Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.1215/10829636-9966051
David Aers, Sarah Beckwith
The tradition of the virtues was the model for moral practice from Aristotle to Luther. This tradition framed practices of living well in relation to visions of the good, and in its later Christian version, of God. One became good through practice, just as a harpist might play well through disciplined habits of exercise. In Alasdair MacIntyre's extraordinary excavations of philosophy and intellectual history, the Reformation is by and large neglected as he traces a path from Aristotle to Hume and beyond. This special issue seeks to put the Reformation(s) back into the picture and to see what avenues might be opened as a result. Articles explore what happens to ancient and medieval habits, practices, and conceptualizations of virtue and the virtue tradition resulting from the complex reorganizations of ritual, sacramental, ecclesiological, theological, and ethical practices during the Reformation era. The essays in this issue explore various strands of the Reformation in which the virtue tradition is maintained, transformed, or rejected.
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Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.1215/10829636-9966065
James Simpson
The tradition that became liberalism, which claims to have promoted meritocracy and individual agency, was, in both evangelical origin and in a one-hundred-fifty-year tradition thereafter, unremittingly hostile to the claims of human merit and agency upon God. This hostility is considered from three discursive angles: legislation, poetry, and pastoralia. Between at least 1571 and 1660 the English state legislated against confidence in the salutary value of humanly produced virtue. Early modern elegiac poetry evinces the attempted dissolution of evangelical selfhood and the inevitable twin of that desired dissolution: the unraveling of discursive confidence that must accompany, and perhaps produces, the desire for self-dissolution. Elegiac writing unwrites itself. The article then looks behind the literature to the pastoral incitation to crush both selfhood and the self's habitual, agential understandings of language.
{"title":"Unwritten Virtues, Selves, and Texts: Early Modern Self-Erasure","authors":"James Simpson","doi":"10.1215/10829636-9966065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/10829636-9966065","url":null,"abstract":"The tradition that became liberalism, which claims to have promoted meritocracy and individual agency, was, in both evangelical origin and in a one-hundred-fifty-year tradition thereafter, unremittingly hostile to the claims of human merit and agency upon God. This hostility is considered from three discursive angles: legislation, poetry, and pastoralia. Between at least 1571 and 1660 the English state legislated against confidence in the salutary value of humanly produced virtue. Early modern elegiac poetry evinces the attempted dissolution of evangelical selfhood and the inevitable twin of that desired dissolution: the unraveling of discursive confidence that must accompany, and perhaps produces, the desire for self-dissolution. Elegiac writing unwrites itself. The article then looks behind the literature to the pastoral incitation to crush both selfhood and the self's habitual, agential understandings of language.","PeriodicalId":51901,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43519061","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.1215/10829636-9966135
J. Lupton
This essay explores the Erasmian humanism and ecosociable sensibility of As You Like It. Both Shakespeare and Erasmus cultivated recreation and play, practiced an irenic and ecumenical approach to wisdom, respected women's virtuous capacity, and acknowledged their kinship with other creatures. Like The Praise of Folly and Erasmus's writings on friendship and peace, As You Like It builds a multidimensional portrait of virtue as lively, gracious, embodied, performative, hospitable, and always open to irony — aware of the costs and conditions of virtue in the world. In his irenic writings, Erasmus lays out an account of human nature that highlights human beings’ vulnerability, sociability, and creaturely state. How does a naturally gentle species become bellicose? Echoing the teachings of Pythagoras, Erasmus finds the origins of war in the killing of animals, first in self-defense and then in the hunt. In As You Like It, Shakespeare traces the emergence of human and animal aggression from acts of self-preservation and care, and he stages a softened Augustinianism in a created world that is “very good” (Gen. 1:31). His Erasmian sensibility is also Orphic and Pythagorean. This essay supplements Renaissance humanism with Rabbinic and post-Rabbinic readings of Genesis in order to construe the virtue of magnanimity as a hospitable stance toward different wisdom traditions.
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Pub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1215/10829636-9687844
E. Reese
The thought of Thomas Aquinas is rightly understood to be hierarchical, but the word hierarchy is understood diversely across time and place, and important readers of Thomas have praised or blamed him for being less hierarchical than his contemporaries. Early modern critique of hierarchy with its political edge often dominates understanding of the notion, but such critique stems from medieval controversies over religious perfection and sacramental life, which in turn echo the monastic polemics of Pseudo-Dionysius, the probable inventor of the term hierarchy. The massive influence of Dionysius made him a contested authority in Thomas's time, and in his battles with secular clergy the Dominican theologian shows himself a more careful interpreter of the pseudo-Areopagite than his contemporaries, who purported to defend hierarchy against the mendicants. This study presents the reading method of Aquinas as a contemplative project, motivated and delineated by the mendicant controversies of the thirteenth century, and undertaken alongside the obscure Dionysius within their common pursuit of religious perfection.
