Religious Life Archive
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The dissemination of visions of the otherworld in England and northern France c.1150-c.1321
Posted on January 14, 2014 | No CommentsThis thesis examines the dissemination of visions of the otherworld in the long thirteenth century (c.1150-1321) by analysing the work of one enthusiast for such visions, Helinand of Froidmont, and studying the later transmission of three, contrasting accounts: the vision of the monk of Eynsham (c.1196), the vision of St. Fursa (c.656) and the vision of Gunthelm (s.xiiex). -
Looking in the Past for a Discourse of Motherhood: Birgitta of Sweden and Julia Kristeva
Posted on January 12, 2014 | No CommentsThis essay explores two parallel trajectories of mythic retrospection: medieval “myths” of the Biblical past (like Birgitta’s prophetic visions), and modern “myths” of the medieval past (like Kristeva’s survey). -
Transformations of Print into Painting: A Case Study of the Context of Prints in an Illustrated Brigittine Psalter
Posted on January 11, 2014 | No CommentsThis liturgical psalter raises issues of the production and consumption of religious texts in convents in the northern Netherlands. -
Dead virgins: feminine sanctity in medieval Wales
Posted on January 8, 2014 | No CommentsExamines literature on the medieval traditions associated with Welsh holy women. Prerequisites for feminine sanctity; Biographical pattern of the female saints; Implications of the popularity of the Welsh women saints. -
Emotions and Power in Orderic Vitalis
Posted on January 4, 2014 | No CommentsThis essay explores some of the complexities and paradoxes encountered when one thinks about power, particularly as power was expressed by a single author, Orderic Vitalis. -
Charisma, Medieval and Modern
Posted on January 2, 2014 | No CommentsPopularized by the mass media, Max Weber’s sociological concept of charisma now has a demotic meaning far from what Weber had in mind. Weberian charismatic leaders have followers, not fans, although, exceptionally, fans mutate into followers. -
The medieval principle of motion and the modern principle of inertia
Posted on January 1, 2014 | No CommentsAquinas’s First Way of arguing for the existence of God famously rests on the Aristotelian premise that “whatever is in motion is moved by another.” Let us call this the “principle of motion.” Newton’s First Law states that “every body continues in its state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.” Call this the “principle of inertia. -
![All Things to All Men: Representations of the Apostle Paul in Anglo-Saxon Literature Valerie Susan Heuchan University of Toronto: Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Medieval Studies (2010) Abstract This dissertation […]](http://www.medievalists.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Anglo-Saxon-text-115x115.jpg "All Things to All Men: Representations of the Apostle Paul in Anglo-Saxon Literature")
All Things to All Men: Representations of the Apostle Paul in Anglo-Saxon Literature
Posted on January 1, 2014 | No CommentsAll Things to All Men: Representations of the Apostle Paul in Anglo-Saxon Literature Valerie Susan Heuchan University of Toronto: Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Medieval Studies (2010) Abstract This dissertation […] -
They Hasten toward Perfection: Virginal & Chaste Monks in the High Middle Ages
Posted on January 1, 2014 | No CommentsAs perennial Christian ideals, virginity and chastity were frequent themes in medieval religious discourse. Male religious were frequently virgins and were expected to cultivate chastity; however, women not men were usually the focus of such discussions. But some monastic writers did draw on those models when considering their own spirituality, and it is worth knowing how they were understood and enlisted in those instances. -
Maria Mediatrix: Mediating the Divine in the Devotional Literature of Late Medieval and Early Modern England
Posted on January 1, 2014 | No CommentsIn medieval theology, Mary‘s body, as the physical site of the Incarnation, provided an opportunity for speculation about the relationship between divinity and humanity...An examination of how Marian imagery is used as a rhetorical and meditative device in devotional texts will shed light on the way the relationship between human body and divine spirit was experienced. -
The Voices of the Saints: Speaking Reliquaries
Posted on December 31, 2013 | No CommentsAlthough they have often been considered as mere representational labels identifying the relic contained, body-part reliquaries, or what I would prefer to call shaped reliquaries, participate in a fluid exchange of signs -
John of Freiburg and the Usury Prohibition in the Late Middle Ages: A Study in the Popularization of Medieval Canon Law
Posted on December 31, 2013 | No CommentsIn this dissertation I provide an edition of the treatise on usury (De usuris, bk. 2, tit. 7) contained in the Dominican friar John of Freiburg’s (d. 1314) Summa confessorum (ca. 1298) – a comprehensive encyclopedia of pastoral care that John wrote for the benefit of his fellow friar preachers and all others charged with the cure of souls. -
