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4 - 1215–1349: culture and history

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2011

By
Alastair Minnis
Edited by
Samuel Fanous  and
Vincent Gillespie
Alastair Minnis
Affiliation:
Yale University
Samuel Fanous
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Vincent Gillespie
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

Lights, music, action:

The greatest Roman noblemen, swathed in silk and purple, preceded [the pope] to the accompaniment of drum and chorus, strings and organ, and the resounding harmonies of trumpets, and an infinite multitude of clerics and people followed.…Uncounted lanterns, suspended on ropes throughout the streets and alleys, strove to make the brightness of that day succumb to the brilliance of their own light. The number of banners and pieces of purple cloth, which were unfolded on the houses and the high towers of the Romans, cannot be estimated at all.

This vivid scene marked the beginning of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, a carefully-orchestrated event which was the crowning glory of Innocent III's pontificate (he died a year later). Unfortunately, the council did not get off to a good start as far as the English Church was concerned, since, just as the archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, was setting off to attend it, his powers were suspended by Innocent's representatives, as a punishment for his failure to publish the papal bull censuring England's barons for forcing their king to assent to Magna Carta. However, Langton was able to return from exile to his See in 1218, when both Innocent and John were dead. And the zeal with which English clergymen sought to implement the pope's decrees was undiminished.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Mysticism , pp. 69 - 90
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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References

Berman, Constance Hoffman, The Cistercian Evolution: The Invention of a Religious Order in Twelfth-Century Europe (Philadelphia, PN: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), pp. xi, xiiiGoogle Scholar
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Sajavaara, Kari, The Middle English Translations of Robert Grosseteste's ‘Chateau d'Amour’ (Helsinki: Société Néophilologique, 1967)Google Scholar
Southern, R. W., Robert Grosseteste: The Growth of an English Mind in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 225–30Google Scholar
Callus, D. A., ‘The Date of Grosseteste's Translations and Commentaries on Pseudo-Dionysius and the Nicomachean Ethics’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 14 (1947), 186–210Google Scholar
Lees, Rosemary Ann, The Negative Language of the Dionysian School of Mystical Theology: An Approach to ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’, Analecta Cartusiana 107 (Salzburg: University of Salzburg, 1983)Google Scholar
Clark, John P. H., The Cloud of Unknowing: An Introduction, Analecta Cartusiana 119.4–6 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1995–6), I.14–19, 71–3Google Scholar
Walsh, James, in the introduction to his modern English translation of The Cloud of Unknowing (New York: Paulist Press, 1981), pp. 2–9, 19–23Google Scholar

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