Important Personalities (11th-16th Century) Flashcards
Bernard of Clairvaux
The great late 11th and early 12th century Cisterican monk, writer, spiritual and mystical author. Of aristocratic parentage and good education and possessing wonderful gifts of oratory, he exemplifies the Cistercian and Benedictine model of “the love of learning and the desire for God.” He also opposed the developing scholastic model as exemplified by Abelard’s dubitando et inquaerendo (“one must doubt and question”). [Ozment pp.87-9; Source Reading: “On the Love of God”]
Peter Waldo/Valdes
a well-to-do and educated merchant of Lyon in southern France who had a conversion experience in 1170 that led him to attempt giving up all his possessions, preaching to all comers in the open air, living a simple “apostolic” and gospel life, living by begging. He was in many ways the fore- runner and counterpart to Francis. But he also rejected transubstantiation and other “non-biblical” doctrinal teachings, which put him into conflict with the clerical hierarchy. With his stress on following biblical norms, he either commissioned or took part in the first translation of the NT (from Latin) into a modern language (the local vernacular of French-Provencal). His followers, “the Poor of Lyon/Christ,” otherwise known as the Waldensians (see “Important Heresies,” below), continued his cause. [The name “Peter” may be a later attribution; his original name may have been “Valdes,” of which “Waldo” is a corruption.]
Joachim of Fiore
Joachim was a Cisctercian monk from southern Italy (Calabria) who wrote a series of works in the late 12th century which presented the history of the world in terms of a Trinitarian dispensation, three ages with characteristic ideals and supporting institutions (Ozment: “a revolutionary view of history”): first was the age of God the Father, a time of the patriarchs and of the patriarchal family; the second age of the Son is born from that of the Father (following Trinitarian relations) and is priestly-clerical in character, with the hierarchical church; the soon-dawning age of the Spirit is monastic in character, mystical/charismatic and egalitarian. (His view was taken up by the Spiritual Franciscans, who understood Francis to be the herald of this new age of the Spirit.) He experienced a conversion to radical discipleship during a personal crisis on a pilgrimage to the holy land; after time as a hermit, he joins the Cistericans. Having founded an observant order of the Cistercians (at the Monastery of Fiore/Flora) known as the Fiorentines, Joachim was patronized by several popes. Having submitted his writings to Pope Innocent III in 1200, he dies before judgment passed. Though Aquinas refuted his view of history, and though later condemned in a local French council, he is placed in paradise by Dante, and all considered him an exceptionally holy individual. [Ozment pp.103-114]
Francis of Assisi
Like his near-contemporary Peter Waldo/Valdes, a conversion experience set him on the path of itinerancy, poverty, preaching, begging, and living the “apostolic life.” His submission to the Church (and urging his followers to such as well) was what enabled his acceptance by the hierarchy, the “Order of the lesser Brothers” (Ordo friarorum minorum – O.F.M.)—“the Franciscans”— being the result of his following. [Ozment, pp.98-102]
Catherine of Siena
14th century Dominican “tertiary” who had mystical and ascetic tendencies from youth, dedicated to social work as well as silence and fasting, subsequently traveling through northern Italy advocating reform and renewal done through “total love of God,” eventually becoming an ambassador of Sienna to the Avignon papacy. Her many letters made her influential among many in the hierarchy; she helped persuade Pope Gregory XI to return the papacy to Rome from Avignon in 1377. She attempted in the rest of her short life (died at age 33 in 1380) to heal the subsequent Great Schism, to no avail. Her literary/theological activity enabled her to be canonized as a “doctor of the Church” in 1970.
Meister Eckhart
14 century Dominican teacher, spiritual advisor, writer, and mystic. Influenced by and further influencing many of the Beguines associated with the Dominicans as tertiaries, he developed an intellectual mysticism based on a “breakthrough” to a unitive state with God which characterized our original being. Though condemned (unjustly, in the view of many) as heretical, his writings continued to influence much German mysticism. [Ozment, pp.127-134]
Petrarch
14th century founding father of Italian Renaissance humanism, by becoming a master of classical Latin and Italian, advocating powerfully for a rhetorically-based educational ideal in place of scholastic disputation. Devoutly Augustinian in faith, his evangelical piety was centered on that of the Confessions, and his many letters (many to ancient Romans and Christians) and writings profoundly affected the spread of this new birth of imitation of the classical style of communication and persuasion, in distinction from scholastic and monastic attitudes.
Gerhard Groote
14th century founder of the “Brethren of the Common Life,” otherwise known as the Modern Devotion, a major spiritual-renewal movement of the later middle ages, aimed at piety and service in small communities (or even just groups), reviving the original spirit of the canons regular and the early spirit of the mendicants, but without formal Rule, so were more like the mendicant tertiaries; they were Bible-orientated in piety, tending toward mysticism, active in
charitable service, and had some influence and cross-over with both humanism and some early Protestant reformers. Its most distinctive product was Thomas à Kempis’ Imitation of Christ, still considered a spiritual classic.
