Medieval Theology Texts

Especially within a society such as ours, which distorts love into lust, the ability to recognize and display the gift of love is essential. Selfish love, which is so inherent to humanity, inhibits God from acting in our lives, blinding us from experiencing His presence and eternal joy. It is so easy to look for pleasure and love in self satisfaction. However, the path to lasting happiness is not found through instant gratifications, but in the grueling practice of living a life full of

The topic of spirituality, divinity and otherworldly phenomena is quite common in medieval literature and there is a multitude of contexts, in which these topics are addressed. The protagonists of those texts find themselves in a balancing act between the secular world and a supernatural world, where they need to overcome struggles to master the difficulties of their worlds’ dualisms. Be it an otherworld of fairies or the christian hereafter, those worlds and the mundane conducts often influence each other reciprocally in the stories of medieval literature.

In the Medieval times, the Roman Catholic Church played a great role in the development of England and had much more power than the Church of today does. In Medieval England, the Roman Catholic Church dominated everyday life and controlled everyone whether it is knights, peasants or kings. The Church was one of the most influential institutions in all of Medieval England and played a large role in education and religion. The Church's power was so great that they could order and control knights and sends them to battle whenever they wished to. The Church also had the power to influence the decision of Kings and could stop or pass laws which benefited them in the long run, adding to this, the Church had most of the wealth in Europe as the

In several ways, Christians and Muslims in the Middle Ages shared in their approach to dealing with the infidels living in their lands, particularly in their proclamation of legal edicts defining the level of toleration and the protection offered those nonbelievers. Yet, however similar the two society's legislative relations were in managing minority faiths, there still existed minor fundamental differences stemming from disparities in their societal structure.

In Victor and Edith Turner’s work on “Pilgrimage as a Liminoid Phenomenon,” they discuss French folklorist and ethnographer Arnold van Gennep’s rites of transition which correlates with which one experiences on a pilgrimage. This process comprises of three stages. The first stage is separation to separate oneself from home or the comfort of one’s familiar environment; the second stage is limen or margin which puts one in a state of liminal transition or threshold; the final and third stage is aggregation which will be the central focus of this paper.

There was one main religion in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. This religion was Roman Catholic Christianity. It was both unifying and separating in some ways. Unlike now, religion served various functions, and was the main cultural aspect in people's lives. The Christian patriarch was more powerful than European kings, and wealthier.

If today's secular saint finds meaning in life through love (with the object of that love subjective, i.e. different for each individual), for me the meaning of life is less subjective: Whether one is a secular or a hero saint, he is called to attain a level of holiness and virtue ultimately ending in union with God (the spirit of love). Augustine's idea of love as having its beginning and its end in God may be considered the fruit of long meditation upon the question of the meaning of life. That fruit is there for any and all to taste. Therefore, this paper will show why I believe the meaning of life to be grounded in the caritas of Augustine: the perfect love hinted at by

The Song of Songs was a particularly important text for Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), a Cistercian monk who wrote often about love of various forms (Evans 1, 5-8). In his “Sermons on the Song of Songs,” Bernard explored the relationship between the soul and Christ as between the Bride and Bridegroom. First, Bernard explored what was distinctive about marriage among other human relationships: “If someone is a slave, he fears his master’s face…If he is a son, he honors his father. But she who asks for a kiss feels love…for to [Bridegroom and Bride] everything is common, nothing is the property of one and

To effectively support this argument, it is vital to analyze different aspects of love as discussed by Beauvoir in her account of The Woman in Love. The first basis of this narrative portrays man as a superior being to whom an inferior has to submit. He is a god in his woman’s eyes modeled just a little lower than the angels . While the man occupies his rightful status as a god, the woman is deemed as the worshipper. Both eventually become the other’s prisoner. In this vulnerability, women are ready to submit completely to their husbands whose image they hold in high regard.

7.00 - 9.00 am - chapter house (chapters from the bible or writings of saints were read)

Early Christianity had a lot to do with the transformation of Rome and posed a challenge to the Roman Empire. Christians were known as the enemy of Rome, primarily because they refused to worship the emperors as the embodiment of Rome’s Gods meaning they were denying his divinity and authority. The one whom the Christians worshiped had been declared a criminal, was tried and put to death the roman state.

In 312 CE, Roman Emperor Constantine achieved a victory at the Milvian Bridge. The night previous to this battle, Constantine dreamt of a cross inscribed in hoc signo vinces, in this sign you will conquer. As trivial as this dream may seem, it ultimately signified the beginning of the rise of Christianity. With his victory, Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and supported and encouraged it throughout the empire. In 313 CE, another milestone occurred as the emperors, both Constantine I of the West and Licinius of the East, signed the Edict of Milan declaring that the Diocletianic Persecution would end, and Christianity would be tolerated in the Roman Empire. This religion began to flourish as people quickly converted from pagan

The modern concept of love owes a great deal to the Humanist tradition of the Renaissance. The humanists focused on perfection and exaltation of this life as opposed to the afterlife. In Tristan and Iseult the seeds of Renaissance love are present in the Middle Ages. To the modern eye, it is a mystery how the period of the Middle Ages produced the seeds of the diametrically opposite Renaissance. Yet it is necessary to understand this transformation if one is to fully comprehend the forces that helped produce the modern consciousness. Courtly Love is a transitional concept that emerged in the Middle Ages. It is transitional because it emerged early and acknowledges God as the creator of love,

Among various political, social, and religious strife, the Medieval Literature is characterized by Christian influence and beliefs. In medieval texts, authors highlight the importance and grandeur of the Christian faith by contrasting it with descriptions of foreign lands. As a result, people received a false view of these faraway lands that included Syria and India. In texts such as Sir John Mandeville’s The Book of Marvels and Travels and Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Man of Law’s Tale” offer examples of othering by their misunderstanding of foreign people and criticism of their religion which in turn facilitates the authors in defining the Christian European identity.

Marcel Proust was a twentieth century French writer best known for his novel In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu) and at over 3000 pages, it is one of the longest novels ever written. This book is difficult to summarize but essentially the work is about learning to appreciate life and existence, rather than focusing on the superficial aspects of the mundane. These ideas are portrayed through Marcel, who is the narrator and the principal character of the novel and by the secondary characters he meets during his life. This work was published in the nineteenth century but Proust’s ideas are reflected in Claude Lorrain’s Pastoral Landscape with the Ponte Molle and in Hyacinthe Rigaud’s Portrait of Louis XIV. Even though these