The author also examines three characteristically Hildegardian themes in the Expositiones – her concept of [End Page 297] salvation history, the ‘virtues’, and heresy – to situate the homilies within the context of her life and work. Kienzle’s analysis of Hildegard’s exegetical method poses questions about her claims to spiritual authority. The magistra does not adopt a visionary persona in her homilies. The absence of reference to her visions in these works indicates that she felt no need to justify her authority to preach and teach when it involved commenting on scripture to her own community of nuns. Her position as their superior, bound with the obligation to instruct, provided the authorising environment to deliver her exegesis. Importantly, Kienzle situates Hildegard and her learning within the wider context of the vibrant monastic milieu of religious reform and intellectual exchange. She deftly outlines the breadth of monastic women’s learning in Germany in the twelfth century, and their involvement in intellectual networks, emphasising the formative nature of this religious culture for Hildegard. Through the Expositiones Hildegard develops a distinctive exegesis for a female audience that in turn ‘speaks to multiple audiences’, like her other visionary and epistolary works. Julie Hotchin Independent Scholar, Canberra Copyright © 2015 Julie Hotchin

A Comparative Exploration of the Spiritual Authority of the Awliyā’ in the Shi‘i and Sufi Traditions

This paper aims to engage in a critical comparison of the spiritual authority of the awliyā’ in the Shi‘i and Sufi traditions in order to examine an area of Islamic belief that remains unclearly defined. Similarities between Shi‘i and Sufi doctrine have long been noted, but little research has been conducted on how and why they developed. Taking a central tenet of both, walāyah, the paper discusses several of its key aspects as they appear recorded in Shi‘i ḥadīth collections and as they appear later in one of the earliest Sunni Sufi treatises. By extention, it seeks to explore the identity of the awliyā’ and their role in relation to the Twelve Imams. It also traces the reabsorption into Shi‘i culture of the Sufi definition of walāyah via two examples: the works of one branch of the Dhahabi order and those of Allamah Tabataba’i, a popular twentieth-century Iranian mystic and scholar.

‘Mulieres Religiosae’: Shaping Female Spiritual Authority in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods ed. by Veerle Fraeters and Imke de Gier (review)

‘Mulieres Religiosae’: Shaping Female Spiritual Authority in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods ed. by Veerle Fraeters and Imke de Gier (review)

Mufti ‘Iwāz and the 1816 “Disturbances at Bareilli”:Inter-Communal Moral Economy and Religious Authority in Rohilkhand

In the Spring of 1816, the North Indian town of Bareilli witnessed a series of protests following the imposition of a House Tax by the East India Company government. Under the leadership of Mufti ‘Iwāz, a local ‘ālemassociated with reformist Sufi traditions, various Muslim and Hindu communities of Bareilli engaged in collective action which culminated in a violent confrontation. Reading court records against the grain, this paper argues that the protests represented a complex form of negotiation framed within Islamo-Persianate paradigms—including symbols, language, and authority ­structures—which continued to define modes of popular political expression in the early colonial period. By focusing on Mufti ‘Iwāz, the incident provides rare insights into the practical relationship between Muslim orthodoxy, communal dynamics, and political authority. I argue that with the collapse of Mughal rule, themuftiassumed a role as an intermediary between the people of Bareilli and Company officials derived from precolonial conceptions of moral, popular, and spiritual authority shared by Hindu and Muslim communities.

The Beguines of medieval Paris: gender, patronage, and spiritual authority

Introduction Chapter 1. The Prud'homme and the Beguines: Louis IX and the Foundation of the Beguinage of Paris Chapter 2. The World of the Beguinage Chapter 3. Beguines, Silk, and the City Chapter 4. Masters and Pastors: Sorbonne Scholars, Beguines, and Religious Instruction Chapter 5. Religious Education and Spiritual Collaboration at the Beguinage of Paris Chapter 6. There Are Among Us Women Called Chapter 7. The King's Beguines Appendix. Beguines Whose Occupations Are Known Notes Bibliography Index

Clergy Sexual Abuse: Social Science Perspectives ed. by Claire M. Renzetti, Sandra Yocum (review)

