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Convention and Conversion: Patterns in Late Medieval Piety

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Richard Kieckhefer
Richard Kieckhefer
Affiliation:
Professor of religion and chair of the department of religion at Northwestern University. On 10 January 1998 he delivered this paper as the presidential address to the American Society of Church History.
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Extract

Ernst Troeltsch is known to church historians largely for his classic threefold distinction of church, sect, and mysticism. In The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches, Troeltsch describes the church as an institution enmeshed with society and making accommodations to the world's imperfections; the sects, driven by a quest for purity, refuse to make accommodations or compromises, while the mystics stand aside from this conflict and concern themselves with “a purely personal and inward experience” in which “the isolated individual, and psychological abstraction and analysis become everything.” Troeltsch sees mysticism not as a phenomenon naturally at home within the church but rather as one that leads away from the establishment, and it is perhaps this perception in particular that gives his work lasting relevance. The assumption that mysticism veers naturally in an antiecclesial direction, and that its more orthodox manifestations are anomalies requiring explanation, remains very much alive in the literature. Indeed, from the perspective of cultural materialism, it is the political, antiecclesial, subversive bite of mysticism that is its most interesting feature. On this point liberal Protestantism and postmodernism have come together, theology and cultural studies have embraced. Troeltsch's schema thus retains relevance well beyond the sphere of historiography.

Type
Articles
Information
Church History , Volume 67 , Issue 1 , March 1998 , pp. 32 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1998

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References

I am deeply indebted to Barbara Newman for her suggestions on a draft of this paper.

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15. This is the argument of Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 121–23.Google Scholar

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22. For a parallel account of conversion, focusing on the twelfth century, see Morrison, Karl F., Understanding Conversion (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992). What Morrison's view shares with mine is a sense of conversion as a sustained and intricate process, not reducible to particular moments of dramatic reversal.Google Scholar

23. Kempe, Margery, The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Meech, Sanford Brown and Allen, Hope Emily, Early English Text Society, o.s., 212 (London: Oxford University Press, 1940);Google ScholarThe Book of Margery Kempe, trans. Windeatt, B. A. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985).Google Scholar

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26. The shift in early representations of Francis is traced in Omer Englebert, Saint Francis of Assisi: A Biography, 2nd English ed., trans. Cooper, Eve Marie (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Servant, 1965), pp. 16–19.Google Scholar

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28. Hunt, Richard, “Universities and Learning,” in The Flowering of the Middle Ages, ed. Evans, Joan (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), p. 195. I have substituted my own translation for Hunt's.Google Scholar

29. On this tradition see Erhard Dorn, Der sündige Heilige in der Legende des Mittelalters (Munich: Fink, 1967).Google Scholar

30. On this theme see Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls, pp. 122–49 (esp. p. 122).Google ScholarThe motif can be traced back to Gregory the Great, as reported in Venerabilis Baedae Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, i.27 ad 8, ed. Plummer, Charles (Oxford: Clarendon, 1896), p. 56 (“Bonarum quippe mentium est, et ibi aliquo modo culpas suas agnoscere, ubi culpa non est”).Google Scholar

31. According to Howard, F. E. and Crossley, F. H., English Church Woodwork: A Study in Craftsmanship During the Medieval Period, A.D. 1250–1550 (London: Batsford, 1917), p. 297, “There is clear documentary evidence to prove that the practice of the appropriation of pews was in vogue from the first introduction of fixed seating, though it was never approved by ecclesiastical authority.”Google Scholar

32. Stoppard, Tom, Arcadia (London: Faber and Faber, 1993). One of the characters is a mysterious hermit, resident on the estate of the play's aristocratic family ca. 1800.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33. The Incendium Amoris of Richard Rolle of Hampole, ed. Deanesly, Margaret (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1915), passim, esp. chap. 20.Google Scholar

34. Comper, , The Life of Richard Rolle, pp. 284–92;Google ScholarBiasiotto, Peter R., History of the Development of Devotion to the Holy Name (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: St. Bonaventure College and Seminary, 1943);Google ScholarCabassut, A., “La Déotion au nom de Jésus dans l'Église d'occident,” La vie spirituelle 86 (1952): 46–69;Google ScholarSuso, Henry, The Life of the Servant, chap. 4, in The Exemplar, with Two German Sermons, trans, and ed. Tobin, Frank (New York: Paulist, 1989), pp. 70–71.Google Scholar On the background for the monogram see Traube, Ludwig, Nomina sacra: Versuch einer Geschichte der christlichen Kürzung (Munich: Beck, 1907), pp. 156–60;Google Scholar on Bernardino of Siena's use of it see Kieckhefer, Richard, “Holiness and the Culture of Devotion: Remarks on Some Late Medieval Male Saints,” in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, ed. Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate and Szell, Timea (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 301–02.Google Scholar

35. The lncendium amoris, chap. 21, p. 205 (interna quiete); chap. 33, p. 238 (canor interior); chap.33, p. 240 (ab interiori doctore); chap. 40, p. 270 (pro interne suauitatis magnitudine); chap. 13, p. 182(ardens … intra se caritati incomparabili atque constantissima). “Finding no delight in outward activity, one is rapt inwardly with melody and joy” (IA/22).Google Scholar For English translation, see The Fire of Love, trans. Wolters, Clifton (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972).Google Scholar

36. Rolle, Richard, “The Form of Living,” xii, in The English Writings, p. 181; Rolle, The Commandment, pp. 146–47.Google Scholar

37. On this point see Riehle, Wolfgang, The Middle English Mystics, trans. Standring, Bernard (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981).Google Scholar

