New Books in Medieval History

A sharply observed study of the representations of education found in Anglo-Saxon texts, Irina Dumitrescu’s The Experience of Education in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Cambridge University Press 2018) invites readers to recognize just how often educational encounters crop up throughout the Anglo-Saxon corpus. By attending to the ways that violence, deceit, suspicion, sexual desire, concealed identities, and various temptations modulate the relationship between teacher and student, and the ways that shocking and moving stories fix knowledge in the mind and demonstrate relationships—even grammatical relations—in unforgettable ways, The Experience of Education in Anglo-Saxon Literature offers readers interested in the history of pedagogy an exploration of the relationships between Anglo-Saxon students and teachers that tangles with both scholarly and popular expectations of the medieval mind.Addressing Anglo-Saxon uses of the culture of late antiquity, especially the form of the dialogue, The Experience of Education in Anglo-Saxon Literature reveals scenes heavily invested in the tensions between teacher and student, portrayals of engagement between parties that complicate relations of power and creation of knowledge. In the texts under consideration, the lesson for the reader (or hearer) grows from the conflict, rather than concord, between student and teacher. Focused on spiritual education and literacy, often closely linked in Anglo-Saxon texts, Dr. Dumitrescu’s work considers the Anglo-Saxon interest in negative emotions like fear, curiosity, erotic longing, and mistrust; and the potential cognitive uses of these emotions as they emerge in the faceoffs, desert journeys, revenants, riddles, letter battles, sea voyages, and challenges to memory that provide the narrative substance of Anglo-Saxon writing.Rereading the standard texts of the Anglo-Saxon corpus, The Experience of Education in Anglo-Saxon Literature demonstrates the ways in which texts like The Life of St. Mary of Egypt speak to broader medieval interests in learning, and drives toward a grasp of Anglo-Saxon beliefs about the purposes of teaching. Chapters on Solomon and Saturn I, Aelfric Bata’s Colloquies, and Andreas follow an approach to Bede’s Ecclesiastical History which suggests that the common focus on Caedmon’s Hymn draws attention away from the John of Beverly miracle: a story at the crossroads between miraculous Latin learning and English poetry in a mode of vernacular liberation.Treating urges and passions as sparks that give the learning process a necessary heat, even as they threaten to scorch it beyond utility, The Experience of Education in Anglo-Saxon Literature sketches a subtle and sophisticated approach to human emotion and cognition in the literature of Anglo-Saxon England.A researcher, writer, editor, and educator, Carl Nellis digs in archives and academic libraries for the critically-acclaimed Lore Podcast. Studies on both sides of the Atlantic left him with a taste for the tangled colonial history that threads the culture of the Middle Ages into today’s United States. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What role, if any, do mythological texts play in philosophical discourse?  While modern Hindu Studies scholars are becoming increasingly attuned to the extent to which Indian narratives encode ideology, Sucharita Adluri’s Textual Authority in Classical Indian Thought: Ramanuja and the Vishnu Purana (Routledge, 2014) explores the extent to which the great medieval Hindu thinker Rāmānuja himself looked to the Viṣṇu Purāṇa (a 1st-4th century narrative work extolling the glories of the great god Viṣṇu) to bolster his theistic stance on the nature of truth.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In his sparkling new book, “Mysticism” in Iran: The Safavid Roots of a Modern Concept (University of South Carolina Press, 2017), Ata Anzali, Assistant Professor of Religion at Middlebury College, offers a sweeping and brilliant intellectual history of the concept of ‘Irfan in medieval, early Modern, and modern contexts. Combining a mesmerizingly layered analysis of previously unexplored manuscripts with close attention to shifting social and political contexts, Anzali shows, with dazzling nuance, the processes and dynamics that informed the institutionalization of ‘Irfan in Iran. This nimbly written book will be of considerable interest to scholars of Muslim intellectual history and Religious Studies. In this conversation, we talked about the key themes, theoretical interventions, and arguments of this book.SherAli Tareen is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His academic publications are available here. He can be reached at sherali.tareen@fandm.edu. Listener feedback is most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In his thrilling and sparkling new book, Medieval Empires and the Cultures of Competition: Literary Duels at Islamic and Christian Courts (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), Samuel England, Assistant Professor of Arabic at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, analyzes with remarkable nimbleness the interaction of literature, politics, and power in medieval imperial settings. Effortlessly traversing from Buyid Baghdad to Spain and Italy, England shows ways in which literary competition, especially in poetry, pollinated imperial visions and fissures of political sovereignty. Literature and literary duels performed in the space of the imperial court, England convincingly argues, were critical to assemblage of medieval imperial sovereignty. This finely written book will interest and delight scholars of literature, religion, politics, and history-students of Arabic will especially appreciate the copious exhibition of wonderful Arabic poetry throughout the text.SherAli Tareen is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His academic publications are available here. He can be reached at sherali.tareen@fandm.edu. Listener feedback is most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What sounds like the title of a Hollywood movie is actually a result of meticulous historical research. Frances Courtney Kneupper‘s new book The Empire at the End of Time: Identity and Reform in Late Medieval German Prophecy (Oxford University Press, 2016) analyzes apocalyptic prophecies of the late medieval Holy Roman Empire in terms of their genesis, perception, authorship and individual impacts in specific contexts. Kneupper furthermore illustrates the dynamics between the Church and Clergy and prophetic thought and shows how these texts shaped German identity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today’s episode, I am joined by Joshua Parens to discuss his innovative and engaging book Leo Strauss and the Recovery of Medieval Political Philosophy (University of Rochester Press, 2016). While one may easily confuse the book with something narrow or parochial—who is Leo Strauss and of what relevance is medieval political philosophy?