UCLA Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies | Viator Abstracts, Vol. 378, no. 2 (Fall 2007)

Medieval Latin Metaphors. GILES CONSTABLE. This article studies the concept and use of metaphors in medieval Latin literature. After a brief discussion of the theory of metaphors, which were regarded, following Cicero, as transfers of words from one meaning to another and were called translationes and transumptiones, the article studies how metaphors were used in practice, both as multiple metaphors by the same author and single metaphors used by many authors. It concentrates on metaphors drawn from biology, life and death, eating and drinking, insects, water and the sun, and military activities, but there are also brief discussions of metaphors drawn from other fields. They were used in various ways but always involve two elements, based either on similarity or opposition, and they throw light on many aspects of medieval thought.

Scholarship and Activism at Cîteaux in the Age of Innocent III. BRIAN NOELL. This study considers the embrace of academic theology at Cîteaux, mother house of the Cistercian Order, in the early decades of the thirteenth century. Scholars have traditionally portrayed the Cistercians as distrustful of the scholastic enterprise. The manuscript evidence from Cîteaux suggests, however, that by around 1200 the white monks had established significant contacts with the schools. Recruited to evangelize among heretics, Jews, and the neglected laity during Innocent III’s pontificate, they began to copy, purchase, or receive as donations glossed Bibles, scholarly preacher’s aids, academic sermon anthologies, and collections of scholastic quaestiones. The monks of Cîteaux made practical use of these works in religious confrontation and pastoral care. In the age of Innocent III the Cistercians experimented with academic study as a foundation for the sort of active monastic vocation that would soon find mature expression among the mendicant orders.

Performing the Medieval Art of Love: Medieval Theories of the Emotions and the Social Logic of the Roman de la Rose of Guillaume de Lorris. TRACY ADAMS. Medieval artes amatoriae seem to teach how to simulate love through words and gestures. This essay suggests that, like other medieval treatises on the emotions, medieval artes amatoriae are grounded in the assumption that by acting out the gestures and words associated with an emotion, one begins to experience it. Like their prototype, Ovid’s Ars amatoria, these works are interested in creating the emotion of love in the seducer, the one who performs the signs. Focussing on the Guillaume de Lorris section of Le Roman de la Rose, the essay argues that in the often-noted gradual effacement of the distance between the lover and the story’s narrator, this romance carefully depicts the psycho-physiological transformation of the lover assimilating the emotion of love. The essay further argues that purpose of medieval artes amatoriae was to teach their readers how to master the art of falling in love for the purpose of making them agreeable to socially-useful marrriages.

A Pseudo-Grosseteste Treatise on Luxuria at Pavia. JAMES MCEVOY AND MICHAEL DUNNE. This article contains an edition of a text on luxuria which has been attributed to Robert Grosseteste and which is contained in a single manuscript belonging to the University Library of Pavia. Despite the fact that there is historical evidence from the 15th Century Chancellor of Oxford, Thomas Gascoigne, that Grosseteste composed a text Contra luxuriam, the authors conclude that the Pavia text is not to be identified with that work, or with well-authenticated views on a similar topic expressed by Grosseteste. In itself, however, the Pavia text is it itself an interesting treatise on the general theme of luxuria with a particular emphasis on the peccatum sodomiticum, drawing as it does upon a number of traditional sources both Scriptural and Patristic, as well as upon Roman Law.

Class, Sex, and the Other: The Representation of Peasants in a Set of Late Medieval Tapestries. KATE DIMITROVA. This essay investigates the characterization of peasants in a set of three fifteenth-century tapestries illustrating peasants hunting with ferrets and posits some interpretations of what that characterization means. During the late Middle Ages, tapestry served basic utilitarian needs such as insulating cold castle walls, but it also functioned on socio-political levels as well. Surviving aristocratic inventories show that there was widespread interest in the commissioning of tapestries, among which those with rustic themes form a special category. Interesting parallels can be drawn between late medieval literature and the visual arts in terms of the positive and negative typecasting of the peasant. For instance, in literature, the representation of peasants, especially in a satirical context, is generally negative. By contrast, in the visual arts (particularly tapestry), artistic choices concerning material, color and visual vocabulary create a complex and ambiguous context in which peasants and their activities are presented, allowing for a more nuanced interpretation of these images.

Making War on the Widow: Boccaccio’s Il Corbaccio and Florentine Liberty. MICHAELA PAASCHE GRUDIN. Boccaccio’s Corbaccio is an allegorical attack on the papacy as it was seen by many Florentines in the second half of the fourteenth century. As recent critics have increasingly observed, the traditional autobiographical and antifeminist reading of the work leaves much unexplained: the angry violence of the misogyny, uncharacteristic of Boccaccio; its pervasively Dantean background; its frequent references to politics and to liberty; its self-consciousness about its own language; and a host of minor details. Boccaccio was a practiced political allegorist, and his use of the image of a Widow to characterize the papacy resembles traditional, biblical use of marital and sexual imagery for criticism of the church, and works by close contemporaries such as Dante (on whom he bases his Spirit), Petrarch, and Marsilio of Padua. The dating of the Corbaccio remains uncertain; but its most likely occasion is the impending war between Florence and the papacy in 1375.