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Pub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1215/10829636-9687886
Chandler Fry
While much criticism on the fourteenth-century English scribe and politician Thomas Usk characterizes him as a self-interested partisan whose Appeal and Testament of Love lay bare his hopes for material reward from London's rulers, this article argues that Usk's two texts offer a political vision organized around what he and his culture regarded as a virtue: rational obedience to political authority. In his Appeal, the explosive text that was written for the trial of London's mayor in 1384, Usk makes use of charged language tied to the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 in order to depict obedience as fundamental to peace in London. His Testament, written a year later while in prison, revisits the issues that moved him to write the Appeal, this time drawing on medieval ethical and political theory to define the necessity of—and the limits to—obedience in a monarchical society.
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Pub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1215/10829636-9687928
Kathryn Gucer
This essay illuminates an unexplored intersection between recent work on early modern networks, book history, and the history of libraries. It focuses on a letter book, a continuous record of the French Protestant Church of London's correspondence from 1643 to 1650. The church officials who kept this unusual record found themselves imagining their library and its books as working parts in a vibrant information hub for the Huguenot churches in England. Using methods from microhistory (i.e., plausible inference) and literary criticism to uncover an alternative reading of the letters copied into the letter book, as distinct from the original letters, the article traces the beginnings of a lending library in the church officials’ thinking. In illuminating the letter book's impact, the essay places Huguenots, long treated as a marginalized minority, in the spotlight of a global history, which traces the movements of people, ideas, and goods across newly imagined spaces.
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Pub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1215/10829636-9687872
Luke Sunderland
The description of living beings—the “ornements” of the earth in all their diversity—is a central task of Jean Corbechon's fourteenth-century encyclopedia, the Livre des propriétés des choses, a translation into French of Bartholomaeus Anglicus's thirteenth-century De proprietatibus rerum, undertaken for Charles V of France. This article surveys the system for conceptualizing nature in Corbechon's encyclopedia. The Livre's account of animal, vegetable, and mineral life surpasses that of bestiaries and other vernacular encyclopedias, providing an idiom in French for the expression of natural diversity, complemented by new visualizations in the illustrated manuscripts. The concept of propriétés articulates the principles of diversity from elemental commonalities, through groups and subgroups such as birds and birds of prey, down to individual species. The Livre encourages the formation of analogies between beings, especially in terms of anatomy and modes of motion, reproduction, combat, and nutrition. Visual tools, including image grids, express groupings, and the etymologies of beings’ names gloss their properties and create links to human life. Ultimately, a restless ontological complexity of beings emerges, as the properties of animals, plants, and stones are enmeshed with each other and with human beings.
对生物的描述——地球上各种各样的“装饰品”——是让·柯比松14世纪的百科全书《自由的个体》(Livre des propriactsams des choses)的一个中心任务，这本百科全书是13世纪巴塞洛缪·安利库斯(Bartholomaeus Anglicus)的《自由的个体》(De proprietatibus rerum)的法语翻译，是为法国查理五世承担的。本文考察了柯比雄百科全书中对自然概念化的系统。《利弗尔》对动物、植物和矿物生命的描述超越了动物传记和其他白话百科全书，它提供了一种表达自然多样性的法语成语，并辅以插图手稿中的新视觉效果。固有薪金薪金的概念阐明了多样性的原则，从基本的共性，通过类群和次类群，如鸟类和猛禽，一直到单个物种。Livre鼓励生物之间形成类比，特别是在解剖学和运动模式、繁殖、战斗和营养方面。视觉工具，包括图像网格，表达分组，以及生物名字的词源修饰了它们的属性，并创建了与人类生活的联系。最终，当动物、植物和石头的属性彼此交织在一起，并与人类纠缠在一起时，一种不安的生物本体论复杂性出现了。
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Pub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1215/10829636-9687914
J. Werlin
This essay is a prosopographic study of the group of published poets, born between 1570 and 1610, who were employed as clergymen. It argues that this period saw an important shift in the organization and occupational structure of the church, which helped to produce a generation of university-educated, high-status clerics who were also accomplished versifiers. Poets such as George Herbert and John Donne were not anomalies but part of a wider trend that profoundly shaped English verse conventions. The essay thus makes a case for considering institutional history as an important influence on literary history.
