KEVIN L. HUGHES, EDITOR
CONTRIBUTORS: FELIX ASIEDU, PHILIP CARY. SHERYL FORSTE-GRUPP, MAURA LAFFERTY, KIM PAFFENROTH, MIRIAM SHADIS

Editor's Note: This section represents the first stage of revision. The original biographical essay by Miriam Shadis remains, but to it we have added annotations for medieval texts we thought most useful and easily applied to the Augustine and Culture Seminar. We have designed our annotations to help the nonmedievalist get at least an inkling for the thinkers/texts represented, so that one who has a notion of a theme but is not sure what medieval texts might fit the theme has somewhere to turn. We apologize for its partial nature, and we hope that it helps you plan the medieval section of your courses.

ABELARD, PETER (philosopher, theologian, teacher, monk, poet, ca. 1079-1142)

Historia calamitatum: Formally a letter of consolation sent to a friend (perhaps fictional), the History of My Calamities is an account of the tempestuous events of Abelard's life. In it, he describes not only his illicit love affair with a student, Heloise, and its tragic conclusion, but also the ups and downs of his tumultuous life as a teacher, philosopher, theologian and monk. Though decidedly one-sided, it is one of the few surviving autobiographical accounts of the Middle Ages, and it gives us a rare individual's perspective on life in the twelfth century. In addition, together with the letters of Abelard and Heloise, the Historia gives us an unusually intimate portrait of a woman's life, from her love affair as a teenager to her development as abbess and administrator of a new order of nuns.

Letters of Abelard and Heloise: Though they have been widely read since the Middle Ages, the authorship of these letters, especially those attributed to Heloise, is still hotly debated. Certainly "Heloise's" letters present her as valuing her role as Abelard's lover and wife over her current role as abbess, and deprecating of her abilities as a woman.

Together with the Historia, the letters offer an opportunity to discuss desire and violence, the problematic nature of authorship, the purposes of autobiography, gender roles, and the attitudes of both sexes towards women in the Middle Ages. The rules suggested by Abelard for the new order of nuns bears comparison with other medieval monastic rules, such as that of Benedict. These works could be read profitably together with other autobiographical works such as Augustine's Confessions or Boethius's Consolation, with works exploring the relationship between men and women, such as Homer's Odyssey, Aristophanes's Lysistra, and Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale, or with the works of Catherine of Siena.

Critical Editions:
All the letters are contained in J.P. Migne, PL 178 (Paris, 1958). Historia calamitatum. Ed. J. Monfrin. Paris: Vrin, 1959. Historia calamitatum and Letters 1-7, ed. Jospeh T. Muckle and T.P. McLaughlin in Medieval Studies 12 (1950), 15 (1953), and 17 (1955), 18(1958); and Letters IV-XIV, ed. Edme M. Smits. (Groningen: [s.n.], 1983.

English Translations: The most easily available English translation of the Historia and the letters is that of Betty Radice, The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974).

Recent studies include: Michael T. Clanchy, Abelard.- A Medieval Life (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997); and John Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). On the debate about the authorship of the letters, see John F. Benton, "The Correspondence of Abelard and Heloise," in Falschungen im Mittelalter, MGH.Schriften 33. Hannover, 1988. 5:96-120; and D. E. Luscombe, "From Paris to the Paraclete: The Correspondence of Abelard and Heloise, " in Proceedings of the British Academy 74 (1988): 247-283. See also Mary M. McLaughlin, "Abelard as Autobiographer: The Motives and Meaning of his Story of Calamities, " Speculum 42 (1967), pp. 463-88.

ANSELM (1033-1109, Saint, Bishop, Doctor of the Catholic Church)

ANSELM IS BEST KNOWN IN THE INTELLECTUAL TRADITION FOR HIS ONTOLOGICAL" ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD AND HIS SATISFACTION THEORY OF THE ATONEMENT ARTICULATED IN HIS PROSLOGION (1078) AND CUR DEUS HOMO (1098), RESPECTIVELY. WHILE ANSELM IS OFTEN DESCRIBED AS THE FATHER OF SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY, THERE ARE MANY SIDES To ANSELM WHICH PAY SERIOUS STUDY FOR THE ISSUES THEY RAISE ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DEVOTIONAL PIETY AND THE INTELLECT OR EVEN BETWEEN THE IMAGINATION AND PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY.

Born in Aosta in Lombardy, educated at the Benedictine abbey of Bec in Normandy, Anselm -became prior and abbot of Bec, and later archbishop of Canterbury (1093-1109). There are, then, two distinct phases of Anselm's life: that part of his vocation which he practiced while at Bec, and the role of the archbishop which he played later, a role which often saw him living in exile and in conflict with the king of England. Of all of Anselm's major works the three that seem the most pivotal for understanding him are the Monologion, the Proslogion and the Cur Deus Homo. The Monologion, written in 1076, is Anselm's first major work. It was written as a reflection on the doctrine of the Trinity, inspired in part by the conversations he used to have with his fellow monks and also by his reading of Augustine's De trinitate. It engendered a dispute between Anselm and his former teacher Lanfranc about the use of dialectic in theology. Anselm responded that virtually all he had argued could be found already well-articulated in Augustine's De trinitate. The Proslogion (1078) which followed, was an attempt by Anselm to simplify the arguments of its predecessor. It reads in some of its sections like Augustine's Confessions, though Anselm never claims that as its inspiration. The Cur Deus Homo written twenty years after the Proslogion is generally considered Anselm's most important work in revealing the structure of his theological thinking.

For the Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance seminar Anselm's Prayers and Meditations are the most accessible. The Proslogion might be the most useful for the purposes of the Augustine and Culture Seminar because it combines Anselm's devotional poetry with his dialectical skill. The Cur Deus Homo is also a possibility in showing how Anselm took an important theme in the Christian tradition and attempted to provide a rational foundation for it.

Scholarly Resources
Jasper Hopkins, A Companion to the Study of Saint Anselm (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1972)
R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
G. R. Evans, Anselm and Thinking about God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978)
G. R. Evans, Anselm and A New Generation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980)

Available Resources for the Classroom
Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics, 1998)
Anselm: Monologion and Proslogion (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 1995)
The Prayers and Meditations of Saint Anselm-with the Proslogion (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1973)

BOETHIUS (statesman and phiiosopher, ca. 480-584/Sa6)

BOETHIUS COMBINED AN ACTIVE LIFE AS AN ARISTOCRATIC ROMAN POLITICIAN UNDER THE GOTHIC EMPEROR THEODORIC WITH THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE OF A PHILOSOPHER. HE IS BEST KNOWN TO PHILOSOPHERS AS THE MAJOR TRANSMITTER OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY, PARTICULARLY THAT OF THE NEO-PLATONIST PORPHYRY AND OF ARISTOTLE=S LOGICAL WORKS, TO THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES. HIS CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY, ARGUABLY THE MOST INFLUENTL4L LATIN WORK OF LATE ANTIQUITY, IS ALSO THE MOST APPROPRIATE FOR STUDY IN CORE HUMANITIES.

Consolation of Philosophy: In the Consolation 8oethius reflects upon the relationship of his philosophy to his life. Having risen to the highest position possible in Theodoric's court, Boethius tells us that he suddenly and unjustly fell from the emperor's favor. While in prison awaiting execution, he wrote the Consolation, which describes the cure provided by Philosophy, personified as a beautiful woman, for the depression into which Boethius as a result of his misfortunes. Philosophy describes his illness as a "lethargia", a sort of amnesia which has led Boethius to forget how to see himself and his fortune properly. She gradually leads him on a journey of self-recollection, which involves coming to an understanding of the relationship between Fortune, Fate and the Providence of Clod. A masterpiece of form and structure, the work combines prose dialogue with lyrics commenting on the themes of each section. Imitated repeatedly throughout the Middle Ages, the Consolation appealed to both clerics and lake, and was translated repeatedly into the vernacular by, among others, Alfred, Jean de Mean, Chaucer, and Elizabeth I. The Consolation would work well with Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, Plato's cave or the Phaedrus, Augustine's Confessions or Cassiacan dialogues, the Romance of the Rose, Chaucer's House of Fame and Dante's Divine Comedy. Addressing directly the question of "why bad things happen to good people," the Consolation raises the problems of the possibility of the application of philosophy to real life, the relationship between the human and the divine, and how to reconcile the seeming randomness of fate with a doctrine of divine goodwill. It also offers an opportunity to discuss the problematic relationship of between Boethius's autobiographical account and the persuasive nature of his work, as well as the relationship between pagan culture and Christian theology.

Critical Edition: Boethius, Philosophise consolatio, ed. Ludwig Bieler, CCSL 94 (Turnholt: Brepols, 1957).

Translation: The most readily available translation is that of V.E. Watts, The Consolation of Philosophy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969).

Studies:
Chadwick, Henry, Boethius, the consolations of music, logic, theology, and philosophy (Oxford Clarendon and Oxford University Press, 198 1).
Crabbe, Anna M., "Literary Design in the De consolatione Philosophise, " in Boethius, His Life, Thought and Influence, ed. M.T. Gibson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981).
Dronke, Peter, Verse with prose from Petronius to Dante : the art and scope of the mixed form (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1994).
Lerer, Seth, Boethius and Dialogue: Literary Method in the Consolation of Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985).
0' Daly, Gerard. The Poetry of Boethius (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991).

BONAVENTURE OF BAGNOREGGIO (saint, Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church, 1221-1274.)

BONAVENTURE'S WRITINGS RUN FROM THE MOST TENDENTIOUS SCHOLASTIC ARGUMENT TO THE UTTERLY RHAPSODIC MYSTICAL WISDOM-LITERATURE. BUT ALL OF HIS WORKS ARE CHARACTERIZED BY THE FRANCISCAN THEOLOGICAL PREFERENCE FOR LOVE OVER KNOWLEDGE AS THE FUNDAMENTAL FORM OF RELATIONSHIP To GOD. PHILOSOPHICALLY, HE IS MORE AUGUSTINIAN THAN HIS GREAT CONTEMPORARY THOMAS AQUINAS.

Perhaps the most useful texts in the Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance course
are:

The Soul 's (Mind 's) Journey into God:
This text begins as a reflection upon the famous mystical experience of Francis upon Mt. Alverno, in which he saw a six-winged seraph and received the stigmata. Bonaventure uses this experience as the paradigm for the mystical ascent to God. Using the six wings of the seraph as his point of departure, Bonaventure begins from the contemplation of creation, then contemplates the soul, and finally is lifted to the contemplation of God. The text is rather brief, roughly sixty pages of verse-type translation in the Paulist edition, and could serve as a nice compare/contrast with the simplicity of Francis's praise of God through creation in the Canticle of Brother Sun. Alternatively, it could be read with Plato's Symposium in mind as a development (whether positive or negative) of the theme of ascent developed by Diotima.

Tree of Life:
A devotional meditation upon the life and passion of Christ. Bonaventure presents Christ as the tree of life which produces the blossoms of virtues like humility piety, patience, and constancy. The meditation focuses upon Jesus as he is portrayed in the Gospels, and Bonaventure invests these scenes with vivid imaginative detail. He attempts to draw the reader into the scene with invitations to participate in the action. Whether as an example of devotion to the humanity and passion of Christ --more and more prevalent in the later middle ages, most notably in medieval women like Julian and Catherine of Siena-- or as an example of vivid imaginative literature and/or devotional rhetoric, this text is easily managed in the classroom. Students, however, may find it sentimental.

