Where the Middle Ages Begin
The most recent addition to the family of literary genres may be the booklife. Finding its origin in Roland Barthes’s Roland Barthes and now taught in English departments, the booklife proposes a union of sorts of writing and living. Whether the genre will be long-lived is an open question, that it can be fruitful is not in doubt. But medievalists already knew that the dividing line between book and life is always thin, especially if that life has been lived in and among books.
The Manuale is similarly a pastoral work, addressed to the priest, indeed, to a specific priest. It is however a different sort of work from the Instructions, and it does not provide the details of the tenets of the Church which the Instructions provides…
Medieval Music Literature Christensen, Thomas (University of Chicago) THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL MUSIC, March (2011) Abstract Literature on music in the Middle Ages poses special challenges to the historian. There is first of all the obvious fact that there is a great deal of it. (The number of extant medieval music theory texts alone exceeds […]
The Art of Comparing in Byzantium Maguire, Henry The Art Bulletin, Vol. 70, No. 1 (1988) Abstract Rhetoric was an important component of Byzantine higher education, which affected the literature, art, and even mentality of the Byzantines. A study of the theory of encomium and censure shows how rhetorical structures, especially comparisons and biographical sequences, […]
When Pope Urban II called for a military campaign to the Holy Land in 1095, he launched what would be the first in a series of Christian crusades. But even more than that, he advocated a form of warfare that would be pleasing to God.
Pacifism and Crusade in Ramon Llull Ensenyat, Gabriel (Department of Catalan Philology, Universitat de les Illes Balears) Quaderns de la Mediterrània, Vol.9 (2008) Abstract One of the aspects of Ramon Llull that has usually been emphasised is the peaceful nature of his missionary projects. However, it is also true that the Blessed Ramon expressed the […]
Lewd Imaginings: Pedagogy, Piety, and Peformance in Late Medieval East Anglia Sebastian, John Thomas PhD Dissertation, Cornell University, August (2004) Abstract This dissertation explores clerical and lay desires for spiritual teaching and learning at the end of the Middle Ages in England, desires that, while ostensibly contemplative, carried crucial ecclesiological, political, and literary implications. Where […]
This essay takes a different path through the religious culture of fourteenth-century Bohemia and of Prague, in particular.
The 31st Annual Canadian Conference of Medieval Art Historians A New Vision of Death: Re-Evaluating Huizinga’s Views on the Late Medieval Macabre Kralik, Christine (University of Toronto) Abstract In The Waning of the Middle Ages, first published in the Netherlands in 1919, Johan Huizinga explored the late medieval art of France and the Netherlands and […]
Preaching Saint Stanislaus : Medieval Sermons on Saint Stanislaus of Cracow and Their Role in the Construction of His Image and Cult Kuzmova, Stanislava PhD Dissertation, Central European University (2010) Abstract This dissertation offers a comprehensive analysis of the sermon corpus on St. Stanislaus within the late medieval discourse on him. Stanislaus was the bishop of Cracow […]
Blessed John Soreth and Liège: A Collection of Sermons from 1451 Dieterich, D. Henry Fifteenth Century Studies v. 11 (1985) Abstract Not every prophet lives to see his words come true. In the fifteenth century, Savonarola’s “gladius domini super terram cito et velociter” comes to mind, but the peril of French invasion was in view when […]
Sins of Tongues, Pains of Members: Speech, Division and Sacrament in Late Medieval Exempla Langum, V.E. Marginalia, Vol. 6, (2006-2007) Cambridge Yearbook Abstract Late medieval exempla teem with burned and chewed tongues, cleaved bodies, engorged genitals and rotting corpses. Designed both to engage and instruct, effective exempla ‘removent taedium’ and ‘somnolentiam fugant’ in the visceral details […]
Women and the Production of Religious Literature in the Vernacular 1300-1500 By Katherine Gill Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy: A Religious and Artistic Renaissance Matter, edited by E. Ann (Philadelphia, 1994) Introduction: Preaching and vernacular religious literature constitute a key site of literary innovation in the late Middle Ages. Sermons, original compositions […]
Auxiliary Preachers in the Northern Province: Supplementing the Parish Clergy in the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries Birkett,Helen Marginalia, Vol. 7, (2008) Abstract By the thirteenth century, the prolonged period of economic and demographic growth experienced by Western Europe had brought profound changes to the religious landscape. Itinerant preachers who followed the trade routes between […]
How many times Jesus wept? Lachrimae Christi topos in Medieval Sermon Literature Hanska, Jussi (University of Tampere) MIRATOR LOKAKUU/OKTOBER/OCTOBER (2003) Abstract This essay studies the role of literary topoi or commonplaces in medieval sermon literature by using the lachrimae Christi topos as a case study. It is a commonplace that can be found in nearly all the […]
Ranulph Higden, Ars componendi sermones Translated by Margaret Jennings and Sally A. Wilson Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations, Vol.2 ISBN 978-90-429-1242-7 Ranulph Higden, monk of St. Werburgh’s Abbey and well-known author of the Polychronicon and other treatises, penned a concise and user-friendly Art of Preaching about 1346. His Ars componendi sermones follows a schematic common […]
This essay explores the evolving significance of a famous fourteenth-century Paul’s Cross sermon by Thomas Wimbledon in late medieval and early modern England and its transmission from manuscript to print.
Witnesses of God: Exhortatory Preachers in Medieval al-Andalus and the Magreb By Linda G. Jones Al-Qanṭara: Revista de Estudios Arabes, Vol.28:1 (2007) Abstract: This article analyzes the rhetorical and ritual characteristics of pious exhortation (wa‘z ) as practiced in al-Andalus and the Maghreb, based on specimens from two homiletic sources. The texts are considered in light of hagiographical and […]
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