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1997 Colloquium Paper Abstracts

Redemptive Topography in Hans Sachs' "Eve's Unequal Children"
Alexander Sager, German Studies

Hans Sachs, the German folk-poet par excellence, has a complicated relationship to Lutheran Protestantism. Much recent work has shown that Sachs was not the uncritical Lutheran apologist he was long supposed to have been, but rather the representative of self-conscious classes of urban craftsmen and laborers struggling to form/maintain ideological coherence amid massive social, economic and religious change. In his play "Die ungleichen kinder Eve" (1553), Sachs, while borrowing entire passages from Luther and orthodox Lutheran writers such as Philip Melanchthon and Erasmus Alberus, produces a text curiously precarious in its relation to austere Lutheran theology. The Nuremberg cobbler subtly manipulates his sources to negotiate the urban environment midway between valorization and critique, apotheosis and condemnation: the unruly but redemptive, hart-selig milieu of the working-classes.

The Founding and Growth of the Territorial Hochstift of Bamberg
Jennifer Welsh, Medieval Studies

In Medieval Germany, bishops served a dual function. Not only were they ecclesiastical lords, but they were also secular nobles as well. They had their own territories over which they exercised governmental and administrative rights, and from which they derived considerable income. Bishops worked very hard to expand and maintain their territories, just like any other worldly lord. This paper examines the history of the bishopric of Bamberg's territorial development from the foundation of the bishopric in 1007 under Heinrich II up through the end of the fourteenth century. Since Bamberg was established at a definite time, it is an excellent example of how a bishopric could work to increase and consolidate its territories right from the beginning, starting with rich endowments from its founder. The struggles for temporal power among the various individuals, both sacred and secular, provide valuable insights into the history of the holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages.

Some Runica Manuscripta in the Old English Poetical Dialogues of Solomon and Saturn
Inmaculada Senra-Silva, Medieval Studies

The Old English Dialogues of Solomon and Saturn are found in two manuscripts, both in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. The first Poetical Dialogue treats the powers of the Pater Noster. In MS A, the powers of the prayer are represented by runes followed by the Latin equivalents. R. J. Menner, the latest editor of the poem, argues that runes in this poem "represent the last vestige of an ancient pagan Germanic tradition, according to which the runes themselves possessed magic power. The native superstition of the pagan English has been pressed into the service of Christianity, just as has the persistent Oriental tradition of King Solomon's power over demons."

I believe, as Derolez does in his Runica Manuscripta, that the runes in this particular poem divert from any pagan implications, and I am inclined to interpret them as ornamental. In an effort to prove this statement, in this paper I will not only examine the lines in Poem I where these runes appear, but also the use of manuscript runes as an adaptation of epigraphical runic lore.

Historical Truth, Hagiography, and the Venerable Bede
Todd Stevens, Arts and Sciences

The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written by the Venerable Bede, combines a chronology of events in English history with a hagiological account of significant events in the lives of several saints, often also notable personages in English history. To modern readers, however, the presentation of the hagiographical elements presents some difficulties. The chronological aspect of the work is often verifiable by additional sources, and possible within scientific reality as we know it; there is never any doubt that a battle could have taken place or that a letter was able to have been sent from a pope to a bishop. The miracles described, however, are not as easy to explain, often falling outside our current understanding of what is possible. Their presentation, however, differs little from the presentation of the historical facts within Bede's narrative. Modern readers must thus ask themselves how far a miracle story represents fact. What is more important, however, is that we ask whether Bede believed in the veracity of the miracles he presents within the Ecclesiastical History. My reading of the Ecclesiastical History will be centered around this issue, and the implications of it for a contemporary reader of Bede.

