Dissent and Order in the Middle Ages

Dissent and Order in the Middle Ages
Author: Jeffrey Burton Russell
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 141
Release: 2005-02-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1597521027

The study of the conflict between religious orthodoxy and heresy in the Middle Ages has long been a controversial field. Though the sectarian differences of the past have faded in intensity, the varieties of academic correctness that today inform historical studies are equally likely to give rise to a number of interpretations, sometimes providing more information about the sympathies of contemporary historians than the beliefs, feelings, and actions of Medieval people. In this book, Jeffrey Burton Russell provides a fresh overview of the subject from the Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.) to the eve of the Protestant Reformation. The fruit of many years of thought and scholarship, 'Dissent and Order in the Middle Ages' is a concise introduction to the full range of religious and social phenomena encompassed by the book's title. While tracing the intellectual battles that raged between the champions of orthodoxy and the partisans of dissent, Russell grounds these conflicts, which often seem rather recondite to the modern reader, in the evolving social context of Medieval Europe. In addition to discussing conflicts within Christianity, Russell sheds new light on such vexing topics as the origin of anti-Semitism and the persecution of alleged witches. More than just an overview, Russell's study is also an original interpretation of a complex subject. Russell sees the conflict between dissent and order not as a war of binary opposites, but rather as an ongoing dialectic, a creative tension that, despite the excesses it entailed on both sides, was essential to the development of Christianity. Without this creative tension, Russell argues, Christianity might well have stagnated and possibly died. Dissent and order, then, are perhaps best seen as symbiotically joined aspects of a single living, healthy organism. 'Dissent and Order in the Middle Ages' will appeal to, and challenge, all readers interested in European history, from beginning students to seasoned scholars, as well as those concerned with Christianity's past - and future.

Dissent and Philosophy in the Middle Ages

Dissent and Philosophy in the Middle Ages
Author: Ernest L. Fortin
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2002
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780739103272

Dissent and Philosophy in the Middle Ages offers scholars of Dante's Divine Comedy an integral understanding of the political, philosophical, and religious context of the medieval masterwork. First penned in French by Ernest L. Fortin, one of America's foremost thinkers in the fields of philosophy and theology, Dissidence et philosophie au moyen-%ge brings to light the complexity of Dante's thought and art, and its relation to the central themes of Western civilization. Available in English for the first time through this superb translation by Marc A. LePain, Dissent and Philosophy will make a supremely important contribution to the discussion of Dante as poet, theologian, and philosopher.

Dissent and Reform in the Early Middle Ages

Dissent and Reform in the Early Middle Ages
Author: Jeffrey Burton Russell
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2005-02-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1725213265

From the Introduction: The conceptual boundaries of this study...include all varieties of religious dissent, nonconformity, and tension. The chronological limits are from about 700 to about 1150. Before the eighth century dissent was, in the tradition of the heresy of the early Church, theological and priestly. After the middle of the twelfth century the increasing influence of Eastern dualism under the name of Catharism changed the whole emphasis and style of medieval dissent. Between 700 and the mid-twelfth century, however, dissent was typically medieval in its moral and popular emphasis without yet being adulterated by currents from the East. In this period it was closely connected with the growing intensity and diversification of movements of moral and intellectual reform. With these movements and as part of them, dissent was one of the elements shaping medieval civilization.

Pedagogy, Intellectuals, and Dissent in the Later Middle Ages

Pedagogy, Intellectuals, and Dissent in the Later Middle Ages
Author: Rita Copeland
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2001-07-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1139427989

This book is about the place of pedagogy and the role of intellectuals in medieval dissent. Focusing on the medieval English heresy known as Lollardy, Rita Copeland places heretical and orthodox attitudes to learning in a long historical perspective that reaches back to antiquity. She shows how educational ideologies of ancient lineage left their imprint on the most sharply politicized categories of late medieval culture, and how radical teachers transformed inherited ideas about classrooms and pedagogy as they brought their teaching to adult learners. The pedagogical imperatives of Lollard dissent were also embodied in the work of certain public figures, intellectuals whose dissident careers transformed the social category of the medieval intellectual. Looking closely at the prison narratives of two Lollard preachers, Copeland shows how their writings could serve as examples for their fellow dissidents and forge a new rapport between academic and non-academic communities.

