Fathers of the Church Medieval Continuations – serie

The eucharistic crisis of the eleventh century posed the greatest challenge to the Church's understanding of the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament until the Reformation. The eucharistic symbolism of ""Berengarius of Tours"", which was at the heart of the controversy, was challenged first by Lanfranc of Canterbury and then by his student Guitmund of Aversa. Both authors countered with a vigorous defense of the Church's traditional belief that the body of Christ in the Eucharist is the same body that was born of the Virgin Mary, now risen and in glory. In this first English translation of Lanfranc's ""De corpore et sanguine Domini adversus Berengarium"", the reader learns firsthand both the history of the crisis and the doctrinal issues in question. Lesser known than Lanfranc's work, but of greater doctrinal significance, is Guitmund's ""De corporis et sanguinis Christi veritate in eucharistia"". In Guitmund's work, one finds a treatment of the doctrinal issues involved that is not only more systematic than that of Lanfranc, but far more speculative in character, and one that presents a fascinating vision of the Eucharist as a continuation of Christ's Easter appearances. Such a vision is one that the translator calls the species domini or an 'appearance of the Lord'; for it interprets the doctrine of the Real Presence in a way that identifies it as physical contact with the celestial Christ, of the same genre as the post-Resurrection appearances to his followers. The translations of both Lanfranc's and Guitmund's works, along with extensive commentary and notes, make this volume of the ""Mediaeval Continuation of the Fathers of the Church"" series an important study in the history of the development of eucharistic theology.

The philosophical and theological works of St. Thomas Aquinas are held in universal esteem. His commentaries on Scripture and the role of Scripture in his theological works have garnered considerable attention. Yet Thomas's academic sermons delivered on Sundays and special occasions have been widely overlooked. Considering that Thomas was a Dominican, a member of the Order of Preachers, and that he held the position of Magister in Sacra Pagina at the University of Paris—wherein preaching was a required task—the oversight is remarkable. Though hundreds of medieval sermons are attributed to Thomas Aquinas, the Leonine Commission has identified only 20 as his. This book features all 20 sermons, and one whose authenticity has been debated, translated from the original Latin texts, five of which have never been published before. An introduction and notes accompany the first-ever English translation. Readers will gain insight into the way in which Thomas expressed his exegetical insights in his sermons.The sermons cover an array of topics, among them Advent, the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, the Exaltation of the Cross, Mary, other saints, and ordinary Sundays. Thus, from different angles readers will have a better view of Thomas's spirituality and also of the way in which he translated his theological and spiritual thought into consequences for an authentic Christian life, the religious life, doing good to one's neighbor, and pastoral work.The Academic Sermons will fascinate readers as it presents Thomas's unique style of preaching and how he skillfully communicated the fruits of his contemplation. With this book, Thomas the preacher comes to the fore.

Peter Abelard wrote his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans in the mid-1130s, toward the end of his life, while teaching in Paris. Filled with questions on topics such as redemption, grace, and original sin, the commentary demonstrates the growing interest of urban scholars in applying dialectic to the study of Sacred Scripture. Abelard's analysis of some of these topics contributed to his second condemnation at the Council of Sens in 1140.The commentary is in many respects quite orthodox; Abelard presents himself as a devout Christian seeking to refine Christian teaching and strip away centuries of accretions that had obscured the deeper, original truths. This is particularly the case in the famous question on redemption, in which Abelard demonstrates critical flaws in traditional theories of redemption while affirming the salvific effect of Christ's death. Other passages deal with subjects such as the Trinity and intention—also matters of controversy—and the ethics of love for God and neighbor. Abelard discusses love of neighbor at length no less than three times. Despite its importance and the frequent references made to it by modern scholars, this commentary has never before been translated into English in its entirety. This volume, which includes an extensive introduction, fills this gap, thus providing a needed contribution to medieval scholarship.