{"title":"Early Stuart Clergyman Poets: A Prosopographic Approach","authors":"J. Werlin","doi":"10.1215/10829636-9687914","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/10829636-9687914","url":null,"abstract":"This essay is a prosopographic study of the group of published poets, born between 1570 and 1610, who were employed as clergymen. It argues that this period saw an important shift in the organization and occupational structure of the church, which helped to produce a generation of university-educated, high-status clerics who were also accomplished versifiers. Poets such as George Herbert and John Donne were not anomalies but part of a wider trend that profoundly shaped English verse conventions. The essay thus makes a case for considering institutional history as an important influence on literary history.","PeriodicalId":51901,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46962410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1215/10829636-9687900
B. Mottram
Studies on the Renaissance reception of Virgil as an epic, georgic, and bucolic poet typically overshadow Virgil’s reception as an author of light, ludic verse. In 1428, Maffeo Vegio (1407–1458) wrote his Supplementum to Virgil’s Aeneid, an earnest attempt to complete the revered ancient epic. A decade later, however, Vegio was alluding to Virgil’s poetry irreverently in distichs and epigrams, regarding Virgil’s example as justification for poetic frivolity. The vogue for such poetic trifles sparked controversy between Vegio and his literary associates over poetic decorum and the moral limits of poetry. This article situates Vegio’s short poems within this literary-historical context, showing how the reception of Virgil intersected with a fierce polemic over the status and legitimacy of light verse. It sheds new light not only on Vegio’s poetics of Virgilian allusion, but also on the role of literary networks in shaping the theory and practice of Renaissance imitation and the construction of poetic identity.
{"title":"Nugae on the Block: Maffeo Vegio (1407–1458), Virgil, and the Early Quattrocento Polemic over Light Verse","authors":"B. Mottram","doi":"10.1215/10829636-9687900","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/10829636-9687900","url":null,"abstract":"Studies on the Renaissance reception of Virgil as an epic, georgic, and bucolic poet typically overshadow Virgil’s reception as an author of light, ludic verse. In 1428, Maffeo Vegio (1407–1458) wrote his Supplementum to Virgil’s Aeneid, an earnest attempt to complete the revered ancient epic. A decade later, however, Vegio was alluding to Virgil’s poetry irreverently in distichs and epigrams, regarding Virgil’s example as justification for poetic frivolity. The vogue for such poetic trifles sparked controversy between Vegio and his literary associates over poetic decorum and the moral limits of poetry. This article situates Vegio’s short poems within this literary-historical context, showing how the reception of Virgil intersected with a fierce polemic over the status and legitimacy of light verse. It sheds new light not only on Vegio’s poetics of Virgilian allusion, but also on the role of literary networks in shaping the theory and practice of Renaissance imitation and the construction of poetic identity.","PeriodicalId":51901,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45761739","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1215/10829636-9687858
Valerie Allen
Christian devotion often focused on holy measurements such as those of Christ's height, side wound, and the nails that pierced him. This article focuses on ones occurring in English manuscripts, primarily from the late fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth century. The devout touched, kissed, beheld, and wore these measures, drawn scaled or life-sized, in expectation of protections in life or indulgences after death. These metric relics are considered in light of the mathematics of medieval measurement, which essentially comprised laying one body against another to deliver some kind of ratio or relation. None of the textual amulets delivers a discrete statistic but instead requires a gauging operation, such as multiplying a length fifteen times, thereby placing the worshipper in the position of measurer. By imaginatively measuring the wounds and nails, as if present at the Passion, the votaries interrogate even as they touch.
{"title":"To Measure Is to Feel: The Mathematics of Middle English Metric Relics","authors":"Valerie Allen","doi":"10.1215/10829636-9687858","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/10829636-9687858","url":null,"abstract":"Christian devotion often focused on holy measurements such as those of Christ's height, side wound, and the nails that pierced him. This article focuses on ones occurring in English manuscripts, primarily from the late fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth century. The devout touched, kissed, beheld, and wore these measures, drawn scaled or life-sized, in expectation of protections in life or indulgences after death. These metric relics are considered in light of the mathematics of medieval measurement, which essentially comprised laying one body against another to deliver some kind of ratio or relation. None of the textual amulets delivers a discrete statistic but instead requires a gauging operation, such as multiplying a length fifteen times, thereby placing the worshipper in the position of measurer. By imaginatively measuring the wounds and nails, as if present at the Passion, the votaries interrogate even as they touch.","PeriodicalId":51901,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN STUDIES","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41737439","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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