Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Christian heresies History Middle Ages'
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Eby, John C. "The petrification of heresy : concepts of heterodoxy in the early middle ages /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/10467.
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McKinstry, Emily. "The Mind of a Medieval Inquisitor: an Analysis of the 1273 Compilatio de Novu Spiritu of Albertus Magnus." PDXScholar, 2018. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/4356.
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The fight against heresy in medieval Europe has fascinated scholars for centuries. Innumerable books, movies, and even video games have been made about this struggle to combat heresy in the Middle Ages. Despite this apparent fascination with the subject, our understanding of medieval heretics and the inquisitors who prosecuted them remains murky. What we do know is that many medieval people lost their lives, while others were punished with imprisonment or excommunication. We also know that many others dedicated their lives to rooting out what they believed was the evil of heresy among the populace. And we know that fear of the spread of heresy was rampant within the later medieval Church. But what constituted heresy? Who were the people accused as heretics? And why were they accused? These are questions that are still debated and discussed within the scholarly community.
As a contribution to the study of heresy, I have chosen to analyze one particular document and its author. This document, the Compilatio de Novu Spiritu, written by Albertus Magnus around 1273, consists of a list of ninety-seven heretical beliefs attributed to heretics in the Swabian Ries. It has been previously studied as marking the beginning of the "Free Spirit" heresy. However, many of the previous assumptions about the heresy of the Free Spirit have been questioned by more recent scholarship, including whether the sect existed at all. Instead, the heresy of the Free Spirit is now generally acknowledged to be closely related to medieval mysticism, and practiced by only a few individuals or possibly small groups. Therefore, the significance of the Compilatio has changed. I will re-examine the document, analyzing it not as a precursor to a later religious movement that preached that souls united with God can act with moral impunity, but as a window into the mind of its inquisitorial author, Albertus Magnus.
The intent of this study is to better understand the thinking of the inquisitors who fought against heresy, focusing particularly on the Compilatio and its author, Albertus Magnus (c.1200 - 1280). The methodology of the study of heresy has elicited significant debate among historians, and these issues need to be addressed prior to an analysis of this document. Therefore, I will discuss the historiography of medieval heresy and address the major disagreements within the field in this introduction. In Chapter 1, I set forth as historical background the religious situation in medieval Europe at the time the Compilatio was written. The medieval Church spent considerable time and resources in the struggle against heresy, so I will also examine the Church's response to heresy in this chapter. In the second chapter, I address how Albertus responded to the statements enumerated in the document and in particular, the manner in which he cites early church heresies. Lastly, in the final chapter, I explore how Albertus Magnus used early church writers such as Augustine and Gregory for substantiation throughout the document. Specifically, I analyze how Augustine, Gregory, and Albertus treat the sin of pride.
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Muir, Autumn M. "The Psalter Mappaemundi: Medieval Maps Enabling Ascension of the Soul within Christian Devotional Practices." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1300733958.
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FitzGerald, Brian D. "The medieval 'vates' : prophecy, history, and the shaping of sacred authority, 1120-1320." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a45bc6f3-8adf-4b5c-b5d4-7d7f23dbb9b0.
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Belief in prophetic inspiration and the possibility of discerning the future was a cornerstone of medieval conceptions of history and of God’s workings within that history. But prophecy’s significance for the Middle Ages is due as much to the multiplicity of its meanings as to its role as an engine of history. Prophetia was described in terms ranging from prediction and historiography to singing and teaching. This thesis examines the attempts of medieval thinkers to wrestle with these ambiguities. The nature and implications of prophetic inspiration were a crucial area of contention during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as scholastic theologians, with their particular techniques and standards of rationality, attempted to make systematic sense of inspired speech and knowledge. These attempts reveal a great deal about medieval structures of knowledge, and about theological reflections on the Church’s place in history. The stakes were high: ‘prophecy’ not only was the subject of Old Testament exegesis, but also, in its various forms, was often the basis of authority for exegetes and theologians themselves, as well as for preachers, visionaries, saints, and even writers of secular works. Those who claimed the mantle of the prophet came just as easily from inside the institutional structures as from outside. Theologians began legitimating a moderate form of inspiration that justified their own work through ordinary activities such as teaching and preaching, while trying to keep at bay perceived threats from powerful assertions of prophetic authority, such as Islam, female visionaries, and schismatic and apocalyptic Franciscans. This study argues that, as theologians sought to determine the limits of prophetic privilege, and to shape prophecy for their own purposes, they actually opened space for claims of divine insight to proliferate in those ordinary activities, and in a way that went beyond their control.
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Crumplin, Sally. "Rewriting history in the cult of St Cuthbert from the ninth to the twelfth centuries." Thesis, St Andrews, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/406.
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Zimmern, Matthew. "Hagiography and the cult of saints in the diocese of Liège, c. 700-980." Thesis, St Andrews, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/358.
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Carlson, Laura M. "The politics of interpretation : language, philosophy, and authority in the Carolingian Empire (775-820)." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:9e2574f8-b264-4e48-8390-fbec34411651.