—our discussion proved to be anything but. In arguing against the commonly held belief that Medieval Philosophy was simply a synthesis of Greek thought with the Bible, Parens reads the works of Alfarabi and Maimonides, two of the most influential pre-modern philosophers, through the works of Leo Strauss, the foremost political thinker of the 20th century. This subtle layering makes for an exciting braided text, cross-pollination between epochs that contextualizes these thinkers on their own terms as well as genealogically.For Parens, the “theological-political problem” at the core of Leo Strauss’ work is neither strictly one of reason or of revelation but rather at the heart of metaphysics—of being and the relationship between morality and philosophy. In working out Strauss’ unfolding thinking on this problem the reader is guided through competing visions of the study of medieval philosophy and the manner in which Strauss re-centered the work of political thought from a scholastic setting to that of the Islamic world. At its heart lies the question of what Leo Strauss means by “political philosophy,” and thereby a long history from Plato through Maimonides and Alfarabi to the present day.Joshua Parens is Professor of Philosophy and Dean of the Braniff Graduate School of Liberal Arts at the University of Dallas. He edits the series Rochester Studies in Medieval Political Thought.Moses Lapin is a graduate student in the departments of History and Philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He writes, shipwrecked, from a desert island somewhere in the Mediterranean. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Abu Nasr Al-Farabi (c. 872 – c. 950) a philosopher who wrote on politics, metaphysics, and logic as well as mathematics, psychology, and music, was known by Jews, Christians, and Muslims as the “second teacher,” second only to Aristotle. Although little of his biography is known, we have many of his works that were instrumental in preserving and adapting the Greek philosophical heritage in an Islamic idiom in the Middle Ages. Until the work of Leo Strauss and his students, Alfarabi was largely a forgotten figure to modern scholars.Today’s podcast is a discussion with Alexander Orwin about his new book Redefining the Muslim Community: Ethnicity, Religion, and Politics in the Thought of Alfarabi (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), a synthetic study across Alfarabi’s disparate oeuvre that weaves a thematic treatment of notions such as language, nationhood, religion, and politics with an analysis of each of his works in turn. Using the term umma (literally “nation,” although inclusive of terms like civilization or community) as a keyword, Orwin shows how Alfarabi strove to recast the Islamic umma as a community in both a religious and cultural sense. This not only provides a gateway into understanding Alfarabi’s works more broadly, but spotlights his competing loyalties to religion and philosophy. In rethinking the political thought of Plato and Aristotle and demonstrating that their vision of politics was not rendered obsolete by the Islamic faith, Alfarabi, and thereby Orwin, engages in a discourse around nationhood that precedes nationalism and comes to terms with diversity across ethnic, religious, and state boundaries.Alexander Orwin is an assistant professor of Political Science at Louisiana State University.Moses Lapin is a graduate student in the departments of History and Philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, he will be interning this summer at Yoyodyne. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In her recent monograph, Assembling Shinto: Buddhist Approaches to Kami Worship in Medieval Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2017), Anna Andreeva focuses on a complex network of religious sites, figures, and texts to help us better understand the way in which Japanese deities were worshipped in medieval Japan. In so doing, she illuminates the medieval stages of a process that led to what was later called Shinto, and adds to the growing body of scholarship that challenges the relatively recent idea that Shinto is simply the native religion of Japan, unchanged since ancient times.To tackle such a grand undertaking, Andreeva focuses on a mountain in central Japan called Mt. Miwa as well as on Ise, the location of the Ise shrines and the abode of the most important imperial deity. Beginning with the significance of Mt. Miwa as a religious site for pre-ninth-century Japanese rulers, Andreeva charts the decline of this mountain’s importance during the eighth-to-twelfth centuries and the subsequent revival of the site during the thirteenth century by non-elite practitioners of esoteric Buddhism stationed at small Miwa temples and by the Saidaiji lineage under the direction of the Buddhist monk Eison and his disciples. Continuing chronologically, she then shows how the thirteenth-century revival led some time later to the emergence of the so-called Miwa-ryu Shinto, an eclectic tradition which spread to different regions of Japan and whose influence continued until the early nineteenth century.Central to Andreeva’s project is the world of Japanese esoteric Buddhist thought and ritual, for it was in this setting that the Japanese