Medieval Religious Rationalities

Medieval Religious Rationalities PDF Author: D. L. d'Avray
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139491229
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Inspired by the social theories of Max Weber, David d'Avray asks in what senses medieval religion was rational and, in doing so, proposes a new approach to the study of the medieval past. Applying ideas developed in his companion volume on Rationalities in History, he explores how values, instrumental calculation, legal formality and substantive rationality interact and the ways in which medieval beliefs were strengthened by their mutual connections, by experience, and by mental images. He sheds new light on key themes and figures in medieval religion ranging from conversion, miracles and the ideas of Bernard of Clairvaux to Trinitarianism, papal government and Francis of Assisi's charismatic authority. This book shows how values and instrumental calculation affect each other in practice and demonstrates the ways in which the application of social theory can be used to generate fresh empirical research as well as new interpretative insights.

Medieval Religious Rationalities

Medieval Religious Rationalities PDF Author: D. L. d'Avray
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139491229
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
Inspired by the social theories of Max Weber, David d'Avray asks in what senses medieval religion was rational and, in doing so, proposes a new approach to the study of the medieval past. Applying ideas developed in his companion volume on Rationalities in History, he explores how values, instrumental calculation, legal formality and substantive rationality interact and the ways in which medieval beliefs were strengthened by their mutual connections, by experience, and by mental images. He sheds new light on key themes and figures in medieval religion ranging from conversion, miracles and the ideas of Bernard of Clairvaux to Trinitarianism, papal government and Francis of Assisi's charismatic authority. This book shows how values and instrumental calculation affect each other in practice and demonstrates the ways in which the application of social theory can be used to generate fresh empirical research as well as new interpretative insights.

Spiritual Rationality

Spiritual Rationality PDF Author: Stefan K. Stantchev
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191009237
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Spiritual Rationality: Papal Embargo as Cultural Practice offers the first book-length study of embargo in a pre-modern period and provides a unique exploration into the domestic implications of this tool of foreign policy. Based on a large and varied body of archival and printed, papal and secular sources, this inquiry covers Europe and the broader Mediterranean from c. 1150 to c. 1550. During this time of an increasing papal role within Christian society, the church employed restrictions on trade with Muslims, pagans, 'heretics', 'schismatics', disobedient Catholic communities and individual Jews in order to facilitate papally-endorsed warfare against external enemies and to discipline internal foes. Various trade bans were originally promulgated as individual responses to specific circumstances. These restrictions, however, were shaped by the premise that sin and the defense of the decorum of the faith and Christendom condoned, or even required, papal intervention into the lives of the laity and by the text-based approach of popes and canonists. Papal embargo, consequently, was not only the sum total of individual trade bans but also a legal and moral discourse that classified exchanges into legitimate and illegitimate ones, compelled merchants to distinguish clearly between themselves as (Roman) Christians and a multitude of others as non-Christians, and helped order symbolically both the relationships between the two groups and those between church and laity. Papal embargo's chief relevance thus lay within Christian society itself, where it functioned as an intangible pastoral staff. While sixteenth-century developments undermined it as a policy tool and a moral discourse alike, papal embargo inscribed the notion of the immorality of trade with the enemy into European thought.

Rationalities in History

Rationalities in History PDF Author: D. L. d'Avray
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139490508
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
In Rationalities in History the distinguished historian David d'Avray writes a new comparative history in the spirit of Max Weber. In a strikingly original reassessment of seminal Weberian ideas, d'Avray applies value rationality to the comparative history of religion and the philosophy of law. Integrating theories of rational choice, anthropological reflections on relativism, and the recent philosophy of rationality with Weber's conceptual framework, d'Avray seeks to disengage 'rationalisation' from its enduring association with Western 'modernity'. This mode of analysis is contextualised through the examples of Buddhism, Imperial China and sixteenth-century Catholicism - in the latter case building upon unpublished archival research. This ambitious synthesis of social theory and comparative history will engage social scientists and historians from advanced undergraduate level upwards, stimulating interdisciplinary discourse, and making a significant contribution to the methodology of history. D'Avray explores the potential of this new Weberian analysis further in his companion volume, Medieval Religious Rationalities.

Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought

Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought PDF Author: Giles Constable
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 423

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Book Description


Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought

Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought PDF Author: Giles Constable
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521638746
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
This volume of three Studies concentrates on the changes in religious thought and institutions in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and includes not only monks and nuns but also less organised types of life such as hermits, recluses, crusaders and penitents. It is complementary to Professor Constable's forthcoming book The Reformation of the Twelfth Century, but is dissimilar from it in examining three themes over a long period, from late antiquity to the seventeenth century, in order to show how they changed over time. The interpretation of Mary and Martha deals primarily (but not exclusively) with the balance of action and contemplation in Christian life; the ideal of the imitation of Christ studies the growing emphasis on the human Christ, especially His body and wounds; and the orders of society looks at the conceptual divisions of society and the emergence of the modern idea of a middle class.

