The biography of Ignatios the Deacon: a reassessment of the evidence

Abstract

The recently published critical editions of three of Ignatios the Deacon's works, his correspondence and two of his hagiographical texts, may have enhanced our familiarity with an important scholarly figure, but have apparently not established a consensus as regards his educational curriculum and ecclesiastical career. This is not surprising in view of the lack of explicit information on crucial periods of his life and the wide diversity of the literature associated with his name. However, the discussion has become all the more confused as some of Ign.'s autobiographical references have been called into question (to my mind, not reasonably) or not taken into account in their entirety. Setting aside the divergences between the biography sketched by Cyril Mango and that by myself, which mainly concern the tentative period of Ign.'s episcopate and the period he became skevophylax, a very different interpretation of Ign.'s biographical data has been offered by Georgios Makris, the editor of the Life of St. Gregory the Decapolite. And a more recent reconsideration of his biography, presented in the Berliner Prosopographie der mittelalterlichen Zeit and published in full length by Thomas Pratsch in this journal, without radically disputing the basic chronological framework of Ign.'s lifetime as proposed by Mango, has tried to rearrange the scattered pieces of his puzzling career. Several hypotheses regarding Ign.'s ecclesiastical career were also put forward by Michel Kaplan in his inquiry into Ign.'s letters dateable to his period as metropolitan of Nicaea. Finally, in his posthumously published History of Byzantine Literature, Alexander Kazhdan, demonstrating excessive skepticism, distinguished the author of the anonymously preserved correspondence from Ignatios the Deacon, as well as denied him the composition of other works that have been assigned to him. The purpose of the present note is to re-assess the biographical evidence provided in Ign.'s own work.     

Negotiating episcopal support in the Merovingian kingdom of Reims (ad 561–75)

Minimal scholarly attention has been paid to the ecclesiastical policies of King Sigibert I of Reims (r. 561–75). An examination of Sigibert's policies suggests the lengths to which the king went to attract and maintain episcopal allies in strategic and politically divided civitates. While Gregory of Tours in his Decem Libri Historiarum blamed Sigibert's death on his stubborn refusal to heed episcopal counsel, the bishop of Tours recognized that the king of Reims was not consistently hostile to the church and its bishops, and saw the circumstances of Sigibert's untimely death as ultimately tragic.     

Was Photios an Anti‐Latin?: Heresy and Liturgical Variation in the Encyclical to the Eastern Patriarchs

In discussing Epistle 2, most of the attention has been focused on the discussion of the filioque, to the exclusion of Photios’ other liturgical and ecclesiastical comments. While the filioque arguments are now widely seen as an interpolation into the text (though whether by the hand of Photios or another author can be debated), these additional comments are largely glossed over. However, the liturgical comments in Photios’ Ep. 2 are indeed a central point of contention for the Patriarch himself, rather than a scribe or secondary author. Photios’ antagonism towards Latin liturgy is part of a broader cultural conflict between the two halves of medieval Christendom. For Photios, as well as his predecessors and successors, Orthodoxy was increasingly defined as not only a theological issue, but an issue of praxis, and the presence of innovative liturgical practices was indicative of a perverted theology. These sorts of differences would have been especially notable for Greek missionaries to the Bulgars who lived and worked beside, and in opposition to, Latin missionaries in a competition for ecclesiastical hegemony. Ultimately, Photios’ writings against the liturgical practices of the Latins were of considerably greater importance to his contemporaries than the filioque was to his successors, and the implications of Photios’ theology, given his enduring importance to Orthodox Christianity, have the potential to create new flashpoints in contemporary discussions between Orthodox and Western Christians.     

Robert Grosseteste and the simple benefice: a novel solution to the complexities of lay presentation

That pastoral care was the main focus of Robert Grosseteste's theological work and correspondence is well established: Grosseteste is often characterised as the vehement, uncompromising promoter of the pastoral ideal in the face of strong opposition, ecclesiastical and lay. Less close attention has been paid to whether the records of his diocesan administration demonstrate the practical outworking of his pastoral theories. Although narrow in compass, his administrative rolls for the English diocese of Lincoln are not entirely sterile. They show Grosseteste experimenting with a novel form of parish organisation, using grants of simple benefices (simplex beneficium) to ensure appropriate provision for a parochial priestly function whilst offering a constructive compromise to the laity who had the right to nominate clergy for churches (the patrons) when their candidates were deemed inadmissible. The practical working out of these proposals reveals that they had both educational benefits, particularly for potential clergy, and allowed Grosseteste to focus his educational and pastoral efforts directly within the parishes.     