Peter the Venerable (d. 1156), the powerful abbot of Cluny, left behind not only extensive letter collections, but also polemical treatises intended to refute contemporary challenges to Christianity. Perhaps the most important is Against the Inveterate Obduracy of the Jews (Adversus Judeorum inveteratam duritiem), written between Against the Saracens (ca. 1150) and Against the Petrobrusians (ca. 1139-41).Against the Inveterate Obduracy of the Jews represents a turning point in medieval anti-Jewish polemics. On the one hand, the polemic's intention—to bring about the conversion of the Jews—is predicated on an assumption that Jews are rational agents who may be persuaded of Christian truths by philosophical argument, empirical evidence, and proper biblical exegesis. On the other hand, Peter also introduced the notion that the Jews' enduring ""blindness"" stems from a persistent strain of bestial irrationality, for which they themselves are responsible. Peter traces this irrationality to the medieval Jews' commitment to the Talmud.Peter is the first medieval Christian author to name the Talmud explicitly. The Jewish convert to Christianity, Petrus Alfonsi, had ridiculed Talmudic folklore in his Dialogue Against the Jews. Peter the Venerable borrowed from but also surpassed Alfonsi's critique, as even his use of the name Talmud indicates. By emphasizing the irrationality of the Jews, Peter cast doubt upon their essential humanity and paved the way toward an increasingly violent treatment of the Jewish minority in medieval Christendom. Perhaps for this reason, Peter's Against the Inveterate Obduracy of the Jews has been popular among modern anti-Semites as well.With this translation, Irven M. Resnick makes the complete work available for the first time in English.

Albert the Great wrote On the Body of the Lord in the 1270s, making it his final work of sacramental theology. A companion volume to his commentary on the Mass, On the Body of the Lord is a comprehensive discussion of Eucharistic theology. The treatise is structured around six names for the Eucharist taken from the Mass: grace, gift, food, communion, sacrifice, and sacrament. It emerges from the liturgy and is intended to draw the reader back to worship. The overall movement of the treatise follows the order of God’s wisdom. Albert begins by discussing the Eucharist as a gift flowing from the goodness of the Trinity. He touches on its relation to redemption and the Church, including a rigorous Aristotelian analysis of Eucharistic change and presence before ending with a discussion of Mass rubrics. The most significant theological emphasis is on the Eucharist as food given to feed the people of God. The style varies to suit the content: certain sections are terse; others are devotional, allowing the reader to enter the saint’s own prayer. Perhaps most characteristically Albertine is an extended meditation that compares the process of digestion to the incorporation of the Christian into the Body of Christ. The mixed style allows this work to integrate rigorous aspects of scholastic thought with a fervent love for God, making On the Body of the Lord one of Albert’s most human as well as one of his most beautiful works. On the Body of the Lord was well received, particularly in areas that came to be influenced by the devotio moderna. By 1484, three separate Latin editions had been printed, two of which were the inaugural works on new presses. In the following century the Protestant Reformation brought an end to its popularity. On the Body of the Lord is here translated into English for the first time.

Even prior to his death on 15 November 1280, the Dominican master Albert of Lauingen was legendary on account of his erudition. He was widely recognized for the depth and breadth of his learning in the philo­sophical disciplines as well as in the study of God, earning him the titles Doctor universalis and Doctor expertus. Moreover, his authoritative teach­ing merited him the moniker Magnus, an appellation bestowed on no other man of the High Middle Ages. This volume contains the first half of Albert the Great’s commentary On Job (on chs. 1–21), translated into English for the first time; a translation of the second half of the work will appear in a subsequent volume of the Fathers of the Church, Me­diaeval Continuation series. Albert completed Super Iob in 1272 or 1274, when he was over seventy years old, at the Dominican Kloster of Hei­lige Kreuz in Cologne, where, as lector emeritus of the Order, he likely lectured on this profound biblical book. Significantly, Albert may have been inspired to produce On Job by his most famous student, Thomas Aquinas, who had written his own Joban commentary, the Expositio su­per Iob ad litteram, while serving as conventual lector at San Domenico in Orvieto from 1261 to 1264. Yet Albert occupies a unique position in the history of the interpretation of Job: he is the first and only exegete in history who explicitly reads the whole book as a debate in the mode of an academic or scholastic disputation among Job and his friends about divine providence concerning human affairs. The Introduction to this volume situates Albert’s On Job—its general approach and key exegetical features—in the broad context of Dominican theological education and pastoral formation in the thirteenth century.