John Wyclif and the Primitive Papacy. IAN CHRISTOPHER LEVY. John Wyclif envisioned an ideal Church that could be created in his own day, based on the model of the earliest apostolic community depicted in the New Testament. The Church of the late fourteenth century would come to resemble the ecclesia primitiva, a poor communion of fellow workers marked by charity and humility. Within this holy fellowship there would be a place for the papacy, but it would no longer resemble the monarchy it had ascended to in the later Middle Ages. Instead, the pope would relate to his fellow bishops as St Peter had to the other apostles. His fellow Christians would recognize this man as their true pope, for he would be the person most closely resembling the apostolic martyrs and thus prove a genuine disciple of Christ. Wyclif actually bears comparison to two other fourteenth-century critics: Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham. Like Ockham, Wyclif believed that the papacy was established by Christ, although not as it exists in its present form. Yet, unlike Ockham, but similar to Marsilius, he did not concede to the papacy the plenitude of power. In order to gain a more complete understanding of Wyclif’s views one must study his place within the exegetical tradition of such important biblical passages as Matthew 16.18-19 and Galatians 2.11-14.

Hunting, Heraldry, and the Fall in the Boke of St. Albans. KAREN ELIZABETH GROSS. The Boke of St. Albans (1486) has long been recognized as a landmark in early English printing and appreciated as a rich source of Middle English vocabulary. Its most striking feature, however, has often gone overlooked: the combination in one volume of works on heraldry with those on hunting and hawking. This article examines the historical and social contexts of both hunting and heraldry in late fifteenth-century England to suggest why these two independent subjects would have been brought together at this moment. The essay then considers closely the first of the Boke’s heraldic tracts, the Liber Armorum, analyzing in particular its use of Genesis in defining the nature of gentility. The social arguments forwarded in the Liber Armorum, with its exacting definitions of a gentleman, provide another answer as to why hunting and heraldry were related and why both subjects seemed to require specialized vocabularies of precision.

Conveying Heresy: “A Certayne Student” and the Lollard-Hussite Fellowship. MICHAEL VAN DUSSEN. Lollard-Hussite relations in the early fifteenth century cannot accurately be described in terms of English initiation and Bohemian reception. Evidence from a series of Anglo-Czech epistolary exchanges and from later accounts of the correspondence indicates that a mutually beneficial fellowship existed. Documents pertaining to the correspondence reveal a keen interest in Bohemian affairs on the part of English Lollards, and a level of bilateral communication that extends beyond textual exchange to more personal levels of interaction. Central to this fellowship were the efforts of the Bohemian student Mikuláš Faulfiš as courier. This study proposes that he made as many as three trips to England, and that in his role as intermediary he was largely responsible for enabling the exchange of tidings and texts. His death in 1411 may also have contributed (among other causes) to the ensuing halt in correspondence between English and Czech reformers.

Ut Pictura Convivia: Heavenly Banquets and Infernal Feasts in Renaissance Italy. GUENDALINA AJELLO MAHLER. The Italian Renaissance produced a number of grand courtly banquets in which the gastronomic experience was transformed into a continuous tapestry of representational imagery governed by a single theme. This paper examines two extraordinary events which represent twin currents which ran through this feasting tradition. The first, a banquet of Heaven, marks a high point in the intellectual aspirations of the genre. It was a remarkably ambitious, if somewhat pedantic, attempt to sublimate the dinner party into an exercise in high culture. The second, a feast served in Hell, played on the appeal of the sublime. Held in a sophisticated courtly setting, it flirted subversively with the tradition’s rag-tag cousin: the popular carnivalesque. These banquets were high-stakes political events which spoke in the language of high art. Whether or not they amount to an art form, these events cannot be understood without using the sharp tools of iconographic and cultural analysis.

The Magnificence of Learned Women. HOLT N. PARKER. Women trained in humanism were essentially monstrous: female but eloquent. Such aberrations were routinely shut away in various forms in order to put an end to a disturbing anomaly. However, learned women were also displayed publicly. The Renaissance virtue of magnificentia can help explain this paradox. Magnificence celebrated the superfluous, the rare, the competitive. Thus women's "useless" knowledge was proof of abundant cultural resources; their performances served as displays of valuable curiosa; their presence gave boasting rights to families, states, and ages.

Two Liturgical Responses to the Protestant Reformation at the Collegiate Church of Saint Mary in Aachen, 1570–1580. ERIC RICE. The identity of Aachen’s “royal basilica” was dominated by Charlemagne, it founder, but was also bound up with a septennial pilgrimage and thus personal devotion. The church became an important center for the articulation of the Holy Roman Empire’s struggle against Protestantism, prompting liturgical changes during the last third of the sixteenth century. This article discusses two such changes between 1570 and 1580: the clear presentation of centuries-old plainchant melodies for the Feast of Charlemagne in up-to-date polyphonic settings by Johannes Mangon (ca. 1525–1578) and the construction of a new pulpit for vernacular preaching in close proximity to the former location of an ancient one. Each of these modifications updates an old or existing practice in a way that renews its relevance in light of the increase of Protestantism in the area. Such updates resonate with the Counter-Reformation goal of preserving and renewing the Catholic faith.

