Brepols Online Books Medieval Miscellanea Collection 2024 - bob2024mime

Brigide Schwarz (1940–2019), a leading German historian of the Renaissance papacy, is presented here for the first time in a dossier of ten previously untranslated scholarly studies.

The volume brings the mechanisms of late medieval career building back to life. Success among churchmen was measured in access to ever more lucrative ecclesiastical endowments (or benefices). As the fifteenth century progressed, their treatment assumed highly monetized and abstract dimensions. Guided by Dr Schwarz, economic historians can discern many transactions that foreshadow the asset management of present-day Wall Street.

From the 1400s, administrative positions at the papal court (or Curia) were increasingly auctioned off. This created a marketplace for bidders expecting returns by way of ‘creative’ fee regulations or through the cornering of services in monopolies.

Only recently, scholarship has begun to question older depictions of the late medieval Church as one of decay and moral corruption. Dr Schwarz points to the ‘modernity’ of the fiscal arrangements which nation states like France soon copied as an efficient model of public financing.

La théologie est née comme science métaphysique. Dès Aristote, la science la plus haute se présente comme une discipline philosophique qu’il appelle épistémè théologikè, « science théologique ». Ce que nous appelons aujourd’hui « métaphysique », c’est ce que les traductions latines d’Aristote appellent scientia divina, « science divine ». Or cette « science divine » aristotélicienne ne porte pas sur les dieux de la religion. Aristote emploie d’ailleurs un terme tout à fait différent pour désigner le discours mythique et religieux sur les dieux : il parle alors de theologia ; la theologia est une autre sorte de discours, celui des mythologies sur les dieux, tandis que la « science divine » du philosophe porte sur une substance première, séparée du monde sensible et principe de son mouvement, soit le premier moteur. Ce principe n’opère aucun salut. Il ne faut donc pas confondre le discours scientifique (la « science théologique » ou « science divine », sur le premier moteur) et le discours religieux. La difficulté est alors de comprendre quand, comment et pourquoi cette discipline philosophique suprême, la science théologique, s’est orientée vers les religions vécues par les hommes. Quand le mur séparant la theologia de la « science théologique » a-t-il été abattu ? Le présent volume s’est donné pour visée de se confronter à la nécessité d’une prise en compte, non seulement du fait religieux, mais aussi de la rationalité religieuse. Le terme « théologie » est ambigu. Il désigne tantôt la compréhension d’une religion par elle-même, tantôt la compréhension du divin par un discours rationnel. C’est pourquoi une étude comparée de la théologie comme science dans les monothéismes a un double objet : il s’agit d’abord d’étudier comment la spéculation métaphysique sur les dieux, le divin et Dieu s’est transformée en « science théologique » ; il convient ensuite de montrer comment les religions monothéistes se sont construites en théologies sur les canons de la rationalité grecque.

While Northern and East Central Europe are often considered to have been peripheral parts of medieval Latin Christendom, they nevertheless embraced many of the same cultural impulses found in more central areas. Key among these was the way in which social elites, in the first centuries after the introduction of Christianity, recognized the potential to exploit the cult of saints as a way of legitimizing their own social standing. Taking this thematic focus as its starting point, this volume explores the intersection of religion, power, and the reception and development of new impulses from abroad within Northern and East Central Europe. It does so by comparing and contrasting cults that emerged locally with cults that were imported to the region. Through this comparative overview, the chapters of this volume not only contribute to a more nuanced understanding of these outlying regions, but also shed new light on Latin Christian Europe as a whole.

The Belgian Dominican friar Antoninus Hendrik Thomas published a critical reconstruction of the earliest Constitutions of the Dominican Order. He identified meticulously where Saint Dominic and his first brothers had borrowed material from other religious and secular juridical systems, as well as where they had been original, thus uncovering the foundational charism of the Order. Even today, researchers in the field regard Fr Thomas’s work as indispensable. Unfortunately, many of his insights are difficult to access for a wider audience, since Fr Thomas wrote his work in his native language, Dutch. To mark the eighth centenary of the death of Saint Dominic in 2021, the Belgian Dominican province therefore decided to publish Fr Thomas’s work in an English translation, as well as to complement this with a selection of essays written by contemporary experts, who – from their particular perspectives – engage with Fr Thomas’s main insights. The essays deal with the historiographical tradition to which Fr Thomas belonged, the Premonstratensian, Cistercian and secular sources of the Constitutions, the manuscript tradition and editing process of the earliest Constitutions, and their reception in the first century of the Order and by the late medieval observant movement.