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Is language a tool of empire or is empire a tool of language? This thesis examines the cultivation of Carolingian hegemony on a pan-European scale; one defined by a renewed interest in the study of language and its relationship to Carolingian eagerness for moral and spiritual authority. Intended to complement previous work on Carolingian cultural politics, this thesis reiterates the emergence of active philosophical speculation during the late eighth and early ninth centuries. Prior research has ignored the centrality of linguistic hermeneutics in the Carolingian literate programme. This thesis addresses this lacuna, demonstrating the symbiotic relationship between spirituality, language, and politics within the Carolingian world. The work appropriates prior investigations into the connection of semiotics and Christian philosophy and proposes the development of a renewed interest into ontology and epistemology by Carolingian scholars, notably Alcuin of York and Theodulf of Orléans. The correlation between linguistic philosophy and spiritual authority is confirmed by the 794 Synod of Frankfurt, at which accusations towards both the Adoptionist movement of northern Spain and the repeal of Byzantine Iconoclasm were based on the dangers of linguistic misinterpretation. The thesis also explores the manifestation of this emergent philosophy of language within the manuscript evidence, witnessed by the biblical pandects produced by Alcuin and Theodulf. Desire for the emendation of texts, not to mention the formation of a uniform script (Caroline Minuscule), abetted the larger goal of both infusing a text with authority (both secular and divine) and allowing for broader spiritual and intellectual understanding of a text. Increasing engagement with classical philosophy and rhetoric, the nature of Carolingian biblical revision, and the cultural politics as seen at the Synod of Frankfurt depict the primacy of language to the Carolingians, not only as a tool of imperialism, but the axis of their intellectual and spiritual world.
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Leatherbury, Sean Villareal. "Inscribed within the image : the visual character of early Christian mosaic inscriptions." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:9ea6f425-7010-4820-b35d-bed33c658b60.
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Between the fourth and the seventh centuries CE, Christian patrons erected thousands of churches, chapels, and monasteries in cities and villages across the Mediterranean, decorating the apses, walls and floors of many of these structures with figural and geometric mosaics. These late antique Christian mosaics have been studied for their iconography, their Graeco-Roman components, and as evidence for the religious beliefs of newly-Christian patrons. However, art historians largely have ignored the ways that texts, inscribed within the visual field and composed of the same mosaic material, functioned as images in Christian spaces. For the first time, this thesis assembles the foundations of a comprehensive catalogue of early Christian mosaic inscriptions, places them back into the physical spaces in which they were meant to be read, and analyzes how these texts functioned both verbally and visually for the late antique reader/viewer, against the backdrop of Graeco-Roman traditions. I first examine the ekphrastic components of Christian inscriptions and look more closely at the different ways in which texts work with and against images and spaces, encouraging the viewer to react physically and mentally. Second, I study the language of light used by the inscriptions, and argue that this language linked text to the material of mosaic and enabled patrons to make complex statements about their cultural erudition and religious affiliation. Third, I investigate the functions and visual forms of short tituli which label scenes or name figures to simplify, authenticate or transform static images into narratives in motion. Finally, I turn to the frames of the inscriptions and contend that different forms conveyed powerful visual arguments. By writing these texts back into their mosaics, this thesis argues that texts and images were inseparable in the period, and that text written into images performed and played in more complex ways than has been previously thought.
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Curk, Joshua M. "From Jew to Gentile : Jewish converts and conversion to Christianity in medieval England, 1066-1290." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:996a375b-43ac-42fc-a9f5-0edfa519d249.
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The subject of this thesis is Jewish conversion to Christianity in medieval England. The majority of the material covered dates between 1066 and c.1290. The overall argument of the thesis contends that converts to Christianity in England remained essentially Jews. Following a discussion of the relevant secondary literature, which examines the existing discussion of converts and conversion, the principal arguments contained in the chapters of the thesis include the assertion that the increasing restrictiveness of the laws and rules regulating the Jewish community in England created a push factor towards conversion, and that converts to Christianity inhabited a legal grey area, neither under the jurisdiction of the Exchequer of the Jews, nor completely outside of it. Numerous questions are asked (and answered) about the variety of convert experience, in order to argue that there was a distinction between leaving Judaism and joining Christianity. Two convert biographies are presented. The first shows how the liminality that was a part of the conversion process affected the post-conversion life of a convert, and the second shows how a convert might successfully integrate into Christian society. The analysis of converts and conversion focusses on answering a number of questions. These relate to, among other things, pre-conversion relationships with royal family members, the reaction to corrody requests for converts, motives for conversion, forced or coerced conversions, the idea that a convert could be neither Christian nor Jew, converts re-joining Judaism, converts who carried the names of royal functionaries, the domus conversorum, convert instruction, and converting minors. The appendix to the thesis contains a complete catalogue of Jewish converts in medieval England. Among other things noted therein are inter-convert relationships, and extant source material. Each convert also has a biography.
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Rumsey, Patricia. "Sacred time in early Christian Ireland : the Nauigatio and the Céli Dé in dialogue to explore the theologies of time and the liturgy of the hours in pre-Viking Ireland." Thesis, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, 2006. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.683216.
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Schwartzman, Lauren J. "Contest and community : wonder-working in Christian popular literature from the second to the fifth centuries CE." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a3de02f7-18a9-4363-8bbf-cea5a73eb223.
