Medieval theology (Medieval Studies)

This article re-examines the much-debated question of the indebtedness of the medieval Icelandic scholar-poet-politician Snorri Sturluson to the Christian-Latin tradition. I offer an argument for a relationship between the construction of Snorri’s mythography in the Edda and two figurative traditions stemming from the Old Testament,  most notably codified in the 9th chapter of the Book of Ecclesiastes, and their subsequent reception in the medieval commentary tradition in Latin and Icelandic, the Old Norse liturgy, vernacular saints’ lives, and lives of the Icelandic bishops. My central claim is that two pervasive figures, the bird and the fish—prototypically represented as captured in Ecclesiastes 9:12 and elsewhere in the Christian literary tradition—merit consideration not as “sources” of certain myths of Loki but of Snorri’s representation of them. Previous scholarship, I suggest, has overlooked a Christian background to the Norse gods’ final fishing expedition, which leads to the binding of Loki and his captivity until Ragnarǫk, when Loki is caught in a net of his own invention: a widespread biblical topos concerning the devil and other “evil-doers.” Snorri’s treatment of the “The Matter of Loki” is hence relevant more broadly to long-standing debates concerning the intellectual debt of Snorri’s conception of Norse myth as “mythic history” to the formative influence of Christian eschatology.

Gli uomini di cultura del Medioevo intendevano la schola come
una formazione (institutio) condivisa, fondata su capisaldi costituiti
dalle sue autorità (auctoritates) e organizzata secondo un
curriculum. Il volume ripercorre, tra continuità e cambiamento,
la storia della scuola dal protagonismo della Chiesa nell’istruzione
altomedievale al sempre più articolato quadro di scuole nel
basso Medioevo, quando, a partire dal xii secolo, nelle vivaci città
dell’Occidente latino sorsero le prime università. In questi secoli
la scuola non fu solo chiamata a divulgare la cultura “dotta”,
quella scritta, ma assunse essa stessa il ruolo di centro propulsore
di nuova cultura, frutto della complessa mediazione tra i saperi
pagani della tradizione classica e quelli cristiani. Il flusso di
“intellettuali”, di modelli culturali e di libri, che trovò il suo raccordo
nei centri di istruzione, concorse così in modo determinante
alla formazione di un sapere omogeneo.

This paper seeks to clear the way for new historical-theological research into the corpus of St Gregory Palamas and his followers in late Byzantium. While recognizing the immense impact and the extraordinary contribution of pioneering scholars such as Fr John Meyendorff, this paper examines the methodological and hermeneutic questions that dominated Neo-Palamite scholarship in the twentieth century.

Which animals – real or imaginary – helped construct the power
of the Popes over the centuries? And during the Middle Ages,
the Protestant Reformation or in more recent years, which animals
inspired polemics and satire about the papacy?
Several animals of the papacy are part of our collective memory (the dove, the eagle, the lion). Many others have been forgotten, and yet parrots and peacocks, phoenixes and griffins, leopards and elephants have accompanied the papacy for very long periods of time.
This historical reconstruction is based on a first-hand reinterpretation of a wealth of
textual and iconographic sources. Each chapter follows the historical pathway of one of the various animals, from its very first mention (the 3rd century for the dove, the 6th for the horse, the 11th for the parrot) until its symbolic decline, or tracing its survival to the present day.
These stories of animals are an observatory – fascinating but also incisive –illustrating
how the papacy constructed its power, and the efforts of people to inspire its reform or
make it an object of derision.


