Mediaeval Thought

T. P. Ellis’ 50 pages of legal analysis of the Mabinogion (1928) is exceptionally methodical and detailed, with supporting  quotes on all important points, and  page referencing to the mediaeval MSS. As a high court judge in a tribal society Ellis' professional expertise is particularly apt. His paper is therefore highly recommended as a priority source analysis. Unfortunately his paper is not openly accessible, so I am sharing my own study paraphrase, which reduces 50 pages to 17 pages. It includes all Ellis' points relating to the Four Branches, and names comparisons with other tales. The key issue of sarhad, honour, is thoroughly analysed with legal provisions, and Mabinogion examples. Ellis comments this is central to an understanding of the texts.

Ellis, Thomas Peter., ‘Legal References, Terms, and Conceptions in the  Mabinogion’, Cymm., xxxix (1928), pp. 86–147.

Many points Ellis makes are found in later literature on mediaeval Welsh prose, without crediting him. Here, as with his 1929 translation, he suffers from undeserved obscurity.
The paper can be specially requested from NLW, then the PDF still has to be transcribed as it does not copy/ paste easily. I am making my own paraphrased version of my transcription available, to save others’ from duplicating my efforts, and to provide a shorter version than the original. 

As my own research focus is the Four Branches of the Mabinogi. I include all Ellis' points in this area, often quoting him, together with the source quotes he gives and MS. page references. Comparisons with other tales from the Mabinogion are noted but usually without quotes or MS. page references. There are a few of my own points: these are indicated by square brackets. I have slightly reorganised the topics to make just five categories: political organisation, the family, criminal law/ civil law, marriage law, courts and procedure. (Ellis’ own subsections are listed at the top, which they are not in the origianl.)
The resulting document makes Ellis' excellent and painstaking work much more easily available in RTF text format (at least for the Mabinogi material, and other tales can be traced from the notes given).. Ellis' analysis has stood the test of time very well indeed and stands as a classic which needs to be openly available to scholars.

There are certain thoughts - intimations - that will seem corny, or laughable, and therefore dismissed - and only seriously absorbed into the changing mind when felt, in the shelter of the quietly moving music of the soul.
It is the function of art, and of love, to make this music heard . . . 

  It is not the music of depression - it is the way through.

This paper - first published in German, in Herdfeuer (2020) 56 - presents, as an important finding for the history of Germanic religion, in the Christian Middle Ages, an analysis of the praise poem, Carmen de Imagine Tetrici, by the Carolingian theologian, Walahfrid Strabo (8009 - 849), chaplain at the royal court, at the time. By close analysis, mindful of the rules of contemporary aesthetics, and of theologically based reception of the religious-cultural heritage of Antiquiy, including the pagan Germanic, it van be shown, that Walahfrid invokes 'Lady Holda' ad patron deity of divination or seerdom. The persistance of this understanding of Lady Holda - the Mother Holle of Grimm's folk tale collection - and its vitality in cultural awareness, is shown by analysis of a sermon of Martin Luther for Advent. This is framed by a view to present public interest in Mother Holle, as deity, and on her sites of worship, in a discernible movement of retrieval of cultural roots, and by a concluding section on divination in Greco-Roman Antiquity, as presented and discussed by Plutarch. Consequences for the retrieval and practice of divination are considered.

This essay, published in: Herdfeuer, no. 39 (2/2014), (Beyss, Barbara (ed.), Eldaring e.v. (publ.)), pp. 4 – 46, follows some traces of a pre-Christian heritage on a chapel dating from the early Middle Ages. It refers to the long history of Pagan- Christian coexistence as the basis for a practical syncretism as evident here. The essay also outlines a systematical theological basis for the reception of the Pagan heritage in Christian sacred sites in the context of inter-religious understanding. The essay is in German with an introduction in English.

The beautiful 'Cobden' Book of Hours in the Special Collections Archive at Bristol University has three sections devoted to the saints. The calendars are examined, and the saints have been analysed as saints of Troyes, where the Book was made, Universal Saints and Northern French saints. These saints appear again in the Litany and in the special suffrages. The Icon of St Michael seems to have been drawn with a link to the Military Order of the Knights of Mont  St Michel. The form of the cults of these saints, including 'punishing them' is explored. It is seen that by the mid fifteenth century most of the saints are Universal and Rome approved, and come from the early church.The inclusion of St Mastidia and St Helena prove the provenance of the book in a workshop in Troyes and an artist is suggested.

