Papers by Robert Shaffern
The aim of this course is twofold: (1) to provide a topical examination of some contemporary issu... more The aim of this course is twofold: (1) to provide a topical examination of some contemporary issues in medieval historiography and (2) to do so by exploring medieval ideas about death and the afterlife. Using saints, relics, magic, miracles, ghosts, visions, possessions, etc. as a point of departure, we will examine the role of the divine, demonic, and supernatural in the religious beliefs and daily life of people in the Middle Ages. We will discuss various practices of commemoration, mourning, and burial as well the doctrine of resurrection, visions of heaven and hell, ghostly apparitions, and the invention of Purgatory. Most importantly, we will attempt to understand what these beliefs reveal about the medieval world and the social context that gave them meaning.
The aim of this course is twofold: (1) to provide a topical examination of some contemporary issu... more The aim of this course is twofold: (1) to provide a topical examination of some contemporary issues in medieval historiography and (2) to do so by exploring medieval ideas about death and the afterlife. Using saints, relics, magic, miracles, ghosts, visions, possessions, etc. as a point of departure, we will examine the role of the divine, demonic, and supernatural in the religious beliefs and daily life of people in the Middle Ages. We will discuss various practices of commemoration, mourning, and burial as well the doctrine of resurrection, visions of heaven and hell, ghostly apparitions, and the invention of Purgatory. Most importantly, we will attempt to understand what these beliefs reveal about the medieval world and the social context that gave them meaning.
Ablasskampagnen des Spätmittelalters
Everyone knows, or thinks he knows, that the hucksterism of Johann Tetzel (1465-1519), the Domini... more Everyone knows, or thinks he knows, that the hucksterism of Johann Tetzel (1465-1519), the Dominican preacher of indulgence, occasioned Martin Luther's great rebellion against Catholic Christianity. Tetzel, who had had previous commissions as an indulgence preacher, had been commissioned to preach the indulgence to raise funds for the new St. Peter's Basilica then being built in Rome. Tetzel's arrival in Thuringia merely set off the ever-impulsive Luther to make public his arguments against not only indulgences, but traditional Christianity generally. Luther had been entertaining his rejection of the traditional teaching on justification for at least eighteen months already. The Augustinian, never one to mince words, not only attacked pardons, but Tetzel as well. Luther's personal and moral condemnation of Tetzel became standard fare in later centuries. There is, however, very little evidence that Tetzel either violated church law or behaved inappropriately in his preaching of the indulgence, something that Nikolaus Paulus highlighted in his 1899 study of Tetzel's career.¹ Information about Tetzel's activities and offices for the period 1503-1509 abounds. During that period, he preached indulgences on behalf of the Teutonic Order of Knights in Livonia, who had received permission from Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503) for a jubilee pardon to be preached for three years in the ecclesiastical provinces of Magdeburg, Bremen and Riga. For three years Tetzel preached another indulgence, granted by Pope Julius II, in the provinces of Cologne, Mainz and Trier, beginning in 1506. Unfortunately, virtually nothing is known regarding his career for the crucial six years between 1510 and 1516. In any event, by Tetzel's lifetime, bishops and popes had been granting indulgences since the eleventh century; after about a century of these grants, scholars began to comment upon their power and efficacy in commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (in the case of theologians) and the Decretum and Decretals (in the case of canon lawyers). Tetzel himself served as inquisitor (another office in which Dominicans had long served disproportionately); thus did his superiors recognize his mastery of church teaching. That a mendicant friar was named to preach the indulgence for St. Peter's was also quite usual; from their very origins, the mendicants had vested interests in pardons, whether as preachers or as dispensers.² Dominicans had been preaching
Promissory Notes on the Treasury of Merits
The Catholic Historical Review
The Catholic Historical Review
The Historian, Mar 22, 2006
Journal of Medieval History, 1996
Indulgences, which were remissions of temporal penalty for sin, were one of the most popular reli... more Indulgences, which were remissions of temporal penalty for sin, were one of the most popular religious practices of the later Middle Ages. Famous as the occasion for the Protestant Reformation, the abuses connected with the popularity of indulgences are well-documented, but to focus on abuse, as so many histories have done, is to miss the insight into the religious culture that the study of indulgences affords. The proliferation of indulgences can instead be attributed to the imagery and sensibilities in medieval Catholicism, which the pastoral methods of the mendicant friars systematised, popularised, and employed to serve the ecclesiology of papal monarchy.
Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, 2001
... She is more mature than Sarah, wiser than Rebecca, more fertile than Leah, more graceful than... more ... She is more mature than Sarah, wiser than Rebecca, more fertile than Leah, more graceful than Rachel, more devout than Anna, purer than Susanna, more courageous than Judith, and more attractive than Edissa.”25 Indeed, the union of the pope and the Roman church was ...
The Catholic Historical Review
History: Reviews of New Books, 2011
Church History, 1992
By the thirteenth century, Latin Christians had been dispensing and collecting indulgences for tw... more By the thirteenth century, Latin Christians had been dispensing and collecting indulgences for two centuries. Though indulgentia was a relatively late term, and first the favorite of thirteenth-century Dominican theologians, remissions of temporal penalty for sin had been granted since the eleventh century, whether they were known as remissiones or relaxationes, the two most popular terms of eleventh- and twelfth-century ecclesiastics. Bishops granted partial indulgences for visitations of holy places. Partial indulgences remitted a fraction of all penalty incurred through sin. Contributions to pious works, such as church, hospital, or bridge constructions, were also rewarded with indulgences. Other prelates granted indulgences until Lateran IV. The popes granted both partial and plenary indulgences (those which remitted all penalty for having sinned). They granted partial indulgences for much the same reasons as other bishops. Plenary indulgences were almost exclusively granted to ...
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Papers by Robert Shaffern