«Dal 13 marzo 2013 siede sull’antica cattedra di Pietro un pontefice che,
primo nella storia, ha scelto il nome di Francesco, il santo che ancora oggi tutti associano all’amore nei confronti dell’ancor piú antico miracolo
della natura creata e dei suoi animali. Certo, i tempi cambiano, e l’enciclica Laudato si’ del 2015 è stata debitamente definita “ecologista” dai media per le novità che contiene. Ma in realtà, papa Francesco si riallaccia a una tradizione, tanto remota quanto ininterrotta, che associa animali e pontefici in un rapporto simbolico e metaforico di stupefacente coerenza, pur nell’estrema varietà dei messaggi. Una storia, anzi un insieme di storie per narrare le quali nessuno strumento ci è parso altrettanto opportuno della piú veneranda delle enciclopedie: un bestiario. Nel corso delle pagine che seguiranno, cercheremo di costruirne uno assai particolare, popolato di colombe, draghi, cavalli, asini e cammelli, pappagalli, fenici e pavoni, aquile, leoni, leopardi, corna di ceraste e corni di unicorni, oltre che di orsi ed elefanti, allo scopo di comprendere in qual modo tutti questi animali abbiano contribuito a creare e poi accompagnato – talvolta senza soluzione di continuità e per molti secoli – l’autoaffermazione simbolica del papato nel suo divenire storico e istituzionale; oppure, al contrario, siano stati usati per criticare o delegittimare il pontefice e la Chiesa».

Il volume analizza un'abbondante documentazione dei secoli XIII-XV relativa alle scuole ecclesiastiche legate alla canonica della cattedrale di Città di Castello, al monastero camaldolese di Sansepolcro e agli Ordini mendicanti presenti nei due maggiori centri dell'Alta Valle del Tevere. Di particolare interesse si rivelano le costituzioni della scuola canonicale del 1288, la cui attività è documentata dal 1233 al 1469. Dal capitolo della cattedrale di Città di Castello dipende anche la pieve di Santa Maria in Sansepolcro, la cui scuola è sporadicamente documentata nel 1279 e nel 1292.
La seconda parte del libro è dedicata alla presentazione di alcune biblioteche ecclesiastiche (monastero camaldolese di Anghiari 1140, vescovo di Città di Castello 1279, monastero camaldolese di Sansepolcro 1478/80) e familiari queste ultime nell'intento di capire quali testi di cultura religiosa fossero diffusi fra i laici.
Un'appendice finale raccoglie schede documentarie e bibliografiche su alcuni maestri di diritto canonico e di teologia, tra i quali il domenicano Giacomo Nardi da Città di Castello, gli agostiniani Dionigi da Sansepolcro e Rodolfo da Città di Castello, i camaldolesi Giovanni Abbarbagliati da Sansepolcro e Alessio da Città di Castello, il minore conventuale Luca Pacioli e i Servi di santa Maria Niccolò di Francesco da Sansepolcro e Stefano di Luca Becci.

(from back of the book)

In this study Charles Raith II fills a gap in Reformation-era scholarship by analyzing Calvin’s teaching on works and reward in light of medieval theological developments surrounding the doctrine of merit. While significant analysis has been given to Calvin’s doctrine of justification, its relation to sanctification, the notion of union with Christ, and the role of participation, there is as yet no sustained analysis of how these teachings are shaped by the most hostile and pervasive of his polemics, namely, his confrontation with a merit-based framework for understanding Christian salvation. This volume, however, interprets Calvin’s own theological constructions as contextually determined by the reigning polemics of his day. In sum, the volume (1) analyzes Calvin’s tracts, scriptural commentaries and Institutes to demonstrate the manner of Calvin’s rejection of the doctrine of merit; (2) reviews the scholastic developments surrounding the doctrine of merit from the High to Late Middle Ages as background to Calvin’s thought; (3) highlights Calvin’s principle problems with the doctrine of merit: the competitive-causal schema between divine and human causality, merit as a basis for justification, and good works as “deserving” of reward; and (4) unpacks Calvin’s theology of justification, sanctification, the worth of works, and the role of works in salvation as an alternative to the “opponents” doctrine of merit. The volume concludes by reflecting on the reception of Calvin’s theology of works and reward in later Reformed thought.

L’autore offre un bilancio delle edizioni critiche delle opere di san Bonaventura da Bagnoregio. partendo dal sussidio compilato nel 1975 da Balduinus Distelbrink e dai successivi aggiornamenti e accertamenti relativi all’autenticità di vari scritti del Dottore Serafico. Uno spazio particolare viene offerto ai sermoni, per i quali si indicano nuovi manoscritti e testi finora inediti e sconosciuti, reperiti durante le recenti ricerche dell’autore. Si prospettano quindi nuove edizioni di alcuni gruppi di discorsi bonaventuriani.