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In this thesis, I hope to demonstrate that what I call the magic contest tradition, that is the episodes of competitive wonder-working that appear in a wide variety of apocryphal and non-canonical Christian texts, made an important contribution to the development of Christian thought during the second to the fifth centuries CE. This contribution was to articulate ‘the way’ to be a Christian in a world which was not isolated from the secular, and not insulated from the reality of the Roman empire. First, I demonstrate that a tradition of texts which feature magic contests exists within the broader scope of non-canonical Christian literature (looking at this literature across communities, regions and time periods). Second, I identify what the major features of the traditions are, e.g. what form the narratives take, what the form for a magic contest is, and what the principles used to build the magic contests are, and how these principles feature in the texts. The principles I identify are power, authority, ritual, and conversion, as well as their use as historical exempla. Third, I discuss what the texts did in the context of the time period, and for the communities that produced and read them: in other words, how did the this tradition work? I show that they served multiple purposes: as tests of faith, religious truth and ways to proclaim such; as constructors and markers of group identity (and the perilous task of identifying the insiders and those who should be outsiders); as calls to unity within the overarching diversity of the times and places, and a unified front for the ‘battle’ against evil. I suggest that the texts present a model for how one could decide what the ‘true faith’ was and how one could practice it in the turbulent environment that early Christians faced both before and after Constantine.
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Lewis, Kevin James. "Rule and identity in a diverse Mediterranean society : aspects of the county of Tripoli during the twelfth century." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4c3eef19-7dcf-450c-97dc-7c9b2780a916.
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The county of Tripoli (Lebanon) was one of four “crusader states” established in the Levant after the First Crusade (1095-99). Compared to the other states, the county of Tripoli has suffered from a disproportionate level of historiographical neglect. What has been produced has taken an institutional and Eurocentric approach to the subject and its sources. The present thesis jettisons this in favour of a post-institutional methodology, approaching the county from the perspectives of geography and demographics, which together ensure that it is treated within its proper Syro-Lebanese context. Chapter one looks at the role of local geography in shaping the political frontiers of the county of Tripoli and its neighbours, arguing that topography was more important than the agency of the European settlers. Chapter two continues to challenge traditional assumptions regarding European influence, arguing that the specifically southern French origins of many of the county’s settlers were of little significance. Chapter three analyses the use of Arabic by the Frankish government of the county, informed by an awareness of diglossia. It argues that the Franks were more likely to know spoken Arabic than written, but remained reliant upon local intermediaries when ruling over Arabophones. Chapter four looks at popular religion, arguing that the cross-fertilisation of religious beliefs and practices was widespread but poorly understood by the contemporary intelligentsia, upon whose sources historians rely. As a whole, the thesis argues that the county’s inhabitants lacked a distinctive culture, identity, religion or language. The sole justification for viewing the county as an integrated unit is geographical.
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Norris, Laura Sharon. "Love of God and Love of Neighbor: Thomistic Virtue of Charity in Catherine of Siena's Dialogue." University of Dayton / OhioLINK, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=dayton1413228274.
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Pearson, Hilary E. "Teresa de Cartagena : a late medieval woman's theological approach to disability." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:c416992a-09f6-4516-b7cc-59bd88ff4717.
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This thesis studies, through a literary and theological analysis of her writings and an examination of her background, how a fifteenth century Spanish nun called Teresa de Cartagena dealt spiritually with disability. She was physically disabled, having become deaf as an adult but also having endured many illnesses. Her first book, Arboleda de los enfermos, was written to pass on to other sufferers the spiritual lessons she had learned from her own suffering; that suffering was good because it had saved her from sin and had brought her to God. Her second work, Admiraçión operum Dey, was written to answer those who had criticised her for the act of writing because of her gender, at that time a disability for any woman wishing to write or teach. She justified her writing as a special work of God, but did not claim mystical direct divine inspiration. Teresa was a member of a prominent family of Jewish Christians (conversos). At the time she was writing, the second half of the fifteenth century, anti-converso prejudice and violence were growing in Spain. This culminated in the introduction of the Inquisition in order to deal with the so-called 'judaising conversos'. In these circumstances her conversa status was a distinct social disability, but there is no express mention of this in her writings. However, there are traces in her writings of converso concerns, and of a specifically converso theology. Although there have been many studies of Teresa de Cartagena from the viewpoints of medieval Spanish literature, disability studies, feminist history and her use of rhetorical techniques, there has been no in depth study of her theology and spirituality. This thesis demonstrates that, although in general these were orthodox and unoriginal, they were unusual for a woman of her time and background.
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Curtis, Florence Sally Haines. "The intellectual scope of the 'mester de clerecía'." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ac9a4eb0-567f-4668-983e-897dce15bfff.
