Justine L. Tombley’s excellent study A Diabolical Voice: Heresy and the Reception of the Latin “Mirror of Simple Souls” in Late Medieval Europe is the following step in the medieval historian’s groundbreaking output on Marguerite Porète’s Mirror of Simple Souls. This highly focused study offers a comprehensive and insightful discussion of the reception of the Latin text in Italy and Southern Germany in the first decades of the fifteenth century and connects this to some of the extant manuscripts of the Mirror in Latin. Introducing the study is the story of Marguerite Porète’s repeated condemnation as a heretic (in Valenciennes in 1306, and Paris in 1310), the concomitant condemnation of her book as heretical, and her death at the stake on June 1, 1310, as well as a survey of eighty years of scholarship following Romana Guarnieri’s identification, in 1946, of the Mirror of Simple Souls as the text that led to its author’s death. This makes the introduction a concise and impressive state of the art of textual and historical scholarly work on Marguerite and the Mirror in all its surviving versions (the French original and the medieval translations into Latin, Middle Dutch, and Italian), and sets the scene for the detailed analyses of the manuscripts and texts that criticize the Mirror discussed in the following four chapters, of which chapters 2, 3, and 4 are devoted to a single manuscript or text.Chapter 1 describes brief warnings against the Mirror as a worthless, deceptive, and dangerous text in, among others, the sermons of Bernardino of Siena (between 1427 and 1444), letters by Giovanni of Capestrano and Lorenzo Giustiniani, who led an inquisition into heresy in Venice for Eugenius IV, and by Antonio Zeno, who sent a list of propositions from the Mirror to theologians at the University of Padua to be investigated. It also looks into the intriguing mention by the Council of Basel’s historian John of Segovia of an accusation of heresy, including the ownership of a copy of the Mirror, against Eugenius IV himself. Though mostly very brief, these mentions allow Trombley not only to gain insight into the double-faced reception of the Mirror (acceptance–rejection), but also into how the discourse and the ensuing actions against the Mirror are interwoven with conciliar politics. The repeated warnings against the text suggest a wide dissemination among both religious and lay readers, and, as Trombley shows, quite a few of its readers did not see any danger in the text. (A case in point is John-Jerome of Prague, who copied the Mirror in Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Conv. soppr. G.3.1130, and who drew a smiling monk in the decorated initial A at the beginning of the text.) The readers who denounced the Mirror and urged against its dissemination did so independently of the 1306 and 1310 convictions, yet did associate the work with the decree Ad nostrum, written at the Council of Vienne in 1311 and believed to have been partly based on the condemnation of the Mirror as heretical. Their rejection of the text also seems to rest on the belief that it was a founding text for heretical groups and that it led to error and ruin for its adherents.Through Trombley does not go into how specifically “ruin” is to be understood, she carefully analyzes all the instances in which the Mirror is described, decried, confiscated, vandalized, and condemned as a dangerous, diabolical, heretical text in letters and warnings mainly written in Latin, and, as mentioned before, traces the texts and their authors back to a network of clerics around pope Eugenius IV, his mission to eradicate heresy and the themes and controversies surrounding the Councils of Basel and Ferrara-Florence (1431–1449), and to Giacomo de Zocchi, professor of canon law at the university of Padua since 1428, thus uncovering a web of attacks on the Mirror extending from Italy into Germany more than 120 years after its author’s death.Chapter 2 offers the first full codicological analysis of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Latin 46, a manuscript famous in Mirror studies as the only physical evidence of efforts to suppress and destroy the text, as the larger part of the copy was cut out of the manuscript (apart from the opening page written on the verso side of f. 70, and the last eight lines of the text on f. 72r–f. 71 being misbound). An eclectic copy with possible Benedictine origins and suggestive of humanist interests (texts by Seneca and John Chrysostom are included in the codex) on the part of the compiler, this copy is yet another proof of the double-faced reception Trombley is documenting. Someone wanted the Mirror in this collection of texts, yet someone (else?) later decided that the text was problematic and needed to be destroyed. Presenting codicological evidence that points both to Italy and Southern Germany, this chapter presents intriguing scenarios as to where and when the Mirror may have been excised. If this was in Italy, the owner of the manuscript may have been alerted to the heretical nature of the text in one of the inquisitorial campaigns against the text. If in Germany, the owner may have received word of the warnings against the text through the network of Southern German clerics who studied, likely under de Zocchi, at the university of Padua. That the codex was carefully studied for problematic content also shows in “evidence of suspicion and scrutiny” (88) in Angela of Foligno’s Liber and a Pseudo-Augustinian epistle that mentions an apocryphal Origen text, both also included in the collection.Chapter 3 focuses on the list of thirty propositions from the Mirror occurring in Vatican City, BAV, MS Vat. Lat. 4953. As a similar list drawn up for the theologians of Paris in the early fourteenth century does not survive, this list, potentially drawn up to be investigated by the theologians of the university of Padua at the request of Antonio Zeno, helps shed light on the reasons why the Mirror may have been condemned by the Paris theologians, whose refutations may well have been similar to those added to the propositions here. Yet the significance of the list in MS Vat. Lat. 4953 is not just retrospective. As the remaining texts in this codex are all linked to the theological disputes between the Greek and the Latin Churches–the focus of the Council of Ferrara-Florence, Trombley suggests the likelihood of this codex being a handbook to help its owner, most likely someone involved with the papal court, navigate the negotiations at the Council, and of the list having originated in the context of Giovanni of Capestrano’s investigation of heresy in Venice. (Again, the study suggests several possible scenarios.)After a detailed discussion of the possible association of the Mirror and Palamism—a Greek theological view revolving around “the question of the divine attributes and the nature of union between humans and the divine” (99)—and Ferrara-Florence, the chapter includes a detailed discussion of the refutations found in the list. These boil down to objections to five main themes: the special status of the simple, annihilated souls as exempt from normal spiritual practice as taught by the Church, the souls’ indifference to practicing the virtues and to emotions, the idea that the simple souls can experience full union with the divine during their earthly lives, the souls’ complete surrendering of their will to God’s, which would mean that they no longer have free will, and the Mirror’s insistence on the “unknowability” of God.A Diabolical Voice closes with the discussion of Padua, Biblioteca universitaria di Padova, MS 1647, a fifteenth-century codex that contains a seven-folio text that denounces excerpted passages of the Mirror as heretical and the book as a whole as diabolical. This manuscript and text are discussed at the end of the monograph, because the polemic is a fifteenth-century copy by Padua theologian Giacomo de Zocchi of a much earlier text, possibly written before the 1306 and 1310 condemnations of the Mirror, and most likely before the Council of Vienne, as the canon lawyer who writes the text does not refer to Ad nostrum in his refutations. As this author quotes from the Latin translation, this also pushes the terminus ante quem of the Latin translation back to the end of the thirteenth century. The early fourteenth-century original of the mid-fifteenth-century copy found here was, thus, contemporary with but independent of the investigation of the Mirror by the Paris theologians that led to Marguerite’s execution.Interestingly, this attack on the Mirror assumes that the work was written by a man and formulates an appraisal of the work in virulently hostile language that leads, as Trombley points out, to a condemnation that reads as if it is a verdict in a heresy trial. The themes picked up for refutation by this author are the same ones as those singled out by the compiler of the list of propositions in MS Vat. Lat. 4953: the soul’s indifference to moral guidance and its rejection of Christian works and practices, its proclaimed ability to gain knowledge of God without Church teachings, and the deification of the soul in mystical union.In addressing the concerns about and attacks against the Mirror in Italian and Southern German sources in the second quarter of the fifteenth century, this monograph complements and adds nuance to the narrative of the Mirror’s successful, if not triumphant, survival often, if not predominantly, highlighted in Marguerite scholarship. Thus, this book truly fills a gap in our knowledge about the Mirror and its medieval reception. Not only does Trombley uncover the intricate connections between people and texts that created this web of references to and judgments of the Mirror, she also shows how their concerns fit into the late medieval spiritual upheaval that shows in an explosive increase in lay and religious interest in the contemplative life, but also in fears of heresy through revelations and visions, and of new reform movements in the Church and monastic orders. The study hints at the uses of texts and condemnations of them as church-political moves, and at the clash between mystical experience expressed in literary form with doctrinal theology and canon law. Above all, it shows how two opposite assessments of a text coexisted and how important nuance is in academic research. Whether or not the Mirror was heretical is not the question Trombley asks in this book. Rather, she asks “whether medieval readers believed the text was heretical” (24). Some of them did, and others did not.The detail with which Trombley clarifies the many theological, doctrinal, and historical issues surrounding the texts she analyzes in the book cannot be conveyed in a review. As a reader, you are thinking along with the author, and I found myself eager to find out what the next step in the journey of discovery through these texts and manuscripts would be. The completeness in Trombley’s description of the various connections between the texts and the careful listing of the different scenarios of text production and exchange make the reading of this study a highly satisfying intellectual experience that this review cannot do justice to. Trombley also offers complete and detailed descriptions of the manuscripts in chapters 2, 3, and 4. The texts from MS Vat. Lat. 4953 and Biblioteca universitaria di Padova, MS 1647 are translated by Trombley and added in the two appendixes to the book, opening them up for future work. The bibliography is extensive and an invitation to further reading. This is an incredibly rich book for scholars of the Mirror, and as such it is an invaluable addition to the field. Also, it is a riveting read for any scholar of medieval religious cultures, be they historians, theologians, or literary scholars, even when the stress is on the historical. The importance of this book for anyone studying whatever aspect of the Mirror cannot be stressed enough.