Life of St. Francis:
As mentioned in relation to St. Francis, this would be of interest mainly in relation to the earlier lives of Francis done by Thomas of Celano. Bonaventure, as Minister General of the Order, took it upon himself to temper some of the radical qualities of Francis's life and practice.

Collations on the Six Days:
Here's a rich example of medieval exegesis. These conferences were delivered informally to the brothers of the Order in Paris in the evenings. The text for reflection is Genesis 1, the six days of creation. It' s incomplete, but it offers a vivid sense of how rich medieval thinkers like Bonaventure found Scripture to be. The thrust of the text really is upon the plan of history as foreshadowed and contained within the plan of creation on the first six days. This would be most valuable, to my mind, if the class had read Genesis 1 and struggled through the text, just to see what Bonaventure does with the same text.

Critical edition: S. Bonaventura, Opera Omnia. 10 volumes, in folio. Quarrachi, 1882-1902.

English translations:
A selection of accessible texts are available in the Classics of Western Spirituality volume: Bonaventure: The Soul Journey into God, The Tree of Life, The Life of St. Francis, ed. Ewert Cousins <Mahwah, Paulist Press, 1978) (ISBN 08091-2121-2). A cheaper edition of the first text above is published by Hackett as The Journey of the Mind to God, edited by Stephen Brown. Bonaventure's Collations on the Six Days is available from Franciscan Press, (ISBN 0-8199-0974-2). Many other of Bonaventure's more explicitly (and technically) theological works are also available through Franciscan Press in extraordinarily cheap hardback editions, but these seem a bit too specifically scholastic for the purposes of the Augustine and Culture course. A helpful article on his life and work can be found on the web: http://www.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/etext/bonavent.htm.

CATHERINE OF SIENA (1347-80, Dominican tertiary, mystic, saint, Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church)

DESPITE BEING A LAY WOMAN OF MINIMAL EDUCATION WHO DIED AT THE AGE OF THIRTY THREE, C. HAD AN ENORMOUS REPUTATION AND WIDESPREAD INFLUENCE OVER THE CHURCH AND SECULAR RULERS OF HER DAY, AS HER LETTERS SHOW. SHE WAS ALSO INSTRUMENTAL IN PERSUADING THE POPE TO RETURN TO ROME FROM AVIGNON. IN His LIFE OF ST. CATHERINE HER CONFESSOR, RAYMOND OF CAPUA, RECOUNTS THE EXTREMES TO WHICH SHE TOOK HER ASCETICISM IN RESPONSE TO HER VISIONS. IN 1970, SHE WAS ONE OF THE FIRST WOMEN TO RECEIVE THE TITLE OF DOCTOR OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.

Catherine's sense of calling began at an early, age. According to Raymond, she was only seven when she vowed her virginity to God, fifteen when she cut off her hair and refused her family's pressures to marry, eighteen when she received the Dominican habit. She experienced what she described as a ' mystical espousal' to Christ in 1368, at which point she embarked on a vigorous life of social work among the poor of Siena. Catherine insists that there is no real distinction between love for God and love for neighbor, and this is what drives her to service even as she advances in mystical knowledge. She is therefore an interesting case study in the dynamic relationship between the active and contemplative life.

The Dialogue:
This is Catherine's major work, also called the "Book of Divined Teaching. " It is in form a dialogue between Catherine (referred to throughout in the third person as "the soul") and God the Father. It contains God's instructions to Catherine on the stages by which the Christian soul might arrive at perfection and be united with God. It develops largely through the layering of seemingly incongruous images, for example, the image of Christ as a bridge, of the cross as an anvil on which sin is hammered out, of the Blood of Christ as a cleansing agent, all developed alongside each other. Her. vivid imagery and focus upon the image of the suffering Christ are characteristic of late-medieval piety. This text would work well with other works exploring the relationship between the human and the divine and the nature of the soul. It might work well, too, along with an exploration of late medieval art and its focus upon realistic portrayal of the crucifixion.

Catherine's letters and the life by Raymond of Capua overwhelming visionary life interrupted by her active engagement in the affairs of the world, as she pursued her ambition to inspire a Crusade. Raymond's life-also is an excellent illustration of the development of Catherine's persona as saint and her acceptance as such by her world.

Edition and Translation:
Il dialogo dells Divina Providenza ovvero Libro dells divina dottrina. Ed. Giulianna Cavallini. Roma:
Edizioni Cateriani, 1968.
The Dialogue. Trans. Suzanne Noffke. New York: Paulist Press, 1980.
The Letters of Catherine of Siena. Trans. Suzanne Noffke.
Binghamton: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, SUNY Binghamton, 1988. Four volumes are projected but only one has appeared.

Studies:
Raimondo da Capua. The Life of St. Catherine of Siena. Trans. George Lamb. New York: Kennedy and Sons, 1960.
Noffke, Suzanne. Catherine of Siena: Vision through a Distant Eye. Collegeville, Minn. : Liturgical Press, c1996.
Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley: University of California Press, c 1987. Bynum has fascinating things to say about Catherine and the kind of mysticism that she embodied.

LA CHANSON DE ROLAND (The Song of Roland)

LA CHANSON DE ROLAND IS A TRADITIONAL FORMULAIC EPIC RECOUNTING THE FIERCE LOYALTIES TO GOD AND KING WHICH INSPIRE THE POEM'S HERO AND HIS PEERS TO TAKE A SUICIDAL STANCE AGAINST THE GODLESS SARACENS. THE POET ALSO DEPICTS STRUGGLES WITHIN THE FRANKISH COURT BETWEEN RIVAL BARONS MOTIVATED VARIOUSLY BY GREED, DISLOYALTY ON THE ONE HAND AND GLORY, PIETY ON THE OTHER HAND.

In the year 777, Emperor Charlemagne marched into Spain with all of his available forces. He divided his army into two parts, one of which crossed the eastern Pyrenees in the directions of Gerona; the other, under his own command, crossed the Basque Pyrenees and was directed upon Pampeluna. Both cities fell, and the two armies joined forces before Saragossa, which they besieged with out success. A fresh outbreak of hostilities by Saxons obliged Charlemagne to abandon the Spanish expedition. As he was crossing the Pyrenees, the rear-guard of his army was set upon by a party of Basques and slaughtered to a man. The chronicler Eginhardt, who recounts this sober piece of history in his Vita Caroli (830), concludes: "In the action were killed Eggihard the king's seneschal, Anselm count of the palace, and Roland duke of the Marches of Britany, together with a great many more. "

The anonymous Old French epic The Song of Roland (middle 11th century) celebrates this minor military skirmish. It represents a glorification of the ideals of the French nobility in the period such as feudalism, Christian fervor, French nationalism, heroic honor, desire for fame and glory. In the poem Charlemagne leaves Roland and a small band to guard the rear of his army by holding the pass at Roncesvalles; however the French heroes were overwhelmed by the pagan Saracens and Charlemagne may only avenge their deaths.

Critical Edition:
Brault, Gerard J.,ed. La Chanson de Roland: An Analytical Edition. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978. A conservative edition of the Oxford text with a facing page translation.

Translations:
Owen, D.D.R. The Song of Roland. Bury St. Edmunds: St. Edmundsbury Press, 1990. An English version of the Roland that can be used with reasonable confidence by students.
Goldin, Frederick, tr. The Song of Roland. York: W. W. Norton 8e Company, 1978. A highly readable poetic rendering of the Chanson which preserves the laisses similaires, the mysterious AOIA, and heroic tension of the confrontation of Roland' s proud refusal to summon Charlemagne for help and Oliver's pragmatic pleas to summon the king.
Sayers, Dorothy L., tr. Song of Roland. New York: Viking Penguin, 1957. Probably the most widely known and used translation. It has with great verve and insight captures the tone atmosphere of the period. It also presents the reader with an all to personal and at times even arbitrary meaning.

Secondary Literature:
Mickel, Emanuel J. Ganelon, Treason, and the Chanson De Roland. Pittsburgh: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990.
Haidu, Peter. The Subject of Violence The Song of Roland. and the Birth of the State. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.
Cook, Robert Francis. The Sense of the Song of Roland. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
Vance, Eugene. Reading the Song of Roland. Landmarks in Literature. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall. 1970.

CULHWCH AC OLWEN (Culhwch and Olwen)

THE OLDEST ARTHURIAN TALE, CULHWCH OC OLWEN TELLS THE STORY OF HOW THE YOUNG CULHWCH WINS HIS BRIDE OLWEN FROM HER GIANT FATHER WITH THE HELP OF ARTHUR AND HIS NOBLES. THE TALE CONTAINS A VARIETY OF MEDIEVAL POETIC AND RHETORICAL MODES INCLUDING: ONOMASTIC LORE, RHETORICAL RUNS AND HEROIC CATALOGUES, BURLESQUE, AND SATIRE.

Based on the Aarne-Thompson international folktale motif "Six go through the whole world" (AT 513A), the Welsh Culhwch ac Olwen is the earliest Arthurian tale and portrays Arthur and his nobles not as chivalric, courtly knights but as heroic, boastful fighters. The tale begins and ends with the young nobleman Culhwch's search for a wife whom he must woo and win from her formidable giant father. The middle of the tale is devoted to Arthur, his court, and their adventures to help Culhwch. It contains a catalogue of Arthur's entire retinue of warriors and courtly attendants; the catalogue of over 200 names with accompanying epithets suggests the wealth of medieval Welsh folk tradition associated with Arthur. It also contains a catalogue of approximately 40 tasks assigned Culhwch by the giant. Students find the catalogue tedious until it is read out loud and they are assigned the role of Culhwch who has the same reply to each of the giant's requests: "It's easy for me to manage that, though you think it's not easy. " After the 10th repetition, they no longer have to read Culhwch's reply - they chant it together! This activity demonstrates to them the story's origin in oral tradition.

Critical Editions:
Bromwich, Rachel and D. Simon Evans, eds. Culhwch and Olwen. An edition and study of the oldest Arthurian tale. Cardiff. University of Wales Press, 1992. Revs. (1) Brynley F. Roberts. Studia Celtics 24/25 (1989/90), 196-197. (2) Juliette Wood. Folklore 105 (1994), 116. (3) Karl Horst Sch.midt. Zeitschrift fur celtische Philologie 46 (1994), 321. (4) J. T. Koch. Speculum 71 (1996), 132ff.

Translations:
Ford, Patrick K. The Mabinogi and Other Medieval Welsh Tales. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977.
Jones, Gwyn and Thomas Jones, tr. The Mabinogion. Boston: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1993.

Contextual Studies:
Bromwich, Rachel, A. 0. H. Jarman, and Brynley F. Roberts, eds. The Arthur of the Welsh. The Arthurian Legend in Medieval Welsh Literature. Cardiff. University of Wales Press, 199 1. Revs. (1) Sioned Davies. Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 25 (Summer 1993), 104. (2) Karl Horst Schmidt. Zeitschriftfur celtische Philologie 46 (1994), 322-323.
MacCana, Pronsias. The Mabinogi. University of Wales Press. 1977 and 1992.
Roberts, Brynley F. A study of the tale in A Guide to Welsh Literature. Ed. A.O.H. Jarman and G.R. Hughes. University of Wales Press, 1976 and 1992. 214-220.

