Download or read book Medieval Religious Rationalities written by D. L. d'Avray and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-23 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by the social theories of Max Weber, David d'Avray asks in what senses medieval religion was rational and, in doing so, proposes a new approach to the study of the medieval past. Applying ideas developed in his companion volume on Rationalities in History, he explores how values, instrumental calculation, legal formality and substantive rationality interact and the ways in which medieval beliefs were strengthened by their mutual connections, by experience, and by mental images. He sheds new light on key themes and figures in medieval religion ranging from conversion, miracles and the ideas of Bernard of Clairvaux to Trinitarianism, papal government and Francis of Assisi's charismatic authority. This book shows how values and instrumental calculation affect each other in practice and demonstrates the ways in which the application of social theory can be used to generate fresh empirical research as well as new interpretative insights.
Download or read book Rationalities in History written by D. L. d'Avray and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-23 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Rationalities in History the distinguished historian David d'Avray writes a new comparative history in the spirit of Max Weber. In a strikingly original reassessment of seminal Weberian ideas, d'Avray applies value rationality to the comparative history of religion and the philosophy of law. Integrating theories of rational choice, anthropological reflections on relativism, and the recent philosophy of rationality with Weber's conceptual framework, d'Avray seeks to disengage 'rationalisation' from its enduring association with Western 'modernity'. This mode of analysis is contextualised through the examples of Buddhism, Imperial China and sixteenth-century Catholicism - in the latter case building upon unpublished archival research. This ambitious synthesis of social theory and comparative history will engage social scientists and historians from advanced undergraduate level upwards, stimulating interdisciplinary discourse, and making a significant contribution to the methodology of history. D'Avray explores the potential of this new Weberian analysis further in his companion volume, Medieval Religious Rationalities.
Download or read book Schools of Asceticism written by Lutz F. Kaelber and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the Weberian theme of religious asceticism in the context of medieval religion, concentrating on the Cathars and Waldensians in southern France. Analyzes how the ideology and social organization of religious groups shaped rational ascetic conduct of their members and how the different forms of asceticism affected cultural and economic life, combining a sociological approach to the analysis of medieval history with an original analysis of primary sources. For scholars of comparative historical and theoretical sociology, medieval history, and religious studies. Paper edition (unseen), $19.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Spiritual Rationality written by Stefan K. Stantchev and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-07-17 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spiritual Rationality: Papal Embargo as Cultural Practice offers the first book-length study of embargo in a pre-modern period and provides a unique exploration into the domestic implications of this tool of foreign policy. Based on a large and varied body of archival and printed, papal and secular sources, this inquiry covers Europe and the broader Mediterranean from c. 1150 to c. 1550. During this time of an increasing papal role within Christian society, the church employed restrictions on trade with Muslims, pagans, 'heretics', 'schismatics', disobedient Catholic communities and individual Jews in order to facilitate papally-endorsed warfare against external enemies and to discipline internal foes. Various trade bans were originally promulgated as individual responses to specific circumstances. These restrictions, however, were shaped by the premise that sin and the defense of the decorum of the faith and Christendom condoned, or even required, papal intervention into the lives of the laity and by the text-based approach of popes and canonists. Papal embargo, consequently, was not only the sum total of individual trade bans but also a legal and moral discourse that classified exchanges into legitimate and illegitimate ones, compelled merchants to distinguish clearly between themselves as (Roman) Christians and a multitude of others as non-Christians, and helped order symbolically both the relationships between the two groups and those between church and laity. Papal embargo's chief relevance thus lay within Christian society itself, where it functioned as an intangible pastoral staff. While sixteenth-century developments undermined it as a policy tool and a moral discourse alike, papal embargo inscribed the notion of the immorality of trade with the enemy into European thought.
Download or read book On Faith Rationality and the Other in the Late Middle Ages written by Gergely Tibor Bakos and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Faith, Rationality, and the Other in the Late Middle Ages is an investigation of Nicholas of Cusa that seeks a deeper understanding of this important medieval intellectual and his importance for us today. One of Gergely Bakos's primary aims in this study is to understand Nicholas of Cusa's important and underexamined dimensions of his approach to dialogue with Islam. The framework and the methodology that informs this investigation was inspired by the late Professor Jos Decorte (1954-2001), a Flemish philosopher and mediaevalist at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. Bakos carefully exposits his method of approaching medieval thought (Part One) and then applies and tests this method in practice (Part Two). The most extensive part of this study offers a sketch of the historical background of Nicholas's dialogue with Islam and investigates what possibilities this approach offers. All of this is placed in dialogue with two other mediaeval approaches to Islam (Thomas Aquinas and Ram—n Lull). The þnal chapters discuss Nicholas of Cusa's project from a perspective offered by his mystical theology. The book culminates in an exploration of the possibilities of Nicholas of Cusa's approach by testing the framework of the study. Finally, the author evaluates the application of his own approach (Part Three). The study ultimately has two purposes: to contribute to a better understanding of Nicholas of Cusa's thought, on the one hand, and, on the other, to test a particular methodology and interpretative framework for the understanding of mediaeval culture.
