Course and Workshop at CEU

Monasticism and Hagiography in Late Antiquity

Basic information

Level: 

Master's

CEU code: 

MS 5299

CEU credits: 

2

ECTS credits: 

4

Academic year: 

2009/2010

Semester: 

Winter

Start and end dates: 

11 Jan 2010 - 31 Mar 2010

CEU Information

CEU Instructor(s): 

Marianne Sághy

Course description

Brief course description: 

This seminar introduces students to recent scholarship and critical theory concerning the ascetic movement and its literary output. How did different communities define and institutionalize holiness? How did the charismatic ideal of holy man came to be appropriated by a Christian official, the bishop? The unveiling of hagiographical texts will helps us discover the functions of the saints and of their cult in various Christian communities.

Learning Outcomes: 

Familiarity with the sources, with hagiographic discourse and with the theoretical models of the social function of asceticism. Christian hagiography is a traditionalist genre constantly rewriting its own foundational discourses, therefore the understanding of the basic principles of textual interpretation and hagiographic research offers the key for the study of the entire literary genre from late antiquity to our own times. Students will learn how to use spiritual literature as an historical source, how to use critical theory in the interpretation of hagiographical texts, how to distinguish between rhetorics and propaganda, how to analyze the authorial intentions informing the text and how to read hagiography as a manifesto of social and spiritual ideals.

Assessment : 

Oral presentation of a chosen topic (50%), active participation in class (50%).

1., The Holy Man in Action
 Athanasius of Alexandria, „Life of St. Antony of Egypt.” Tr. D. Brakke. Medieval Hagiography. Ed. Thomas Head. New York-London: Routledge, 2001, 1-30.
2., Text and Theory: The Making of a Genre I.
Cox, Patricia: Biography in Late Antiquity. A Quest for the Holy Man. Berkeley- Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983, ch. I. 
Van Uytfanghe, Marc. „L’hagiographie: un ’genre’ chrétien ou antique tardif?” Analecta Bollandiana 111 (1993): 135-188.
3., Text and Theory: The Making of a Genre II.
 Wilson, Anna: „Biographical Models: the Constantinian Period and Beyond.” Constantine: History, Historiography, and Legend. S. N. C. Lieu – D. Montserrat eds. London: Routledge, 1998, pp.107-135.
Cameron, Averil. „Form and Meaning: the Vita Constantini and the Vita Antonii.” Greek Biography and Panegyrics in Late Antiquity. Eds. P. Rousseau – T. Hägg. Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000: 72-88.
 4., Iconicity
 Francis, James A. “Living Icons: Tracing a Motif in Verbal and Visual Representation from the Second to Fourth Centuries C.E.” American Journal of Philology 124 (2003): 575-600.
 5., Spiritual Deserts and Representations of the Body
Goehring, James E., „The Dark Side of Landscape: Ideology and Power in the Christian Myth of the Desert.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33 (2003): 437-452.
Brown, Peter, “The Desert Fathers: Anthony to Climacus.” The Body and Society. Men, Women and and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988, pp. 214-240.
6., Social Function
Brown, Peter, „The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity.” Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971), 80-101 = Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity, Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982, 103-152.
Rousseau, Philip, „The Historiography of Asceticism.” The Past Before Us. The Challenge of Historiographies of Late Antiquity. Eds. C. Straw- R. Lim. Turnhout: Brepols, 2004: 89-101.
5., Romancing the Hermit: Jerome
 Saint Jerome: The Life of Saint Paul the First Hermit. Tr. I. S. Kozik, The First Desert Hero: Sat. Jerome’s Vita Pauli. New York, Paulist Press, 1968.
http://home.newadvent.org/fathers/3008.htm
Rebenich, Stefan, Jerome. London: Routledge, 2002, 12-21.
6., Urban, Female, and Wandering Ascetes
Saint Jerome: Letter XXII (To Eustochium). Select letters of St. Jerome. Eds. Goold, George P. - Wright, F. A. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991, pp. 53-159.
Caner, Daniel. Wandering, begging monks : spiritual authority and the promotion of monasticism in late antiquity. Berkeley : University of California Press, 2002.
7., Dead Saints?
Trout, Dennis E. „Damasus and the Invention of Early Christian Rome.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33:3 (2003), 517-536.
8., Explaining the Cult of the Saints
 Peter Brown, . Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1981.
Hayward, Paul Antony: „Demystifying the Role of Sanctity in Western Christendom.” The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Eds. J. Howard-Johnston – P. A. Hayward. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, 115-142. 
9., Charisma and the Mitre
Rapp, Claudia, . Berkeley:  University of California Press, 2005.
10., Holy Bishops I: Ambrose of Milan
Paulinus of Milan, Life of Ambrose. Soldiers of Christ : Saints and Saints' lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Ed. Th. F. X. Noble. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995.
McLynn, Neil Brendan, . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994, ch. 8, pp. 361-377.
11., Holy Bishops II: Augustine of Hippo
Possidius: Life of Augustine. Ed. Th. F. X. Noble. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995.
Peter Brown: Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
Elm,  Eva, Die Macht der Weisheit: Das Bild des Bischofs in der Vita Augustini des Possidius und anderen spatantiken und fruhmittelalterlichen Bischofsviten, Leiden: Brill, 2003.
12., Holy Bishops III: Martin of Tours
Sulpicius Severus,  The Life of Saint Martin. Tr.  Th. F. X. Head. . Ed. Th. F. X. Noble. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995.
Stancliffe, Clare. .  Oxford: Clarendon Press,1983.

