Theology Archive
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The Three Recensions of Eriugena’s Versio Dionysii
Posted on November 18, 2012 | No CommentsHowever, as G. Théry later discovered, Traube’s point of departure—the citations of Dionysius in Hincmar’s treatise on predestination—was faulty. Since Traube published his notes on the manuscripts of the Versio, Théry has proven that the citations in Hincmar’s Liber de praedestinatione come from Hilduin’s translation rather than that of Eriugena. -
The Papacy and the Imperial Court in the Aftermath of the Acacian Schism
Posted on November 6, 2012 | No CommentsViezure's paper examines how the Papacy portrayed their efforts to end the Acacian Schism, in what she describes as 'an attempt to paint the image of a powerful Pope.' -
Science and Religion in the Middle Ages
Posted on November 6, 2012 | No CommentsWhy did science and natural philosophy suffer such disparate fates in the two great civilizations of Christendom and Islam? -
You Are What You Eat: Hildegard of Bingen’s Viriditas
Posted on October 21, 2012 | No CommentsHildegard argues in the beginning of Physica that humans become what they eat. -
Bernard Ayglier and William of Pagula: Two Approaches To Monastic Law
Posted on October 10, 2012 | No CommentsThe paper examines the role of canon law in two monastic works, the Speculum monachorum (SM) (1272x74) of Bernard Ayglier (d.1282), abbot of Montecassino, and the Speculum religiosorum (SR) (c.1322) of William of Pagula, a canonist and secular priest (d.1332) -
Ecclesiastics and Ascetics: Finding Spiritual Authority in Fifth and Sixth Century Palestine
Posted on October 4, 2012 | No CommentsIn the context of ongoing christological controversy and division within eastern Christianity, the relationship between ecclesiastic and ascetic authority is a fruitful avenue of investigation. -
Knowledge of Ephraim’s Writings in the Merovingian and Carolingian Age
Posted on October 4, 2012 | No CommentsThe florilegium entitled Liber Scintillarum, the book of sparks from the words of God and of his saints, was composed by the monk Defensor of Ligugé. Our evidence for the life and date of Defensor derives entirely from his preface. -
The Arian Controversy: Some Categories Reconsidered
Posted on September 23, 2012 | No CommentsThe choice of categories to designate the two opposing sides in the fourth-century theological controversy is crucially important, for the categories color the whole interpretation of the controversy. Some of the categories used in the past are less than satisfactory. The pair "Arian" and "Nicene" is anachronistic, and perhaps too dogmatic. -
The Virtuous Pagan in Middle English Literature
Posted on September 14, 2012 | No CommentsFrom the first through the fourteenth centuries, a succession of solutions to the problem of these virtuous pagans evolved. For the Early Church, an attractive solution was that Christ descended into Hell to convert the souls he found there. -
The Education of Heloise in Twelfth-Century France
Posted on September 9, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper holds that Heloise had opportunity and one can demonstrate that other women, both secular and religious, while being located within the twelfth century of France, also had similar, if not more opportunities in education, business, and other domains that were typically thought of as impossible for women of this era. -
The Making of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae
Posted on September 3, 2012 | No CommentsBernard McGinn explores Thomas’s reason for writing the Summa and its principles, structure, and originality. -
George Gemistos Plethon on God: Heterodoxy in Defense of Orthodoxy
Posted on September 3, 2012 | No CommentsThe Emperor, John VIII Palaeologos, knew they were going to face some of the finest minds in the Roman Church on their own soil; he therefore wanted the best minds available in support of the Byzantine cause to accompany him. Consequently, the Emperor appointed George Gemistos as part of the delegation. -
The Symbolical Career of Georgios Gemistos Plethon
Posted on September 2, 2012 | No CommentsThus Gemistos was the first who in an authoritative way attacked the hegemony of Aristotle in western thought. -
Qui coierit cum muliere in fluxu menstruo… interficientur ambo (Lev. 20:18) – The Biblical Prohibition of Sexual Relations with a Menstruant in the Eyes of Some Medieval Christian Theologians
Posted on August 20, 2012 | No CommentsWhat attitudes did medieval Christian theologians have towards the prohibition in Leviticus of sexual relations with a menstruating woman? -
Eriugena: The Medieval Irish Genius Between Augustine and Aquinas
Posted on August 17, 2012 | No CommentsCarolingian thinker Johannes Scottus Eriugena (810-877 CE) is the author of numerous philosophical and theological works. -
Living Blood Poured Out: Piety, Practice, and Theology in Northern Europe in the Fifteenth Century
