Sacred and Secular in Medieval and Early Modern Cultures: New Essays

247 Pages·2006·1.443 MB·English

by  Lawrence Besserman (eds.)

THE NEW MIDDLE AGES
BONNIE WHEELER,Series Editor
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SACRED AND SECULAR
IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY
MODERN CULTURES
NEW ESSAYS
Edited by
Lawrence Besserman
SACREDANDSECULARINMEDIEVALANDEARLYMODERNCULTURES
© Lawrence Besserman,2006.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2006 978-1-4039-6732-9
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First published in 2006 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-53000-7 ISBN 978-1-4039-7727-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781403977274
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sacred and secular in medieval and early modern cultures :new
essays / [edited] by Lawrence Besserman.
p.cm—(New Middle Ages)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.Civilization,Medieval.2.Literature,Medieval—History and
criticism.3.Secularism in literature.4.Holy,The,in literature.
5.Christianity in literature.6.Church and state—Europe—History—
To 1500.I.Besserman,Lawrence L.,1945– II.New Middle Ages
(Palgrave (Firm))
CB353.S155 2005
940.1—dc22 2005048705
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CONTENTS
List of Contributors ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Preface xv
Introduction Sacred and Secular in Medieval and Early Modern
Cultures:Issues and Approaches 1
Lawrence Besserman
Part I Medieval and Early Modern
Literature:Lyric,Narrative,and Drama
1. The Imitation of Hagiographic Formulas in
Occitanian Vidas(Lives of the Troubadours) 19
Cyril Aslanov
2. “Quid Hinieldus Cum Christo?”:The Secular
Expression of the Sacred in Old and Middle English Lyrics 29
Thomas G.Duncan
3. Reading Radical Metonymy in Pearl 47
Alan J.Fletcher
4. Purchasing Pardon:Material and Spiritual Economies
on the Canterbury Pilgrimage 63
Alastair Minnis
5. Sacred and Secular in The Merchant ofVenice 83
Murray Roston
viii CONTENTS
Part II Medieval and Early Modern History:
Church and State
6. The Communal Body,the Corporate Body,and the
Clerical Body:An Anthropological Reading of
the Gregorian Reform 101
Lior Barshack
7. Sacred,Secular,and Impure:The Contextuality of Sensations 123
Esther Cohen
8. Secular and Sacred:The History of Rhetoric and
Religious Community in the Middle Ages 135
Rita Copeland
9. Sacred Authority and Secular Power:The Historical
Argument of the Gesta Episcoporum Cameracensis 149
Robert M.Stein
10. The Space of the Altar 167
Miri Rubin
Notes 177
Index 227
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Cyril Aslanovis Associate Professor of French Language and Literature at
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.He has published a study of André
Chouraqui’s translation of the Bible (Pour comprendre la Bible:la leçon d’André
Chouraqui,Monaco,Editions du Rocher,1999) and a monograph on the
fourteenth-century Provençal Jewish lexicographer Joseph Kaspi
(Leprovençal des Juifs et l’hebreu en Provençe:le dictionnaire Sharshot ha-Kesef de
Joseph Caspi,Paris-Leuven:Peeters,2001).
Lior Barshack is a senior lecturer in legal and social theory at the
Radzyner School of Law in the Interdisciplinary Center,Herzliya,Israel.
He has written many articles on the place of legal rituals and fictions in civil
religion.He is currently working on a book on civil religion and editing
together with Peter Goodrich and Anton Schutz a collection of essays on
the work of Pierre Legendre.
Lawrence Besserman is Professor of English at The Hebrew University
of Jerusalem.He has taught at Harvard,New York University,and Columbia.
His publications include The Legend of Job in the Middle Ages (Cambridge,
MA,1978),Chaucer and the Bible (New York,1988),and Chaucer’s Biblical
Poetics(Norman,OK,1998).He has also edited The Challenge of Periodization:
Old Paradigms and New Perspectives (New York,1996);and he is the general
editor of the first anthology of European medieval literature in Hebrew
translation, An Anthology of Medieval Literature (Tel Aviv: Dvir-The Israel
Council for Translation of the Classics,1991).
Esther Cohenis Professor of Medieval History at The Hebrew University
of Jerusalem. Her publications include The Crossroads of Justice: Law and
Society in Late Medieval France (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993); Peaceable Domain,
Certain Justice:Crime and Society in Fifteenth-Century Paris(Hilversum:Verloren,
1996);and “The Animated Pain of the Body,”American Historical Review105
(2000),36–68.
Rita Copeland is Professor and Chair of Comparative Literature at the
University of Pennsylvania.Her publications include Rhetoric,Hermeneutics,