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repentance, the Gospel parable shows far simpler action than the threefold process of contrition, confession, and satisfaction typically associated with the late medieval sacrament. The son may be contrite, but the father welcomes him home before he verbally expresses wrongdoing, and the story offers no evidence of restitution for his misdeeds. Although the parable raises issues related to justice (more specifically, to the efficacy and rewards of devout action), patterns of revision in Middle English retellings suggest that the portrayal of divine mercy generated the most
of the Supper of the Lord in its sale and application for others (i.e. offering masses for other people). Here the entire theory of Sacrifice was set forth and the use of the Sacraments was shown. And when pious men in the Monasteries now heard that they must flee from Idols, they began to depart from their impious servitude. Therefore Luther added to the explanation of the doctrines on penance, the remission of sins, faith, and indulgences, also these topics: the difference between divine and human laws, the doctrine on the use of the Supper of the Lord and the other
those who were now to be excluded from a share in a family’s wealth also had to be kept from marriage and having children, it was crucial to establish what actually constituted legitimate Christian marriage, as well as to underline who was, and who was not, permitted to marry. The Church, however, had never defined this precisely. Indeed throughout the earlier middle ages and well into the eleventh century, marriage was not considered to be a sacrament, and in fact was something over which the Church had little if any control. 28 This remained the case up to the
condemnation of the British Government in 1920. The bishops accused republicans of attacking their country as if it were a foreign power. They declared that they had no legitimate authority for their campaign and, more significantly, branded the republican movement as being inherently opposed to Catholic doctrine. ‘In spite of their obvious sin and the fact of their unlawful rebellion’, they went on, ‘they still play the role of good Catholics and demand the Sacraments’. Consequently, the bishops moved to cut republicans off from the Church. All those who participated in the
acts of torture are transformed into sacraments through the heroine's alliance with a piece of the holy cross, an angel, two evil dragons, her many converts, and her own prayer. This poem integrates previously ruptured material and spiritual components essential to Christian community. Sir Orfeo (item 39) models selective adaptation through the transformation of a classic story of tragic loss into one of hopeful recuperation, wherein a saint's life, in tandem with romance, rewrites an inherited model. In this genre-composite, the human-tree hybrid Orfeo performs
relationships formed over time and guided by religious teaching. This volume takes actions such as those of Levy and Aston as its prompt to explore the intersections between religion and the passage of life in early modern England. The term ‘life cycle’ is interpreted broadly here to include rituals, sacraments and everyday observance; biological transition points such as birth and death, life stages such as childhood or adolescence, and indeed the passage of time and the process of ageing. The interdisciplinary scope
was in relation to baptised slaves that the question of freedom might even become urgent. The sacrament was the most pressing preoccupation for those m issionaries who worked amongst the slave population. Receiving baptism also appears to have been popular amongst slaves themselves, and Peabody has explored a number of reasons for the receptivity of slaves to baptism, including African religious syncretism and 143 frontiers of servitude the possibilities of social and linguistic advancement offered by baptism.219 In 1667, Du Tertre estimated the number of
Wyclif’s views on sacramental theology are difficult to summarise collectively, but much of what he said on the topic was generally concerned with removing a particular sacrament from its ceremonial or accidental trappings, rather than questioning its necessity. The only sacrament about which he expressed some doubt is confirmation, but, even here, it would seem to be its administration at the hands of bishops that is the true target of the doubts he expresses. His beliefs about the process of sacramental change in the eucharist represent a more radical and controversial departure from orthodox teaching, but, once again, the need of this sacrament is never questioned. Because of the complexity of Wyclif’s ideas about the eucharist, and of the metaphysical principles that inform it, as well as the volume of writing dedicated to this topic, it will be covered separately in Chapter 4.
This book explores a range of literary and theatrical forms as means of mediating religious conflict in early modern England. It deals with the specific ways available to mediate religious conflict, precisely because faith mattered more than many other social paradigms. The first part explores the ways in which specific religious rituals and related cultural practices were taken up by literary texts. In a compelling rereading of the final act of 'The Merchant of Venice', the book investigates the devotional differences informing early modern observances of Easter. Subsequently, it explores the ways in which Christmas provided a confessional bridge uniting different religious constituencies. Goodnight ballads were not only commercially successful pieces of public entertainment but also effective forms of predominantly Protestant religious persuasion. The book's consideration of Elizabethan romance links the literary form to the sacrament of the Eucharist, and argues that the Eucharist debate had an impact on Elizabethan romances. The second part 'Negotiating confessional conflict' provides a rereading of When You See Me You Know Me, exposing the processes of religious reform as an on-going means of mediating the new normality of confessional plurality. It examines the potential of the tragic form by a reading of the play The White Devil, and discusses the ideological fault line in the views of witchcraft. The book also shows that Henry V anticipates later sermons of John Donne that served to promote 'an interrogative conscience'.
Exempla, the stories with which preachers enlivened their sermons and impressed salutary moral lessons on their hearers, have long been appreciated as a source of key importance for medieval history. They played an important part in popular preaching and yet, for all the work being published on preaching and on the mendicant orders more generally, little of the abundant primary material is available in English translation. This book presents translation material from two collections of exempla assembled in the British Isles in the last quarter of the thirteenth century. One, the Liber Exemplorum (LE), was compiled by an English Franciscan working in Ireland. The other, probably the work of an English Dominican based in Cambridge (DC), is represented by fifty-two stories, about one-sixth of the total. These two collections are important because they are among the earliest to survive from the British Isles. Their short, pithy narratives are not limited to matters of Church doctrine and practice, but touch on a wide range of more mundane matters and provide vivid snapshots of medieval life in the broadest sense. The first part of the collection is chiefly devoted to Christ and the Virgin, the Mass and the saving power of the Cross. The second part has exempla on a wide variety of doctrinal, moral and other topics. These include the vices, the virtues, the sacraments and church practice, and the sins and other failings thought to beset particular professions or groups.