Categories: Authors and Authoresses

7 Jun 2010, Comments (0)

Late Medieval Female Authors

Author: Ann Scott

In fourteenth and fifteenth-century Europe, women rarely wrote books. Of the small number of works they did produce, even fewer remain today. These surviving volumes offer us a rare glimpse into the struggle of a small number of women who acted with determination to begin filling the void of female authorship in European literature.

Although the Church encouraged women to submerge themselves in spiritual disciplines, and while a few upper-class and monastic women received some education, they were not encouraged to write literature. Society consented to females writing in the vernacular when women confined their work to personal correspondence or household administration, but when they wanted to publish, the confining socio-religious controls of the late medieval Church and academic tradition created a nearly impenetrable barrier between their dream and reality. Those who broke through these barriers usually did so at great personal cost. This website will soon offer a more detailed study of several of these women by name.

- Ann Scott -

14 Feb 2010, Comments (0)

Augustine’s City of God and Benedict’s Rule: Innovative Worldview and Preserved Paradigm (Part I)

Author: Ann Scott

Augustine's Confessions

The writings of western Christian intellectuals and ascetics from the late fourth to the mid-sixth centuries gave birth to crucial new forms of philosophical thought while providing justification for the preservation of Antique culture. Written scarcely more than a century apart, two Christian literary works in particular from this era embodied the changing manifestations of Christianity in the European world where they left their mark: City of God by Augustine of Hippo and Benedict’s Rule—written by the father of western monasticism himself.

First, these works exemplify the rise of a fresh intellectual and philosophical religiosity in the Late Antique period, and second, they demonstrate the subsequent assimilation and transformation of traditional Roman society into the socio-religious and economic forms of Christianized medieval Europe. Augustine’s City of God and Benedict’s Rule also demonstrate the crucial role played by the Church as the only continuous institution linking the Late Roman Empire to the Middle Ages.

- Ann Scott -

See Part II

Book Cover Photo on Left: Saint Augustine’s Confessions, translated and edited by Dame Maria Boulding.

13 Feb 2010, Comments (1)

Augustine’s City of God and Benedict’s Rule: Innovative Worldview and Preserved Paradigm (Part II)

Author: Ann Scott

Faced with humiliation and persecution, Christians of the third century and very early fourth century had walked an unpopular road, yet they remained confident in their faith. When Constantine legalized Christianity in 313 A.D. and supported this declaration by his token conversion, the Church received a subsequent influx of nominal “converts” from the populous. Christianity was no longer persecuted or disreputable; rather it was conventional and respectable. Even many of the new church bishops came from the Roman elite.

Theodosius I and St. Ambrose

When Augustine of Hippo was twenty-six years old (380 A.D.), Theodosius I issued The Edict of Thessalonica, requiring all subjects of the Roman Empire to convert to Christianity en masse. However, many did so in name only. Pious Christians began to ponder whether these common Christians possessed the faith and purity necessary to reach their eternal objective. These conservatives reacted against the secularization and lack of piety in the newly established hierarchy of organized Christianity.

From the early fourth century, the focus of the Church shifted noticeably from a conversion and baptism mentality to a Last Judgment mentality. Christianity became more heaven-directed, emphasizing the connection between the world of men and the afterlife. The church demonstrated these concepts by stressing the connection between men on earth and the saints who had died and were presently in heaven, interceding for earth-bound souls. In the early fifth century, Augustine would expand this idea of the other-worldliness of Christian human beings in his City of God.

See Part III

Augustine’s City of God and Benedict’s Rule: Innovative Worldview and Preserved Paradigm

11 Feb 2010, Comments (0)

Augustine’s City of God and Benedict’s Rule: Innovative Worldview and Preserved Paradigm (Part IV)

Author: Ann Scott
St. Augustine of Hippo

St. Augustine of Hippo

Aurelius Augustinus (Augustine) was primed for the task of confronting the philosophically challenging questions of his day (discussed in Part III).  He was a typical Late Antique Roman citizen, raised in a home with both pagan and Christian influences (his father was a pagan and his mother was a Christian). After living for pleasure, as described in his classic Confessions, Augustine’s conversion to Christianity and commitment to the priesthood led him to apply his Roman education in labor for the Church.

Armed with his classical-historical and philosophical training, Augustine set out to create a new philosophy of history for the Christian world that would also explain the demise of the Western Empire. He rejected the traditional, cyclical notions of history in favor of a linear history, one that began with the incarnation of Christ and ran to the Last Judgment. Such a linear view looked beyond the present and terrestrial and into the realms of heaven and life eternal.

See Part V

Augustine’s City of God and Benedict’s Rule: Innovative Worldview and Preserved Paradigm

30 Jan 2010, Comments (1)

Fourteenth Century English Literature: An Introduction

Author: Ann Scott

By the fourteenth century, England remained culturally deferential to France and spiritually dependent on Rome. Since the Norman invasion, most non-Latin texts available in England were in either Old French or Anglo-Norman. Since literature written in Middle English was a relatively new development, there were far fewer vernacular books available in England than common French books in France. Accordingly, the contributions of English authors writing in their native tongue became significant not only to their readers but also for the national pride of the country itself, as England gave birth to its own literary tradition.

- Ann Scott -

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14th Century 1300s Augustine's City of God Benedict's Rule Benedictine Monasticism Cenobitic Monasticism Christian Philosophy Constantine I Daily Life in the Middle Ages English LIterature Fall of the Roman Empire Medieval England Medieval Sounds polytheism Saint Augustine's Confessions Saint Benedict’s Rule St. Augustine's City of God Theodosius I