Department of Theology and Religion

THE MAKING OF MODERN CHRISTIANITY:

MEDIEVAL AND REFORMATION EUROPE
(THEO 2301)
MODULE HANDBOOK, 2015-16

THE MAKING OF MODERN CHRISTIANITY:

MEDIEVAL AND REFORMATION EUROPE

Contents

Module Convenor and Office Hours

Introduction: Module Outline; Teaching; Workload; Assessment

Course Programme

Part I: Medieval Christianity

General Reading

Lecture and Seminar Topics, Essay Titles and Resources

Part II: Reformation Europe

General Reading

16

Lecture and Seminar Topics, Essay Titles and Resources

18

Cover image: Albrecht Drer, The Revelation of St John: 8. The Battle of the Angels, 1497-98 (woodcut).

MODULE STAFF AND CONTACT DETAILS

The Making of Modern Christianity is a team-taught module. The convenor for 2015-16 is Dr Susan Royal
(susan.royal@durham.ac.uk). The module lecturers are Dr Royal and Dr Marika Rose
(marika.rose@durham.ac.uk), both of whom are available to see students by appointment. Dr Royal is also
available in her office hours: Tuesdays 12-1, in room 205, Dun Cow Cottage.
Seminars are led by Dr Royal and by Dr Zoltan Schwab (zoltan.schwab@durham.ac.uk).

INTRODUCTION
This module examines the emergence of modern Christianity. The medieval and Reformation periods were
pivotal for the making of the modern world because the theological, spiritual and moral ideas of both
leading intellectual and more popular movements influenced the long-term development of churches,
governments and culture, and their impact is still evident in church and society today. This module will
examine these ideas but will also explore the ways in which they were profoundly affected by the social,
political and economic conditions that characterized the medieval and early modern world. In this module
students will have opportunities to engage with primary medieval and Reformation sources.
The module consists of two parts. In Michaelmas Term we will study the European Middle Ages; in
Epiphany Term the subject will be the Reformation. There will be revision sessions in Easter Term.
Lectures are at 2pm on Mondays in room 157, Elvet Riverside. Seminars are on Tuesday, Wednesdays, and
Thursdays. There are three groups: Seminar Group 1 meets at 3pm on Tuesdays with Dr Royal in Seminar
Room C, Abbey House; Seminar Group 2 meets with Dr Royal in Palace Green 28 at 9am on Wednesdays;
Seminar Group 3 meets with Dr Schwab at 11am on Thursday, in room 77, Elvet Riverside. All students
will be allocated to a group at the beginning of the year, and will also be provided with a full pack of seminar
readings.
Please note that neither lectures nor seminars take place every week. The full timetable is on p. 4.
Workload
One formative 2000 word essay (on either part of the course). Due: 7 December 2015. This essay should
be handed in at the lecture on 7 December. The essay will be returned at the lecture on 18 January 2016.
Summative assessment
This module, which counts fully for finals, is assessed on:

One 3000 word essay (on either part of the course) (25%). Due 14 March 2016. This essay will be
returned in the week beginning 25 April.
A three hour examination (on both parts of the course) (75% of assessment).

COURSE PROGRAMME
12 October

The Making of Modern Christianity: Introduction

No seminar this week

Susan Royal

Part I: Medieval Christianity

19 October
20-22 October
26 October
27-29 October
2 November
3-5 November
9 November
10-12 November
16 November
17-19 November
23 & 24-26 November
30 November
1-3 December
7 December
8-10 December
14 & 15-17 December

Christendom, 500-1500
Marika Rose
No seminar this week
From Monastery to University
Marika Rose
Seminar: Poverty, Chastity, Obedience?
Mystical Theology
Marika Rose
Seminar: Mysticism, Gender and Embodiment
Islam and the Formation of Europe
Marika Rose
Seminar: The Crusades
Judaism and the Invention of Race
Marika Rose
Seminar: Christian Anti-Semitism
No classes
Heretics and Witches
Marika Rose
Seminar: Witch-Hunts
The Emergence of the Individual
Marika Rose
Seminar: The Social Logic of Salvation
No classes