The author provides an appraisal of the critical editions of the works of St Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, starting from the subsidy compiled in 1975 by Balduinus Distelbrink and the subsequent updates and assessments of the authenticity of the various writings of the Seraphic Doctor. Sermons occupy a special place, for which new manuscripts and texts previously unpublished and unknown found during the author’s recent researches, are indicated. New editions, therefore, of some groups of the writings of Bonaventure are foreseen.

The article provides a study and critical edition of a short latin dialogue on the question of the poverty of Christ and the Apostles. The text, so far unknown, is transmitted by the commentary on the Old Testament written around 1450 by the Sienese magister Pietro de' Rossi. Even if it has a dialogical structure, in which both Michael of Cesena and a spokesperson of John XXII present their thesis, the work is clearly favorable to the Pope. The article argues that the text, dating back to about 1340-1350, offers an unusual perspective on the controversy, providing new insights on this stage of the debate. In particular, the dialogue takes advantage of arguments used, contested and sharpened for years during the discussion, and presents several references to the dissident friars living in the Eremo delle Carceri (near Assisi) or in Corsica, and to Ubertino da Casale's opinion on the apostolic poverty controversy.
Il contributo propone lo studio e l'edizione critica di un breve dialogo latino, finora ignoto, sulla questione della povertà di Cristo e degli Apostoli. Il testo è trasmesso dal commento all'Antico Testamento composto intorno alla metà del Quattrocento dal maestro senese Pietro de' Rossi, e-sulla base di Rossi-dalle Historiae senenses di Sigismondo Tizio. Pur presentando una forma dialogica, in cui prendono la parola frate Michele da Cesena e un portavoce di Giovanni XXII, l'opera è nettamente orientata a favore della posizione 'anti-pauperista' del pontefice, ed è databile intorno al 1340-1350. Costruita, in buona parte, su auctoritates bibliche e canonistiche non nuove, essa offre, su una questione dibattuta ormai da decenni, una prospettiva tarda, interessante per la chiarezza dell'esposizione (che poteva sfruttare un arsenale polemico ormai collaudato da entrambe le parti), e per alcuni significativi riferimenti ai frati rigoristi delle Carceri e della Corsica, nonché alla presa di posizione di Ubertino da Casale sulla questione della povertà.

Realizzato a tempera e oro su tavola, secondo le tecniche dell'antica pittura sacra cristiana, la tavola con l'Albero della Vita, opera vasta e dettagliatissima attribuita al pittore toscano Pacino da Buonaguida ( ), fu commissionata agli inizi del XIV secolo dalle Clarisse del monastero di Santa Maria in Monticelli a Firenze, per essere trasportata in via de' Malcontenti in occasione del loro trasferimento nel 1531. Intorno al 1808, in seguito alle soppressioni napoleoniche, la pala finì nel patrimonio di Montedomini: riscoperta nel 1849, fu subito trasferita alla Galleria dell'Accademia, dove tuttora è custodita. Opera entusiasmante per complessità stilistica e ricchezza di particolari, il suo significato non si può però ridurre all'indagine storico-artistica. Come scrive A. Malraux: «Un crocifisso romanico non era al suo nascere una scultura, e la Madonna di Cimabue non era da principio un quadro» 1 . Così il grande dipinto di Pacino, realizzato per un ordine eminentemente contemplativo e di natura claustrale, doveva possedere non solo una finalità didattica e dottrinale, ma svolgere la funzione di una solenne pala d'altare, e rappresentava «in qualche modo, la dilatazione della tavola mistica del sacrificio» 2 .

The oldest preserved Old Norse text explaining the theory of the four humours is a roughly 900-word-long treatise, preserved in Hauksbók, under the title Af natturu mannzins ok bloði. This unique text in the Old Norse corpus can be described as consisting of two parts, which differ somewhat in nature. The first section is a theological preamble or premise, elucidating the divine creation and the nature of the elements (earth, water, air and fire) and their harmonious interaction. The second part is a physiological section with a systematic explication of the constitution of the humours and their effects on the character and disposition of men. In this essay the ideas presented in the first part of Af natturu mannzins ok bloði are put into context with currents of thought transmitted in a body of medieval learned and theological texts, while maintaining a focus on the writings that we have grounds to assume were extant in medieval Iceland and Norway. Furthermore, the elucidation of the theory of the four humours, which appears in the second part of Af natturu mannzins ok bloði, is traced to a popular and widespread learned Latin text: Epistula Vindiciani ad Pentadium. The two texts are compared and argued that this latter part of Af natturu mannzins ok bloði is an Old Norse translation derived from Epistula Vindiciani.

