Bede,Irish computistica and Annus Mundi

Bede's decision to diverge from the mainstream chronological tradition, based on the Septuagint, in favour of the Vulgate for chronology has generally been explained by his concerns about contemporary apocalypticism. This essay will argue that Bede's choice of Annus Mundi was also greatly influenced by Irish computistica. These texts incorporate a chronological framework – influenced by Victorius of Aquitaine's Easter Table – that was implicitly and explicitly apocalyptic and provided a date for the Passion that Bede objected to. Bede was greatly indebted to Irish computistica but adopting the Vulgate Annus Mundi allowed him to assert his own views on chronology.     

Bede,iconoclasm and the Temple of Solomon

In Bede's lifetime (c.673–735) the churches at Wearmouth‐Jarrow were richly decorated with panel paintings from Rome. This essay examines the significance that those paintings held for Bede and his community, and it reveals the strategies that Bede employed to defend them in his commentary on the Temple of Solomon (De templo), which was written after images had become a contentious issue in Byzantium during the reign of Emperor Leo III (714–41). This has important implications for our understanding of Bede's place in the intellectual landscape of early eighth‐century Europe, and it shows the ambitious nature and topical relevance of his mature exegetical programme.     

Bede's Cædmon, “The Man Who Had No Story” (Irish Tale-Type 2412B)

Although various analogues have been cited to Bede's account of the poet Cædmon, none are very close. The plot of a tale well known in modern Irish and Scottish tradition, however, “The Man Who Had No Story” (Irish type 2412B), resembles the first part of Bede's chapter so closely as to suggest that Bede shaped his account under the influence of this narrative pattern, which must, therefore, be assumed to be of some antiquity. Clinching this connection is the motif that Cædmon, a lowly cowherd, is called by name by his mysterious interlocutor. Naturally, Bede turned this tale-type to his own purposes by emphasising devotional features that are not a normal part of the tale. Moreover, he added the story of Cædmon's later life and pious death. Bede's monastic milieu was not impervious to oral culture, it seems. His account of Cædmon involves much myth-making, and it is best read as an example of the storyteller's art.     

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.     

MIRACLES, HISTORICAL TESTIMONIES, AND PROBABILITIES

The topic and methods of David Hume's “Of Miracles” resemble his historiographical more than his philosophical works. Unfortunately, Hume and his critics and apologists have shared the pre‐scientific, indeed a historical, limitations of Hume's original historical investigations. I demonstrate the advantages of the critical methodological approach to testimonies, developed initially by German biblical critics in the late eighteenth century, to a priori discussions of miracles. Any future discussion of miracles and Hume must use the critical method to improve the quality and relevance of the debate. Hume's definition of miracles as breaking the laws of nature is anachronistic. The concept of immutable laws of nature was introduced only in the seventeenth century, thousands of years after the Hebrews had introduced the concept of miracles. Holder and Earman distinguish the posterior probability of the occurrence of a particular miracle from that of the occurrence of some miracle. I argue that though this distinction is significant, their formulae for evaluating the respective probabilities are not useful. Even if miracle hypotheses have low probabilities, it may still be rational to accept and use them if there is no better explanation for the evidence of miracles. Biblical critics and historians do not examine the probabilities of miracle hypotheses, or any other hypotheses about the past, in isolation, but in comparison with competing hypotheses that attempt to better explain, increase the likelihood of a broader scope of evidence, as well as be more fruitful. The fruitful and simple theories of Hume's later and better contemporaries, the founders of biblical criticism, offer the best explanation of the broadest scope of evidence of miracles. Moreover, they do so by being linguistically sensitive to the ways “miracle” was actually used by those who claimed to have observed them. The lessons of this analysis for historians and philosophers of history—that the acceptance of historical hypotheses is a comparative endeavor, and that the claims of those in the past must be assessed in their own terms—ought to be clear.     

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.     

From the Preface to the French edition of Une exigence infinie

Abstract

In 2008, Rowan Williams sparked a huge controversy in Britain by pleading for more recognition of shari'a law. The present paper aims to explore Mike Higton's suggestion that this plea actually results from Williams's defence of the Enlightenment. The paper will first show that Williams's plea for increased recognition of shari'a is in line with the Enlightenment ideal of sociability. It will subsequently show that this does not mean that Williams gives up on the importance of the secular law. Special attention will be given to the two fundamental principles behind Williams's views on shari'a and these principles will be developed with the help of Edward Schillebeeckx's view of ‘the humanum’. Finally, the paper will also indicate that Williams's two fundamental principles offer a way to better understand the biblical commandment to love one's neighbour—a view that will be developed with reference to the work of Slavoj Zizek.     

