Vows Of Celibacy Research Articles

The Female Tonsure and Female Monasticism in Old Russia and the Balkans

This paper describes a rare rite of female tonsure that is known from five Slavonic Euchologia (Trebnik) of the 13th–16th centuries and attempts to investigate on the basis of historical sources how this rite of tonsure could be applied in the Balkans and in Early Russia. N. F. Krasnosel′tsev suggested that this tonsure was of a very ancient origin and was intended for tonsuring virgins who took the vow of celibacy. The Greek original of this rite is preserved only in one known Euchologion Coisl.213 (1027). We argue that its Slavonic translation is of a Serbian origin and was made not earlier than in the 13thcentury, but that it apparently was not used in the Balkans afterwards. In Early Russia this rite is scantily attested in written sources — since the 14thcentury its content was shortened and influenced by the later practice of tonsure. However, historical sources prove that tonsuring of virgins was very common in Kievan Rus′ with its urban convents, while it was practically unknown in the Balkans. In medieval Bulgaria and Serbia there were recorded cases of widows tonsured without entering the monastery. It is difficult to say whether before the end of 14th century any fully developed female monastic communities existed in this region in the form in which they are known in Rus′. Probably, the rite of tonsure of virgins in Old Russia was very close to the rite from the manuscript Gilf.21, though, most likely, it did not contain the final part — the prayer for the removal of the veil (kukol'), as in Coisl.213.

Sexual Crime, Religion and Masculinity in Fin-de-siècle France: The Flamidien Affair by Timothy Verhoeven

Reviewed by: Sexual Crime, Religion and Masculinity in Fin-de-siècle France: The Flamidien Affair by Timothy Verhoeven Aaron Freundschuh Timothy Verhoeven, Sexual Crime, Religion and Masculinity in Fin-de-siècle France: The Flamidien Affair. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. In February 1899, Gaston Foveaux, age 12, was abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered at Lille’s Notre Dame de Treille school, where he regularly participated in a youth club. After more than two days, his body was found on the school grounds, a space supervised by the Lasallian Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes. Gaston’s belongings, including a coat and cap, turned up elsewhere in the school. When questioned by investigators, the concierge (who had been situated near the walled entrance) said that he had been been paying especially close attention to all comings and goings during the likely timeframe of Gaston’s disappearance, and that the boy had not left the school. The culprit, in a ploy to throw investigators off the scent, left a faux apology next to Gaston Foveaux’s body, signed “an ardent socialist” (2). Soon enough, one of the members of the teaching congregation of Christian brothers at the school, Frère Flamidien, age 35, was named the prime suspect. Placed under arrest, Flamidien was questioned for several weeks. Swift and awful was his public humiliation, yet he stood his ground. The so-called Flamidien affair ended abruptly when the case against him was thrown out on procedural grounds. Frère Flamidien was released, and the Foveaux case went cold. In this slim volume, Timothy Verhoeven, Senior Lecturer at Monash University, takes the view that the Flamidien affair was a “key moment in driving even deeper the wedge between republicans and Catholics” in finde-siècle France (6). Over the course of seven brisk chapters, Verhoeven sustains a discussion of the major contextual elements of the scandal. These include the ideological battle over public education, and the competing norms of masculinity that set the celibacy of the Christian brothers against the republican ideal based on marriage and procreation. When he was forced to stand before the corpse of Gaston Foveaux in a common mise-en-scène known as la confrontation, Flamidien was overcome with tearful emotion, a reaction that set him apart from his brethren within the school’s teaching congregation. To investigators, who typically relied on [End Page 201] pseudo-scientific techniques to decipher guilt on the faces of the accused, Flamidien had given himself away. Another flimsy investigative method, graphology, was used to pressure Flamidien into confessing. According to Verhoeven, Flamidien’s steadfastness inspired his defenders to refashion the retiring brother as the “Catholic vision of masculinity” and a “Christian model of heroism” (69). It is on these themes, especially as they are explored in connection with the disputed practice of celibacy, that this microhistory stakes its strongest claim for the historical relevance of the Flamidien affair. The local Catholic press organ, La Croix du Nord, rejected republicanism’s insistence on narrowly prescribed norms of gender, and since the teaching congregants took vows of celibacy, this point of contention could not be kept separate from the “school wars” that divided republicans and Catholics in the early decades of the Third Republic. Having watched the Church stand in reactionary opposition to the very idea of democracy in the century after the Great Revolution, republicans in Lille were irate to find the city’s Catholics uncooperative in this murder investigation. Crowds assembled in the public square after Flamidien was apprehended. A Lille street poster denounced Flamidien as a “product of his milieu” and cautioned those who mistook clerics for the moral guides they pretended to be (81). At certain points in this study, the long-simmering inter-generational conflicts between Catholics and republicans completely eclipse the specific evidence presented by the Foveaux crime scene, and along with it the individuals who participated in the investigation. The result is an uncritical emphasis on the themes of anticlericalism and Catholic victimhood. The author supposes, for example, that the “anticlerical mind” (35), haunted by visions of clerical pedophilia, drove investigators to suspect the Christian brothers at Foveaux’s school. But the material clues detected at...

