‘From Nitria to Sitria’: the construction of Peter Damian's Vita Beati Romualdi

This article examines the construction of Peter Damian's (c.1007–72) Vita Beati Romualdi (c.1042) as a piece of eleventh-century hagiography. Peter Damian was an erudite hermit, monk and reformer whose ideas on spiritual perfection helped to shape the ideals of the so-called ‘Gregorian Reform’ movement in the eleventh century. This article aims to contribute to recent historiography on the eleventh century through a re-examination of this important piece of hagiography, which has not been more thoroughly considered by medievalists since 1957 in Tabacco's critical edition. This article suggests that, through the biography of St Romuald, Peter Damian sought to promote the example of the Desert Fathers in formulating a more rigorous monastic rule, not only for his hermits at Fonte Avellana, but also for a wide monastic and lay audience. It also argues that there existed a gradual evolution in monastic ideology from the tenth century onwards, sponsored by ascetics like Damian who strove constantly to lead a more austere existence based on the Desert tradition and more particularly the Life of St Antony. In particular, the article pays attention to how Damian, as a hagiographer, was engaged in the construction of Romuald's sanctity.     

A Byzantine hagiographical parody: Life of Mary the Younger

Abstract

In this paper, it is argued that The Life of Mary the Younger, an anonymous Byzantine text of the eleventh century, has a conscious intertextual dialogue with the oldest Byzantine Life venerating a holy woman, the Life of Macrina written by her brother, Gregory of Nyssa, between 380 and 383. The intertextual relation between these two female Lives takes the form of parody. Following Linda Hutcheon's theory of parody, this article shows how the anonymous hagiographer of Mary reworks Gregory's authoritative text to create a new work, a parody in terms of postmodern literary criticism, whose aim was to criticise old and contemporary customs, conventions and ideologies. In other words, the present article approaches and decodes the literariness, the function and ideology of Mary's Life in the light of Macrina's Life.     

Much Ado About Dugald: The Chequered Career of Dugald Stewart's Letter to Sir William Forbes on James Beattie's Essay on Truth

Summary

Although Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo's An Account of the Life and Writings of James Beattie has long served as an invaluable resource for those interested in Beattie's life and thought, there has been little scholarship on the genesis of Forbes's book. This article considers the role played by Dugald Stewart—as well as that of his friend, Archibald Alison—in the making of Forbes's Life of Beattie. It also examines the reasons for Forbes's decision not to print Stewart's letter in its entirety in the Life of Beattie and explores the letter's significance for understanding Stewart's philosophical development.     

Gender and Sanctity in the Middle Ages

This review essay examines recent trends and developments in the study of medieval sanctity and gender, looking at the range of approaches which have been and are being taken by both historians and literary scholars to a wide variety of hagiographic texts. Two recent studies of medieval hagiography are reviewed, John Kitchen, Saints' Lives and the Rhetoric of Gender: Male and Female in Merovingian Hagiography and the collection Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters edited by Catherine Mooney. These works are representative of differing approaches to the issue of male authors' representations of female sanctity and concomitant issues of gender ideology.     

Inspecting the pious body: Christological morphology and the ritual-crucifixion allegation

The first ritual-murder accusations appeared at a time in which a theology that was increasingly invested in Christ's human body was articulated. Forms of mimetic devotion emerged across Latin Christendom, but were considered highly controversial. The Life and Miracles of St William of Norwich, this essay argues, is an attempt to think about some of the problems that arise from this theology. By interpreting Jewish actions, both real and alleged, the author, Thomas of Monmouth, deployed a Christian bodily logic in order to make a claim about William's sanctity based on his physical ‘likeness’ to Christ in suffering. While in the end this rhetorical and theological scheme was not widely accepted by the author's contemporaries, the Christological grammar of bodily hermeneutics that the Vita articulates resonated in the language of subsequent allegations.     

Review articles/Besprekingsartikels

Abstract

Swiss missionary Henri Alexandre Junod has been widely recognised for his extensive entomological, botanical, linguistic and anthropological contributions regarding southern Africa. However, shortly after publishing his most acclaimed work, The Life of a South African Tribe, Junod wrote a little-studied novel, Zidji: étude de m?urs sud-africaines, in which he endeavoured to give a detailed portrayal of South African Society. Interestingly, he chose fiction as the best vehicle for conveying what he saw as the 'truth' of the situation. As the only novel written by Junod this is a unique piece of writing in relation to his other work and its study shows that it is essential to an understanding of Junod. In Zidji he attempts to give a complete picture of South African society at the beginning of the twentieth century by recounting a black convert's experiences of what Junod considered to be the three main influences acting upon black society of the time, that is, tribal life (paganism), the mission station (Christianity) and white society (civilisation). By considering his depiction of South Africa, in particular his presentation of 'civilisation', further light is shed on his sentiments and perspective of the missionary encounter, social change and race relations in South Africa.     