Politics without democracy 1815–1914: Perception and preoccupation in British government

Nietzsche's embrace of the idea of eternal recurrence has long puzzled readers, both because the idea is inherently implausible and because it seems inconsistent with other aspects of his philosophy. This paper offers a novel account of Nietzsche's motives for that embrace—namely that Nietzsche found in eternal recurrence the only possible way to reconcile three potent and apparently conflicting convictions: (1) there are no Hinterwelten (“worlds-beyond”), (2) the great love (take joy in) all things just as they are (amor fati), and (3) all joy wills eternity. The case for this account has two parts. I show first that Nietzsche was deeply committed to each of these principles at or before the time the idea of eternal recurrence “came to” him in 1881 and second that these principles, though in apparent conflict, can, as Nietzsche understood them, be reconciled by, and only by, the idea of eternal recurrence. It follows, I argue, that the idea of eternal recurrence was originally independent of Nietzsche's conceptions of the will to power and the Übermensch.     

Simone Weil's Political Theology

This article suggests that Simone Weil's political theology is characterized by the idea of labor and the event of laboring. I begin by arguing that her thinking is shaped by a materialist reading of Christianity that employs Marx's concepts — labor, capital and alienation — to examine the political implications of three theological ideas, fall, slavery and sin. Next, I suggest that although laboring should be understood as a creative endeavor, Weil argues that it is always conditioned and constrained by a force she terms social matter. This constraint produces what Marx called alienation and Weil will refer to as enslavement (and even sin). Finally, I contend that Weil's idea of labor — and its call for a minimization of constraint — provides a counter-force to social matter. I conclude by suggesting that Weil's labor provides a different way of conceptualizing not just the political subject, but political theology itself.     

WHAT TYPE OF HISTORIAN? CONCEPTUAL HISTORY AND THE HISTORY OF CONCEPTS: A COMPLEX LEGACY AND A RECENT CONTRIBUTION

Javier Fernández Sebastián's edited collections of essays, Political Concepts and Time, is both a critical homage to the monumental work of Reinhart Koselleck (1923–2006) and an important contribution to the methodology of history‐writing. Centered on the polysemic nature of concepts, which are read as “‘vehicles for thought’” studied in their pragmatic and communicative applications in society, Political Concepts and Time provides a stimulating analysis of the role, weight, and future of conceptual history. Its thirteen essays offer an account of problems, questions, and debates on the interplay of words and concepts, meaning and historical change, context and discourse. They endeavor to clarify the complicated and perennially unresolved relationship between theory and practice. In order to do so, Fernández Sebastián has assembled a scholarly composite and broadly international group of specialists from a variety of disciplines and research fields. With the intellectual legacy of Koselleck's Begriffsgeschichte looming large, this book rethinks the ways in which not just historians but also social scientists and philosophers study the past as the expression of contingent, ever‐changing, and revocable semantic units shaping the culturally plural worlds we inhabit. Informed by the idea that history is porous, Political Concepts and Time also deals with the perhaps obvious but no less challenging issue of our approach to time as everyday experience and through its representation(s). Together with exploring the volume's specific historical topics, this essay will highlight some of its limitations and, above all, will respond to its criticism of intellectual history. The following pages will thus argue the case for the latter methodological perspective by reflecting on the type of historian it delineates. Claiming that in their investigation of past meanings intellectual historians make use of creative imagination, the essay will suggest that this model of history‐writing leads to a better understanding of multiple sources and that it might ultimately help overcome some of the inconsistencies and often simplistic divisions between various branches of the historiographical tree. In particular, a small proposal to reconcile conceptual and intellectual history will be advanced.     

5. INDIA,ITIHASA, AND INTER‐HISTORIOGRAPHICAL DISCOURSE

An effective and enriching discourse on comparative historiography invests itself in understanding the distinctness and identity that have created various civilizations. Very often, infected by bias, ideology, and cultural one‐upmanship, we encounter a presumptuous‐ness that is redolent of impatience with the cultural other and of an ingrained refusal to acknowledge what one's own history and culture fail to provide. This “failure” need not be the inspiration to subsume the other within one's own understanding of the world and history and, thereby, neuter the possibilities of knowledge‐sharing and cultural interface. It is a realization of the “lack” that provokes and generates encounters among civilizations. It should goad us to move away from what we have universalized and, hence, normalized into an axis of dialogue and mutuality. What Indians would claim as itihasa need not be rudely frowned upon because it does not chime perfectly with what the West or the chinese know as history. accepting the truth that our ways of understanding the past, the sense of the past, and historical sense‐generation vary with different cultures and civilizations will enable us to consider itihasa from a perspective different from the Hegelian modes of doing history and hence preclude its subsumption under the totalitarian rubric of world history. How have Indians “done” their history differently? What distinctiveness have they been able to weave into their discourses and understanding of the past? Does the fact of their proceeding differently from how the West or the Chinese conceptualize history delegitimize and render inferior the subcontinental consciousness of “encounters with past” and its ways of being “moved by the past”? This article expatiates on the distinctiveness of itihasa and argues in favor of relocating its epistemological and ideological persuasions within a comparative historiographical discourse.     