O que é Portugal? O que somos e porque o somos by Manuel ClementeO segredo da justiça by Pedro Garcia MarquesHumanidade(s): considerações radicalmente contemporâneas by Isabel Capeloa GilA Filologia e o Presente by Hans Ulrich GumbrechtBrexit: uma questão de racionalidade política by Annette Bongardt and Francisco Torres

Reviews 127 as also transpires in other parts of Cruz de Guerra, as much as he admires the Jesuits’ intellectuality and their love of knowledge, he is very harsh on the vow of celibacy. Himself forced to enter the seminary at the age of ten, Rocha, the son of landowners, abandoned the cloth when he moved to Portugal. As with most of Rocha’s narratives, Cruz de Guerra peers into his own past, which is entwined with that of Goans both outstanding and ordinary, both at home and abroad. Though his viewpoint is far from romantic or sentimental — at one point he describes Goan Freedom Fighters breaking into his ageing parents’ great house to steal a gun — and he is highly critical of Goans, he is determined to narrate episodes that show Goans at their best. One such example would be the undeniable link between the Hindus and the Catholics, as the final piece in the book, ‘Recordando uns episódios em Goa: tempo português em viragem’ [Remembering some Goan Episodes: Changing Portuguese Times], attests. It recounts the author’s experience in the Seminar of Rachol, the heart of Catholicism in Goa, when Rabindranath Tagore’s play Sanyassi, on Hindu philosophy, was performed. Another example would be his love of local customs and Goa’s language, Konkani, when he chooses to narrate that on the same occasion, in that same temple of erudition, where mostly Latin was spoken, a young Christian from Mardol got up on stage and, in the style of the popular tyatr, delivered a monologue about the vicissitudes of a cowherd when an ox runs away from the herd to go after a cow! What makes Cruz de Guerra a page-turner is Rocha’s ability to switch not only between genres and topics, but also between narrative tones. If he can be severely critical, he can also be amusing and entertaining. Manuel Clemente, O que é Portugal? O que somos e porque o somos (Lisbon: Universidade Católica Editora, 2015), 45 pages. Print. Pedro Garcia Marques, O segredo da justiça (Lisbon: Universidade Católica Editora, 2016), 75 pages. Print. Isabel Capeloa Gil, Humanidade(s): considerações radicalmente contempor âneas (Lisbon: Universidade Católica Editora, 2016), 60 pages + bibliography and notes. Print. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, A Filologia e o Presente, trans. by Ana Maria Carneiro (Lisbon: Universidade Católica Editora, 2017), 50 pages + notes. Print. Annette Bongardt and Francisco Torres, Brexit: uma questão de racionalidade política (Lisbon: Universidade Católica Editora, 2017), 46 pages + notes. Print. Reviewed by Paulo de Medeiros, University of Warwick In 2015 the Press of the Catholic University of Portugal (UCP) started a new series, with the title of Argumentos, which now includes twenty-five books, the latest of which is devoted to sacred art and architecture in Braga. Although Reviews 128 the Press (Universidade Católica Editora) has been publishing for twenty years in a diverse range of academic fields and disciplines, including not only the Humanities and Social Sciences but also Law, Business, Engineering and Theology, it does not enjoy much visibility outside those fields. The new series could change that, as it is interdisciplinary, very topical and accessible. Published in cooperation with the Fundação Cupertino de Miranda and priced at five euros per volume (€4.50 initially), there are many reasons for it to become a success and reach a wider audience beyond the restricted groves of academia. Unlike the comparable series published directly by the Fundação Cupertino de Miranda — also very topical and priced even lower, with the paperback versions costing just three euros — which is widely available to the general public in special displays placed in most supermarkets as well as bookstores, this series still needs better distribution if it is ultimately to reach the wide audience it addresses in Portugal. Conversely — and this is both unusual and very welcome — the books can be purchased from Amazon UK for a still modest five pounds plus postage. The topics covered are wide-ranging, encompassing some questions more restricted to an academic interest while others speak to anyone wishing to be informed, be it on euthanasia, the question of Europe, or the impact of refugees...