Performing post-migration cinema in Italy: Corazones de Mujer by K. Kosoof

Following consideration of the most common representations of migrants in Italian cinema, where they are often portrayed as victimised and minor subjects, this article analyses a film by Davide Sordella and Pablo Benedetti, Corazones de Mujer (2008) as a ‘post-migration alternative’. This film considers a different way of depicting ‘foreigners’, and addresses the complex issues of gender and sexuality as they emerge at the interface between Western and Arab cultures. Within the conceptual framework of Judith Butler's ‘gender performativity’ and Rosi Braidotti's ‘nomadic subject’, this article aims to suggest an alternative way of representing migrants in Italian cinema as agents of social and gender transgressions.     

Practical Hagiography: James of Voragine’s Sermones and Vita on St Margaret of Antioch

Abstract

In addition to his exceedingly popular Legenda Aurea, James of Voragine wrote in another hagiographical genre: sermons on the saints. The Sermones de sanctis likewise became immediately popular, as his Dominican brothers used James’s model sermons to learn to preach about the saints in a format that would provide the laity with intelligible and practical theological instruction. James’s corpus gives us a rather unusual opportunity to compare the ways in which a single author manipulates multiple hagiographical genres, and his writings on St Margaret of Antioch allow us to explore how a medieval preacher used a historically disputed saint — a dragon-fighter — to provide a practical model of sanctity to his lay audience. I compare the representations of Margaret in James’s sermones and vita, arguing that James adapted certain features of Margaret’s saintly example in the vita to instruct the audience of his sermons about proper Christian virtues and actions. As a point of comparison, I explore a sermon by Évrard of Val des Écoliers in which the Augustinian teaches his audience a practical skill — how to pray — through Margaret’s example.     

Calvin's Legacy for Public Theology

Abstract

Many thinkers, of whom Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a prominent example, have expressed ambivalence regarding John Calvin's contribution to our understanding of a healthy civic order: while Calvin's political genius is undeniable, he and his followers are also known for intolerant attitudes and practices. Thus the image of "two Calvins" by a recent biographer of the Reformer. In this essay I lay out some relevant tensions in Calvin's political thought, while also identifying underlying themes that were later developed by his followers. Special attention is given to the ways in which the "neo-Calvinist" movement, initiated in the nineteenth century by Abraham Kuyper, both corrected and expanded upon Calvin's theology of public life. It is noted that while Kuyper's thought also influenced the Afrikaners' apartheid ideology, Reformed opponents of apartheid also appealed to elements in Kuyper's theology of public life. Although the results have been mixed, Kuyper and others did demonstrate the ways in which some basic elements of Calvin's thought can be used to address issues that are being given sustained attention today in broad-ranging explorations of what makes for a flourishing civil society characterized by a variety of "mediating structures."     

On the path to oblivion: The pilgrims' declining role in the St. Christopher plays of early and early modern Spain

This article examines the representation of the pilgrim in the corpus of St. Christopher dramas of early and early modern Iberia. The importance of the character's supporting role varies according to the era in which each play is written. At first, in the medieval religious dramas of the Crown of Aragon, the pilgrim not only celebrates St. Christopher's piety and anticipates his meeting with Jesus Christ, but also embodies the sanctity and devotion necessitated of pilgrimage. The pilgrims undergo a transformation in the sixteenth century as they become comic and serve as foils to the protagonist's gravity. On the seventeenth-century secular stage, the representations diverge: they begin with a traditional representation of the pilgrim, but then the figure ultimately disappears as the comedias focus on the later period of St. Christopher's life, the result of a Tridentine directive that refocused the general worship of saints and hagiographical literature.     

Turning Latin into Greek: Anna Komnene and the Gesta Roberti Wiscardi

This article examines the relationship between one of the most famous Byzantine sources, the Alexiad of Anna Komnene, and the Gesta Roberti Wiscardi, written by William of Apulia at the end of the eleventh century. It shows that Anna not only had access to a substantial archive of material relating to the Normans of southern Italy, but also that the author drew extensively on William of Apulia's account of the attacks of Robert Guiscard on Epirus in 1081–5. Multiple borrowings are identified, including a crucial case of mistranslation from the Latin into Greek, demonstrating that the Gesta lay at the heart of the Alexiad's coverage of the Normans. It argues that Anna Komnene makes carefully judged variations from the southern Italian text, before suggesting that the latter was composed shortly before the Council of Bari (1098). It concludes with a suggestion that the contribution of William of Apulia is surreptitiously acknowledged by the Byzantine author.     