Part II: The Reformation Age

18 January
19-21 January
25 January

Susan Royal

26-28 January
1 & 2-4 February
8 February
9-11 February
15 February
16-18 February
22 & 23-25 February
29 February
1-3 March
7 March
8-10 March
14 March
15-17 March

New Worlds: What the Renaissance Did

Seminar: Erasmus Vision
Scripture versus the Church: The Struggle for
Authority
Seminar: The Bible in the Reformation
No classes
From Justification to Predestination
Seminar: The Doctrine of Justification
The Battle for the Sacraments
Seminar: Water and the Spirit
No classes
Resistance, Martyrdom and Compromise
Seminar: Making Martyrs
Building the Kingdom of God
Seminar: Political Religion in the Reformation
Surviving the Reformation
No seminar this week

25 April, 2, 9 May

Revision & Discussion

MR & SR

Susan Royal

Susan Royal
Susan Royal
Susan Royal
Susan Royal
Susan Royal

SEMINARS, ESSAYS AND RESOURCES

PART I: MEDIEVAL CHRISTIANITY

General Reading
You are encouraged in this part of the course to pursue areas and approaches that particularly interest you.
There should be some flexibility within the seminar texts, essay and exam questions for you to focus more
on historical or theological questions according to your preference, and to draw in some of the other areas
you have studied during your course so far. The list below gives some general historical and general
theological texts, as well as some texts which take particular theoretical (e.g. feminist and postcolonial)
approaches to historical and theological questions. The core text from which most lecture/background
readings are taken is Carol Lansing and Edward D. English (eds), A Companion to the Medieval World (2013). I
recommend that you buy a copy of this text.
David Aers and Lynn Staley, The Powers of the Holy: Religion, Politics, and Gender in Late Medieval English Culture
(1996).
Nadia Altschul and Kathleen Davis, Medievalisms in the Postcolonial World: The Idea of the Middle Ages Outside
Europe (2009).
Geoffrey Barraclough, The Medieval Papacy (1968, repr. 1979).
David N. Bell, Many Mansions: An Introduction to the Development and Diversity of Medieval Theology (1996).
Lisa Bitel and Felice Lifshitz (eds), Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe: New Perspectives (2010).
Uta-Renate Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century
(1988).
Rmi Brague, Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization (2002).
Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, AD 200-1000 (1996).
Caroline Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality: An essay on religion in late medieval Europe (2011).
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (ed), The Postcolonial Middle Ages (2001).
Marcia Colish, Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 400-1400 (1997).
William R. Cook and Ronald B. Herzman, The Medieval World View: An Introduction (2004).
G. R. Evans, The Medieval Theologians: An Introduction to Theology in the Medieval Period (2001).
Robert Fossier (ed.), The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Middle Ages, (1997).
Deno J. Geanakoplos, Medieval Western Civilization and the Byzantine and Islamic Worlds, (1979).
James R. Ginther, The Westminster Handbook to Medieval Theology (2009).
Michael Haren, Medieval Thought: The Western Intellectual Tradition from Antiquity to the Thirteenth Century (1992).
George Holmes (ed.), The Oxford History of Medieval Europe (1992).
Lisa Lampert-Weissig, Medieval Literature and Postcolonial Studies (1992).
Carol Lansing and Edward D. English (eds), A Companion to the Medieval World (2013).
Jacques le Goff, Medieval Civilization (1988).
Jacques le Goff, The Birth of Europe (2005).
Jacques le Goff, Your Money or Your Life: Economy and Religion in the Middle Ages (1990).
F. Donald Logan, A History of the Church in the Middle Ages (2002).
David Luscombe, Medieval Thought (1997).
Margaret R. Miles, The Word Made Flesh: A History of Christian Thought (2005).
Colin Morris, The Papal Monarchy: the Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (1989).
Alexander Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (1978).

Making of Modern Christianity

6
Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform 1250-1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation
Europe (1980).
Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, vol. 3, The Growth of Medieval Theology, 600-1300 (1978).
William C. Placher, A History of Christian Theology: An Introduction (1983).
B. B. Price, Medieval Thought: An Introduction (1992).
R.W. Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe, 2 vols (1995-2001).
R.W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (1970).
R.W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (1953, rerpr. 1980).
R. N. Swanson, Religion and Devotion in Europe, c. 1215-c. 1515 (1995).
Norman Tanner, The Church in the Later Middle Ages (2008).
Walter Ullmann, The Origins of the Great Schism (1948).
Rik Van Nieuwenhove, An Introduction to Medieval Theology (2012).
Rowan Williams, The Wound of Knowledge: Christian Spirituality from the New Testament to St. John of the Cross
(1990).

