John VanEngen
University of Notre Dame, History, Faculty Member
Medieval women were normally denied access to public educational institutions, and so also denied the gateways to most leadership positions. Modern scholars have therefore tended to study learned medieval women as simply anomalies, and... more
Medieval women were normally denied access to public educational institutions, and so also denied the gateways to most leadership positions. Modern scholars have therefore tended to study learned medieval women as simply anomalies, and women generally as victims. This volume, however, argues instead for a via media. Drawing upon manuscript and archival sources, scholars here show that more medieval women attained some form of learning than hitherto imagined, and that women with such legal, social or ecclesiastical knowledge also often exercised professional or communal leadership. Bringing together contributors from the disciplines of literature, history and religion, this volume challenges several traditional views: firstly, the still-prevalent idea that women's intellectual accomplishments were limited to the Latin literate. The collection therefore engages heavily with vernacular writings (in Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, French, Dutch, German and Italian), and also with material culture (manuscript illumination, stained glass, fabric and jewelry) for evidence of women's advanced capabilities. But in doing so, the contributors strive to avoid the equally problematic view that women's accomplishments were somehow limited to the vernacular and the material. So several essays examine women at work with the sacred languages of the three Abrahamic traditions (Latin, Arabic and Hebrew). And a third traditional view is also interrogated: that women were somehow more "original" for their lack of learning and dependence on their mother tongue. Scholars here agree wholeheartedly that women could be daring thinkers in any language; they engage readily with women's learnedness wherever it can be found.
(The cover image depicts Esther in an authoritative teaching posture, advocating before the Persian king, Ahasuerus for the Hebrew people, an act of bravery that thwarted the genocide of her people. The image comes from one of the most lavishly illustrated medieval Hebrew manuscripts extant, 'The Northern French Miscellany', containing biblical texts and prayers (c. 1277-1286). © The British Library Board, London, British Library, MS Additional 11639, fol.260v).
(The cover image depicts Esther in an authoritative teaching posture, advocating before the Persian king, Ahasuerus for the Hebrew people, an act of bravery that thwarted the genocide of her people. The image comes from one of the most lavishly illustrated medieval Hebrew manuscripts extant, 'The Northern French Miscellany', containing biblical texts and prayers (c. 1277-1286). © The British Library Board, London, British Library, MS Additional 11639, fol.260v).
Medieval women were normally denied access to public educational institutions, and so also denied the gateways to most leadership positions. Modern scholars have therefore tended to study learned medieval women as simply anomalies, and... more
Medieval women were normally denied access to public educational institutions, and so also denied the gateways to most leadership positions. Modern scholars have therefore tended to study learned medieval women as simply anomalies, and women generally as victims. This volume, however, argues instead for a via media. Drawing upon manuscript and archival sources, scholars here show that more medieval women attained some form of learning than hitherto imagined, and that women with such legal, social or ecclesiastical knowledge also often exercised professional or communal leadership.
Bringing together contributors from the disciplines of literature, history and religion, this volume challenges several traditional views: firstly, the still-prevalent idea that women’s intellectual accomplishments were limited to the Latin literate. The collection therefore engages heavily with vernacular writings (in Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, French, Dutch, German and Italian), and also with material culture (manuscript illumination, stained glass, fabric and jewelry) for evidence of women’s advanced capabilities. But in doing so, the contributors strive to avoid the equally problematic view that women’s accomplishments were somehow limited to the vernacular and the material. So several essays examine women at work with the sacred languages of the three Abrahamic traditions (Latin, Arabic and Hebrew). And a third traditional view is also interrogated: that women were somehow more “original” for their lack of learning and dependence on their mother tongue. Scholars here agree wholeheartedly that women could be daring thinkers in any language; they engage readily with women’s learnedness wherever it can be found.
Contributors: Asma Afsaruddin, Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Amanda Bohne, Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis, Adrienne Williams Boyarin, Dyan Elliott, Thelma Fenster, Sean Field, Sarah Foot, Megan J. Hall, Ruth Mazzo Karras, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Rachel Koopmans, F. Thomas Luongo, Leanne MacDonald, Gary Macy, Maureen Miller, Barbara Newman, S.J. Pearce, Anna Siebach-Larsen, Gemma Simmonds, David Wallace, John Van Engen, Nicholas Watson, Jocelyn Wogan-Browne.
