Showing papers in "Church History and Religious Culture in 2008"

Iconoclast, Iconoclastic, and Iconoclasm: Notes Towards a Genealogy

Abstract: This article aims to contribute to a better understanding of the genealogy of the terms 'iconoclast(ic)' and 'iconoclasm.' After some observations on the beginning of early Christian art that stress the necessity of abandoning a monolithic view of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic art regarding their iconic/aniconic aspects, it is noted that 'iconoclast' is mentioned first just before the start of the iconoclastic struggle and always remained rare in Byzantium. It became known in the West by Anastasius's Latin translation of Theophanes' Chronographia Tripartita . From there it was probably picked up by Thomas Netter, whose Doctrinale against Wycliffe and his followers proved to be very influential in the early times of the Reformation when images were a focus of intense debate between Catholics and Protestants. Thus the term gradually gained in popularity and also gave rise to 'iconoclasm' and 'iconoclastic.' The present popularity of the term has promoted the grouping together of events that probably should not be considered together. It has also made scholars focus on Protestant vandalism during the Reformation period rather than on the much greater damage to medieval art caused by the Catholic Baroque period.

Neo-Calvinist Culture Protestantism: Abraham Kuyper's Stone Lectures

Abstract: The article addresses Kuyper's re-interpretation of Calvinism, which allegedly combined the richness of its tradition with an endorsement of modern principles and ways of life (except for gambling, theater going, and some other minor activities). Yet the acceptance of the modern way of life did not mean secularism; on the contrary, according to Kuyper Calvinism in itself was a modern principle, which could – against the prevailing powers of a secularizing modernity – penetrate society as a whole.

A Sun that Lost its Shine: The Reformation in Dutch Protestant Memory Culture, 1817-1917

Abstract: This essay is a first exploration of nineteenth-century Dutch Protestant memory culture. Using Reformation commemorations as our case study, we show that the appropriation of Luther and Calvin for group identity purposes underwent a twofold transition in the century between 1817 and 1917. Whereas the unity of Dutch Protestantism was a dominant theme during the first decades of the nineteenth century, the Reformation became increasingly used as an instrument for justifying subgroup identities. Simultaneously, a past-oriented discourse (the Reformation as “origin”) was gradually abandoned in favour of a future-oriented discourse (Reformation “principles” that ought to be obeyed and applied). This, we argue, distinguished Dutch Protestant memory culture both from national commemorative discourse and from Protestant memory cultures abroad.

Escaping the Reformation in the Republic of Letters: Confessional Silence in Latin Emblem Books

Abstract: Recent scholarship has advanced paradoxical conclusions about the relationship between Renaissance humanism and the Reformation. While humanist techniques are considered to have played an instrumental role in the development, spread, and implementation of the Reformation, the humanist community is generally regarded as a supra-confessional “Republic of Letters.” This article addresses this paradox by looking at the religious language in Latin emblem books. These highly popular works emphasized a personal, intellectual spirituality, and expressed reservations against institutionalised religion. They have often been interpreted ideologically, as a humanistic, irenical response to the religious turmoil. When read in the context of the authors' and readers' practical interests, however, they reveal a more pragmatic strategy. Rather than promoting religious ideals, they used an a-confessional language to accommodate religious pluriformity. Examples of the reception by individual readers, e.g., in alba amicorum, further exemplify how confessional silence served as a communicative strategy in the Republic of Letters.

Johann Heinrich Hottinger (1620–1667) and the “Historia Orientalis”

Abstract: Generally neglected by scholars of the history of oriental studies, Johann Heinrich Hottinger's Historia Orientalis (1651, 2nd ed. 1660) is one of the most significant contributions to the history of Islam to have been published in the seventeenth century. This article analyses Hottinger's interest in Islam and in Arabic sources across the range of his writings and his correspondence, with a special focus on the Historia Orientalis. It discusses the philological and antiquarian standards by which he assessed Arab history and it describes the numerous Islamic manuscripts he exploited. It also examines the manifold ways in which Hottinger used the Koran and other Islamic sources to corroborate his apologetic Protestant interpretation of Church history. It thus sheds a light on the impact that a combination of confessional commitment, antiquarianism, and philology had on the rise of oriental studies in seventeenth-century Europe.