This book presents a Thomistic account of sacramental efficacy from a historical and systematic perspective.  The excerpt available here includes the book's introduction, table of contents and some of the front matter.  The book is currently available from The Catholic University of America Press (2017).

Durante la segunda mitad del siglo XV y el primer tercio del XVI se atestigua en el contexto hispánico un importante fenómeno de mujeres autoras muy relevante en el campo espiritual. Esta renovación solió entenderse en clave de reforma constituyendo un fenómeno de características diferenciadas que podemos denominar "reformismo femenino". Fijamos la atención en el círculo cortesano femenino de la reina Isabel la Católica para analizar sus comportamientos religiosos en esta clave.

The chapter explores the forms of sacralized mastership characterizing ecclesiastical cultures of learning in northern and western Europe from the ninth to the twelfth centuries. The main focus is on changing contemporary assumptions about the interaction of teachers and students with the sacred sphere, such as forms of divine inspiration, 'natural', God-given talent or learning as a form of asceticism. At the same times, the chapter reflects critically on the label of 'charismatic' teaching, which has been used in several important works to characterize the relevant concepts of teaching.

Saint Bonaventure doesn't systematize a treatise on ecclesiology as usual in the Middle Ages. However, in several passages of his works from the first to the last shows richness of theological elements. The starting point in understanding the Church is always Trinitarian. This is why not only Christology but also pneumatology, that is, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, has a fundamental place. From the foundation to the perfection of the Church, the third person of the Trinity plays a determining role. The mission of Christ in the Passion follows that of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. He acts in such a way that he makes the Church alive, dynamic, imbued with faith, charity and hope. The work of the Incarnation is the fruit of the partaking of the whole Trinity, while in the Son the Church finds the foundation and mediator of the faith, which incorporates the life of the mystical body, in the Holy Spirit we find the charity that makes the Church a place of diversity, Mutual opening, and fraternal service.

This article examines two distinct responses to the reception of Aristotle in the thirteenth century: the Bonaventurean and the Thomist. The outcome of this debate (and the Condemnations of 1277) led to the modern separation of faith and reason. Rather than seeing voluntarism and nominalism as the cause of the modern separation of faith and reason, and theology and philosophy, it will be suggested that it is actually the other way around: the Bonaventurean response indirectly resulted in the growing separation of faith and reason, which led, in turn, to voluntarism. It is important not to confuse the Thomist and Franciscan responses, as sometimes happens in recent scholarship, including in the work of Gavin D'Costa, as will be shown. Both the Thomist and the Bonaventurean approaches are legitimate resources to respond to the (post)-secular context in which we find ourselves, and the former should not be reduced to the latter. Keywords Aquinas and Bonaventure, faith and reason, origins of modernity I n this article I want to revisit debates that took place at the end of the thirteenth century. From a historical point of view it is exactly in this period that we find the origins of secularism and modernity, especially the growing separation of faith and reason, theology and philosophy. The end of the thirteenth century is therefore a defining moment in relation to secularity, understood here as the beginning of the process of a diminishing role for religion in the academia (and in the arts faculties in particular, resulting in a new relation between theology and philosophy), as well as in terms of the conditions conducive to espousing faith. 1 The reception of Aristotle in the universities led to different 1 Charles Taylor distinguishes between three understandings of secularism: first, secularity can refer to the emptying out of different social spheres (economic, political, cultural, educational)

The beatific vision debate (1331–1336) presents two problems. First, what could have been the motivation of Pope John XXII for raising the issue? Second, why was his proposed theology of the delayed vision rejected nearly unanimously? This paper, after a summary of the debate, tries to answer these two questions. It appears that the Pope initiated the controversy in the name of a conservative theology reaching back past High Scholasticism to Patristic authors. It emerges that it was High Scholasticism that introduced a new interpretation of the vision, probably motivated by institutional and pastoral concerns. The universities’ program of “scientific theology” required reassurances of the truth of theological principles, while a delay of the rewards seemed to present difficulties for the theologically less educated believers. This change, however, came at the price of surrendering the concept of the communio sanctorum and the resurrection to an individualist eschatology and crypto-Platonic metaphysics of the soul.

