2302

MEDIEVAL RELIGIONS

Course description

This course aims to introduce students to a number of major topics concerning the institutions, thought and practice of medieval Christianity as it interacted with Judaism and Islam. The course will study Christianity (including its confrontation with Paganism) in the framework of its encounters with Judaism and Islam in the medieval West. Students will be encouraged to explore areas of similarity in the thought of the three Abrahamic religions, while recognising the distinctiveness of each. In considering how the adherents of different religions identified themselves, they will address the extent to which religious intolerance and persecution related in medieval societies to fear of ‘the other’. Treatment of the religions will interlock in order to demonstrate the many facets of the various interactions between Christians, Muslims and Jews in the Middle Ages.

Aims:

a)  To make students aware of the fact that Christianity was not the sole religion of medieval Western Europe and to introduce students to the many facets of interactions between Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

b)  To introduce students to important topics in a formative period in the development of the Western Church

c)  To teach students to distinguish between the institutions of the medieval Church and its teachings, as well as to distinguish between learned theology of the elite and religious expression of the laity.

d)  To introduce students to an exciting period of intellectual growth and to study its impact on the doctrinal and institutional developments of the Church.

e)  To be introduced to the work of a number of major Christian, Jewish, and Muslim medieval thinkers.

Objectives:

Candidates who will have attended all lectures, participated conscientiously in all classes and prepared well for tutorials will:

a)  have a sound overview of the major developments of the medieval western Church

b)  understand the importance of the Middle Ages for the development of the doctrines and institutions of the Western Church

c)  understand the importance of studying the interactions between Christians, Jews and Muslims to gain an understanding of the history of medieval Europe, and the attitudes of Christians towards those they described as Pagans

d)  understand the importance of the medieval encounter between Christians, Jews and Muslims for subsequent attitudes in Christianity, Judaism and Islam concerning the religious self in relationship to the religious other.

Teaching: The course will be delivered through 16 lectures in Michaelmas, followed by 6 classes and 8 tutorials in Hilary.

Assessment is by three-hour written examination.

Lectures (Michaelmas Term)

  1. Carolingian Church

Themes: Paganism (Saxons, Vikings, Magyars)

  1. Carolingian Church

Theme: Role of Papacy

  1. Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Iberia, 711-c. 1300

Themes: Conquest of Islam; Cordoban Caliphate; Convivencia; New Christian kingdoms; Almoravids and Almohads

4.  Jews in Medieval Christian Society, C. 1000 - C. 1300

Themes: Demography; Centres of Judaism; Christian attitudes to Jews

  1. Gregorian Reform

Themes: The year 1000; ‘Peace and Truce of God’; Purity and reform; Gregory VII; The Investiture Controversy

  1. Monastic Reform

Themes: Hermits and the search for perfection; Bernard of Clairvaux; The Cistercian Order; Other monastic orders

  1. Twelfth-century Renaissance: Monastic and cathedral schools

Themes: Learning and labour; Monastic libraries; Cathedral schools; Salerno, Bologna, Paris

  1. Twelfth-century Renaissance: medieval humanism

Themes: Challenge of ratio (reason); issue of the Eucharist; John of Salisbury; Herrad of Hohenbourg

  1. Twelfth-century Renaissance: Anselm of Canterbury/Bec
  1. Twelfth-century Renaissance: Peter Abelard
  1. Universities of Paris and Oxford: Aquinas
  1. Universities of Paris and Oxford: Duns Scotus and William of Ockham

Theme: Conciliarism

  1. Averroes and Maimonides
  1. Heresy

Themes: Cathars; Waldensians; Inquisitions

  1. Friars
  1. 1492: The Fall of Granada and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain

Classes (Hilary Term)

1.  Benedictine monasticism; Cluny

Themes: The era of regula mixta; the Carolingians and the Rule of St Benedict; the St Gall Plan; Cluny and reform

2.  Twelfth-century Renaissance: Study of the Bible:

Themes: Glossa ordinaria; School of Rashi; Christian Hebraists

3.  Canon Law

Themes: Evolution of Gratian’s Decretum; Lateran IV and programme of Innocent III; Gregorian Decretals

