Positively Medieval. Jamie Blosser

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ medieval Christianity to be intellectually inquisitive, spiritually vibrant, dynamic and world-affirming, sincerely held, and culturally diverse.

      This is why, as a writer and a teacher, I have always preferred to use primary texts from the historical period in question, rather than substituting modern scholarship. In other words, I would a thousand times prefer that a young reader actually pick up Augustine’s Confessions and hear this wonderful saint tell his own life story than resort to a textbook on Augustine purchased at a bookstore. I have found that the lives of men and women from the past come to life when we read about them in their own words. This is even more true of the saints, whose writings seem to exude a sanctity all to themselves, which often gets lost when it is reduced to a paragraph summary in a contemporary textbook.

      Even more, I have found that history works best when its focus is on concrete individuals, real personalities, rather than a broad survey of dates, events, and vague generalizations. This is why I have chosen to structure this book not so much chronologically or thematically, but around the lives of real persons—the lives of the saints.

      The faithful men and women of the Middle Ages—those who passed on the Faith so heroically and at such great cost—still retain their power to inspire, to capture imaginations, and to teach those willing to learn.

       Who Are the Medieval Saints?

      Narrowing down the list of candidates for inclusion in this book was nothing short of agonizing. Every name crossed off the list, to my mind, represented a piece of the brilliant mosaic of medieval Christianity. Numerous readers will groan to find their favorite figure excluded and can take consolation that I groaned twice as loudly. Allow me to share a few brief considerations that I took into account.

      First, not all the figures in this book are canonized saints. It was not until the year 1234 that the Catholic Church developed a centralized, organized procedure for declaring people saints. Until that time sainthood functioned more informally: if enough people began to treat someone as a saint—recalling her virtues, for example, or preserving her relics, visiting her tomb, praying to her, saying Masses in her honor—and if this pattern continued for long enough and spread widely enough, the person began to be called a saint, and that was that.

      But some of the figures in this book wouldn’t even be considered saints by this less formal procedure. Usually there are good reasons: no one knew enough about the personal lives of Julian of Norwich or pseudo-Dionysius (though their writings were impeccable), Justinian’s and Charlemagne’s personal lives left something to be desired (though they did more for the Church than anyone else in their eras), Meister Eckhart’s and Gregory of Palamas’ writings were controversial in some places (though their sincerity was never in question), and so on. But it seemed better to include figures of great historical and religious significance, and who generally led praiseworthy lives, than to be overly rigid about survivors of the canonization process.

      I have taken great effort to include Doctors of the Church whenever possible, although some have been regrettably omitted. The term Doctor, Latin for “teacher,” is used to recognize those saints who have made particularly important contributions to the Church’s theological tradition: usually they are theologians, though sometimes mystics or pastors have received the honor.

      A greater effort has been made to ensure that the book presents a representative sampling of medieval Christianity. Too many treatments of this period resemble a roll call of celibate male clerics. Without casting doubts upon the immense contributions carried out by churchmen during the Middle Ages, it would be a shame to overlook the work done by laity, and by women in particular, in carrying on the faith in this period. For this reason, I have included six women as subjects of this book, and six married persons.

      As a professional theologian, I have worked hard to overcome a prejudice for my own discipline, and to fight the tendency to write nothing but biographies of university professors. Instead, to capture the diversity of contributions made by the medieval saints, I have come up with several categories into which to group them. Admittedly, they are somewhat superficial; most of these personalities are so multifaceted that they are hard to pin down!

      First are the missionaries, those who devoted their lives to the spread and proclamation of the Gospel.

      Next is the group I call the leaders—those who founded institutions, ruled nations, or simply rose to the occasion when intelligent and creative leadership was needed in the Church or society.

      Third, we have the martyrs, those who paid the cruel price of fidelity to the Gospel, shedding their blood in the name of Christ.

      Fourthly, those I call monastics, who dedicated their lives to the values of poverty, chastity, and obedience to give witness to the kingdom of God.

      Next, mystics who excelled at a life of prayer and communicated to others the path to a mature spiritual life.

      Sixth, the thinkers, the intellectuals who helped to develop, clarify, and defend the Church’s theological and philosophical traditions.

      I have ended the book with a seventh group, Eastern Christians, who carried out some of these same tasks in the regions of the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Of course, some figures fit in more than one category, and a rather arbitrary judgment call had to be made. For example, Boethius is undeniably a thinker, a martyr, and a leader.

      As for the specific writing selections, I have tried—as with the choice of writers—to find a balance between high quality selections and diverse, representative samples. The reader will find theological and philosophical tracts, commentaries, dialogues, homilies, letters, scientific treatises, last wills, judicial transcripts, biographies and autobiographies, prayers, hymns, poetry, legislation, and much more. I have tried to select writings from the saints themselves, but when this was not possible (Elizabeth of Hungary, for example, left no writings) I have opted for the writings of their friends or associates, or at least near contemporaries.

      The vast majority of Western medieval writers wrote in Latin, of course; Eastern writers, in Greek. In some cases I have made my own translations; in a few cases permission has been graciously granted to use those of others. In the majority of cases I have simply adapted older, public-domain translations, updating them for readability. Readability has to be balanced against fidelity to the original texts, and I have consistently favored the former without (I hope) doing violence to the latter.

      This book is not written with scholars in mind, and those who wish to use these texts for scholarly ends will likely complain of the absence of some elements they have come to expect (reference to critical editions, footnotes with variant translations, and similar material). My aim throughout has been to produce writing samples that are clear, concise, and enjoyable to read, yet which remain substantially true to the original texts. A bibliography at the end of the book indicates which sources I consulted for each chapter.

      Mediterranean World, Early Middle Ages, c. AD 500

      Medieval Missionaries

      No Christian would deny that missionary work is part of the fundamental charter of the Christian Church. The call to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19) echoes throughout the centuries as Jesus’ last and greatest charge, and Christians of every generation have responded to it generously. The bold example of the original apostles, especially the globetrotting St. Paul, served to inspire hundreds of missionaries СКАЧАТЬ