Reading the Bible in the Middle Ages

by Nelson, Jinty; Kempf, Damien; Wood, Ian

• ISBN13: 9781474245722
• ISBN10: 1474245722
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-09-24
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

For earlier medieval Christians, the Bible was the book of guidance above all others, and the route to religious knowledge, used for all kinds of practical purposes, from divination to models of government in kingdom or household. This book's focus is on how medieval people accessed Scripture by reading, but also by hearing and memorizing sound-bites from the liturgy, chants and hymns, or sermons explicating Scripture in various vernaculars. Time, place and social class determined access to these varied forms of Scripture. Throughout the earlier medieval period, the Psalms attracted most readers and searchers for meanings.

This book's contributors probe readers' motivations, intellectual resources and religious concerns. They ask for whom the readers wrote, where they expected their readers to be located and in what institutional, social and political environments they belonged; why writers chose to write about, or draw on, certain parts of the Bible rather than others, and what real-life contexts or conjunctures inspired them; why the Old Testament so often loomed so large, and how its law-books, its histories, its prophetic books and its poetry were made intelligible to readers, hearers and memorizers. This book's contributors, in raising so many questions, do justice to both uniqueness and diversity.

Author Biography

Damien Kempf is a researcher at the University of Liverpool, UK, and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellow at Heidelberg University, Germany.

Jinty Nelson is Emerita Professor in the Department of History, King's College London, UK. She is a Fellow of the British Academy has published extensively on early medieval Europe. Her research focus has been on kingship, government and political ideas, on religion and ritual, and increasingly on women and gender.

Table of Contents

1. Twelfth-century Notions of the Canon of the Bible (Cornelia Linde, German Historical Institute, London)
2. The Orator as Exegete: Cassiodorus as a Reader of the Psalms (Gerda Heydemann, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften)
3. Lay Readers of the Bible in the Ninth Century (Jinty Nelson, King's College London)
4. Political Discourse and the Biblical Past in the Epitaphium Arsenii (Mayke de Jong, University of Utrecht)
5. ”Quid nobis cum allegoria?” The Literal Reading of the Bible in the Era of the Investiture Contest (Florian Hartmann, University of Bonn)
6. Biblical Readings for the Night Office in Eleventh-century Germany: Reconciling Theory and Practice (Henry Parkes, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge)
7. Violence, Learning, Prophecy and Power in Twelfth-century France and Germany (Claire Weeda, University of Amsterdam)
8. Sibyls, Tanners and Leper Kings: Taking Notes from the Bible in Twelfth-century England (Julie Barrau, Emmanuel College, Cambridge)
Further Reading
Index