Between history and hagiography: Eadmer of Canterbury's vision of the Historia novorum in Anglia

Written between c.1093 and the end of the 1120s, Eadmer of Canterbury's Historia novorum in Anglia is one of the best-known sources for the study of Anglo-Norman political, ecclesiastical and cultural history. This article explores the identity of the text as it developed in Eadmer's own mind. While modern scholars have placed the Historia novorum within the development of English national historiography, Eadmer showed no desire for his work to be received in this way. Instead, Eadmer's Historia was profoundly influenced by his extensive experience in writing the lives and miracles of saints. The Historia novorum occupies a space between history and hagiography, which successfully redeployed Eadmer's experiences of writing the past through hagiography, in order to produce an innovative and unique example of the genre of medieval historiography.     

‘Because their patron never dies’: ecclesiastical freedmen,socio-religious interaction,and group formation under the aegis of ‘church property’ in the early medieval west (sixth to eleventh centuries)

In the early medieval west, patronate, as adapted from Roman law, was a fundamental category in determining the legal status of freedmen. In many cases it entailed a basic set of obligations. In an increasing number of situations, however, the patron became an ecclesiastical institution, since slaves and freed persons were often given to churches and monasteries. As ecclesiastical institutions regarded their patronal rights over freed persons as part of inalienable church property, the patronal relationship became permanent and inheritable. In Eastern Francia (the Rhineland and beyond) this transformed ecclesiastical freedmen into religiously defined social groups with potentially distinct aims, religious tasks, and organizational structures, and a shared notion of freedom. From the Carolingian period onward, it even became attractive to enter voluntarily into this status. It is argued here that with its underlying network of socio-religious relations, patronate over ecclesiastical freedmen and censuales can be better understood when considered as an element of a ‘temple society’.     

Preaching,politics and episcopal reform in Wulfstan's early writings

Putting Wulfstan's earliest legal texts – the Canons of Edgar and the so‐called Peace of Edward and Guthrum – in dialogue with his homilies on the role of the bishop, this article argues that, from his earliest writings, Wulfstan adapted approaches from Kings Alfred and Edgar as well as from the Benedictine reform to make ambitious claims concerning the role of the bishop in the secular sphere. These claims went beyond the contemporary understanding of the relationship between bishop and king both in England and on the Continent, to frame the bishop as the primary authority in the nation because he is the teacher of teachers.     

Mediæval Military Architecture in England

Recent survey of the late twelfth- to early thirteenth-century chancel of St Mary's church, New Shoreham (Grade I listed) has revealed traces of two consecutive medieval paint schemes on the architecture, dating from c. 1210. No previous research or publication has taken account of these remains, which indicate the original interior appearance of this large and historic parish church. Samples of the paint have been scientifically analysed, revealing the pigments used and their stratigraphic relationship across the survey area; the identification of carbon black on architectural features is particularly important. Comparison with other ecclesiastical buildings in England and on the Continent indicates that St Mary's chancel is a key example of a widespread decorative scheme of red-and-black architectural polychromy, reinforcing its significance as an exemplar of early Gothic style in medieval England.     

On the Medieval and the Modern: Reading Nicholas of Cusa

ABSTRACT

In addressing not only the Conciliarist controversy of his day but issues of civil and ecclesiastical government and challenges to the Church, from reform movements to the division between Catholic and Orthodox traditions, Nicholas of Cusa (1401–64) continues to provoke responses. Some see him as the first modern; others view him as the last great medieval thinker. Demonstrating a breadth of interests, Nicholas of Cusa has come to be viewed as an important transitional figure who continues to provoke debate on the Western tradition and the history of political thought.     

Norman crusaders in the Catalan reconquest: Robert Burdet and the principality of Tarragona, 1129-55

A Norman adventurer, Robert Burdet, while participating in the Reconquista, established a short-lived crusader principality at Tarragona. This Norman gained fame after 1114, first serving Alfonso I el Batallador (‘The Warrior’) of Aragón in the wars against the Banu Hūd of Zaragoza; thereafter he was contracted by Archbishop Oleguer Bonestruga of Tarragona, the primate of northeastern Spain after 1118 and a papal legate after 1123, to assume in 1129 the secular lordship of Tarragona which had been constituted by the comital house of Barcelona as a papal fief and ecclesiastical principality. After this prelate's death in 1137, the Norman held this frontier and attempted to found an autonomous crusader state, but in 1146 the new archbishop, Bernard Tort, began to re-impose ecclesiastical control over Tarragona. At the same time, the house of Barcelona inherited the royal title from Aragón, thus forming the crown of Aragón by merging the former kingdom with the Catalan counties and reviving the crusade against Muslim Lérida and Tortosa which fell in 1148 and 1149. The archbishop and count moved against the Normans to integrate their principality into the new Aragó-Catalan federation. Prince Robert lost much of his power before his death in 1155, and his heirs were reduced to vassalage to Barcelona and subservience to their ecclesiastical lord, the archbishop of Tarragona. Civil war broke out after 1155 and the expulsion of the Normans by 1177 brought their principality to an end.     