4.  Crusades:

Themes: Link to Reform movement; Pilgrimage; Holy war; Jews and Muslims

5.  Heresy, mysticism, gender

6.  Popular religion

Themes: Religion/religiosity; Christian lay piety; Jewish lay piety

FACULTY OF THEOLOGY AND RELIGION
Final Honour School

Book List for Paper FHS 2302

Medieval Religions

GENERAL BACKGROUND

R. W. Southern / The Making of the Middle Ages (1953, now pbk).
R. W. Southern / Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Penguin 1980).
Alexander Murray / Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (1980).
R Fletcher / The conversion of Europe. From Paganism to Christianity, 371-1386 AD (London, 1997
R. McKitterick / The Early Middle Ages 400 – 1000 (Short Oxford History of Europe) (2001).
D. Power, ed. / The Central Middle Ages 950 – 1320 (Short Oxford History of Europe) (2006).
T. Reuter, ed. / The New Cambridge Medieval History III: c. 900-c. 1024 (2000).
D. Luscombe and J.S.C. Riley-Smith, eds. / The New Cambridge Medieval History IV: c. 1024-c. 1198 (2004).
D. Abulafia, ed., / The New Cambridge Medieval History V: c. 1198-c. 1300 (1999).
T.F.X. Noble and J.M.H. Smith, eds. / The Cambridge History of Christianity III: Early Medieval
Christianities c. 600-1100 (2010)
M. Rubin and W. Simons, eds. / The Cambridge History of Christianity IV: Christianity in
Western Europe c. 1100-c.1500
C. Robinson, ed. / The New Cambridge History of Islam I: the Formation of the
Islamic World Sixth to Eleventh Centuries (2010)
M. Fierro, ed., / The New Cambridge History of Islam II: The Western Islamic World, Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries (2010)
Rik van Nieuwenhove / An Introduction to Medieval Theology (Cambridge: CUP, 2012).* Extremely useful introduction. Gives a list of primary and secondary sources for each theologian

CAROLINGIAN CHURCH AND THE CONVERSION OF PAGANS

T. Reuter, ed., / The Greatest Englishman. Essays on St Boniface and the church at Crediton (1980)
W. Levison, / England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (1946) esp ch. 4 on Boniface, mission and church reform
J.M. Wallace-Hadrill / The Frankish Church (1983)
R. McKitterick / The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms 789-895 (London, 1977)
R. E. Sullivan / Christian missionary activity in the early middle ages (London, 1994)
R. E. Sullivan / ‘The Carolingian missionary and the pagan’, Speculum 28 (1953), 705-40
I Wood / The missionary life: saints and the evangelisation of Europe, 400-1050 (Harlow, 2001)
I. Wood / ‘Missionaries and the Christian frontier’, in W.Pohl, I.Wood and H.Reimitz (eds.), The Transformation of Frontiers (2000), pp. 209-18
I. Wood / ‘Christians and pagans in ninth-century Scandinavia’, in Sawyer et al., The Christianization of Scandinavia, ed. B Sawyer, et al. (1987), pp. 36-67
J.T. Palmer / Anglo-Saxons in a Frankish World 690-900 (Turnhour, 2009)
J C Russell, / The Germanization of early medieval Christianity (1994)
L C Duggan / ‘“For force is not of God”? Compulsion and conversion from Yahweh to Charlemagne’, Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages, ed. J. Muldoon (1999), pp. 49-62
R. M. Karras, / ‘Pagan survivals and syncretism in the conversion of Saxony’, Catholic Historical Review 72 (1986), 553-72