Specific Studies:

Radner, Joan N.  Interpreting Irony in Medieval Celtic Narrative: The Case of Culhwch ac Olwen Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 16 (1988): 41-59.
Edel, Doris. The Arthur of Culhwch and Olwen as a Figure of Epic-Heroic Tradition.  Reading Medieval Studies. 9 (1983):3-15.
Edel, Doris. The Catalogues in Culhwch ac Olwen and Insular Celtic Learning."Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies/Bwletin y Bwrdd Gwybodau Celtaidd 30 (1983): 253-267. Henry, P. L. "Culhwch and Olwen - Some Aspects of Style and Structure." Studia Celtics 3

DANTE ALIGHIERI (1265-1321)

DANTE ALIGHIERI IS ONE OF THE GREATEST POETS OF ALL TIME, KEEPING COMPANY WITH HOMER, VIRGIL SHAKESPEARE, AND MILTON. DANTE's CHRONOLOGICAL PLACE IN THE MIDDLE OF THAT GROUP OF FIVE IS SUGGESTIVE OF HIS ROLE IN LITERATURE, AS HE IS IN MANY WAYS THE EPITOME OF THE MEDIEVAL WORLD, AND A PIVOT OR BRIDGE BETWEEN THE ANCIENT AND MODERN. LIKE SHAKESPEARE, THE BREADTH OF DANTE'S LANGUAGE IS ONE OF HIS GREATEST STRENGTHS, AS HIS WRITING SEAMLESSLY FLOWS FROM CRUDE TO SUBLIME, OR FROM THE BITTEREST PERSONAL INVECTIVE, TO THE MINUTEST PEDANTRY OF MEDIEVAL BIOLOGY OR THEOLOGY, TO THE HIGHEST RAPTURE IN THE FACE OF ALL-CONSUMING DIVINE LOVE. FOR ME, HIS VERSES ARE THE MOST HUMBLING AND ENNOBLING EVER PENNED, ONLY TO BE COMPARED WITH SHAKESPEARE'S.

Dante was born in Florence to a noble family. Although he married Gemma di Manetto Donati and they had four children, Beatrice (probably Bice Portman, also married to someone else,) was his love and inspiration throughout his life. They had met when both were nine, and she died in 1290. In 1294 Dente became involved in the bitter power struggle between the Guelphs and Ghibellines in northern Italy, a bloody conflict whose participants populate Dente's Comedy, and which was also immortalized in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. After the defeat of the Ghibellines, the Guelphs split into two factions, the Whites and the Blacks. Dante was a White Guelph, and he was exiled from Florence in 1302 when the Blacks came to power. He spent the rest of his life in exile, a bitter fate that he describes in one of the most moving passages in the Comedy, "You shall be forced to leave behind those things you love most dearly, and this is the first arrow the bow of your exile will shoot. And you will know how salty is the taste of others' bread, how hard the road that takes you down and up the stairs of others' homes " (Paradiso 17, 55-60). Dante traveled throughout Europe, and died in Ravenna in 1321.

Dante wrote his greatest and most famous work, La Divine Commedia, between 1308 and 1321. Although written in the form of a journey through hell, purgatory, and paradise, the poem is not about what happens after death, but is an allegory of human life. In it Dante ranges over practically every subject imaginable - mythology, politics (both ancient and medieval), and Aristotelian logic and natural philosophy all figure prominently - but ultimately everything in it revolves around one idea: love. In the center of the entire work, cantos 17 and 18 of Purgatorio, Dante engages in what is for me the most honest and complex theology and anthropology of love ever written, as he struggles to describe how reason, will, and desire interact in love. The relation is still mysterious, but Dente is clear that it is the essence of all life, human or divine: "Neither Creator nor his creatures ever, my son, lacked love" (Purgatorio 17, 91-92). 'Mere has also been an extremely rich tradition of illustrations of The Comedy, the most available of which are those by Botticelli, Blake, and Dore I especially like the latter, as his starkness really give an eerie, surreal quality to the pictures.

For further advice, also consult Approaches to Teaching Dente's Divine Comedy. Ed. Carol Slade.
New York: Modem Language Association of America, 1982.
For a very impressive Dente web site, see http://members.aol.com/lieberk/welt old.html. The Dante Society of America, also sponsors an annual contest for undergraduate essays on Dante, which might be helpful to our students; see their web site at http://www.princeton.edu/-dante/dsa.html.

Translations:
John Ciasdi, Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradiso. New York: Mentor Books, 1982.
    Allen Mandelbaum, The Divine Comedy. New York: Bantam, 1983.
    Mark Musa, Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. New York: Penguin, 1984. (This is also the translation being used in The Portable Dante, which is quite a bit cheaper than buying the three volumes
    separately, and gives you La Vita Nuova.)
Dorothy L. Sayers, The Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1949. (Out of print, but still available in libraries, together with her Introductory Papers on Dante, New York: Harper, 1955).

ERASMUS OF ROTTERDAM (1466?-1536)

CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING EXCERPT FROM HUGH TREVOR-ROPER ON ERASMUS: "BORN THE ILLEGITIMATE SON OF AN OBSCURE PRIEST, HE ROSE, MERELY BY HIS PEN, TO A POSITION OF UNDISPUTED SUPREMACY IN EUROPE. COSMOPOLITAN IN AN AGE OF AWAKENING NATIONALISM, HE WAS BORN IN HOLLAND, STUDIED IN PARIS, FOUND HIS INTELLECTUAL HOME IN OXFORD, TOOK HIS DOCTORATE AT SAVOY, TRAVELED TO GERMANY AND ITALY, PUBLISHED HIS WORKS IMPARTIALLY IN LOUVAIN, PARIS, VENICE AND BASEL, AND HAD DISCIPLES THROUGHOUT EUROPE. WHEN HE TRAVELED, CUSTOMS-OFFICERS TREATED HIM AS A PRINCE, PRINCES AS A FRIEND. "

By any measure Erasmus occupies a place in a Christian tradition that is uniquely his own. Considered by his contemporaries the most celebrated scholar of his generation, Erasmus was acquainted by letter, personal contact, patronage, or influence with the most prominent members of European society. Yet, -Erasmus' legacy remains a controversial one. In an age of passionate religious conflicts and theological wrangles, Erasmus appeared to both his admirers and detractors as either a spineless character who used his wit to circumvent the difficult choices he needed to make or a passionate intellectual whose attempt to bring his scholarship to bear on the life of a church desperately in need of reform was misunderstood. There is an important sense in which so many of the difficulties Erasmus encountered or engendered lie at the heart of the very idea of Christian scholarship and the nature of "Christian learning" and what the vocation of the Christian intellectual should be. Styling himself as a second Jerome, Erasmus' labors in producing a text of the New Testament based on the best manuscripts he could find, and his work on reproducing the library of the Fathers are unparalleled in their import on the later history of the Christian tradition. Even those like Luther who eventually found Erasmus' manner in theological disputation somewhat lacking could not escape the simple fact that without his learning much of what Luther and others claimed as the fountain from which they drew their deep convictions would have been the poorer.

For the Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance seminar, any number of Erasmus's works would find a place. For those interested in the intractable problem of the freedom of the will, Erasmus's exchange with Luther on this issue makes for fascinating study. In this regard both Erasmus's On the Freedom of the Will and the Inquiry Concerning Faith should be treated together, for slightly different rhetorical approaches to the Lutheran problem, as Erasmus understood it. For those interested in Erasmus's more general approach to Christian life and practice, his Handbook of the Militant Christian is essential reading. It is in a sense it is his Manifesto.

Some Relevant Texts: Adages (Adagia, 1500)
The Handbook of the Militant Christian (Enchiridion militis Christiani, 1503/04?)
The Praise of Folly (Moriae Encomium, 1511)
The Complaint of Peace (Querela Pacis, 1517)
An Inquiry Concerning Faith (Inquisitio de fide, 1524)
On the freedom of the will (De libero arbtrio, 1524 )
On Mending the Peace of the Church (De sarcienda ecclesiae concordia, 1533)
Colloquies

Available Resources for the Classroom:
The Essential Erasmus. Selected and translated with introduction and commentary by John Dolan. (New York: Meridian, 1983 [reprint of 1964 edition]).
Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly and Other Writings (New York: Norton, 1989)
Erasmus-Luther: Discourse on Free Will (New York: Continuum, 1993 [reprint of 1961 edition].

FRANCIS Of ASS1SI (1182-1226)

FRANCIS OF ASSISI IS ONE OF THE WORLD'S MOST BELOVED SAINTS. HIS SIMPLICITY OF LIFE, LOVE OF POVERTY, AND LITERAL IMITATION OF THE GOSPEL MARK HIM AS ONE OF THE MOST UNIQUE AND POWERFUL FIGURES IN THE MIDDLE AGES. FRANCIS'S WRITINGS ARE SHORT AND EASY TO READ, BUT THEY CAN CAPTURE THE BRILLIANT SIMPLICITY OF A LIFE FREE OF ATTACHMENTS. THE WRITINGS ABOUT HIM ARE MUCH MORE ABUNDANT AND BRING UP INTERESTING QUESTIONS OF FACT VS. FABLE, ETC.

Francis's writings are generally short and practical in nature. Much of what can be are letters to Friars, Clare and her sisters, etc. Francis's prose style is notable in its utter dependence upon Scripture, particularly upon the synoptic gospels. Often it seems as if Francis just strings verses and phrases of the Gospels together, so as to let the Gospel address his reader rather than Francis himself.

Perhaps most useful in the context of the Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance course are: Canticle of Brother Sun. Francis composed this poem upon his deathbed. As the title indicates, Francis addresses a hymn of praise to God "through" the elements of nature, with which Francis feels a fraternal connection. Read alongside one of the "praise of creation" Psalms (say, Ps. 103) and/or Augustine's Confessions Bk 13., the poem can bear witness to a Hebrew and Christian "theology of nature. " Noteworthy, too, is Francis's inclusion of "Sister Bodily Death" among the sibling elements of creation. It's difficult not to imagine this poem as part of Francis's preparation for his own death.

Admonitions Earlier Rule, Later Rule, Testament:
These four texts address Francis's vision of the life of poverty, the religious life in Franciscan form. It can be interesting to read these works in comparison to the Rule of Benedict. Poverty to Francis means more than the Benedictine commitment to hold all things in common; it means to hold nothing at all, to beg for one's food, and so to live the life of Christ and the apostles as they wandered from town to town. Also note the different attitude towards authority in Francis. The "Earlier Rule" is called in Latin the "regula non bullata, "the "unapproved rule, " since it was deemed a bit too radical in its approach to poverty. The Later Rule is then the "regula bullata, " the approved rule, and is written perhaps in a lower key. An interesting interpretive point arises from reading Francis's Testament, his last statement to the Order before his death, and questioning whether it is more like the Earlier or the Later Rule. In other words, was Francis finally unhappy with the compromise of the later Rule and attempting to get his last word in?

If someone is interested in hagiography/biography: Thomas of Celano's St. Francis of Assisi. First arid Second Life (Franciscan Press, 1988) ISBN 08199-0554-2 make for interesting reading, perhaps made even more interesting by reading them with St. Bonaventure's lives of Francis in the Bonaventure volume of the Classics of Western Spirituality. (ISBN 0-8091-2121-2) What's left in? What's left out? Also, the "Little Flowers of St. Francis (Fioretti) ' are a later collection of legends/folk tales about Francis and his companions that capture the Franciscan ideal in a plain-speaking (sometimes even scatological) fashion. Available in paperback, Image books, ISBN 0-385-07544-8. On a similar theme, the Sacrum Commercium is a mythical account of Francis's pursuit of poverty, here personified in Lady Poverty, to whom he becomes betrothed. Charming. Only in the Omnibus.

Texts:
Francis and Clare: The Complete Works. Classics of Western Spirituality, (Mahwah, Paulist Press, 1982) ISBN:08091-2448-7.
St. Francis of Assisi, Omnibus of Sources Marion Habig, ed. (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1972) (New edition in preparation from New City Press in two volumes, 1999-2000)
Omer Engelbert, St. Francis of Assisi.
Lester K. Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (Ithaca: Cornell 1978).