Northumbria's southern frontier: a review

Northumbria's southern frontier was arguably the most important political boundary inside pre‐Viking England. It has, however, attracted little scholarly attention since Peter Hunter Blair's seminal article in Archaeo‐logia Aeliana in 1948, which later commentators have generally followed rather uncritically. This essay reviews his arguments in the light of more recent research and casts doubt on several key aspects of his case: firstly, it contests his view that this boundary was fundamental to the naming of both southern and northern England and its kingdoms; secondly, it queries the supposition that the Roman Ridge dyke system is likely to have been a Northumbrian defensive work; thirdly, it critiques the view that the Grey Ditch, at Bradwell, formed part of the frontier; and, finally, it argues against the boundary in the west being along the River Ribble. Rather, pre‐Viking Northumbria more probably included those parts of the eleventh‐century West Riding of Yorkshire which lie south of the River Don, with a frontier perhaps often identical to that at Domesday, and it arguably met western Mercia not on the Ribble but on the Mersey. It was probably political developments in the tenth century, and particularly under Edward the Elder and his son Athelstan, that led to the Mercian acquisition of southern Lancashire and the development of a new ecclesiastical frontier between the sees of Lichfield and York on the Ribble, in a period that also saw the York archdiocese acquire northern Nottinghamshire.     

Daily life in the country. The co-existence of Jews and Christians at the end of the Weimar Republic

Godwin's controversial claim for earthly immortality in the first edition of Political Justice has been largely dismissed by scholars as a flaw in his philosophy or as absurd speculation which Godwin cannily omitted from the later editions of the text. In this paper, I will demonstrate, not only that such claims were not nearly as idiosyncratic or eccentric as they have been presented, but that they constitute an intrinsic part of his overall philosophy regarding perfectibility and human progress. Moreover, by examining the revisions made to Political Justice in the second and third editions, it will be possible to prove that the essence of his argument regarding material immortality was not as radically altered as is widely accepted. I will further show how the population controversy of the 18th century forced Godwin to apply his perfectibilist theory to contemporary demographic challenges and how he defended his concept of immortality from both the principle of population and, more particularly, Malthusian philosophy.     

Some Literary Cafes of the Late Nineteenth Century

A concern with the use and abuse of power, how it is exercised, by whom, and to what ends runs throughout the fiction of Catalan writer Jaume Cabré. His 1984 novel Fra Junoy o l'agonia dels sons, which was awarded the Premi Prudenci Bertrana, Crítica Serra d'Or, and Nacional de la Crítica, dramatizes the intransigence of ecclesiastical authorities in conflict with the desire for tolerance of a friar. Cabré employs different temporal and spatial planes, shifting points of view, and one of his favorite strategies, that of beginning his novels in medias res and showing the consequences of actions before narrating the actions themselves. A contrapuntal technique contrasts not just characters, but differing concepts of religion and religious life, and sets quotations from the Bible against passages from the governing documents of the convent where Fra Junoy serves as confessor. The clash between his doubts and the certitude of the convent's rigid abbess calls to mind the contest between Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn in John Patrick Shanley's Doubt: A Parable (2005).     

Henry Savile's Tacitus and the English role on the Continent: Leicester,Hotman, Lipsius

This article argues that Henry Savile's widely admired Tacitus of 1591 should not be read as an implied call for a more aggressive English stance against Spanish advances on the Continent (as one recent article suggests), but precisely for a more restrained and prudential approach. Secondly, it calls into question the generally accepted view that Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, played a prominent role in the composition of the book. It argues that in reconstructing the work's original intellectual context and especially that of the supplement The Ende of Nero and the beginning of Galba, the main emphasis should not be on Essex's political and military career, but on that of his stepfather Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. The article provides an investigation (as far as the surviving information allows) of the background in Continental politics and political thought in relation to the text of The Ende, which suggests that it should primarily be read from the perspective of the unsuccessful English intervention in the Low Countries in 1585–88.     