The Theory and Practice of Friendship in the Middle Ages

Ciceronian Amicitia in the Letters of Gerbert of Aurillac. COURTNEY DEMAYO. Despite historians’ disagreement over the nature of Gerbert of Aurillac’s relationships, his surviving letters contain evidence that he shared close emotional bonds of friendship with several of his peers. Gerbert shared these friendships with ecclesiastical peers, former students, and members of the German imperial family. Those same letters indicate that his relationships were largely modeled on Ciceronian amicitia, implying that Gerbert’s letters actually advance a model of friendship based on the criteria established in Cicero’s De Amicitia.

Justifying Cross-Cultural Friendship: Bohemond, Firuz, and the Fall of Antioch. REBECCA L. SLITT. The friendship between Bohemond, one of the leaders of the First Crusade, and Firuz, a Muslim resident of the city of Antioch, was militarily important, but philosophically difficult from the perspective of Latin Christian chroniclers writing in the eleventh and twelfth centuries because it did not conform to Western ideals of friendship. Therefore, in order to make this relationship more palatable to them and their audience, the chroniclers used two main strategies. Either they asserted that Firuz’s social class and/or religion were the same as Bohemond’s, thus making him conform more closely to the Christian chroniclers’ idea of an acceptable choice of friend; or they enhanced the image of Bohemond’s power, thus turning the relationship, like the military victory, into a triumph of Christians over Muslims.

Friendship in Anselm of Canterbury’s Correspondence: Ideals and Experience. H. M. CANATELLA. This essay analyzes Anselm of Canterbury’s (c. 1034-1109) correspondence with two of his life-long correspondents and friends, Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester, and Countess Ida of Boulogne. Gundulf was a monk of both Bec and Caen who became bishop after Lanfranc ascended to the archbishopric of Canterbury, and Ida was the pious wife of Eustace II, count of Boulogne, and mother of the crusaders Godfrey of Boullion, Eustace III, and Baldwin of Jerusalem. Anselm wrote to both Gundulf and Ida throughout his life, and these friendships are more than mere rhetorical expression. Anselm valued each friendship on an individual, personal, and spiritual level, and the reality of these relationships is corroborated by other primary sources. An investigation into the letters that Anselm wrote to the two reveals Anselm’s ideals of friendship, his influences, and his affections for Ida and Gundulf. Building upon an established tradition, and using ideas found in John Cassian’s Collationes, Anselm articulated a classical Christian model of friendship, applied to both a man and a woman, which corresponds to actual lived experience.

Cicero and the Boundaries of Friendship in the Twelfth Century. CONSTANT J. MEWS. Cicero’s De amicitia exerted a powerful influence on Latin Christian thought in the twelfth century. This paper considers core features of Cicero’s idealization of friendship and the way these ideals were transformed within a Christian context, above all in the writing of Augustine, as a prelude to exploring how twelfth-century writers responded to the themes of the De amicitia. Traditionally, friendship was perceived as operating within a purely masculine environment. I consider the way in which Abelard composed his Historia calamitatum as a way of offering consolation to someone in distress, perhaps intending it to be read by Heloise. I also explore the way in which Heloise sought to redefine their relationship by recalling Ciceronian ideals of true friendship, as not seeking any personal advantage, suggesting further evidence for considering the exchange of love letters known as the Epistolae duorum amantium as a record of the early letters of Abelard and Heloise. The teacher in this exchange alludes to the same passage of Cicero’s De amicitia as Abelard includes in the Sic et Non when considering the nature of caritas. His mature thinking about love in the Theologia “Scholarium” draws on both Ciceronian and Augustinian elements. Although the treatise of Aelred of Rievaulx on spiritual friendship has certain broad themes in common with this exchange, it combines Ciceronian and Augustinian themes in very different ways, and cannot be identified as a literary influence on the love letters. Aelred, whose thinking extends builds on that of Bernard of Clairvaux about love, was also responding to a vogue of interest in Cicero’s De amicitia in the twelfth century, produced his own, very different formulation of the ideals of friendship.

Friendship in Public Life during the Twelfth Century: Theory and Practice in the Writings of John of Salisbury. CARY J. NEDERMAN. This paper explores the discourses of friendship found within the theoretical writings and correspondence of twelfth-century courtier-humanist John of Salisbury. I first consider John’s theorization (in his Policraticus) a model of friendship derived from classical Ciceronian principles of literary interaction among well-educated and articulate equals. I then examine the extent to which John puts this theory into practice in his two letter collections. I argue that there is a clear attempt on John’s part to apply the lessons of Ciceronian friendship directly to the political and personal relationships that he forged and sustained.