Making of Modern Christianity

7
Michaelmas Term, 2014: Medieval Christianity
Lecture and Seminar Schedule

I: CHRISTENDOM, 500-1500
Background/Lecture Reading:
Adriaan H. Bredero, Christendom and Christianity in the Middle Ages (1994), chapter 1, Religion and
Church in Medieval Society, 1-52.
No Seminar.
Further Reading:
Geoffrey Barraclough, The Medieval Papacy (1968, repr. 1979).
Adriaan H. Bredero, Christendom and Christianity in the Middle Ages (1994), esp. ch. 1.
Uta-Renate Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century
(1988).
Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, AD 200-1000 (1996).
Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes, 2nd ed. (2001).
Colin Morris, The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (1989).
Stuart Murray, Post-Christendom (2004).
Thomas Noble, The Republic of St. Peter: The Birth of the Papal State, 680-825 (1984).
James M. Powell (ed.), Innocent III: Vicar of Christ or Lord of the World? (1994).
Kwok Pui-Lan, Don H. Compier and Joerg Rieger, Empire and the Christian Tradition: New Readings of Classical
Theologians (2007).
Jeffrey Richards, The Popes and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages (1979).
Jane Sayers, Innocent III: Leader of Europe 1198-1216 (1994).
Brian Tierney, Origins of Papal Infallibility 1150-1300 (1972).
Walter Ullmann, A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages (1972).

Making of Modern Christianity

II: FROM MONASTERY TO UNIVERSITY

Background/Lecture Reading:
Constance H. Berman, Monastic and Mendicant Communities in A Companion to the Medieval World,
edited by Carol Lansing and Edward D. English (2013), 231-256.
Philipp W. Rosemann, Philosophy and Theology in the Universities in A Companion to the Medieval
World, edited by Carol Lansing and Edward D. English (2013), 544-560.
Seminar: Poverty, Chastity, Obedience?
Reading for Seminar:
Primary Texts:
Rule of Saint Benedict, Prologue, and chapters 1-9, 20-40, 53, 58-60
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/benedict/rule
Peter Abelard, The Story of His Misfortunes, in The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, translated by
Betty Radice (London: Penguin, 2003), 3-31.
Secondary Text:
Tina Beattie, The Rise of the Universities in Theology after Postmodernity: Divining the Void A
Lacanian Reading of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 147-164.
Seminar Questions
What ideas about God, human beings, and the ideal Christian life can be seen in the Rule of St
Benedict?
What role do monastic communities play in Peter Abelards narration of his life story?
What are the similarities and differences between Peter Abelards experiences and the sort of
community described by Saint Benedict?
What contemporary institutions does the Rule of Saint Benedict remind you of?
Essay Questions
How did monastic communities shape the history of medieval Europe?
What impact did the emergence of the universities have on the study of theology and its role in the
church?
Further Reading:
Giorgio Agamben, The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life, translated by Adam Kotsko (2013) [this
is a difficult but fascinating account of medieval monasticism by a contemporary philosopher].
Christopher Brooke, The Age of the Cloister: The Story of Monastic Life in the Middle Ages (2003).
_______, The Monastic World, 1000-1300 (1974).
M. Browne, and C. OClabaigh (eds.), The Irish Benedictines: A History (2005).
S.G. Bruce, Silence and Sign Language in Medieval Monasticism: The Cluniac Tradition, c. 900-1200 (2007).
David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century after Saint Francis (2001).
James G. Clark, The Benedictines in the Middle Ages (2011).
A. B. Cobban, The Medieval Universities (1975).
G. Constable, and B.S. Smith (eds.), Three Treatises from Bec on the Nature of Monastic Life (2008).
Linda L. Coon, Dark Age Bodies: Gender and Monastic Practice in the Early Medieval West (2010)/
R.B. Dobson, Durham Priory, 1400-1450 (1973).
Making of Modern Christianity