ROBERT HENRYSON: THE TESTAMENT OF CRESSEID

THE FIFTEENTH-CENTURY SCOTTISH CHAUCERIAN HENRYSON WROTE A CONTINUATION OF GEOFFREY CHAUCER'S TROILUS AND CRISEYDE IN WHICH THE HEROINE IS PUNISHED WITH EXILE AND LEPROSY FOR HER INFIDELITY TO TROILUS. THE SEVERE MOOD, TONE, AND ALLEGORY OF HENRYSON'S POEM EXEMPLIFY A HARSH ANACHRONISTIC CHRISTIAN MORALITY IMPOSED UPON A PAGAN HEROINE.

Written in middle Scots, The Testament of Cresseid begins with a magnificently evocative description of a chilly Highland winter before the conventionally sleepless narrator takes down Chaucer's poem of the Trojan War to read. Finished with Chaucer, the narrator then reads a continuation of the life of Cresseid after the Greek Diomede deserts her for another woman. Cresseid is judged by the Greek Olympians and cursed with leprosy. She flees her father's house and joins a leper house and laments the turns of Fortune's wheel, warning other ladies to beware frivolity. With the other lepers she begs for alms in Troy. Troilus rides by her and, looking upon her ruined face, vaguely remembers her; he gives her rich alms. Cresseid laments again her infidelity and dies. Henryson ends the poem by condemning Cresseid - a condemnation Chaucer never articulates in his poem. With sufficient background information this poem could be taught by itself as a morality treatise. Henryson' s simplistic moral equations of sin and retribution, virtue and reward mirror Augustine' s own correlation of evil and punishment, good and reward. Henryson's poem offers another way to understand how an individual' s free will and choice determines his or her outcome. For Cresseid, the wages of sin are a horrifying, disfiguring illness which resembles the sickness of the soul which sin inflicts according to Augustine - think of the passages in Confessions when he mourns his soul's corrupt state.

Critical Edition:
Henryson, Robert. "The Testament of Cresseid. " In The Story of Troilus. Ed. and trans. R.K. cordon. Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press. 1978. Pp. 349-368.

Secondary Literature:
Sepherd, Robert K. "Criseyde/Cresseid/ Cressida: What's in a Name?" Sederi: Journal of the Spanish Society for English Renaissance Studies. 4 (1993):229-36.
Storm, Melvin. "The Intertextual Cresseida: Chaucer's Henryson or Henryson's Chaucer?"
Scottish Literature 28 (1993):105-22.
McKenna, Steven R. "Henryson's Tragedie' of Cressied." Scottish Literary Journal 18(1991):26-3 6.
Boffey, Julia. "Lydgate, Henryson, and the Literary Testament." Modern Language Quarterly 53(1992): 41-56.
Benson, C. David. "Critic and Poet: What Lydgate and Henryson did To Chaucer' s Troilus and Criseyde. " Modern Language Quarterly 53(1992):23-40.
Parkinson, David J. "Henryson's Scottish Tragedy." Chaucer Review 25(1991): 358-62. Pittock, Malcolm. "The Complexity of Henryson's The Testament of Cresseid." Essays in Criticism 40(1990):198-221. Patterson, Lee W. "Christian and Pagan in The Testament of Cresseid:" PhilologYcal Quarterly 52(1973): 696-714: Jentoft, C.W. "Henryson as Authentic ' Chaucerian' : Narrator, Character, and Courtly Love in The Testament of Cresseid. " Studies in Scottish Literature 10 (1972):94-102.

HILDEGARD OF BINGEN (1098-1179)

ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE FIGURES IN MEDIEVAL HISTORY, AND A'RENAISSANCE WOMAN' IN THE TRUE SENSE. HER THREE BOOKS OF VISIONS ARE PERHAPS THE MOST ORIGINAL VISIONARY LITERATURE IN THE CHRISTIAN WEST. IN ADDITION TO THESE, HILDEGARD WROTE MUSIC TWO VOLUMES ON SCIENCE AND MEDICINE FOR WOMEN. SHE WAS REGARDED AS A PROPHETESS BY HER CONTEMPORARIES.

Perhaps most useful texts in the Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance course are:
Scivias: The title is shorthand for 'Scite Was domini,' or "Know the ways of the Lord." Her first book of visions, written in her early forties, offers a vision of 'salvation history' creation, fall, redemption. Interesting to read alongside the Book of Revelation. Her images are striking in their brilliance, and there is an extant facsimile of a manuscript that Hildegard may have supervised which illustrates her visions. This text is probably too long to read from beginning to end in ACS. Recommended are (1) the first 'Declaration,' in which H. gives an account of why she can preach this stuff, leading to fruitful discussion of her place as a woman and/or the authority of visions. Also (2) the visions of creation and the universe. (1.28e3) Finally, (3), the third book may be of interest in its portrayal of the end of time, Antichrist, etc., especially if one is handling 'apocalypse and utopia' type stuff or ' question of evil' : How is evil portrayed by Hildegard`?

Book of the Rewards of Life:
This is her second visionary work and is essentially a moral theology. Its draws its reflections from one central vision and explores it in great detail. It catalogues 35 types of sin and gives corresponding virtues as antitheses. Ibis work might be of interest if one had read Aristole's Nicomachean Ethics with its famous account of the virtues. Or it might usefully be read along side of Augustine's Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love. Or perhaps contrasted to Thomas Aquinas's treatment of the virtues in the Summa Theologise.

Symphonia:
This edition by Barbara Newman gives the texts of Hildegard's music. The poetry is sometimes vague and allusive, but this might be read with profit if one is also listening to the music with the class.
Letters: Shorter and sometimes more accessible to readers, Hildegard's correspondence with popes, emperors, abbots, and others bears witness to her stature in 12th century Europe. Letter 15R, in which Hildegard castigates the clergy and bishops of Europe, is particularly noteworthy. Letter 169R contains her famous apocalyptic "Mainz prophecy. " Caution: Stay away from Matthew Fox's versions or anything from Bear 8P Co. publishers. This press edits out any element in Hildegard's thought that might be concerned with sin, punishment, and hell, making H. far more palatable to 'enlightened' ears. But in doing so, the press radically misrepresents her thought.

Tests & Translations:
All Latin texts can be found in the Patrilogia Latina volume 197. Critical edition of the Scivias
and the Letters are available in the Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Medievalis, which Falvey Library possesses.
Scivias. Translated by Columba Hart and Jane Bishop. Classics of Western Spirituality. Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1990. ISBN: 0-8091-3130-7 The introduction by Barbara Newman is a good general introduction to her Life and work.
Symphonia. Latin and English. Translated by Barbara Newman. 2nd ed.lthaca: Cornell University Press, 1998. ISBN:
0801485479.
Book of the Rewards of Life. Translated by Bruce W. Hozeski. New York: Oxford, 1994. ISBN: 01951137 1. Letters. Translated by J. Baird 8e R. Ehrman. 2 vols. New York: Oxford, 1994-98. ISBN: 0195121171,0195120108.
Useful and accessible studies of the many facets of H.'s life can be found in Voice of the Living Light, ed. Barbara Newman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). ISBN: 0-520-21758-6

JACOPONE DA TODI, LAUDE (Lauds, or Praises)

JACOPONE DA TODI'S (C. 1230-1306) LAUDS ARE WHAT ONE EDITOR HAS CALLED "THE MOST POWERFUL RELIGIOUS POETRY IN ITALY BEFORE DANTE. " THE NINETY-THREE POEMS, WRITTEN IN ITALIAN, SPEAK BOTH OF THE AUTHOR' S INTERIOR STRUGGLE WITH SIN, AGE, LOSS, AND MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AND OF HIS OUTER STRUGGLE WITH THE OPPONENTS OF THE SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS IN THE LATE 13TH CENTURY.

Jacopone was born sometime between 1230 and 1236 to an aristocratic family in Todi, a town in Umbria. He married and began to work as a public notary. When his wife died at an early age, Jacopone abandoned his career and became a bizzacone, a penitent beggar. He lived this solitary life for ten years, gaining fame as a holy man throughout the region of Umbria. In 1278, for reasons unknown, Jacopone joined the Franciscan Order, just as the controversy over Franciscan poverty was reaching its height. In the late 1290s, he was an outspoken critic of papal politics, and he supported the rebellion of the Colonna cardinals against Boniface VIII in 1297. When this rebellion failed, Jacopone was sentenced to life imprisonment in the dungeon of Todi monastery. He was finally released in 1303, and he lived with the friars of the Convent of San Lorenzo until his death in 1306.

The Lauds are brief poems, mostly ' mystical' in nature, tracing the path of the soul from the life of the senses to interior union with God. Others are social criticism, attacking popes or bishops for their moral failures. Several of his later lauds are pleas for clemency from succeeding popes. Jacopone is an introspective poet. His deepest insights come from an appropriation of the Franciscan theme of poverty. For Jacopone, true
poverty is not simply the refusal of material wealth but rather the total abandonment of the self to 'nichil, ' to nothingness before God. If one were pursuing an Augustinian theme like ' interiority,' then many of Jacopone' s Lauds could be useful. The meditations upon " How grace transforms the Hell of Sin into Bliss " and on "Pride, the Root of All Sins" could be useful in showing the continuity of the Augustinian theme of grace and sin in the Middle Ages. A fair number of the social-critical poems address apocalyptic themes of Antichrist and the Heavenly Jerusalem, which may play into a millennial or utopian theme. For Jacopone, the mystical journey of the soul is complemented by the journey of the entire Church to God. Be forewarned, his poetry is not for the faint of heart. The internal struggles are marked by grim and graphic representations of the decay of a corpse (Laud 25), sharp cautions against the dangers of the senses (Lauds 5, 6, 7) and on the 'dangerous charms of woman' (Laud 8). But there are also wonderful depictions of the Nativity and the 'Tree of Divine Love.' All in all, Jacopone's Lauds bear witness to the vibrancy of the Franciscan mystical tradition in the midst of the ecclesiastical turmoil of the late thirteenth century.

Critical Edition and Translation:
Laude, edited by Franco Mancini. Bari, Italy: Laterza, 1974.
Jacopone da Todi. The Lauds. Classics of Western Spirituality. Mahwah, NJ: Pauliat Press, 1982.

Contextual and Specific Studies:
Burr, David. Olivi and Franciscan Poverty. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989.
Croce, Benedetto. Poesia d 'arte e poesia popolare. Bari, Italy: Laterza, 1946.
Lambert, Malcolm D. Franciscan Poverty. London: SPCK, 1961.
Peck, George. The Fool of God -¬Jacopone da Todi. Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 1980.
Underhill, Evelyn. Jacopone da Todi -- A Spiritual Biography. London: J. Dent Se Sons, Ltd, 1919.

JULIAN OF NORWICH: REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE

JULIAN WAS A 14TH-CENTURY MYSTIC WHO HAD VISIONS OF CHRIST' S SUFFERING} ON THE CROSS, DESCRIBING HIM IN VIVID DETAIL AS IF SHE WERE THERE. SHE ALSO RECEIVED FROM HIM WORDS OF COMFORT FOR ALL OF SUFFERING HUMANITY. SHE REMAINS TO THIS DAY THE FAVORITE SPIRITUAL WRITER OF A WIDE VARIETY OF READERS.