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This thesis investigates the first poetry written in Castilian by intellectuals, the 'mester de clerecía', ‘craft of clerics’. Exploring the unique circumstances of Iberia in the Middle Ages as a hub for the intellectual vanguard and a holy territory for encounters with saints, pilgrimage and Reconquest, I examine the canonical texts of an alleged thirteenth-century poetic school as the Castilian bedrock of a wider Iberian and European literary movement. Notably including analysis of the fourteenth-century "Libro de buen amor", a canonical work in its own right thought to parody the earlier poems, I also reassess the significance of the verse form 'cuaderna vía' for the 'mester de clerecía', in which the thirteenth-century poems are exclusively written. Over an introduction and four chapters, I combine close reading of the "Libro de Alexandre" (Chapter 1), Berceo’s Vidas of Millán, Domingo and Oria (Chapter 2), the "Libro de Apolonio" and "Poema de Fernán González" (Chapter 3), and the "Libro de buen amor" (Chapter 4), with research into intellectual, pedagogical, and religious contexts. Notably, I have found the poems analyzed to be especially concerned with the landscape of the reading mind. The result is an expanded view of the 'mester de clerecía' as theological and philosophical poems that offer ways of understanding and approaching the life of the mind as well as that of the body that are thought-provoking and informative to this day. Concluding that the thirteenth-century, canonical poems are the witnesses of a 'textual community' of authors rather than a poetic school, I advocate an inclusive definition of the 'mester de clerecía'. The 'mester de clerecía' are of extremely rich intellectual scope and are of potential interest to scholars of all European literatures, and literary, intellectual, and social history, as well as theology and philosophy.
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Rogozhina, Anna. "'And from his side came blood and milk' : the martyrdom of St Philotheus of Antioch in Coptic Egypt." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:35b8fd5c-5c85-4b5f-81c8-77e0b66a165d.
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My thesis examines the function and development of the cult of saints in Coptic Egypt. For this purpose I focus primarily on the material provided by the texts forming the Coptic hagiographical tradition of the early Christian martyr Philotheus of Antioch, and more specifically - the Martyrdom of St Philotheus of Antioch (Pierpont Morgan M583). This Martyrdom is a reflection of a once flourishing cult which is attested in Egypt by rich textual and material evidence. This text enjoyed great popularity not only in Egypt, but also in other countries of the Christian East, since his dossier includes texts in Coptic, Georgian, Ethiopic, and Arabic. This thesis examines the literary and historical background of the Martyrdom of Philotheus and similar hagiographical texts. It also explores the goals and concerns of the authors and editors of Coptic martyr passions and their intended audience. I am arguing that these texts were produced in order to perform multiple functions: to justify and promote the cult of a particular saint, as an educational tool, and as an important structural element of liturgical celebrations in honour of the saint. Another aim of this work is to stress the entertainment value of such texts. I explore the sources used by Coptic hagiographers for creating such entertaining stories, as well as the methods they used to re-work certain theological concepts and make them more accessible to the audience. The thesis begins with description of the manuscript tradition of Philotheus and a brief outline and comparison of its main versions. The second chapter discusses the place of the Martyrdom of Philotheus in Coptic hagiography and its connection to the so-called cycles. The next two chapters explore the motifs and topoi characteristic of Coptic martyr passions, especially the legend of Diocletian the Persecutor and the image of Antioch as the Holy City in Coptic hagiography, as these two motifs appear in one way or another in the majority of the martyr passions. Chapter 5 is dedicated to one of the focal points in the Martyrdom - the miracle of resurrection and the tour of hell – and its literary and theological background. Chapter 6 discusses representations of magic and paganism in Coptic hagiography and some of the concerns of Coptic hagiographers. In the last chapter I explore the geography of the cult, its iconographic and hymnographic dimensions and the transformation of the perception of the saint; the second part of this chapter discusses the questions of performance, authorship and audience.
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Levine, Adam. "The image of Christ in Late Antiquity : a case study in religious interaction." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:bf630377-9f51-4e53-bb6f-d60d750745d3.
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This dissertation focuses on images of Christ that date from the first half of Late Antiquity, defined as the three centuries between AD 200 and 500. The cultural dynamics of this period left a distinct impression on Christian art, and this dissertation traces that impact. Unlike other studies that attempt to resolve ambiguity within the corpus of Christ images, the argument here maintains that ambiguity was a key component in the creation and subsequent interpretation of the Late Antique Christian iconography. The dissertation proceeds in three parts, each comprising two chapters. In the first section, the history and historiography of the image of Christ is explored, and a methodology capable of accommodating the diverse meanings assigned to the Christ’s discrepant and ambiguous iconographies is developed. In order to better understand the socio-religious environment in which the first images of Christ were produced and interpreted, the second section of the dissertation moves away from material culture and towards method and theory. The notion that interpretation is a group level phenomenon is critiqued, and a model explaining how individuals in Late Antiquity could have made sense of ambiguous images of Christ is advanced. The final section turns back to the material culture and applies the framework developed in the second section to two artworks: (1) the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus and (2) the floor mosaic from the Hinton St. Mary Roman Villa now in the British Museum. By complementing the standard analyses of Christian art with interpretations grounded in the diverse interactions viewers had with artworks, new perspectives will emerge that provide a fuller picture of Late Antique Christianity and the iconography of its godhead alike.
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Wolf, Christa J. "A Descriptive Analysis of the Oberammergau Passion Play 2010." University of Akron / OhioLINK, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1374768702.
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Harrington, Jesse Patrick. "Vengeance and saintly cursing in the saints' Lives of England and Ireland, c. 1060-1215." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2018. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/277930.