Like many of you, I was overwhelmed by reading René Girard's first book Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque, published in 1961.1 But I belong to a special class: Compared to all the young and less young readers and researchers who make up this assembly, I am what in high places, at the ARM [Association Recherches mimétiques], we do not hesitate to qualify as a “historical Girardian”: I read this book in 1961, thanks to Michel Deguy. And, of course, all his other books in the order of their publication. So I'm probably the oldest surviving groupie of René Girard. It's not a claim to fame, but it's in this way that I find a fellowship with you and that I'm happy to be before you. Indeed, I think that between Girardians, the differences matter less than the similarities.It is about another event, very recent, but directly linked to the previous one and also moving for me, that I am going to talk to you: the discovery of René Girard, biographie, the forthcoming book by Benoît Chantre, that I had the chance, once again, to read before everyone else. I read it passionately because of all the things it teaches us about the genesis of Girard's work and above all because it gives this work an extraordinary and indisputable unity.I had assumed the unity of Girard's work but Benoît Chantre's book confirms it: What is called the mimetic theory is not a whole made up of separate and detachable parts, like a three-stage rocket, to which we like to compare it. Even if the writing of mimetic theory has undergone the turbulence of world history and the biography of its author, the whole determines its parts; the whole comprehends the boundaries of the work, the first writings and the last, in both senses of the word: to be taken altogether, understood as a whole, or discarded altogether. Moreover, its radical nature prohibits any form of readjustment or compromise. Girard has said it expressly in his interviews: There is no “Girardian system” but at the outset, a very compact intuition that fertilized all his research. This same intuition allowed Girard to profit from the work of his contemporaries and to maintain real relationships with the thought leaders of his time, such as Goldmann, Deguy, Foucault, Lacan, Barthes, and Derrida, without ever turning away from his own path. This intuition takes shape even before the conception of a “triangular” desire on an individual scale, a desire that will subsequently become “mimetic” on the scale of human societies.By reading the biography of Girard by Benoît Chantre, I better understood the importance of literature in the genesis of what we call mimetic theory. Marx wrote that ideas are not born like mushrooms; they always reflect a state of social reality. Girard showed, on the contrary, that social reality is not merely reflected but revealed by great literature. And with Girard, brilliant ideas are of the order of an event, intuitions inspired by readings in tune with events in his life. Reading Girard's intellectual biography therefore holds some surprises, things we did not know and things that can shed new light on those we already know.A genuine surprise is to learn that the excellent title “mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque” of his first work was imposed on him by his publisher. Girard had titled his history of the novel, which is at the same time a history of desire, “L'incarnation romanesque.” At first, we will see what this mysterious title can mean; then, we will see that there are not only circumstantial reasons, linked to his teaching, to explain the confidence that Girard placed in literature, and not in philosophy and the human sciences, in his search for truth.It was in Girard's personal papers, described by him as “very important papers” and carefully preserved and carried around from one move to another, that Benoît Chantre found, among other things, the drafts of “the novelistic incarnation.” Now this is quite extraordinary, as we are witnessing the blossoming of the intuition that presided over the mimetic theory even before the conception of desire as “mimetic.” Girard, a young assistant professor, pressured by the American university imperative to “publish or perish,” had set to work. His first articles dealt with Saint-John Perse and Malraux. From these “apocalyptic” authors, who seek meaning in a fragmented world that has lost its bearings, he caught hold of an idea that gave meaning to his own inner exile: “The absolute is looming behind the absurd.”2 The absolute or the sacred is not part of the ideology of the modern world. In order to take its measure, Girard believed, it is necessary not only to resist the dominant mystification of positivism and progressivism but also to resist nihilism. He is grateful to Saint-John Perse for this double negation: “The senseless world whose meaning is served up to us by the rationalist philosophers is followed by a flat refusal of the broken world in which we find ourselves. The poet refuses to abandon the search for meaning.”3Girard's intuition is existential. It is always an event in his life, a founding event. He remembers how, as a child, he suddenly realized that he could read. And it is just as suddenly that the poems of Saint-John Perse, previously indecipherable, have become, in exile, like a light in his dark night: “I remember that it came suddenly, a bit like when I had learned to read the works I was assigned to teach: Balzac, Stendhal, Proust.”4 The poetry of Saint-John Perse opens the doors of the sacred. What does this intuition consist of? The sacred, amid the fragments of the world, can only be said poetically, in “the work of language.” Girard retains the image of an “immobile center in the middle of the movement.”5 In this early article, he remarks: “The sacred imposes itself with increasing force as we come into closer contact with nothingness.”6 Saint-John Perse defines himself as one of those “great adventurers of the soul . . . questioning the entire surface of the globe to understand the meaning of this terrific disorder.”7 But there is nothing “unreal” about the sacred here, as if it were the product of a “nihilating” imagination according to Sartre. The intuition that Girard attributes to Perse in his article is, on the contrary, an “intuition of being at the heart of nothingness.” In his poem the death of cultures displays their hidden source, the secret of their composition and their decomposition. The sacred is seen endowed with a reality that escapes rationalism and all its avatars, the idealism and realism of philosophers, the naturalism of writers, the positivism and progressivism of historians; it is a reality that escapes the closure of the conceptual thinking and is born aloft by images. To evoke this “beyond the absurd,” this beyond death, which is the sacred, metaphor reveals itself more lucid and more powerful than the concept.Even before the “novelistic revelation” of “a desire that from the outset is oriented toward death,” Girard has an intuition of an “apocalyptic” sacred that gives meaning to history, and he has chosen literature as a source of inspiration for the “demystification” that he is about to make of . . . literature. The young Sartrean professor Girard seeks the authenticity of a work in its ability to resist a dominant mystification: It is for the hero of a novel to assume his freedom, and for that, he must cut the ties that link him to a worldliness ruled by bad faith and inauthentic desires. The conclusion of the novel La Princesse de Clèves, for a Sartrean, would express this freedom: Her husband has died and nothing prevents Madame de La Fayette's heroine from marrying the Duke of Nemours, with whom she experiences a shared amorous passion. Yet she has arrived at “greater and more distant views”; she renounces her love and the world altogether and retires to a convent to die. A sublime action, but one that could also be described as suicidal and driven by pride. The reading that René Girard makes of it, in an article written well before Deceit, Desire and the Novel, is altogether different. What we find there is his intuition of the sacred: The sacred imposes itself with all the more force as we rub shoulders with nothingness.In Deceit, Desire and the Novel, Girard emphasizes the lucidity of the Princess of Clèves: She leaves the Duke of Nemours and the romantic world to escape the hell of jealousy, too aware that “only obstacles” have strengthened the ardor of the passion she inspired in the man she loves. But in a text that Girard has reworked several times entitled “Les vues grandes et éloignées de Madame de Clèves,”8 the heroine's self-control is not the subject; it is her death that is at stake, and this death is sacrificial. We learn that in one way or another, every great novel is “autobiographical,” in the sense that the author of the novel, even if at the beginning he distinguishes himself from it, maintains links that become closer and closer to its main character as the novel progresses. Distancing himself to mock his heroine, Flaubert ends up with the acrid taste in his mouth of the poison that kills her and confesses, “I am Madame Bovary.” The coincidence of Madame de La Fayette ending up being confused with Madame de Clèves, at the precise moment when the princess, who wanted to be different, discovers herself identical to all women, this perfect coincidence cannot be accomplished, says Girard, other than in the “sacrifice” of the heroine by the novelist. At the end of the novel, her amorous passion, which makes her look like all women, is replaced by a “Christic” passion, the final and redemptive point of the novel, a dying that evokes the Pauline “old man” whom we must slay within us in order to be reborn.Readers sense keenly this “fictional incarnation.” The novelist is embodied in her heroine. The heroes of novels “are not creatures in the same way as other characters because it is by creating them that the novelist creates himself,”9 writes Girard. By creating them or by killing them? By creating them first: The hero or heroine is not a character that the novelist disposes of as he pleases, as he disposes of other characters—it is “an abrupt crystallization of a will,” writes Girard, in short, an individuality endowed with a force, which Madame de Clèves calls “virtue,” “honor,” “fidelity,” and which Julien Sorel calls “duty,” Raskolnikov “remorse,” Des Grieux “love.” This “force, (I quote), which uproots them from the novelistic world is the very one which guides the novelist's hand.”10 To put it in other terms, the novelist, Madame de La Fayette, embodies herself in her heroine to enact her exit from the world, to free herself from and as we would are the way of the that the is embodied in her that the is a is to that the novelist does not just look at the from the it from the In literature, the writes Girard, does not on and but on the free from the to the But what Girard will call novelistic more than an of the novelist with her It a death and a To a from desire, to this point of from which it to know the of and to the world and history, the heroine must be and therefore put to By the Princess of Clèves, Madame de La Fayette into the world and is as a Her an to a It is this that the novel In conclusion to his article on Madame de La Fayette, Girard must not seek the to the in or in some of but in the that Madame de Clèves for her with the Duke of And this because it like the by her we are to it. us seek it the novel of it is the novel novelistic work would therefore be an of The novelistic from the killing of a But for the to for “the of to into the of which is the meaning of novelistic the author of the novel must with his And not only the author, but the as the novel will not itself to be that is to to the or that one would like to make of by a of the novel itself of its or of reading its I Benoît