Julian of Norwich is perhaps the most accessible of medieval mystics. She is read and loved--and taken as a spiritual guide--by a large non-academic audience. One reason is that her visions are simple and direct, and vivid with sensory detail <for instance, she describes exactly what Christ looks like as his body dries up with thirst on the cross). Another is that her book is immensely comforting: she wants her readers to imagine Christ looking at them with infinite tenderness and saying, as he said to her: "Are you well satisfied with my suffering for you?....If you are satisfied, I am satisfied too. It is a joy, and bliss, and everlasting delight to me that ever I suffered for you..." and (most famously) '.'All shall be well, and all shall be well ... and thou shah see thyself, that all manner of thing shall be well. "

Julian had her visions during a severe illness when she was thirty years old. Soon afterwards it seems she wrote them down in what is now called the Short Text of her Showings or (in more contemporary translation) Revelations. But she had a long life ahead of her to meditate on the theological issues raised by these visions. The result is the Long Text, written twenty years later, in which she tackles the thorny problem Of theodicy: how can all things be well if some creatures end up eternally damned? After recounting Julian's visions as before, the Long Text goes on to agonize over this problem in a theological meditation that is intellectually exciting, fiercely complex, and not quite orthodox, drawing from certain mystical themes such as the notion that the higher part of our soul contains a will that has never sinned or been separated from God. In the course of her attempt to combine this theme with orthodox Christology, there emerges the notion of Christ as our eternal Mother, which Julian develops with astonishing boldness and depth.

Critical Edition:
4 Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich, ed. E. Colledge, and J. Walsh. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1978. Contains the original middle English texts, with extensive introduction and commentary on Julian's texts, sources, and theology.

Translations:
--Julian of Norwich., Showings, ed. E. Colledge and J. Walsh New York: Paulist, 1978. (Classics of Western Spirituality series). The best scholarly edition in modem English, containing both the Short Text and the Long Text, together with a long introduction.
--Revelations of Divine Love, ed. C. Wolters. New York: Penguin, 1966. Has all the features of a good Penguin edition: reliable translation and a useful, reader-friendly introduction to Julian's life and theology.

Contextual Studies:
Raitt, Jill (ed). Christian Spirituality, vol. 2: High Middle Ages and Reformation. New York: Crossroad, 1987. Encyclopedic articles by eminent scholars covering a variety of authors, movements, themes and forms of devotion in Julian's era.

Critical Studies:
Baker, Denise. Julian of Norwich's Showings: From Vision to Book. Princeton: Princeton University, 1994. Subtle study by a medievalist interested in issues of textuality and extensively familiar with the textual landscape of the 14th century.
Jantzen, Grace. Julian of Norwich: Mystic and Theologian. New York: Paulist, 1988. Fine introductory study, with helpful discussion of historical background, by a philosopher interested in the contemporary relevance of Julian's spirituality.

MARTIN LUTHER (1483-L546)

THE FOUNDING FIGURE OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION, LUTHER IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT THEOLOGIANS OF THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION, A FIGURE OF ENORMOUS HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE, AND ONE OF THE MOST FASCINATING CHARACTERS IN HUMAN HISTORY. HIS WRITINGS REMAIN GRIPPING AND CONTROVERSIAL.

Augustine, the West's "teacher of grace, " taught that we cannot truly obey God unless God helps us by giving us grace. Luther's theology centers on how to get this grace--by believing God's promises in the Gospel of Christ. Hence whereas Augustine prays for God to give him the grace to obey His law ( " Give what you command, and command what you will") Luther tells us where to look to find this grace ("The promises of God give what the commands of God require " ). This is why Luther teaches his famous doctrine of justification by faith alone apart from the works of the law. Like Augustine, he thinks that if we try to justify ourselves by following God's commandments, we will fail, and end up hating God and his Law. But if instead we believe the Gospel of Christ and its promises of mercy, we will be comforted by God's kindness towards us, and thus come to love him (which is of course what it means to obey the first and greatest of God's commandments). To put it in Catholic terms, Luther thinks of the Gospel as the fundamental means of grace.

The three treatises anthologized below are of particular interest:
1. The Freedom of a Christian: non-polemical (engaging in no attacks on the Pope), this treatise is an introduction to the heart of Luther's theology of Law and Gospel (here called the "commandment" and "promise" of God, respectively).

2. The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (in Dillenberger, The Pagan Servitude): Luther's great polemic against Roman Catholic sacramental theology.

3. Letter to the Christian Nobility (in Dillenberger, Appeal to the Ruling Class): a key document for those interested in the political history of the Reformation, this is Luther's call for the princes of Germany to do what the Pope (in Luther's view) refused to do--reform the Church.

Critical Edition: Kritische Gesamtausgabe den Werke D. Martin Luthrs. Weimar 1883ff The Weimar edition (usually abbreviated WA for Weimarer A usgabe) has superseded all other editions as the definitive reference point for Luther scholarship.

Translations:
Luther's Works (54 vols), ed. Jaroslav Pelikan et al. The standard American edition in the red binding, contains the most important of Luther's writings.
Three Treatises. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1960. See above.

Luther: Selections from his Writings, ed. John Dillenberger. New York: Doubleday, 1962.

Contextual & Specific Studies

Hillenbrand, Hans. The Reformation: a Narrative History Related by Contemporary Observers and Participants. An anthology of illuminating documents from the period.

Ozment, Steven. The Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-century Germany and Switzerland. New Haven: Yale, 1975. A study of the state of popular culture and conscience at the height of the Reformation. If you know what it was like for an ordinary person going to confession in Luther's Germany, the explosive power of Reformation theology becomes much clearer.

Althaus, Paul. The Theology of Martin Luther. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966. Together with its companion volume The Ethics of Martin Luther (Fortress, 1972) this comprises a comprehensive survey of Luther' s thought. Arranged topically and well-indexed, it can easily be used as a reference work.

Bainton, Roland. Here I Stand a Life of Martin Luther. Originally 1950, now Nashville; Abingdon Press, 1978. A classic, immensely readable biography, which sets Luther's theology in the context of his life and times, including the early history of the Reformation.
 

PROCOPIUS (historian, ca. 500-after 554)

ASSESSOR (LEGAL ADVISOR) TO GENERAL BELISARIOS, THE MAJOR GENERAL WHO SERVED UNDER THE BYZANTINE EMPEROR JUSTINIAN IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE SIXTH CENTURY, PROCOPIUS WAS WELL PLACED TO OBSERVE THE EVENTS HE INCLUDES HIS ACCOUNTS OF THE EVENTS OF THE SIXTH CENTURY.

Wars:
Procopius's Wars are a classicizing military history in eight books of the campaigns of Belisarius against the Persians, Vandals (in Africa) and Goths (in Italy). In addition to being the only eyewitness whose account of most of the events survives, Procopius contributes considerable talents as a brilliant narrator, as his colorful description of the defense of Rome by Belisarius against the Goths well illustrates. His account lays emphasizes the brilliance of Belisarius' military strategies, as well as the human foibles p which affect their success.

Secret History:
While the Wars are overtly neutral, the Secret History, which seems not to have circulated until the tenth century, is a virulent and satirical attack on Procopius' boss, Belisarius, his wife Antonia, as well as on the Byzantine emperor Justinian and his empress Theodora. Strongly biased and deeply involved in the intrigues of the Byzantine court, the Secret History is an excellent example of the ancient genre of satirical invective. The description of Justinian' s character is a marvelous illustration of the vices of typically attributed to the tyrant in Late Antique rhetoric, depending largely on the standard theme of the " world turned upside down" . Part of this theme, the salacious description of Theodora, includes in exaggerated form all the accusations (sexual, personal and political) typically made against a powerful woman in Late Antiquity. This passage might work well with other classical and medieval portraits of women to show the terms according to which women were typically judged.

Critical Edition:
Opera omnia, ed. Jacobus Haury and rev. Gerhard Wirth (1982-64).

Translations:
Averil Cameron translates in an abridged form all of Procopius's works in History of the Wars, Secret History and Buildings (New York: Twayne, 1967); Richard Atwater's translation is of the complete Secret History (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1963).

Studies: Cameron, Averil. Procopius and the Sixth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). Evans, J.A.S. Procopius. New York: Twayne, 1972.
 

RULE OF BENEDICT (ca. 54O CE)

ONE OF THE SHORTEST, MOST PRAGMATIC SPIRITUAL CLASSICS IN THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION. ONLY 80 PAGES IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION, THE RULE COVERS SUCCINCTLY THE PRINCIPLES OF MONASTIC LIFE AND DETAILS MEDIEVAL MONASTIC PRACTICES OF PRAYER, FASTING; AND COMMUNITY LIFE. EASY TO READ AND SURPRISING TO MANY STUDENTS IN ITS DEMANDS, THE RULE PROVIDES EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR DISCUSSING THE NATURE OF A COMMUNITY AND/OR CAN REPRESENT A PRACTICAL SOLUTION TO AUGUSTINE'S PROBLEM OF PRIDE OR SELF LOVE.

If the Rule is taught after Augustine, students often find it a great relief to read something less speculative, but they find it even laughable to suppose that someone would willingly submit to such a set of rules and regulations. This often provides ample opportunity to reflect upon what rules and regulations (many unspoken, and few chosen) we submit to every day -fashion, social convention, 'coolness,' etc. In this light, perhaps, Benedict's proposal that you might actually choose the rules by which you live less bizarre, although the particular monastic observances may still seem impenetrable. Also, refuse to let your students get away with dismissing the Rule as 'back then' and thus 'backwards' by insisting that thousands of people still return to this text today as a Rule for life.

The American Benedictine edition of the Rule, RB 1980, is recommended, both because it offers a better translation than some others and because it numbers chapters and verses like the Bible does, making references in class and citations in papers easier. It's also the cheapest edition on the market.

The Prologue provides ample food for reflection and must be considered in some depth for the particular observances in the text that follows to make any sense at all. The first lines are drawn from Proverbs: "Listen carefully, my son, to the master's instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart, " marking the text as a form of wisdom literature. Like Proverbs, it moves back and forth between the mundane practical stuff and the deeper reflective moments with ease. If one had read Proverbs earlier, this could point to some interesting comparisons. The Prologue also discusses the centrality of obedience, of ' giving up your own will' to salvation. Images of battle against sin stand alongside parental images (as above) and pedagogical images (the monastery is to be a 'school for the Lord's service' Prol. 45) Also, the prescription for silence can be most fruitful in discussion (no mean irony there). Generally, students will take this as patently absurd at first, but, when pushed, may acknowledge that they or their roommate or (most damning of all!) their professors just talk too much, and silence may be something that one would desire. As the classic Western Christian monastic text, it can also be read alongside the Rule of Francis, whose way of life is 'in the world,' but whose call to poverty is more absolute.

As both easy to read and alien to our contemporary sensibilities, the Rule has led to some of my most interesting classes in Core Humanities Seminar.

Texts:
RB 1980, ed. Timothy Fry, OSB. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1981. The complete edition, ISBN 0-8146-1220-2, contains both Latin and English and has ampler Support material for the history of Christian monasticism and for particular issues that arise in the text itself. For students, order RB 1980: The Rule of Benedict in English (same as above, but 1982), ISBN 0-8146-1272-5.
 

SILENCE

A THIRTEENTH-CENTURY ANGLO-NORMAN ROMANCE, SILENCE TELLS THE STORY OF A YOUNG GIRL RAISED AS A BOY BY HER PARENTS. THE POEM EXPLORES GENDER ISSUES AS ALLEGORICAL FIGURES NATURE AND NURTURE DEBATE THE INNATE AND LEARNED ABILITIES OF THE FEMALE SEX. THE POEM ALSO EXPLORES ISSUES OF LANGUAGE AND CHALLENGES TO SOCIAL ORDER IN WHICH A GIRL NAMED SILENCE CONCEALS HER SEXUALITY BY DRESSING LIKE A BOY.