Intersections between philosophy and art: expressions of immanence in the seventeenth century — Spinoza and Vermeer*

ABSTRACT

Spinoza's philosophy of immanence represents a turning point that radically changed our conception of human agency and its relation to infinity. Hans Blumenberg rightly called the principle of immanence “a general hypothesis of the epoch”, a principle that applies to philosophy no less than to the sciences and arts in the seventeenth century. This article looks at Dutch paintings by drawing parallels between Spinoza's philosophy and Vermeer's work. Spinoza and Vermeer both deny a dualistic conception of the world and a hierarchical structure between inner and outer spheres. With the example of Vermeer's painting the Milkmaid, this article shows how an analysis of light and colour, time and space, reveal a vision of immanent infinity, with the human agent at its centre.     

“.. . And Jill came tumbling after”

Milan Stuchlik. Life on a Half Share: Mechanisms of Social Recruitment among the Mapuche of Southern Chile. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1976. 222 pp. Maps, illustrations, tables, figures, and bibliography. $25.00.     

Theatre,mathematics, and the aesthetics of infinity: Complicite’s A Disappearing Number

ABSTRACT

Complicite's A Disappearing Number is one of the best examples of contemporary plays that use theatrical strategies to convey complex scientific ideas. Complicite uses performance to stage the complex mathematical concepts of partition and infinite convergent series, taking inspiration from the statement by renowned British mathematician G. H. Hardy that “a mathematician... is a maker of patterns”. As well as performativity, other elements in the play contribute to performing mathematics on the stage, elements such as time and space, narrative structure, thematic content, and characterization. Complicite introduces a complex pattern that runs throughout the play to connect these elements to form a complete whole. These elements effectively work with each other to release a set of clues that guide the audience towards decoding the play's pattern. This study provides an in-depth analysis of these connections and the complex process of decoding the pattern in the play.     

Laughing at a saint? Miracle and irony in the Vita Gangulfi prima

This article examines the Vita Gangulfi prima, a text which was frequently copied and widely circulated in the Middle Ages. It argues that the text can be understood as an ironic discourse on miracle stories in hagiographical texts: the central message of the Vita is that meek and penitential living leads to sanctity, and not the enjoyment of stories about miracles. At the same time, the Vita presents the reader to some extent with a performance of this idea. The reader who sees through to the Vita's ironic intent is encouraged to laugh at the saint and thereby comes to comprehend the very sin for which the various characters in the Vita are punished, while the text simultaneously depicts penitence as the way out of this sinfulness. The Vita's critique of miracle stories made an eccentric contribution to a discourse which was also carried on in a number of other hagiographical texts of the early tenth century.     

Social Science and the Discovery of a 'Post-Protestant People': Rowntree's Surveys of York and their other Legacy

Abstract

Despite the bitter criticism it evoked, both from clerical professionals and lay experts on its publication in 1951, Rowntree's and Lavers's English Life and Leisure survived to become an enduring classic of modern British social science. Yet, in many ways, the respectability it eventually achieved now masks the true radicalism of its findings. Building on fifty years of his own social survey work in York, Rowntree (and his collaborator) were able to show the full extent of the decline of church organization, affiliation and attendance in twentieth-century Britain. They also demonstrated just how these processes had particularly affected the Protestant community — most notably the Nonconformist Protestant community — in England. Finally, they went on to demonstrate how that — institutional — decline was increasingly related to changes in, and a diminution of, specifically Christian beliefs amongst the population as a whole. Their results anticipated many of the conclusions of the 'pessimistic' sociologists of religion in the 1960s. They also constitute a profound critique of 'optimistic' historical revisionism in more recent years. As such, they are perhaps more relevant than ever.     

Writing the region: Jonathan Couch and the Cornish fauna

Abstract

The county of Cornwall was the subject of an early nineteenth century attempt to compile an exhaustive regional fauna, Jonathan Couch's three volume A Cornish Fauna (1838–44). Although the Fauna was part of a much broader contemporary impulse to document the natural history of Britain, it was a very early example of a zoological study organised by geography rather than faunal group. It therefore required the author to make an explicit defence of its geographical approach and focus. According to Couch the region was the best place from which to build a better understanding of nature and, ultimately, of nature's creator. In particular, careful observations of a naturalist's local fauna could contribute to mid-nineteenth century debates over the distribution and migration of animals, their extinction, and their value to human industry. According to Couch, the county of Cornwall was especially suited to this sort of investigation. Indeed, although little had been done on the Cornish fauna before Couch's own study, his work was the catalyst for a number of other Cornish naturalists over the latter half of the century.