Deliberate Disjunction: Another Look at "The Seafarer"
Kara Doyle, Medieval Studies

Critical approaches to the Old English poem "The Seafarer" have identified two areas of confusion: the interpretation of the word forthon, and the continuity (or lack thereof) between the intense and changeable emotions described in the first part of the poem and the gnomic wisdom expressed in the second part. In this paper I will use the concepts of the divided will and the moment of conversion, both drawn from Augustine's Confessions, to help shed new light on these two textual cruces. I will argue that, in order to critique the conflicting and profoundly worldly values expressed in the first part of the poem, and to reproduce in the reader his own post-conversion view of his former feelings, the poet deliberately produces disorientation by using "forthan" in unexpected ways. The final disjunctive use of forthon, the well-known passage containing the flight of the poet's hyge, reproduced the poet's moment of conversion to Christian values. This conversion explains the gnomic and unified quality of the second section of the poem. Thanks to this approach, we can understand both the poet's disjunctive use of forthon and the larger structure of "The Seafarer."

Henry of Ghent's "Quasi-Aristotelian" Account of the Immaculate Conception
Susan Brower, Medieval Studies

The doctrine of the Virgin Mary's Immaculate Conception was recognized as an official dogma of the Catholic faith in the late nineteenth-century, but debate over the issue is centuries old. Henry of Ghent's discussion of Mary's immaculate conception occupies an important place in this longstanding debate. In question 13 of his 15th Quodlibet, he offers what became, in his day, a highly controversial answer to the question of whether Mary was born with original sin. Henry argued that Mary was not immaculately conceived but remained in a state of sin only for the first instant of her existence. This rather inventive position was almost unanimously rejected by Henry's contemporaries and successors. Interestingly, however, they discounted his position not because they thought it was theologically unorthodox, but because they thought it involved a misunderstanding of Aristotelian physics.

Henry of Ghent's answer to the question of Mary's Immaculate Conception not only gained notoriety among medieval theologians, but has been identified by modern scholars such as S. Knuutila and N. Kretzmann as the origin of an unusual theory of change commonly referred to as "Quasi-Aristotelianism." Knuutila and Kretzmann refer to Henry's position as quasi-Aristotelian because they think it makes use of an un-Aristotelian notion of instantaneous change between contradictory conditions -- a notion which ultimately entails the absurdity that sin and grace are simultaneously present in Mary. In this paper I argue that Henry's position is not quasi-Aristotelian in its account of instantaneous transtion. I do think, however, that careful consideration of question 13 indicates another sense in which Henry's position can accurately be described as quasi-Aristotelian -- a sense which has hitherto gone unnoticed.

How Many Angels Can Dance on the Head of a Pin: Aquinas on the Individuation of Immaterial Substances
Christina Van Dyke, Philosophy

Throughout his writings, Thomas Aquinas claims that matter is the principle of individuation (POI) -- that is, that matter is what makes one material substance (e.g. a pine tree) numerically distinct from another. However, although this POI is effective for material substances such as pine trees, it does not seem adequate to explain the individuation of immaterial substances such as angels, which don't contain any matter. Indeed, Aquinas offers a different account of the individuation of angels, claiming that each angel is its own species -- that is, that there exists only one angel per species. The task of this paper is to argue that this rather strange-sounding thesis is not only interesting in itself, but that it also helps shed light on Aquinas's views on the individuation of both material substances and human beings.

Witnessing the Passion: Late-Medieval English Accounts of Visionary Encounter with the Death of Christ
Chara Armon, History

This paper identifies the experience of witnessing or attending the Passion of Christ as a distinctive element of late-medieval Christocentric piety by discussing visionary encounters with the Passion which appear in Passus 18 of William Langland's The Vision of Piers Plowman and Margery Kempe's Book. In these and other late-medieval English texts, sensory perception of the events of Christ's death created convictions of participatory proximity to the sources of religious belief. Visionary strategies of identification with the crucified Christ mediated tensions between the spiritual and the physical, the abstract and the tangible, and the individual and the Church. Experiences of the break down of temporal, geographical, and ecclesiastical barriers between visionaries and the divine produced written accounts which further re-vivified the Passion and preserved evidence of this striking development in the tradition of Passion devotion.