Intricate Interfaith Networks: The Variety of Jewish-Christian Contacts in the Middle Ages

• Medieval Studies

Date: 

22 Feb 2010 - 9:00am - 23 Feb 2010 - 4:00pm

Building: 

Nador u. 9, Monument Building

Room: 

Gellner room

Event type: 

workshop

Event audience: 

Public to outside CEU

Contact details

CEU contact person: 

Gerhard Jaritz

E-mail: 

jaritzg@ceu.hu

Phone: 

327-3048

Organizers and Presenters

CEU organizers: 

Gerhard Jaritz

CEU organizer: 

Department of Medieval Studies

External presenters: 

Ephraim Shoham Steiner (Beer Sheva)

Christians and Jews populated medieval Europe from the English Channel and the Atlantic Ocean to the Baltic Sea and from the North Sea to the Mediterranean. Within these broad geographical limits groups and individuals set up an intricate network system of commerce, trade, finance as well as the exchange of professional knowledge from philosophical concepts to domestic medical know-how.
Recent scholarship has shown that the denomi¬national divide, although ever present and at times even violently so, did not stop people from forming ties and expanding in more intricate ways and forms than previously thought. At times, these networks functioned with what seems to be a disregard to the denominational and religious difference. This is by no means a simple and self evident statement. The theologi¬cal background regarding “other” faiths within each respective religion, strong social, religious and authoritative circles criticizing such contacts if not discouraging them altogether created a formidable opposition to these contacts and networks.
The workshop intends to address this situation from various angles and disciplinary approaches and to suggest possible avenues for explaining the phenomenon.

Intricate Interfaith Networks

 

      

The Variety of Jewish-Christian Contacts

in the Middle Ages

International Workshop in Medieval Studies

February 22 – 23, 2010

Central European University

Nádor utca 9

1051 Budapest

Gellner Room

Workshop organizers:

Ephraim Shoham Steiner (Beer Sheva)

Gerhard Jaritz (Budapest/Krems)

Information and workshop office:

Department of Medieval Studies

Central European University

1051 Budapest

Hungary

Tel.: +36 1 327-3051

Fax: +36 1 327-3055

Email: medstud@ceu.hu

 

PROGRAM           Monday, February 22, 2010       9:00   Welcome and Opening       9:30  JONATHAN ELUKIN (Hartford):                   Jews as Medieval Europeans      10:30  Coffee      11:00  CRISTIAN GASPAR (Budapest):                   The Saint Who Worshiped the Jews and                   Ignored the Mother of God: Tolerance and                   Its Limits in the Vita S. Nicolai Peregrini                   [BHL 6223]                    PIERO CAPELLI (Venice):                Nicolas Donin and Other Jewish Converts                   in Jewish-Christian Public Disputations                   in the Middle Ages                   MARTHA KEIL (St. Pölten):                What Were They Talking about?                   The Question of Everyday Conversations                   between Jews and Christians in Late                   Medieval Towns      12:30   Lunch     14:30   FLOCEL SABATÉ (LLeida):                  Jewish Neighborhood in Christian Towns                   (14th/15th-c. Catalonia)                   EVELINE BRUGGER (St. Pölten):                Neighbors, Business Partners, Victims:                   Jewish-Christian Interaction in Austrian                   Towns during the Persecutions of the                   Fourteenth Century               15:30   Coffee   16:00   KATALIN SZENDE (Budapest):                  From Court Jews to Town Jews.                  Changing Roles of Hungary's Jewish                  Population in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth                  Centuries                  ETLEVA LALA (Elbasan/Budapest):                  Christian-Jewish Communication Patterns                   in Albanian Coastal Towns (13th-15th c.)                  GERHARD JARITZ (Budapest/Krems):                  Christian and Jewish Sumptuary Laws     17:30   Book presentations     Tuesday, February 23, 2010     9:30   LILACH ASSAF (Constance):                  The Language of Names: Jewish Onomastics                  in Late Medieval Germany, Identity and                  Cultural Exchange                  RAINER BARZEN (Trier):                  Their Own Poor and the Poor of the Others     10:30   Coffee     11:00   EPHRAIM SHOHAM STEINER                 (Beer Sheva):                    “This should not be shown to a gentile.”                    Medico-magical Marginal Entries in                    Medieval Franco-German Hebrew                    Manuscripts and Their Social Significance                 TAMAS VISI (Olomouc):                    The University, the Astronomical Clock,                    and the Jews: The Formation of an                    Ashkenazi Philosophical School in Early                    Fifteenth-Century Prague                 12:00     Lunch      14:00    KATRIN KOGMAN-APPEL                   (Beer Sheva):                      Between the Italian Renaissance and                      Southern German Book Art: Joel ben                      Simeon and Cultural Exchange in the                      Fifteenth Century                       ZSÓFIA BUDA (Budapest):                    Jewish and Christian Contribution                       in Medieval Jewish Book Art – the                       Hamburg Miscellany       15:00     Coffee        15:30     Summary and Final Discussion