scholarly journals Hagiography as Source: Gender and Conversion Narratives in The Book of the Saints of the Ethiopian Church

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 307
Author(s):  
Anna Redhair Wells
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Conversion Narratives ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Prior Relationship ◽  
Ethiopian Church

Drawing on the work of Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent, this essay proposes utilizing hagiographies from the The Book of the Saints of the Ethiopian Church, a fifteenth-century Ethiopian collection of saints’ lives, to explore various aspects of conversion. Other scholars employ a similar approach when analyzing hagiographical literature found in medieval Europe. While acknowledging that these texts do not provide details about the historical experience of conversion, they can assist scholars in understanding the conception of conversion in the imagination of the culture that created them. This essay specifically focuses on the role of women in conversion throughout the text and argues that, although men and women were almost equally represented as agents of conversion, a closer examination reveals that their participation remained gendered. Women more frequently converted someone with whom they had a prior relationship, especially a member of their familial network. Significantly, these observations mirror the patterns uncovered by contemporary scholars such as Dana Robert, who notes how women contributed to the spread of Christianity primarily through human relationships. By integrating these representations of conversion from late medieval Ethiopia, scholarship will gain a more robust picture of conversion in Africa more broadly and widen its understanding of world Christianity.

Rivals for Ministry? Ordinations of Secular and Regular Clergy in Southern England c. 1300–1500

1989 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 99-109
Author(s):  
Virginia Davis
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Religious Orders ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Southern England ◽  
Secular Clergy ◽  
Pastoral Role ◽  
Late Medieval Literature ◽  
Changing Patterns

At the beginning of the fourteenth century ecclesiastical recruitment AA was flourishing in England. Hundreds of men turned up to be ordained at the four Ember seasons each year at which major ordinations were permitted to be held. The majority of these men were secular clergy; only a small proportion were members of religious orders. Of the scores of people in the diocese of Winchester who came at the stipulated time to be ordained to the major orders at this date only about one fifth were members of religious orders and of those, only a handful were mendicants. However, by the end of the century, after the ravages of the Black Death, although the total numbers of men being ordained had declined dramatically a greater percentage of these were regular rather than secular clergy. A similar pattern can be seen all over Southern England. It was a trend which persisted throughout much of the fifteenth century. This paper will investigate the changing patterns of secular and regular ordinations to the priesthood in southern England in the period between 1300 and 1500. In the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries extensive anti-mendicant feeling was expressed both in late medieval literature and in rivalry between the secular clergy and the friars over the pastoral role of the latter. Was this, in fact, a reflection of a reality which meant that, compared to the position in the early fourteenth century, far more ordained friars were on the streets and in the parishes?

Treating the Body Politic: The Medical Metaphor of Political Rule in Late Medieval Europe and Tokugawa Japan

2008 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takashi Shogimen
Keyword(s):  
Medical Treatment ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Perspective Drawing ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
George Lakoff ◽  
Medical Metaphors

AbstractThe essay examines medical metaphors in the discourse on government from a cross-cultural perspective. Drawing on George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's theory of metaphor, a comparison of medical metaphors in the political writings in late medieval Europe (c. 1250–c. 1450) and Tokugawa Japan (1602–1867) demonstrates that the European notion of medical treatment as the eradication of the causes of diseases magnified the coercive and punitive aspects of government, while the Japanese notion of medical treatment as the art of daily healthcare served to accentuate the government's role of preventing conflicts and maintaining stability. These differing images of medical treatment metaphorically structured contrasting conceptions of government in the two historical worlds.

Piracy and law in medieval Genoa: the consilia of Bartolomeo Bosco

2003 ◽  
Vol 9 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 256-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Tai
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Legal Opinions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Mediterranean

AbstractThis essay contextualizes a series of learned legal opinions, or consilia, authored primarily by the Genoese jurist Bartolomeo Bosco (d. 1437) on the subject of maritime theft, or piracy, by referring to contemporaneous records for the practice of maritime theft in the Mediterranean, archival records in the Archivio di Stato for Bosco's career, and related consilia authored by Bosco. It argues that Bosco's opinions on matters related to the practice of piracy, overlooked despite revived scholarly interest in his work, illustrate the applications and limitations of consilia as practical documents in medieval civic governance, and suggest a divide between commercial and administrative perspectives in the maritime republics of late medieval Europe. Finally, it proposes that Bartolomeo Bosco be numbered among the "economic humanists" of the fifteenth century.

