I am attempting to compile a bibliography of materials on the role of books and reading in the Reformation period. Rather than provide such a cumbersome list here on the blog, I have decided to play with WorldCat’s lists feature because of its simple “Citations” view for easy import into Zotero. Any you with a preference for either WorldCat or some other discovery tool like Primo please comment on which you prefer and why.

You may view the still-in-progress bibliography here: http://www.worldcat.org/profiles/paul.commonplaces/lists/2906205

Popularity: 9% [?]

For those of you who might be interested, I am speaking at an upcoming mini-conference being held at Southern Seminary, November 2, 2011. I will be speaking on Pierre Viret from a much-expanded form of a paper I delivered at the Refo500 Research Consortium (RefoRC) in Zürich last June, and will be drawing connections between his ecclesiology, his political writings, and his piety in a way that I hope will be helpful.

The conference is being hosted by The Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Many, many, thanks to Dr. Michael A. G. Haykin for the invitation and opportunity.

---

La Réforme: Celebrating the French Reformation on the Quincentennial of Pierre Viret (1511–71), November 2, 2011 9am – 12pm, Heritage Hall, Southern Seminary.

Schedule: [Online]

• 9:00 am – An Introduction to the French Reformation
  Michael Haykin, Professor of Church History, SBTS,
  and the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies
• 9:15 am – Pierre Viret and the Politics of Piety
  Paul Roberts, Director of Patron Services,
  James P. Boyce Centennial Library
• 10:15 am – Break
• 10:35 am – Calvin and his Prayers
  Dustin Benge, SBTS Student
• 10:50 am – The Pastoral Vision of Theodore Beza (1519-1605)
  Shawn Wright, Professor of Church History, SBTS
• 11:50 am – Concluding Words

Popularity: 10% [?]

Perhaps it’s the historian in me, but I love marginalia — when it is done well, at least.  I recently found this phrase written on the title page of a 1573 English copy of Pierre Viret’s Christian Instruction. 

As it turns out, “non est mortale quod opto,” which according to my very weak Latin skills is something akin to “what I desire is not mortal,” was a common phrase used in a variety of inscriptions on chairs, doorposts, and even inserted into books by book collectors. It originates from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Liber II, line 56, which actually reads: “sors tua mortalis, non est mortale, quod optas.”

It comes as Phoebus (the Sun) replies to his son Phaethon’s request to have control of his father’s chariot and wing-footed horses for a day.  Phoebus replied that he was asking too great a favor, one that is unfitting for his strength and youth.  Not even Jupiter, the mighty lord of Olympus can can drive this team of horses. He continues, “sors tua mortalis, non est mortale, quod optas,” that is, “your fate is mortal, what you desire is not mortal.”

So it appears that this quote has for centuries been reappropriated to express the human desire for the divine.  I wonder what the writer of this phrase onto the title page of Viret’s magnum opus intended to convey by this.  Was he commenting on the text, or just following a common practice?

Popularity: 38% [?]

From a recent release:

As of April 1, 2010, the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA) will be available free of charge on the Getty Web site at http://library.getty.edu/bha. Free Web access to BHA is an advantage not only to all traditional users of the database but also to such potential users as institutions in developing countries and independent scholars worldwide, who until now have been unable to afford access to the BHA.

…

BHA on the Getty Web site offers both basic and advanced search modules, and can be searched easily by subject, artist, author, article or journal title, and other elements. To search BHA, please visit, http://library.getty.edu/bha. Note that the database search includes both BHA (covering 1990-2007) and the International Bibliography of Art (IBA), covering the years 2008 and part of 2009. The Répertoire de la litterature de l’art (RILA), one of the predecessors of BHA, with records that cover 1975-1989, will be online by May 1.

Use the BHA at: http://library.getty.edu/bha

Popularity: 30% [?]

St. Augustine famously argued that community is created as people with common affections for something mutually esteemed have opportunity to communicate about and celebrate those common affections. Oliver O’Donovan’s book “Common Objects of Love” was an exposition of this idea for modern culture. This have profoundly shaped my understanding of community, as a pastor and as a librarian. For the latter context, my approach to the library’s contribution to the the seminary where I serve has been transformed and is now driven by attempts to further our constituency’s opportunities to more deeply discover and communicate about those distinctives which drew the community together in the first place. Echoes of Augustine are hard for me to silence as I consider the use of oral history in the study of communities. It seems to me that if Augustine was right, and I believe he was, part of oral history is the attempt to discover what a community considers to be its distinctives and how that community communicates and celebrates those distinctives as a part of building their sense of true community.