The author of the poem Heldris of Cornwall combined traditional themes of the warrior maiden, Potiphar' s wife, and Merlin' s inexplicable laughter to narrate the adventures of a girl raised as a boy in order to circumvent the English king's inheritance laws which only recognized males as heirs. When she reaches adolescence, Nature and Nurture appear and fiercely debate Silence's future. Nature argues that sex determined one's social role and Silence should go sew. Nurture argues that no one would want to be a repressed, silent woman. Silence agrees with Nurture and determines to run away, continuing her life as a male. Students would find the debate about gender determined social roles easy to transpose to their own experience and observations. Who would want to be female (or male) given society's expectations and limitations? Silence's true sex is discovered when she must fulfill a seemingly hopeless quest - capturing Merlin. She does capture Merlin but her success reveals her disguise because according to prophesy only a woman can ensnare the magician. In the end her success makes Silence a voiceless woman who ends up marrying the king but laments "I thought I was tricking Merlin, but I tricked myself I thought/to abandon woman's ways forever. " Silence's regret at the sudden stricture society imposes upon her activities and possibilities makes the poem an uneasy commentary upon contemporary society.

Critical Edition and translation:
Roche-Mahdi, Sarah, ed. and trans. Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance. East Lansing, MI: East Lansing Colleagues Press. 1992. An edition of the text with a facing page translation.

Secondary Literature:
Arthuriana 7 (1997). The entire volume is devoted to articles on Le Roman de Silence covering topics of allegory, romance genre conventions, narrative patterning, issues of power and gender, misogyny, sexuality.
Kinoshita, Sharon. Heldris de Cornualle's Roman de Silence and the Feudal Politics of Lineage. PMLA 110(1995):397-409.
Bullough, Vern L. " On Being a Male in the Middle Ages. " In Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages. Ed. Lees, Clare E, Thelma Fenster, and Jo Ann. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. 1994. 31-45.
Allen Peter L. "The Ambiguity of Silence: Gender, Writing, and Le Roman de Silence. " In Sign, Sentence, Discourse: Language in Medieval Thought and Literature. Ed. Wasserman, Julian N. and Lois Roney. Syracuse: Syracuse UP. 1989. 98-112.
Bloch, R. Howard. "Silence and Holes: The Roman de Silence and the Art of the Trouvere. " Yale French Studies 70 (1986):81-99.
 

BUILE SHUIBHNE (SWEENEY ASTRAY)

THIS TWELFTH-CENTURY SAGA IS ABOUT A PAGAN IRISH KING WHO IS DRIVEN INSANE BY THE CURSE OF AN ANGRY CHRISTIAN CLERIC. DURING HIS INSANE WANDERINGS, SWEENEY COMPOSES AND RECITES DECEPTIVELY SIMPLISTIC POETRY DESCRIBING NATURE, HIS SLOWLY EMERGING FAITH IN GOD, AND THE TRAGEDY OF EXILE AS A FORM OF PENANCE.

According to Irish annals, during the Battle of Moira in 637 a.d., Sweeney, king of the Dal-Arie, went mad because he had abused the cleric Ronan Finn who asked God for vengeance. Transformed into bird (in his poetry, Sweeney describes his feathers), Sweeney wanders Ireland - too afraid to make contact with humans, composing poetry about the landscape, his own mental deterioration and his acceptance of the Christian God. Just before he dies a traditional Irish three-fold death by stabbing, drowning, and falling, Sweeney find acceptance and peace in the monastic community of St. Moling.Buile Shuibhne articulates the tension between the newly dominant Christian ethos and the older, stubborn Celtic temperment. Although by the end of the saga, Sweeney' s madness has become not only a curse but also a means for him to access celestial, divine knowledge of the natural, Christian world " he knows when terce has come in Rome - the reconciliation between the pagan and the Christian is tenuous and fragile. Sweeney can also be interpreted as the figure of the artist who is alienated from society and its contraints upon imagination and artistic freedom. Buile Shuibhne has many connections with King Lear - where both kings find refuge from their rash behavior in the wilderness and where both kings learn empathy for human frailty and mortality by exposure to the hardships of nature.

Critical Edition:
O'Keeffe J.G., ed. and trans. Buile Shuibhne The Frenzy of Suibhne), vol. 12. London: Irish Texts Society. 1913.

Translation:
Heaney, Seamus. Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1983.

Secondary Literature:
Osterhaus, Joe. "The Belling in the Glen." Harvard Review 10 (1996):131-35. Review of Heaney's translation of the saga. Carson, Ciaran. "Sweeney Astray: Escaping from Limbo" In The Art of Seamus Heaney. Ed. Curbs, Tony. Dufour: Chester Springs, PA. 1994. 141-48. Review of Heaney's translation. McCracken, Kathleen. "Madness or Inspiration? The Poet and Poetry in Seamus Heaney's Sweeney Astray. " Notes on Modern Irish Literature 2 (1990): 42-5 1. Stewart, James. "Sweeney among the Fighting Gaeis: Aspects of the Matter of Ireland in the Work of Seamus Heaney. " Angles on Eng. Speaking World 1 (1986):7-37. Blake, James J. "Mad Sweeney: Madness in Irish Literature." The Nassau Review: the Journal of Nassau Community College Devoted to Arts, Letters, 8e Sciences 5(19,87): 40-47. Kelly, H. A. "Heaney's Sweeney: The Poet as Version-Maker." Philological Quarterly 65(1986):293-3 10. Nagy, Joseph F. "The Wisdom of the Geilt. " Eigse 19 (1982/82): 44-60.0 Riain, Pidraig. "A Study of the Irish Legend of the Wild Man." Eigse 14 (1971-72): 179-206.
 

THOMAS à KEMPIS (1380-1471)

WHAT IS MOST STRIKING ABOUT THE IMITATION OF CHRIST I8 IN THE SIMPLICITY OF ITS VISION OF THE CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. ITS AUTHOR MANAGES TO CAPTURE IN A FEW PAGES WHAT HE DEEMS THE ESSENTIALS OF CHRISTIAN PRACTICE, DIRECTED MOSTLY AT THE MONASTIC AUDIENCE TO WHICH HE WAS MOST FAMILIAR. AND YET PPS APPEAL IN THE LATER HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION HAS BEEN MOSTLY IN A NONMONASTIC CONTEXT. IN THIS REGARD SETTING THE RULE OF ST. BENEDICT ALONGSIDE THE IMITATION OF CHRIST MAKES FOR FASCINATING READING. WHAT MAY NOT ALWAYS BE OBVIOUS ABOUT THE IMITATION OF CHRIST, HOWEVER, I3 THE DEEP LEARNING WHICH LIES BEHIND PP, WHICH CAN EASILY BE OBSCURED BY THE WRITERS REFERENCES TO LEARNING IN THE SERVICE OF GOD.

Thomas Haemerken, born in Kempen in the Diocese of Cologne near Dusseldorf, lived most of his life as an Augustinian monk in the monastery of Mount. S. Agnes. His association with Mount S. Agnes was partly influenced by the presence of his brother John born 1388) who was already affiliated with the Brethren of the Common Life, the movement associated with the reforming spirituality of Geerd Groote (1340-1384). Thomas à Kempis would eventually emerge as one of the luminaries of the Devotio Moderna (new devotion) inspired by Groote.

Thomas à Kempis left home at thirteen to join his brother John in Deventer, the birthplace of Groote and a center of the new devotion. At nineteen (1399) he entered Mount S. Agnes, where his brother was Prior, and after a long probationary period was made a monk in 1406 and eventually received holy orders in 1413. In 1428 he became Sub-Prior and a master of Novices. He died in 1471 leaving behind a series of works, but none nearly as well-known and as influential as his Imitation of Christ. Diverse characters like Thomas More, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Ignatius Loyola, John Wesley allude to its influence. Much of this derives from the fact that the Imitation of Christ serves as a kind of distillate of the spirituality of the Devotio Moderna in a form that is easily accessible. In purpose and inspiration the Imitation of Christ is comparable to earlier Rules for the religious life, like the Rule of St. Benedict and the Rule of St. Augustine.

Available Resources for the Classroom
Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (Hammondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1982)
John Van Engen ed. Devotio Moderna: Basic Writings. Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1988)

Medieval Sources for the Augustine and Culture Seminar
Miriam Shadis, Former Arthur J. Ennis Postdoctoral Fellow
 

As part of my duties as an Ennis Fellow, I was asked to put together a list of medieval sources which might be useful to faculty teaching the Augustine and Culture Seminar, along with some sort of introductory essay. What follows, I humbly beg, should be considered as a sort of work in progress -- another way of saying that promises are made which are not quite fulfilled; ideas are explored which could bear more consideration (and definitely more dialogue). In this introduction I have tried not so much to characterize the Middle Ages, nor the diverse texts which I present, but rather to situate the "why" of medieval studies in a Core Humanities Program. I beg the reader's indulgence; I speak only for myself here, from my own perspective. I welcome all critique, questions, and of course, compliments!
---Miriam Shadis

Why ought a medieval text be taught in the Augustine and Culture Seminar apart from the fact that in this vast period ' (some say 410-1453 CE) we see many developments which fostered and enabled modem humanistic study, such as the origins of the University, intercultural exchange between Jew, Muslim and Christian (especially in philosophy and science), Abelard's articulation of the dialectic, and the foundations of representative government, to name only a very few, there is a real need to appreciate the history of the texts which we read. To leap from Augustine to Shakespeare is to deny in large part the history of the humanities, and thus to misrepresent and misunderstand the important, but distinct historical contributions of thinkers and writers such as Shakespeare, or Augustine. Of real concern for those of us who teach these texts are problems of historical periodization and gender, the problem of teaching outside of one's discipline or field, not to mention the issue of canonicity, which is an implicit component of the Seminar Course -- the idea that some texts (and some kinds of texts) are more essential than others to a good education.

I shall use a rather infamous example to further my point: the work of Camille Paglia. In her obnoxious, but significant book Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, Paglia ignores the entire Middle Ages (with the exception of a brief discourse on the plague); thus her work, a self-proclaimed demonstration of " the unity and continuity of western culture " which " accepts the canonical western tradition" is a historical failure. While hers is an extraordinary attempt to grapple with certain histories and texts of the western world in terms of her focus on paganism and the body, it is completely ordinary in its refusal to contend with 1200 or so years of the textual and artistic production and influence of the medieval European, North African and Near Eastern world.

Canonically speaking, however, it may be to our benefit that the Middle Ages have been somewhat ignored by those eager to praise the concept of canonicity itself, and who cling to, or stand firm by, its value. We are much more free, as a result of this, to apply the terms of value (e. g. , "great " ) to a variety of texts, and to determine through the text itself its propriety for the Humanities Seminar. The challenge of working with many medieval texts
often involves reconceptualizing what we mean by abstractions such as authority, justice, piety, or beauty, or even more concrete things like "church" or "family". We are often limited by a perspective highly influenced by renaissance ideals which leap over the formative years of western civilization, in order to explain them.
Furthermore, too much predetermination about what "fits" may not be always appropriate to the goals of the course. Including things that don't have an obvious "fit" can help students arrive at their own definitions of things like authority and power, and thus helps them assume some responsibility for their own learning. This speaks to what I understand to be one of the main goals of Core Humanities: getting students to think for themselves. I am not suggesting a type of syllabic anarchy, but rather that by broadening our notion of what is appropriate, we can relearn why or how an original " fit " was constructed.