On Faith, Rationality, and the Other in the Late Middle Ages:

On Faith, Rationality, and the Other in the Late Middle Ages: PDF Author: Gergely Tibor Bakos
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1606083422
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
On Faith, Rationality, and the Other in the Late Middle Ages is an investigation of Nicholas of Cusa that seeks a deeper understanding of this important medieval intellectual and his importance for us today. One of Gergely Bakos's primary aims in this study is to understand Nicholas of Cusa's important and underexamined dimensions of his approach to dialogue with Islam. The framework and the methodology that informs this investigation was inspired by the late Professor Jos Decorte (1954-2001), a Flemish philosopher and mediaevalist at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. Bakos carefully exposits his method of approaching medieval thought (Part One) and then applies and tests this method in practice (Part Two). The most extensive part of this study offers a sketch of the historical background of Nicholas's dialogue with Islam and investigates what possibilities this approach offers. All of this is placed in dialogue with two other mediaeval approaches to Islam (Thomas Aquinas and Ram—n Lull). The þnal chapters discuss Nicholas of Cusa's project from a perspective offered by his mystical theology. The book culminates in an exploration of the possibilities of Nicholas of Cusa's approach by testing the framework of the study. Finally, the author evaluates the application of his own approach (Part Three). The study ultimately has two purposes: to contribute to a better understanding of Nicholas of Cusa's thought, on the one hand, and, on the other, to test a particular methodology and interpretative framework for the understanding of mediaeval culture.

Inspiration and Authority in the Middle Ages

Inspiration and Authority in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Brian FitzGerald
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019253582X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Inspiration and Authority in the Middle Ages rethinks the role of prophecy in the Middle Ages by examining how professional theologians responded to new assertions of divine inspiration. Drawing on fresh archival research and detailed study of unpublished manuscript sources from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, this volume argues that the task of defining prophetic authority became a crucial intellectual and cultural enterprise as university-trained theologians confronted prophetic claims from lay mystics, radical Franciscans, and other unprecedented visionaries. In the process, these theologians redescribed their own activities as prophetic by locating inspiration not in special predictions or ecstatic visions but in natural forms of understanding and in the daily work of ecclesiastical teaching and ministry. Instead of containing the spread of prophetic privilege, however, scholastic assessments of prophecy from Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas to Peter John Olivi and Nicholas Trevet opened space for claims of divine insight to proliferate beyond the control of theologians. By the turn of the fourteenth century, secular Italian humanists could lay claim to prophetic authority on the basis of their intellectual powers and literary practices. From Hugh of St Victor to Albertino Mussato, reflections on and debates over prophecy reveal medieval clerics, scholars, and reformers reshaping the contours of religious authority, the boundaries of sanctity and sacred texts, and the relationship of tradition to the new voices of the Late Middle Ages.

Religion, Rationality and Community

Religion, Rationality and Community PDF Author: Robert Gascoigne
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400950519
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
This study is an attempt to examine the relationships between religious belief and the humanism of the Enlightenment in the philosophy of Hegel and of a group of thinkers who related to his thought in various ways during the 1840's. It begins with a study of the ways in which Hegel attempted to evolve a genuinely Christian humanism by his demonstration that the modern understanding of man as a free and rational subject derived its strength and validity from the union of God and human existence in the incarnation. The rest of this study is con cerned with two different forms of opposition to Hegel: first, the criti cal discipleship of the Young Hegelians and Moses Hess, who insisted that Hegel's notion of Christian humanism was false because religious belief was necessarily inimical to a clear consciousness of social evil and the determination to abolish it; second, the religious opposition to the Enlightenment in the thought of Schelling and Kierkegaard, which emphasized God's transcendence to human reason and the insig nificance of secular history. In the years leading up to the revolution of 1848, Hegel's synthesis was rejected in favour of the assertion of atheistic humanism or religious otherworldliness. Chapter One, after discussing the young Hegel's critique of the social and political effects of Christianity, examines the union of religi ous belief, speculative philosophy and the rational state in Hegel's mature system.

A Companion to Medieval Rules and Customaries

A Companion to Medieval Rules and Customaries PDF Author: Krijn Pansters
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004431543
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
An introduction to the Rules and Customaries of the main religious Orders in Medieval Europe: Benedictine, Cistercian, Carthusian, Augustinian, Premonstratensian, Templar, Hospitaller, Teutonic, Dominican, Franciscan, and Carmelite.

The Truth Within

The Truth Within PDF Author: Gavin Flood
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199684561
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
Explores the metaphor of inwardness and the idea of truth within, along with the methods developed in three religions to attain it, such as prayer and meditation.