Summer Reads

Lori Feathers (@lorifeathers) is a co-owner of Interabang Books in Dallas, Texas, and the store’s book buyer. She writes freelance book reviews, sits on the board of the National Book Critics Circle, and is a fiction judge for the 2018 Best Translated Book Award. The winter break was one of long reads: Exit West, If Beale Street Could Talk, Manhattan Beach, Little Fires Everywhere. After a busy four months of editing and teaching, with little time for reading novels, Managing and Culture Editor Michelle Johnson is looking forward to again immersing herself in other worlds. Here are three already on her list. Therese Bohman Eventide Trans. Marlaine Delargy Other Press Swedish author Therese Bohman, who is also an art-and-culture columnist, creates for her third novel an art history professor navigating the politics of the academic world. The publisher’s catalog describes the book as posing questions about the “distorted standards to which women are held in their relationships and careers.” The online reviews promise “crystalline reflections on art and culture” (Sylvia Brownrigg) and a protagonist who ultimately prevails. Rupert Thomson Never Anyone But You Other Press To continue reading about strong women, art, and culture, I’ve already set aside the advance copy of Rupert Thomson’s Never Anyone But You. This novelization of the lives of two revolutionary women, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, traces their clandestine love affair in avant-garde 1930s Paris and Jersey. While smashing gender barriers, they played an influential role in the surrealist and dadaist movements and eventually risked their lives creating anti-Nazi propaganda. Tayari Jones An American Marriage Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill With both Edwidge Danticat and Jacqueline Woodson recommending it, this story of a wrongful conviction’s impact upon a marriage is a timely must-read. Though not a courtroom drama, the novel promises enough connection to the law-and-literature genre to satisfy readers who, like me, want to reflect on how the US legal system affects both those brought into it and their families. editor’s pick: summer reads with a woman. Lisa, his latest lover, understands his commitment to God and never asks him to choose between her and the church. When Lisa is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Father Abram feels helpless to her suffering and struggles to understand why God allows it. At the same time, he questions whether God truly forgives his repeated breach of his vow of celibacy. He despairs God’s silence in response to both his sins and his efforts to atone for them. Father Abram entangles himself in a tightening web of dishonesty as he tries to keep his relationship with Lisa concealed, and this causes him great shame. He comes to understand that his feelings of shame are a symptom of God’s grace—evidence that his striving to be good can never be finished. Unworthy is an immersive novel of one man’s fight to reconcile his flawed humanity with a godliness compelled by the sacred; his recognition that even the most devout face silence in their need for divine solace. Madame Nielsen The Endless Summer Trans. Gaye Kynoch | Open Letter The Endless Summer feels like a fairy tale—lyrical, poignant, and dreamy; a story set in an otherworldly, timeless space. A group of young people converge upon a ramshackle manor where they pass day after summer day in a state of hedonistic languor and ardent fascination with the beautifully poised and reserved matron of the house, referred to simply as “the mother.” This woman is indeed mother of three children: a teenage daughter, Stina, and two little boys. But for Stina and the handful of young men who decamp at the manor that summer (among them both Stina’s genderambiguous lover and her best friend from school), the mother is muse—enigmatic, beautiful, self-possessed—a being whose love and attention they all long to receive. To their great surprise, the mother takes a lover, one of a newly arrived pair of young men from Portugal hitchhiking across Europe. Months later the summer idyll abruptly ends when one of the group dies. Madame Nielsen fittingly subtitles her novel “a requiem,” and indeed it beautifully...