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This dissertation concerns the narrative and theological role of divine vengeance and saintly cursing in the saints’ Lives of England and Ireland, c. 1060-1215. The dissertation considers four case studies of primary material: the hagiographical and historical writings of the English Benedictines (Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, Eadmer of Canterbury, and William of Malmesbury), the English Cistercians (Aelred and Walter Daniel of Rievaulx, John of Forde), the cross-cultural hagiographer Jocelin of Furness, and the Irish (examining key textual clusters connected with St. Máedóc of Ferns and St. Ruadán of Lorrha, whose authors are anonymous). This material is predominantly in Latin, with the exception of the Irish material, for which some vernacular (Middle Irish) hagiographical and historical/saga material is also considered. The first four chapters (I-IV) focus discretely on these respective source-based case studies. Each is framed by a discussion of those textual clusters in terms of their given authors, provenances, audiences, patrons, agendas and outlooks, to show how the representation of cursing and vengeance operated according to the logic of the texts and their authors. The methods in each case include discerning and explaining the editorial processes at work as a basis for drawing out broader patterns in these clusters with respect to the overall theme. The fifth chapter (V) frames a more thematic and comparative discussion of the foregoing material, dealing with the more general questions of language, sources, and theological convergences compared across the four source bases. This chapter reveals in particular the common influence and creative reuse of key biblical texts, the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, and the Life of Martin of Tours. Similar discussion is made of a range of common ‘paradigms’ according to which hagiographical vengeance episodes were represented. In a normative theology in which punitive miracles, divine vengeance and ritual sanction are chiefly understood as redemptive, episodes in which vengeance episodes are fatal can be considered in terms of specific sociological imperatives placing such theology under pressure. The dissertation additionally considers the question of ‘coercive fasting’ as a subset of cursing which has been hitherto studied chiefly in terms of the Irish material, but which can also be found among the Anglo-Latin writers also. Here it is argued that both bodies of material partake in an essentially shared Christian literary and theological culture, albeit one that comes under pressure from particular local, political and sociological circumstances. Looking at material on both sides of the Irish Sea in an age of reform, the dissertation ultimately considers the commonalities and differences across diverse cultural and regional outlooks with regard to their respective understandings of vengeance and cursing.
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Rigolio, Alberto. "Beyond schools and monasteries : literate education in Late Roman Syria (350-450 AD)." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:85ff7460-1425-418e-8718-652473a371e6.
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The subject of the present work is the provision of higher literate education in late Roman Syria (c. 350 - c. 450). The difference that Christianity made to literate education has always been in danger of being explained with the introduction and the development of a new kind of instruction provided in monasteries. A rigid dichotomy between secular schools and Christian monasteries, however, finds limited validation in our sources for literate education. While early Christian literature often presented monasteries as providers of education, documentary evidence offers a more blurred picture. On the one hand, studentsʼ papyri show the penetration of Christianity into schools, and, on the other, secular instructional texts have been found in the excavations of early monasteries in Egypt. This thesis presents a neglected corpus of Christian instructional texts that call into question an oppositional understanding of scholastic and monastic education in the Syrian region during late Antiquity. The corpus consists of the Syriac translations of six literary pieces by (or attributed to) Plutarch, Lucian, and Themistius that bring together features of rhetorical education with an interest in Christian asceticism (ch. 2). While the contents and the transmission of the Syriac translations reveal the link to Christianity and Christian ascetic practice (ch. 3), the textual form and the choice of the texts unearths the underlying connection to traditional literate education (ch. 4). These documents, which will be put in relation to instructional literature composed in Greek, Latin, and Syriac in the same period, challenge the existence of a neat line dividing scholastic and monastic education in the Syrian region during late Antiquity. A fresh analysis that is not constrained by a preconceived model of monastic instruction better accounts for the involvement of early Christian leaders in higher education and prompts a new investigation of their conduct on the social scene. Their agency now appears much closer to that of their non-Christian counterparts, sophists in primis, and raises the broader question of the extent to which they owed their considerable success to the implementation of strategies ultimately derived from the world of professional paideia.
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Watts, Steven Edra. "'Let us run in love together' : Master Jordan of Saxony (d. 1237) and participation of women in the religious life of the Order of Preachers." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/10154.
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In this thesis I argue that Jordan of Saxony (d. 1237), Master of the Order of Preachers, fostered a culture of openness toward the participation of women in the religious life of the Dominican order. This is demonstrated, in part, through the study of the nature of Jordan's support for Diana d'Andalò (d. 1236) and her convent of Sant'Agnese and his presentation of female pastoral care in the Libellus, his history of the order. The argument is also developed by means of a chronologically-informed reading of Jordan's letters, which explores his use of familial language, his employment of the topoi of spiritual friendship, and the significance he attributes to the role of religious women's prayer in the order's evangelical mission. Jordan's friendship with Diana d'Andalò and her convent of Sant'Agnese is well-known, if not necessarily well-explored. It is usually treated as a case apart from the order's increasing hostility to the pastoral care of religious and devout women, which gained momentum over the course of Jordan's tenure. This thesis seeks to break down this compartmentalized view by articulating not only the close parallels between Jordan's perception of friars and nuns within the order, but also the way in which he extended bonds of mutual religious commitment to religious women outside the order. As such, this study also intends to contribute to a growing historiography that explores the various ways in which medieval men and women participated together in religious life.