This paper will argue that the order and the unity of St. Thomas Aquinas’s five ways can be elucidated through a consideration of St. Thomas’s appropriation of an Avicennian insight that he used to order and unify the wisdom of the Aristotelian and Abrahamic philosophical traditions towards the existence of God. I will begin with a central aporia from Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Aristotle says that the science of first philosophy has three different theoretical vectors: ontology, aitiology, and theology. But how can all three be united into a single Aristotelian science? In his Metaphysics of the Healing, Avicenna resolved the impasse by taking the ontological vector as the subject of metaphysics. He then integrated the question of the four first causes into the penultimate stage of his demonstration for the existence of God, thereby placing aitiological and theological questions among the ultimate concerns of a unified Aristotelian metaphysics. In the five ways, St. Thomas integrated Avicenna’s Aristotelian search for the first four causes into the last four of his five ways, by showing that each of the four aitiological orders terminate in an ultimate first cause that we call God. Finally, by appending the proof from the Physics to the beginning of the five ways, St. Thomas was able to show that the ultimate aim of both natural philosophy and metaphysics is the divine first principle, which is the beginning and subject of sacra doctrina.

Per Lumina Vera ad Verum Lumen: The Anagogical Intention of Abbot Suger
Symmeikta: Collection of Papers Dedicated to the 40th Anniversary of the Institute for Art History, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, 2012

This academic paper critically reexamines the conventional interpretation of the inscription on the bronze doors at St-Denis, and proposes to frame the inscription in the context of the influence Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite on medieval theology and spirituality.

ENGLISH

In the 12th century European context, predominates the iconography of Christ placed in a light mystic mandorla holding an open book containing inscriptions concerning a special theology of light.

The Maiestas Domini iconography strongly arises together with the historical fact of the agustinian liturgical movement. The so called agustinian canonigas were originally born in saint Ruph of Avignon and saint Victor of Marseille holding the spirituality of the Rule written by saint Agustin himself and later moved into Cataluña renewing his original idea of neoplatonic mystical beauty.

The arrival of collections of manuscripts into Catalonia containing the Homily to the Prologus of saint John by Scotus Eriugena is enough to proof the relationship between the theology of light iconography and the neoplatonic traditions originated in the 9th century Carolingian Court.

The text of the Vox Spiritualis Aquilae involves a reception of the Theology of light within the Maiestas Domini iconography. It is a new way of representing God, man and world in art.
SPANISH
En el contexto del siglo XII europeo, se impone la iconografía del Cristo Luz aureolado por una almendra mística, sosteniendo un libro abierto con inscripciones alusivas a una teología de la luz.

La proliferación de la iconografía de la Maiestas Domini se produce en el contexto histórico de la reforma litúrgica canóniga agustiniana, cuyo origen se encuentra en san Rufo de Avignon y san Víctor de Marsella. Cataluña, se hace depositaria de la Regla se san Agustín, que propugna un ideal renovado de belleza mística neoplatónica.

La llegada al Principado de manuscritos de la Homilía al Prólogo de Juan, escrita por Juan Escoto Eriúgena, es una prueba, en pleno siglo XII, de la relación entre una iconografía teológica de la luz y una tradición neoplatónica originada en el siglo IX en la corte carolingia.

El texto de la Vox spiritualis aquilae representa la recepción de la teología de la luz en la iconografía de la Maiestas Domini y, con ella, una nueva forma de representar a Dios, al hombre y al mundo en el arte.

