Lay movements & organisations
More general subjects:
The Controversy over Integralism in Germany, Italy and France during the Pontificate of Pius X (1903-1914)
In the years after 1900 the autonomous activity of the Catholic laity in politics culture and society was opposed by ‘integralists’ in theological circles in the laity as well as in the clergy and last but not least in the Roman Curia. The integralists favoured a strict confessionalism and hierarchical control over all fields of Catholic life. Pope Pius X enforced this position in Italy and in France by solemnly condemning the autonomist Christian Democracy of Romolo Murri and the ‘Sillon’ movement of Marc Sangnier. In Germany however compromises with the Roman authorities were possible on all fields of contention: concerning the interdenominational character of the Christian trade unions the independence of the Centre Party from the hierarchy and also during the controversy over the ‘Catholic belles-lettres’. Finally in the papal encyclical ‘Singulari quadam’ (1912) the interconfessional Christian trade unions were at least ‘tolerated’. The present volume analyses these struggles in a comparative perspective and by evaluating the entire accessible archival documentation it reconstructs for the first time the respective internal decision-making processes of the Roman Curia. The result of this entire research is a profiling of three important European Catholicisms in the controversy over integralism. This conflict had a decisive bearing on the long-term positioning of French German and Italian Catholicism within their respective national societies.
Networking Europe and New Communities of Interpretation (1400–1600)
Long-distance ties connecting Europeans from all geographical corners of the continent during the fifteenth and sixteenth century facilitated the sharing of religious texts books iconography ideas and practices. The contributions to this book aim to reconstruct these European networks of knowledge exchange by exploring how religious ideas and strategies of transformation ‘travelled’ and were shared in European and transatlantic cultural spaces. In order to come to a better understanding of Europe-wide processes of religious culture and religious change the chapters focus on the agency of the laity in ‘new communities of interpretation’ instead of intellectual elites the aristocracy and religious institutions. These new communities of interpretation were often formed by an urban laity active in politics finance and commerce. The agency of religious literatures in the European vernaculars in processes of religious purification reform and innovation during the long fifteenth century is still largely underestimated. ‘Networking Europe’ aims to step away from studying ‘national’ textual production and consumption by approaching these topics instead from a European and interconnected perspective. The contributions to this book explore late medieval and early modern networks connecting people and transporting texts following three main axes of investigation: ‘European Connections’ ‘Exiles Diasporas and Migrants’ and ‘Mobility and Dissemination’.
The Heresy of the Brothers, a Heterodox Community in Sixteenth-Century Italy
Around the mid-sixteenth century one of the largest Italian heterodox communities developed in Modena: the community of ‘Brothers’. At the beginning of the century a flourishing humanistic tradition had inspired protests against the authority of the Church and had led many of the city’s prominent figures to sympathize with Luther and the Reformation. Over the following decades such positions became more extreme: most of the ‘Brothers’ held radical convictions ranging from belief in predestination to contestation of the Antichrist pope. In some cases the ‘Brothers’ even went so far as to deny the value of baptism.
This heterodox community in Modena created a hidden network for the free expression of its reformed faith. Within twenty years however the election of Pope Pius V (1566-1572) and the consolidation of the Holy Office led to a harsh campaign to disperse dissenters in the city. Despite the protection of illustrious members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy the bishops of Modena and the dukes of Ferrara the Holy Office succeeded in repressing the community. The history of the ‘Brothers’ of Modena therefore provides a case study for understanding how the Inquisition influenced the balance of religious Italy changing the face of the Peninsula forever.
Religious Transformations in New Communities of Interpretation in Europe (1350–1570)
Bridging the Historiographical Divides
This volume brings together medievalist and early modernist specialists whose research fields are traditionally divided by the jubilee year of 1500 in order to concentrate on the role of the laity (and those in holy orders) in the religious transformations characterizing the ‘long fifteenth century’ from the flourishing of the Devotio Moderna to the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.
Recent historiography has described the Christian church of the fifteenth century as a world of ‘multiple options’ in which the laity was engaged with the clergy in a process of communication and negotiation leading to the emergence of hybrid forms of religious life. The religious manifestations of such ‘new communities of interpretation’ appear in an array of biblical and religious texts which widely circulated in manuscript before benefiting from the new print media.
This collection casts a spectrum of new yet profoundly historical light on themes of seminal relevance to present-day European society by analysing patterns of inclusion and exclusion and examining shifts in hierarchic and non-hierarchic relations articulated through religious practices texts and other phenomena featuring in the lives of groups and individuals. The academic team assembled for this collection is internationally European as well as interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary in its methodology.