deities could be transformed from beings characterized by ignorance and desire into embodiments of Buddhist awakening. Throughout the book Andreeva addresses many religious elements, Japanese and not, that were incorporated into esoteric Buddhist traditions active at Mt. Miwa and Ise. These include the incorporation of deities from ancient Japanese mythology into medieval legends and esoteric ritual, serpentine and dragon imagery, initiation rites modeled on the enthronement of a king, pilgrimage, and the use of royal symbolism. In addition, she provides a number of detailed descriptions of rituals and translations of liturgical and exegetical works.The book’s topic is very complex: Andreeva has opted out of the usual approach, which would be to trace the development of a single figure, text, idea, or institution. This makes the project far more difficult for the researcher, but has the invaluable advantage that it allows the reader to perceive and appreciate the fascinating networks that show how medieval Japanese religion actually existed and developed on the ground. Beyond its importance for understanding Japanese Buddhist intellectual history, esoteric Buddhist thought and ritual, and the development of Shinto, the book also serves as an example of how to study the intricate social, economic, and geographical networks that lie behind the development of religious ideas, practices, and institutions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In his recent monograph, Ritualized Writing: Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), Bryan D. Lowe examines eighth-century Japanese practices that ritualized writing, or, in other words, conceptually and practically set sutra-transcription apart from other forms of writing. Drawing on a rich trove of eighth-century documents that describe everything from donation sums and sources, to the types of paper used, to the purification rites practiced prior to transcription, to records of which scribes had borrowed or returned their brushes, Lowe provides us not only with an expert analysis of the religious meaning of various aspects of sutra-copying, but also with a detailed description of the fascinating ritual and material culture of public and private scriptoria and intimate glimpses into the lives of the patrons and laborers of these institutions. More broadly, Lowe’s book asks us to rethink our assumptions about ritual, for in the case studies found within we see ritual used not simply symbolically–as a representation of a pre-extant cultural or political system–but rather as a social and ethical practice that generates new communal identities and offers opportunities for individual cultivation. Ritual, Lowe shows, is not just a result, but also a cause.In the first part of the book Lowe looks at the ritualization of writing. Here we learn of the way in which sutra-copying and purification rites executed prior to copying are simultaneously ethical, soteriological, and ritually efficacious. That is, copying a sutra in the ritually correct and pure way was conceived as morally upright, but also as an act that would bring about the rituals intended results and by which one would make soteriological progress. In this part of the book Lowe also introduces a type of prayer text called a ganmon, and shows how these texts drew on Buddhist and non-Buddhist language to create a uniquely East Asian genre that was unquestionably Buddhist even as it incorporated norms and imagery from non-Buddhist sources.In the second part of the book we learn about the ways in which ritualized writing was produced by certain forms of social and institutional organization, but also about the ways in which this practice in turn affected those forms of organization. Lowe discusses grassroots fellowships of pious friends that were formed for the purpose of commissioning sutra-transcriptions, and also examines private and public scriptoria, which were highly bureaucratic. A key theme in this part of the book, and indeed throughout this work, is that taking a closer look at the networks of people and institutions involved in the production of ritualized writing calls into question the stark divisions between state, aristocratic, clan, and popular Buddhism, divisions that are often assumed in research on this period. Many of the fellowships that Lowe examines, for instance, were created by individuals who had strong ties to the state and to certain clans, but whose intentions, while in part political and aimed at forming new social ties between groups, were also deeply personal, pious, and religious.In the third part of the book Lowe provides us with two carefully crafted microhistories. First, we read about the career of a scriptorium worker who served as a scribe, proofreader, and administrator, and find that rather than simply being a cog in a sutra-copying bureaucracy, through his work this individual developed his own religious, literary, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hussein Fancy’s book The Mercenary Mediterranean: Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (University of Chicago Press, 2016) begins with the description of five Muslim jenets, or cavalrymen, journeying through Spain in 1285 to serve as soldiers for the crown of Aragon. As Fancy explains, these men were not outliers, but just a few of the many thousands who were employed by successive Aragonese kings over the course of the 13th and 14th centuries, and their service challenges many of our long-held assumptions of the divide between the Christian and Islamic worlds during the Middle Ages. For the kings of Aragon, hiring jenets gave them a powerful force of light cavalry that could be used to foster their imperial ambitions, while the jenets themselves saw their service for Christian kings as fully compatible with their tradition of jihad. By describing their relationship, Fancy’s work highlights one of the many ties that linked Christian Aragon to Muslim North Africa, two regions that are usually treated separately rather than part of the interconnected Mediterranean world that emerges from his pages. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices