This book considers how biblical women were read, appropriated and debated in a wide range of early modern texts. It traverses a range of genres and examines literature written by a variety of confessionally diverse writers. By considering literature intended for assorted audiences, the book showcases the diverse contexts in which the Bible's women were deployed, and illuminates the transferability of biblical appreciation across apparent religious divisions. The book has been split into two sections. Part One considers women and feminine archetypes of the Old Testament, and the chapters gathered in Part Two address the New Testament. This structure reflects the division of Scripture in early modern Bibles and speaks to the contemporary method of reading the Bible from the Old Testament to the New Testament. In spite of this division, the chapters regularly make cross references between the two Testaments highlighting how, in line with the conventions of early modern exegesis, they were understood to exist in a reciprocal relationship. Within each section, the chapters are broadly organised according to the sequential appearance of the women/feminine archetypes in the Bible. The biblical women studied extend from Eve in Genesis to the Whore of Babylon in Revelation. The chapters vary between those that examine dominant trends in appropriation to those that consider appropriations of a particular interest group or individual.
This book, written in honour of Mayke De Jong, offers twenty-five essays focused upon the importance of religion to Frankish politics. It deals with religious discourse and political polemic in studies that take up the themes of identity, and the creative deployment of the language of the Old Testament within Frankish society. The book explores how the use of ethnic rhetoric in a Christian context shaped medieval perceptions of community. It shows that the Carolingian way of dealing with the Adoptionist challenge was to allow a conversation between the Spanish bishops and their Frankish opponents to take place. Charlemagne's role in the Vita Alcuini as a guardian of orthodoxy who sought to settle a controversy by organising and supervising a theological debate was striking. The book also discusses the admonition of an abbot of Frankish origin who came from southern France and made his monastic career in southern Italy. It showcases three letter manuscripts that share certain features but are different in other aspects. The first manuscript is a collection of the Moral Letters from Seneca to his pupil Lucilius , Paris , BnF, lat. 8658A. The book demonstrates that the lists of amici, viventes et defuncti reflected how the royal monastery was interacting with ruling elites, at different levels, and how such interactions were an essential part of its identity. It also examines the context of Monte Cassino's fading into the background, in the conviction that both political and religious concerns were at play.
The Old Testament reveals a female cast that is as significant as it is varied: its pages weave together the stories of mothers, daughters, wives and queens, as well as female prophets, judges and military leaders, who shape biblical history. The biblical books of Ruth, Esther and Judith are each devoted to the lives of their female title figures, and in the
creative adaptation provided by the Bible, especially the Old Testament, within early medieval law, liturgy and religious practice. In a happy turn of phrase characteristic of Mayke’s remarkable feel for language, she described this as an ‘elective affinity, based on a perceived similarity and continuity between the biblical past and the present’.9 The cultural transformation that such absorption of the Bible into early medieval thought entailed was further developed in relation to Carolingian politics in other articles, such as her classic studies of Hrabanus Maurus and
The New Testament is not as populated with female figures as the Old, and many of the women found within its pages are only partially depicted. Indeed, it is commonplace in early modern literature to find a string of Old Testament female exemplars with what can sometimes seem like a token few New Testament names tacked on. In The glory of women ( 1652 ), Heinrich
. This choice is revealing, as it is the Old Testament book which the mostly unsparingly confronts the faithful with the enigma of evil. With the help of Calvin’s teaching, La Place showed his household that afflictions could be salutary for Christians and that Satan’s attacks on them were in vain. Fear was thus pointless, and the power of the enemy could only affect men’s bodies.34 This episode shows the direction in which the narrative is moving; by inclu ding his hero’s message of hope, Goulart is thinking of his own readers who are still saddled with the terrible
allusion in the poem is exclusively to the Old Testament, and there is no mention of Christ, the cross, the virgin or the saints, though the poet’s Christianity is evident in references to judgment and hell. 14 Furthermore, the reference to the Old Testament, with the possible exception of the ‘Song of Creation’ in Heorot, would seem to be outside the knowledge of the characters of the poem: their
accepted typological and prophetic readings inadmissible or just plain wrong. 19 The Bible and British naval power Chamberlain was far from being the first to associate Old Testament passages with British maritime ventures. Ever since the early modern period, Protestants had used scriptural passages pertaining to Israel to frame interpretations of military victories and defeats, sudden deaths, harvests, famines and extreme weather, interpretations which continued
Introduction Cleanness combines discussion of a religious virtue with retelling of stories from the Bible. Its three main stories (at the end of the poem the narrator refers to the thrynne wyses in which he has dealt with his theme) are from the Old Testament. They centre on Noah, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Belshazzar’s feast. All three have a number of episodes. The story of Noah includes God’s anger with the corruption of the world, his command to Noah to build the Ark, the Flood, and God’s covenant with Noah never to destroy the whole world again. The
Chapter 2 . The roles and influence of household chaplains, c.1600–c.1660 Kenneth Fincham I n her diary for 1617–19, Lady Anne Clifford recorded some revealing contacts with two household chaplains. With one, Richard Rands, she began reading through the Old Testament until her husband, the 3rd Earl of Dorset, ‘told me it would hinder his study’. Clifford was engrossed in a dispute with Dorset over her inheritance, and had ‘much talk’ with another chaplain, Geoffrey Amherst, about the gossip in London following her decision to reject James I’s offer of