Because at least two of our authors for the Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Thought Class are NOT women, we might also use the medieval text as an expedient and appropriate place to incorporate a woman's voice. Consider the words of medievalist Nancy Partner:

Like many profoundly important true things, this one, that human society consists of two sexes, can be stated so simply that it is faintly embarrassing to say or write it. But it is important almost beyond the power of expression to medieval studies... The "one-sex model" <to misuse a current phrase) of medieval society gives all the "body" to one part of society and all the "mind" to another, which is a notably corpselike arrangement. The restoration of women to the scene, to every locale and activity, restores a human world where body and mind are inextricably united, and where women and men struggle through their lives pursuing human wishes by human means, inevitably and always together (however inharmoniously), together in their emotions, thoughts, and imaginations, even when separate in their outward circumstances. "Introduction," Studying Medieval Women pp 1-2.

Women are provocateurs. In bigger way than Camille Paglia ever could, be women provokes students into thinking about not only gender difference, but
also historical,religious, cultural difference, as well as problems of evidence: asking questions about how we know what we know. It is true that students have a greater difficulty with placing women in the past and understanding historical difference than with almost anything else. A chronic problem of this kind of course is the tendency to get students to read Augustine, or Plato, or Montaigne without encouraging them to think: " Look, they are just like us. "I must
plead guilty to this charge as well; I often ask students to think about what' s familiar in the reading that they are doing, for fear it will otherwise seem all too foreign and weird. Women highlight not only gender, but historical difference -- their very presence is a sort of shock treatment or antidote to the ahistorical tendencies of the course. They are *not* like us, and yet, they help to explain *us.* Often enough, studying them helps us to see that the "us" we are is not the "us" we think we are.

I would like to conclude by offering one final observation about the relationship of the (or "a") canon to the Augustine and Culture medieval studies, and women. Medieval women have a complex relationship to any canon; certainly, educated medieval women such as Hildegard of Bingen with her mystical, exegetical and medical writings contributed to the canon of great western texts; women such as Christine de Pizan helped construct the canon as they valorized writers such as Boccaccio as authorities. But women have also been marginalized as serious contributors, and this marginalization is, I believe, linked to the marginalization of medieval texts as a whole in courses such as ours: medieval authors are thought to be poorly educated, irrational, spiritual, a historical -- in a word, effeminate. Adoption of such texts in courses designed to prompt students as they begin college also speaks to what Nancy Partner identifies as the "double exclusion" of the Middle Ages. If I have anything new to offer to this discussion, it is that the exclusion (or, more positively, inclusion) of medieval texts, as well as texts by and about medieval women has profound implications for the practice of teaching the Augustine and Culture Seminar.

The following list is arranged chronologically. I've tried to cross-reference texts which complement each other as much as possible, as well as to refer to other authors (e.g., Augustine; Shakespeare) used in the ACS: Traditions in Conversation course. I've tried to keep the list strictly medieval; it is of course idiosyncratic, as are the annotations accompanying the bibliography. I've not annotated some obvious choices, such as Chaucer, either because I' m unfamiliar with them myself (ergo, Chaucer), or because they are so deeply canonical (Chaucer again) they need no explaining. For those who are completely unfamiliar with medieval texts, I've included a sort of greatest hits medley: favorite quotes from each source, so you can have a sense of the style of the work. In the spirit of encouraging the study of medieval texts. I've left out texts which some may consider appropriate -- drawing the line generally well before the Reformation and high Renaissance (hence no Luther, More, Machiavelli or Erasmus: all fine fellows, but heroes of a new world.)

Because of the limits of and difficulties involved in finding complete, cheap, good editions of some medieval texts in translation, I've included in the discussion below texts which may not always be available independently of some sort of anthology or collection, but which usually can be obtained in part -- I've given at least one citation for each source where an enterprising instructor can find the text for photocopying.
 

Early Middle Ages
Corpus Juris Civilis of Justinian (572-565) Fundamentals of Roman Law "rediscovered" in twelfth century "Justice is the constant and perpetual desire to give to each person his own due, right [ius] ... Jurisprudence [iurisprudentia] is the acquaintance with both human and divine things, the knowledge of what is just and what unjust .... These are 'the precepts of the law [ius] to live honestly, not to injure another, and to render to each his own. "

The Rule of St. Benedict The Rule (530) is the prescriptive basis for western monasticism. It describes in detail the purpose and function of a religious community, and is surprisingly humane in its approach to the cloistered life, with an emphasis on humility, work, and prayer. It is long (but easy) reading; one would want to pick selections, such as the chapters "Concerning the Kinds of Monks and their Manner of Living, " " Concerning Obedience, " or " Whether Monks Should Have Anything of their Own. " The following excerpt is from the section " Concerning the Amount of Drink" -- a student favorite. "Indeed we read that wine is not suitable for monks at all. But because, in our day, it is not possible to persuade the monks of this, let us agree at least as to the fact that we should not drink till we are sated, but sparingly. For wine can make even the wise go astray.

Gregory of Tours History of the Franks trans. Lewis Thorpe, Penguin Classics, 1974. Bishop Gregory of Tours' (539-594) history of Frankish Gaul is a detailed chronicle of the Frankish kingdoms, and includes Gregory's observations of contemporary society. It is important text for understanding the construction of history in this period, as well as the dynamics between Church and State with its parallels of the tension between the Gallo Romans and the newcomer Franks. Some significant episodes described by Gregory include the conversion of Clovis, and the foundation of the Abbey of the Holy Spirit by St. Radegund, as well as the endless battles between Queens Fredegund and Brunhild. " Meanwhile the revolt which, at the instigation of Satan, had broken out in the nunnery in Poitiers, became more and more serious as day followed day. I have told you how Clotild was set upon rebellion and had gathered round her a band of cut-throats, evil-doers, fornicators, fugitives from justice and men guilty of every crime in the calendar. These she ordered to break into the nunnery and to drag out the Abbess. " (X. 15).

St. Columban, Boat Song (ca. 600). St Columban was an Irish missionary to the east, responsible for founding several monasteries in Frankish territories, as well as the Italian monastery of Bobbio. His boat song is a beautiful, vigorous and short poem, which exemplifies the combination of adventure and fortitude embraced by the heroic monks of this period. It would be interesting for that reason to compare with the Rule of St. Benedict, and possibly with the Viking Sagas. The metaphor of conquering nature (conquering sin) might be interesting to compare with St. Francis's poetry. "Cut in the forests, swept down the two-homed Rhine, Our keel, tight-caulked, now floats upon the sea. Heia men! Let the echoes resound with our Heia! ... Endure and save yourselves for better things; 0 you who have suffered worse, this too shall end. Heia men!

Pope Gregory I; the Great (590-604). Gregory sent another Augustine to convert the English, and in his letters he expresses his philosophy (or politics) of conversion: "I have long been considering the case of the Angles, to wit, that the temples of the idols in that nation should not be destroyed, but that the idols that are in them should be. If these temples are well-built, it is necessary that they should be transferred to the service of the true God; and so that, when the people see that these temples are not destroyed, they may put away error from their heart and, knowing and adoring the true God, may have recourse
to the familiar places they have been accustomed to. "In his Book of Pastoral Care. Gregory sets out the obligations and characteristics of a good Bishop, answering the question " What manner of man ought to rule? "

Mohammed (d. 632), The Koran. The sacred text of Moslems sets out the tenets of Islam, defines the relationship of the "People of the Book" (Jews and Christians), and justifies Holy War. "Believers, Jews, Christians, and Sabeans -- whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day and does what is right -shall be rewarded by their Lord; they have nothing to fear or to regret .... Righteousness does not consist in whether you face towards the east or the west. The righteous man is he who believes in Allah and the Last Day, in the angels and the Scriptures and the prophets; who for the love of Allah gives his wealth... " (Sura 2)

Central Middle Ages

Einhard and Notker the Stammerer. Two Lives of Charlemagne, trans. Lewis Thorpe, Penguin Classics, 1969.

Dhuoda, Manual for a son. This ninth century Frankish woman's instruction to her son is poignant and startling for what it reveals about human political activity, motherhood, and women's learning in the late Carolingian era. "I ask and humbly suggest to your noble youth, as if I were present, and also to those to whom you show this book that they may read it, that you might not condemn me and reproach me for the fact that I am so bold as to embark upon such a profound and perilous task: to direct to you instruction concerning God. " Generically, this work is both autobiographical and didactic; it might be categorized in the genre of "Mirrors for Princes, " as well.

Urban II, Crusade Sermon. In 1095, at the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II preached the first Crusade. His sermon, exhorting French nobles and clergy to retake Jerusalem (he called it a pilgrimage) was reported by Fulcher of Chartes, and by Robert the Monk, who were present. Urban promised remission of sins for Crusaders. "Concerning this affair, I, with suppliant prayer -- not I, but the Lord -- exhort you, heralds of Christ, to persuade all of whatever class, both knights and footmen, both rich and poor, in numerous edicts, to strive to help expel that wicked race from our Christian lands before it is too late. " Fulcher of Chartres, Chronicle of the First Crusade M.E. McGinty, trans. (UPenn Press, 1941.) Fulcher also describes the successful seige of Jerusalem as an eyewitness. For Raymond, see Dana C. Munro, Urban and the Crusaders. (UPenn; Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History, vol. 1, no. 2 1985)

The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America. ed. and trans. Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Palsson. (London, Penguin Classics, 1965.) The sagas of the Icelandic and Greenlander voyages throughout the north Atlantic are a combination of history and epic poetry. The voyages described actually took place (around the year 1000), but the intervening 200 years in the development of the text has lent a fictional quality to the story. It might be interesting to read these in conjunction with Shakespeare's The Tempest or More's Utopia "Some time later, Bjarni Herjolfsson sailed from Greenland to Norway and visited Earl Eirik, who received him well. Bjarni told the earl about his voyage and the lands he had sighted. People thought he had shown great lack of curiosity, since he could tell them nothing about these countries, and he was criticized for this .... There was now great talk of discovering new countries."

High Middle Ages

Al-Ghazali, (1058-1111) Faith and practice of Al-Ghazali W. Montgomery Watt, (Chicago, 1982); This Moslem philosopher wrestled with the problem of
"systematic doubt; "his solution was found in illumination from God. "From my early youth, since I attained the age of puberty before I was twenty, until the present time when I am over fifty, I have ever recklessly launched out into the midst of these ocean depths, I have ever bravely embarked on this open sea, throwing aside all craven caution; I have poked into every dark recess, I have made an assault on every problem, I have plunged into every abyss, I have scrutinized the creed of every sect, I have tried to lay bare the inmost doctrines of every community. All this have I done that I might distinguish between true and false, between sound tradition and heretical innovation . . . . . .

Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and Its Art Treasures. trans. Erwin Panofsky (2nd edition 1979 Princeton University Press.) This is the fascinating and sweet record of the Abbot Suger's (1081-1151) efforts to restore and rebuild the Abbey Church of St. Denis, near Paris. Through Suger's autobiographical writing, we see how aesthetic choices were made, how buildings were financed, how Suger made manifest neoplatonic ideals in the "new" gothic architecture. Issues of piety, competition between monastic orders (Suger was an old-fashioned Benedictine during the first Rush of Cistercian reform), contemporary politics, and self-aggrandizement also abound. "Thus, when -- out of my delight in the beauty of the house of God -the loveliness of the many-colored gems has called me away from external cares, and worthy meditation has induced me to reflect, transferring that which is material to that which is immaterial, on the diversity of sacred virtues: then it seems to me that I see myself dwelling, as it were, in some strange region of the universe which neither exists entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the purity of Heaven; and that, by the Grace of God, I can be transported from this inferior to that higher world in an anagogical. manner."

