Showing papers in "Church History and Religious Culture in 2012"
TL;DR: In this paper, the author poses the question whether it still makes sense to speak about a Hellenization of Christianity in Antiquity, and refines his own definition of the Hellenisation of Christianity as a specific transformation of the Alexandrian educational institutions and of the academic culture that was developed in these institutions in the theological reflection of Early Christianity.
Abstract: In this paper, delivered as the First Annual Lecture in Patristics of the Centre for Patristic Research (CPO), the author poses the question whether it still makes sense to speak about a Hellenization of Christianity in Antiquity. In contrast to the nineteenth-century understanding, it is shown that many of today's authors claim that we need to avoid any intellectual and ideological narrow-mindedness. The author pleads for a precise manner in defining the term “Hellenization” much more than the scholars of the nineteenth century did. Against the background of these thoughts he refines his own definition of the Hellenization of Christianity as a specific transformation of the Alexandrian educational institutions and of the academic culture that was developed in these institutions in the theological reflection of Early Christianity.
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TL;DR: In 1637, the Aberdeen Doctors, in response to a request by the irenicist John Dury, wrote a treatise proposing fraternal peace between Reformed and Lutheran churches in Europe.
Abstract: In 1637 the Aberdeen Doctors, in response to a request by the irenicist John Dury, penned a treatise proposing fraternal peace between Reformed and Lutheran churches in Europe. Despite common recognition of the Doctors as early-modern irenicists if not forerunners of modern ecumenism, their treatise on Protestant unity has attracted little scholarly interest. The only modern scholar to comment upon that work perceived heteredox impulses at work in the Doctors' proposal.Through careful analysis of the Doctors' treatise and comparison of it to early modern Reformed works of the same genre, this article aims to shed greater light on the nature—the grounds, scope, and limits—of the Doctors' irenicism. Against the judgment that their proposal for peace marked some level of departure from the confessional orthodoxy of their day, their work is shown to be thoroughly consistent with, and very likely indebted to, programs for Protestant peace advanced by orthodox peers and predecessors in the international Reformed tradition.
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TL;DR: The Synopsis Purioris Theologiae, a textbook in systematic theology, originated as a series of disputations held in Leiden University between 1620–1624 and shows that the cycle and its four repetitions replaced a similar cycle with repetitions that started in 1596 under Franciscus Junius Sr.
Abstract: The Synopsis Purioris Theologiae, a textbook in systematic theology, originated as a series of disputations held in Leiden University between 1620–1624. In presiding over a cycle of disputations, the Leiden professors Johannes Polyander, Andreas Rivetus, Antonius Walaeus, and Antonius Thysius continued a tradition from before the Synod of Dort. This article discusses the original academic setting of the disputations, shows that the cycle and its four repetitions replaced a similar cycle with repetitions that started in 1596 under Franciscus Junius Sr., and that the order of subjects was agreed on beforehand.The professors composed the theses and were responsible for the final text of the Synopsis.
3 citations
TL;DR: The problematic history of the early Reformation in the lands of the Polish Crown, a significant locus of Lutheranism in the reign of King Zygmunt I Jagiellon (1506-1548), is discussed in this article.
Abstract: This article reconstructs and explores the problematic historiography of the early Reformation in the lands of the Polish Crown, a significant locus of Lutheranism in the reign of King Zygmunt I Jagiellon (1506–1548). The eighteenth, nineteenth, and early-to mid twentieth centuries produced a sizeable literature on early Lutheranism in Poland, fuelled by Polish-German conflict, minority politics, and Stalinist state sponsorship. Since the 1960s, however, scholarship in Polish and German has had very little to say about Lutheranism in the lands of the Polish Crown before 1548. It is argued that the discrediting of Ostforschung after World War Two, coupled with the rise of a new Polish nationalist reading of the Reformation from the 1960s (which rejected Lutheranism as German, and un-Polish), have led to a deliberate twentieth-century “forgetting” of the Polish kingdom’s Lutheran past, which impoverishes our understandings of the European Reformations.
3 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyze the perceptions of the Jews by the Dominican friars in latemedieval Florence and focus on the encounter between the Christian and Jewish worlds as manifested in Santa Maria Novella church in the oral and visual traditions.
Abstract: This paper analyzes perceptions of the Jews by the Dominican friars in latemedieval Florence and focuses on the encounter between the Christian and Jewish worlds as manifested in Santa Maria Novella church in the oral and visual traditions. The intention is to examine the representations of Jews in a particular context, that of an Italian urban society in the late fourteenth century, especially in the context of mendicant activity, by studying both preaching and art in that context.The article shows the similarities and differences between the visual and the verbal in relation to the different media discussed, and analyzes the complexity of the Dominican perception of the Jews.
3 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined the role of servants in the implementation of the Genevan Reformation in the 1530s-1560s by looking at Genevan Consistory records and city legislation as recorded in the Sources du Droit, as well as considering John Calvin's stance on the absolute importance of truth in a godly society.