Since the mid-90’s the figure of Peter Lombard and his Book of Sentences has regained the importance in scholarly world and been studied from both historical-theological and historical-philosophical perspectives. But some aspects of his thinking, encapsulated in the written form, which was to become the material basis for the thirteenth- through the fifteenth-century theological projects, remained somewhat insufficiently researched. Therefore this article analyzes the select parts of the Book of Sentences with the purpose of looking at how Peter Lombard handled the issue of God’s knowledge. The article shows that for Peter Lombard God’s knowledge is God’s awareness of everything knowable. It has no causal power which belongs to the divine will. Nevertheless, this knowledge is able to function in two different modes: it can be either a purely cognitive act as awareness alone, or a double cognitive and voluntary act as awareness and simultaneous volition in the form of approbation. Hence, God’s knowledge in general is not causative, but God’s knowledge of the good must be causative because he simultaneously knows and wills what is good. The article reasonably suggests that Lombard’s logic implies the compatibility of God’s (fore)knowledge and voluntary activity, on the one hand, and the contingency of the created order and the rational creatures’ free will, on the other hand. But the details of this conception remain unrevealed as Lombard’s presentation of the problem is to be declared underdeveloped.

Le fotocopie per uso personale del lettore possono essere effettuate nei limiti del 15% di ciascun volume dietro pagamento alla SIAE del compenso previsto dall'art. 68, commi 4 e 5, della legge 22 aprile 1941 n. 633. Le fotocopie effettuate per finalità di carattere professionale, economico o commerciale o comunque per uso diverso da quello personale possono essere effettuate a seguito di specifica autorizzazione rilasciata da CLEARedi, Centro Licenze e Autorizzazioni per le Riproduzioni Editoriali, Corso di Porta Romana 108, 20122 Milano, La pubblicazione di questo volume è stata realizzata grazie alla collaborazione e al contributo finanziario di Nell'ambito del progetto di ricerca «Crisi

In his mature thinking, he went far beyond what he had learned during his apprenticeship: at Chartres, philosophy of a Platonic stamp based on the Timaeus and on the Consolation of Philosophy and Opuscula sacra of Boethius; at Laon, theology founded on Biblical exegesis and the Fathers. In his Commentary on Boethius’s Opuscula sacra, his fundamental work, he developed  a profoundly innovative ‘rational’ theology and an autonomous and broadly coherent philosophical reflection. It combines the Platonic doctrine of the preeminence of form with a keen sense of the primacy of the concrete and the singular. It consists of, principally, an ontology, a philosophy of language and an epistemology, all closely inter-connected. Only the principles (God, prime matter, ideas) are simple, and only in God is being everything that he is. Created entities, by contrast, receive their being from something other than themselves (from God) and they are composed of an ordered aggregation of forms. Forms are always inherent in a substrate. Common natures do not exist; everything, compounds and forms, is singular: the humanity of every man is similar to but different from that of any other man. But not everything that is singular is an individual – only concrete entities and the compounds of forms that constitute the complete form of every concrete entity are individuals.

Tant y a que nous voyons par experience, les femmes envoyer aux corps des enfans, qu' elles portent au ventre, des marques de leurs fantasies […] Des animaux il en est de mesmes: tesmoing les brebis de Jacob, er les perdris et lievres, que la neige blanchit aux montaignes Michel de Montaigne, Les Essais I, 21 ∵ * Research for this paper has been conducted within the framework of the project FIRB 2012 (Future in Research) "Foreseeing Events and Dominating Nature: Models of Operative Rationality and the Circulation of Knowledge in the Arab, Hebrew and Latin Middle Ages", funded by the Italian University and Research Ministry (MIUR).