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153). St. Bernard is one of the most important, influential religious, institutional and political figures of his day. A member of the first generation of the Cistercian Order, he profoundly influenced the successful development of that Order. I like to think of him as having a finger in every pie, however: Bernard preached the second Crusade, censured Abelard, advised kings, and wrote mystical treatises on the Love of God.  He had a special affection for the Virgin Mary and the Infant Jesus, which can be related to an increased "humanism" in the practice of Christianity in this period. There is a huge corpus of Bernard's work, much of it available, (I believe) through the Paulist Press. Here is a selection from his writing on the foundation of the monastic-military order, the Knights Templar: " The knight of Christ, I say, is safe in slaying, safer if he is slain. He is accountable to himself when he is slain, to Christ when he slays ... For when he kills a malefactor, he does not commit homicide but, I might say, malicide, and is clearly reputed to be the vindicator of Christ, bringing punishment to evildoers, and praise in truth to good men."

Autobiography of Ousama (1095-1188), trans. G.R. Potter (1929). Ousama Ibn Mounkidh wrote down his observations of the western Crusaders in Jerusalem (he referred to them generically as "the Franks. ") He remarked on their capacity for friendship, and intelligence, criticizing what he believed to be a perverse sense of honor and jealousy. Although he generally found them to be barbarians, he admired their capacity as warriors. Ousama suggests a humanizing influence in intercultural relations: "It is always those who have recently come to live in Frankish territory who show themselves more inhuman than their predecessors who have been established amongst us and become familiarised with the Mohammedans."

Abelard and Heloise, The Letters of Abelard and Heloise. including Abelard's History of My Calamaties trans. Betty Radice, Penguin Classics, 1974. Peter Abelard (1079-1142) is justifiably known as one of the most famous scholars of his day. His philosophical works explored the problem of dialectic (Sic et Non), the nature of the Trinity On the Unity and Trinity of God), as well as the importance of moral responsibility Ethics: Know Thyself.  However, Abelard is probably best known for his tragic relationship with his student/wife Heloise (1100- 1163), which along with the successes and failures of his career is chronicled in his autobiography The History of My Calamities (automatically one might think of pairing this with Augustine's Confessions; both works complicate the genre of autobiography by wrestling with and even exemplifying the author's philosophy). Heloise's letters to Abelard, after their adoption of holy orders and separation reveal all of the qualities for which she was famous: her erudition, her passion for Abelard, and her struggle to accept (or not accept) her vocation as nun and abbess. Heloise frankly describes her divided self (cf the divided mind of Augustine) and her unwillingness to submit her interior self to her exterior fate. Abelard and Heloise are difficult for students who are not accustomed to characterizing intellectuals as heroes, but the same students usually find the pair personally fascinating, as well. Abelard: " Since therefore I was wholly enslaved to pride and lechery, God' s grace provided a remedy for both these evils, though not one of my choosing: first for my lechery by depriving me of those organs with which I practised it, and then for the pride which had grown in me through my learning -- for in the words of the Apostle, 'Knowledge breeds conceit' -- when I was humiliated by the burning of the book of which I was so proud. " <p. 65) Heloise: "my love rose to such heights of madness that it robbed itself of what it most desired beyond hope of recovery, when immediately at your bidding I changed my clothing along with my mind, in order to prove you the sole possessor of my body and my will alike...

It was not any sense of vocation which brought me as a young girl to accept the austerities of the cloister, but your bidding alone, and if I deserve no gratitude from you, you may judge for yourself how my labours are in vain. I can expect no reward for this from God, for it is certain that I have done nothing as yet for love of him. " (113-117)

Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias or Know the Ways. trans. Bruce Hozeski (1986) Book of Divine Works w/ Letters and Songs; Book of the Rewards of Life as well as other mystical, cosmological and scientific treatises. Along with Heloise, Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) enjoys the reputation of being one of the most learned people of her day. This twelfth century Abbess was a .visionary/prophet, who preached and taught, as well as ran a powerful abbey. Hildegard is considered to be a significant theologian, scientist (her interest was medicine), musician and dramatist, and all of her work and life has been the subject of much scholarly interest recently. Her works include published letters to notable figures of her day (such as St. Bernard, and the Emperor Frederick 1. Her visionary record., Scivias. or Know the Ways is replete with contemporary illustrations, and is divided into three parts: 1) a historical vision, which describes the evolution of the relationship between God, the world, and humans; 2) a vision of redemption, and 3) an architectural vision of salvation. "And I am Reason, and have the wind of the resounding Word through which every creature has been made, and I have given my breath to all these things so that none of them is mortal in its kind, for I am Life. I am Life whole and entire, not cut from stone, not sprouted from twigs, not rooted in the powers of a man' s sex; rather all that is living is rooted in me. For Reason is the root, and in it blossoms the resounding Word. " Liber divinorum onerum 1.1.

Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love. While often offensive, this text reveals misogynist attitudes (whether ironic or not) towards women and love. The possibility that this work was commissioned by a woman can provoke students to think about women' s collusion with social attitudes about themselves. The work outlines rules for various types of love (and lovers, especially in regard to class). Some examples of the Rules of Love include: 1) Marriage is no real excuse for not loving. 2) He who is not jealous cannot love. 13) When made public, love rarely endures. "Love is a certain inborn suffering derived from the sight of excessive meditation upon the beauty of the opposite sex, which causes each one to wish above all things the embraces of the other and by common desire to carry out all of love's precepts in the other's 'embrace. " It certainly would be interesting to compare this text with Plato's Symposium or even the Gospels.

Moses Maimonides. Guide for the Perplexed; Eight Chapters; Laws Concerning Character Traits. Maimonides (1135-1204) was an important Jewish philosopher, and cultural leader of the Hebrew community in his adopted Cairo (he was originally from Cordoba, but was expelled with other members of the Jewish community). Maimonides' works range from the scientific to the ethical, and explore the tension between piety and society. In the Laws Concerning Character Traits, he advocates a "middle way, "invoking the "Golden Rule, " and encouraging the care of the self for the good of society. Eight Chapters discusses the care
of the soul; the problem of human freedom, and the role of Law. See The Ethical Writings of Maimonides ed. Raymond L. Weiss with Charles E. Butterworth (New York 1975) or which contains excerpts from many of these works and has a very helpful introduction. From "The Fifth Chapter: On directing the power of the soul toward a single goal: Man needs to subordinate all his soul' s powers to thought... and to set his sight on a single goal: the perception of God (may He be glorified and magnified) I mean, knowledge o Him, in so far as that lies within man's power .... he should made his aim only the health of his body when he eats, drinks, sleeps, has sexual intercourse is awakes and is in motion or at rest. The purpose of his body's health is that the soul find its instruments healthy and sound in order that it can be directed toward the sciences and toward acquiring the moral and rational virtues, so that he might arrive at that goal."

Francis of Assisi, Rule, Testament, Canticle of the Sun
(See also, Francis and Clare: the Complete Works, trans. Armstrong and Brady, Paulist Press 1982)

Marie de France, The Lais of Marie de France, trans. Robert Harming and Joan Ferrante, Labyrinth Press, 1978. The Lais of Marie de France are wonderful tales of medieval knights and ladies, and they enable us to see a woman' s claim to authority through her art -- Marie is very concerned that we know that these are HER stories. The stories themselves reveal complicated ideas about love and righteousness; I would particularly recommend Yonec, Eliduc, and Guigemar. Certainly it would be interesting to compare these texts with the Art of Courtly Love,or with the historical and nearly contemporary example of Abelard and Heloise. The Lais are widely available and successful with students. Marie is also the author of a series of medieval Faibles . "Whoever deals with good material feels pain if it's treated improperly. Listen, my lords, to the words of Marie, who does not forget her responsibilities when her turn comes. " (Guigemar)

The Poem of the Cid, trans. Rita Hamilton and Janet Perry, Penguin Classics, 1975. This late twelfth-century epic poem is the first written in the Castilian vernacular. It is semi historical, but sets out contemporary ideals of the virtues of a good knight and a good lord. Loyalty, valor, honor, and adventure are key themes, as are the problems of gender and religious difference. "The Cid, sure of success, shouted his battle cry: "Attack them, my knights, for the love of God! I am Ruy Díaz of Vivar, the Cid Campeador! " They assailed the Moorish ranks, where Pedro Bermúdez was already in the thick of the fight. There were three hundred knights with lance and pennon, and with every lance thrust a Moor fell dead. " (35) "Who could say how many lances rose and fell, how many shields were pierced, coats of mail torn asunder and white pennons stained red with blood, how many riderless horses ranged the field? The Moors called on Muhammed and the Christians on St James. In a short time one thousand three hundred Moors fell dead upon the field. " (36)

Marguerite Porete (?-1310). The Mirror of Simple Souls. The orthodoxy of this theologically sophisticated text, for which the author was ultimately burned at the stake, has been much debated. Marguerite Porete was a Flemish woman, probably of the upper-class, who belonged to the order of Beguines, a later medieval order of urban women who lived a usually communal, usually celibate, simple life devoted to prayer and charity. Marguerite presents in her Mirror at least two important points -that faith, not knowledge, is the route to salvation (much of the Mirror is a dialogue between Reason and Love), and that the soul is annihilated in its ultimate union with God. It is a mystical text, describing the journey of a soul from a position of piety to perfection in God. Because of her struggle to define the nature of God, her stance on works, and on free will, Marguerite would be very interesting to read along with Augustine. " 5. Now there is another life, which we call peace of charity in annihilated life. Of it, says Love, we wish to speak, asking that one find 1) a soul 2) who saves herself by faith without works, 3) who is alone in Love, 4) who does nothing for God, 5) who leaves God nothing to do, 6) who can be taught nothing, 7) from whom nothing can be taken, 8) to whom nothing can be given, 9) who has no will.
 

Late Middle Ages

Boccaccio, Giovanni, The Decameron late medieval; social reflection -- perhaps helpful in situating Shakespeare for both its chronological and geographical situation.

Francesco Petrarca. Books of Familiar Things (including "The Ascent of Mount Ventoux; Letters to his Socrates; Letter to Cicero); The Secretum. Petrarch (1304-1374), as the "Father of Humanism" manifests in his works a significant turn in late medieval letters towards a new perspective on the Ancient writers. Petrarch was particularly fond of Augustine (see the Ascent of Mount Ventoux; his "Guide" up the Mountain is Confessions), and Cicero (in whom he became vastly, personally disappointed). His letters generally bear witness to the vitality and personality of the late medieval scholarly world; particularly interesting are his letters to Boccaccio, telling him not to give up on Literature, and his personal observations on the destruction of the Black Death. "To Marcus Tullius Cicero; from Verona, 16 June 1345. Franciscus sends his greetings to Cicero. I have been hunting for your letters long and persistently. I discovered them where I least expected to, and avidly read them. I could hear your voice, Marcus Tullius, confessing much, complaining of much, speaking in various moods. I was already well aware what a master you were for others; now at last I learned what kind of a guide you were for yourself ... Why did you choose to involve yourself in so many vain contentions and unprofitable quarrels?... How much better it would have been for you, the philosopher, to have grown old in country peace, meditating, as you yourself write somewhere, on eternal life, not on this transitory 'existence! How much better if you had never held the fasces of power, never longed for triumphs, never corrupted your spirit with any Catilines! But how vain are my wordsl Farewell forever, my Cicero. "

Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, The Letters. A Doctor of the Church, Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) is a remarkable example of a medieval person. Her dictated letters to Popes (regarding the Babylonian Captivity at Avignon) and other rulers of her day are passionate documents