9
Marilyn Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Ages (2005).
G. R. Evans, The Medieval Theologians: An Introduction to Theology in the Medieval Period (2001).
Gillian R. Evans, Old Arts and New Theology: The Beginnings of Theology as an Academic Discipline (1980).
Sarah Foot, Monastic Life in Anglo-Saxon England, c. 600-900 (2006).
Gregory the Great, The book of Pastoral Rule (2007).
Jeffrey F. Hamburger, and Susan Marti, Crown and veil: female monasticism from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries
(2008).
S. Harper, Medieval English Benedictine Liturgy: Studies in the Formation, Structure and Content of the Monastic Votive
Office, c. 950-1540 (1993).
William Hinnebusch, The History of the Dominican Order (2 vols. 1966, 1973).
P.D. Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession: Religious Women in Medieval France (1991).
B. Kerr, Religious Life for Women, c. 1100-c. 1350 (1999).
C. H. Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages (2001).
Jean Leclercq, O.S.B., The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture (1961).
Lester K Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (1978).
T. Nyberg, Monasticism in North-Western Europe, 800-1200 (2000).
Olaf Pedersen, The First Universities: Studium Generale and the Origins of University Education in Europe (1997).
A.J. Piper, The Durham Monks and the Study of Scripture, in The Culture of Medieval English
Monasticism (2007), pp. 86-103.
Bert Roest, A History of Franciscan Education (c. 1210-1517) (2000).
Philipp W. Rosemann, Understanding Scholastic Thought with Foucault (1999).
S. Thompson, Women Religious: The Founding of English Nunneries after the Norman Conquest (1991).
Ian P. Wei, Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris: Theologians and the University, c. 1100-1330 (2012).

Making of Modern Christianity

10

III: MYSTICAL THEOLOGY

Background/Lecture Reading:
John Arnold, Gender and Sexuality in A Companion to the Medieval World, edited by Carol Lansing and
Edward D. English (2013), 161-184.
Seminar: Mysticism, gender and embodiment
Readings for Seminar:
Primary texts:
Excerpts from Bernard McGinn (ed), Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism (New York: Random
House, 2006):
Catherine of Genoa, Purgation and Purgatory, 66-71
Hadewijch of Antwerp, Vision VII, 102-104
Mechthild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light of the Godhead, 202-207
Hildegard of Bingen, Letter 103R. To Guibert of Gembloux, 331-335.
Angela of Foligno, The Memorial, 374-379.
Teresa of Avila, The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by herself translated by J M Cohen
(Harmandsworth: Penguin, 1957), chapter 29.
Marguerite Porete, The Mirror of Simple Souls, translated by Edmund Colledge, J C Marler and
Judith Grant (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999), chapter 118.
Secondary text:
Grace Jantzen, Cry out and write: mysticism and the struggle for authority in Power, Gender and
Christian Mysticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 157-192.
Seminar Questions
What different roles do gender and the body play in these different writings?
Can you see any relationship between the different understandings of God in these writings and the
different forms of life the authors lived?
What sort of appeals to authority do these authors make in their writings?
Marguerite Porete was burnt at the stake for heresy after refusing to recant her views; can you see
anything in the excerpt that might have caused concern? How (if at all) is this excerpt different from
the others?
Essay Questions
How did changing understandings of mystical theology affect the social status of women in medieval
Europe?
How did the gender of mystical theologians influence the way they wrote their texts and the way
their texts were received?

Further Reading:
David and Lynn Staley, The Powers of the Holy: Religion, Politics, and Gender in Late Medieval English Culture
(1996).
Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, Julian of Norwich and the Mystical Body Politic of Christ (1999).
Christine Caldwell Ames, Righteous Persecution: Inquisition, Dominicans and Christianity in the Middle Ages (2008).
Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God: and selections from sermons (1959).
Making of Modern Christianity