Recovering the histories of women religious in England in the central Middle Ages: Wilton Abbey and Goscelin of Saint-Bertin

Building upon the efforts made by scholars over the past 20 years to enrich our understanding of the vibrancy and sophistication of the literary cultures fostered within English communities of women religious during the central Middle Ages, this article shows that these women kept their communities' histories and preserved their saints' cults through their own writing. The evidence for this is uncovered through comparative analysis of the two extant versions of the post-mortem miracles of the late Anglo-Saxon saint Edith of Wilton (c.961–c.984): the Vita et translatio Edithe, composed c.1080 by the Flemish hagiographer Goscelin of Saint-Bertin (c.1040–d. after 1107), and the early fifteenth-century Middle English Wilton Chronicle. This analysis reveals that the writer of the Chronicle depended on a collection of Edith's and other Wilton saints' miracles that was maintained by their consorors throughout the late tenth and eleventh centuries, independently of Goscelin's account.     

A revolutionary's biography: the case of V D Savarkar

This article examines the contributions of V.D. Savarkar, an intellectual founder of Hindu nationalism, to the history of an idea: namely, the revolutionary. It examines the impact of Savarkar's interpretation of the revolutionary on modern political thought in India. It explains that Savarkar established criteria for identifying revolutionaries, but he also argued that studying the life-stories of revolutionaries would inspire Indians to create future revolutions. It will further consider that for Savarkar, the reading of history was ontologically transformative and the contributions of past revolutionaries were meant to create an effective response for readers to become transformed into new revolutionaries. Through a study of the first English-language biography of Savarkar, entitled The Life of Barrister Savarkar (1926), and Savarkar's early writings on revolutionary wars, this paper will show the importance of examining Savarkar's ideas and interpretations for considering the making of revolutionary thought in India in the early decades of the twentieth century.     

Getting the punchline: deciphering anti-Jewish humour in Anglo-Norman England

The idea that laughter was impossible for medieval monks has been largely overturned in recent decades, but the paucity of sources and the cultural specificity of humour still makes understanding their sense of humour difficult. William of Malmesbury, a twelfth-century English Benedictine, nevertheless provides a rare glimpse of what made monks laugh in his collection of Marian miracles, the Miracula sanctae Mariae. Introducing one of his miracle stories as ‘a great joke that will have readers laughing out loud’, William gives us invaluable information about the way humour could infiltrate the most unlikely of genres, in this case one generally thought to be devotional and edificatory in nature. The story is also virulently anti-Jewish. By placing the joke in its historical context, exploring the themes of corruption, political weakness and interaction between Jews and Christians in twelfth-century England, we can understand what this joke meant and what it can in turn reveal about the world that produced it.     

Hwaetberht,Sicgfrith and the reforming of Wearmouth and Jarrow

This paper builds upon recent scholarship, exploring how Wearmouth‐Jarrow, founded as a ‘family monastery’ in the mainstream of early medieval Northumbrian monasticism, reformed itself to become the proto‐Benedictine bastion of correct behaviour described in Bede's Lives of the Abbots and the anonymous Life of Ceolfrith. The understudied abbots Hwaetberht and Sicgfrith appear to be at the heart of this process. Their careers and actions suggest the existence of a party at Wearmouth‐Jarrow opposed to the dominance of the founder's kin group and wishing to reform the monastery on Benedictine lines. This party triumphed only in 716, when Hwaetberht became abbot.     

AGAINST PERIODIZATION: KOSELLECK'S THEORY OF MULTIPLE TEMPORALITIES

In this essay I intend to flesh out and discuss what I consider to be the groundbreaking contribution by the German historian and theorist of history Reinhart Koselleck to postwar historiography: his theory of historical times. I begin by discussing the view, so prominent in the Anglophone context, that Koselleck's idea of the plurality of historical times can be grasped only in terms of a plurality of historical periods in chronological succession, and hence, that Koselleck's theory of historical times is in reality a theory of periodization. Against this interpretation, to be found in works by Kathleen Davis, Peter Osborne, and Lynn Hunt, among others, I will argue that not only is Koselleck's theory of historical times, or, with a more phenomenlogical turn of phrase, his theory of multiple temporalities, not a theory of periodization, it is, furthermore, a theory developed to defy periodization. Hence, at the core of Koselleck's work is the attempt to replace the idea of linear, homogeneous time with a more complex, heterogeneous, and multilayered notion of temporality. In this essay I will demonstrate how this shift is achieved by means of three dichotomies: between natural and historical, extralinguistic and intralinguistic, and diachronic and synchronic time.