the between the first and the Madame de Clèves, which is also the between the novelist and the princess, the that the novelist from its all the that social to it, the novelistic from the of desire a intuition of the sacred therefore served as a to a that of a death would be the of “The sacred imposes itself with all the more force as we rub shoulders with wrote Girard in his first article on Saint-John This is in the of Deceit, Desire and the Novel, in a from like a to to the social world, it did a for if the does not it is it will and will not novelistic therefore has not only a or but an and even himself any more than from to René Girard, even before his did not hesitate to of the heroine as a of as a to his in “Les vues grandes et éloignées de Madame de The of a “novelistic by the author over his is for him to the of as a to his Girard the to these characters of novels who have according to in order to be by the of the novelist. A Sartrean will be to about these characters who are by the of but in their know to But Girard with this of he the heroes as it is because he refuses to make them are not of desire, he but of the of of and they and To like Girard has beyond the to himself at the at the very of the novelistic not only has an it is a as we have which for between the differences but because the same of the great they are also the of the Princess of Clèves, Girard himself to the of a novel of from the in which he the modern or The hero is the Des who will also the world, or more be by it, in order to to a he has in love He from to to and to his by into it It's an exit from the world from just the of an a into at the end of which this will free himself from of the says to his individuality and new This which is realized by the of the hero and thanks to the of the novelist, very to a creates new which the cannot in the that the author, with his Girard the again, the novelistic from the of desire, about a This is that of the author and his character whose are by the of the novel, “a man of who has from to whom the must be the that author, and is no that of the world that the hero but that of the novel that the world and reveals its Girard “The hero is therefore the between the novelist and the of the novel, as the perfect is the between the world and its He from the of the novel, from this world in which he is and his passion him by to the of the and above the world in which he does not will have understood that the for Girard the heart of novelistic only reveals himself in the death and of his Madame de La Fayette and the are revealed to as only in their “novelistic a death followed by a this of the above the is more of the of the who himself as a than of a and between the author, the and the The on it to me, that the author of the had to with himself and within himself a an he shared with “The the one who this “I am and they are and to the novelistic can therefore be like all the great works the of an the moment of the novelistic the which was the of the writing of the “very important papers” and the of his of in the one that in the of Deceit, Desire and the Novel, many things It time for Girard to “the man” of his Sartrean and become the new that of his time to free himself from the of and to the of the world in of the of would like to take of what Girard's first some published and us about the genesis of Girard's work, and the in is this importance to Chantre us that “The has become Deceit, Desire and the He also us that René Girard this The his of the To of the to of is to the of the too of the closure of conceptual The sacred, that hidden form of all the great is death in the of life. The novelistic has this of the at of the and the we have it also makes it to works as as La Princesse de Clèves and discovery is this of But before that, another discovery was also for of and the of the It is the discovery of the form of the great their It is this that new as between the novel of an and the novel of a into In literature, this is It the of the to the and the of at the source of the it reveals the of the and the the of that refuses to It is a double and says Benoît Chantre, to the to be the of Girard therefore himself with this discovery of This would him to this of that was his first published work. He will to the whole the revealed in the of Benoît Chantre that, in the of death and his is as the novelist his on the of the novel, the novelistic will the novelist on the of Girard can novel is in a way to beyond the novel its We know that we can be of the novel, once again, in a that is we that it is a of the novel in the of its own in the which is its but on the which many have by death, or to the is because the of the novel is a the of in the of the will Girard to and the of the intuition from reading the great This was like a “the that there was no meaning suddenly there was meaning It was a real but not it was like a that is and will or Girard that the of the novels is inspired by that of the of and The embodied hero is both in the world and at with it. The great novels are made of a into hell followed by an or a which is like a to death, followed by To the who him for “the of Girard that the novel is to the of and that this can only be revealed if it is and in a he you have to to the point the from the us to think of the conclusion of Deceit, Desire and the Novel, which with the redemptive conclusion of of is born And to these of And To the But in of that which In Saint-John Perse, Girard had as we have an intuition of being at the heart of It is at the of what Girard will as a that the of novel characters take in Girard's thought has from the and that is also he is There is no the of the with that of the the does not . . . . The is which even to to But this does not in and a The of the novel is by the of the individual and the of the as Girard is novelistic according to his It is in literature such an important in his search for and in his life. Girard by the poetry of Saint-John Perse, that the is It the to within the the within the when they are as is the with in literature, make it to to make new and therefore to find to the reality of human The novel itself is a says Girard, as it makes a world up from its a new world on the of an novelistic is a title it is a as we have for a of on the of character in a novel is only made of the of to be embodied in a there is also a literature, the text to be It was even very at the time when Girard in to of when of literature is it is to that a text is it embodies a it to of it has a that must be by And this is double for Girard, who a work both to an reality and to the of the work, which would be like the of this Chantre in his book that the of this of novelistic the young Girard from his and the way to for This an or has an and is a in the sense that “the first would be a if it were not followed by a which it in a redemptive (I Benoît is for Girard a a of It us away from from The of the work set up the of the world is also for the an to another for “The of the novelist, says Chantre, is like the he death and The of the novel a in death from which a Girard, it is the that in the great a that of death and What as we see in the conclusion of great is the this and Benoît Chantre of a of that Girard's a that is being of came to his And his own did not Girard, the refusal of this of is the is what the that which does not see and is always in search of a The of life, the that Girard will to the is this that was in both senses of the will have understood that great literature, work according to Girard, into the of and itself of between the author, his character or and the It is the in the of a “novelistic This can be in the of the the novelist himself of killing the “old man” in and of himself from one novel to another or within his novel, as in the novelist of and Mensonge romantique in 1961, Michel had very the of the work and the by Girard to take of his and the of the In a Girard assumed of the is the escape from the of the the from to what calls if it is not is at the of the and the a of shared And we understand that this death to which is the of a has an meaning even more than an It could only be in novels and in the of René Girard, it the for a that cannot be without
John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs is probably the best-known Protestant martyrology of the sixteenth century. The first English edition, published on 20 March 1563, was an enormous compendium of biographies of Protestant martyrs from the proto-Protestant Bohemian Jas Hus in the early fifteenth century up to the reformers killed during the persecutions of the Catholic government of Queen Mary I of England (1553–8). Appearing in the tense political and religious context of the accession of the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I, Foxe’s work sought to bolster the faith of English Protestants and was a polemical attack on Catholicism. In 1571, the Anglican authorities ordered that a copy should be kept in every English cathedral church. In this passage, Foxe recounts the life of Dr. Rowland Taylor, a protestant preacher arrested and burned at the stake in 1555. Foxe’s portrayal of Taylor offers an interesting contrast between the martyr’s seeming lack of emotional response (indeed serenity) when faced by the intemperate accusations and rage of the Catholic bishop of Winchester. The martyr’s lack of emotional response to the prospect of his horrific death – particularly his fearlessness – are presented as remarkable and exemplary proof of his faith and, by extension, of the superiority of that faith over Catholicism.
On 11 November 1755, Christopher Smart and Richard Rolt signed a contract with the stationer, Thomas Gardner, and the printer, Edmund Allen, to provide material—whether their own or that of collaborators—for a new periodical, to be entitled The Universal Visiter or Monthly Memorialist. The first number of this periodical (henceforth UV) appeared on 1 February 1756, and it ran for twelve monthly numbers, terminating in December 1756.1 The progress of UV was troubled from an early stage. Smart’s health was poor, and assistance in production of material for the periodical—from David Garrick, Charles Burney, Thomas Percy, possibly Arthur Murphy, and most famously Samuel Johnson—was called upon almost immediately. Contributions were not signed but were sometimes identified by initials or other marks. Smart’s own contributions were most prominent in the early numbers, between January and April 1756. A number of Smart’s contributions to UV, in both prose...
It is a special responsibility to incur individual readings of one’s work from colleagues. I hope the following line of thought does them justice. Nay Rather, an essay by Anne Carson (a translator and poet as well as a classical scholar), begins with an account of the trial of Joan of Arc. Caught in battle against the English and their Burgundian allies on 23 May 1430, a year after she had assisted a French army in lifting the English siege of Orleans, Joan of Arc was put on trial for heresy. The trial lasted from January to May 1431, and Joan was burnt at the stake on 30 May, aged nineteen. In recounting this history, Carson explains that she is particularly interested in the way in which, as she puts it, Joan was ‘distant’ from her own words. Carson (2014: 8) elaborates. Joan of Arc’s guidance, military and moral came from a source that she called ‘voices’. She began to hear them at the age of twelve, and they commanded her style of dress, her beliefs and the revolutionary politics of her action. At her trial, her English ecclesiastical prosecutors wanted to know her voices, for Joan to name and describe them in ways in which they might understand: in terms of recognised religious imagery and emotions, and in a conventional narrative that might then be subjected to mechanisms of theological proof.
This collection of articles on the theme of Carolingian cultures of dialogue and debate may seem a contradiction in terms. After all, it has recently been argued that by the end of the fourth century, Christianity had created authoritative structures of knowledge in which public disputation was replaced by catechism-like exchanges. This also spelled the end of classical dialogue, that is, the searching and open-ended exchange of ideas as it had been practised in the ancient world since the days of Socrates. Medievalists, on the other hand, have maintained that something resembling a public sphere emerged in the so-called ‘high’ Middle Ages; the lively and wide-ranging debates engendered by the Investiture Controversy have been cited as a case in point. A superficial combination of both perspectives, however different, yields the early medieval west in its traditional guise as a convenient and static backdrop that articulates previous declines and subsequent ‘rises’ of phenomena connected with modernity. For obvious reasons, this image needs to be discarded, but not simply by arguing for greater continuity, or by attempting to rehabilitate a period of roughly five centuries that was ‘actually’ much more culturally complex than has been hitherto assumed. On the contrary, we should make the most of the scholarly debates outside the orbit of Early Medieval Europe, for these raise questions that can be fed productively into our own analytical framework. This is why this themed edition on Carolingian dialogues and debates opens with an extensive contribution on late antique Christian dialogue. It is also the reason why in this Introduction we shall take some time to explore the common ground between ancient historians and early medievalists, as well as the differences in their approach. To put it succinctly, all are concerned with the larger issues involved, such as the impact of Christianity, or with the shifting balance between oral and written culture. Nonetheless, recent debates among historians of late antiquity have mostly revolved around the question of whether the new religion did indeed put an end to a brilliant culture of open debate. Recently, this contention has been challenged head-on with regard to late antiquity and Byzantium, with much attention to the literary complexity of the relevant sources. 1 The post-Roman west, however, is not part of these reconsiderations, largely because of the general assumption that all the venues that might have enabled public debate vanished along with the Roman empire. Whereas Augustine and his flock had remained attuned to empire-wide religious contestation, Alcuin of York was representative of a restricted palace-connected elite, with great ideals concerning literacy and reform that had, however, little practical effect on society at large. Hence, it is still widely held that early medieval society offered little room for criticism and debate. This tenacious image is based on the preconception that the expression of divergent points of view was unthinkable in a period in which ‘the Church’ was dominant and religious diversity was oppressed. Free expression of opinion is supposed to have disappeared, along with the possibilities of an open exchange of ideas, the very moment Emperor Justinian closed the doors of the Academy of Athens. While it should be noted that ‘free expression of opinion’ is an idealistic construction in the first place, it cannot be denied that religious unity at the level of kingdoms and empires was indeed the professed ideal during much of the early Middle Ages. Yet this ideal had to be constantly negotiated, debated and reformulated, if it was ever to be achieved. 2 Scholars, bishops and rulers were intent on establishing orthodoxy and defending it against heresy, that much is true, but orthodoxy, as is well known, does not exist in and by itself. It develops in a dialectical relationship with ‘heresy’– a position that is not only held by modern sociologists of religion, but was acknowledged in the early Middle Ages as well. Debate with heterodox thinkers was considered necessary to arrive at the ‘truth’. Criticism and divergent opinions were welcomed in the political and religious arenas of debate (at least in theory), as long as they served the uncovering and defence of truth and arguably benefitted the common good. Another widely held notion concerning the absence of debate in the early Middle Ages that we need to address from the outset is the supposed demise of (formal) rhetoric. George Kennedy, an authority in the field of classical rhetoric and its medieval Nachleben even went so far as to claim that formal speech was no longer regarded as an effective form of persuasion, because ‘men's minds and actions were largely manipulated by a rhetoric of brute force and authority [. . .] not by logical argument’. 3 The general opinion is that classical rhetoric dwindled in the sixth and seventh centuries, because there were fewer opportunities for public speaking. With the decay and fragmentation of civic life, rhetoric lost its public function and oratory went into decline. Training in written argumentation became ever more important, and those elements of the rhetorical discipline that were still considered useful were redirected to written discourse. 4 Certainly, there is much evidence that points in the direction of a weakening of classical rhetoric after the municipal schools closed. Yet, rhetoric is so much more than formal rhetoric in the classical tradition of Cicero, Demetrius or Quintilian, a point to which we shall return below. There continued to be venues for oral rhetoric and occasions for debate where one could show off one's skills in persuasive public speaking. We only need to think of assemblies and smaller-scale deliberative meetings at the courts, such as are described in De ordine palatii, or of discussions on orthodoxy during or in the margins of ecclesiastical synods, to imagine places and opportunities where training in oral delivery must have come in useful. Although debates were increasingly based on the interpretation of written texts, that interpretation was still communicated orally in public meetings, and those who could speak well in public received the admiration of their contemporaries. In 800, Alcuin's student Candidus reported to his teacher how much he had admired the outspoken speech that Theodulf of Orleans had delivered at the assembly of Rome in that same year. Candidus praised the ‘free voice’ of Theodulf speaking out in a public meeting. 5 On such eminently public occasions, rulers and their direct entourage were admired for their eloquence. When Agobard of Lyon reported on the assembly of Attigny in 822, he praised Emperor Louis who with God's inspiration interrogated those present, uncovered the truth in a most elegant manner, and ‘announced this faithfully, by his own word of mouth’. 6 The most impressive address at Attigny, however, was delivered by Abbot Adalhard of Corbie, by then an old and experienced orator. According to his biographer, Adalhard's eloquence was such that it was ‘utterly suited for persuasion and dissuasion’. 7 Secular magnates also took an active part in such public discussions; especially the contentious issue of the use of ecclesiastical land for military purposes was debated hotly from the 820s onwards, with churchmen wanting to set limits to this, while the saeculares argued that the res publica could not do without it. 8 The dialogue is only very rarely evidenced as a form for normative Christian writing, despite the strategic place of conversion and theological discussion in Christian communities. The catechism and other question-and-answer structures are not in any significant sense a dialogue: they are forms of exchange to aid controlled learning and to produce certain, fixed responses. 9 For Richard Lim, the new religion indeed spelled the end of dialogue, albeit for different reasons. In classical antiquity, Lim argues, the dialogue belonged to the elitist literary culture of paideia. It was highly influential, yet also a ‘boutique literary genre’, and therefore very different from the inclusive Christian sermo humilis that aimed to reach as many people as possible, including those from lower social strata. Put briefly, the inherent elitism of the dialogue, as Lim called it, was ill-suited to a religious communication that aimed at the masses, so the demand for this particular literary form gradually disappeared. 10 As Averil Cameron recently pointed out, the freedom, democracy and open-ended exchange with which Goldhill and others identify ‘real’, that is, Socratic, dialogue is mostly a modern ideal. 11 A related and equally vexed question is whether the dialogues transmitted through texts in any way reflect ‘real’ public debates and discussions. Since all dialogues available to historians are literary constructs, including the ones that are presented as spontaneous and open-ended, a sharp distinction between literary and viva voce dialogue is not helpful. What we are able to grasp are the cultural ideals of how a dialogue should proceed. 12 In a critique published only a year after Cameron's, Peter Van Nuffelen primarily engages with Richard Lim's Public Disputation, Power, and Social Order in Late Antiquity (1995). 13 This influential book no doubt inspired the more recent verdict on the ‘end of dialogue’, but its central argument ranges more widely: it is about once wide-open intellectual horizons being narrowed by the increasing dominance of Christian orthodoxy. From the late fourth century onwards, the intellectually demanding public disputation that had been the prevailing norm and practice began to be replaced by statements of religious consensus. First, such debates became staged operations in which the victory of orthodoxy was decided from the beginning, and they just survived as literary exercises, with an even more predictable result. According to Van Nuffelen, however, this transition from once spontaneous and oral events to stilted literary productions represents an evolutionist projection on Lim's part. After all, any knowledge of the supposedly impromptu earlier disputations comes from literary accounts, which may have been just as fictitious as their fifth- and sixth-century successors. And instead of taking the latter to be mere literary productions and therefore not representative of any real-life exchange, a careful study of these texts in fact shows how much public disputation was still valued as a way of gaining truth and knowledge. 14 Whether any of the textual evidence reflects ‘real’ disputes is a moot point, but it surely becomes clear that in this period in which there supposedly was no room anymore for the real and open-ended exchange of ideas, it was precisely this that remained the norm for Christian authors who set out to persuade their opponents. There was of course a tension between this ideal and reality, but this ‘was sustained by a belief in the power and moral propriety of persuasion and reason’. 15 These modern dichotomies – oral versus literate, reason versus authority, and open social competition versus closed group identities – have not just been projected onto late antiquity. They have also been essential in articulating the differences between modern and pre-modern societies in general, and of the position of the Middle Ages within the grand narrative of western history. More specifically, these set oppositions have long informed the dominant image of the western early Middle Ages as a period of political chaos and cultural stagnation, inspiring some lively debates among early medievalists, primarily on the impact of literacy on political communication, on the existence and perception of state-like structures and on the participation of the clergy in the latter. 