11
Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs, (especially sermons 1, 2, 74) in Bernard of Clairvaux: Selected
Works, translated by G. R. Evans (1987).
Lisa Bitel and Felice Lifshitz (eds), Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe: New Perspectives (2010).
Fiona Bowie (ed), Beguine Spirituality: An Anthology (1989).
Caroline Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality: An essay on religion in late medieval Europe (2011).
Caroline Walker Bynum, Did the twelfth century discover the individual? (1980).
Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (1987).
Caroline Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Germany and Beyond (2007).
John Coakley, "Christian Holy Women and the Exercise of Religious Authority in the Medieval West,"
Religion Compass 3 (2009), 847-856.
Norman Cohn, The pursuit of the millennium: revolutionary millennarians and mystical anarchists of the Middle Ages
(1970).
Lynda L. Coon, Dark Age Bodies: Gender and Monastic Practice in the Early Medieval West (2010).
Jeffrey F Hamburger and Susan Marti, Crown and veil: female monasticism from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries
(2008).
Amy Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife: Meister Eckhart and the Beguine mystics, Mechtild of Magdeburg and
Marguerite Porete (1995).
Amy Hollywood and Patricia Z. Beckman, The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism (2012).
Grace Jantzen, Julian of Norwich: Mystic and Theologian (1987).
Grace Jantzen, Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism (1995).
E. Ann Matter, The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity (1990).
Bernard McGinn (ed), Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism (2006).
Bernard McGinn, The presence of God: a history of Western Christian mysticism. Vol. 2 The Growth of Mysticism
(1995).
Bernard McGinn, The presence of God: a history of Western Christian mysticism. Vol. 3 The Flowering of Mysticism
(1998).
Catherine M Mooney (ed), Gendered voices: medieval saints and their interpreters (1999).
Saskia Murk-Jansen, Brides in the Desert: The Spirituality of the Beguines (1998).
Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff, Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism (1994).
Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff (ed), Medieval Womens Visionary Literature (1986).
Sarah Poor, Mechtild of Magdeburg and her Book: Gender and the Making of Textual Authority (2004).
Denys Turner, Eros and Allegory: Medieval Exegesis of the Song of Songs (1995).
Denys Turner, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism (1995).
Mark Verman,The Books of Contemplation: Medieval Jewish Mystical Sources (1992).

Making of Modern Christianity

12

IV: ISLAM AND THE FORMATION OF EUROPE

Background/Lecture Reading:
Olivia Remie Constable, Muslims in Medieval Europe in A Companion to the Medieval World, edited by
Carol Lansing and Edward D. English (2013), 313-332.
Seminar: The Crusades
Readings for Seminar:
Primary texts:
Humbert of Romans, Opus Tripartitum, in Louise and Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: Idea and
Reality, 1095-1274 (London: Edward Arnold, 1981), 103-117.
Usama ibn Munquidh, Autobiography in Arab Historians of the Crusades, edited by Francesco Gabrieli,
translated by E J Costello, 73-84.
Secondary text:
Norman Housley, Consequences: The Effect of the Crusades on the Development of Europe and
Interfaith Relations in Contesting the Crusades (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 144-166.
Seminar Questions
What principles of biblical interpretation are at work in Humberts arguments?
How does Humberts understanding of the purpose of the Crusades compare to ibn Munquidhs
perceptions of the Crusaders?
How does ibn Munquidh understand the role of religion in his encounters with the Franks?
Essay Questions
Were the Crusaders more interested in conquest or conversion?
What influence did Muslim rule in Spain have on the development of medieval Europe?
What role did Islam play in the formation of medieval Christian identity?
Further Reading:
Simon Barton, Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines: Interfaith Relations and Social Power in Medieval Iberia (2015).
Phillipe Buc, Holy War, Martyrdom, and Terror: Christianity, Violence and the West ca 70 to the Iraq War (2015).
Thomas E. Burman, Reading the Quran in Latin Christendom, 1140-1560 (2007).
David B Burrell, Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions (1993).
David B. Burrell, Knowing the Unknowable God: ibn Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas (1986).
Sidney H. Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam (2012).
Dmitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early
Abbasid Society (1998).
B. Hamilton, The Crusades (1998).
Katie Harris, From Muslim to Christian Granada: Inventing a Citys Past in Early Modern Spain (2007).
L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500-1614 (2006).
Geraldine Heng, Holy War Redux: The Crusades, Futures of the Past and Strategic Logic in the Clash of
Religions in PMLA 126 (2011), 422-43
http://www.jstor.org.ezphost.dur.ac.uk/stable/41414113
Norman Housley, Contesting the Crusades (2006).
Ibn Fadlan, Journey to Russia: A Tenth-Century Traveler from Baghdad to the Volga River, edited and translated by
Richard Frye (2005).
Yves Lacoste, Ibn Khaldun: The Birth of History and the Past of the Third World (1984).
Making of Modern Christianity