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Bonfiglio, Emilio. "John Chrysostom's discourses on his first exile : Prolegomena to a Critical Edition of the Sermo antequam iret in exsilium and of the Sermo cum iret in exsilium." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:df828fcd-dc2a-47b9-8bb1-c957c9199fb1.
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The Sermo antequam iret in exilium and the Sermo cum iret in exsilium are two homilies allegedly pronounced by John Chrysostom in Constantinople at the end of summer 403, some time between the verdict of the Synod of the Oak and the day he left the city for his first exile. The aim of the thesis is to demonstrate that a new critical edition of these texts is needed before any study of their literary and historical value can be conducted. Chapter one sketches the historical background to which the text of the homilies refers and a concise survey about previous scholarship on the homilies on the first exile, from the time of Montfaucon’s edition until our days. The problem of the authenticity occupies the last part of the chapter. Chapter two investigates the history of the texts and takes into account both the direct and indirect traditions. It discusses the existence of double recensions hitherto unknown and provides the prefatory material for the new critical edition of recensio α of Sermo antequam iret in exilium and of the Sermo cum iret in exsilium. Chapter three comprises the Greek editions of the two homilies, as well as a provisional edition of the Latin version of the Sermo antequam iret in exilium. Chapter four is divided into two parts, each presenting a philological commentary on the text of the new editions. Systematic analysis of all the most important variant readings is offered. The final chapter summarizes the new findings and assesses the validity of previous criteria used for discerning the authenticity of the homilies on the exile.
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Moulet, Benjamin J. A. "Evêques, pouvoir et société à Byzance, début du VIIIe siècle - milieu du XIe siècle: territoires, communautés et individus dans la société privinciale de l'Empire byzantin." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/210419.
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Co-tutelle de thèse Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne / Université Libre de Bruxelles, sous la direction conjointe de Michel KAPLAN (Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne) et de Jean-Marie SANSTERRE (Université Libre de Bruxelles)L’épiscopat constitue un fondement essentiel mais méconnu de l’Église mésobyzantine. Malgré la relative rareté des sources, il est possible d’en retracer l’histoire et les grandes évolutions :une part importante de l’hagiographie de l’iconoclasme et post-iconoclaste concerne en effet métropolites et évêques, témoignant du lien fort existant entre ceux-ci et le peuple des cités dont ils ont la charge, particulièrement quand ils sont considérés saints par la population. De nombreuses sources épistolaires, ecclésiastiques et sigillographiques, émanant des évêques eux-mêmes, permettent d’approcher les réalités du corps épiscopal et celles de la société provinciale qu’il représente auprès des autorités centrales. L’évêque apparaît également comme le relais des volontés impériale et patriarcale dans les provinces de l’Empire. Dans un contexte de compétition de pouvoir avec les autorités locales, l’évêque tente ainsi d’imposer le sien propre, dans ses aspects spatiaux, sociaux, religieux et symboliques.
L’approche collective et les approches individuelles de l’épiscopat doivent permettre de comprendre les réalités sociales d’un Empire de plus en plus centré sur sa capitale et dont sont progressivement détachées, du moins dans les sources, les périphéries. Une histoire décentrée de l’Empire byzantin passe dès lors par des études régionales mais aussi par des études consacrées à des groupes sociaux enracinés dans tout l’Empire, surtout lorsque, comme les évêques, ils revendiquent la spécificité de leur région et leur attachement à une société provinciale qui constitue le socle de l’Empire.
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The episcopate is an essential structure of the middle-Byzantine Church ;however, it remains little known. Although sources are limited, its history and evolution can still be reconstructed, as a large portion of the iconoclastic and post-iconoclastic hagiography deals with metropolitans and bishops. The sources reveal the strong connection between bishops and the inhabitants of the cities under their responsibility, especially when the population considers them as saints. Numerous epistolary, ecclesiastic and sigillographic documents issued by bishops themselves partially unveil the realities of the episcopal group and the provincial society that bishops represent to the central authorities. The bishop also serves as relay of both imperial and patriarchal wills to the provinces of the Empire. Competing with local authorities, the bishop thus tries to impose his own influence in its spatial, social, religious and symbolic dimensions.
Both collective and individual approaches of the episcopate make the social realities of the Empire more understandable, as it becomes more and more focused on its capital city while its peripheries gradually move away, which documentation seems to imply. Regional studies, but also studies focused on social groups established across the whole Empire, are the fundamentals of a decentred history of the Byzantine Empire. This is especially true since social groups such as bishops claim the specificity of their regions and their link to a provincial society that represents the cornerstone of the Empire.
Doctorat en Histoire, art et archéologie
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished
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Langdell, Sebastian James. "Religious reform, transnational poetics, and literary tradition in the work of Thomas Hoccleve." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a2e8eb46-5d08-405d-baa9-24e0400a47d8.
