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The papers in this second selection of articles by Professor Colish
focus on thinkers of the patristic age, and relate to her three
monographic studies in this area published over the last two
decades. At the same time these papers look beyond the patristic
period, both backward to these authors' appropriation of the
classical and Christian traditions, and forward to their function
as authorities in later medieval intellectual history, from the
Carolingian Renaissance to Anselm of Canterbury, the scholastics,
and Dante. Themes which these papers address include the
transmission and use of Platonism and Stoicism, logic and
linguistic theory, and the ethics of lying, moral indifference, and
the salvation of the virtuous pagan.
Spanning thirty years, the papers brought together in this volume
reflect three of Professor Colish's interests as a historian of
medieval scholastic thought. The first group of studies represent
investigations that flowed into, and out of, the research on Peter
Lombard (d. 1161) and his contemporaries that culminated in her
book Peter Lombard (1994). Following the publication of that work,
she next sought to discover how Peter's theology became mainstream
Paris theology in the period between Lombard's death and the early
13th century, resulting in the second group of papers in this
collection. Finally, the last two papers offer reflections on
broader interpretive issues, considering ways in which medievalists
ought to reconsider their general understanding of the story lines
of high medieval intellectual history.
Addressing classicists, philosophers, students, and general readers
alike, this volume emphasizes the unity of Seneca's work and his
originality as a translator of Stoic ideas in the literary forms of
imperial Rome. It features a vitalizing diversity of contributors
from different generations, disciplines, and research cultures.
Several prominent Seneca scholars publishing in other languages are
for the first time made accessible to anglophone readers.
Addressing classicists, philosophers, students, and general readers
alike, this volume emphasizes the unity of Seneca's work and his
originality as a translator of Stoic ideas in the literary forms of
imperial Rome. It features a vitalizing diversity of contributors
from different generations, disciplines, and research cultures.
Several prominent Seneca scholars publishing in other languages are
for the first time made accessible to anglophone readers.
What validated or invalidated baptism in the eyes of medieval
Christians? The answer to this question is neither simple nor
straightforward. As this fascinating contribution to medieval
intellectual history shows, medieval ideas on baptism, though seen
as necessary for salvation, were far from unanimous. Marcia Colish
demonstrates persuasively that, from the patristic period through
the early fourteenth century, there was vigorous debate surrounding
baptism by desire, fictive baptism, and forced baptism. Drawing on
a wide and interdisciplinary range of sources that goes well beyond
the writings of theologians and canonists to include liturgical
texts and practices, the rulings of popes and church councils,
saints' lives, chronicles, imaginative literature, and poetry,
Faith, Fiction and Force in Medieval Baptismal Debates illuminates
the emergence and fortunes of these three controversies and the
historical contexts that situate their development. Each debate has
its own story line, its own turning points, and its own seminal
figures whose positions informed its course. The thinkers involved
in each case were, and regarded one another as being, members of
the orthodox western Christian communion. Thus, another finding of
this book is that Christian orthodoxy in the Middle Ages was able
to encompass and accept disagreements both wide and deep on a
sacrament seen as fundamental to Christian identity, faith and
practice.
This magisterial book is an analysis of the course of Western
intellectual history between A.D. 400 and 1400. The book is
arranged in two parts: the first surveys the comparative modes of
thought and varying success of Byzantine, Latin-Christian, and
Muslim cultures, and the second takes the reader from the
eleventh-century revival of learning to the high Middle Ages and
beyond, the period in which the vibrancy of Western intellectual
culture enabled it to stamp its imprint well beyond the frontiers
of Christendom. Marcia Colish argues that the foundations of the
Western intellectual tradition were laid in the Middle Ages and
not, as is commonly held, in the Judeo-Christian or classical
periods. She contends that Western medieval thinkers produced a set
of tolerances, tastes, concerns, and sensibilities that made the
Middle Ages unlike other chapters of the Western intellectual
experience. She provides astute descriptions of the vernacular and
oral culture of each country of Europe; explores the nature of
medieval culture and its transmission; profiles seminal thinkers
(Augustine, Anselm, Gregory the Great, Aquinas, Ockham); studies
heresy from Manichaeism to Huss and Wycliffe; and investigates the
influence of Arab and Jewish writing on scholasticism and the
resurrection of Greek studies. Colish concludes with an assessment
of the modes of medieval thought that ended with the period and
those that remained as bases for later ages of European
intellectual history.
Recent research on the Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, Viking and
Angevin worlds of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The eleventh
volume of the Haskins Society Journal presents recent research on
the Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, Viking and Angevin worlds of the
eleventh and twelfth centuries. Topics include reconsideration of
aspects of Charles Homer Haskins' Renaissance of the Twelfth
Century seventy years after its publication, as well as studies of
the Liber Eliensis, the English coronation ordo, several studies of
ecclesiastical politics, and more. This volume of the Haskins
Society Journal includes papers read at the 16th Annual Conference
of the Charles Homer Haskins Society in Houston in November 1997
and at other conferences in the year following the Haskins.
Contributors include MARCIA COLISH, JENNIFER PAXTON, H.E.J.