‚Frau Holle‘ ist im kulturellen Gedächtnis deutschsprachiger Länder lebendig geblieben und ist durch Grimms Märchen weltweit bekannt geworden. Die ehrenvoll als 'Holda', die ‚Holde‘, bezeichnete, gehört zu den germanischen Gottheiten, die seit der Christianisierung als ‚numinose‘ Gestalten fortbestanden. Das ist durch volkskundlichen Arbeiten seit dem 19. Jh. sind gesichert.
Kaum beachtet ist die Frau Holles Rolle als Göttin oder Symbolgestalt der Divination, des Sehertums. Das entspricht der verbreiteten Auffassung einher, dass diese in germanischer und früher deutscher Kultur keine besondere Rolle gespielt habe. Anhand gewichtiger Zeugen, vom Anfang und Ende des Mittelalters, von Walahfrid Strabos aus der Karolingerzeit, und Martin Luther, lässt sich zeigen, dass die Frau Holle im Frühmittelalter als Patronin der Sehergabe angesehen wurde.
Indem Walahfried Hofgeistlicher war, als einer der führenden Gelehrten seiner Zeit, hat sein Zeugnis Gewicht. Er stellt die Frau Holle als Patronin der Sehergabe in eine Reihe mit  Heldinnen der griechischen Kultur und der Bibel. Sie wird ihnen als emblematische Gestalt des eigenen kulturellen Erbes in gleichem Rang gegenübergestellt. Es ist bemerkenswert, dass sie hierbei in dieser Funktion genannt wird. Bei Martin Luther ist die Auffassung der Frau Holle als Symbolgestalt der Divination, polemisch gewendet, weiterhin lebendig. 
Erkennbar ist erneutes Interesse an der Frau Holle, wie es sich in Veröffentlichungen, vielfach im Internet, und, aktuell in einem Film des ZDF: Frau Holle und ihre versunkene Welt (4. 10. 2020) zeigt. Hier wird die ‚Frau Holle‘  über die Sphäre des Kindermärchens hinaus wahrgenommen, als eine für die eigene geschichtliche kulturelle Identität bedeutsame numinose Gestalt.
‚Schamanismus‘ – als Sammelbegriff für Divination verschiedener Kulturen – fasziniert seit Jahrzehnten unsere Kultur – und andere in industriellen Gesellschaften -  bis in den gesellschaftlichen ‚Mainstream‘ hinein. Merkwürdigerweise richtet sich dieses Interesse kaum auf die antiken Formen des Sehertums, das im griechisch-römischen Bewusstsein mit Orakeln wie in Delphi fest verankert war, und im germanischen und deutschen Kulturraum bis zum Ende des Mittelalters lebendig geblieben ist. Angesichts dessen ist die erneute Wahrnehmung der Frau Holle als Göttin des Sehertums von Bedeutung für einen weithin verlorenen Aspekt der eigenen Kulturtradition.

English summary:
This essay presents ‘Mother Holle’, the divine figure preserved in the folktale of the Grimm brothers, as deity of divination. In the Middle Ages she was addressed by her honorific, as Lady Holda: as the 'Benign One'. Her invocation as patron of divination by the Carolingian theologian at the royal court and poet, Walahfrid Strabo (early 9th century), in a solemn praise poem for a major public ceremony, gives firm testimony of how she was understood –and esteemed as part of the own cultural heritage – in the early Middle Ages' high culture. On this background, the descriptions of divinatory practices of Germanic tribes, by authors of Greco-Roman Antiquity, indicate long continuity, well into the Christian era. Martin Luther’s polemical references to Mother Holle as deity of Pagan divination confirm this. In the context of broad cultural and academic interest in ‘shamanism’ of non-western cultures, since the mid-20th century, the identification of Mother Holle / Lady Holda as deity of divination - known by other names as Frîja, Frig or Frea -  may serve to remind that this is part of the German religious-cultural heritage too. It survived in Christian context, for at least a millennium after the end of Greco-Roman Antiquity,  with its well-developed culture of divination as at Delphi, and of Pagan Germanic cultures.

This paper examines William of Malmesbury's  (c.1090—c.1142) detailed description of ancient Roman remains at Carlisle in northern England. This remarkable passage features in his 'Gesta pontificum Anglorum' (Book III ch. 99) and has been much commented upon by previous scholars as an instance of personal observation.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to indicate the pervasive influence of textual sources that mediated William’s description of these Roman ruins. Second, to demonstrate how William carefully projects his own 'romanitas' (Romanness) onto his description of these archaeological remains. Through close textual reading and literary analysis it is shown that this scene is not a straightforward example of antiquarianism based upon personal observation, but instead a complex passage of literary inclination which indicates the wider cultural associations of Rome and 'romanitas' within William of Malmesbury's historical writings.

Anhand von zeitgenössischen Quellen wird der Frage nachgegangen, wie die Rolle Heinrichs des Löwen auf dem Wendenkreuzzug beschrieben und charakterisiert wird. Bei der Untersuchung wird in den Fokus gestellt, wie es möglicherweise zum Fehlen von Hinweisen auf den Kreuzzug in den den Welfen nahestehenden Texten kommen konnte.

Aim of this paper is to follow the paths of eriugenian thought in one of his most topical argument: the creation of everything in the Verb. Moving from the fourfold division of nature, set at the beginning of Periphyseon, two main problems are identified: the non-creativeness of God, and the creativeness of the primordial causes. An attempt to reconstruct the play of ontology and meontology under these themes is made, in search of what the Irish master means speaking of God’s self-creation in everything and God’s identity with the Creation. The Wisdom argument is identified by Eriugena to overpass the aporias that rational though, which follows the rules of dialectics, meets as its limits. Moving from scientia to sapientia, the intellect passes from a divisive knowledge to a unitive one, and by this step an harmonisation of the four divisions of nature with the division between things-that-are and thing-that-are-not is understood in a unitary frame.

