Popular Preaching in the Thirteenth Century: Rhetoric in the Fight against Heresy

ABSTRACT

Much has been said about the new path forged by preaching during the thirteenth century. In that era of economic revival and material development of towns and technology, along with innovation in scholastic methods, it seems only natural that mendicant preachers, firmly engaged in society, would infiltrate the social organisation and take the spiritual lead. Also, from that time on, eradicating heresy was paramount. Mendicant preachers, the spearhead of the papacy, devised new advanced rhetorical weapons that were able to reach far and wide. Indeed, close scrutiny of their activism reveals an innovative modus operandi, necessitated by the systems of communication for lay and clerical society alike. Based on the so-called ‘popular’ preachers' discourse and exempla, this article appraises and re-evaluates the character and efficiency of the means of communication applied through popular rhetoric in the enterprise of mass-persuasion in the face of a peril deemed to threaten the very foundations of Christian society. However, investigating the extent to which the anti-heretical preaching campaign, verbo et exemplo, reached its expected goal in the long run, given the increasingly repressive parallel mechanism of the Inquisition, exposes an asymptotic struggle.     

Substitute or subordinate? The role of a male procurator at a Benedictine women's monastery

This paper examines an attempt to introduce a male administrator at a Benedictine women's monastery in Catalonia in the fourteenth century. It argues that records from the monastic and episcopal archives indicate the existence of a complex and dynamic interplay between the nuns and their abbess and the bishop. Due to this complicated process of negotiation, the bishop did not succeed in imposing a new male authority figure over the traditional leadership of the community. Over the next fifty years, the abbesses reasserted themselves and redefined the procurator's role as one subordinate to themselves. The episode illustrates that nuns could employ varied tactics to resist attempts to change their traditional administrative structure.     

论中古基督教之异端

本文从政治、社会、经济、思想及宗教的角度探讨中古基督教正统与异端之争。认为胜 (正统 )、负 (异端 )之关键往往极受客观环境所影响 ,诸如城市的兴起、教会的改革、知识分子之涌现及其与俗世王侯和教廷的关系等等。     

"女帝世纪"成因探析

七、八世纪是日本历史上的一段重要时期。这一时期,女性登上了日本的政治舞台,并且在长达两百年的时间里,共涌现出了八代六位女天皇,该时期也被称为"女帝世纪"。那么"女帝世纪"这一独特历史现象的出现是巧合,还是必然?本文拟以"母性崇拜"情结为核心,从日本的继承制度、神话传说、婚姻制度等角度对"女帝世纪"的成因做尝试性的分析。     

19世纪英国工人阶级子女童年生活转型原因探析

在19世纪,英国工人阶级子女的童年生活,逐渐由参加劳动转变为接受教育。这种转型根源于当时的社会、政治、经济生活所发生的深刻变化。思想文化界看待童年的观念变迁影响着人们对待儿童的态度。工业社会对劳动者的素质提出了新要求,改变了人们对待儿童的劳动和教育问题的传统态度;国家出于社会控制以及对民族未来的考虑,也在下层儿童的教育和劳动立法问题上采取越来越主动的态度;工人阶级家庭对于子女的教育和劳动问题的态度,也因为时代和社会的变化以及生活水平的提高而发生着改变。正是在这些因素的作用下,工人阶级儿童的生活重心逐渐由劳动转移到教育,这种转变不仅改变了几个世纪以来英国普通儿童的命运,也使得现代意义的童年生活初具模型。     

The Origins of Tunnage and Poundage: Parliament and the Estate of Merchants in the 14th Century

By establishing the dates and political context of all early grants of the subsidy of tunnage and poundage, this study provides new evidence for the relationship between parliament and the so-called 'estate of merchants' during the third quarter of the 14th century. Until the 1370s, tunnage and poundage was granted by the king's council with the assent of groups of merchants; it was only at the end of Edward III's reign that grants of the tax began to be made in parliament, and only from the mid 1380s that it became fully integrated into the customs system. Throughout the period of experimentation, the subsidy was intended for a specific purpose: the defence of the coasts and of English shipping. This partly explains why the crown chose to discuss it with groups of mariners and merchants rather than with the Lords and Commons in parliament. The chronology therefore calls into question assumptions about the collapse of the estate of merchants in the 1350s and the take-over of its fiscal and political agenda by the burgesses in the parliamentary Commons. Through an analysis of petitions made in the name of the 'merchants of England', it can be shown that crown and parliament alike continued to recognize this group as a distinct political entity for the rest of Edward III's reign. The decisive shift came not in the 1350s but in 1382, when the merchants themselves acknowledged that the appropriate place to determine the crown's financial policies was, indeed, in parliament.     

The Reign of Grace: Liberalism and Heresy in the New World

This article examines the controversy surrounding The Reign of Grace (1888), a pamphlet published in Dunedin by William Salmond (d. 1917), a Presbyterian intellectual. It came in for harsh criticism. James MacGregor, a conservative minister, and Adam Johnston, a layman, wrote rebutting pamphlets. The controversy occurred during a period in which Presbyterianism's leadership was dividing along liberal and traditionalist lines. It dominated proceedings at the Presbytery of Dunedin for months, featured at the 1888 Synod of Otago and Southland, and received some coverage abroad. At stake was Salmond's proposal for an extended “reign of grace” that allowed for postmortem repentance. His opponents considered this an attack on Christian mission. I discuss the controversy in terms of Salmond's views on the Bible, his challenge to the Westminster Confession, and his specific proposition for extending grace's “reign.” I argue that while the debate reflected a stark liberal–traditionalist polarisation — something seen particularly in regard to the Confession — there was something further at play. Regarding Salmond's extension of grace's reign, the debate was not between liberals and traditionalists, but between a man largely standing alone against an array of liberals and traditionalists who found his idea dangerous.