Late Medieval Piety expressed in Song Manuscripts of the Devotio Moderna

Abstract: Booklets with song texts from houses belonging to one of the branches of the Devotio Moderna often contain texts of songs which had been sung earlier. However, the fact that such song texts were written down in booklets shows that they were valued by their owners, who chose to express their personal piety in these songs. Manuscripts of this type are a kind of personal creed. Compared with the heavenly Jerusalem, life on earth is seen as misery, but all afflictions are seen as tolerable if they lead to eternal glory. Heaven is considered as the true home of Christians. On the other hand, the fear of being damned for eternity is strong. Even songs expressing severe affliction end with a confession of trust in God the Father, Christ or Mary. In a booklet written by or for a female Augustinian canon, a specific female piety with connotations of an erotic longing for the celestial bridegroom Christ is perceptible.

“Alternative Spiritual Exercises for Weaker Minds”? Vernacular Religious Song in the Lives of Women of the Devotio Moderna

Abstract: In the Devotio Moderna, women appear to have used vernacular religious song to a much greater degree than men Why this is so is an as yet unanswered question and the focus of this article It explores in the first instance how song might have fit into the lives of meditation to which such women were dedicated, arguing that vernacular religious song was accepted but under some suspicion as a lesser meditative mode It then interprets documented instances of actual singing in order to assess under what circumstances song might have been permitted to serve as meditative vehicle

Johann Nikolaus von Hontheim's Febronius : A Censored Bishop and His Ecclesiology

Abstract: In the second half of the eighteenth century, the greatest enemy of the Roman Curia was no longer French Gallicanism but German Febronianism, since it challenged papal primacy. It gained its name from the pseudonymous author of the book, De statu Ecclesiae (1763). The author, auxiliary Bishop Johann Nikolaus von Hontheim, was immediately censored and later forced to sign a retraction. This essay will provide the first English synthesis and overview of the publishing history of this important work and its ecclesiology, as well as show how the Curia dealt with this dissident theologian.

Female Founders: Exercising authority in Thirteenth-century Flanders and Hainaut

Abstract: The many houses of Cistercian nuns founded in Flanders and Hainaut by the mid thirteenth century produced large numbers of documents about their female founders and patrons. Although some of these abbeys owed their foundation to the countesses Jeanne and Marguerite of Flanders, analysis here concentrates on the lives and foundations of other noblewomen who continued to have power over property in the thirteenth century. Their religious patronage was often an aspect of their public (rather than private) authority.

Music and Meditation: Songs in Johannes Mauburnus's Rosetum exercitiorum spiritualium

Abstract: The Rosetum exercitiorum spiritualium et sacrarum meditationum of Johannes Mauburnus is considered the most extensive and influential treatise on meditation in the circles of the late Devotio Moderna. It was printed in five editions from the late fifteenth to the early seventeenth century. Besides instructions for numerous meditations of varying length, this treatise contains seven religious songs which were intended to stir up the emotions and facilitate the correct disposition for meditation. These songs were created as contrafacts, meaning that the newly composed texts were sung to well-known melodies of liturgical hymns and religious songs. In song rubrics, Mauburnus gives precise instructions about their function as an aid to summoning the motivation for the great number of spiritual exercises that had to be accomplished by the adherents of the Devotio Moderna every day. A unique feature of the Rosetum is the combination of a concrete meditation with a corresponding written song. These songs have not yet been examined systematically. The texts were edited by Guido Maria Dreves in Analecta hymnica on the basis of the edition printed in Paris in 1510. The melodies have not yet been reconstructed. In this article, the seven contrafacts are studied for the first time from the point of view of their structure and function, and their melodies are reconstructed on the basis of liturgical sources associated with the Devotio Moderna.