Lay Piety and Religious Discipline in Middle English Literature

Abstract

In late-fourteenth-century England, the persistent question of how to live the best life preoccupied many pious Christians. One answer was provided by a new genre of prose guides that adapted professional religious rules and routines for lay audiences. These texts engaged with many of the same cultural questions as poets like Langland and Chaucer; however, they have not received the critical attention they deserve until now. Nicole Rice analyses how the idea of religious discipline was translated into varied literary forms in an atmosphere of religious change and controversy. By considering the themes of spiritual discipline, religious identity, and orthodoxy in Langland and Chaucer, the study also brings fresh perspectives to bear on Piers Plowman and The Canterbury Tales. This juxtaposition of spiritual guidance and poetry will form an important contribution to our understanding of both authors and of late medieval religious practice and thought.

Ciudad y filantropía: políticas urbanas y fundaciones de origen bancario italianas

“…Witkowsky y Bauerkämper (2016:3) ponen de manifiesto la dificultad de abordar una definición univoca y compartida, tratándose de "un concepto multifacético, ambivalente e incluso ambiguo", aunque destacan que las acciones filantrópicas tienen por objetivo la mejora del bienestar de los seres humanos y el alivio de la miseria. De hecho, a partir de la Edad Media, se puede detectar una cierta asonancia entre caridad cristiana y espíritu filantrópico, cuando la iglesia animaba a los ricos a hacer limosnas a los pobres o a los desvalijos (Las Heras y Cortajarena, 2014/1978, de modo que los bienes materiales que se donaban se convirtieran directamente en capitales espirituales (Rice, 2008). Efectivamente, según Sanglard (2005), la filantropía puede entenderse como la laicización de la caridad cristiana, que a partir del siglo de la Ilustración se convirtió de virtud religiosa a virtud social.…”

Kissing Matter: John Lydgate’s Lyric On Kissing at Verbum caro factum est and the Democratization of Contemplation

“…Whether encouraged or not by Carthusians and Birgittines alike, the contemplative aspirations of the laity could not be denied, as the creation of chantries as well as household chapels, and the growth in religious fraternities and guilds demonstrate (see Rice 2008;Harvey 2006;Barron 1985). New English devotional practices and liturgies, such as the devotion to the Name of Jesus, emerged so to satiate the laity's curiosity for contemplative spirituality 1 .…”