Olivi and the Interpretation of Matthew in the High Middle Ages

Kevin Madigan is assistant professor of the history of Christianity at Harvard Divinity School.

"Olivi and the Interpretation of Matthew in the High Middle Ages is a wonderfully clear and original study of the primary forms of high medieval gospel exegesis." —Amy Hollywood, Dartmouth College"For specialists in medieval exegesis and spirituality, it is important for the access it provides to Olivi's unedited and largely unstudied Matthew commentary and for the fascinating implications it teases out." —Religious Studies Review"...an important and needed contribution to the history of biblical interpretation." —The Sixteenth Century Journal"Olivi and the Interpretation of Matthew in the High Middle Ages is an excellent contribution to the growing bibliography on the study of the Bible in the Middle Ages. Kevin Madigan reads the difficult Franciscan texts with skill and shows the complex ways in which exegesis and apocalypticism intersect. It is especially interesting to see the importance of these controversial texts in a larger medieval context." —E. Ann Matter, University of Pennsylvania"Eleven years ago Kevin Madigan wrote a good dissertation on Olivi's Matthew commentary. In subsequent years he broadened his investigation, placing his research in a richer, more complex historical context which gave it new meaning and importance. The result is a truly excellent book, one that places Olivi's commentary within a long, developing exegetical tradition—three, in fact—and makes good sense of it in the process. Madigan writes well, too, a rare gift in historians. " —David Burr, Virginia Tech"Madigan ends by noting that Olivi's distinctive exegetical traits—occasional controversialism and muted Joachism—had no future, for the Franciscan exegete who called the late-medieval tune, Nicholas of Lyra, had absolutely no use for them. Madigan's book, however, will surely have a future because of its clarity and sovereign control of the material." —The Catholic Historical Review". . . Kevin Madigan has taken a careful scholarly knowledge of a biblical commentary and worked it into a much bigger picture. He contextualizes Olivi's commentary in the history both of scriptural exegesis and of the mendicant-secular quarrels, especially over poverty, of the high Middle Ages. He employs his close reading to illuminate newly a much wider question, as all good scholarship should." —Speculum"It is... heartening to turn to this penetrating study of Peter John Olivi.... Madigan shows himself a very able scholar who works in the tradition of Beryl Smalley.... With Madigan's help, there are new reasons to benefit from the unique exegesis expounded by this gifted Franciscan friar from the land of langue d'oc, who often enough said no to whatever he thought shortchanged the ideals of Jesus and Francis."—Cistercian Studies