Hawk from a Handsaw

'A Tawdry Crow and an Impending Fall. Islam, Conversion and Crusade in William of Tripoli's Notitia de Machometo and De statu Sarracenorum', Master dissertation, Université Catholique de Louvain, 2020

This thesis presents the works and visions on Islam, conversion and crusade ascribed to William of Tripoli, a Dominican friar who lived and worked during the middle of the 13th century in the Holy Land, and the concomitant research on these works and his persona. There are two treatises on his name, Notitia de Machometo and De statu Sarracenorum, of which the former has served as a model for the latter, which is strongly less polemical, expands on the historiographical aspect and was very popular in the medieval West. Considering its profoundly different approach to the topics discussed in Notitia, it is very likely that it is from the hand of another, European author and not of William. This thesis will discuss the historical setting, the persona of William of Tripoli, the contents and the debate on the authorship of the two works ascribed to him. Keywords: William of Tripoli – Islam and the West – Notitia de Machometo – De statu Sarracenorum – Dominican – Crusades - Conversion

Authors, actors and informers are involved in this phrase

English Studies, 2017

This paper argues that the recent trend in early modern studies occasionally referred to as the “new humoralism”, which lays heavy emphasis on the physiological and humoral significance of the emotions in seventeenth-century Renaissance literature, pays insufficient attention to the theological traditions of Christian humanism in the sixteenth century. In particular, the article traces a trajectory of the use of metaphors of clean versus muddy and calm versus turbulent water in Erasmus, John Calvin, John Donne and Edward Reynolds to illustrate the complexity of literary-theological discourse revolving around affectivity in sermons, treatises and biblical commentaries in the period, while simultaneously establishing the continuity of an exegetical tradition concerning Christ’s emotions.

Notes & Queries, 2024

Both Shakespeare and Davies share a sense of the inflationary rhetoric that surrounds these events. Davies worries that if he has used too many 'Hyperboles', then 'Art should discharge. .. MUCH on loves effect' (ll. 376-7). Shakespeare, as dramatist, is able to stand askance, representing in the Duke of Norfolk someone who, like Davies, struggles to find words rich enough appreciate the royal scene. Shakespeare's Norfolk, like Davies, conflates the two kings:. .. him in eye, Still him in praise: and, being present both 'Twas said they saw but one (1.1.30-32) But Norfolk adds a revealing comment on his own observation:. .. no discerner Durst wag his tongue in censure. When these suns-For so they phrase 'em-by their heralds challenged The noble spirits to arms, they did perform Beyond thought's compass (1.1.33-36) 'Beyond thought's compass' is a phrase that gives away the strategy that we have been straining to follow. It gives a name to this royal hyperbole that points toward praise beyond our abilities to express in language. Indeed, it draws our attention to the requirement of one performing the inability to give adequate praise: praise beyond praise. Of course, Christian IV's state visit was not the Field of Cloth of Gold with its hyper competitive, latent aggression underlying every moment. But Shakespeare's parody of royal observers is so well keyed to the tone and strategies used by Davies that one is tempted to wonder if Shakespeare had read his poem to the Danes and had it in mind.

The focus of this essay will be on the mention of weapons (such as swords, arrows, axes, etc.) and other objects associated with war (spoils, armor, etc.) in The Life of St. Guthlac. What will be discussed is the historical background behind those objects, specifically within the time period when St. Guthlac made his retreat. The use of weaponry as an extended metaphor is also subject to analysis, since it provides an in-sight into the life of an Anglo-Saxon warrior.

English Studies, 2021

This article examines the development of the anonymous Old English homily for Martinmas throughout the ninth and tenth centuries. In particular, the work focuses on how the homily was reshaped during its transmission to conform to the differing thematic approaches that individual Anglo-Saxon scribes took while “copying” the text. After situating the context of the Sulpician Martiniana in early England, the author explores the thematic patterns evident in the anonymous Old English homily’s selective translation of Sulpicius’s Vita S. Martini and Epistulae. It is demonstrated that the later Anglo- Saxon copier’s removal of the diving waterfowl episode is explicable as consistent with his thematic retelling of Martin’s life, which excludes the saint’s exorcist activities. In addition to offering an explanation for the episode’s omission, the article argues that modern editors should treat the extant versions of the Martinmashomily as two distinct textual traditions.