13
Mara Rosa Menocal, The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Create a Culture of Tolerance in
Medieval Spain (2003).
Ali Khalidi Muhammad (ed.), Medieval Islamic Philosophical Writings (2005).
H.-E. Mayer, trans. J. Gillingham, The Crusades, second edition (1988).
Ian Richard Netton, Encyclopedia of Islamic civilization and religion (2008).
Ian Richard Netton, Islam, Christianity and tradition: a comparative exploration (2006).
David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of minorities in the Middle Ages (1998).
Edward Peters (ed), Christian Society and the Crusades, 1198-1229: Sources in Translation (1971).
J. Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (1986).
J. Riley-Smith (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades (1995).
Andr Vauchez, The Laity in the Middle Ages: Religious Beliefs and Devotional Practices, ed. Daniel Bornstein, trans.
Margery Schneider (1993).
D. Webb, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in the Medieval West (1999).

Making of Modern Christianity

14

V: JUDAISM AND THE INVENTION OF RACE

Lecture/Background Reading:
Kenneth R. Stow, Jews in the Middle Ages in A Companion to the Medieval World, edited by Carol
Lansing and Edward D. English (2013), 293-312.
Seminar: Christian Anti-Semitism
Reading for Seminar:
Primary texts:
Selections from Jacob Marcus (ed), The Jew in the Medieval World: A Sourcebook (New York: Meridian,
1960):
Pope Gregory I, Letters on the Treatment of Jews, http://www.ccjr.us/dialogika-resources/primarytexts-from-the-history-of-the-relationship/251-gregory-I
Thomas of Monmouth, Accusation of the Ritual Murder of St William of Norwich
http://www.ccjr.us/dialogika-resources/primary-texts-from-the-history-of-therelationship/260-thomas-monmouth
Ephraim Ben Jacob, The Ritual Murder Accusation at Blois, May 1171
http://www.ccjr.us/dialogika-resources/primary-texts-from-the-history-of-therelationship/259-ephraim-ben-jacob-qthe-ritual-murder-accusation-at-bloisq-may-1171
William of Newburgh, The York Riots, http://www.ccjr.us/dialogika-resources/primary-texts-fromthe-history-of-the-relationship/262-william-newburgh
Fourth Lateran Council, Canons Concerning Jews, 1215, http://www.ccjr.us/dialogikaresources/primary-texts-from-the-history-of-the-relationship/264-lateran4
Giovanni Boccaccio, Tales I, 2 and I, 3 in The Decameron, translated by John Payne,
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23700
Secondary texts:
David Biale, Gods Blood: Medieval Jews and Christians Debate the Body in Blood and Belief: The
Circulation of a Symbol Between Jews and Christians (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007),
81-122.
Seminar Questions
What role does theology play in these texts in Christian attitudes towards Jewish people?
What anxieties are visible in Christian attitudes to Jews?
How are Christian attitudes to Jews similar to and different from the Christian attitudes to Muslims
in the texts from the previous seminar?
Essay Questions
How did Judaism influence Christian theology in the medieval period?
What role did Christian attitudes to Jews play in the emergence of ideas of race?
Further Reading:
Anna Sapir Abulafia, Religious violence between Christians and Jews: medieval roots, modern perspectives (2002).
Gil Anidjar, Blood: A Critique of Christianity (2014) [especially chapter 1: Nation (Jesus Kin), which is hard
work but brilliant, and focuses on the themes of blood and antisemitism in the emergence of
racial thinking in medieval Europe].
Making of Modern Christianity