Space, time, and the world

2021 ◽  
pp. 137-169
Author(s):  
Matthew Kempshall
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Scientific Discovery ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Renaissance Humanism ◽  
Historical Progress ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
The World ◽  
Age Of Discovery ◽  
New Vision

Conceptions of space and time have conventionally lent themselves to characterizations of late medieval Europe as an ‘Age of Discovery’. These characterizations underpin an account of historical ‘progress’ which is technological, intellectual, and social. Coupled with other retrospective ‘modern’ projections—Renaissance humanism and the rise of ‘the state’—they present a teleological narrative of empirical, rational, and scientific discovery at the waning, even the end, of ‘the Middle Ages’. By qualifying and revising such a narrative, this chapter invites appreciation of a more complex historical reality, a necessarily plural and fragmented picture of socially and culturally conditioned ways of seeing space, measuring time, and understanding the connections between them. The discoveries of the fifteenth century emerge, as a result, not as the reflection of a brave new vision of the world, a shift from ‘religion’ to ‘science’ or from ‘medieval’ to ‘modern’, but rather as a reconfiguration of representations of what was already known. This was certainly an age of conceptual change and development but one which was characterized as much by refining, re-ordering, and reconnection as it was by innovation and discovery.

The Gaulish past of Milan and the French invasion of Italy1

2018 ◽  
pp. 102-120
Author(s):  
Oren Margolis
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Foundation Myth ◽  
Italian City ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Italian Wars ◽  
The City ◽  
Source Materials

The foundation myths of late medieval cities and states were never simply about origins: they were above all about destiny. In the fifteenth century, the combination of humanist methods and models, newly available source materials, and changing domestic and international political circumstances provided the impetus for the continued development of these myths as well as the creation of new ones. Yet even in Italy, not all eyes looked to Rome. The Carolingian foundation myth of Florence, in which Charlemagne’s supposed rebuilding of the city was used to explain the pro-French orientation of the commune and its Guelph elite, is perhaps the most well-known of these myths, but also an example of an Italian city defining itself in relation to a foreign power. This essay focuses on another element of Quattrocento myth-making culture: the treatment of northern Italy’s Gaulish past in the writings of some of the region’s humanists (e.g. (Antonio Cornazzano and Alberto Cattaneo), and the role of these writings in Franco-Milanese relations before and during the outbreak of the Italian Wars and the French domination of Milan.

The Merging of Religious Elements with National Consciousness in the Historical Works of Jan Długosz

1990 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 69-80
Author(s):  
Urszula Borkowska
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Rural Populations ◽  
National Consciousness ◽  
Political Union ◽  
Cultural Experience ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Grand Duchy Of Lithuania ◽  
Religious Elements

The fifteenth century was a very important period in the history of the Polish State and nation. It had a particular significance for the development of national consciousness. The union of the Polish kingdom with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (1385) changed not only the boundaries of this new and unified state called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but also created new and specific conditions for the development of the nation. The different nationalities of the jagiellonian state, Poles, Ruthenians, Lithuanians, Germans, Jews, and Armenians played an important role in the lively exchange of cultural experience on the basis of a sometimes uneasy partnership. Poland guaranteed privileges to the lords, both spiritual and temporal, to the gentry, and to the patricians, estates that had emerged in the course of the fourteenth century. These were united by common sentiment and desire for a strong political foundation. The urban and rural populations of both Polish and non-Polish speakers were bound together by loyalty to the Crown and its territory. Like other groups in late-medieval Europe they saw such a political union as advantageous.