A History of Medieval Christianity

A History of Medieval Christianity
Author: Jeffrey Burton Russell
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2000
Genre: Church history
ISBN: 9780820445113

This volume, a general history of the church in the Middle Ages, pays close attention to the spiritual, intellectual, and institutional aspects of medieval Christianity. From its beginnings, the church has existed in a state of tension between two forces: the spirit of order and the spirit of prophecy. The spirit of order attempts to reform humanity and human institutions; the spirit of prophecy attempts to transform them into the world of God. This tension created a balance within the church that kept it from forgetting the nature of basic religious experience while continuing to remain sensitive to the needs of society.

Difference and Dissent

Difference and Dissent
Author: Cary J. Nederman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 268
Release: 1996
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780847683765

This innovative collection points to the need for a reevaluation of the origins of toleration theory. Philosophers, intellectual historians, and political theorists have assumed that the development of the theory of toleration has been a product of the modern world, and John Locke is usually regarded as the first theorist of toleration. The contributors to Difference and Dissent, however, discuss a range of conceptual positions that were employed by medieval and early modern thinkers to support a theory of toleration, and question the claim that Locke's theory of toleration was as original or philosophically adequate as his adherents have asserted.

The Devil, Heresy and Witchcraft in the Middle Ages

The Devil, Heresy and Witchcraft in the Middle Ages
Author: Alberto Ferreiro
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 422
Release: 2023-12-14
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9004613714

The study of heresy and heterodoxy and of belief in magic, witchcraft and the devil has in the past 25 years made significant advances in our understanding of art and iconography, ideas, mentality and belief, and ordinary life and popular imagination in the patristic and medieval periods. At the forefront of research into this aspect of medieval intellectual history has been Jeffrey B. Russell, whose numerous books and articles have opened important new paths in the field. To mark his retirement 17 established and emerging scholars from Europe and North America - historians of art, the church, religions, and ideas - have contributed papers on the many areas which Russell has influenced. Topics dealt with include elves, the Christians apocrypha, mysticism, sexuality, heresies and heresiologies, apocalyptic tracts, astrology, hell, and other Christian encounters with non-believers. These essays are offered as tribute to the deep impact that Russel has had on medieval studies. Contributors include: Alan Bernstein, Richard Emmerson, Alberto Ferreiro, Neil Forsyth, Abraham Friessen, Karen Jolly, Henry Ansgar Kelly, Richard Kieckhefer, Beverly M. Kienzle, Garry Macy, Bernard McGinn, Edward Peters, Cheryl Rigs, Larry J. Simon, Laura Smoller, Catherine B. Tkacz, and John Tolan.

An Age of Saints?

An Age of Saints?
Author: Peter Sarris
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2011-06-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004206604

This volume focuses on the strategies through which secular and ecclesiastical authorities throughout the early medieval world shaped and exploited Christian culture in their own interests, and the simultaneous attempts of rivals and sceptics to resist that same process.

Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe

Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe
Author: Edward Peters
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2011-09-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812206800

Throughout the Middle Ages and early modern Europe theological uniformity was synonymous with social cohesion in societies that regarded themselves as bound together at their most fundamental levels by a religion. To maintain a belief in opposition to the orthodoxy was to set oneself in opposition not merely to church and state but to a whole culture in all of its manifestations. From the eleventh century to the fifteenth, however, dissenting movements appeared with greater frequency, attracted more followers, acquired philosophical as well as theological dimensions, and occupied more and more the time and the minds of religious and civil authorities. In the perception of dissent and in the steps taken to deal with it lies the history of medieval heresy and the force it exerted on religious, social, and political communities long after the Middle Ages. In this volume, Edward Peters makes available the most compact and wide-ranging collection of source materials in translation on medieval orthodoxy and heterodoxy in social context.