This is my mental context when considering, for example, “popular memory as an object of study” (Perks and Thomson, 75ff). Setting aside for now the discussion of dominant memory and public representations of history, to which the implications of Augustine’s arguments are clear, do not Augustine’s precepts on community also bear directly on those more private narratives? One cannot exist totally in isolation from the other. Indeed, they inform and shape each other, mutually contributing to this thing called community. Oral history explores how this happens, prods the private memory for how it differs from and contributes to the public memory. It is in this way that we can avoid treating the object of history as ‘the past’ (Perks and Thomson, 84).

Ethical dilemmas can still be problematic, especially in regard to the interviewer’s relationship to the community whose constituency is being interviewed. The example of feminism is noted in the text, as is the correlation of this dilemma to the ongoing discussion between historians and anthropologists about methodologies. Perks and Thomson also point out that “oral historians have increasingly examined language ‘as the invisible force that . . . gives meaning to historical events.’” (Perks and Thomson, 94). I find this to be a helpful point of discussion. Of course, even the word ‘meaning’ has its own hermeneutical baggage: is meaning determined by the individual, thus allowing for a multiplicity of meanings, or by the community, or by some Other; but the point is still well taken. A community is shaped and developed (present tense) by events of the past by its interpretive communication of those events. An important point for oral histories to explore.

It is not without notice that I write these things on Good Friday, among the most important of days for my Community, and one for which disagreements in ‘meaning’ abound. Meaning is rooted in the author’s intention, and the intended meaning of historical events is determined by the One who sovereignly rules over it. In the case of Good Friday, thankfully, as also of Easter, the meaning is clearly set out for us in the clearest of ways — communicated by He who orchestrated it.

Romans 5:8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (ESV)

Popularity: 30% [?]

A recent announcement from the Internet Archive:

The Internet Archive is pleased to announce an important manuscript, Homiliary on Gospels from Easter to first Sunday of Advent, as the 2,000,000th free digital text. Internet Archive has been scanning books and making them available for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public for free on archive.org since 2005.

“This 1,000 year old book which has only been seen by a select few people, can, with the technology of today, be shared with millions tomorrow,” said Robert Miller, Director of Books of the Internet Archive. “Selecting this title for the 2 millionth text is a fitting tribute to the team of scanners who have been carefully working for the past 5 years.”

…

“Handwritten in Latin by a number of scribes in a script inspired by the court of Charlemagne, this rare and beautiful treasure from the first millennium of Christianity, is one of the gems in the renowned collection of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. The Institute is dedicated to transmitting the inheritance of the Middle Ages to new generations; to deepening our understanding of the life and ideals of Western culture in the time of its first youth,” said Jonathan Bengtson, Director of Library and Archives, University of St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto & Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

View the Homiliary on Gospels from Easter to first Sunday of Advent for yourself.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Can [the] discussion of narrative and historical interpretation remain true to the community of discourse from which it emerges and to our professional vision of what the community should ask of its history? — Ronald J. Grele, “Useful Discoveries: Oral History, Public History, and the Dialectic of Narrative,” The Public Historian, Vol 13, No2 (Spring 1991), pp 61-84

This question is posed by as he ruminates on the implications of Carr’s “potentially democratic and diachronic view of narrative” and Glassie’s view of the “wholeness of a culture” on the possibility of a “theory of presentation” in oral history. I must confess, I am still not sure I understand all of what is being discussed in these ideas and am struggling to find a handle by which to grasp them and their imlications for oral history as a discipline.

I agree with Carr that an awareness of history and the impulse to express it are indeed fundamental aspects of the human experience, and that our interpretation of these things occurs through the lens of past experience, and in doing so I suppose I reveal myself to be “deeply historicist,” though I struggle to see this as Kantian to the same extent as Grele. I recognize in myself some measure of apparent elitism if indeed a recognition of variance in narrative ability is elitist. These are probably the byproducts of my training as an historian.

Grele’s explanation of Glassie’s more “populist” view of history in which folk ideology trumps scholarly analysis is an argument that remains elusive for me. Grele portrays Glassie’s view as one in which scholarly criticism is an ethical and intellectual destruction of the narrative. At this point I am left in the dust and cannot follow the argument. This lack of ability for me renders my judgment on Grele’s discussion of the implications of a sythesis of these two approaches on the theory of oral history a moot point. Communication is indeed framed by human experience. I get that, and I can see — to some extent — how both views have bearing on this. The leap from this to the question at hand, however, is a leap to great for my synthetic abilities.