COWDREY, GEORGE GARNETT, JOHN FRANCE, PETER BURKHOLDER, BARBARA
YORKE, TOM KEEFE, EMILY ALBU, KARL MORRISON.
In this welcome new work Marcia L. Colish offers the only
book-length study of the patriarch treatises of Ambrose of Milan
(c. 340-397), in which he develops, for the first time in the
patristic period, an ethics for the laity. Ambrose the ethicist has
been viewed primarily as the author of advice to those with special
callings in the church, such as priests, widows, and consecrated
virgins. His views have been characterized as advocating asceticism
and promoting a Platonic view of human nature, in which the body is
a moral problem. Ambrose's patriarch treatises, argues Colish, are
instead aimed at lay people who did not have special callings in
the church, but who led active lives in the world as spouses,
parents, heads of households, professionals, and citizens. These
treatises reveal a different side of Ambrose and show that he
developed an ethics of moderation based on an Aristotelian and
Stoic anthropology, which he modified in the light of biblical
ethics and St. Paul's view of human nature. through a careful
consideration of the patriarch treatises in their historical
context, as sermons delivered by Ambrose to the catechumens in his
Milanese church whom he was preparing during Lent for their coming
Easter baptism. The pastoral context and intended audience of these
treatises have largely been ignored in previous scholarship. Colish
contends that when the treatises are read as Ambrose intended for
them to be received, as a corpus of works aimed at the conversion
of pagan Roman adults to Christianity, Ambrose's vision of a
Christian ethics for the common man emerges. Ambrose's Patriarchs
will be invaluable to scholars in the fields of theology, classics,
philosophy, and ethics.
In this welcome new work Marcia L. Colish offers the only
book-length study of the patriarch treatises of Ambrose of Milan
(c. 340-397), in which he develops, for the first time in the
patristic period, an ethics for the laity. Ambrose the ethicist has
been viewed primarily as the author of advice to those with special
callings in the church, such as priests, widows, and consecrated
virgins. His views have been characterized as advocating asceticism
and promoting a Platonic view of human nature, in which the body is
a moral problem. Ambrose's patriarch treatises, argues Colish, are
instead aimed at lay people who did not have special callings in
the church, but who led active lives in the world as spouses,
parents, heads of households, professionals, and citizens. These
treatises reveal a different side of Ambrose and show that he
developed an ethics of moderation based on an Aristotelian and
Stoic anthropology, which he modified in the light of biblical
ethics and St. Paul's view of human nature. through a careful
consideration of the patriarch treatises in their historical
context, as sermons delivered by Ambrose to the catechumens in his
Milanese church whom he was preparing during Lent for their coming
Easter baptism. The pastoral context and intended audience of these
treatises have largely been ignored in previous scholarship. Colish
contends that when the treatises are read as Ambrose intended for
them to be received, as a corpus of works aimed at the conversion
of pagan Roman adults to Christianity, Ambrose's vision of a
Christian ethics for the common man emerges. Ambrose's Patriarchs
will be invaluable to scholars in the fields of theology, classics,
philosophy, and ethics.
Early Christianity faced the problem of the human word versus
Christ the Word. Could language accurately describe spiritual
reality? The Mirror of Language brilliantly traces the development
of one prominent theory of signs from Augustine through Anselm of
Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas, and Dante. Their shared epistemology
validated human language as an authentic but limited index of
preexistent reality, both material and spiritual. This sign theory
could thereby account for the ways men receive, know, and transmit
religious knowledge, always mediated through faith. Marcia L.
Colish demonstrates how the three theologians used different
branches of the medieval trivium to express a common sign theory:
Augustine stressed rhetoric, Anselm shifted to grammar (including
grammatical proofs of God's existence), and Thomas Aquinas stressed
dialectic. Dante, the one poet included in this study, used the
Augustinian sign theory to develop a Christian poetics that
culminates in the Divine Comedy. The author points out not only the
commonality but also the sharp contrasts between these writers and
shows the relation between their sign theories and the intellectual
ferment of the times. When first published in 1968, The Mirror of
Language was recognized as a pathfinding study. This completely
revised edition incorporates the scholarship of the intervening
years and reflects the refinements of the author's thought. Greater
prominence is given to the role of Stoicism, and sharper attention
is paid to some of the thinkers and movements surrounding the major
thinkers treated. Concerns of semiotics, philosophy, and literary
criticism are elucidated further. The original thesis, still
controversial, is now even wider ranging and more salient to
current intellectual debate.
The papers in this second selection of articles by Professor Colish
focus on thinkers of the patristic age, and relate to her three
monographic studies in this area published over the last two
decades. At the same time these papers look beyond the patristic
period, both backward to these authors' appropriation of the
classical and Christian traditions, and forward to their function
as authorities in later medieval intellectual history, from the
Carolingian Renaissance to Anselm of Canterbury, the scholastics,
and Dante. Themes which these papers address include the
transmission and use of Platonism and Stoicism, logic and
linguistic theory, and the ethics of lying, moral indifference, and
the salvation of the virtuous pagan.
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