Abstract: This article begins to examine the role of servants in the implementation of the Genevan Reformation in the 1530s–1560s by looking at the Genevan Consistory records and city legislation as recorded in the Sources du Droit, as well as considering John Calvin's stance on the absolute importance of truth in a godly society. It contrasts official efforts to inculcate the principle of truth-telling among servants with employers' expectations that servants would lie in order to protect family honor and reputation. It argues that, as a result of these potentially conflicting obligations to employers and to the principles of Geneva's reforming church and city authorities, servants were at one and the same time vital to the enforcement of the Reformed system of discipline and the consistory's pursuit of truth and frequent obstacles to that enforcement.
3 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors study how the Portuguese cathedral chapters reacted to the application of the Tridentine decrees by their bishops and they show that the applications of the decisions of the Council of Trent at the diocesan level was part of a rebalance of power that was taking place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries within the Catholic Church.
Abstract: In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, dioceses were centres of conflicts and struggles for power between bishops and the cathedral clergy. The dynamics of dioceses may be better understood by examining how the decrees of the Council of Trent were interpreted and applied in them. The main purpose of this paper is to study how the Portuguese cathedral chapters reacted to the application of the Tridentine decrees by their bishops. I show that the application of the decisions of Trent at the diocesan level was part of a rebalance of power that was taking place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries within the Catholic Church.
2 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined the ways in which the authors of the Synopsis Purioris Theologiae appropriated the literatures of classical antiquity and employed them in the context of their scholastic discourses.
Abstract: This article seeks to contribute to the current re-evaluation of the relationship between the Protestant Reformation and the first period of Reformed orthodoxy by examining the ways in which the authors of the Synopsis Purioris Theologiae appropriated the literatures of classical antiquity and employed them in the context of their scholastic discourses. The derivative manner in which the many references to ancient Greek and Latin writings are employed is evidenced by the demonstrable influence of three major intermediaries: medieval lexicons and anthologies, the tradition of biblical exegesis, and the writings of John Calvin. With special attention to the classical texts that are quoted in the fundamental introductory theses of several disputations, as well as in the “polemical” ones refuting non-Reformed teaching, it is argued that the Synopsis is constructed on a complexity of intertexts that extends beyond the traditionally identified patristic and medieval sources. Thus a better understanding is gained into the nature of the (dis)continuities from medieval Scholasticism to the Reformation and early Reformed orthodoxy.
TL;DR: The authors found evidence of a provenance relating to a parish church: London Gray's Inn 20, a collection of his sermons on the Gospels, was owned by a parish priest.
Abstract: As part of their mission to preach faith and morals, the medieval Dominicans often served as allies of parochial clergy and the episcopate. Scholars such as M. Michele Mulchahey have shown that on the Continent, the Order of Preachers often helped to educate parish priests. We have evidence that thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Dominicans were allowing parochial clergy to attend their schools in England as well. Much of this evidence is codicological. Two English codices of William Peraldus's sermons provide evidence of a provenance relating to a parish church: London Gray's Inn 20, a collection of his sermons on the Gospels, was owned by a parish priest, and Cambridge Peterhouse 211, a manuscript of his sermons on the Epistles, contains an act issued by the rector of a parish church. Another manuscript of Peraldus's sermons contains synodal statutes. As the Order of Preachers was outside of the diocesan chain of command, these statutes point to the use of these sermons by those who were subject to the episcopate.Since the Dominicans were normally forbidden from sharing their model sermon literature with secular clergy, these codices suggest a program on the part of the English province of the Order of Preachers to make sure that diocesan clergy could attend Dominican schools in order to gain the skills necessary to preach the basic doctrines and morals of the Christian faith to England's laity.
TL;DR: More explained his refusal to comply with the first Act of Succession with the argument that his allegiance was to a higher council higher than the parliament of England as discussed by the authors. But More could not lawfully adhere to the principle of consensus and at the same time swear to uphold the royal supremacy because the king's supremacy in the English church implicitly asserted England's separateness and therefore broke up Christianity's consensual uniformity.
Abstract: In letters to family and friends while he was confined in the Tower of London in 1534 and the first few months of 1535, Thomas More explained his refusal to comply with the first Act of Succession with the argument that his allegiance was to a council higher than the parliament of England. The “higher council” to which More referred was the General Council of Christendom, whose determinations embodied Christianity’s canonically enjoined consensus fidelium and therefore held precedence over laws enacted by lesser assemblies such as England’s parliaments. Ecclesiastical consensus was the foundation of all More believed. It was the test that screened Catholic from heretical doctrine, and it was infallible. But More could not lawfully adhere to the principle of consensus and at the same time swear to uphold the royal supremacy enacted in 1534 because the king’s supremacy in the English church implicitly asserted England’s separateness and therefore broke up Christianity’s consensual uniformity. Thus the oath of allegiance to the first Act of Succession was one of several pieces of legislation that More could not in conscience obey.