Richard Matthew Pollard – författare

Where do we go after we die? This book traces how the European Middle Ages offered distinctive answers to this universal question, evolving from Antiquity through to the sixteenth century, to reflect a variety of problems and developments. Focussing on texts describing visions of the afterlife, alongside art and theology, this volume explores heaven, hell, and purgatory as they were imagined across Europe, as well as by noted authors including Gregory the Great and Dante. A cross-disciplinary team of contributors including historians, literary scholars, classicists, art historians and theologians offer not only a fascinating sketch of both medieval perceptions and the wide scholarship on this question: they also provide a much-needed new perspective. Where the twelfth century was once the 'high point' of the medieval afterlife, the essays here show that the afterlives of the early and later Middle Ages were far more important and imaginative than we once thought.

Where do we go after we die? This book traces how the European Middle Ages offered distinctive answers to this universal question, evolving from Antiquity through to the sixteenth century, to reflect a variety of problems and developments. Focussing on texts describing visions of the afterlife, alongside art and theology, this volume explores heaven, hell, and purgatory as they were imagined across Europe, as well as by noted authors including Gregory the Great and Dante. A cross-disciplinary team of contributors including historians, literary scholars, classicists, art historians and theologians offer not only a fascinating sketch of both medieval perceptions and the wide scholarship on this question: they also provide a much-needed new perspective. Where the twelfth century was once the 'high point' of the medieval afterlife, the essays here show that the afterlives of the early and later Middle Ages were far more important and imaginative than we once thought.

In the history of Christianity, the so-called ‘Church Fathers’ hold an immensely important place. This title, which we now associate with figures like St Augustine or St Jerome, was used from the fourth century onwards to designate particularly trustworthy authorities, whose opinions became the foundation of Western religious and intellectual culture. But who exactly were these Church Fathers? This examines this fundamental questions and considers which authors constituted the ‘Church Fathers’, the key religious authorities of the early Middle Ages, and assesses whether the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus formed part of this illustrious category. In the process Richard Matthew Pollard uses a variety of novel techniques: using new quantitative methods, as well as sensitive qualitative analysis, it sketches the shape of this shadowy group, and traces how certain figures join, or leave, this exclusive club. In particular, the book focuses on the place of Flavius Josephus, an ancient Jewish historian (c. 37-100) whom some have suggested became a quasi-Church Father. Only by carefully defining the Church Fathers can we evaluate such claims; in the process, we learn a great deal more about Josephus’ understudied medieval legacy. Josephus and the Church Fathers in the Early Middle Ages ultimately enables us to understand and appreciate the foundational authorities of European Christian culture – some of whom were not Christian at all.

The Codex epistolarisCarolinus preserves ninety-nine letters, dated between 739  and 791 and sent by the popes to the Frankishking Charlemagne and his predecessors. The compilation was commissioned byCharlemagne in 791, but the sole surviving medieval manuscript of the letterswas made at Cologne in the later ninth century and is now in Vienna(Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Cod. 449). The headings or lemmata provided for each letter by theFrankish compilers in 791 and faithfully preserved in the codex, add adistinctive Frankish commentary on events in Rome and Italy in the second halfof the eighth century. This book not only provides the first full Englishtranslation of the letters and lemmatain the Codex epistolaris Carolinusbut also re-creates the original Carolingian order of presentation of theletters according to the manuscript. A substantial introduction discusses thehistorical significance of the collection, the compilation and contexts of theVienna manuscript, especially the significance of the lemmata, the peculiarities of the Latin of the papal letters andthe biblical citations, and the historical context of the letters themselves.The lemmata and letter translationsare augmented with introductions to each letter and a comprehensive historicalcommentary and glossary.