15
Christine Caldwell Ames, Righteous Persecution: Inquisition, Dominicans and Christianity in the Middle Ages (2008)
Jeremy Cohen, Living letters of the law: ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (1999).
George Fredrickson, Racism: A Short History (2002) [chapter 1, Religion and the Invention of Racism deals
with antisemitism and racism in the medieval period].
David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of minorities in the Middle Ages (1998).
David Biale, Blood and Belief: The Circulation of a Symbol Between Jews and Christians (2007).
David B Burrell, Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions (1993).
David B Burrell, Knowing the Unknowable God: ibn Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas (1986).
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Karl Steel, Race, travel, time, heritage in postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural
studies (2015), 98-110.
Norman Cohn, The pursuit of the millennium: revolutionary millennarians and mystical anarchists of the Middle Ages
(1970) [lots of interesting material on the relationship between religious fervour and Christian
violence towards Jewish communities].
Andrew Colin Gow, The red Jews: antisemitism in an apocalyptic age, 1200-1600 (1995).
Lu Ann Homza (ed), The Spanish Inquisition, 1478-1614: An anthology of sources (2006).
Geraldine Heng, Englands Dead Boys: Telling Tales of Christian-Jewish Relations Before and After the
First European Expulsion of the Jews in MLN 127.5 (2012), pp S54-S85.
Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages I: Race Studies, Modernity and the
Middle Ages in Literature Compass 8/5 (2011), 258-274.
Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages II: Locations of Medieval Race in
Literature Compass 8/5 (2011), 275-293.
Charles Manekin (ed.), Medieval Jewish Philosophical Writings (2007).
Ivan Marcus, Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe (1998).
Jacob Marcus (ed), The Jew in the Medieval World: A Sourcebook (1960).
Mara Rosa Menocal, The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Create a Culture of Tolerance in
Medieval Spain (2003).
David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of minorities in the Middle Ages (1998).
Helen Rawlings, The Spanish Inquisition (2006).
Paola Tartakoff, Between Christian and Jew: Conversion and Inquisition in the Crown of Aragon, 1250-1391 (2012).
Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion (2004).
Joshua Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and its relation to antisemitism
(1993).
Mark Verman,The Books of Contemplation: Medieval Jewish Mystical Sources (1992).

Making of Modern Christianity

16

VI: HERETICS AND WITCHES

Lecture/Background Reading:
Carol Lansing, Popular Belief and Heresy in A Companion to the Medieval World, edited by Carol
Lansing and Edward D. English (2013), 276-292.
Seminar: Witch-Hunts
Reading for Seminar:
Primary text:
Extracts from the Malleus Maleficarum in ed. Alan C. Kors and Edward Peters, Witchcraft in Europe
400-1700: A Documentary History (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2001), 181-209.
Secondary text:
Silvia Federici, The Great Witch Hunt in Europe in Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive
Accumulation (New York: Autonomedia, 2014), 163-218
Seminar Questions
What is the different between witches and other heretics, according to the Malleus Maleficarum?
What role does gender play in the Malleus description of witches and witchcraft?
How do theology, reason and legal systems at the time influence the structure and content of the
Malleus Malleficarum?
How are the anxieties about witches and witchcraft similar to and different from the attitudes to
Jews and Muslims in the texts from previous seminars?
Essay Questions
Why were witches persecuted in medieval Europe?
What impact did the witch trials have on the status of women in medieval Europe?
Further Reading:
Christine Caldwell Ames, Righteous Persecution: Inquisition, Dominicans and Christianity in the Middle Ages (2008).
Bengt Ankerloo and Stuart Clark, eds., Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Middle Ages (2002).
Michael Bailey, Battling Demons: Witchcraft, Heresy, and Reform in the Late Middle Ages (2003).
Heidi Breuer, Crafting the Witch: Gendering Magic in Medieval and Early Modern England (2009).
Norman Cohn, The pursuit of the millennium: revolutionary millennarians and mystical anarchists of the Middle Ages
(1970).
Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane, A History of Medieval Heresy and Inquisition (2011).
Moira Smith, The Flying Phallus and the Laughing Inquisitor: Penis Theft in the Malleus Maleficarum in
Journal of Folklore Research 39.1 (2001), 85-117 http://www.jstor.org/stable/3814832
Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the body and primitive accumulation (2014).
Valerie J. Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (1991).
Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1992).
Lu Ann Homza (ed), The Spanish Inquisition, 1478-1614: An anthology of sources (2006).
Geraldine Heng, Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy (2004).
Grace Jantzen, Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism (1995), chapter 7: Heretics and witches.
Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (2014).
Gordon Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages: The Relation of Heterodoxy to Dissent c.1250-1450, 2 vols (1967).
Gordon Leff, Heresy, Philosophy and Religion in the Medieval West (2002).
R I Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: authority and deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250 (2007).
Making of Modern Christianity