According to 1 Cor 15.44 and 1 Cor 15.52, the human body “is sown an animal body, [but] it will rise a spiritual body” and “the dead will rise again incorruptible, and we will be changed.” These passages prompted many questions: What is a spiritual body? How can a body become incorruptible? Where will the resurrected body be located? And, what will be the nature of its experience? Medieval theologians sought to answer such questions but encountered troubling paradoxes stemming from the conviction that the resurrected body will be an “impassible body” or constituted from “incorruptible matter.” By the thirteenth century the resurrection demanded increased attention from Church authorities, not only in response to certain popular heresies but also to calm heated debates at the University of Paris. William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris, officially condemned ten errors in 1241 and in 1244, including the proposition that the blessed in the resurrected body will not see the divine essence. In 1270 Parisian Bishop Étienne Tempier condemned the view that God cannot grant incorruption to a corruptible body, and in 1277 he rejected propositions that a resurrected body does not return as numerically one and the same, and that God cannot grant perpetual existence to a mutable, corruptible body.The Dominican scholar Albert the Great was drawn into the university debates in Paris in the 1240s and responded in the text translated here for the first time. In it, Albert considers the properties of resurrected bodies in relation to Aristotelian physics, treats the condition of souls and bodies in heaven, discusses the location and punishments of hell, purgatory, and limbo, and proposes a “limbo of infants” for unbaptized children. Albert’s On Resurrection not only shaped the understanding of Thomas Aquinas but also that of many other major thinkers.

Among the intellectuals of the Carolingian Renaissance of the Ninth Century, few are as prolific and influential as Hrabanus Maurus (c.780- 856), a monk and abbot of the monastery of Fulda and then archbishop of Mainz. Most famous to modern authors as the putative author of the hymn "Come, Holy Ghost," Hrabanus was highly esteemed by generations of medieval intellectuals, including Dante who located the archbishop among St. Bonaventure's cohort in the sphere of the Sun.This volume presents for the first time in English translation Hrabanus' pedagogical masterpiece On the Formation of Clergy (De institutione clericorum). Unveiled on the Feast of All Saints in 819, at the dedication of the great Salvator basilica, Hrabanus' work addresses the most important focuses of the Carolingian Renaissance: education and ecclesiastical reform. The treatise promotes a careful balance between classical training and Christian ethics and features the robust pedagogy of the early medieval monastic curriculum. At points it even offers glimpses into the energetic environment of Fulda's classrooms. On the Formation of Clergy also supplies a program for ecclesiastical reform. It provides readers with a primer on ecclesiastical hierarchy and liturgy, providing glosses on church offices and explanations of important church activities.Hrabanus divided his opus into three books. Book One explains Holy Orders. It lays out the distinctions between clergy and laity, enumerates the ranks of the priesthood, describes clerical vesture, and explores the sacraments. Book Two examines priestly life. It considers ascetic disciplines appropriate for priests at different grades, describes expected prayer routines, and identifies important doctrinal teachings and principal liturgical feasts. Book Three treats biblical studies and preaching. It lays out a curriculum for the liberal arts, connects the liberal arts to catechetics and homiletics, and integrates academic study with moral instruction.On the Formation of Clergy was widely read throughout the Middle Ages. Beyond its impact on the Carolingian Renaissance, the treatise guided legal analysis in Gratian's Decretum, supplied examples for Peter Lombard's Sentences, and is cited by theological titans from Rupert of Deutz to Thomas Aquinas to Gabriel Biel.

This is the first English translation of a major work by Rupert of Deutz, arguably the most prolific Christian author since Augustine. During his lifetime, which spanned the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Rupert engaged in controversies on the Eucharist and on predestination and composed works on the Trinity, salvation in Christ, and other major theological topics. An ardent defender of a monastic theology that focused on the interpretation of Scripture and the liturgy, Rupert is well known also for his distinctive hermeneutical approach to the Bible. His Commentary on the Song of Songs builds on the long Hebrew-Christian tradition of allegorical interpretation of this Old Testament book but adds a radically original dimension to it: it interprets the text as a dialogue between Jesus and Mary and unfolds in this context a novel approach to Mary, who is presented as the teacher of the apostles and assumed to have participated in the Apostolic Council, described in Acts 15.Rupert has prefaced his commentary with a letter to Thietmar, bishop of Verden (in northern Germany), as well as a prologue in which he reflects on his experience of being called to perform this exegetical task. The complete translation by Jieon Kim and Vittorio Hösle of this major work (up to now translated only into German) is preceded by an introduction that discusses Rupert's life and works, as well as the history of the interpretation of the Song of Songs, and offers hermeneutical reflections on Rupert's methodology.