Bringing together contributors from the disciplines of literature, history and religion, this volume challenges several traditional views: firstly, the still-prevalent idea that women’s intellectual accomplishments were limited to the Latin literate. The collection therefore engages heavily with vernacular writings (in Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, French, Dutch, German and Italian), and also with material culture (manuscript illumination, stained glass, fabric and jewelry) for evidence of women’s advanced capabilities. But in doing so, the contributors strive to avoid the equally problematic view that women’s accomplishments were somehow limited to the vernacular and the material. So several essays examine women at work with the sacred languages of the three Abrahamic traditions (Latin, Arabic and Hebrew). And a third traditional view is also interrogated: that women were somehow more “original” for their lack of learning and dependence on their mother tongue. Scholars here agree wholeheartedly that women could be daring thinkers in any language; they engage readily with women’s learnedness wherever it can be found.
Contributors: Asma Afsaruddin, Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Amanda Bohne, Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis, Adrienne Williams Boyarin, Dyan Elliott, Thelma Fenster, Sean Field, Sarah Foot, Megan J. Hall, Ruth Mazzo Karras, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Rachel Koopmans, F. Thomas Luongo, Leanne MacDonald, Gary Macy, Maureen Miller, Barbara Newman, S.J. Pearce, Anna Siebach-Larsen, Gemma Simmonds, David Wallace, John Van Engen, Nicholas Watson, Jocelyn Wogan-Browne.
Research Interests: History, Gender Studies, Women's Studies, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 15 moreWomen's History, Literature, Medieval Studies, Medieval Islam, Medieval Women, Medieval Church History, Women, Medieval Europe, Church History, Codicology of medieval manuscripts, Medieval Christianity, Religious Studies, Women and Gender Studies, Middle Ages, and Medieval Women and Gender
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Anglo-Saxon periods, Ireland comes in, surprisingly, near the end of the pack. Another unifying theme is the question of which social groups promoted the saints' cults most vigorously. Rollason concludes that before 850 it was... more
Anglo-Saxon periods, Ireland comes in, surprisingly, near the end of the pack. Another unifying theme is the question of which social groups promoted the saints' cults most vigorously. Rollason concludes that before 850 it was primarily ecclesiastics and perhaps a few of the laity from the noble and royal classes. By contrast, lay participation increased among the lower as well as the upper classes after the tenth-century monastic reform. Rollason sees this phenomenon as yet another example of a continental development, this time a Carolingian one, eventually finding its way into Anglo-Saxon England. Despite this abiding interest in how foreign forces shaped Anglo-Saxon saints' cults, Rollason ends his work by showing just how well these cults endured the Norman invasion. In a fascinating final chapter, Rollason argues that it was neither the case after 1066 that the defeated Anglo-Saxons recast their native saints as heroes of resistance nor that their Norman overlords ascribed to these saints a second-class status. Here one almost gets the impression that the Normans found in the Anglo-Saxon cult of saints an institution which had already been so thoroughly shaped by continental practice that they saw little in it to change. Like the Anglo-Saxon rulers before them, the Normans were far more interested in exploiting these cults for their own ends than in exterminating them. While readers interested in the purely religious function of the cult of the saints may find this book only moderately useful to them, they must acknowledge that Rollason does superbly what he purports to do. Apart from giving a balanced and sober analysis of the cult of the saints in its larger cultural context, he offers anecdotes and illustrations that should delight all students of the Anglo-Saxon period, whatever their discipline.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The Medieval Imagination. By Jacqes Le Goff. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988. vii + 293 pp. $27.50. - Your Money or Your Life: Economy and Religion in the Middle Ages. By Jacques Le Goff. Translated by Partricia Ranum. New York: Zone Books, 1988. 11...more
Research Interests:
This article encompasses three different approaches to the relationship between manuscripts and memory in the Devotio Moderna, more particularly in the milieu of Brothers of the Common Life. The first part deals with the way in which the... more
This article encompasses three different approaches to the relationship between manuscripts and memory in the Devotio Moderna, more particularly in the milieu of Brothers of the Common Life. The first part deals with the way in which the manuals of the founding fathers of the movement dealt with the faculty of memoria. In Gerard Zerbolt’s thought memoria often meant something approximating what we nowadays call human consciousness. In the process of spiritual formation this memoria needed a fundamental refocusing of the mind to rid it of distractions. The emphasis of Devout meditation fell less on recalling than on actively producing a certain affect or state of mind, for example by occupying or preoccupying the memoria with the mystery of the Passion. The second part of the article shows how other types of written memories that were initially personal aids turned into important elements in the cultivation of collective memory and hence the strengthening of communal ideals. Thirdly, the article expands on...