Summer Reads

Lori Feathers (@lorifeathers) is a co-owner of Interabang Books in Dallas, Texas, and the store’s book buyer. She writes freelance book reviews, sits on the board of the National Book Critics Circle, and is a fiction judge for the 2018 Best Translated Book Award. The winter break was one of long reads: Exit West, If Beale Street Could Talk, Manhattan Beach, Little Fires Everywhere. After a busy four months of editing and teaching, with little time for reading novels, Managing and Culture Editor Michelle Johnson is looking forward to again immersing herself in other worlds. Here are three already on her list. Therese Bohman Eventide Trans. Marlaine Delargy Other Press Swedish author Therese Bohman, who is also an art-and-culture columnist, creates for her third novel an art history professor navigating the politics of the academic world. The publisher’s catalog describes the book as posing questions about the “distorted standards to which women are held in their relationships and careers.” The online reviews promise “crystalline reflections on art and culture” (Sylvia Brownrigg) and a protagonist who ultimately prevails. Rupert Thomson Never Anyone But You Other Press To continue reading about strong women, art, and culture, I’ve already set aside the advance copy of Rupert Thomson’s Never Anyone But You. This novelization of the lives of two revolutionary women, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, traces their clandestine love affair in avant-garde 1930s Paris and Jersey. While smashing gender barriers, they played an influential role in the surrealist and dadaist movements and eventually risked their lives creating anti-Nazi propaganda. Tayari Jones An American Marriage Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill With both Edwidge Danticat and Jacqueline Woodson recommending it, this story of a wrongful conviction’s impact upon a marriage is a timely must-read. Though not a courtroom drama, the novel promises enough connection to the law-and-literature genre to satisfy readers who, like me, want to reflect on how the US legal system affects both those brought into it and their families. editor’s pick: summer reads with a woman. Lisa, his latest lover, understands his commitment to God and never asks him to choose between her and the church. When Lisa is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Father Abram feels helpless to her suffering and struggles to understand why God allows it. At the same time, he questions whether God truly forgives his repeated breach of his vow of celibacy. He despairs God’s silence in response to both his sins and his efforts to atone for them. Father Abram entangles himself in a tightening web of dishonesty as he tries to keep his relationship with Lisa concealed, and this causes him great shame. He comes to understand that his feelings of shame are a symptom of God’s grace—evidence that his striving to be good can never be finished. Unworthy is an immersive novel of one man’s fight to reconcile his flawed humanity with a godliness compelled by the sacred; his recognition that even the most devout face silence in their need for divine solace. Madame Nielsen The Endless Summer Trans. Gaye Kynoch | Open Letter The Endless Summer feels like a fairy tale—lyrical, poignant, and dreamy; a story set in an otherworldly, timeless space. A group of young people converge upon a ramshackle manor where they pass day after summer day in a state of hedonistic languor and ardent fascination with the beautifully poised and reserved matron of the house, referred to simply as “the mother.” This woman is indeed mother of three children: a teenage daughter, Stina, and two little boys. But for Stina and the handful of young men who decamp at the manor that summer (among them both Stina’s genderambiguous lover and her best friend from school), the mother is muse—enigmatic, beautiful, self-possessed—a being whose love and attention they all long to receive. To their great surprise, the mother takes a lover, one of a newly arrived pair of young men from Portugal hitchhiking across Europe. Months later the summer idyll abruptly ends when one of the group dies. Madame Nielsen fittingly subtitles her novel “a requiem,” and indeed it beautifully...

SWORN VIRGINS, MALE AND FEMALE BERDACHES: A COMPARATIVE APPROACH TO THE SO-CALLED ‘THIRD GENDER’ PEOPLE

The phenomenon of sworn virgins in Northern Albania applies to women who, by taking a vow of celibacy, dressed and behaved as men (Young 2001). Berdache males and females are aboriginal North-American Indians1 who assumed the dress, occupation and roles of the opposite sex by changing in this way their gender status (Blackwood 1984; Schnarch 1992). This article is based on a comparative approach which looked at different cultural variations of sworn virgins, male and female berdaches. The reason for examining such practices is to show how gender and sexuality can be seen as culturally defined phenomena, embedded in society and not necessarily in biological sex. Therefore, it is important to look and think beyond labeling individuals based on Western gendered and sexual prescriptions, as is evident in the terminology. These categories do not fulfil the notion of gender normatively; they can be seen as cross-cultural gender variations that need to be analysed in greater detail.

Book Review: Bakich,O. M. (2015). Valerii Pereleshin: Life of a Silkworm Toronto: University of Toronto Press

Book Review: Bakich,O. M. (2015). Valerii Pereleshin: Life of a Silkworm Toronto: University of Toronto Press

Medical magnificat: Souls proclaiming God's greatness.

Medical magnificat: Souls proclaiming God's greatness.

Harmful or Benign? Transnational Medical Networks and the Celibacy of Priests

This article investigates the nineteenth‐century debate within transnational medical networks about the physiological effects of celibacy for priests. Many doctors, motivated in part by their animosity towards the Catholic Church, argued that the vow of celibacy was not only futile, but responsible for sexual immorality in the church. However, medical opinion was never uniform, and other doctors rallied to the church, defending the celibate vow as largely benign. Both sides shared a willingness to look abroad for support and inspiration. This article investigates this debate as a transnational phenomenon, as key texts were translated and published across Europe and North America, and as several notorious case‐studies emerged to form the focus of international controversy.