Download or read book Thinking Through Revelation written by Robert J. Dobie and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Let There Be Enlightenment written by Anton M. Matytsin and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-14 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Matytsin, Darrin M. McMahon, James Schmidt, Céline Spector, Jo Van Cauter
Download or read book The Cambridge History of Medieval Canon Law written by Anders Winroth and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-27 with total page 738 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Canon law touched nearly every aspect of medieval society, including many issues we now think of as purely secular. It regulated marriages, oaths, usury, sorcery, heresy, university life, penance, just war, court procedure, and Christian relations with religious minorities. Canon law also regulated the clergy and the Church, one of the most important institutions in the Middle Ages. This Cambridge History offers a comprehensive survey of canon law, both chronologically and thematically. Written by an international team of scholars, it explores, in non-technical language, how it operated in the daily life of people and in the great political events of the time. The volume demonstrates that medieval canon law holds a unique position in the legal history of Europe. Indeed, the influence of medieval canon law, which was at the forefront of introducing and defining concepts such as 'equity,' 'rationality,' 'office,' and 'positive law,' has been enormous, long-lasting, and remarkably diverse.
Download or read book Inspiration and Authority in the Middle Ages written by Brian FitzGerald and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-06 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspiration and Authority in the Middle Ages rethinks the role of prophecy in the Middle Ages by examining how professional theologians responded to new assertions of divine inspiration. Drawing on fresh archival research and detailed study of unpublished manuscript sources from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, this volume argues that the task of defining prophetic authority became a crucial intellectual and cultural enterprise as university-trained theologians confronted prophetic claims from lay mystics, radical Franciscans, and other unprecedented visionaries. In the process, these theologians redescribed their own activities as prophetic by locating inspiration not in special predictions or ecstatic visions but in natural forms of understanding and in the daily work of ecclesiastical teaching and ministry. Instead of containing the spread of prophetic privilege, however, scholastic assessments of prophecy from Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas to Peter John Olivi and Nicholas Trevet opened space for claims of divine insight to proliferate beyond the control of theologians. By the turn of the fourteenth century, secular Italian humanists could lay claim to prophetic authority on the basis of their intellectual powers and literary practices. From Hugh of St Victor to Albertino Mussato, reflections on and debates over prophecy reveal medieval clerics, scholars, and reformers reshaping the contours of religious authority, the boundaries of sanctity and sacred texts, and the relationship of tradition to the new voices of the Late Middle Ages.
Download or read book The Sacred and the Sinister written by David J. Collins, S. J. and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2019-03-20 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by the work of eminent scholar Richard Kieckhefer, The Sacred and the Sinister explores the ambiguities that made (and make) medieval religion and magic so difficult to differentiate. The essays in this collection investigate how the holy and unholy were distinguished in medieval Europe, where their characteristics diverged, and the implications of that deviation. In the Middle Ages, the natural world was understood as divinely created and infused with mysterious power. This world was accessible to human knowledge and susceptible to human manipulation through three modes of engagement: religion, magic, and science. How these ways of understanding developed in light of modern notions of rationality is an important element of ongoing scholarly conversation. As Kieckhefer has emphasized, ambiguity and ambivalence characterize medieval understandings of the divine and demonic powers at work in the world. The ten chapters in this volume focus on four main aspects of this assertion: the cult of the saints, contested devotional relationships and practices, unsettled judgments between magic and religion, and inconclusive distinctions between magic and science. Freshly insightful, this study of ambiguity between magic and religion will be of special interest to scholars in the fields of medieval studies, religious studies, European history, and the history of science. In addition to the editor, the contributors to this volume are Michael D. Bailey, Kristi Woodward Bain, Maeve B. Callan, Elizabeth Casteen, Claire Fanger, Sean L. Field, Anne M. Koenig, Katelyn Mesler, and Sophie Page.
Download or read book Religion Rationality and Community written by Robert Gascoigne and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study is an attempt to examine the relationships between religious belief and the humanism of the Enlightenment in the philosophy of Hegel and of a group of thinkers who related to his thought in various ways during the 1840's. It begins with a study of the ways in which Hegel attempted to evolve a genuinely Christian humanism by his demonstration that the modern understanding of man as a free and rational subject derived its strength and validity from the union of God and human existence in the incarnation. The rest of this study is con cerned with two different forms of opposition to Hegel: first, the criti cal discipleship of the Young Hegelians and Moses Hess, who insisted that Hegel's notion of Christian humanism was false because religious belief was necessarily inimical to a clear consciousness of social evil and the determination to abolish it; second, the religious opposition to the Enlightenment in the thought of Schelling and Kierkegaard, which emphasized God's transcendence to human reason and the insig nificance of secular history. In the years leading up to the revolution of 1848, Hegel's synthesis was rejected in favour of the assertion of atheistic humanism or religious otherworldliness. Chapter One, after discussing the young Hegel's critique of the social and political effects of Christianity, examines the union of religi ous belief, speculative philosophy and the rational state in Hegel's mature system.
