Ethics and Power in Medieval English Reformist Writing (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature)

Ethics and Power in Medieval English Reformist Writing. Part of Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature. Author: Edwin D. Craun, Washington and Lee.
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Lavinsky Yeshiva University lavinsky yu. In this absorbing and erudite study, Edwin Craun explores a rich but neglected tradition of pastoral writing on fraternal correction, focusing on England during the two centuries after the Fourth Lateran Council.

Ethics and Power in Medieval English Reformist Writing

Working with a wide range of texts, many available only in manuscript form, he discusses fraternal correction both as it was conventionally practiced--as charitable admonition meant to reform the behavior of individuals--and as a mode of clerical discourse that was adapted by reformist writers for the purpose of authorizing broad critiques of ecclesiastical power. In contrast to accounts that see late medieval England as a period in which clerical authority was gradually consolidated through the pastoral initiatives of , Craun's study shows how fraternal correction offered a framework for lay people to reprove their disciplinary superiors, and, by extension, groups and institutions identified with dominant religion.

The opening chapter introduces fraternal correction as a moral practice, tying its development to the widespread adoption of the Augustinian Rule within twelfth-century monastic communities. The topic of correcting sin migrated into a wider sphere of academic debate in the early thirteenth century through the influence of moral theologians preeminently Aquinas , canon lawyers, and conciliar legislation intent on reforming the conduct of "lay people and clerics alike" This material was then incorporated into fourteenth- century pastoral texts such as alphabetized compendia and summae for confessors; those containing entries on correction central to Craun's study include Ranulph Higden's pastoral manual Speculum curatorum , John Bromyard's Summa praedicantium , Omne bonum attributed to James le Palmer , Johann von Freiburg's Summa confessorum , and Bartolomeo da San Concordio's Summa de casibus conscientie.

Pastoral instruction in the correction of sin also took the form of sermons and scriptural exegesis on Matthew These biblical verses provided the themes "Si autem peccaverit in te frater tuus" and "Estote misercordis," respectively for a range of relevant sermons, including those from the expanded version of the Northern Homily Cycle and the standard cycle of sermones dominicales , and show up again in William of Nottingham's commentary on the Gospel harmony Unum ex quatuor , another significant source of guidance about corrective speech.

Although these various texts were all but inaccessible to non-clerical readers, Craun contends that "their influence was pervasive in late medieval England," a claim he substantiates in later chapters that turn from moral theology to reformist writing Craun restricts his treatment of pastoral writing to material circulating before in order to construct "a benchmark against which to gauge how reformist writers, later ones as well as Wyclif and Langland, transformed fraternal correction into a tool for ecclesiastical and social reform" 6.

Organizing the sources in this way, he argues, affirms Michael Haren's judgment that "'the pre- Wycliffite church contained, at its middle levels certainly, a ferment of self criticism'" The methodological perils of such an approach are obvious, and a scholar less grounded in this earlier archive might have been tempted to project reformist writing against a stable and inert backdrop.


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Instead, Craun treats the reader to a discussion of pastoral texts in all of their expansive complexity. A salutary aspect of this chapter is the author's effort to move past a Bakhtinian account of pastoral writing which views it merely as a form of monologic discourse 82n73, 2n8, citing Le Goff's influential work as a case in point. Discussions of fraternal correction in these texts thread their way through contrary alternatives and apparent contradictions; they not only outline competing moral choices but also embed the habits of ethical reasoning necessary to amend one's life and the lives of others.

Even readers already well acquainted with pastoral manuscripts from before will find much in Craun's discussion that is new and interesting while continuing to lament that more of this archive has not been made available in modern critical editions.


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Throughout these early chapters, the implications for how we understand reformist writing later in the book are apparent, especially with respect to Wycliffism. Craun's engagement with pastoral materials, his attention to their ethical sophistication and discursive ambiguity, counters the longstanding tendency among literary scholars to present Wycliffism as a privileged locus of medieval subjectivity, and in this regard the book underlines the value of approaches, such as Kathryn Kerby-Fulton's own study of reformist writing, that situate "heresy" within wider networks of literary and cultural production.

Fraternal correction as it was envisioned and enabled by pastoral texts insists "subjects are bound by the law of charity to admonish superiors, including their own, about anything that needs correcting in their conduct" To rebuke a sinner was to offer him the opportunity to repent and reform, and hence it was cast as one of the spiritual works of mercy.

Read e-book online Ethics and Power in Medieval English Reformist Writing PDF

In a study simultaneously part intellectual and social history, and part literary, Edwin Craun explores the practice of fraternal correction as it is described and deployed in a range of texts, pastoral, polemical and literary, across the period from the Fourth Lateran Council to the s. In the first two chapters Craun unpicks the ways in which fraternal correction was constructed to give licence to lay criticism of the clergy, while at the same time constraining Most users should sign in with their email address.

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