La Religion du quotidien. Rites et croyances populaires de la fin du Moyen Age. By Francesca Canadé Sautman. (Biblioteca di ‘Lares’, New Ser., 50.) Pp. v + 232. Florence: Olschki, 1995. L. 46,000. 88 222 4339 0; 0409 6231 (original) (raw)
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The Rebel Messages of 1381: Texts, Intertexts; Contexts, Commentaries
The Great Revolt of the English Peasantry of 1381 generally figures in studies of Middle English literature by way of references or reactions to it on the part of now-canonical poets, notably Chaucer, Gower, and Langland. But amidst its textual debris there survive those six rebel messages which merit appreciation (in which Langland assumes the auxiliary role of a potential influence) as fascinating testimonials to a late-medieval sub-culture that may legitimately be termed ‘vernacular’ in other and more than a linguistic sense. Achievements of early English wordcraft in their own right, if perhaps with a necessary rather than a contrived aesthetic, they qualify as candidates for an 'Arden' edition – authoritative texts with intertextual explorations, contextual information, and perceptive commentary against the background of existing scholarship -- of the kind habitually accorded to the plays, or more pertinently the Sonnets, of Shakespeare.
Escaping the Reformation in the Republic of Letters
Church History and Religious Culture, 2008
Recent scholarship has advanced paradoxical conclusions about the relationship between Renaissance humanism and the Reformation. While humanist techniques are considered to have played an instrumental role in the development, spread, and implementation of the Reformation, the humanist community is generally regarded as a supra-confessional “Republic of Letters.” This article addresses this paradox by looking at the religious language in Latin emblem books. These highly popular works emphasized a personal, intellectual spirituality, and expressed reservations against institutionalised religion. They have often been interpreted ideologically, as a humanistic, irenical response to the religious turmoil. When read in the context of the authors’ and readers’ practical interests, however, they reveal a more pragmatic strategy. Rather than promoting religious ideals, they used an a-confessional language to accommodate religious pluriformity. Examples of the reception by individual readers, e.g., in alba amicorum, further exemplify how confessional silence served as a communicative strategy in the Republic of Letters.
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 2002
Hidden gospels. How the search for Jesus lost its way. By Philip Jenkins. Pp. viij. New York-Oxford : Oxford University Press, . $. JEH () ; DOI : .\S Attempts to write ' objective ' lives of Christ or to embark on yet another quest for the historical Jesus have had a long tradition especially among radical theologians. In recent years outrageous views have seemed to be in the ascendancy ; the more heretical the conclusion the more likely it is to be publicised. From Allegro and his sacred mushroom of through Elaine Pagels on the Gnostic Gospels to the publicity-seeking work of John Dominic Crossan, Robert Eisenmann and Barbara Thiering the general reader is likely to know their unorthodox rewritings of early Christianity. It is this phenomenon that Jenkins, an historian at Pennsylvania State University, investigates in this timely and well-researched book. One recurring theme is that most of their ' heresies ' are not new ; he cites precedents for them from writings of a century or more ago. But the popularity of similar views nowadays is attributed to the growth of academic religious studies departments, the rise in feminist studies (sic) and the willingness of publishers and the media to pander to sensationalist opinions. Radical historians of religion are fascinated by Christian origins but the origins they wish to see are made to conform to the requirements of modern (secular) society's agenda, where an anti-authoritarian stance and liberal values are buttressed by a revisionist history of Jesus, which is made compatible with such opinions by an uncritical use of certain ancient noncanonical texts. Contemporary practitioners have a large number of esoteric or hitherto lost texts to hand. Hidden documents whose origins are obscure and whose discovery involves subterfuge grab the headlines. The Nag Hammadi codices, especially the Gospel of Thomas and the Dead Sea Scrolls, figure prominently in these rewritings. Valuable though all these texts are, their insights are to do with sectarian movements and should not be used indiscriminately as foundational documents for earliest Christianity. Similarly many of the New Testament Apocrypha give valuable insights into popular piety from the second century onwards but are of little historical value for knowledge of the New Testament era, whose dramatis personae they write about. By misusing such writings a genuinely academic quest for the historical Jesus has been hijacked-hence this book's subtitle. In successive chapters Jenkins shows how many studies of ' Q ', Thomas, the elusive Secret Gospel of Mark and other texts are biased, uncritical or just three prefaces Schweitzer wrote to his first, second and sixth editions. Although not an entirely new translation, but rather a major overhaul of the earlier one, this edition is a timely resource for English-language theology. Making Schweitzer's final text available to English readers for the first time is invaluable not only for those still engaged in a quest for the historical Jesus but also for all theologians engaged in Christology. This book lies behind all the Christological projects of the twentieth century and its impact is not exhausted yet. S J' C, J C O The Gospel and Ignatius of Antioch. By Charles Thomas Brown. (Studies in Biblical Literature, .) Pp. xiiij. New York : Peter Lang, . £. JEH () ; DOI : .\Sx Based on a dissertation for Loyola University, this is a study of Ignatius' use and application of the term ευ0 αγγε! λιον (Gospel). The first part of the book analyses the contexts and associated vocabulary and concepts in Ignatius, and in other early Christian literature. Here Brown builds on earlier scholarship in denying that Ignatius uses the term of, or is dependent on (a) written Gospel(s) ; while acknowledging Ignatius' use of pre-formed traditions, he emphasises the oral, preached nature of ' Gospel ' in the letters, and its particular focus on the passion and resurrection of Jesus (as in Paul). The second part develops his argument that in Ignatius, as in other early Christian literature, the term regularly defines the limits of acceptable belief and practice : in contemporary jargon, it is to do with identity and boundaries, binding insiders together and excluding outsiders. In effect, this results in an exegetically based study of Ignatius' thought, particularly his Christology, with rather less of an ecclesiological focus than in many analyses. There is little here that is startling, and the approach is expository and sympathetic, inclined to affirm Ignatius' view of the unity of the Church and of heresy. As such it does serve as an accessible introduction to Ignatius ' thought, if not to recent more critical analyses of his rhetoric. It is well-produced, if somewhat expensive for its length. K' C, J L L Pneuma. Funktionen des theologischen Begriffs in fruW hchristlicher Literatur.