Medieval and Early Modern Studies

In The Body in Mystery, Jennifer R. Rust takes the political concept of the mystical body of the commonwealth, back to the corpus mysticum of the medieval church. Rust argues that the communitarian ideal of sacramental sociality had a far longer afterlife than has been previously assumed. Reviving a critical discussion of Ernst Kantorowicz’s masterwork, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (1957), Rust brings to bear the latest scholarship, and expands the representation of the corpus mysticum through a range of literary genres as well as religious polemics and political discourses. She reclaims the concept as an essential category of social value and historical understanding for the imaginative life of the major literature of Reformation England. The Body in Mystery provides new ways of appreciating the always rich and sometimes difficult continuities between the secular and sacred in early modern England.

... Page 11. Remensnyder / Beyond Muslim and Christian 555 This poem, which was in circulation by 1550, features a Muslim king who rides out from Granada with his knights. Among them is a tor-nadizo from Seville, a convert from Islam to Christianity. ...

This volume presents a new approach to Spanish Baroque drama, inspired by Foucauldian discourse archeology, whose rare fusion of meticulous philology and ambitious theory will be exciting and fruitful both for the specialist of Spanish literature and for anyone invested in the history of European thought. Detailed readings are dedicated to some of the most prominent plays by Lope de Vega and Calderón de la Barca, both autos sacramentales (El viaje del alma; El divino Orfeo; La lepra de Constantino) and comedias (El castigo sin venganza, El príncipe constante, El médico de su honra). The "archeological" perspective cast on the plays implies an integration of their discourse-historical "foils", from pagan antiquity through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, as well as a discussion of related discourses, mainly theological, philosophical and historiographical. A separate "excursus" suggests a reconsideration of the common manner in which the discursive relation between the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, Mannerism and the Baroque is conceptualized.

in terms of its dramatic, social, and economic significance, though a few critics have considered the spiritual possibilities offered by the idyllic Forest of Arden in an age of religious conflict. 2 Robert Schwartz, for instance, has argued that the Duke and his “band of outlaws” are Libertines who seek “to pursue the spirit of Christian value through nature rather than scripture or the orthodox rituals of the church” and its conventional sacred places. 3 Conversely, Peter Milward has associated the Forest of Arden with “the old faith,” pointing out that some important Catholic families resided in its environs, among them the Ardens, through whom the playwright was connected with the recusant culture of Warwickshire.4 And Carol Enos suggests that the play gives us a dramatic version of the Forest of Ardennes — situated at the border of Flanders and France, at an easy distance from the Catholic university at Louvain as well as from the seminaries at Douai, Rheims, and St. Omer — and with it an Edenic place that facilitates spiritual reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants.5 Shakespeare’s Arden and its borderlands do indeed present spatial possibilities for a world out of place in which ancient sacred spaces had vanished or were changed profoundly. This essay is concerned with the play’s reimagining of the constitution and function of sacred space in a postReformation age. As many of the old faith’s sacred sites were dismantled, left to decay, or altered significantly, reformed congregations sought to rei magine the relationship of worship to space.6 As You Like It presents us with a potent spatial opposition: the courtly world of culture and the wild realm

This essay explores the practicalities of making and buying clothing in early modern Florence. Drawing on the household accounts of families associated with the Medici court, together with a range of other archival sources, the essay uncovers complex patterns of interaction between consumers, artisans, and retailers. Such networks were fundamental to the way dress fashions developed and achieved wider diffusion during this period. Wealthy Florentines closely supervised the many different stages involved in the acquisition of clothing, often drawing on expertise they had accumulated as silk merchants and as agents purchasing goods on behalf of others. Buying clothing was also a strongly gendered pursuit, shaped by contemporary views of women's domestic roles. Despite the influence exercised by consumers, members of the clothing trade played a significant part in promoting change in fashions. In particular, tailors and mercers became known for their ability to create new designs a...

Abstract This essay provides an account of the uncomfortable discrepancies in the way Muslim conversion is depicted among the early Latin histories of the First Crusade. Local contexts within western Europe shaped fundamentally different views of the Crusades. An ...