Religious Practices and Everyday Life in the Long Fifteenth Century (1350–1570)
Interpreting Changes and Changes of Interpretation
The essays in this book bring to light and analyse the continuities and shifts in daily religious practices across Europe - from Portugal to Hungary and from Italy to the British Isles - in the transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. While some of these changes such as the increasing use of rosaries and the resort to Ars Moriendi were the consequence of the rise of a more personal and interiorized faith other changes had different causes. These included the spreading of the Reformation over Europe the expulsion or compulsory conversion of the Jews in the Iberian Peninsula and the conquest of large portions of eastern Christianity by the Turks - all of which forced people who suddenly found that they had become religious minorities to adopt new ways of living and new strategies for expressing their religiosity.
By recovering and analysing the cultural dynamics and connections between religious power knowledge culture and practices this collection reconsiders and enriches our understanding of one of the most critical phases of Europe’s cultural history. At the same time it challenges existing narratives of the development of (early) modern identities that still all too often dominate the self-understanding of contemporary European society.
Religious Connectivity in Urban Communities (1400–1550)
Reading, Worshipping, and Connecting through the Continuum of Sacred and Secular
The boundaries between sacred and secular in the late Middle Ages traditionally perceived as separate domains are nowadays perceived as porous or non-existent. This collection on religious connectivity explores a new approach to religious culture in the late Middle Ages. In assessing the porosity of the domains of sacred and secular and of religious and lay the contributors to this collection investigate processes of transfer of religious knowledge literature and artefacts and the people involved.
Religious connectivity describes people in networks. This concept emphasises dynamics and processes rather than stability and focuses on all persons involved in transfer and appropriation not just the producers. It is therefore a fruitful concept by which to explore medieval society and the continuum of sacred and secular. By using the lens of religious connectivity the authors of this collection shed new light on religious activities and religious culture in late medieval urban communities.
Jerusalem in the Alps
The Sacro Monte of Varallo and the Sanctuaries of North-Western Italy
The Sacro Monte (Holy Mountain) at Varallo is a sanctuary in the Italian Alps west of Milan. It was founded in the late fifteenth century by a Franciscan friar with the support of the town’s leading families. He designed it as a schematic replica of Jerusalem to enable the faithful to make a virtual pilgrimage to the Holy City if they could not undertake the perilous journey to visit it physically. The Sacro Monte consists of a sequence of chapels containing tableaux of life-size painted terra-cotta figures with fresco backgrounds recounting the life and Passion of Christ. A century later in the era of the Counter-Reformation a ‘second wave’ of Sacri Monti was constructed in the north-western Alps modelled on Varallo but dedicated to other devotional themes like the Rosary or the life of St Francis. All these sanctuaries like Varallo were the result of local initiatives initiated by the clergy and the leaders of the communities where they were situated. Like Varallo they were the work of artists and craftsmen from the alpine valleys or from nearby Lombardy. Long dismissed as folk art unworthy of serious critical attention the Sacri Monti are now recognised as monuments of unique artistic significance. In 2003 UNESCO listed nine of them in its register of World Heritage Sites. This book studies their development as the products of the religious sensibilities and the social economic and political conditions of the mountain communities that created them.
Preaching and Political Society
From Late Antiquity to the End of the Middle Ages / Depuis l'Antiquité tardive jusqu'à la fin du Moyen Âge
Depuis au moins l’Antiquité tardive les relations entre prédication et société politique ont été nombreuses et variées. Dans le présent volume ont été réunies douze contributions qui en mettant en œuvre une documentation le plus souvent encore inédite étudient comment dans des contextes historiques culturels et géographiques différents ces relations complexes se sont déployées. Les contributions permettent ainsi de mieux apprécier dans quelles circonstances et selon quelles modalités plusieurs prédicateurs ont été amenés à proposer dans leurs sermons une réflexion de nature politique censée contribuer à la formation de l’opinion des puissants et des fidèles en général. Elles montrent aussi quelques-unes des voies qui permettent d’explorer un domaine de recherche qui n’a suscité jusqu’ici qu’un nombre limités de travaux mais dont la connaissance est sans aucun doute indispensable pour mieux comprendre la complexité des sociétés médiévales.
Humanistes, clercs et laïcs dans l’Italie du XIIIe au début du XVIe siècle
Pourquoi associer dans le titre de cet ouvrage les catégories usuelles au Moyen Âge de clercs et de laïcs aux « humanistes » un mot qui n’apparaît dans les documents qu’à l’extrême fin du XVe siècle ? La juxtaposition des trois termes nous rappelle que ces admirateurs et imitateurs des auteurs antiques que nous nommons humanistes appartenaient tant à l’un qu’à l’autre des deux « genres de chrétiens » définis depuis la réforme grégorienne. Ce sont bien des laïcs en effet qui ont lancé le mouvement humaniste à Padoue au XIIIe siècle mais par la suite des clercs des frères et des moines y participèrent également.