It is necessary to consider medieval Western Neoplatonism as a current of thought inserted in a wide cultural atmosphere where liturgical, theological, aesthetic, and artistic patterns play an important role as elements of a common historical past. In this article the author argues to what extent Neoplatonic concepts (Epiphany, Negative Theology, Theology of Light and Metaphor of Light) derived from Johannes Scotus Eriugena, translator of the Corpus Areopagiticum into latin, relate to the Iconography of Crist-Light or Maiestas domini in a mandorle of light. Writings of various thinkers, paintings from the 12th century and medieval epigraphy are taken as primary sources in order to understand the relationship between Neoplatonism and Iconography in the European Middle Ages

A Homily on the Prologue to the 4th Gospel (the "Homily") written by Eriugena was attributed to Origen in the Medieval Period, but that attribution was not conclusively proven to be wrong until the mid-20th century. Consequently, the Homily was copied more frequently and distributed more widely than it otherwise would have been and for that reason alone is uniquely important. Yet, the Homily is also uniquely important because in it Eriugena occasionally refers to otherwise unknown Greek texts of the 4th Gospel. In particular, he cites Greek texts with the personal pronoun αὐτὸς as line initial at 1:2 rather than the demonstrative pronoun οὗτος. Because of the narratological function of the Prologue, this ostensibly minor difference has potentially profound implications for understanding both the Prologue as well as the entire 4th Gospel. The purpose of this paper is to (a) argue for the authoritativeness of αὐτὸς as line initial at 1:2 (Sections I-II), (b) demonstrate how it relates to the meaning and function of verses 1:1-5 as 'theological' poetry (Section III), (c) identify how those verses relate to Eriugena's interpretation of the spiritual ascension of the Woman at the Well that is found in one of several extended fragments that survive from his commentary on the entire 4th Gospel (Section IV) and (d) draw some conclusions and raise some questions about the implications of Eriugena's reading of the 4th Gospel (Section V). Outline

This article examines textual descriptions of smiling, laughing and joking with the pope in thirteenth-century Rome. It focuses on two Anglo-Norman accounts of conducting litigation at the papal curia: Thomas of Marlborough's (d.1236) Chronicon abbatiae de Evesham and Gerald of Wales's (c. 1146–1220×23) De jure et statu Menevensis ecclesiae. Both authors include several careful and prominent references to smiling, laughing and joking, and specifically in relation to Pope Innocent III. These passages have previously been read as straightforward examples of wit and friendship, but this study shows that the authors use these physiological expressions to convey complex and subtly different pictures of the papal curia. Above all, this article demonstrates how Thomas and Gerald's descriptions of humorous interactions with the pope play crucial narrative and mnemonic roles within their work.

Il presente articolo esamina le descrizioni testuali del sorridere, del ridere e dello scherzare con il Papa nella Roma del XIII secolo. Si focalizza in particolare su due resoconti anglo-normanni di controversie nella curia papale: il 'Chronicon abbatiae de Evesham' di Thomas of Marlborough (data di morte 1236) e il 'De jure et statu Menevensis ecclesiae' di Gerald of Wales (c. 1146–1220×23). In entrambi i testi sono presenti molti riferimenti attenti agli atti di sorridere, di ridere e di scherzare, in particolar modo in relazione a Papa Innocenzo III. Questi passaggi sono stati in precedenza interpretati come inequivocabili esempi di umorismo e amicizia, ma questo studio dimostra come gli autori usino queste ‘espressioni fisiologiche’ per descrivere immagini leggermente differenti della curia papale. Soprattutto questo articolo mostra come le descrizioni di interazione umoristica con il papa di Thomas of Marlborough e di Gerald of Wales giochino ruoli narrativi e mnemonici cruciali all'interno dei loro lavori.

The result of a colloquium organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies (Cambridge, UK), Divine Essence and Divine Energies offers a rich repository of diverse opinion about the distinction between essence and energy in Orthodox Christianity – a doctrine which lies at the heart of the often fraught fault line between East and West, and which, in this book, inspires a lively dialogue between the contributors.

The contents of the book revolve around several key questions: In what way were the Aristotelian concepts of ousia and energeia used by the Church Fathers, and to what extent were their meanings modified in the light of the Christological and Trinitarian doctrines? What theological function does the essence-energy distinction fulfil in Eastern Orthodoxy with respect to theology, anthropology, and the doctrine of creation? What are the differences and similarities between the notions of divine presence and participation in seminal Christian writings, and what is the relationship between the essence-energy distinction and Western ideas of divine presence?