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Sociology, Law, Liturgy, Literary studies, Historical Studies, and 3 moreSaint, HOMO VIATOR, and Chose
Research Interests:
Any historical period called “late” is headed for interpretive trouble, and one called “late medieval” is probably doomed. Periodization is an artifice, as we know, yet also an art. Historians have entirely reconceived “late antiquity”... more
Any historical period called “late” is headed for interpretive trouble, and one called “late medieval” is probably doomed. Periodization is an artifice, as we know, yet also an art. Historians have entirely reconceived “late antiquity” over the past generation, transforming Roman decadence into an imperial and Christian culture three centuries long embracing the whole Mediterranean world, creative in its culture and foundational for societies that followed. But what of “late medieval”? In most textbooks the term comes paired still with “decline.” Humanists and Reformers first created the artifice of a “middle time,” a dismissive gesture toward the thousand years that separated them from the golden ages of antiquity and/or the early church. Nineteenth-century scientific historians introduced art into this artifice by dividing that amorphous millennium into semi-coherent sub-periods: “early” (400–1000), “high” (1000–1300), and a rump called “late” (1300–1500). Church history entered i...
Research Interests:
Medieval women were normally denied access to public educational institutions, and so also denied the gateways to most leadership positions. Modern scholars have therefore tended to study learned medieval women as simply anomalies, and... more
Medieval women were normally denied access to public educational institutions, and so also denied the gateways to most leadership positions. Modern scholars have therefore tended to study learned medieval women as simply anomalies, and women generally as victims. This volume, however, argues instead for a via media. Drawing upon manuscript and archival sources, scholars here show that more medieval women attained some form of learning than hitherto imagined, and that women with such legal, social or ecclesiastical knowledge also often exercised professional or communal leadership. Bringing together contributors from the disciplines of literature, history and religion, this volume challenges several traditional views: firstly, the still-prevalent idea that women’s intellectual accomplishments were limited to the Latin literate. The collection therefore engages heavily with vernacular writings (in Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, French, Dutch, German and Italian), and also with material culture (manuscript illumination, stained glass, fabric and jewelry) for evidence of women’s advanced capabilities. But in doing so, the contributors strive to avoid the equally problematic view that women’s accomplishments were somehow limited to the vernacular and the material. So several essays examine women at work with the sacred languages of the three Abrahamic traditions (Latin, Arabic and Hebrew). And a third traditional view is also interrogated: that women were somehow more “original” for their lack of learning and dependence on their mother tongue. Scholars here agree wholeheartedly that women could be daring thinkers in any language; they engage readily with women’s learnedness wherever it can be found. Contributors: Asma Afsaruddin, Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Amanda Bohne, Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis, Adrienne Williams Boyarin, Dyan Elliott, Thelma Fenster, Sean Field, Sarah Foot, Megan J. Hall, Ruth Mazzo Karras, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Rachel Koopmans, F. Thomas Luongo, Leanne MacDonald, Gary Macy, Maureen Miller, Barbara Newman, S.J. Pearce, Anna Siebach-Larsen, Gemma Simmonds, David Wallace, John Van Engen, Nicholas Watson, Jocelyn Wogan-Browne.
Research Interests: History, Gender Studies, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Literature, and 13 moreMedieval Studies, Medieval Islam, Medieval Women, Medieval Church History, Women, Medieval Europe, Church History, Codicology of medieval manuscripts, Medieval Christianity, Religious Studies, Women and Gender Studies, Middle Ages, and Medieval Women and Gender
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
"1 his will be the definitive study of a noteworthy religious movement of the later Middle Ages. Van Engen has mined the libraries and archives with extraordinary thoroughness and has found a wealth of new knowledge." — Robert... more
"1 his will be the definitive study of a noteworthy religious movement of the later Middle Ages. Van Engen has mined the libraries and archives with extraordinary thoroughness and has found a wealth of new knowledge." — Robert E. Larner, Northwestern University "''' ...