À la différence d’une historiographie qui a bien souvent privilégié les ruptures et les oppositions entre clercs et laïcs entre scolastiques et humanistes les auteurs de ce livre s’intéressent aux continuités tout en s’affranchissant d’une approche exclusivement littéraire ou philosophique qui est dominante en particulier pour les “grands” humanistes. En prenant en compte les personnages “mineurs” ou les oeuvres “mineures” de grands auteurs il s’agit également de “démonumentaliser” les oeuvres littéraires et de les examiner du point de vue des échanges féconds entre clercs et laïcs qui ne cessèrent entre le XIIIe et le début du XVIe siècle de nourrir la culture urbaine italienne. Les prises de position des humanistes sont ici systématiquement replacées dans le cadre de dynamiques sociales et de réseaux construits.
Les quinze contributions de ce volume ont été regroupées en quatre sections : les deux premières privilégient une analyse des modèles discursifs - c’est le cas pour l’art de la parole ainsi que pour les champs de l’hagiographie et de la philologie biblique et patristique - tandis que les deux autres sections privilégient plutôt une approche en termes de réseaux d’appartenance et de posture vis-à-vis des pouvoirs institutionnalisés.
La "Protectrice du Païs-Bas"
Stratégies politiques et figures de la Vierge dans les Pays-Bas espagnols
Dans les Pays-Bas espagnols morcelés par les revendications particularistes provinciales et bouleversés par d’incessantes guerres se construit tout au long du xviie siècle une figure originale de la Vierge. «Reine de Guerre» et «Victorieuse» garante du pouvoir des Habsbourg et Patronne des villes elle entre dans l’appareil symbolique que forgent les autorités pour promettre aux populations l’ordre espéré et fonder par la même occasion leur légitimité. L’Auteur repère et analyse les procédés qui ont contribué à définir ce rôle politique d’une Vierge puissante triomphale et souveraine. Elle montre comment émerge cette fonction mariale autant dans la littérature pèlerine dévotionnelle et théologique que dans les pratiques des communautés urbaines et de la Cour installée à Bruxelles.
Annick Delfosse est Docteur en Histoire de l'Université de Liège et Agrégée de l'enseignement secondaire supérieur. Actuellement chargée de recherches au F.N.R.S. et maître de conférences à l'Université de Liège ainsi qu'aux Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix de Namur elle étudie les manifestations baroques du catholicisme post-tridentin et explore les rapports entretenus entre Église et État à l'époque moderne.
Parisian Confraternity Drama of the Fourteenth Century
The ’Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages’
Parisian Confraternity Drama of the Fourteenth Century is the first volume of studies devoted solely to the Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages. These anonymous plays found in a single luxury manuscript comprise the only major corpus of dramatic works in French that have survived from the fourteenth century. They derive from a rich diversity of sources: narrative miracle accounts saints’ lives epic chansons de geste vernacular romances and history. Each play is preceded by a richly detailed miniature some two dozen include a sermon in prose and each includes at least one rondel to be sung by the cortege accompanying the Virgin. They constitute both a collective demonstration of the fervent late-medieval devotion to the Virgin and a substantial archive of contemporary insights into the issues of power authority and influence that struggled for dominance in fourteenth-century Paris. As this extraordinary collection has in its entirety attracted little critical attention to date this volume will be of significant interest to scholars wishing to explore the plays in their literary context as well as those interested in medieval drama the Marian tradition and the role of confraternities in fourteenth-century French culture.
New Trends in Feminine Spirituality
The Holy Women of Liège and their Impact
Was there a women’s movement in the thirteenth century and is such a question meaningful in its medieval context? Far from being resolved the issue of whether women had a thirteenth-century renaissance has still decisively to unsettle the periodization of Western European history in twelfth and sixteenth-century humanist renaissances. Herbert Grundmann long ago demonstrated the participation of women in the eremitically-inspired reforming movements of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and in the production of vernacular literature. Yet it is upon his work that this volume builds for the diocese of Liège is the key area in this development. It was from Liège that Jacques de Vitry approached the papacy to secure permission for the women of the bishopric of Liège France and Germany to live together and to promote holiness in each other by mutual example. The seventeen contributors to this volume examine not only the beguine religious life in the southern Low Countries but also the impact of this movement on later medieval Sweden England and France the new modes of influence exerted by women in their religious lives and the revivals of feminine spirituality in the late medieval West through to contemporary North America. Research does not yet allow for a whole new synthesis but this volume directs scholars to detailed work on specific localities and persons with an awareness of the problems and possibilities of wider European comparisons.
Jutta and Hildegard: the Biographical Sources
This book is a comprehensive collection of biographical sources all translated from the latest critical editions relating to Jutta of Disibodenberg (1092-1136) and Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). Except for the Life of Hildegard they have never been translated before. The Life of Jutta in particular is a major source recently discovered throwing new light on the early life of Hildegard. The contents include translations with scholarly introductions of the following documents: The Chronicles of Disibodenberg (selections); Charters of Disibodenberg; Documents of Sponheim; The Life of Jutta; Guibert's Letter 38 to Bovo (including his incomplete Life of Hildegard); the Life of Hildegard; Eight Readings to be read on the Feast of St Hildegard; Guibert's Revision of the Life of Hildegard; Charters of Rupertsberg; Canonisation Proceedings.