Reviewed by: Clergy Sexual Abuse: Social Science Perspectives ed. by Claire M. Renzetti, Sandra Yocum Nicholas P. Carfardi Clergy Sexual Abuse: Social Science Perspectives. Edited by Claire M. Renzetti and Sandra Yocum . Lebanon, NH : Northeastern University Press , 2013 . 216 pp. $35.00 . This book is a collection of essays by social scientists, adding insights from their areas of expertise – sociology, criminology, cultural anthropology, and psychology – to the rather saturated issue of clergy sexual abuse. While most of the essays deal with the sexual abuse of children by clergy, primarily Roman Catholic clergy, two of the essays deal with the sexual abuse of adults by clergy. It was those two essays that I found the most interesting because they provided the freshest insights. In “Don’t Call it an Affair,” Diana Garland, writes a striking essay on the primarily female victims of sexually predatory pastors. Perhaps I found this piece so interesting because it did not deal with the ever-depressing topic of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests. The pastors involved here are ecumenical abusers. They include both celibate Catholic priests and married Protestant pastors and Jewish rabbis. I was struck by how similar the response of adult women who had been sexually abused by their pastors was to those of the children who had been abused – from not understanding what was happening to not knowing how to tell people about it to the years of recovery required. The other piece on adult sexual abuse, “Clergy Sexual Misconduct with Congregants or Parishioners,” by Bradley Tobin and Kris Helge is primarily a brief on the need for state statutes criminalizing sexual activity between ministers and their adult congregants. Evidently thirteen states already have such laws, and evidently they pass constitutional muster. The other articles are more specifically on clergy, primarily Catholic, abuse of youngsters. Karen Terry, whose work I admire, summarizes her John Jay data, but also repeats the canard that the infamous Mouton-Doyle-Peterson report was circulated to the American Catholic bishops at Collegeville in 1985. It was not. John C. Gonsiorek is justifiably angry with the Catholic hierarchy. His [End Page 67] description of them as out of touch aristocrats gets more support everyday from dioceses across the country. But his solution to the problem requires rewriting the First Amendment in a way that is unlikely. I am sure that Paul Steele in “Contingent Crimes” was saying something insightful, but his retreat into jargon made his insights inaccessible to me. Sandra Yocum in her “The Priest and Catholic Culture as Symbolic System of Purity,” is on to something in the idea that when spiritual authority is built on sexual purity, the holders of that authority who act out sexually completely devastate their victims and destroy their authority. She seems to think, however, that the child victims of the clergy sexual abuse crisis in the United States were more vulnerable because they were trained on the Baltimore Catechism’s exalted view of priesthood. This is truer of the priest abusers – trained in the 1950s and 1960s – than it is of their victims. Children abused in the 1970s and early 1980s – which is when most of the abuse occurred – never saw a Baltimore Catechism. It was long gone from the scene by then. Like most collections, this one has its highs and lows. The editors did a fine job in choosing interesting topics and in making sure that there was no overlap in coverage, not an easy task in compiling such works. Nicholas P. Carfardi Duquesne University School of Law Copyright © 2014 American Catholic Historical Society

The Beguines of Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage, and Spiritual Authority by Tanya Stabler Miller (review)

The Beguines of Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage, and Spiritual Authority by Tanya Stabler Miller (review)