Ancestors, Virgins, & Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late Imperial China (review)

Reviewed by: Ancestors, Virgins, & Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late Imperial China Robert Entenmann Ancestors, Virgins, & Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late Imperial China. By Eugenio Menegon. [Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series 69.] (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2009. Pp. xxii, 450. $49.95. ISBN 978-0-674-03596-6.) Eugenio Menegon's Ancestors, Virgins, & Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late Imperial China is a path-breaking contribution to scholarship on Christianity in China. Drawing on Chinese and European archival and published materials, Menegon examines the Chinese Catholics of Fuan county in Fujian, an area evangelized by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Spanish Dominicans, and shows how Chinese Catholics made Christianity a Chinese religion. Christianity may be universal, equally true in all places and at all times, but it also is a historical phenomenon, a product of a particular time and place. In China and the Christian Impact: A Conflict of Cultures (New York, 1982), Jacques Gernet argues that [End Page 875] everything that goes to make up Christianity—the opposition in substance between an eternal soul and a perishable body, the kingdom of God and the earthly world, the concept of a God of truth, eternal and immutable, the dogma of the Incarnation—all this was more easily accessible to the inheritors of Greek thought than to the Chinese, who referred to quite different traditions. Christianity and China were incompatible, Gernet suggests, because of "fundamental differences between two mental universes."1 Menegon effectively refutes this view. He demonstrates that Chinese Catholics transformed Christianity from a foreign religion into a Chinese one with "a new religious identity, both Chinese and Catholic, local yet universal in aspiration" (p. 8, emphasis in original). He shows as well what the localization of Christianity in this part of southeast China reveals about the relationship between late-imperial Chinese society and religion. Although proscribed in 1724 and thereafter regarded as a heterodox sect,Christianity, like other illegal popular religions, generally enjoyed local de-facto toleration. Menegon shows that it functioned much like indigenous lay devotional groups in popular Buddhism and Daoism such as the Non-Action Sect and the cult of the Lady of the Water Margins. Chapters 2 to 4 offer a chronological overview of Catholicism in Fuan. Chapter 5 shows how Christianity embedded itself within kinship networks and found a place for itself in local society. Chapter 6 deals with the role of priests, both Chinese and Europeans, in pedagogical and catechetical instruction, as healers and exorcists, and as enforcers of control and discipline over Christian communities. Incidentally, Menegon's assertion that marriage, although a sacrament,"remained outside the purview of missionaries in China" (p. 221n22) is questionable. This may have been the case in the Dominican Fuan mission, but evidence from eighteenth-century Sichuan shows that European missionaries and Chinese clergy labored, persistently but often unsuccessfully, to enforce canon law on marriage, even though Catholic norms often conflicted with Chinese custom. Church practice in late-imperial China varied from time and place, and no place was completely representative. Menegon is particularly insightful in examining the religious life of Chinese Catholics. Chapter 7 offers fresh perspectives on the issue of Chinese rites, showing how the Dominicans tried and largely succeeded in redefining the central Chinese virtue of filial piety in a way that would not conflict with the Church's prohibition of ancestral rites. Chapter 8 deals with the beatas, women who took vows of celibacy as members of the Third Order of Dominicans. Chinese culture valued female chastity but rejected virginity as [End Page 876] an ideal. Menegon examines how the beatas' embrace of religious virginity gave them agency and gradual acceptance, challenging patriarchal authority both in their society and the Church. Ancestors,Virgins, & Friars is superb. Grounded in Chinese and European missionary materials and informed by Menegon's training in Chinese social history, it is well written and analytically rigorous. It is an important original contribution to both Chinese history and the history of Christianity. Robert Entenmann St. Olaf College Footnotes 1. Jacques Gernet, China and the Christian Impact: A Conflict of Cultures (New York, 1982), pp. 3-5. Copyright © 2011 The Catholic University of America...

The case of theVajra-wielding monk

In this article I am discussing some polemical passages in Tantric Buddhist works belonging to the 10th-13th centuries concerning the infringement of vows of celibacy when monks took initiation containing sexual elements. The passages follow the standard exegetical format of first presenting argumentation ( yukti ) followed by scriptural citations ( āgama ) purportedly supporting the position of the author. Whereas the argumentation part has been discussed in previous works by others, here I wish to draw attention to the scriptural matter used in justification. In our case nearly always the same quotation is used in a distorted manner. This is a sign that those in favour of justifying transgression of monastic rules were struggling to find appropriate substantiation. From this one could infer that the rites demanding such infringements in the case of a monastic person were most likely developments outside that community, and hence the origins of such innovations should be sought after among lay tantrics.