38. To be sure, Hamburger, Jeffrey F. argues (persuasively) in The Rothschild Canticles: Art and Mysticism in Flanders and the Rhineland circa 1300 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990) that the manuscript he is explicating contains imagery even for speculative and apophatic mysticism, but these are in the minority; most of the images even in this manuscript are for theoerotic motifs, and for these there are far closer analogues in the iconographic tradition.Google Scholar

39. Comper, The Life of Richard Rolle, pp. 195–98;Google ScholarHughes, Jonathan, Pastors and Visionaries: Religion andSecular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1988), has much to say about the posthumous reputation of Rolle and its context.Google Scholar

40. Vauchez, André, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. Birrell, Jean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 407–12.Google Scholar

41. Most of the sermons are published in Die Predigten Taulers, ed. Vetter, Ferdinand (Berlin: Weidmann, 1910).Google ScholarModern German translations are in Tauler, Johannes, Predigten, new ed., trans, and ed. Hofmann, Georg (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1979),Google Scholar which is the basis for the English version in Tauler, Johannes, Sermons, trans. Shrady, Maria (New York: Paulist, 1985).Google Scholar The sermons are discussed in Ozment, Steven E., Homo Spiritualis: A Comparative Study of the Anthropology of Johannes Tauler, Jean Gerson and Martin Luther (1509–16) in the Context of their Theological Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1969);Google ScholarKieckhefer, Richard, “John Tauler,” in An Introduction to the Medieval Mystics of Europe, ed. Szarmach, Paul E. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984), pp. 259–72;Google Scholar and especially Gnädinger, Louise, Johannes Tauler: Lebenswelt und mystische Lehre (Munich: Beck, 1993).Google Scholar For themes relevant to this paper see also Kieckhefer, Richard, “The Role of Christ in Tauler's Spirituality,”" Downside Review 96 (1978): 176–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42. The German text, with spurious attribution, is published in von Basel, Nicolaus, Benefit von der Bekehrung Taulers, ed. Schmidt, Carl (Strassburg, 1875; reprint, Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1981).Google ScholarEnglish translations are in The History and Life of John Tauler of Strasbourg, with Twenty-Five of His Sermons (1340), trans. Winkworth, Susanna (London: Allenson, 1905), pp. 40–99,Google Scholar and in The Sermons and Conferences of John Tauler, of the Order of Preachers, Surnamed “The Illuminated Doctor”; Being His Spiritual Doctrine, trans. Elliott, Walter (Washington, D.C.: Apostolic Mission House, 1910), pp. 9–49.Google ScholarSee Gnädinger, , Johannes Tauler, pp. 87–96.Google Scholar

43. For an early case, see Borgstadt, Elvira, trans., The “Sister Catherine” Treatise, in Meister Eckhart, Teacher and Preacher, ed. McGinn, Bernard (New York: Paulist, 1986), pp. 347–87;Google Scholar on later examples see Pickering, F. P., “Notes on Late Medieval German Tales in Praise of docta ignorantia,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 24 (1940): 121–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44. Vetter, no. 54, p. 247 (ir minne und ir meinunge enist nut zů im gekert) (Hofmann, no. 52, p. 397).Google Scholar

45. Vetter, no. 47, p. 213 (Hofmann, no. 61, p. 474).Google Scholar

46. Vetter, no. 61, p. 335 (Hofmann, no. 44, p. 341).Google Scholar

47. Hofmann, no. 77, p. 596.Google Scholar

48. Vetter, no. 62, p. 338 (das innerste das ist alwegen das alter beste; wan das uswendige das nimet alle sine kraft von disem) (Hofmann, no. 39, p. 291).Google Scholar

49. Vetter, no. 54, p. 247 (Hofmann, no. 52, pp. 397–99).Google Scholar

50. Vetter, no. 74, pp. 400–01, and no. 60f, p. 315 (din eigene uebunge) (Hofmann, no. 74, p. 572, and no. 31, p. 221).Google Scholar

51. Vetter, no. 60e, p. 309 (Hofmann, no. 25, p. 176).Google Scholar

52. Vetter, no. 15, p. 68 (Hofmann, no. 15a, p. 101).Google Scholar

53. Vetter, no. 47, p. 211 (Hofmann, no. 61, pp. 471–72).Google Scholar

54. Hofmann, no. 60, pp. 462–64.Google Scholar

55. Hofmann, no. 60, p. 465.Google Scholar See Lewis, Gertrud Jaron, By Women, for Women, about Women: The Sister-Books of Fourteenth-Century Germany (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1996), pp. 100–105,Google Scholar and Hale, Rosemary, “Imitatio Marine: Motherhood Motifs in Devotional Memoirs,” in Medieval German Literature, ed. Classen, Albrecht (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1989), pp. 129–45;Google Scholar reprinted in Mystics Quarterly 16 (1990): 193–203.Google Scholar

56. Vetter, no. 46, pp. 206–07 (Hofmann, no. 54, pp. 422–23); see also Vetter, no. 71, p. 388 (Hofmann, no. 80, pp. 615–16), and for reflections on the harm done to Christ by use of oaths referring to the wounds see Vetter, no. 60h, p. 327 (Hofmann, no. 35, p. 258).Google Scholar

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58. Vetter, no. 32, p. 118 (Hofmann, no. 32, p. 228). Cf.Google ScholarEckhart, Meister, Die rede der underscheidunge, chap. 20, Werke, ed. Largier, Niklaus (Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1993), pp. 394–403.Google Scholar

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61. Vetter, no. 51, p. 232 (Hofmann, no. 58, pp. 448–49).Google Scholar

62. Vetter, no. 33, pp. 130–31 (Hofmann, no. 33, p. 244).Google Scholar