Within the work of certain scholars who have written on Dionysius the Areopagite (e.g., Dodds, Arthur, et al.) there is the view, as widespread as it is unexamined, that his thought, being little more than a parody of Neoplatonic idealism, promotes a disembodied theology and philosophy. Within the realm of art and beauty, arguably the center point of the Dionysian project, historians of aesthetics (Croce, Bosanquet, Gilbert, Kuhn, et al.) have encouraged such a disembodied portrait of the Areopagite.

This judgment in part derives from wrongly viewing the Areopagite from the perspective of Modern aesthetics, disintegrating his thoughts on art and beauty for the sake of a science (viz. aesthetics) that did not exist in late antiquity. Within such a disintegration, art and beauty are wrenched from their place in the overall Dionysian project and one begins from an already disembodied point of view.

One primary controversy that has emerged from all this concerns the way that ‘art’ functions with respect to divine pedagogy in the Areopagite’s thought. The most recent and most widely read (not to mention severely criticized) translation of the Corpus Dionysiacum, done by Rorem and Luibheid for the Classics of Western Literature series, interprets a significant passage from the Celestial Heirarchy in such a way as to completely alter the Dionysian view of the way that art functions in the service of divine pedagogy. Their interpretation follows the thought of the well-known 20th c. French Dionysian scholar, Rene Roques, who in a series of essays argued for his own position against the translation done by Eriugena on the grounds that Eriugena interpreted Dionysius through the lens of Eriugena’s own aesthetics and thus distorted the Dionysian view.

In this presentation, we want to challenge this interpretation and subsequent translation from three perspectives: 1) historical; 2) philosophical and 3) intra-textual. We will argue that not only is this translation deeply flawed, but that a more accurate translation of this passage will throw light on a doctrine of divine pedagogy that recognizes the ‘splendor of these created things’ as its medium of communication. More broadly, it will help to reorient Dionysian scholarship away from viewing him as a merely disembodied thinker in an effort to reintegrate his theories of art and beauty within his overall project that includes an

The article investigates the doctrine of transubstantiation or the Eucharistic change as formulated by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa theologiae, Question 75, against its double conceptual (Christian religious vs. Aristotelian philosophical), as well as double linguistic (Latin vs. translated Greek), background. It is presented and analyzed as a philosophical-theological theory that can be explicated and assessed with the help of the concept of untranslatable(s), which was recently discovered and brought to the fore by the proponents of the “translational turn” in continental philosophy. It is argued on the basis of careful study of Aquinas’ text that the notion of transubstantiation should be identified as a conceptual untranslatable.
Here the term “untranslatable” means a unique reinterpretation of Aristotelian language of being and change, which results in a conceptual innovation that has some inherent problems as well as creative and promising inventions. The usage of such a concept is justified by the fact that the reconceptualization that Aquinas did to a number of Peripatetic ideas creates a few untranslatable notions, which do not have much meaning outside the peculiarly Thomistic Latin vocabulary. Despite some criticisms they are not necessarily to be regarded as contradictions, but rather as thomistic untranslatables.

This article presents the first forensic source criticism of the papal encyclical that launched the Third Crusade, Audita tremendi (1187/1188); it makes four main arguments. First, its core empirical contribution is to demonstrate textual variation across the four issues of the letter. Second, it engages with the debate on whether the crusading movement existed in an institutional form in the twelfth century by challenging the interpretation that the reissue of Audita tremendi and similar papal documents was the result of uninspired "plagiarism". Third, it offers a new reconstruction of the immediate context of the issue of the document and argues that, rather than being the product of a long period of careful composition, it was issued as a hurried response to the arrival of the news from Hattin. Fourth, it reconsiders the role of the encyclical in the call for the Third Crusade and contends that the papacy was focussed not on the promotion of the military expedition but the launch of an immediate liturgical campaign of communal repentance. Additionally, the article prints comparative transcriptions of the four issues as an appendix, three of which are published here for the first time.

an article presenting biblical evidence from the New Testament for the hypothesis of the non-unwrapping of the shroud that covered the body of Jesus Christ at the time of his resurrection, according to which the body would have disappeared from inside the cloth without undoing the folds and bonds that held him; the said assumption is commonly made by defenders of the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, based on the fact that the visible image on the fabric shows no signs of over manipulation in its formative stage and immediate following moments. This characteristic is still today used by critics of the authenticity as an evidence of a process similar to canvas painting. The non-unwrapping, in turn, would sustain the other hypothesis that the image was formed by radiation coming from the body of Christ at the time of His resurrection and the miraculous escape of the glorious body out of the shroud, thus leaving the shroud empty but preserving folds and bolds, unlike it would be in the case of someone simply unwrapping the cloths to remove the body.

