2 results
28 - The early schools, c. 900–1100
- from Part III - The Bible Interpreted
- Richard Marsden, University of Nottingham, E. Ann Matter, University of Pennsylvania
-
- Book:
- The New Cambridge History of the Bible
- Published online:
- 28 May 2012
- Print publication:
- 26 April 2012, pp 536-554
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Introduction
The tenth and eleventh centuries do not deserve the neglect that has been their lot. Recent historiography – whether emphasising the theme of steady transformation or interested rather in the idea of a decisive rupture around the year 1000 – has brilliantly illuminated the movements that were in progress throughout this period. These affected not only the major kingdoms of France, Germany and England, but the whole group of western societies which we have come to designate ‘Latin Christianity’, in contrast with Byzantine and eastern Christianity. Between about 900 and 1100, this area can in fact be reduced to the kingdoms of Germany and Italy, a few oases in the Iberian peninsular fighting for Christian reconquest and the kingdoms of France and England. The small Scandinavian kingdoms, culturally dependent on England, had hardly emerged, while in the east of Europe a dividing line appeared, signalling a gradual separation between Latin and Greek zones of influence. The leaders of the Frankish countries had established their domination at the end of the eighth century and in the ninth century at the expense of the Byzantine empire, first appropriating for themselves and then cultivating the symbolic power of both ancient and Christian Rome, and dipping enthusiastically into the Judaeo-Christian Bible for the federal themes of a shared ideology. The wind changed in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The dream of a shared culture subservient to strong authority disappeared, giving way to regional cultures, disconnected from power, which relied more than before on the liberal arts of the quadrivium and trivium, and were less concerned with the communal benefit of biblical models than with their moral and spiritual function. However, there was a change of direction in the second half of the eleventh century: it announced that a process of restructuring was under way, inaugurating a profound transformation in the way the Bible was used throughout the West.
26 - Making sense of the Bible
- from Part V - Christianity: Books and Ideas
- Edited by Thomas F. X. Noble, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, Julia M. H. Smith, University of Glasgow
-
- Book:
- The Cambridge History of Christianity
- Published online:
- 28 March 2010
- Print publication:
- 11 September 2008, pp 531-553
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
In his capacity as adviser to Charlemagne, Alcuin (d. 804) thought that he could introduce his master to all the subtleties of rhetoric and moral philosophy. In the famous Dialogue on Rhetoric and the Virtues, Alcuin cast himself in conversation with the future emperor of the Franks. He prudently made sure to show his patron in a good light by having him pose apposite questions to which he, as teacher, replied by playing with all the resources of the classical Latin art of rhetoric that he taught, the better to persuade his royal audience. Where rhetoricians had drawn the examples necessary for their demonstration from pagan antiquity, Alcuin brandished biblical examples. The lesson is clear. The courtier of the Dialogus de rhetorica was not content only to cajole a king who aspired to be a man of letters, but thus proclaimed with gusto the enduring value of classical learning in the Frankish realms, the triumph of Christian letters, and the absolute primacy of the Bible over all other masterpieces of literary history.
Of course, this is only propaganda. It matters little, however, whether this Dialogue was really written for the benefit of Charlemagne or whether it was a fiction created for use exclusively in schools. In just a few lines it upsets commonly accepted notions of an edition of the Bible by Alcuin (our teacher “forgets” to cite his own version of the Book of Genesis!) and of widespread ignorance of the Scriptures outside clerical circles (the mere mention of the characters of Cain and Abel, Achitophel, Chusai, Tertullus, and Felix, although elaborated orally by the teacher, suffices for the audience of the stories).