Posted on August 17, 2012 | No CommentsProfessor Bynum discusses the widespread prominence of images of the bleeding Christ in the iconography and piety of the period and the many university-level theological debates about blood relics and miracles, including anti-Jewish host desecration libels. -
The Rooster‘s Egg: Maternal Metaphors and Medieval Men
Posted on August 15, 2012 | No CommentsThis dissertation will explore the symbolism surrounding women‘s bodies, particularly menstruating, lactating, and pregnant bodies, which concerned theologians, moralists, and medical writers alike. -
The Construction of the femina in Hildegard’s Symphonia
Posted on July 19, 2012 | No CommentsThe architectural metaphor used throughout Hildegard’s Symphonia is not an isolated or independent occurrence; rather it is deeply rooted in her theology. -
The Pseudo-Amphilochian Vita Basilii: An Apocryphal Life of Saint Basil the Great
Posted on July 15, 2012 | No CommentsThere is yet another aspect of Basil's greatness which is none of his making: of Basil it is possible to know more and to know it more surely, than it is of any other person, with the possible exception of Julian the Apostate, who lived in the first millennium A.D. The physical relics may have disappeared, but the literary remains constitute a remarkable dossier of high historical value. -
Religious Key Terms in Hellenism and Byzantium: Three Facets
Posted on July 8, 2012 | No CommentsThe following is a survey of the main semantic variations of love in the Greek and Latin of the Church Fathers and the medieval Latin of Scholasticism -
Bogomils, Cathars, Lollards, and the High Social Position of Women During the Middle Ages
Posted on June 24, 2012 | No CommentsDuring the 12th century, if not slightly earlier, Western Europe lived through a period of economic and social upheavel termed by many historians the 12th c. Renaissance. One of its aspects is related to the considerable emancipation of women mostly in Southern France, a development which spread over to Italy, Flanders, and later, England. One can even detect social zones where real emancipation was axhieved. -
Sacred rules, secular revelations:the conceptions of rights in pre-modern Europe
Posted on June 18, 2012 | No CommentsBefore examining what this ‘something else’ is, it is necessary to pause a moment to consider the very idea of ‘medieval human rights’. To many the phrase may appear to be an oxymoron. Certainly, the popular image of the Middle Ages is as the ‘Dark Ages’ and, more broadly, with religious and preternatural superstition and ignorance. -
Seeing through the ‘Priest’s Eye’: Teaching Medieval Codicology and Book History through William of Pagula’s Oculus sacerdotis
Posted on June 17, 2012 | No CommentsWritten entirely in Latin and never before edited or fully translated into English, the manuscript’s textual contents remain inaccessible to most students; and even if they are fluent in medieval Latin, they would still have to contend with the manuscript’s paleographical idiosyncrasies, the absence of modern punctuation, and the complex system of lexical abbreviations used by the scribes who penned the text. -
Natural Philosophy and Theology in the Late Middle Ages: A Surprising Relationship?
Posted on June 17, 2012 | No CommentsA significant problem in the early years of Christianity was what attitude to adopt toward traditional pagan learning. Should they shun it as potentially dangerous to the faith? Should they wholeheartedly embrace it as offering important knowledge and insights about the world? Or would it be more advantageous to adopt an intermediate position? -
![Since the advent of Hintikka’s Knowledge and Belief [8] in 1962, epistemic logic has become a vibrant and exciting subfield of modal logic. However, like its sister alethic modal logic [18], epistemic logic is not a new invention or dis- covery of the 20th century. In the Middle Ages, philosophers were concerned with many of the same problems in epistemology that exercise us today, and logicians were correspondingly interested in what types of inferences containing epistemic modes or operators are licet](http://www.medievalists.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/images-23-115x115.jpg "Paul of Venice on a Puzzle About Uncertainty")
Paul of Venice on a Puzzle About Uncertainty
Posted on June 10, 2012 | No CommentsSince the advent of Hintikka’s Knowledge and Belief [8] in 1962, epistemic logic has become a vibrant and exciting subfield of modal logic. However, like its sister alethic modal logic [18], epistemic logic is not a new invention or dis- covery of the 20th century. In the Middle Ages, philosophers were concerned with many of the same problems in epistemology that exercise us today, and logicians were correspondingly interested in what types of inferences containing epistemic modes or operators are licet
