Mark Vessey – författare

Augustine and the Disciplines takes its cue from Augustine's theory of the liberal arts to explore the larger question of how the Bible became the focus of medieval culture in the West. Augustine himself became increasingly aware that an ambivalent attitude towards knowledge and learning was inherent in Christianity. By facing the intellectual challenge posed by this tension he arrived at a new theory of how to interpret the Bible correctly. The topics investigated here include: Augustine's changing relationship with the 'disciplines', as he moved from an attempt at their Christianization (in the philosophical dialogues of Cassiciacum) to a radical reshaping of them within a Christian world-view (in the De Doctrina Christiana and Confessiones); the factors that prompted and facilitated his change of perspective; and the ways in which Augustine's evolving theory reflected contemporary trends in Christian pedagogy.

Augustine and the Disciplines takes its cue from Augustine's theory of the liberal arts to explore the larger question of how the Bible became the focus of medieval culture in the West. Augustine himself became increasingly aware that an ambivalent attitude towards knowledge and learning was inherent in Christianity. By facing the intellectual challenge posed by this tension he arrived at a new theory of how to interpret the Bible correctly. The topics investigated here include: Augustine's changing relationship with the 'disciplines', as he moved from an attempt at their Christianization (in the philosophical dialogues of Cassiciacum) to a radical reshaping of them within a Christian world-view (in the De Doctrina Christiana and Confessiones); the factors that prompted and facilitated his change of perspective; and the ways in which Augustine's evolving theory reflected contemporary trends in Christian pedagogy.

Erasmus' Paraphrases on the New Testament provide a startling example of the adaptation of the Bible to the religious and rhetorical ideals of Renaissance humanism. Yet very little is known about the production and reception of the Paraphrases, which comprise nine volumes of the Collected Works of Erasmus in English. In this collection of twelve contributed essays, Hilmar Pabel and Mark Vessey aim to address this gap in Erasmus studies. The papers reflect recent critical scholarship in three main areas: Erasmus' promotion of the ideals of Renaissance humanism; his work as an editor, translator, and interpreter of the New Testament; and the impact of his published writings on the culture of early modern Europe.Holy Scripture Speaks represents the most concerted collective study of Erasmus' Paraphrases on the New Testament since the completion of the first English translation by scholars during the reign of Edward VI (1548/9). It reveals the rich complexity of the literary, theological, and cultural dimensions of the Paraphrases, and indicates future directions that research in this area should take.

By close engagement with both traditional and contemporary approaches to ancient Christian literature, Latin Christian Writers in Late Antiquity and their Texts seeks to delineate a historiographical problem, at the same time rendering patristics as part of the subject-matter of a new literary history. After preliminary essays marking out the field, the volume is organized in three sections by authors, forms of discourse, and disciplines. Released from the theological discipline of patristics, the writings of the church fathers have in recent decades become the common property of students of early Christianity, late antiquity and the classical tradition. In principle, they are now no more (nor less) than sources, documents and literary texts like others from their period and milieux. Yet when replaced in the longer history of Western textual and literary practices, the collective literary oeuvre of Latin clerics, monks and ascetic freelances of the Later Roman Empire may still seem to occupy a place of decisive, if not canonical importance. How does one now account for the abiding formativeness of Latin Christian writing of the fourth and fifth centuries CE? What demands does such writing lay on a modern history of literature? These are the questions asked here, in view of a new literary history of patristic texts.

A Companion to Augustine presents a fresh collection of scholarship by leading academics with a new approach to contextualizing Augustine and his works within the multi-disciplinary field of Late Antiquity, showing Augustine as both a product of the cultural forces of his times and a cultural force in his own right. Discusses the life and works of Augustine within their full historical context, rather than privileging the theological contextPresents Augustine’s life, works and leading ideas in the cultural context of the late Roman world, providing a vibrant and engaging sense of Augustine in action in his own time and placeOpens up a new phase of study on Augustine, sensitive to the many and varied perspectives of scholarship on late Roman cultureState-of-the-art essays by leading academics in this field

A Companion to Augustine presents a fresh collection of scholarship by leading academics with a new approach to contextualizing Augustine and his works within the multi-disciplinary field of Late Antiquity, showing Augustine as both a product of the cultural forces of his times and a cultural force in his own right. Discusses the life and works of Augustine within their full historical context, rather than privileging the theological contextPresents Augustine’s life, works and leading ideas in the cultural context of the late Roman world, providing a vibrant and engaging sense of Augustine in action in his own time and placeOpens up a new phase of study on Augustine, sensitive to the many and varied perspectives of scholarship on late Roman cultureState-of-the-art essays by leading academics in this field

None of the works included among Erasmus’ ‘Literary and Educational Writings’ in the Collected Works of Erasmus captures his most adventurous thinking about how texts signify in – and thereby make or remake – worlds of thought, feeling, and action. The one that comes closest to doing so, the Ratio verae theologiae (‘A System of True Theology’), was first published separately in 1518 and 1519, then appeared in the preliminaries to the New Testament in Erasmus’ (revised) 1519 edition.This handy Ratio or compendious ‘System’ gave advice on how to interpret complex texts and develop persuasive arguments based upon them. Its lessons were applied to the canonical Scriptures as source, and to everyday Christian theology as target discourse. They unfold in response to the special difficulties and incitements of the biblical text in Latin and Greek, within a framework provided by classical grammar and rhetoric, adjusted to the examples of the Church Fathers as exemplary interpreters of the Bible. At every turn, the Ratio reveals the instincts and intuitions of an exceptional theorist and practitioner of the cognitive, social, and political arts of written language. This student edition, the first of its kind in any language, is based on the translation and notes by Robert D. Sider in the Collected Works of Erasmus Volume 41. It is designed to make it easier to estimate the long-term value of this particular work and of Erasmus’ works more generally, and to allow for a multidisciplinary understanding of the lives of human beings as symbol-using creatures in worlds constructed partly by texts.