16 This has yielded a different perspective on the Carolingian world, not just with regard to the wider impact of Christian-Latin literacy on society, but also concerning the importance of religious institutions, both for the governance of this huge polity as well as for the cultural of its as it was once out to of a great of and that were very much part of the Carolingian of This has for any of dialogue and debate in this historians of the early Middle Ages have been about the of the public mostly from the perspective of political history. For has on the of public of the Carolingian and of the as an eminently public place in the minds of even if the As has the of the first there a culture of the even in the early medieval west with its the notion remained a primarily with courts, and both great and should be to this also as of the and therefore an part of a new of in which public both and could take A of bishops is not at first a for that is and even so a yet if one in the to which the Carolingian on governance and on to such ecclesiastical cannot be in discussions about the of an early medieval public of the issues debated in these ecclesiastical such as or religious to come the of but have part of political and social history. its so the earlier Middle Ages a static backdrop for the of new is the Public an study that put the issue of public opinion and the public sphere on the of medieval in the to show that the of and on since the late century did indeed the of a public sphere in sense of the a part of society that is and in a public the of public opinion that could not be controlled by the Early have much time arguing that all this was in evidence in the and in a has in to make it more to the Middle Ages. the of the public sphere to after the period in which the public to to This is not for these authors are about but by no is in the of a political that remained to the public as by the and his in of the common this was the central point of for any of the that were with or It was the real of which the first at which point political fragmentation set public sphere as it emerged during the Investiture Controversy is a more a that is, an between communication on the one and the on the More has the of such a public albeit a more in the Carolingian world as with the case of and as the There are however, to the to which can be in to show that there was a public sphere in a pre-modern for it is based on about the of in the of western As Peter has pointed out, in intellectual tradition is a and with the between the and the and with It is different from the with its of the common and These modern and their should be into have been to the public sphere into a more and a for sphere where common are at which to the to any of social that could be as In this more way of about the notion of the construction of a public sphere does not on such as or to the of but on such as and debates on the common or on of and According to and the of a public sphere on of the common the on the one hand, and the sphere on the this is, for into Carolingian public debates this does not much and not just because of the of in sources. The is the among modern historians to the of to that of the and to identify public opinion with the participation of the opinion only public once it the of ecclesiastical and We think As to this issue this is not the to a polity sustained by and by with bishops and In the debate and dialogue are at it is to make a clear distinction between the in a way that is and does to the of the sources. to be the modern for any of discussion that is or intellectually be it public or or between such a debate might be or through a written exchange of With regard to the early Middle has an with a it can to discussions during public meetings such as assemblies and synods, as well as to the subsequent written and the discussion engendered by the but also to issues that were by just the exchange of written texts, or to a exchange on a issue among more wide-ranging In the latter we can speak of ‘the debate on for or ‘the debate on even these discussions were of a different and use of different As we have the and impact of such as well as the question of may have is our Whereas debate is a modern and are more that the particular form of the The of both forms of discussion is (at least to the but it is different of argumentation and The and the of and could to the question-and-answer of a or to the literary form in which the discussion was In modern the notion of as a literary form is with particular that to the of which is not the case in the medieval of the When speaking of dialogue in modern we have an discussion in in which the to the truth questions and with for This idealistic of dialogue can be in of dialogue, but as we have in the of classical for the and oral of dialogue. When we speak of on the other hand, we a and of While in a dialogue to on a to an argument and their in The between the forms of discussion may seem is an while is a this distinction does not at all with the of our medieval sources. the word as an to while simply as a between or more early medieval texts as that we to dialogue. We only need to think of Alcuin's as on rhetoric and to where the modern and to the and practice of debate in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. of the must be that modern scholarly is in classical and medieval of and than in the early medieval just Nonetheless, this tension can as a useful to the early medieval of debate. For if we to out the of debate were at the the of and normative that how issues were to be we need to attention to the that were to how the the they by recent historians have more in the impact of rhetoric on how was the knowledge of in late antiquity and the early Middle for the of persuasion of the intellectual who took part in more wide-ranging and public it that their were delivered in an elegant and to their or or to the Carolingian rulers and their who served as in debates that to and To an to these questions we might be to to rhetorical the discipline of rhetoric had no on as and not was the of to the of and not to the question-and-answer of the dialogue and the rhetorical many that are relevant to the of such as the different of argument and while rhetoric was dialectical in in the first we at of rhetorical that were and in the early Middle however, such as De and the book of to we that these received any in the that the rhetorical to of dialectical were at least from the century onwards, in a way that to These that we should to instead of rhetoric to come to a of the and practice of debate in the Middle Ages. We have no reason to however, that rhetoric was relevant to the medieval practice of debate. form of whether the speech of the or the questions and of needs to be persuasive if it to at of on the of rhetoric as transmitted by rhetorical it might be more to for for debate that our medieval may have to in to of persuasive to others of their point of we could think of debate dialogues such as the disputation of Augustine and against or the dialogues by in this one could of debate that offered useful rhetorical to persuade or one's These were that have come in in any debate. of the debates between and their such as the ones have been transmitted in that also medieval debate texts, which could be as evidence that these texts indeed served as for debate in the early Middle Ages. For this this issue opens with of the of contentious literary dialogue that was so for the Carolingian world on which the other whether public disputation and dialectical could have a part in the of around 800, and the of of such As there was more room for dialectical in meetings than in the of or The latter are the of which the way Carolingian aimed at and an for debates that could the and useful then the to the debate between of and and shows that as a was largely of his own and an part of his own of With we from these for to the of the debate among lower They were not supposed to in this but they did so all the and shows some of the of this contribution is on the a that shows how especially in the Carolingian world of the and the to the res publica became more the of public among highly both ecclesiastical and The common of these articles is that all the authors show that the of Christianity did not the end of dialogue and debate. The cultural practice of and was and in the early Middle and into new by from the and classical The question the still that a public sphere can only exist outside we to to as ‘the In to this they have to show that the Carolingian of many different discussion of public debate in the century needs to from this point of not the as an notion or but the of and clergy and and how these into at the level of kingdoms or even the relationship between the political and the religious is not but it comes to the lively contribution of ecclesiastical and to the Carolingian there is still a of to be It is to this that this issue to
Seventeenth-century historians and antiquarians lavished attention on nearly every place in the French kingdom. So it is hardly surprising that pilgrim shrines numbered among the many cities, provinces and dioceses whose pasts attracted such passionate interest and extensive research. Dozens of books about shrines were published over the course of the seventeenth century. Most shrines were dedicated to the Virgin Mary and reported apparitions, miracles and marvels. Authors of shrine books regaled readers with a shrine’s truths as well as delights, thereby establishing the place’s identity and spreading its renown among potential pilgrims and patrons.1 Although the shrine books do not comfortably fit within the category of history, they depend on contemporary practices of history-writing. They share much with sacred or ecclesiastical histories in the mode of Cesare Baronio’s Annales Ecclesiastici (1588–1607).2 Like sacred history, authors of shrine books documented historical precedent in order to support an institution’s privileges. They also shared sacred historians’ goal of restoring ruined ancient sites of worship. Books about shrines borrowed conventions from the vernacular manuscript chronicles that early modern notaries, artisans and merchants penned about their cities and towns.3 Confronting the historical craft embedded in the shrine books — how authors carried out research, how they documented a shrine’s past and how they recounted its history — sheds light on the multiple uses to which the past was put in the seventeenth century. This is the first goal of this essay. The second goal of the essay is to expose what is most remarkable about the shrine books: their hybrid form which melds myth, history and archive. Almost all the shrines in question were rebuilt — and truly revitalized — in the wake of the religious wars (1562–98, 1620–29). Authors invented the literary form that I call ‘the shrine book’ in order to repair the ruptures — material and epistemological — that the religious wars created. For them, the fusion of myth, history and archives would counter iconoclasm, invasion and, above all, doubt. In a recent study of German and Dutch legends such as ‘the pied piper of Hamelin’ and ‘the baby and the cat in the flood’, Judith Pollmann argued that those legends, no matter how apparently fantastic, lodged in the popular imagination because they acquired ‘the flavour of authenticity’ provided by specific historical references.4 This insight also rings true for shrine books, whose authors wanted to show that the shrines were ancient and their reported miracles and legends were true, or at least believable. But key to believability was an archive: a written, legally established and orderly record of God’s and the Virgin Mary’s favours bestowed at a particular place, and of human devotion expressed there in prayer, liturgy and processions. The books’ authors established an archive or written record for their shrines, and thereby laid claim to significant places through the preservation of testimony about the shrines’ marvels. They wanted to save shrines from oblivion by filling in gaps in documentation created by what they condemned as their ancestors’ deplorable failure to keep records, and by the fires that were the scourge of early modern archives. This meant restoring a register of miracles and marvels from legal acts or depositions, or even creating one from scratch in many cases. But the creation of a shrine’s register or archives had a large goal: to prove the truth of the shrine, and of the Catholic faith woven into its history. The two meanings of the word ‘faith’ (foi) that the authors of shrine books employed reinforced the books’ truth claims: ‘faith’ could mean ‘the Catholic faith’ or the content of beliefs that some Catholic authority approved, but ‘faith’ was also invoked as a legal term, as in ‘to bear witness’. The ways that the authors of shrine books both invoked and used history, and invoked and created archives — by demonstrating faith in archives and by preserving witnesses’ testimony — is the subject of this essay. Authors of shrine books showed faith in archives as sources of historical knowledge at the same time that they created archives of the faith that pilgrims placed in the shrines. Authors used the term ‘faith’ in two very particular senses. ‘Faith’ could mean ‘the Catholic faith’, ‘the true faith’, or ‘the ancient faith’: a bounded body of beliefs that a Catholic authority ostensibly or actually approved. For Pierre de Marca, a lawyer turned bishop, the shrine of Notre-Dame de Betharram in the Pyrenees provided evidence of ‘the true faith of our fathers’ that Queen Jeanne of Navarre had tried in vain to ‘bury’ and to ‘ruin’.5 Marca also wrote of the principles of ‘the Faith’ as a body of Catholic doctrine, and sometimes of faith as a theological virtue. It was not entirely new to call the totality of Catholic doctrines ‘the Faith’. But after the religious wars it became a common shorthand for ‘the true Catholic faith’ and moreover signified a bounded code of doctrine. What was particularly potent was the mixture of this definition of faith with the second one. Marca often used ‘faith’ specifically as a legal or quasi-legal term, to indicate testimony, bearing witness, or authenticity (as in faire foi, or en foi de quoi). Using ‘faith’ in both senses, as many authors of shrine books did, effectively created a web of meanings that drew on the authority of both legal and theological language. In this way authors amplified their claims to truth as they created archives of faith. Today’s readers may be surprised by how many pages are devoted to apparitions and miracles in books that were purportedly histories of the shrines. But early modern people avidly consumed tales about marvels, wonders and prodigies. Wonders were ‘good to think with’, providing the occasion for investigating and arguing about nature, divine action and philosophy.6 Over the course of the early modern period, those who wrote about marvels and wonders increasingly felt compelled to provide evidence for them, an intellectual development that also shaped shrine books. What should most strike today’s reader is the tremendous effort that authors devoted to documenting their research into the shrines’ origins and miracles in authoritative written sources and among only the most reliable witnesses. Or at least they created the impression of having done so. ‘All these miracles have their attestations in the Archives of Liesse’, J. de Saint-Pères wrote in his book about the shrine of Notre-Dame de Liesse.7 Pierre Geoffroy assured readers that his documentation of events at Notre-Dame de Garaison was impeccable: ‘Dear Reader … [I assure you] that I recount nothing I have not seen myself’ as superintendent of the chapel, ‘or that I have not learned from people worthy of trust (foy) and of irreproachable character’, drawn from the depositions of those witnesses in public records.8 Yet Geoffroy artfully wove myth into his lively account of Garaison’s history. Pierre Alabert, a later historian of the Garaison shrine, promised that ‘all that I will report about the miraculous is verified and attested appropriately in the Archives of the Chapel’.9 About one especially ‘prodigious’ cure that might raise a reader’s doubts, Alabert added ‘I was present’ and ‘I am a witness to these Prodigies’.10 Like Saint-Pères, Geoffroy and Alabert, most authors of shrine books professed a personal commitment to sound historical method, while also spinning a good yarn about the shrine’s divinely ordained origins, which they admitted were not always scrupulously recorded in writing. The shrine of Notre-Dame du Puy provides a good example of how authors worked. By early modern standards, Le Puy was amply documented by writers of a historical bent: no fewer than four artisan-authored manuscript chronicles and five histories published by clerics survive. I begin with the Jesuit Odo de Gissey (1567–1643), because his Discours historiques de la tres-ancienne devotion à N. Dame du Puy (1620) was an early example of the shrine book.11 It was not the first such book; Mont Saint-Michel (1604), Garaison (1607) and Chartres (1609) had already found their historians.12 But Gissey’s book was a popular and influential example of the genre, judging from the numbers of editions and surviving copies. Notre-Dame du Puy in Velay was a major shrine, drawing pilgrims from across the French kingdom between around 1300 and the Revolution. With its renowned ‘ancient’ image of the Virgin Mary (a dark coloured or ‘black’ madonna), its robust Catholic identity, and steady influx of pilgrims Notre-Dame du Puy, as did other major Marian shrines, provided a tempting opportunity for religious orders intent on expanding their influence in the last decades of the religious wars. Odo de Gissey probably arrived at Le Puy in 1588, part of a Jesuit project to establish a school, church and pilgrim hospice. Other Catholic religious orders arrived in the late 1580s and 1590s, making Le Puy a centre of reformed Catholicism in the region. Gissey’s work was embedded in a world of intellectual collaboration. He belonged to a of in Le history and a that of the religious orders and some Gissey also had a his whose work often and other whose work and and with may have Most had a in Le Puy with shared the common of the history of the shrine and its ‘ancient’ of an who around of the of was to Le Puy in published a book on Notre-Dame du Puy four Gissey published his and a of his book in the same Gissey’s book books were published by the same Gissey’s and books are not in and Gissey to his work to the of modern ecclesiastical historians such as He his Discours historiques by He and He tried to by and the Jesuit a He that to of and the Virgin always especially the of Le would ‘the origins and of the an in the book the of the image and to his claim about the shrine’s Yet Gissey had a claim to a modern historian than Gissey and on a that ‘I this is did a late historian from Gissey for about But Gissey and had in common than The two and wrote their books at the same and in the same They shared books and of the same recent marvels in their books, sometimes in the same Gissey could to what call for It is to they were to in the apparently of the and For most of the seventeenth to of all was to even the learned and those with in the of our two those who were out that in to of and was in order to of a that also rings true for of and church in that to the of and was Gissey and do with written in their religious or what was to by of the and other They also borrowed and from other to the of Gissey’s the material ancient and modern and the of book that the were or Gissey and a of material from the same manuscript written by a and to the wrote his Le de a that the hybrid between and He published but the multiple penned for the manuscript show that an for his This was not a book for an or as was the written over the course of a by a from the de to his that the of our will be for — from and from his decades as a to and in the of Notre-Dame — may have from his over to archives. Although a did not have to records, or for that matter other as in one of the to his I was not to the and worthy of which are in in the and of the of Le Puy, the of the the the of and the the and also the and in the of the of and other in the of Le Puy … which I worthy of For all the Le Puy authors on the of of and Gissey’s to and are than an of to be the authors may have such of and But what had a also provided a on the authenticity of the For the from which Gissey and were were as than as public of and by and church in order to But such were from the authoritative public that they would after and have attention to the that to in trust in and But for most of the early modern period, in the of about what was and what was an archive or of as of their authority as or they to other writers and for their The authors of shrine books their faith in such archives by readers that they their from the most In this way they showed readers that they on the of the to a and by to the truth of its This is Odo de Gissey and other authors to who that they on those who the of his book wrote that an account of two recent marvels from of and Catholic — and of the and the and a and a meant to assure readers not only that the were but also that the of a of the would as a of the good faith of who the In and his on Notre-Dame du Puy, Odo de Gissey on other authors of shrine books, did not report testimony it had recorded in writing. on the legal authority of the written But for all his for Gissey also on the authority of the who a written to This web of and trust is even in book on Notre-Dame de a shrine in the of This book was the creation of a who was also a published and but did of what would call research of his He the ecclesiastical historians of the and historians of such as and the a — part of a of learned to the — had at his at least as around the world of and Yet hardly they were all that was in the wars between and the ‘the of our archives with those of our This one of an all the This is a about a that The sheds light on the authority that for an authority to of authority and places of an of both written to which this is an of one literary But was not in this of to the authority of writing. In a key of the book — of an to Notre-Dame at — by how a of was placed in his a record from the of the of to the of He from the after some people of this whose are and in of and the Virgin Mary this of of and a to and dedicated the after the of the the to on that to some was after and the chapel, and acquired over the was in the did not the at are a in as by other But placed faith in this and wove a lively around The had placed in his by a worthy of his and his de in the only had an the The of because it a that on the of the shrine to the of and that the was dedicated by other than the of de to what had verified by a key of by the seventeenth a to had in the but the in In his readers provided of of the by that the of of the of had seen the in the the was of authority in — as in ways — on the ancient origins of the in the testimony to a of past of the shrine’s sacred of and the shrine’s his claims with and but a of as an account of the documenting a from the shrine’s early his on the authority of both and who could for the Seventeenth-century authors on as they created