Journal of Religious History, 2014

This is a wide-ranging study examining the tension between reason and revelation within English religion across the seventeenth century and in earlier eras (the title is somewhat misleading), with over one-third of the text devoted to the Trinitarian controversy of the 1690s. Christopher J. Walker's sympathies for the pioneers of toleration are barely concealed, leading one to fear that this is a study proceeding from a "presentist" agenda; likewise, the reason and revelation division he deploys makes for a reductionist dichotomy. These initial suspicions are borne out by the text that follows. Yet the eventual conclusion must be that he has still produced an interesting essayand an apostrophe to the Erasmian tradition-that deserves notice. For him, Protestantism is a faith "founded in a rejection of the unquestioned" (p. 9), with reason a means of interrogating dogmas, a method of enquiry potentially always in tension with faith. Chapters 2 and 3 move far from the seventeenth century. The second, "When Sin and Son Were Not," considers pre-Nicean views on the nature of the Godhead and, predictably, the Athanasian Creed is presented by Walker as an "embarrassment" (p. 42), the essence of the dogmatic overreach that so aroused his reformers. Chapter 3 runs through the ranks of the radical reformers, men distinguished by learning, self-belief, arrogance, and anti-Trinitarianism, and culminates in lengthy consideration of Servetus, a man whose capacity for provocation offset his intellectual gifts, who could in 1547 rubbish the belief of the orthodox in a Triune God as the equivalent of belief in "a three-headed Cerberus" (p. 77). Faustus Socinus and his scattered followers are the subject of Chapter 4, which duly takes the reader to England and consideration of some neglected midcentury heresiarchs, particularly John Bidle, who touched the nerves of a spectrum of orthodox Christian opinion in the 1650s. Walker prepares the ground carefully for his detailed treatment of the last decade of the century as he fills in the Restoration religious background, noting the easing out of scholasticism in English intellectual life with the attendant decline of substance as a viable concept in debate. Locke duly makes his appearance with his emphasis on reason as a form of "natural revelation." And the moment for change, on Walker's reading, was ripe. According to him, "rational religion" appealed to all classes (p. 143). The evidence for this vast claim is not much worked over but allows him a free hand to set up high church Anglicans as the whipping boys of his account. He lamely suggests (p. 144) that this wide-ranging constituency consisted of those who were ill-disposed to the place of "reason" in religious life. Such comments remind us that this is an engaged book with its own teleology looking for early modern "progressives" with a commitment to toleration and, usually, a concomitant one to Arianism or Socinianism. Walker wants to set up a severance between Jesus Christ, the man of the Gospel, and Jesus Christ, "a metaphysical hypostasis" (to use his bs_bs_banner

Northern History, 2019

This article revisits a well-known religious conflict in Jacobean Leeds and presents an alternative interpretation of it as arising from differences within mainstream Calvinism, rather than the usual explanation of a clash between reformers and traditionalists. It places John Harrison, the renowned benefactor, centre stage in the opposition to the vicar, Alexander Cooke. They were both Protestants of a reformed stripe and prioritized preaching of the Word over ceremony, but held very different views on what this should mean in practice. Their dispute hardened Harrison's position on the nature of order and authority, and when he built St John's Chapel, several years later, he gave material expression to his views. Several long-standing puzzles about the interior fabric of this well-preserved chapel can be understood as his last word on the conflict.

Studia Historyczne, 2018

The present article explores the early modern preoccupation with omens - extraordinary occurrences observed both on earth and in the sky - which were universally believed to presage some future events and/or provide humans with providential signs and messages. Animals apparently formed a category of particularly common portents, due to their ubiquity and traditional links with the supernatural. Numerous examples of such omens demonstrate that animals and their behaviour were capable of evoking a variety of interpretations (moral, political, religious, etc.) and were indispensable in upholding the emblematic vision of the world, which, providentially, was supposed to be full of signs that could be deciphered by careful observers for their own benefit.