The Miracle of Gerald the Pilgrim: Hagiographic Visions of Castration in the Liber Sancti Jacobi and Milagros de Nuestra Señora

One of the most popular tales of the De miraculis Sancti Jacobi section of the twelfth-century Codex Calixtinus recounts how a devil impersonated St. James and persuaded an unchaste pilgrim to castrate himself. The following essay shows how this exemplum draws on a hagiographic portrayals of mutilation and purification, and is later adapted in Gonzalo de Berceo’s thirteenth-century Milagros de Nuestra Senora to express preoccupations over the enforcement of vows of celibacy during a time of clerical reform. In his “Romero enganado por el enemigo malo,” the Castilian poet deepens the meaning of eunuchism in the tale, beyond castration anxieties surrounding the ideal of clerical celibacy and mystical visions of emasculation. For Berceo, the significance of the miracle extends beyond one pilgrim’s resurrection from the dead, to symbolize the Marian deliverance of Adam and the bodily renewal and spiritual homecoming of all of his corrupt and feckless progeny.

Copernicus' secret: how the scientific revolution began

Nicolaus Copernicus gave the world perhaps the most important scientific insight of the modern age, the theory that the earth and the other planets revolve around the sun. He was also the first to proclaim that the earth rotates on its axis once every twenty-four hours. His theory was truly radical: during his lifetime nearly everyone believed that a perfectly still earth rested in the middle of the cosmos, where all the heavenly bodies revolved around it. One of the transcendent geniuses of the early Renaissance, Copernicus was also a flawed and conflicted person. A cleric who lived during the tumultuous years of the early Reformation, he may have been sympathetic to the teachings of the Lutherans. Although he had taken a vow of celibacy, he kept at least one mistress. Supremely confident intellectually, he hesitated to disseminate his work among other scholars. It fact, he kept his astronomical work a secret, revealing it to only a few intimates, and the manuscript containing his revolutionary theory, which he refined for at least twenty years, remained hidden among my things. It is unlikely that Copernicus' masterwork would ever have been published if not for a young mathematics professor named Georg Joachim Rheticus. He had heard of Copernicus' ideas, and with his imagination on fire he journeyed hundreds of miles to a land where, as a Lutheran, he was forbidden to travel. Rheticus' meeting with Copernicus in a small cathedral town in northern Poland proved to be one of the most important encounters in history.Copernicus' Secret recreates the life and world of the scientific genius whose work revolutionized astronomy and altered our understanding of our place in the world. It tells the surprising, little-known story behind the dawn of the scientific age.

Erinnerung an Paul Speratus (1484–1551), ein enger Anhänger Luthers in den Anfaängen der Reformation

ABSTRACT The essay reminds us of the effects of Paul Speratus, that early follower of Luther who died 450 years ago and who, probably unjustly, has enjoyed little attention in recent decades. At the beginning of 1522, the former Würzburg cathedral preacher was excommunicated by the theology faculty of the University of Vienna, because of a sermon that he had preached in St. Stephan’s Cathedral in Vienna - one of the first that argued against clerical vows of celibacy. From that time, Speratus aligned himself with the faction of reform-minded critics of scholasticism. Nevertheless, he found a new position as pastor in Iglau (Moravia), from which, however, King Ludwig of Hungary attempted to drive him. The congregation initially banded together in defense of their pastor, but under the pressure of the cross it did not persevere. Speratus had to yield and turned toward Wittenberg. There he gained attention as the translator of three writings of Luther, among others the Formula Missae|. In addition, he wrote the lyrics of the great Reformation hymn, Es ist das Heil uns kommen her|. A later song about the Augsburg Diet of 1530 expressed the problem of resistance. After 1524, Speratus took his final post, as court preacher in the young Duchy of Prussia and evangelical Bishop of Pomerania. His contribution to the history of the Prussian Reformation is deserving of a new evaluation.

“It is Better to Marry Than to Burn”: Anglo-American Attitudes Toward Celibacy, 1600-1800

Ministers in England and New England diverged in their writings about lay sexual renunciation. In England, clerical writers were ambivalent about celibacy. In contrast, New England ministers uniformly opposed lay vows of celibacy. These differing responses resulted from both demographic and cultural factors. English ministers found it difficult to criticize celibacy when nearly 20 percent of some birth cohorts never married. In New England, on the other hand, only a tiny percentage of colonists never married, allowing ministers to condemn celibacy. Culturally, the patriarchal family figured more prominently in New England ministers'minds as the foundation of a well-ordered society. Celibacy, then, was a direct attack on the institution that secured religion and promoted social stability. This article helps explain both the virulent attacks on Immortalists and Shakers in New England and the relative lack of controversy that greeted England's few religious celibates.