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This study considers Thomas Hoccleve’s role, throughout his works, as a “religious” writer: as an individual who engages seriously with the dynamics of heresy and ecclesiastical reform, who contributes to traditions of vernacular devotional writing, and who raises the question of how Christianity manifests on personal as well as political levels – and in environments that are at once London-based, national, and international. The chapters focus, respectively, on the role of reading and moralization in the Series; the language of “vice and virtue” in the Epistle of Cupid; the moral version of Chaucer introduced in the Regiment of Princes; the construction of the Hoccleve persona in the Regiment; and the representation of the Eucharist throughout Hoccleve’s works. One main focus of the study is Hoccleve’s mediating influence in presenting a moral version of Chaucer in his Regiment. This study argues that Hoccleve’s Chaucer is not a pre-established artifact, but rather a Hocclevian invention, and it indicates the transnational literary, political, and religious contexts that align in Hoccleve’s presentation of his poetic predecessor. Rather than posit the Hoccleve-Chaucer relationship as one of Oedipal anxiety, as other critics have done, this study indicates the way in which Hoccleve’s Chaucer evolves in response to poetic anxiety not towards Chaucer himself, but rather towards an increasingly restrictive intellectual and ecclesiastical climate. This thesis contributes to the recently revitalized critical dialogue surrounding the role and function of fifteenth-century English literature, and the effect on poetry of heresy, the church’s response to heresy, and ecclesiastical reform both in England and in Europe. It also advances critical narratives regarding Hoccleve’s response to contemporary French poetry; the role of confession, sacramental discourse, and devotional images in Hoccleve’s work; and Hoccleve’s impact on literary tradition.
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Shulevitz, Deborah Gail. "Heresy, Money, and Society in Southern France, 1175-1325." Thesis, 2017. https://doi.org/10.7916/D8P84Q7B.
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This study contributes to the ongoing debate about the existence and nature of the Cathar heresy in Languedoc in the long thirteenth century. Using testimony of accused heretics, it traces a network of fundraising, donations, testamentary bequests, deposit-holding, moneylending, and other types of financial transactions that evidences the existence of a discreet group of people traditionally called ‘Cathars’. This study demonstrates that, unlike many other medieval religious movements, this group did not practice voluntary poverty as part of a holy life. Since the Cathars are traditionally thought to be radical dualists who rejected the material world in all its forms, and because their clergy professed asceticism in other aspects of life, the failure to embrace holy poverty struck contemporary observers as hypocritical and self-serving. Many modern historians have agreed with this assessment, while others have argued that the Cathars did, in fact, embrace poverty. This study serves as a corrective to both points of view: the ‘Cathars’ in thirteenth-century Languedoc neither embraced poverty, nor cynically claimed to do so while disregarding their principles. Rather, repudiation of money was not part of their way of life. That the Cathars of Languedoc did not embrace apostolic poverty is not surprising when we consider that they were embedded in a local culture with strong moneylending traditions. These local practices did not conform to the norms of the Catholic church, rendering the region vulnerable to charges of usury as well as heresy. As part of its effort to standardize religious practice, in the thirteenth century the papacy waged an aggressive campaign against Cathar heresy. Uneasy with the rapid economic expansion of the high Middle Ages, it also stepped up attacks on usury, which was seen by some as a kind of heresy. Seeing that Cathars did not embrace holy poverty – and, in fact, participated in the economy – contemporary critics accused them of practicing usury and pursuing wealth. Languedoc, already deeply associated with Catharism, came under attack in the thirteenth century for its credit culture as well. Using case studies of early thirteenth-century Toulouse and late thirteenth-century Albi, this dissertation examines the association between heresy and usury and argues that attacks on their practitioners were intended to enforce conformity to orthodox norms and eradicate difference within Latin Christendom.
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Raskin, Sarah. "False Oaths: The Silent Alliance between Church and Heretics in England, c.1400-c.1530." Thesis, 2016. https://doi.org/10.7916/D87D2VBX.
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This dissertation re-examines trials for heresy in England from 1382, which saw the first major action directed at the Wycliffite heresy in Oxford, and the early Reformation period, with an emphasis on abjurations, the oaths renouncing heretical beliefs that suspects were required to swear after their interrogations were concluded. It draws a direct link between the customs that developed around the ceremony of abjuration and the exceptionally low rate of execution for “relapsed” and “obstinate” heretics in England, compared to other major European anti-heresy campaigns of the period. Several cases are analyzed in which heretics who should have been executed, according to the letter and intention of canon law on the subject, were permitted to abjure, sometimes repeatedly. Cases that ended in execution despite intense efforts by the presiding bishop to obtain a similarly law-bending abjuration are also discussed. These cases are situated within explorations of the constitutions governing heresy trials, contrasting their use of apparently standard legal terminologies with more aggressive continental inquisitors, as well as the theology and cultural standing of oaths within both Wycliffism and the broader Late Medieval and Early Modern world. This dissertation will trace how Lollard heretics gradually accepted the necessity of false abjuration as one of a number of measures to preserve their lives and their movement, and how early adopters using coded writing carefully persuaded their co-religionists of this necessity. Furthermore, it will argue that the bishops who conducted the trial system deliberately constructed it to encourage this type of perjury, even suppressing attempts to alter heretics’ actual convictions, for the sake of social order and stability.
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Bélanger, Mireille. "Les femmes, les hérétiques et les marchands : trois groupes sociaux représentés sur la façade de l’église abbatiale de Saint-Gilles-du-Gard." Thèse, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/1866/22049.
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Purcell, James. "Parsing Truth in Merovingian Gaul: Evidence and the Early Medieval Critic." Thesis, 2021. https://doi.org/10.7916/d8-2ry7-5z76.