an archive of faith for their shrines. shrine book created an archive for its an archive provided a record of God’s and the Virgin Mary’s action in the and of Authors of shrine books created archives by documenting the origins and history of the shrine and shrine books testimony from witnesses to the miracles and marvels at the they did research, authors of shrine books this testimony in two through written sources and through or of miracles They may have at the time authors their research. especially those who were or of the shrines, and depositions to and other favours that pilgrims But authors that to have at all, or were in or they were not to of the failure of to the miraculous of the image of Notre-Dame de to a written record for Odo de Gissey expressed a about Notre-Dame du miracles have into Most authors professed a commitment to creating a written record of their shrine’s marvels. Pierre Geoffroy to be the first to the of Notre-Dame de Garaison’s to than expressed a goal for Notre-Dame de ‘I in to the word about the and bestowed his effort to that already by the of who had depositions to be from those who a In this way and other authors or created a register or archive on whose the truth of God’s at the shrine could be sources could be in the seventeenth and authors the most of what they could But sources an For authors had two to with that often to and ‘the of the the shrines’ and were key to the shrines’ in a way they provided the for the shrines’ Like authors of shrine books used material by way of and the Authors of shrine books might not have to on or ecclesiastical historians for much in but they reported from or from witnesses’ and or from recounted by that around the Notre-Dame de Garaison in the to people who to about the of the Virgin Mary to a an which had over a later Pierre Alabert to have to the people of the same about miraculous Yet some of the material that authors in sources was from written This is in the quasi-legal of the testimony But a is at the impression that a and had to the of a particular is a common of shrine books. authors to have the written origins of testimony, by a personal with an or at least that one had This to the truth claims that authors the other the authority of written documentation among early modern people also be Most authors on an of and witnesses to show their readers that the they were The of written and sources testimony about the and miraculous are in books about the shrine of Notre-Dame de published books about with Pierre Geoffroy in and his in Pierre Alabert published book about Garaison in later the shrine’s a and of and authors increasingly that the truth the and miracles had to be The was by which myth with history. a the first of this were and it is from to that the occasion was as a of was by the of the Virgin who the to to the that Mary to a church on that the of the Geoffroy created a a about a past through the sacred with historical of the Geoffroy was with a the in the had no but only ‘the ‘the Yet added to the are specific to time and the about a on the same the the in of on the other strike a They to be of legal are only a or often the and of the with a but always the of the to the Virgin of The or as Geoffroy his about the the of the and the of witnesses and all in other shrine books, a of and witnesses were or from to the legal and religious authors that readers would be to trust the word of those from the of who were to be and decades later a to the one Geoffroy tried to the a historical that Geoffroy only He and they may have had no in evidence than the showed in this of Garaison to a by way of this to to the place, and to those who would particular do not the and the but the time because the or the or the of those who in a and in that were no than the were to in and to to those and of such a remarkable and was content to the in its and which be to the reader but the truth of the is no I in course the research that I did that to the place, to an of the of the of a from the than a and who was ordained to the in who to that the in question his which would to the at on the significant of the — especially how they with and the history of other apparitions — how the truth of the as a of how apparitions and miracles should be He felt to his because was on who is not to be by a and human who are by their and only about and miraculous from and ‘to to to and ‘to myself’ of every of having or of having ‘I to and which after having them, to and as to assure the truth of the on What are the ways of the truth about apparitions and a over and provided the of ‘the truth of an ancient or la But other ways of the truth of a past would from to or popular witnesses who not after the or and the that the and into the that the would evidence provided by the and good of the and miracles at the all these of testimony may have written and in it that about having about the most of his material from written So the of the sources is not the key What should be is on testimony and in his of at common and of all the people of these and the no one or to even a in the will to the truth of an action to which of the it is not a is and human that the should be reported to the most authoritative about the miraculous is the testimony of and their and J. de Saint-Pères, de de Marian of J. de Saint-Pères, de de Marian of authors of shrine books even to the legal of attestations about and favours at Notre-Dame de into his on the This was also the by Pierre de Marca in his book on Notre-Dame de and Marca the of writers who legal into their books. But other authors created the of legal documentation in the way they testimony from a testimony, or the of marvels and miracles in a quasi-legal as the had to a or by a is about legal and about the of bearing Authors legal into their of or they a quasi-legal to an impression of legally established But of authors drew the early modern of to their of of who and how many of pilgrims and have a impression on readers for that such divine were are all to the and the the and the the and the promised his as evidence many of God’s bestowed on the at Notre-Dame de Like other authors of shrine books a of to a shrine’s history, and its sacred Authors of shrine books created an archive even as they recounted a shrine’s history and For sites of Catholic ruined by as well as Pierre Geoffroy to the of and to his shrine of Notre-Dame de Garaison to after the religious wars Other authors the for because were both by and by and put ancient and of past are the and of that and that the and of our of to and for our material authors of shrine books an they created archives in order to their that of a shrine’s history and miracles were They did this by demonstrating faith in archives. They to readers their on the authority of and other written In they also showed how there could in be an archive of faith — that of God’s action in the and to Authors created an archive by preserving testimony, or from sources and or ‘the of the probably in written In these ways the authors created the impression of a of witnesses and knowledge the of a shrine’s history. they such testimony from a shrine’s or or from legal such as depositions or or it from witnesses and other they an and it their as might Geoffroy wanted to the of in Notre-Dame de Garaison by a record of divine out in that ancient and sacred by theological and religious the shrine books, but authors with history, archives and — last but not least — a good
Cosmopoiesis: Dante, Columbus and Spiritual Imperialism in Stigliani’s Mondo nuovo Mary A. Watt (bio) By the time Tommaso Stigliani published his 1628 epic, the Mondo nuovo, the new world project was well underway. While explorers continued to probe the interiors and examine the most distant peripheries of the Americas, the focus had shifted somewhat to the establishment of permanent colonies and the struggle for dominion in the newly discovered territories. Not surprisingly, this struggle often reflected parallel tensions in Europe.1 As France, England, Spain and the Netherlands vied for sovereignty on both sides of the Atlantic, so too did the papacy, in the wake of the Protestant revolution, seek to restore its former position of power. Its efforts in service of the Counter Reformation, however, were not restricted to the Catholic (re)conquest of Europe but rather, were also concomitantly aimed at exploiting the possibilities for the conquest of new spiritual territory even as the crowned heads of Europe staked their earthly claims. In this respect, the most obvious manifestations of papal colonial aspirations are the creation of the Jesuit order and the Franciscan missions to the New World.2 This project was underwritten by a [End Page S245] subtle and sometimes not too subtle program of propaganda aimed at reestablishing spiritual hegemony in the Old World and expanding it into the newly found lands. The Papacy and the Italian consciousness, however, could not have been oblivious to the irony that while Italy had no national presence in the New World, it was Italians such as Columbus, Vespucci, Caboto and Verazzano who had guided the ships, assuming the roles of captains and strategists in the conquest of Paradise.3 Threatened in the sixteenth century by the rise of nationalism, the Papacy responded with the creation of its own supranationalist project, presenting itself as super-European, transcending mere nationhood.4 In service of this project the Papacy and the writers of the Italian Renaissance and Counter-Reformation looked to the figure of Christopher Columbus and in particular his Italianicity as proof of the legitimacy of papal but more specifically Italian dominion over all of the souls of this new wilderness.5 Often embellishing the story of Columbus’s 1492 ‘discovery’ with countless details that were not part of the actual voyage, Italian writers created paradigmatic affinities between Columbus’s journey and that of earlier Italian heroes from Vergil’s Aeneas to Dante Alighieri’s pilgrim poet in an attempt to assert papal hegemony even as the Protestant and scientific challenges continued to erode its political might. Torquato Tasso’s 1581 epic Gerusalemme liberata, for example, though set in the time of the first crusade, evokes the figure of Columbus in retro-prophecy, specifically referring to his Italian heritage and thus links the conquest of the New World with the earlier Reconquest of Jerusalem under the auspices of Roman Catholicism. While Tasso predicts [End Page S246] the eventual discovery of a hidden land by Columbus, “Un uom de la Liguria”, Tasso’s Columbus is linked to Italian ascendency in an even more subtle way as Tasso explicitly contrasts Columbus’s success in reaching the New World with Ulysses’s failure to do so.6 Significantly, it is not Homer’s Ulysses to which Tasso makes reference. Rather, his paraphrasing of Ulysses’s journey and eventual destruction are a clear reiteration of Dante’s retelling of the Ulysses story in Inferno 26. In Dante’s version, Ulysses sails through the straits of Gibraltar past the Pillars of Hercules, according to legend inscribed with the prohibition ‘Non plus ultra.’ From there he continues travelling westward until he is shipwrecked by a great storm at what is later revealed to be the shores of Mount Purgatory. Tasso thus suggests a Dantesque reading of Columbus’s voyage by likening the Genoese sailor to the pilgrim who was able to complete a journey that Ulysses could not. Thus Tasso’s prophecy locates Columbus within a literary tradition that has as one of its central motifs the link between Dante and, before him, Saint Paul and Aeneas. As such, Tasso creates a similar link between Columbus’s voyage and the establishment of a Roman Empire that...