Social support as experienced by Roman Catholic priests: the influence of vocationally imposed network restrictions.

This qualitative descriptive study explored the experience of social support as perceived by four Roman Catholic priests who are community caregivers subject to role-related stressors and who have vocational limitations placed on their social support networks. The data collection process consisted of two semistructured interviews employing open-ended questions. Content and concept analysis techniques yielded seven core themes (person-role disharmony, intimate connections, network leveling, moving networks, caregiver survival, vocation-person esteem, caring relationships), three prevailing themes (subsistent relationships, person-priest being, reciprocal fulfillment), and one contextual theme (presence). The priests actively sought support as a means of coping with the daily stress associated with their caregiving roles. Large and diffuse networks were unable to compensate for restrictions resulting from vows of celibacy, discord accompanying midlife transition, or conflicts associated with socially prescribed role expectations of the priesthood. The instability of their support networks resulting from mandatory transfers may have been a contributing factor. Existential presence, an enduring theme, was identified as an inherent quality of caregiving and social support.

The Fourth International Milton Symposium

Matthew Allen. “‘Entertaining the Irksome Hours’: Paradise Lost 2.521–76 as the Fallen Counterpart of Milton's Curriculum in Of Education.”Peter Auksi. “‘Considerate Building’: The Scriptural Roots of Areopagitica.”Andrew T. Barnaby. “‘Reason is but choosing’: Moral Agency and the Call to Discipleship in Milton's Readie and Easie Way.”Nancy K. Barnard. “‘In Mind Prepared’: Proclaiming the Kingdom of God in Paradise Lost.”R. D. Bedford. “Irony in L ‘Allegro and Il Penseroso.”Tony Bellette. “Milton and the Baroque: A Reassessment.”Joan Heiges Blythe. “Sex‐Marked Direct Objects of Desire in Paradise Lost.”David Boocker. “Milton at Vallombrosa.”James B. Brophy. “Blake's Reinterpretation of Comus: Charity Regained.”Lana Cable. “The Politics of Decorum in Protestant Satire and Milton's Polemics.”Douglas Chambers. “Improved by Tract of Time: Art's Synopticon in Paradise Lost 12.”Alexander Chameyev and Nina Diakonova. “Byron's Manfred and Romantic Milton Worship.”Annemarie Christy. “Satan, Sin, and Death: A Paradigm of the Incestuous Family.”Thomas N. Corns, Lou Burnard, and Roy Flannagan. “Electronic Miltons, Past, Present, and To Come.”Denise Cuthbert. “Milton, Marvell and Queen Christina.”R. W. Desai. “The Human Norm in Paradise Lost: Thus measuring things in Heav‘n by things on Earth.’”Jackie Di Salvo. “Manly Reformation in Samson Agonistes.”Martin K. Doudna. “‘In Our Image’: Father and Son in Paradise Lost.”Charles W. Durham. “Satan and the Hierarchy of Hell in Paradise Lost.”Angela Esterhammer. “Words, Worlds, and Speech Acts: A Miltonic Poetics of Creation.”J. Martin Evans. “Milton's Imperial Epic.”Robert T. Fallon. “The ‘Mole’ and the ‘Lanthorn’: Milton's State Letter to Tuscany.”Ida Fasel. “The Dialectic of the Oxymoron in Paradise Lost.”Noam Flinker. “Pagan Holiday and National Conflict: A Philistine Reading of Samson Agonistes.”Claire Fowler. “The Commonwealth ‘miscalled’: Iconoclasm and Mythography in Eikonoklastes.”Coburn Freer. “A Victorian Poetic Critique of Milton.”Donald M. Friedman. “‘Sex’ in Paradise Lost.”Bryan N. S. Gooch. “Handel's L'Allegro, il Penseroso, ed il Moderato: A Reassessment.”Achsah Guibbory. “Idolatrous Images, Imitation, and True Creation in Milton's Eikonoklastes.”John K. Hale. “The Pre‐Criticism of Milton's Latin Verse, Illustrated from the Ode Ad Joannem Rousium.”R. F. Hall. “Pronouns, Tenses, and Fluidity in the Nativity Ode.”Gary D. Hamilton. “Paradise Regained and the Private Houses.”Philip Hardie. “Milton's Reading of Lucretius and the Reader in Lucretius.”J. P. Hardy. “The Tempter Foiled.”Dayton Haskin. “Choosing the Better Part with Mary and with Ruth.”Burton Hatlen. “When God Smiles: Paradise Lost 8.311–559.”Wyman H. Herendeen. “Milton's Accedence Commenc't Grammar and the Deconstruction of Grammatical Tyranny.”T. H. Howard‐Hill. “Milton and Contemporary Theatre: An Investigation of Experience and Influence.”Keith N. Hull. “Rhyme and Disorder in Samson Agonistes.”Lee M. Johnson. “Language and the Illusion of Innocence in Paradise Lost.”Motohiro Kisaichi. “Comus and the Proserpina Myth.”Thomas A. Langford. “‘That one talent which is death to hide’: The Poet as Teacher.”John Leonard. “Milton's Vow of Celibacy: A Reconsideration of the Evidence.”Walter S. H. Lim. “What Happens When God Doesn't Speak in Samson Agonistes?”Peter Lindenbaum. “The Poet in the Marketplace: Milton and Samuel Simmons.”David Loewenstein. “Paradise Lost and the Politics of Rebellion.”Bei‐Yei Loh. “Lycidas as the Manifesto of a Divinely Dedicated Scholar‐Poet and ‘Church‐outed’ Reformer.”Kristin Pruitt McColgan. “Abundant Gifts: Hierarchy and Reciprocity in Paradise Lost.”Donald Peter McDonough. “The Iconography of Milton's expulsion Scene.”Polly Mander. “The Charms of Milton's Ludlow Masque.”Catherine Gimelli Martin. “The ‘Artifice of Eternity’: The Return(s) of a Miltonic Metaphor.”Christopher Martin. “Contending with the Cyclops: Nobodies and Somebodies in the Defensio Secunda.”Michael A. Mikolajczak. “Milton's ‘Reformed’ Heaven.”Janel Mueller. “Dateline: London, May 1641. Byline: John Milton, English Republican.”Brian J. Opie. “Urania Revisited.”Ted‐Larry Pebworth. “‘Conversation with His Like’: Masculine Friendship in Paradise Lost.”G. 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Spiller. “Directing the Audience in Samson Agonistes.”Claude J. Summers. “The (Homo)Sexual Temptation of Paradise Regained.”Margo Swiss. “Satan's Obduracy in Paradise Lost.”John S. Tanner. “Adam's Doom: Knowing Good by Evil in Milton's Eden.”Roberta White. “Milton's Presence in the Poetry of Nemerov and Berryman.”Michael Wilding. “‘Their Sex Not Equal Seem'd’: Equality in Paradise Lost.”Susanne Woods. “Milton's Poetic Authority and Early Protestant Women Poets.”