A valuable addition to the dialogue between Eastern and Western Christianity, this book will be of great interest to any reader seeking a rigorously academic insight into the wealth of scholarly opinion about the essence-energy distinction.

When Kant read Newton (and Clarke) the following conceptual space could have been opened up for him: space is neither a substance nor an accident, but is the way in which objects are present to the (divine) mind. Space is the divine sensorium, the means by which God is present to the creation. That objects have a spatial form occurs insofar as objects are dependent upon and known by (divine) mind. Such a conceptual space, transposed (with some modifications) to the human cognitive mind, might plausibly - both philosophically and historically speaking - have helped Kant along the road to transcendental idealism.

From The City of Reason vol 3 Universitas
by Dr Peter Critchley

Augustine is the last great ancient thinker, using all of his pagan education and training for powerful and cogent statement of Christian thought. Augustine “provided the medieval consciousness, amid an entirely different sociological and political reality, with its foundation and spiritual weapons”. Karl Jaspers certainly underestimates the contributions of thinkers before Augustine, but his appraisal of Augustine’s achievement isn’t far from the truth: “No philosopher before Augustine had concerned himself with the uncertainty of freedom, the ground of its possibility or the question of its actual meaning. But Augustine, thanks to his understanding of St Paul, considered these matters with an enduring force of conviction” (Karl Jaspers, Plato and Augustine (New York: Harcourt Brace/Harvest Book, 1962) 95).

The basis of St Augustine’s The City of God (civitas dei) is the distinction between the earthly city and the heavenly city; these form two distinctive communities, one of the ungodly and the other of the godly. This paper shows how Augustine targets individualism to define a Christian version of ‘rational freedom’. The root of the evil in the earthly city is selfishness. In Augustine’s view, individuals are restless, seeking to dominate each other and make each other means to private ends. Human life is thus an endless quest for power and self-gratification. In Augustine’s conception, the state is necessary, not to make individuals good or virtuous but to restrain them from doing evil. Augustine’s argument is that whilst government and society are natural for human beings, they are also irredeemably coercive. The state is not a positive instrument for promoting the good life – the ‘rational’ conception - but a neutral instrument for imposing the civil peace – the liberal protective or instrumental view. For this reason, Augustine does not belong in the tradition of ‘rational freedom’. Whereas politics in ancient Greece was defined in terms of the creative self-realisation of the human ontology, in Augustine's conception the earthly political association is more an instrument of division, force and rapacity.

The works of Polish archaeologists in Sudan, ongoing since "The Nubian Campaign" (1961-1964), constantly enrich our knowledge about Christian Nubia. New research not only forces us to correct our knowledge on Nubia, but also to take a fresh look at Mediaeval Christianity. An interesting thread of Nubian angelology is the evidence of seven archangels' cult confirmed in inscriptions as well as in painting and architecture. In the case of Nubia we do not have extensive descriptions of the development of the archangels' worship, and our knowledge is based on the combination of individual data, which, when collected, may form a complete picture. The purpose of this paper is to gather these single tesserae and show that the worship of archangels was developing in Nubia and that there was a certain permanent set of the archangelic names.

World Tree Music is a journey into love, legend and mystery through music and song. A cool rippling stream of organic and electronic sound ... a collage of energetic rhythms; topped with a voice like burnished crystal.

This is our long awaited fifth album and it has been lovingly crafted over a considerable period of time.  It encapsulates our existence on the ‘wheel of life’ with one foot in grounded rhythms of life and the other drifting into the realms of dreams and fantasy.  The hopes and fears of humanity in dealing with the world as it is and yet often drifting off into dreams of what could or should be.

Dream like folk-rock fusions merging with classical world rhythm influences. From electronic ambient to exciting world rhythms and songs of love, legend and mystery.

The World Tree or tree of life is a symbol with meaning shared across the myriad cultures of the world, merging many ancient wisdoms. We aim to fuse instruments and styles of the globe transcending national limits, space and time with hopeful and peaceful messages.

Imago Dei is one of the important issues of the theological debate in western Europe between the twelfth and thirteenth century. Focusing on the exegesis of Genesis 1, 26 medieval theologians reconsider the patristic heritage. From the Sentences of Peter Lombard this heritage of interpretations is systematized and becomes the subject of a deep analysis. The result is a more articulated definition of anthropology, which in the age of the great Scholastic intersects with the dialectical tools and philosophical categories provided by the Latin versions of Aristotle and of neo-platonic sources such as Dionysus the Aeropagite. In the works by Bonaventure and Aquinas become also evident the ecclesiological implications of the discourse on the image of God.