Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
This volume celebrates the remarkable scholarly career of medieval historian John Van Engen with eighteen exceptional essays contributed by Van Engen’s colleagues and former doctoral students, a group that includes some of the best established scholars of the Middle Ages as well as leading younger ones. Together, their work reflects the wide-ranging but coherent body of John Van Engen’s own scholarship.
In a section on Christianization, Ruth Mazo Karras explores medieval marriage, Lisa Wolverton offers a new model of the Christianization of Bohemia, R. I. Moore examines the historiography of the Cathars, and Christine Caldwell Ames links the inquisition with medieval and modern concepts of popular religion. Under the rubric of twelfth-century culture, Maureen C. Miller uses eleventh-century Roman frescoes to rethink reform, Jonathan R. Lyon unpacks Otto of Freising’s notions of advocacy and tyranny, Rachel Koopmans traces testimonial letters associated with the cult of Thomas Becket, Dyan Elliot deliberates on the importance of what she calls counterfactual, or alternative, realities in twelfth-century thought and literature, and Giles Constable traces manifestations of the cross in monastic life.
Three essays study Jews and Christians in society. Susan Einbinder probes the connections between martyrdom, politics, and poetry in thirteenth-century Castile, William Chester Jordan traces anti-Judaism in the Christina Psalter, and David C. Mengel highlights the significance of urban space for Jews in fourteenth-century Prague and Nuremberg. Lastly, contributors explore topics in late medieval religious life, a special focus of Van Engen’s scholarship. Walter Simons edits and analyzes a letter defending beguines in the Low Countries, William J. Courtenay traces the effects on pastoral care of papal provisions to university scholars, and James D. Mixson reinterprets the fifteenth-century treatise Firefly. An essay by Marcela K. Perett looks at vernacular anti-Hussite treatises, Daniel Hobbins employs a fifteenth-century Italian story about Antichrist to consider hearsay, belief and doubt, and Roy Hammerling contemplates Martin Luther’s understanding of himself as a beggar.
“The eighteen essays in this festschrift echo the breadth and the focus of John Van Engen’s contributions to the field of medieval history. . . . The volume is thus a fitting tribute to an important and influential scholarly and also, very evidently, pedagogical career.” —The Medieval Review
Lisa Wolverton is professor of history at the University of Oregon.
List of Figures and Maps
Preface
Part 1. Christianization
1. The Christianization of Medieval Marriage by Ruth Mazo Karras
2. The Christianization of Bohemia: Revising the Narratives by Lisa Wolverton
3. The Cathar Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem by R.I. Moore
4. Authentic, True, and Right: Inquisition and the Study of Medieval Popular Religion by Christine Caldwell Ames
Twelfth-Century Culture
5. Reconsidering Reform: A Roman Example by Maureen C. Miller
6. Otto of Freising’s Tyrants: Church Advocates and Noble Lordship in the Long Twelfth Century by Jonathan R. Lyon
7. Testimonial Letters in the Late Twelfth-Century Collections of Thomas Becket’s Miracles by Rachel Koopmans
8. The Counterfactual Twelfth Century by Dyan Elliott
9. The Cross in Medieval Monastic Life by Giles Constable
Part 3. Jews and Christian Society
10. A Death in Wisdom’s Court: Poetry and Martyrdom in Thirteenth-Century Castile by Susan Einbinder
Appendix: Cantiga 348; Time’s Impartial Decree
11. Anti-Judaism in the Christina Psalter by William Chester Jordan
12. Emperor Charles IV, Jews, and Urban Space by David C. Mengel
Part 4. Late Medieval Religious Life
13. In Praise of Faithful Women: Count Robert of Flanders’s Defense of Beguines against the Clementine Decree Cum de quibusdam mulieribus (ca. 1318–1320) by Walter Simons Appendix: Count Robert’s Petition to Pope John XXII
14. The Effect of Papal Provisions to Oxford and Paris Scholars on the Pastorate and Care of Souls by William J. Courtenay
15. Giovanni Dominici’s Firefly Reconsidered by James D. Mixson
16. John Příbram and His Vernacular Treatises: Equipping the Laity in Battle against Hussite Radicals by Marcela K. Perett
17. Hearsay, Belief, and Doubt: The Arrival of Antichrist in Fifteenth-Century Italy by Daniel Hobbins
Appendix: A Medieval Antichrist Story
18. Martin Luther: The Reformed Augustinian Beggar by Roy Hammerling
Publications of John Van Engen
Contributors
Index