Boniface VIII and Philip IV: Conflict Between Church and State
Posted on December 27, 2013 | No CommentsDuring the middle ages there were conflicts between church and state. From 1294-1303 Boniface VIII and Philip the IV, king of France had such an issue. -
A Medieval Peace Movement
Posted on December 27, 2013 | No CommentsThe Bianchi in 1399 - a medieval peace movement in Italy -
Pope Gregory VII: A Church Reformer
Posted on December 27, 2013 | No CommentsBy the time that Hildebrand was appointed Pope Gregory VII, the Church was in dire need of change and direction. -
The Lives of St Samson: rewriting the ambitions of an early medieval cult
Posted on December 26, 2013 | No CommentsIn the middle of the ninth century, at the monastery of Dol in Brittany, the Life of the sixth-century saint Samson was rewritten. The rewriter evidently perceived a defi- ciency in the existing Life of St Samson, and one that many modern historians would come to share: the fact that it had very little to say about Brittany. -
Scottish Monastic Life
Posted on December 9, 2013 | No CommentsThe first thing one has to remember is that most of these visible symbols are the symbols of the very last period of monasticism in Scotland. Monasteries in Scotland were peculiarly likely to suffer the ravages of siege and fire. If they lay on the borders or along the main routes from England into Scotland, they fell victim to the periodic invasion of the English. -
St. Ninian of Whithorn
Posted on December 9, 2013 | No CommentsMy interest here is in finding usable information regarding the centuries before Bede and in the way in which new data, especially the outstanding recent archaeological discoveries at Whithom in Wigtownshire (which is certainly the site of Candida Casal. might support and add to his picture of St. Ninian and the importance of his church at Candida Casa. -
The Holy Foreskin
Posted on December 9, 2013 | No CommentsWhen I first heard about the Sanctum Praeputium I actually thought it was a joke thought up by some medievalist. Apparently some medieval people thought so too! -
The King’s Three Images: The representation of St. Edward the Confessor in historiography, hagiography and liturgy
Posted on December 6, 2013 | No CommentsThis study will revolve around the characterisation of Edward as constructed in the various surviving texts, and its emphasis will be twofold: my primary concern is to explore how St. Edward the Confessor's images were constructed, i.e. how he is represented in the various texts written about him. -
Christ in Motion: Portable Objects and Scenographic Environments in the Liturgy of Medieval Bohemia
Posted on December 5, 2013 | No CommentsIt accordingly seems clear, from many preserved accounts, that by the end of the fifteenth century the rubric of the Church of Prague was no longer the same and that progressive versions contained different layers of alteration to the performance practice of Palm Sunday ritual. -
Projecting Power in Sixth-Century Rome: The church of Santi Cosma e Damiano in the late antique Forum Romanum
Posted on December 4, 2013 | No CommentsIn the year 526 CE, the bishop of Rome, Pope Felix IV, petitioned the Ostrogoth king Theoderic for permission to convert a small complex in the Forum Romanum into a place of worship dedicated to the Saints Cosmas and Damian...This paper critiques traditional interpretations of this church—its physical location and its apse mosaic—in light of new research that nuances our understanding of the historical context in which it was commissioned. -
Mundane Uses of Sacred Places in the Central and Later Middle Ages, with a Focus on Chartres Cathedral
Posted on December 2, 2013 | No CommentsAlthough technically reserved for worship, church buildings were put to numerous non-devotional uses in the Middle Ages, raising the question just how set apart from daily life medieval churches were. -
Society and the Supernatural: A Medieval Change
Posted on November 24, 2013 | No CommentsThe supernatural has become what Renan said it was: 'The way in which the ideal makes its appearance in human affairs.' -
![Construction Materials and Building Constructions in the Architecture of Medieval Rus, from the 10th to the Beginning of the 12th Centuries Bernhard Flüge Paper given at: The Masons at Work […]](http://www.medievalists.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Consécration_cluny-115x115.gif "Construction Materials and Building Constructions in the Architecture of Medieval Rus, from the 10th to the Beginning of the 12th Centuries")
Construction Materials and Building Constructions in the Architecture of Medieval Rus, from the 10th to the Beginning of the 12th Centuries
Posted on November 20, 2013 | No CommentsConstruction Materials and Building Constructions in the Architecture of Medieval Rus, from the 10th to the Beginning of the 12th Centuries Bernhard Flüge Paper given at: The Masons at Work […]