Sacred and Secular Time in the Late Middle Ages: The Case of Cecily Neville
Elisa Mangina, Medieval Studies

In her final years, the fifteenth-century English noblewoman Cecily Neville followed a quasi-monastic daily routine, a detailed account of which has survived under the title "Orders and Rules of the Princess Cecill." Cecily stands out from many other pious noblewomen because she does not withdraw from the world entirely; instead, she carries out her secular duties on top of an extensive round of worship, prayer, and study. Her favorite books include mystical, didactic, and hagiographical works that discuss how a secular person can live a holy life.

In this paper, I analyze the ways in which some of these texts help the reader to reconcile sacred and secular, and I show that an implicit discussion of time is at the heart of this balancing act. Furthermore, the concept of time that emerges has links to late medieval devotional practices such as the use of Books of Hours, and I suggest that it is also helpful for understanding late medieval spirituality in general.

A Way with Words: Some Proper Mass Chant Texts from the Old Spanish Rite
Nils Nadeau, Medieval Studies

Chant presents a unique artistic economy of meaning; these sacred texts are imbued with a sense of timelessness, an aloofness and vitality they manifestly lack when silent on the page. Singing multiplies the significances of words; adjustments must thus be made to those words in order to keep a handle on what is said and done in the act of performing them. Judging by the Church Fathers and later medieval sources, the enhanced profundity of the chanted texts has never been in question in the course of almost two thousand years of Christian chanting. What went in to the concoction of those texts?

I'd like to share a preliminary assessment of the nature of the chanted text, specifically in relation to the melodies which accompany it and the larger ritual context of the medieval mass. My source is the Liber Ordinum of the medieval Spanish Church; the extant copies originate in the northernmost reaches of the peninsula. The chant is pre-Gregorian; I've chosen in particular the proper mass chants for various votive masses detailed in that church book. I hope to confront the essentially changed nature of the chanted text and comment at least briefly on how it might have complemented the other texts, performed and silent, that comprised the mass of the Old Spanish Rite.

A Trilogy of Excess: Looking at and Reading Langland's Ugly Pictures
Eli Lehrer, Arts and Sciences

Quite often, we pay far too little attention to the visual and literal levels of allegory. Yet, in Piers Plowman Langland puts the visual and literal right up front. Piers begins with a description of Will's clothing and follows that with a "merveillous sweven" describing the whole of humanity. The goal of this paper is to explore the implications of these and other visual descriptions in the prologue to Piers Plowman.

The visual descriptions play a two part role. First, they serve as a subtle way of describing the action, allowing the reader to discern plot details which exist below the surface. Second, they help to intensify and gloss the allegorical content of the poem. Although Langland uses a reasonably small number of visual images, nearly all of them exist for a reason. The visual images in the prologue to Piers play a major role in both establishing the character of Will and, more importantly, the fundamental nature of the vision which is to follow.

"Sepdles Speche?" Linguistic Devaluation in "Wynnere and Wastoure" and the Fourteenth-Century English Economy
Diane Cady, English

As John Scattergood has observed recently, studies of "Wynnere and Wastoure" tend to focus either on economic issues or, conversely, on literary characteristics. However, the similarities between monetary and linguistic systems make a simultaneous examination of these two foci fruitful. In this essay I argue that because both money and language have assigned rather than intrinsic values, they are susceptible to manipulation -- in the case of money, through practices such as debasement of the coinage, and in the case of language, by playing with the different significations of words in one's text. Nicholas of Oresme's complaint that debasement of the coinage only benefits the king and his treasury seem to parallel those of the narrator, who, in his prologue, complains that upstart poets use "wyse wordes" in order to profit, both socially and economically. However, when one examines his own poetic practice, one finds that he is as much a manipulator of "wyse wordes" as the young upstarts he is complaining about. It is just the slipperiness of signification that enables the poet to show his skill as a writer, as well as to critique King Edward III's authority and wisdom.

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