Historians of science have become increasingly aware of the connections between religion and science in the early modern period. Science, or more strictly “natural philosophy,” is understood as having pointed to the existence of a designing deity. Conversely, religion is seen as providing a fledgling science with social legitimation. Another connection between seventeenth-century science and religion is less well known, and that is the way in which the experimental practices of the new science were then thought to promote a particular kind of moral and religious formation. As Robert Boyle put it, the study of nature would instill “sentiments of devotion and particular virtues.” This feature of experimental science represents a significant link with the classical notion of philosophy (including natural philosophy), which stressed the importance of the moral formation of the philosopher. The intellectual labors of the experimentalist could thus be understood as a form of spiritual exercises.

Young Italian men joined the Habsburg army in the Low Countries to gain military experience. In pursuit of social advancement, many of these soldiers sought to maintain ties and contacts with their hometowns. Letters were the principal medium for soldiers to establish such a long-distance communication, providing the latest news from the front. This article provides the first examination of letter-writing soldiers as purveyors of news from the battlefield to the governing elites in Italian states during the late sixteenth century. It examines how soldiers of different ranks and social backgrounds used letters to construct a reputation as trustworthy correspondents and as military experts. By providing event-based and up-to-date military and political information on the conflict in which they were actively deployed, soldiers played a crucial role in the circulation of information and shaped the reception at the Italian courts of the unfolding events in the Low Countries.

In Debating Medieval Natural Law: A Survey, Riccardo Saccenti examines and evaluates the major lines of interpretation of the medieval concepts of natural rights and natural law within the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and explains how the major historiographical interpretations of ius naturale and lex naturalis have changed. His bibliographical survey analyzes not only the chronological evolution of various interpretations of natural law but also how they differ, in an effort to shed light on the historical debate and on the medieval roots of modern human rights theories.

Saccenti critically examines the historical analyses of the major historians of medieval political and legal thought while addressing how to further research on the subject. His perspective interlaces different disciplinary points of view: history of philosophy, as well as history of canon and civil law and history of theology. By focusing on a variety of disciplines, Saccenti creates an opportunity to evaluate each interpretation of medieval lex naturalis in terms of the area it enlightens and within specific cultural contexts. His survey is a basis for future studies concerning this topic and will be of interest to scholars of the history of law and, more generally, of the history of ideas in the twentieth century.

“With exemplary scholarship, Riccardo Saccenti provides a clear and unbiased presentation of the evolution of natural law theory, practice, and interpretation from the Middle Ages to the present. His welcome and original work expands our understanding of how medieval natural law, and in particular how the relationship between natural rights and both the church and society, has been viewed by original authors and scholars. This is a valuable resource in its thorough and even-handed treatment of primary sources as well as its inclusion of the vast secondary literature.” — Mark Clark, Catholic University of America

“Scholars from the early twentieth century to the present have disagreed on how to interpret the multiform traditions of natural law in medieval thought and their relations to modern natural law theories. In addition to providing a lucid and up-to-date survey of the historiography of this debate, placing its participants in their own disciplinary and methodological contexts, Riccardo Saccenti also argues persuasively for a more holistic approach to this subject. His valuable study should be required reading for scholars interested in medieval natural law theories, both in their own right and in their continuing relevance to philosophy, theology, law, and political theory.” — Marcia L. Colish, Yale University

“Thoroughly conversant with primary and secondary sources, Riccardo Saccenti offers a new approach to divergent interpretations of the idea of natural law in the Middle Ages. With a rare blend of philosophical competence and historical perceptivity, he succeeds in explaining the positions of acknowledged scholars, such as Finnis, Oakley, Tierney, Nederman, and Brett, both in their presuppositions and in their relevance for current discussions on natural rights. While previous contributions risk being one-sided or limited by their polemical attitude, Debating Medieval Natural Law gives for the first time a comprehensive and balanced survey of the many issues at stake. A long-awaited, reliable guide through the intriguing and sophisticated debates about the origins of a crucial and controversial idea of Western civilization.” — Roberto Lambertini, University of Macerata

ISBN: 978-0-268-10040-7
170 pages
Publication Year: 2016

This special issue of JMEMS addresses different ways of thinking through death and dying in the medieval and early modern period, including different philosophical and legal positions concerning the relationships between the body and its parts, corpses and burial sites, the bodies of saints and the bodies of criminals, the bodies of the dying confessing on their deathbeds and the bodies of suicides choosing to be buried with their souls unprepared. A new frame of knowledge becomes possible when we familiarize ourselves with the face of death. The six essays presented in this special issue do not revolt against the prospect of death, do not neglect what in the early modern period was called “the art of living and dying,” but perform their own version of the “dance of death” as they reconstruct in multifaceted layers the social and at times the political reality of dying present in an array of medieval and early modern European materials.