"Øjet i Det Høje" - Fra elitetroppernes gudserfaring til menigmands gudsbillede

What happens when a fixed set of conceptions are transferred from their original and natural “Sitz-im-Leben” to another social and cultural milieu? Something like this occurred when the literature which had developed in connection with the old monk movements was unleashed in the layman’s world, not the least due to the activities of the new beggar orders in the cities. This article closely studies one “exemplum” and its path from the earliest Middle Age times to the High Middle Ages with a new twist and on to become a part of the Dominican exemplum-corpus in the 15th century. The example demonstrates Gods leniency towards persons who have taken the vow of celibacy: in the face of menacing temptations, God miraculously reveals His eye, thereby either averting the planned sin or bringing on confession. Transferred into the daily lives and piety of ordinary people, the lenient guardian eye becomes a type of “super-ego”, which keeps an eye on the small sins of the individual, especially sexual escapades. In this manner the concept of God takes on the uncomfortable moralistic tones which have survived until this day.

Serviles Voluptates in Apuleius' Metamorphoses

I shall argue in this paper that Fotis, far from being a symbol of sexual lust, represents one face of the coin of mysticism, the face that is discredited in Book 11. In other words, the servitude expressed in the phrases servilem modum and serviles voluptates denotes Lucius' obsessive desire to meddle in the malevolent affairs of witchcraft.2 This is not to say that he is by any means a Puritan. After, as he reports (2.6.7), first ignoring Fotis' advances and then resolving to court her instead of her married mistress (2.6.6), he develops a genuinely passionate attachment to her (2.16-17), without which his vow of celibacy in Isis' service would be less significant (11.19.3). It is nonetheless clear, as I hope to explain more fully, that it is not lust to which he is enslaved. The onlookers in Book 11 certainly do not think that he has been an abandoned libertine (11.16.4;