Robert E. Lerner

Refreshment of the Saints: The Time after Antichrist as a Station for Earthly Progress in Medieval Thought

For St. Augustine the saeculum —the sum total of earthly human existence — was malignant. Not only was it so, he thought, since Adams fall, but it would remain so until the Last Judgment. Since the Fall this world was no place in which to rejoice; only otherworldly liberation could be had ‘from this life of misery, a kind of hell on earth.’ Historical events, aside from the Incarnation, remained for Augustine ‘a chaos of human sin divided by acts of divine power.’ With Christ, history had entered into its sixth and last earthly age and there was no hope for any greater earthly future. In the City of God (20.7) Augustine rejected as a ‘ridiculous fable’ the view that the thousand-year kingdom of Christ in Revelation (20.1-6) would be a future earthly kingdom, interpreting it instead as a figure for the life of the Church in the present. ‘There are no verbs of historical movement in the City of God, ’ Peter Brown assures us, ‘no sense of progress to aims that may be achieved in history.’

New Light on The Mirror of Simple Souls

How does one measure whether a “Speculum” is of sufficiently broad interest to be worthy of an article in Speculum? I refer to Marguerite Poretes Mirror of Simple Souls, which I believe amply meets the test. Since the publication of the Middle French text of the Mirror in 1965, two translations have appeared in modern French, two in Italian, one in German, one in Spanish, and one in Catalan. Two translations are also available in English. Both have remained in print since their initial appearance in the 1990s; one is owned by 576 libraries worldwide, and the other by 160, to which might be added 279 copies of an earlier English translation made from the Middle English version of the Mirror. A rough count of secondary works on Marguerite published in the last twenty-five years adds up to some one hundred books and articles. Quite intriguing is the diverse use made of Marguerite and her work outside of the academy. In 2001 an “installation opera” about Marguerite based on a libretto by the noted poet Anne Carson was performed in New York City; the following year a “Requiem für Marguerite Porete” with “dance and musical interpretation” was performed in Karlsruhe. (In 2004 the present author was called in as a consultant for a film script, Marguerite, although it apparently has never gone into production.) A Web site promoting Eastern wisdom explains that Marguerites “works illumine the nature of the soul in language which is remarkably reminiscent of Vedic teaching on the Atma, the individual soul.” And yes, she has been unofficially canonized, for another Web site informs readers about the “martyrdom” of “Saint Marguerite of Hainaut called la Porète.”

The Image of Mixed Liquids in Late Medieval Mystical Thought

“It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.” Whatever relevance this gnomic saying of Jorge Luis Borges may have to universal history, it can serve as the motto for the following investigation of the relationship between mysticism and the Free Spirit heresy in the later Middle Ages. Scholars are accustomed to regard the socalled heresy of the Free Spirit as sui generis , an aberrant and scandalous religious deviation preached by nihilists, lechers, and megalomaniacs, but this interpretation is not borne out by the sources, as we will see in the story of a simile.

Illuminated propaganda: the origins of the ‘Ascende calve’ pope prophecies

Abstract The illuminated prophecies depicting fifteen popes from Nicholas III onward (incipit: ‘Ascende calve’) were conceived to advance the cause of southern-French Franciscan Spirituals. They were created between c. 1318 and c. 1340, most likely between 1328 and 1330. The early iconography and commentary by John of Rupescissa are particularly helpful for interpreting the original meaning of the prophecies.

Gentile of foligno interprets the prophecy "woe to the world", with and edition and english translation

If a diary of a prominent late-medieval religious figure were to be discovered that revealed his thoughts about the present and the future, such a discovery would seem to be too good to be true. But if labeled differently, such a document does exist: not a diary, but a prophetic commentary. The commentary by the fourteenth-century Augustinian friar Gentile of Foligno on the prophecy “Ve mundo in centum annis,” has never been the subject of sustained attention. Consequently the following presentation aims to examine it carefully within the context of the authors career and to show how it reveals some intriguing working habits as well as Gentiles firm hopes for the advent of angelic popes and ecclesiastical renewal.

A return to the evidence for Marguerite Porete’s authorship of the Mirror of Simple Souls

ABSTRACT In 1946 Romana Guarnieri identified Marguerite Porete as the author of the Mirror of Simple Souls. Since a small number of historians has recently expressed doubts about this identification, a fresh look at the evidence is warranted. This article first returns to Guarnieri’s announcement and subsequent statements on the subject in order to highlight both their strengths and their weaknesses. It then re-assesses the evidence, paying particular attention to new findings that have emerged since 1946. Although Guarnieri’s treatment of the evidence contained flaws, she was all but certainly correct in identifying Marguerite Porete as the author of the Mirror of Simple Souls. New, precise, linguistic analysis and fresh manuscript discoveries strengthen this case.

Rewriting Magic: An Exegesis of the Visionary Autobiography of a Fourteenth-Century French Monk by Claire Fanger (review)

carrying the penitent’s cross, the abjurer had to make her or his way to a port of embarkation at rapid pace; then she or he was forced to stand in the sea and appeal for passage to the Continent. Once in the port of Wissant (the first destination of most of Jordan’s abjurers), the exile had to find a way of creating a new life for herself or himself. Most, it seems, probably failed to do so and found their end in the large cemetery that abutted the town. A few succeeded, and even fewer managed to make a return to their homeland. The consequence of returning to one’s homeland without permission could be catastrophic. A woman who returned to Paris after exile was buried alive beneath the gallows of the bailiwick of St-Maur-des-Fosses, an act that was done in full view of the public pour encourager les autres.