BENEDICTINE MONASTICISM; CLUNY

C.H. Lawrence / Medieval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages (2nd ed.,1989) [3rd ed., 2001
L. Millis / Angelic Monks and Earthly Men. Monasticism and Its Meaning to Medieval Society (Woodbridge, UK, 1992)
J. Nelson / ‘Medieval Monasticism’, in P. Linehan and J. Nelson, ed., The Medieval World (London, 2001), pp. 576-604
R McKitterick / The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms (London, 1977)
J.M. Wallace-Hadrill / The Frankish Church (Oxford, 1983)
M. De Jong / ‘Carolingian monasticism: the power of prayer’, in R McKitterick (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History II, pp. 622-53
M De Jong / ‘Charlemagne’s Church’, in J. Story, ed., Charlemagne: Empire and Society (Manchester, 2005)
S. Boynton / Shaping a Monastic Identity: Liturgy and History at the Imperial Abbey of Farfa, 1000–1125 (Ithaca, 2006)
M. Claussen / The Reform of the Frankish Church: Chrodegang of Metz and the Regula Canonicorum in the Eighth Century (Cambridge, 2004)
G. Constable, ed., / The Abbey of Cluny: A Collection of Essays to Mark the Eleven-Hundredth Anniversary of its Foundation (Berlin, 2010)
B. Rosenwein / To Be the Neighbor of Saint Peter: The Social Meaning of Cluny's Property, 909- 1049 (Ithaca, NY, 1989)
B. Rosenwein / ‘Feudal War and Monastic Peace: Cluniac Liturgy as Ritual Aggression’, Viator 2 (1971), 129-57
L. Coon / Dark Age Bodies: Gender and Monastic Practice in the Early Medieval West (Philadelphia, 2011)
N. Hunt, ed. / Cluniac Monasticism in the Central Middle Ages (1971)
W. Horn and E Born / The Plan of St. Gall: A Study of the Architecture and Economy of, and Life in a Paradigmatic Carolingian Monastery, 3 vols (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1979)
R. Sullivan / ‘What was Carolingian Monasticism? The Plan of Saint Gall and the History of Monasticism’, in A. Murray, ed., After Rome’s Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History, Essays Presented to Walter Goffart (Toronto, 1998), pp. 251-87
James G. Clark: / The Benedictines in the Middle Ages(Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2011).

MUSLIMS, CHRISTIANS AND JEWS IN IBERIA, 711-c. 1300

O. R. Constable / Medieval Iberia. Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources (2nd edn 2012).
Jarbel Rodriguez, ed. / Muslim and Christian contact in the Middle Ages (2015).
Hugh Kennedy / Muslim Spain and Portugal: a political history of al-Andalus (1996).
Hugh Kennedy / ‘The Muslims in Europe’, The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. II, ed. R. McKitterick (1995), pp. 249-71.
Hugh Kennedy / ‘Sicily and al-Andalus under Muslim Rule’, The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. III, ed. T. Reuter (2000), pp. 646-669.
Hugh Kennedy / ‘Muslim Spain and Portugal: al-Andalus and its neighbours’, The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 4.1, ed. D. Luscombe and J. Riley-Smith (2004), pp. 599-622.
B. Lewis / The Jews of Islam (1984).
V.B. Mann, T.F. Glick, J. D. Dodds, eds., / Convivencia: Jews, Muslims, and Christians in medieval Spain (1992).
J.D. Dodds, M.R. Menocal, A.K. Balbale / The Arts of intimacy. Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the making of Castilian culture (2008).
B. Ye’or / The Dhimmi (1985).
Simon Barton / ‘Spain in the eleventh century’, The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 4.2, ed. D. Luscombe and J. Riley-Smith (2004), pp. 154-90.
R. Fletcher / The Quest for El Cid (1989 pbk)
Peter Linehan / ‘Spain in the twelfth century’, The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 4.2, ed. D. Luscombe and J. Riley-Smith, (2004), pp. 475-509.
Joseph F. O'Callaghan / Reconquest and crusade in medieval Spain (2003).
Lucy K. Pick / Conflict and coexistence. Archbishop Rodrigo and the Muslims and Jews of medieval Spain (2004).
J. Ray / The Sephardic frontier: the reconquista and the Jewish community in medieval Iberia (2006).
James M. Powell, ed. / Muslims under Latin Rule, 1100-1300 (1990).