17
Peter A. Morton, ed., and Barbara Dahms, trans., The Trial of Tempel Anneke: Records of a Witchcraft Trial in
Brunswick, Germany, 1663 (2005).
David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of minorities in the Middle Ages (1998).
Mark Gregory Pegg, The Corruption of Angels: The Great Inquisition of 1245-1246 (2001).
Helen Rawlings, The Spanish Inquisition (2006).
E R Truitt, Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature and Art (2015).
Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion (2004).

Making of Modern Christianity

18

VII: THE EMERGENCE OF THE INDIVIDUAL

Lecture/Background Reading:
Caroline Walker Bynum, Did the twelfth century discover the individual? in The Journal of Ecclesiastical
History 31.01 (1980), 1-17.
Seminar: The Social Logic of Salvation
Reading for Seminar:
Primary texts:
Julian of Norwich, Showings, translated by Edmund Colledge (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 263-278.
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, translated by Clifton Wolters (Penguin, 1966), 151-160.
Anonymous Anglo-Saxon, The Dream of the Rood. in The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th
ed. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton, 2013. 33-6.
Secondary text:
Adam Kotsko, The Politics of Redemption: The Social Logic of Salvation (T&T Clark, 2010), chapter 6:
Anselm, 123-149.
Seminar Questions
How do Julian and the anonymous author of the Dream understand the role of Christ in the
salvation of humankind?
What roles do the individual and society play in these two different texts?
How do these texts compare with the atonement theology of Anselm as described by Adam
Kotsko?
Essay Questions
How was Christian theology changed by the new ideas of the individual which emerged in the later
medieval period?
What social, political and theological factors influenced changing understandings of the relationship
between the individual and society?
Further Reading:
William J. Courtenay, Spirituality and Late Medieval Scholasticism, chap. 4 in Jill Raitt, ed., Christian
Spirituality II: High Middle Ages and Reformation (1989).
G. R. Evans, The Language and Logic of the Bible: The Earlier Middle Ages (1984).
G. R. Evans, The Language and Logic of the Bible: The Road to Reformation (1985).
Silvia Federici,Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (2014), 163-218.
Etienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (1955), Part Ten: Fourteenth Century
Scholasticism, chap. II.2 John Duns Scotus and his School, chap. III Disintegration of Scholastic
Theology; Part Eleven: The Modern Way, chap. I William of Ockham, chap. II Nominalism.
J. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (2009).
David Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought (1962), Part V The Breakdown of the Medieval Synthesis.
Richard A. Lee, Jr., Ockham and the Nature of Science in Science, the Singular, and the Question of Theology
(2002), 73-90.
Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A history of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, The Beginnings to the Reformation
(3rd ed.) (2005).
Colin Morris, The Discovery of the Individual, 1050-1200 (1987).

Making of Modern Christianity

19
Heiko Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval Thought Illustrated by Key Documents.
(2002).
Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform, 1250-1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and
Reformation Europe (1980), chap. 1 The Interpretation of Medieval Intellectual History, chap. 2 The
Scholastic Traditions, chap. 4 The Ecclesiopolitical Traditions.
Philipp W. Rosemann, Understanding Scholastic Thought with Foucault (1999), Study 6 The Scholastic Episteme
and its Others.
Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (1983).
R. W. Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe (1995), vol. 2, Foundations, chap. 3, The
Sovereign Textbook of the Schools: The Bible.
Ineke van t Spijker, Fictions of the Inner Life: Religious Literature and Formation of the Self in the Eleventh and Twelfth
Centuries (2004).
Rowan Williams, The Wound of Knowledge: Christian Spirituality from the New Testament to St. John of the Cross,
(1990) chap. 7 The Sign of the Son of Man (Nominalism and Luther).

Making of Modern Christianity