When twenty-one masters of theology at the University of Paris condemned the book The Mirror of Simple Souls as heretical, no doubt the inquisitor William of Paris felt justified in his proceedings against its author, the beguine Marguerite Porete. She had, for a year and a half, contumaciously refused to take the inquisitorial oath and give either an account of herself or of her book. The most learned minds of the Church had confirmed William's belief in the erroneous nature of her work, and with this confirmation he proceeded to call for its extermination. All those who possessed a copy were to turn it in to the Dominican friars fraud under pain of excommunication.1 Its author was likewise condemned, and on June 1, 1310, Marguerite Porete was burned at the stake as a relapsed heretic in the Place de Greve in Paris. For William of Paris, a job neatly done. It ended up being not as neat as William would probably have liked, for the pestiferous Mirror of Simple Souls was never exterminated. It would, without the name of its author, go on to enjoy a long and unusual afterlife throughout Europe as a popular spiritual work. Perhaps one of the most interesting events in its afterlife would occur just one year after Marguerite's execution, when another master theologian, the renowned Meister Eckhart, returned to Paris to serve as the Dominican Chair at the university. Here he lived with William of Paris in the Dominican convent of St. Jacques, where any of the turned-in copies of Marguerite's Mi rror would have been kept. Two years later, upon his return to German lands, Meister Eckhart's vernacular preaching intensified. His most innovative concepts solidified and progressed well beyond what they had previously been. In an interesting twist, however, many of Meister Eckhart's famous ideas from this time exhibit distinct characteristics and language that bear notable resemblances to those found in Marguerite Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls. It is possible not only that Meister Eckhart encountered The Mirror during his time in Paris, but it may also have influenced his vernacular theology. If so, it is clear that Eckhart must have viewed The Mirror far differently than his Dominican brother William and his fellow masters of theology. It is the purpose of this paper to argue that Meister Eckhart did come across The Mirror of Simple Souls, and that the concepts and language of Marguerite Porete greatly contributed to the ideas found in Meister Eckhart's later vernacular treatises and sermons. Unfortunately, there is no smoking gun that definitively proves a connection between Meister Eckhart and The Mirror of Simple Souls, and so the question remains an open and controversial one. Several prominent scholars have weighed in on the matter over the past few decades, with varying results and opinions. The well-known German scholar Herbert Grundmann had some of the strongest convictions concerning this issue. He believed in a very real connection between Marguerite and Eckhart, citing mostly temporal and geographical evidence as strong support for this assertion. He rejected the idea of a reverse influence, that is, the ideas of Meister Eckhart being appropriated by Marguerite, stating that the works of Meister Eckhart could hardly have been known to her early enough for his ideas to be incorporated into her book.2 He also asserted that, even if it is too much to acknowledge an actual influence of Marguerite on Eckhart, there is still a remarkable accord (^'merkwurdiger Einklang) in many of their spiritual ideas. Perhaps the most intriguing (and frustrating) of Grundmann's statements appears in a footnote, where he states that Josef Koch, in a letter sent to Grundmann in 1961, was thoroughly convinced that Meister Eckhart obtained knowledge of both Marguerite's trial and her book.4 However, as other scholars have pointed out, examination of Koch's papers after his death has produced no proof that may have led him to so solid a conviction. …
Dike builders or disrupters of the peace? The counts of Flanders and water management in the coastal wetlands (from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries). During the late mediaeval period, water management in the coastal wetlands of the Low Countries was strongly decentralized. It remained untouched by the judicial and administrative policies pursued by Burgundian and Habsburg rulers which aimed to centralise control. In the case of Flanders, this had more to do with government indifference to the situation on the ground than with local resistance government policies. Many initiatives in the field of water management that have been traditionally attributed to the counts of Flanders, were in fact initiatives that were developed, financed and implemented locally, with only tacit support from central government. And yet in the extremely fragmented water management organisation of late medieval Flanders, a coordinating authority was vital to accommodate the divergent interests of local water boards or cities, and to overcome structural disparities in the funding of sea walls. In the absence of any obvious financial reward for themselves and constrained by the private strategies of their officials, the Flemish rulers did not dare disturb the local balances of power to overcome obvious deficiencies in coastal water management.
Ruy de Queiroz, Luiz Carlos Pereira, Edward Hermann Hæusler
This volume contains the Proceedings of the 10th Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation (WoLLIC'2003). The Workshop was held in Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil from July 29 to August 1, 2003, in the Escola de Minas of the Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto ( UFOP ). WoLLIC is a series of workshops which started in 1994 with the aim of fostering interdisciplinary research in pure and applied logic . The idea is to provide a forum which is large enough in the number of possible interactions between logic and the sciences related to information and computation, and yet is small enough to allow for concrete and useful interaction among participants. Previous versions were held at: Recife (Pernambuco, Brazil) in 1994 and 1995; Salvador (Bahia, Brazil) in 1996; Fortaleza (Ceará, Brazil) in 1997; São Paulo (Brazil) in 1998; Itatiaia (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) in 1999; Natal (Rio Grande do Norte) in 2000; Brasília (Distrito Federal, Brazil) in 2001; Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) in 2002. Scientific sponsorship comes from the Interest Group in Pure and Applied Logics ( IGPL ), the European Association for Logic, Language and Information ( FoLLI ), the Association for Symbolic Logic ( ASL ), European Association for Theoretical Computer Science ( EATCS ), the Sociedade Brasileira de Computação ( SBC ), and the Sociedade Brasileira de Lógica ( SBL ). Funding was kindly given by:(i) CNPq ( Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico , the scientific and technological development council of the Brazilian Ministério da Ciência e Tecnologia ) (grant 450709/2003-5);(ii) CAPES ( Fundação Coordenação de Apoio ao Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior , a Foundation for the Development of Higher-Education under the Brazilian Ministério da Educação e do Desporto ) (grant PAEP0565/03);(iii) FAPEMIG ( Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais , the Minas Gerais state foundation for the support of scientific research);(iv) Escola de Minas da UFOP ( Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto ). Contributions were received in the form of short papers in all areas related to logic, language, information and computation, including:pure logical systems, proof theory, model theory, algebraic logic, type theory, category theory, constructive mathematics, lambda and combinatorial calculi, program logic and program semantics, logics and models of concurrency, logic and complexity theory, proof complexity, foundations of cryptography (zero-knowledge proofs), descriptive complexity, nonclassical logics, nonmonotonic logic, logic and language, discourse representation, logic and artificial intelligence, automated deduction, foundations of logic programming, logic and computation, and logic engineering. Apart from the contributed papers (15), and the invited talks (5), the programme includes 5 tutorial lectures: 1. Algorithmic Randomness and Derandomization by Eric Allender (Department of Computer Science, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, USA) 2. Generalized Quantifiers by Lauri Hella (Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Philosophy, University of Tampere, Finland) 3. Implicit computational complexity by Jean-Baptiste Joinet (Preuves-Programmes-Systèmes, Université Paris 7, France) 4. Proof search foundations for logic programming by Dale Miller (INRIA/Futurs/Saclay, and Laboratoire d'Informatique, École Polytechnique, France) 5. Iterated theory change by Hans Rott (Institut für Philosophie, Universität Regensburg, Germany) All papers in the volume were reviewed by the program committee consisting of Mauricio Ayala-Rinóon ( Departamento de Matemática, Universidade de Brasília, Brazil ) Argimiro Arratia ( Depto. Matematicas, Universidad Simon Bolivar, Venezuela ) Alessandra Carbone ( Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, and Université de Paris XII, France ) Marcelo Coniglio ( Centro de Lógica e Epistemologia, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil ) Gilles Dowek ( INRIA, France ) Arnaud Fleury ( Facoltà di Scienze, Università di Verona, Italy ) Dexter Kozen ( Cornell University, USA ) Maarten Marx ( ILLC, Faculty of Science, Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands ) Anto˚nio Carlos da Rocha Costa ( Escola de Informática, Universidade Católica de Pelotas, Brazil ) Dieter Spreen ( Fachbereich Mathematik, Theoretische Informatik, Universität Siegen, Germany ) Luiz Carlos Pereira ( Departamento de Filosofia, PUC-Rio and UFRJ, Brazil ) Jouko Väänänen ( Department of Mathematics, University of Helsinki, Finland ) Renata Wassermann ( Departamento de Cie˚ncia da Computação, Instituto de Matemática e Estatística, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil ) The organising committee consisted of Lucília Figueiredo ( Departamento de Computação, Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, Brazil ) Fred Ulisses Maranhão ( Centro de Informática, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil ) Anjolina Grisi de Oliveira ( Center of Informatics, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil ) Elaine Pimentel ( Departamento de Matemática, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil ) (Co-Chair) Ruy de Queiroz ( Center of Informatics, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil ) (Co-Chair) Maria Angela Weiss ( Departamento de Matemática, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil ) The volume will be published as volume 84 in the series Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science ( ENTCS ). This series is published electronically through the facilities of Elsevier B.V. and its auspices. The volumes in the ENTCS series can be accessed at the URL http://www.elsevier.nl/locate/entcs A printed version of the current volume has been distributed to the participants at the workshop in Ouro Preto. We are very grateful to the following persons, whose help has been crucial for the success of WoLLIC'2003: Mike Mislove, one of the Managing Editors of the ENTCS series, for his assistance with the use of the ENTCS style files; Thanks are also due to the Department of Mathematics of Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais and the Department of Computing of the Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, which has provided the logistic support to the organising committee. August 2, 2003 Ruy de Queiroz, Elaine Pimentel, Lucilia Figueiredo