Analysis of the Columbanus' monastic rules and the four 'Columbanian' monastic rules written after his death: the Regula Donati, the Regula cuiusdam ad virgines, the Regula cuiusdam patris and the fragment De accedendo ad deum. All four texts express different, and to a certain extent contentious claims on Columbanus' heritage and develop their own distinct monastic program. The Regula cuiusdam patris should be read as a voice of dissent against the path Columbanian monasticism took and might be related to the circle around the monk Agrestius. The Regula cuiusdam ad virgines was most likely written by Jonas of Bobbio, the author of the Vita Columbani. The fragment De accedendo ad deum may have been a lost chapter of the Regula cuiusdam ad virgines. As a reflection on the connection between prayer and ascetic achievements De accedendo can be read as a key text on Columbanian monastic theology.

An introduction I wrote in 2007 to a volume of English translations of St. Thomas Aquinas's three ventures into the Mendicant controversies at the University of Paris. The book that this was written for went nowhere, but maybe the introduction (entirely derivative scholarship, as these things tend to be) will be useful.

This is an overview of the current state of research regarding Peter Lombard and the "Book of Sentences," written for the "Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques." The piece offers a treatment of Peter Lombard's life and works, of the "Book of Sentences," and of the reception of the latter in its long history of commentaries. Detailed bibliographies are included.

This essay considers what might first appear to be a minor theological problem in the major work of Dante’s mentor, and shows that it indeed poses a conundrum and a riddle to be solved. Taking up Augustine’s commentary on Christ’s three resurrection miracles – in the house, outside the gate, and in the sepulchre – I note that in his Tresor Brunetto retains the first of these locations but revises the second to “in the doorway of the house” and the third to “in the street.” Ruling out a traditional “source” for these deviations, I ask: Are these changes of scenery significant – a trivial memory lapse, subtly subversive, or ringing a change? Ultimately, I propose an underlying shift in perspective: from Augustinian biblical topography to a contemporary urban setting – an “update” from a late Classical to a medieval scene, from Hippo to Florence – an “urbanization” of the Augustinian “stages of sin” that gestures towards the streetscape of the Vita nuova.

How could the Táborite radical innovation of popular, purgative violence
be born from an academic Church reform movement stressing the exclusive legitimacy of spiritual struggle and established sources of coercion? The framing of this question has often led historians to answers suggesting influences from outside heterodox traditions combined with unique socioeconomic conditions. I have argued instead that the question is framed misleadingly, and that the Táborite innovation inherited a great deal conceptually from earlier key reformist leaders who were not always consistent on matters like popular pacifism or agency. In their creation of a popular movement which spread geographically in the kingdom, these thinkers clearly simultaneously lost their monopoly on hermeneutic authority, and yet I have argued that certain core assumptions which were fundamental to informing the Táborites’ purgative campaign—confidence in the identity of transcendent
communities, knowledge of God’s will, and the authority to cooperate in
its manifestation—were not fundamentally new or fringe, but rather radical interpretations of those developed a decade earlier by Hussite intellectuals to define their positions on contemporary debates like those on ecclesiology, realism, and reform. In sidelining or overlooking these important continuities and instead emphasising the pacifism of early Hussite thinkers, we not only disregard the important complexity within “Hussite ideology”, but we miss a valuable explanatory factor for Táborite purgative violence, as demonstrated by their self-perception, motivations, and goals.

“Rejecting Essentialism and Gendered Writing: The Case of Christine de Pizan,” in Gender and Text in the Later Middle Ages, hrsg. Jane Chance (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996), pp. 96-131.

examines the intellectual historical, in particular the theological, context in which Christine rejects essentialism and theories of the "nature" of women.