Religion in Modern Russia: Revival and Survival

Robert H. Greene, Bodies Like Bright Stars: Saints and Relics in Orthodox Russia. 299 pp. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010. ISBN-13 978-0875804095. $42.00. Scott M. Kenworthy, The Heart of Russia: Trinity-Sergius, Monasticism, and Society after 1825. 528 pp. New York: Oxford University Press; Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2010. ISBN-13 978-0199736133. $74.00. Oleg Viktorovich Kirichenko, Zhenskoe pravoslavnoe podvizhnichestvo v Rossii (X1X-seredina XX v.) (Female Orthodox Asceticism in Russia [19th to Mid-20th Century]). 637 pp. Moscow: Sviato-Aleksievskaia pustyn', 2010. No ISBN. Irina Paert, Spiritual Elders: Charisma and Tradition in Russian Orthodoxy. 286 pp. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010. ISBN-13 978-0875804293. $43.00. Gleb Mikhailovich Zapal'skii, Optina pustyn'i ee vospitanniki v 1825-1917 godakh (Optina Hermitage and Its Disciples, 1825-1917). 413 pp. Moscow: Rukopisnye pamiatniki drevnei Rusi, 2009. ISBN-13 978-5955103433. As several recent review essays in Kritika indicate, the study of Orthodoxy and of religion in general in modern Russia has flourished over the past 15 years. Moving beyond previously dominant topics, this scholarly work has added substantially to our understanding of religious culture and experience in Russia and their relevance for a wide range of issues. (1) The five books reviewed here make a significant contribution to this growing body of literature. Focusing on the revival of spiritual eldership (starchestvo) and monasticism and the veneration of saints' relics in imperial Russia, as well as the survival of these forms of religious life during the Soviet era, they provide valuable insight into the nature of spiritual authority among the Orthodox faithful during the 19th and 20th centuries, the responsiveness of Orthodox institutions to modernizing change, and the influence of shared religious experience on personal and collective identities. All five studies, moreover, are based on impressive research that makes use of extensive bodies of published and archival sources; for the Soviet period, Oleg Kirichenko also draws heavily on field interviews. Given the overlap in the authors' topics, there are many similarities in their arguments. Broadly, all five authors describe dynamic processes of interaction through which religious institutions were revitalized, spiritual authority was established, and personal and collective identities were formed. These processes took place partly within monastic communities, and Irina Paert, Scott Kenworthy, Gleb Zapal'skii, and Kirichenko demonstrate the central role played by spiritual elders in reviving monastic life in the prerevolutionary period. But while pursuing their own inwardly focused objectives, elders and monastic communities also sought to exercise spiritual authority within the wider Orthodox community. As the authors show, their success in doing so--like the veneration accorded particular saints' relics--depended in large degree on the extent to which they fulfilled the expectations of believers. These expectations included conformity with ideals regarding appearance, behavior, and the setting and experience of interaction. But they also included the perceived ability of elders, monastic communities, and saints through their relics to satisfy the varied and changing spiritual and other needs of the Orthodox faithful who turned to them. Again as the authors demonstrate, the efforts to meet these needs satisfactorily for a large number of believers in a context of modernizing change shaped the activities of elders and of monastic communities, resulting in adaptation to new conditions despite the frequently professed aspiration for the renewal of authentic forms of Orthodox ascetic and monastic life. (2) According to the authors, these processes of interaction also helped shape Orthodox identities on the local and the national levels, through both direct experience and the awareness of their widespread commonality among the faithful. …

Divinely Empowered, Spiritually Gifted: Women in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal Movement in Trinidad

Roman Catholic teaching developed since Vatican II (1962 - 1965) enunciates that Jesus Christ established and ordained a male clergy through his appointment of twelve male disciples. Predicated on this, Roman Catholic women have been denied ordination and access into positions of spiritual authority. In the island of Trinidad however, it has been observed that women have created a unique space for agency that has been seldom a focus of theoretical inquiry. This has been achieved through the emergence of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal Movement (1971), a spirit filled upsurge that revived the entire Church. Through the establishment of powerful prayer ministries, women were the initiators of a new centred spiritual wave; they were all pioneers establishing their own Renewal Communities, and in many instances singlehandedly administering spiritual affairs. These meetings were the perfect environment for God's visitation, which eventually resulted in the bestowal of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of Glossolalia (speaking in tongues) upon all attendants. Inevitably, this phenomenon couldn't be contained; the meetings soon expanded throughout the island, and as the years progressed, specific women saw it fit to establish Renewal Communities that would be the mechanisms used to make Renewal a more visible movement. This paper is a subset of a larger research entitled Zelophehad's Daughters, which is focused on addressing the experiences of female leaders within the Catholic Charismatic Renewal Movement in Trinidad. Using Feminist Theology as its theoretical foundation and the Interpretative Phenomenological Methodological Approach, this research will attempt to examine the relationship between spiritual experiences and female leadership within the Catholic Charismatic Renewal Movement.

The role of the clergy in the creation and work of the state authorities during the first Serbian uprising: Part one

Priests fulfill their mission among the people, and therefore share its fate. They recognize and share its needs, difficulties and aspirations. That was also the case during the First Serbian Uprising. Serbian people and Serbian clergy, therefore, shared the same needs and aspirations to get rid of the Ottoman occupation and to have their own state in which they will live by their own laws. This paper attempts to show how the clergy helped the establishment of Serbian authorities when the Turkish feudal system collapsed in the area of the Pashaluk of Belgrade, and how it participated in their work. This paper tried to show what was immediately done to lead to the establishment of the Serbian state in the making, but also what was done indirectly, through the priestly mission, in order to reach this goal. In particular, it was shown how Stevan Stratimirovic, the Metropolitan of Karlovci, who was the largest and undisputed spiritual authority among the rebels, with his frequent appeals for respect of law and order, often directly addressing rebel leaders, contributed to creating an environment for establishment and work of the new Serbian state authorities. It seems that in the legal and historical literature, as well as in historiography in general, these activities which indirectly lead to the creation of the state after the First Serbian Uprising were not sufficiently analyzed, and in this paper they are at least partially covered.