Download or read book Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought written by Giles Constable and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-03-28 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of three Studies concentrates on the changes in religious thought and institutions in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and includes not only monks and nuns but also less organised types of life such as hermits, recluses, crusaders and penitents. It is complementary to Professor Constable's forthcoming book The Reformation of the Twelfth Century, but is dissimilar from it in examining three themes over a long period, from late antiquity to the seventeenth century, in order to show how they changed over time. The interpretation of Mary and Martha deals primarily (but not exclusively) with the balance of action and contemplation in Christian life; the ideal of the imitation of Christ studies the growing emphasis on the human Christ, especially His body and wounds; and the orders of society looks at the conceptual divisions of society and the emergence of the modern idea of a middle class.
Download or read book A Companion to Medieval Rules and Customaries written by Krijn Pansters and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-06-08 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to the Rules and Customaries of the main religious Orders in Medieval Europe: Benedictine, Cistercian, Carthusian, Augustinian, Premonstratensian, Templar, Hospitaller, Teutonic, Dominican, Franciscan, and Carmelite.
Download or read book The Routledge International Handbook on Max Weber written by Alan Sica and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-09-20 with total page 684 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the latest thinking about Max Weber and his continuing influence on theoretical and empirical interests today. Bringing together the work of leading scholars from a variety of disciplines, it illuminates Weber’s thought in a number of key areas, including the methodology and philosophy of social science, comparative religion, the rationalization process, political sociology, the sociology of law, and the Protestant ethic and the development of capitalism. An international collection that demonstrates the enduring importance of Weber’s thought to contemporary sociology and the discipline’s major concerns, The Routledge International Handbook on Max Weber will appeal to scholars in a range of disciplines, including sociology, social theory, politics, philosophy, law, and international relations.
Download or read book On Faith Rationality and the Other in the Late Middle Ages written by Gergely Tibor Bakos and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Faith, Rationality, and the Other in the Late Middle Ages is an investigation of Nicholas of Cusa that seeks a deeper understanding of this important medieval intellectual and his importance for us today. One of Gergely Bakos's primary aims in this study is to understand Nicholas of Cusa's important and underexamined dimensions of his approach to dialogue with Islam. The framework and the methodology that informs this investigation was inspired by the late Professor Jos Decorte (1954-2001), a Flemish philosopher and mediaevalist at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. Bakos carefully exposits his method of approaching medieval thought (Part One) and then applies and tests this method in practice (Part Two). The most extensive part of this study offers a sketch of the historical background of Nicholas's dialogue with Islam and investigates what possibilities this approach offers. All of this is placed in dialogue with two other mediaeval approaches to Islam (Thomas Aquinas and Ramon Lull). The final chapters discuss Nicholas of Cusa's project from a perspective offered by his mystical theology. The book culminates in an exploration of the possibilities of Nicholas of Cusa's approach by testing the framework of the study. Finally, the author evaluates the application of his own approach (Part Three). The study ultimately has two purposes: to contribute to a better understanding of Nicholas of Cusa's thought, on the one hand, and, on the other, to test a particular methodology and interpretative framework for the understanding of mediaeval culture.
Download or read book The Secular Clergy in England 1066 1216 written by Hugh M. Thomas and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-08-14 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The secular clergy - priests and other clerics outside of monastic orders - were among the most influential and powerful groups in European society during the central Middle Ages. The secular clergy got their title from the Latin word for world, saeculum, and secular clerics kept the Church running in the world beyond the cloister wall, with responsibility for the bulk of pastoral care and ecclesiastical administration. This gave them enormous religious influence, although they were considered too worldly by many contemporary moralists - trying, for instance, to oppose the elimination of clerical marriage and concubinage. Although their worldliness created many tensions, it also gave the secular clergy much worldly influence. Contemporaries treated elite secular clerics as equivalent to knights, and some were as wealthy as minor barons. Secular clerics had a huge role in the rise of royal bureaucracy, one of the key historical developments of the period. They were instrumental to the intellectual and cultural flowering of the twelfth century, the rise of the schools, the creation of the book trade, and the invention of universities. They performed music, produced literature in a variety of genres and languages, and patronized art and architecture. Indeed, this volume argues that they contributed more than any other group to the Twelfth-Century Renaissance. Yet the secular clergy as a group have received almost no attention from scholars, unlike monks, nuns, or secular nobles. In The Secular Clergy in England, 1066-1216, Hugh Thomas aims to correct this deficiency through a major study of the secular clergy below the level of bishop in England from 1066 to 1216.
Download or read book Papacy Monarchy and Marriage 860 1600 written by David d'Avray and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-30 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book surveys royal marriage cases to explore how popes dealt with the marriage problems of kings, especially dissolutions and dispensations.