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“Parsing Truth in Merovingian Gaul: Evidence and the Early Medieval Critic” considers how people distinguished truth from falsehood in a set of post-Roman kingdoms occupying much of modern France and western Germany from c. 450 to 751. Using Merovingian saints’ lives, legal documents, law codes, letters, and theological and philosophical texts, I consider how people and institutions navigated the possibility that information might be presented with the intent to deceive, or might just be wrong. Responses to questions about the reliability of information ranged from the practical to the abstractly epistemological, and the period produced multiple and contradictory arguments about how knowledge could, indeed, be certain. The dissertation concludes by examining some points of contact between Merovingian critical practices and Early Modern ones, looking specifically at the management of knowledge about relics at Sens.
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Taylor, Christopher Eric. "Waiting For Prester John : the legend, the Fifth Crusade, and medieval Christian holy war." Thesis, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/ETD-UT-2011-05-2666.
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In considering the increasing interest in the study of a global Middle Ages, there seem to be few individuals, either fictional or actual, that had a more powerful cosmopolitan currency than the figure of Prester John and the legends surrounding his kingdom. As a product of cultural imaginings and questionably recounted historical events, the search for and legitimization of Prester John has commanded consistent interest, both popular and scholarly, almost continuously since first mention of the figure of John in 1145. The now infamous Letter of Prester John, which details the magnificent Christian kingdom lying somewhere in the East, beyond the approaching threat of an ever-expanding Islam, has long catalyzed a hunt, by both adventurers and scholars, to seek the elusive patriarch. The very indeterminacy of the geographic location of Prester John allowed the European imagination to consequently imagine him everywhere precisely because he could neither be confirmed nor denied existence anywhere. This report will explore the ways that a reading of the Prester John legend reveals competing ambitions of enclosure and expansion within twelfth and thirteenth-century Latin Christendom, specifically around the time of the Fifth Crusade. This report will trace the ideational tensions within a presumed Christian Crusading West trying to legitimate itself against the dialectical buttress of what was increasingly professed as its heretical other, Islam. The Fifth Crusade, especially, seemed to hinge on the possibility of the harmonious convergence of Eastern and Western Christian powers, literalizing the sense of Christian enclosure around all of Islam. Prester John’s kingdom thus served two functions: first, to comprise the other half of the Christian enclosure, and secondly, to mark a phenomenological limit point of human experience that domesticated alterity under the banner of a sovereign priest-king.text
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Saretto, Gianmarco Ennio. "Consuming the Word: Figures of Vernacular Translation in Late Medieval Christian Poetry." Thesis, 2021. https://doi.org/10.7916/d8-r5cp-wq08.
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More than any other period in the history of Western Europe, the Middle Ages were informed by translation. Practices of translation pervaded and underlay every aspect of medieval culture and politics. Yet, our understanding of how medieval writers thought about translation remains profoundly lacking. Most contemporary histories of translation theory choose to neglect the Middle Ages entirely, or to turn them into a footnote to Jerome’s distinction between “sense-for-sense” and “word-for-word” translation. Consuming the Word offers a new approach to medieval translation theory by considering texts, genres, and forms that have been largely neglected by scholars. While most research in this field has concentrated on texts that are regarded as explicitly “theoretical,” such as prefaces, commentaries, and treatises, Consuming the Word extends this investigation to the figurative language of “literary” works: poetical texts written primarily for moral and intellectual edification, aesthetic pleasure, and entertainment. By analyzing an archive of four 14th-century devotional poems composed in Spanish, Italian, and Middle English, this dissertation demonstrates that the writers of the Middle Ages articulated arguments on language, interpretation, and translation whose complexity and originality greatly surpassed the arid and derivative thinking about translation that is generally attributed to this period.
Consuming the Word further demonstrates that, by the late 14th century, Christian devotional writers tended to deploy a particular figure to construct arguments on translation, interpretation, and vernacularity: the figure of gluttony. In the first chapter of this dissertation I examine the theories of language and translation conceived by Dante Alighieri in the first decades of the 14th century. I argue that the figures of consumption and gluttony that appear in the last section of Purgatorio are meant to convey a theoretical justification for his use of the vernacular, bringing to fruition several contradictory arguments that are only outlined in his two previous works on the subject: Convivio and De Vulgari Eloquentia. In the second chapter I concentrate on Cleanness, an anonymous and generally overlooked Middle English poem in which the poet ostensibly eulogizes the virtue of purity. By examining its figurative depictions of cooking and feasting, I contend that, rather than as a casual assortment of disparate scriptural episodes, Cleanness should be interpreted as a coherent argument in favor of vernacular translation. On the contrary, in the third chapter I show how a contemporary Middle English poem, the more famous Piers Plowman, relies on the personification of gluttony to disclose an almost antithetical argument. In Piers Plowman, vernacular translation is described as a losing bargain, morally and intellectually detrimental. In my fourth and final chapter, I turn to the celebrated Libro de Buen Amor, to analyze how its figures of eating and overeating convey an argument on the endlessness of all interpretation and on the importance of choice in the act of translating.
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Spear, Valerie Grant. "Distaff and Crozier : leadership in medieval English nunneries 1280-1539." Phd thesis, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/144681.
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Reid, Zofia Tatiana. "Disempowered women? :." Diss., 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/17606.
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