Mixed Constitutionalism and Parliamentarism in Elizabethan England: The Case of Thomas Cartwright

The Admonition Controversy (1572–1577), largely between Thomas Cartwright (1534/5–1603) and John Whitgift (1530–1604) has proven fecund ground for intellectual historians analysing the religious dimension to early-modern political ideas. This paper argues that the religious dimension of Cartwright's mixed constitutionalism needs better explanation, rather than just noting that his ecclesiastical mixed constitutionalism (Presbyterianism) mirrors his political mixed constitutionalism. This paper tracks Cartwright's progressive, dialogical unfolding of his mixed constitutionalism in response to Whitgift's attempt to derive episcopacy from the fact of English monarchy, effectively discrediting the Admonition to Parliament (1572). Furthermore, the essay outlines how the Cartwright–Whitgift debate led Cartwright to emphasise a parliamentarist mixed constitution when most of his contemporaries, especially the more famous mixed constitutionalist, Thomas Smith, portrayed the English parliament leaning noticeably towards the monarch. This analysis accepts that religious polemic was a major driving force in the normalisation of parliamentarism, yet seeks to show exactly how this worked out in one of the most important church–state disputes in Elizabethan England.     

The life and career of Master Wiger of Utrecht (fl. 1209-1237): an early convert to the Order of Friars Minor

Master Wiger of Utrecht was a prominent ecclesiastical personality in the lower Rhineland during the early thirteenth century (fl. 1209-1237). Trained in theology and law, he rose rapidly through the prelacy, serving as dean and then provost of St Peter's Collegiate Church, Utrecht. As a member of the episcopal mensa, Wiger was also an active participant in diocesan and metropolitan affairs throughout the 1210s and 1220s; he probably even accompanied his bishop to Damietta, Egypt, to take part in the Fifth Crusade. However, after 1228, Wiger gave up his comfortable existence and joined the fledgling Franciscan Order. It was as a Minorite friar that Wiger conducted an official visitation of the order's English province in 1237. He did so at the behest of the controversial Minister General, Elias of Cortona.This essay traces Wiger's professional and scholarly attainments and explores his connection to various ecclesiastical and secular figures of the era. It examines the institutional support and material assistance offered to the mendicant movement by Wiger's associates amongst the prelacy and nobility of the Hohenstaufen Empire. Attention is also given to Master Wiger's literary activity and his status as one of the earliest identifiable creators of a searchable exempla compendium.     

Recent French archaeological work In Syria and Jordan

Abstract

The French connection with the late antique and Byzantine archaeology of the Levant is now more than a century old. Between 1864 and 1877 Melchoir de Vogue published his great Syrie Centrale: architecture civile et religieuse, a work which revealed for the first time the great richness of the archaeological record for the period. With its superb drawings and elegant plans it remains indispensable, especially since it describes some buildings, like the praetorium at Mismiyya, south of Damascus, which have long since disappeared. In these days when so much worthless nineteenth-century travel literature about the Middle East has been reprinted, it is sad that this masterpiece remains unavailable. The French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon from 1921 onwards gave a great impetus to these studies. Although most attention was given to great classical sites like Palmyra or Crusader ones like Crac des Chevaliers, late antiquity was not neglected and there was a growing interest in the deserted towns of the limestone hills of the north from J. Mattern, li travers les villes mortes de Haute Syre (Beirut 1944) and J. Lassus' study of the ecclesiastical architecture, Sanctuaires chretiens de Syrie (1947). This activity culminated in G. Tchalenko's great work Les villages antiques de fa Syrie du Nord (1958) which was based on field work done before 1939.     

Uxores,ancillae and dominae: women in thirteenth-century Hungary in the Register of Várad

Women’s history for Árpád-era Hungary (1000–1301) has generally been restricted to legal issues and the royal court. This study addresses these deficiencies by examining women in the Register of Várad in regard to three areas of investigation: marriage practices and the involvement of the Church, access women had to property and the access women had to authority. Evidence from the register indicates that by the thirteenth century, ecclesiastical ideas regarding marriage were barely making themselves felt. Ideas of consent and even the indissolubility of marriage were at times unimportant. Though priests were occasionally present at marriages, their role was not decisive. Women had three primary means of obtaining property. They could receive gifts or dower on the event of their wedding, and they could receive a portion of the patrimony. This inheritance was termed the quarta filialis as it amounted to no more than one-quarter of the father’s property. These gifts came under the control of the woman’s husband, and she could not access them until his death. Widowhood combined with guardianship of a minor son could allow women to exert considerable power and, just as elsewhere in Latin Europe, women’s access to public and private authority most approximated that of men’s as a widow. Not all women, of course, had access to such power. The Register of Várad shows numerous instances of women slaves who were under the complete control of their master.