Holy vows and realpolitik: Preliminary notes on Kōyasan's early medieval kishōmon

This article concerns the written vows made at the Shingon Buddhist temple Kōyasan 高野山 in the early medieval period (1185–1392). The temple complex at Kōyasan is situated in the mountainous interior of modern Wakayama prefecture, Japan, which in the pre-modern era corresponded to the province of Kii 紀伊. In the early medieval period, Kōyasan was developing a system of local rule centred on control of private estates (shōen 荘園) in the area surrounding the temple. This was an era of decentralization, in which national authority and systems of rule were losing their potency in the face of rising localization and the increasingly central role of the warrior class. With warriors taking an ever greater share of estate revenue and assuming greater administrative control within shōen, estate proprietors such as Kōyasan were faced with diminishing income, leading to centrally-located temples and aristocratic families effectively losing all control over distant estates. Located in the mountains of Kii and overlooking the estates along the Ki river, Kōyasan by contrast was close to its land and was strongly involved in warrior society. A major facet of this relationship with warrior estate managers was the kishōmon 起請文, or written vow, signed at the temple as both a performative act of submission to its spiritual authority and as a contract and code of conduct between proprietor and estate manager (shōkan 荘官).

Revelations of Romantic Childhood: Anna Jameson, Mary Howitt, and Victorian Women's Spiritual Autobiography

Anna Jameson and Mary Howitt, two Victorian professional women of letters, unusually chose to express their spiritual autobiographies through the popular narrative of childhood. They interpreted their childhood experience to embody and promote their adult religious views, Jameson in her 1854 ‘Revelation of Childhood’ and Howitt in her 1889 Autobiography. Both writers deploy images of childhood as popularised through Romantic discourse to achieve this. The child's association with innocence and natural wisdom lends authority to their views, and the idealisation of childhood imagination in particular lends itself to express the adult writers' commitment to ‘Romantic’ religion. Both use the childhood spiritual autobiography to protest against dogmatic, formalised religion in the name of a spirituality based on imagination and feeling. These self-constructions have feminist implications as the women reject patriarchal authorities to form independent religious views, and to implicitly claim a spiritual authority denied women in formal religious argument. These narratives thus constitute a striking intervention into Victorian faith debates, as well as forming a distinctive contribution to traditions of women's self-writing, and of Victorian spiritual autobiography.

Inscribing Spiritual Authority: the Temptation of St. Benedict Capital in the Narthex at Vézelay

In the narthex of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine at Vezelay a rare depiction of the Temptation of St. Benedict on a capital faces toward the tympanum representing Pentecost and the Mission of the Apostles. Both the monastic and the lay communities used the narthex, a site of passage into the main body of the church, but this capital was placed directly in the path of the monks entering the narthex during the Sunday and Easter processions. Across the east face of the capital images of the Devil, a woman, and St. Benedict are aligned beneath an inscription which clearly labels the woman DIABOLVS, as a warning to the monks that women, such as those attending the Sunday and Easter services, must be guarded against as though they were the Devil himself. This article addresses the monastic understanding of the narthex as Galilee, the site for meeting Christ eternal, and relates the capital to the cure of souls (cura animarum) during a period of conflict with the bishop of Autun over this privilege. The sculpted narrati...

‘I am here’: Reading Julian of Norwich in Nineteenth-Century New England

This is a study of the reading of Julian of Norwich’s Divine Revelations by an Irish immigrant, Thomas Connary, who worked as a farmer in New Hampshire in the latter half of the nineteenth century. A close examination of Connary’s annotations in Julian’s visionary autobiography reveals a remarkable intertextual dialogue of voices, in which Connary emulates, and is enabled by, past spiritual authority. By drawing parallels between the devotional practices and habits of reading of Julian and Connary, this essay thinks transhistorically about the nature of the visionary autobiography, and considers an aspect of the cultural mobility of a rich and articulate Middle English mystical tradition.