JEWS IN MEDIEVAL CHRISTIAN SOCIETY, c. 1000 - c. 1300

Robert Chazan, ed. / Church, State and Jew in the Middle Ages (1980).
Jacob Katz / Exclusiveness & Tolerance. Jewish-Gentile relations in medieval and modern times (1961).
Robert Chazan / ‘The Jews in Europe and the Medeterranean Basin’, The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 4, ed. D. Luscombe and J. Riley-Smith (2004), pp. 623-57.
Anna Sapir Abulafia / Christian-Jewish Relations, 1000-1300 (2011 pbk).
Christoph Cluse, ed. / The Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages … (2004).
Kenneth R. Stow / Alienated Minority. The Jews of Medieval Latin Europe (1992).
David Malkiel / Reconstructing Ashkenaz. The human face of Franco-German Jewry, 1000-1250 (2009).
Anna Sapir Abulafia, ed. / Religious violence between Christians and Jews. Medieval roots, modern perspectives (2002)
Sarah Rees-Jones and Sethina Watson, eds / Christians and Jews in Angevin England. The York Massacre of 1190, narratives and contexts (2013).
William Chester Jordan / The French monarchy and the Jews. From Philip Augustus to the last Capetians (1989).
Jeremy Cohen / Living Letters of the Law. Ideas of the jew in Medieval Christianity (1999).
Israel Jacob Yuval / Two nations in your womb. Perceptions of Jews and Christians in late antiquity and the middle ages (tr. B. Harshav, J. Chapman 2006).
Anna Sapir Abulafia / Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-century Renaissance (1995; 2014 pbk).
Jeremy Cohen / The Friars and the Jews. The evolution of medieval anti-Judaism (1982).
Robert Chazan / Daggers of faith. Thirteenth-century missionizing and Jewish response (1989).
Irven Resnick / Marks of distinction. Christian Perceptions of Jews in the High Middle Ages. (2012).

GREGORIAN REFORM

Walter Ullmann / A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages 2nd edn with a new introd. By George Garnett (2002).
K. G. Cushing / Reform and the papacy in the eleventh century (2005).
J, Barrow / ‘Religion’, in The Central Middle Ages, ed. D. Power (2006), 121-48
K. J. Cushing / Reform and the Papacy in the Eleventh Century (Manchester, 2005) chap 4 ‘Reform and the Transformation of the Papacy’
I. S. Robinson / 'Gregory VII and the Soldiers of Christ', History 58 (1973), pp. 169-92.
I. S. Robinson / 'Gregory VII and the Soldiers of Christ', History 63 (1978), pp. 1-22.
I. S. Robinson / The Papacy 1073-1198 (1990).
H. E. J. Cowdrey / Pope Gregory VII: 1073-85 (1998).
H. E. J. Cowdrey / The Register of Pope Gregory VII 1073-1085. An English translation (OUP 2002).
B. Tierney (ed. and tr.) / The Crisis of church and state, 1050-1300. With selected documents, (1964).
H.E.J. Cowdrey / ‘The Peace of God and the Truce of God’, Past and Present 46 (1970), 4267
H.E.J. Cowdrey / ‘The structure of the Church, 1024-1073’, The New Cambridge Medieval History IV (c.1024–c.1198), ed. D. Luscombe and J. Riley-Smith (2 vols, 2004), i, 229-67
T.N. Bisson / The Organized Peace in Southern France and Catalonia, c.1140 – c.1233’, American Historical Review 82 (1977), 290-311
U. Blumenthal / The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century (Philadelphia, 1988)
M. Miller / Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe c. 800-1200 (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2014)
C. Morris / The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church 10501250 (1988)
H. Teunis / ‘Negotiating secular and ecclesiastical power in the Central Middle Ages: a historiographical introduction’, Negotiating Secular and Ecclesiastical Power, eds H. Teunis, A. Wareham, and A.-J.A. Bijsterveld (1999), 1-16 [a useful survey of the historiography of lay-eccl. relations]

MONASTIC REFORM IN LONG TWELFTH CENTURY (c. 1050 – c. 1250)