Week 3: Tuesday

NEW PATHS TO GOD, 1000-1300

Medieval music in honor of the Virgin Mary:

Mariam matrem (Montserrat codex, 14th cent., 2:00 min.): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtbApf3CiJ8&feature=related
O virgo splendens (Montserrat codex, 14th cent., 3:00 min.): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnUrC8jLWqo
Gaudete, Christus est natus ex Maria virgine (Christmas song, sung by Steeleye Span, 2004, 2:11 min.): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDc2FD-vy8M&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PLA2C5CD1E425819C2

Rule of St. Benedict of Nursia (c. 480-550):

Triple vows: obedience (to abbot or abbess), stability (to house), and conversion of manners (to monastic life)

Daily duties of monks and nuns include:

• Opus dei (“work of God”): 7 daily liturgical services
• Chapter meeting (daily business meeting, and reading of one chapter of the Rule)
• Silence most of the day (including at meals)
• Daily work (originally manual; subsequently mostly intellectual, such as copying manuscripts)

Organization of the Roman Catholic Church:

Cardinals = senior churchmen (often bishops), appointed by the pope, who in the 1050s become the sole electors of new popes

Jewish communities were scattered throughout the Christian and Muslim worlds, and there was some circulation of ideas among scholars of all three religions (e.g., on philosophical and scientific subjects)

Major new religious movements:

• Cult of the Virgin Mary (click to see the “Golden Madonna of Essen,” c. 980)
  
• Focus on the redemptive suffering of Jesus’s Crucifixion

Major causes of anticlericalism:

• Simony (buying and selling of church offices)
• clerical concubinage
• clerical corruption and wealth
• poor preaching by poorly-educated clergy

Major new heresies, partly inspired by anti-clericalism, included:

• Catharism (also called Albigensianism, after the city of Albi in S. France): saw spiritual universe as good and material universe as evil
• Waldensianism (so called after its founder, Peter Waldo or Valdez of Lyons): laypeople sought to preach apostolic poverty in the towns

Major new religious orders:

• monastic orders: Cluniacs, Carthusians, Cistercians (most important leader: St. Bernard of Clairvaux)
• military orders: Knights Templar, Knights Hospitallers, Teutonic Knights (seal of the Grand Master)
• mendicant orders: Dominicans, Franciscans

Terms:

Saint:	Holy person, believed to have intercessory powers with God, and to be able to perform miracles
Relic:	Physical remains of a saint (e.g., tooth), or object associated with saint (e.g., clothing), often stored and displayed in a special case called a reliquary
Pilgrimage:	Journey to holy place, person, shrine, relic
7 Sacraments:	Baptism, Confirmation, Matrimony, Holy Orders(Ordination), Extreme Unction, Penance, Eucharist. Administered by priests.
Excommunication:	Expulsion from communion with the Church and with fellow-Christians; those who die excommunicate are irrevocably condemned to Hell
Regular clergy:	Monks, nuns, friars, and others living under a monastic rule (Latin regula)
Secular clergy:	Clerics (such as many parish priests and bishops) who are not members of a monastic community or other religious order
Lay investiture:	Control by secular (“lay”) lords of elections of prelates (holders of high electoral church office), such as popes, bishops, or abbesses, symbolized by investing them with the symbols of office (the ring and pastoral staff)
Apostolic poverty:	Belief that Jesus and his disciples had lived their lives in voluntary poverty, owning nothing, and that the Church and clergy should do likewise
Heresy:	Erroneous or forbidden variant of established religious belief. One who believes in a heresy is a heretic.

Online readings:

Archbishop Eudes of Rouen: Visitation (inspection tour) of monastic and parish clergy, 1248-9

 

Music from medieval Spain:

Song of the Reconquista: Folquet de Marselha, Hueimais no-y conosc razo (De ahora en adelante no conozco razón)
(composed after Alfonso VIII of Castile’s defeat by al-Mansur at Alarcos in 1195; 9:58 min.): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rALJfRSGPGw&feature=related

Cantigas de Santa Maria, X, “Rosa das Rosas” (from 13th cent. Castile, in Galician-Portuguese, 4:46 min.): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgjZxQLiv7k&feature=related

Jewish music for the Sabbath:

Rabbi Abraham ben Meir ibn Ezra (1092-1167), “Ki eshmera Shabbat” (Hebrew, 3:31 min.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&NR=1&v=0xd3N1zdaNU

Música Arábigo-Andaluza, 13th cent. (3:49 min.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pXWjWe48IE&feature=related

1002 Death of Al-Mansur and disintegration of of Al-Andalus (Muslim caliphate of Cordova) leads to:

c. 1050-1250	Gradual Reconquista (reconquest) of much of Iberia by Christian armies (Granada, the last Muslim stronghold, falls in 1492)
1085	Toledo conquered by Christian kingdom of Castile; becomes center for Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholarly exchange
1130s-40s	Merger of Christian kingsdoms of Aragon and Barcelona; capture of Lisbon by Crusaders of 2nd Crusade, and establishment of independent Christian kingdom of Portugal
1212-1264	Pope Innocent III proclaims a Crusade against Muslims in Spain; S. half of Portugal and Spain (except territory around Granada) and Balearic Islands conquered by Christians
1047-1090s	Robert Guiscard (d. 1085, after rescuing Pope Gregory VII from Henry IV in 1084) and his brother Roger, sons of a Norman baron, conquer S. Italy and Sicily, and establish Norman kingdom there, with capital at Palermo, which becomes center of Muslim, Jewish, Greek, and Latin scholarly exchange.
c. 1125-c. 1350	German eastward expansion into Slavic lands