[There is one shrine, within which the marble sarcophagus con-taining the virgin body of St. Æthelthryth is enclosed, turned in the direction of her own altar, just as the exalted lady, entirely whole, entirely uncorrupted, rests in the tomb which, we believe, had been prepared for ...

In his eighty-eighth epigram, “On English Monsieur” (1616), Ben Jonson ridicules the vainglorious pride in apparel of his subject and specifically the Englishman's obsession with clothes and accessories from France. Attired head to toe in French clothing, the Englishman becomes ...

... Patricia Dailey Columbia University New York, New York ... already in dialogue with literary traditions.5 Bar-bara Newman's work on “la mystique courtoise” shows how, for example, Hadewijch's songs use the Minnesang tradition to speak of the relation to the divine.6 Nicholas ...

In the mid–thirteenth century, the aldermen of Douai began issuing a series of ordinances for the regulation of the city's social and economic life.1 They often addressed issues concerning particular groups— citizens, practi-tioners of a certain trade, those who brewed beer, and ...

This study investigates the cultural and textual relationship between two types of texts that inveigh against the preoccupation with fashionable attire: imaginative secular writing and sermons. While scholars have noted the influence sermons had on secular texts in the period, this article shows how popular literature of the profane, in denouncing excessive pride in apparel, had a profound and lasting influence on homiletic discourse. Sermons are hybrid texts that incorporate both the themes and literary flourish of texts written by secular, polemical authors, such as Philip Stubbes and Thomas Nashe. Special attention is given to the sermons preached at Paul's Cross to show how the complex social space surrounding the pulpit was crucial in enabling preachers to express the critique against excesses in apparel.

This essay examines the English translations of the autobiographical writings of Teresa de Ávila — The Lyf of the Mother Teresa of Iesus (Antwerp, 1611) and The Flaming Hart (Antwerp, 1642) — to demonstrate the impact of her exemplary spiritual life on the development of early modern life writing, particularly in domestic contexts. Teresa’s autobiographical texts were mediated for new audiences: religious orders and lay readers, both Catholic and Protestant. Teresa quickly established cult status in large part through readers’ engagement with the record of her life. Analysis of her writings shows how they partook in a carefully orchestrated campaign of Counter-Reformation proselytization that established a network of religious houses but also a network of thought and contemplation across Europe. The key players involved with circulating her works were by and large lay people operating in close collaboration with houses on the Continent, but outside of the religious orders per se. Wh...

John Donne composed his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624) to share a revelatory illness experience with readers. Yet, in the book’s final chapter, Donne himself argues that bodily pain is unshareable. This raises a question: How can Donne hope to share his illness with readers when he believes its physical symptoms resist communication? This essay argues that Donne bypasses this impasse by formally recreating one of his illness’s contemplative symptoms: the vexed temporal disorder caused by interpreting one’s world from within a sick body. Because this symptom arises from Donne’s inability to order the events of his illness, he is able to recreate it within readers by likewise disordering the Devotions’ narrative. By sharing this contemplative “torment” with readers, the Devotions democratizes Donne’s difficult path toward spiritual revelation. In doing so, it demonstrates that narrative form can bridge the communication gap between the suffering writer and his readers.

Julian of Norwich intervened in the clerical discourses surrounding the discernment of spirits (Latin discretio spirituum), a method for observing differences between divine and diabolical causes of visionary experience. During the late Middle Ages in Europe, churchmen used methods of discernment in some prominent trials to examine female visionaries for sanctity or heresy. In these instances, discernment offers a medieval analogue to what critics such as Rita Felski, following Paul Ricoeur, have termed paranoid reading practices or the “hermeneutics of suspicion,” premised on demystifying the illusory nature of signs, as opposed to reparative reading practices or the “hermeneutics of trust,” which calls for restoring their meaning. In a climate when discretio spirituum came to prominence, Julian responded to the suspicious techniques developed to interpret women's visions and bodies by incorporating an innovative guide for discernment in A Revelation of Love that prioritizes tr...