Syllabus
Week 1 “Introduction & background: historiography and methods”
(no readings)
Week 2 “Historiography, grand narratives, and methods”
Texts:
· “Why Study History through Primary Sources”, at: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/halsall/source/robinson-sources.asp
· Kautsky, Karl, Communism in Central Europe in the Time of the Reformation, London: Fischer Unwin, 1897, pp. 7-18, 24-8.
Week 3 “Church and sect; orthodox and heterodox”
Texts:
· Troeltsch, Ernst, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, vol. 1, Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992, pp. 331-349.
· Kaminsky, Howard, “The Problematics of ‘Heresy’ and ‘Reformation’,” in: František Šmahel (ed.), Häresie und vorzeitige Reformation im Spätmittelalter, Munich: Oldenburg, 1998, pp. 1-14.
Sources:
· 1 Corinthians (selections) [in class]
Week 4 “Concepts: apocalypticism, mysticism, Gnosticism”
Texts:
· Williams, Michael, “Gnosticism” in Encyclopædia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/gnosticism (accessed January 2018)
· Riedl, Matthias, “Christian Mysticism,” in A New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Maryanne Cline Horowitz, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2005, pp. 1546-1549.
· Riedl, “Eschatology”, in ibid., pp. 708-10.
Sources:
· “The Hymn of the Pearl” (from the Acts of Thomas), in J.K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993, pp. 488-490.
· Pseudo-Dionysius, “The Mystical Theology,” in Pseudo-Dionysius. The Complete Works, trans.
Colm Luibheid, New York/Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1987, pp. 135-141.
· Revelation of John (selections)
Week 5 “Roman Empire and early Christians”
Texts:
· Pelikan, Jaroslav, “Christianity”, in Mircea Eliade (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 3, New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan, 1987, pp. 348-51, 354-62.
· Riedl, Matthias, “Truth vs Utility: The Debate on Civil Religion in the Roman Empire of the Third and Fourth Centuries”, in Ronald Weed, John von Heyking (eds.), Civil Religion and Political Thought: Its Perennial Questions and Enduring Relevance in North America, Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010, pp. 47-59.
· Lyman, J. Rebecca, “Heresiology: The invention of ‘heresy’ and ‘schism’,” in The Cambridge History of Christianity vol. 2: Constantine to c. 600, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007, pp. 299-302.
Sources:
· “The Passion of the Scillitan Martyrs”, in Herbert Musurillo (trans.), The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972, pp. 87-9.
· Nicaean creed (in class)
Week 6 “Church, Papacy, and the Empire”
Texts:
· Pelikan, Jaroslav, “Christianity in Western Europe”, Mircea Eliade (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 3, New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan, 1987, pp. 379-82.
· Canning, Joseph, A History of Medieval Political Thought, 300-1450, London: Routledge, 1996, pp. 29-39.
· McGinn, Bernard, “Introduction,” in Matthias Riedl (ed.), A Companion to Joachim of Fiore, Leiden: Brill, 2017, pp. 2-5.
· Chadwick, Henry, “Christian Doctrine”, in The Cambridge History of Medival Political Thought c.350-c.1450, ed. J.H. Burns (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 11-20.
Sources:
· Eusebius, “Oration in Praise of the Emperor Constantine”, chapter IX, retrieved from https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/orat-constantine.asp
· Augustine, City of God (selections)
Week 7 “Investiture controversy”
Texts: · “Medieval Papacy” in Encyclopædia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/papacy
· Canning, A History of Medieval Political Thought, pp. 42-3, 84-89.
· Riedl, Matthias, “The Secular Sphere in Western Theology: A Historical Reconsideration”, in: The Future of Political Theology: Religious and Theological Perspectives, ed. Péter Losonczi, Mika Luoma-Aho, Aakash Singh, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011, pp. 17-18.
· Watt, J. A., "Spiritual and Temporal Powers", in: The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c.350-c.1450, ed. J.H. Burns, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 370-83.
Sources:
· “Various Documents on medieval political thought”, pp. 1-5
Week 8 “Cathars and Waldensians”
Texts:
· Biller, Peter, “Christians and heretics,” in The Cambridge History of Christianity vol.4: Christianity in Western Europe c.1100 – c.1500, ed. Miri Rubin and Walter Simons, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 170-186.
Sources:
· Moore, R. I., The Birth of Popular Heresy, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995, pp. 132-8.
· “Select Waldensian sources” pp. 1-3.
· “The Book of Two Principles” in Walter L. Wakefield, Austin P. Evans (trans.), Heresies of the High Middle Ages, New York: Columbia UP, 1991, pp. 519-25
Week 9 “Spiritual Franciscans & Joachites”
Texts:
· Lambert, Malcolm, “Spiritual Franciscans and heretical Joachimites,” in Medieval Heresy. Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992, pp. 189-214.
Sources:
· McGinn, Bernard, Apocalyptic Spirituality, Mahwah, Paulist Press, 1979, pp. 136-41.
Week 10 “Schism & Conciliarism”
Texts:
· Black, Anthony, “The conciliar movement”, in The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c.350-c.1450, ed. J.H. Burns, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 573-87.
Sources:
· Marsilius of Padua, Defensor pacis, pp. 367-75.
· Nicholas of Cusa, The Catholic Concordance, pp. 118-26.
Week 11 “Wyclif and the Lollards”
Texts:
· Lambert, Malcolm, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 2nd ed., Oxford: Blackwell, 1992, pp. 225-42.
Sources:
· John Wyclif, Tracts and Treatises, pp. 173-7, 193-7.
Week 12 “The Hussites”
Texts:
· Ozment, Steven, The Age of Reform: 1250-1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven: Yale UP, 1980), pp. 164-74.
· Soukup, Pavel, “Religion and Violence in the Hussite Wars,” in The European Wars of Religion. An Interdisciplinary Reassessment of Sources, Interpretations, and Myths, ed. by Wolfgang Palaver, Harriet Rudolph and Dietmar Regensburger, Farnham: Ashgate 2016, pp. 19-22.
Sources:
· Jan Hus, De Ecclesia, pp. 183-6.
· “Selections from utraquist controversy”, pp. 1-4;
· McGinn, Bernard, Visions of the End. Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages, New York:
Columbia University Press, 1979, pp. 259-269.
· Fudge, Thomas A., The Crusade against Heretics in Bohemia, 1418-1437, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002, pp. 99-100.
Annotation
The aim of the course will be to present students to the religious thought and controversies over the Western middle-ages, especially focusing on the 11th to 15th centuries. In approaching the topic from an ‘emic’ perspective, the course will necessarily refer to the philosophical, historical, and political weltanschauung which contemporary ‘religious’ agents drew from. The first half will be devoted to the historical background of early
Christianity and its key thinkers, as well as the dominant conceptual and methodological concerns involved in studying “sectarian” or “heretical” groups. We will also introduce the most persistent symbolic forms of opposition to “orthodoxy”: Gnosticism, Mysticism, and Apocalypticism. Several case studies will then be presented, spanning the temporal and geographic range of Latin Christendom. The lectures will provide the relevant historical background, while the interactive seminar portion will introduce discussion of short primary texts and issues.