Astrology and the Sibyls: John of Legnano's De adventu Christi and the Natural Theology of the Later Middle Ages

2007 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 423-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Ackerman Smoller
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Virgin Birth ◽  
Positive Light

ArgumentMedieval authors adopted a range of postures when writing about the role of reason in matters of faith. At one extreme, the phrase “natural theology” (theologia naturalis) was used, largely pejoratively, to connote something clearly inferior to revealed theology. At the other end, there was also a long tradition of what one might term “the impulse to natural theology,” manifested perhaps most notably in the embrace of Nature by certain twelfth-century authors associated with the school of Chartres. Only in the fifteenth century does one find authors using natural reason to investigate religious truths who also employ the term “natural theology,” now in a positive light, for their activities. Among such thinkers, astrology and eschatology frequently played an important role. In that respect, the writings of fourteenth-century Bolognese jurist John of Legnano offer an important example of the place of astrological, prophetic, and apocalyptic material in late medieval natural theology. In his 1375 treatise De adventu Christi, Legnano demonstrated that ancient poets, pagan seers such as the Sibyls, and non-Christian astrologers had all predicted, like Old Testament prophets, the virgin birth of Christ. For Legnano, not simply was Creation part of God's revelation, but, equally importantly, the very categories of reason and revelation blur in a way that points toward the works of Renaissance humanists and lays a foundation for a model of natural vaticination that showed reason's capability to reach fundamental religious truths.

Choosing Death? Experiences of Martyrdom in Late Medieval Europe

1993 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 153-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miri Rubin
Keyword(s):  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Moral Justification ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Radical Movements

Probably one of the most emotive words in our ethical and religious languages, ‘martyrdom’ poses the historian with a complex array of powerful images and awesome actions. Its very naturalness, as a grounding moment through which religions and radical movements are substantiated and made public, raises serious problems of perspective, empathy, judgement: studying martyrdom brings us in touch with some of the most admirable and some of the most repugnant and saddening aspects in human behaviour. Religions, parties, and nations claim martyrs as unambiguous signs of virtue, truth, and moral justification, and thus render martyrdom seemingly obvious. Painful, yes, but admirable; chilling, but satisfying, since in it men and women turn into gods, become myth-makers, and lend legitimation to whoever may claim them. So martyrdom—its discussion, definition, the claim to its virtue and beauty—is always open to appropriation, to competition, to contestation.

Society, family, and gender

2021 ◽  
pp. 171-193
Author(s):  
Catherine Kovesi
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Sexual Differences ◽  
Normative Values ◽  
Shared Understanding ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Masculinity And Femininity ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Community Relationships

A shared understanding of Christianity as the foundation of society in this life and in the next; a predominant acceptance of classical Greek texts for understandings of the human body and of sexual differences between men and women; an overwhelming dependence on patriarchal structures with implications for constructions and experiences of masculinity and femininity; and an ideal of family and of community relationships (whether secular or religious) from which no individual could readily claim isolation were touchstones throughout late medieval Europe against which normative values were constructed. Marginalized and often persecuted groups, such as Jews, sodomites, or heretics, were understood and defined against this normative backdrop. That said, by the end of the period increasing political and legal consolidation of societal structures led to their interrogation by those whom these same structures excluded or constrained. The result is an image of surprising fluidity and change in society, family, and gender.

scholarly journals Printed Pages, Perfect Souls? Ideals and Instructions for the Devout Home in the First Books Printed in Dutch

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Anna Dlabačová
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Religious Instruction ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Religious Reform ◽  
Printed Books

This article studies the role of the earliest books printed in the Dutch vernacular in the religious practice of lay individuals and the devout home. Many of the texts disseminated in these early printed books have received little attention and scholars have tended to view them within the sphere of the Modern Devotion, even though often there is no direct link to this religious reform movement. This article attempts to show that the first books printed in Dutch offer an interesting lens through which to study domestic devotion in the Low Countries in the last decades of the fifteenth century. It argues that these books bridged the gap between catechetical instruction and the private home, literally bringing home many of the ideals and instructions that the clergy would have offered in church and thus increasingly ‘textualizing’ the lives of the late medieval laity. Printers such as Gerard Leeu and his contemporaries acquainted Christians to the use of printed books for personal and practical religious instruction and knowledge and thus paved the way for developments in the sixteenth century.

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