I think the question is attempting to address how historians and their respective presuppositions about the critical interaction with the objective content of history can successfully communicate with communities, as objects of study, who themselves communicate their history differently and with vastly different presuppositions, experiences, and communicatory abilities. If so, my answer remains a steadfast, “I don’t know.” It is impossible to set aside one’s presuppositions, in my opinion. The best one can do is seek to understand the principles of thought behind perspectives elicited from those with differing presuppositional frameworks, and this is as far as I have come in my thinking on the matter. Hopefully my mind will stretch a bit and understand more clearly the ideas behind the question Grele poses.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Given the upcoming superhero movie, Iron Man, which opens tomorrow, I thought perhaps you might be interested in the Iron Duke, Arthur Wellesley, 1st duke of Wellington. He was born on this day, May 1, in 1769. A native Irishman, the Iron Duke was a British Army Commander who shared in the victory over Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, thus becoming “conqueror of the world’s conqueror.”

Wellesley later became Prime Minister of England as a Tory, during which time he saw the passage of the Catholic Emancipation and even fought (and apparently won) a duel with another duke. He also served as chancellor of Oxford, constable of the Tower, master of Trinity House, and as Queen Victoria’s father figure. Not bad for a man that history has recorded as an “honest and selfless politician.” Britannica Online writes of him:

Some modern historians have objected to the posthumous title Iron Duke on the reasonable grounds that he was neither cold nor hardhearted. Yet he himself often boasted of his iron hand in maintaining discipline. His engaging simplicity and extraordinary lack of vanity were expressed in a favourite saying, “I am but a man.”

Please note: The good folks at Britannica Online have generously granted me a free subscription to their service. Please pay them a visit and consider subscribing — especially if you home-school. This information about the Iron Duke comes from them. More posts of this nature are forthcoming, deo volente.

Popularity: 15% [?]

This is the second in a series of posts on Reginald Pole, Cardinal in the Catholic Church during the Reformations in Europe. His initial sympathies with the spirituali and their views of justification by faith were eclipsed by his allegiance to Rome and his duty to submit to the Tridentine decrees on justification. The Treatie of Justification was found among some of his writings after his death and has been attribute to him with various levels of skepticism. This post begins an analysis of this document.

Read Part 1 here.

---

Method and Influences in The Treatie of Justification

That the Treatie of Justification is scholastic in its orientation is of no particular concern, other than for those of authorship. The work is meticulously organized, as would be expected from a theological treatise of the day, appeals heavily to historical precedent, but also appeals to Scripture. The preface includes the overtly indicative need for the whole of the ensuing argument to be grounded in Scripture, or at least for it to be grounded in the traditional interpretation of the Scripture under the authority of the Church fathers, namely Augustine.(4) In fact, the author words the preface in such a way as to leave no doubt that he is prepared to offer the reader a theology of justification wholly within the traditional Roman Catholic view. If Pole did indeed author the work, this may indicate his adoption of Tridentine theology and is here attempting to distance himself from his former views.

The author seeks to provide a Via Regia as a third alternative to two dangerous interpretations of the Scriptural doctrine of justification. The first of these dangers is a Pelagian over-reliance on works, an attempt at justification without the help and grace of God. The second danger is a Lutheran over-reliance on the grace of God, an attempt at justification without the aid of good works. The proposed Via Regia, the “true and high way,” is subsequently expounded in three aspects: how the believer is made just and righteous; how the believer is restored to justice upon falling; and how the believer may finally attain to salvation and glory.

The Influence of Augustine

Given the heavy reliance on Augustinian precedent exhibited by A Treatie of Justification, some consideration of the Augustinian view is warranted. Let it first be noted that Augustine should not be read anachronistically as attempting to settle issues debated centuries after his death. However, his posthumous support can be, and is, claimed by Protestants and Catholics alike. He can certainly be credited with bringing the doctrine of justification into the fore of medieval theological dialogue and in many ways framed the boundaries of the discussion for such
of his theological posterity. His arguments can therefore be cited by both sides of the Sixteenth Century debate for support since so much can be read into and out of his words. Consider the following:

And so extreme gilt compelling them, they fled to faith. Whereby, they might deserve the mercie of pardone, and helpe of our Lorde, which made heaven and earth, that charitie being, through the holy Ghost powred in their hartes, they might doo with love those things, which were commanded against the concupiscenses and lustes of this world.(5)

An argument can be made for either the Roman Catholic or the various Protestant views from these words. The reason being that Augustine never intended for his words to be proof for a centuries later debate. Again, in a separate work, Augustine writes that the word “justify”(6) in Romans 2:13 (“the doers of the law shall be justified”) might mean “hold just” or “account just” in the sense of forensic imputation.(7) As a whole, Augustine’s theology of justification is largely understood to have included the idea of being made righteous rather than a solely forensic declaration.(8) For the Catholic tradition subsequent to Augustine, therefore, to be justified was to become a righteous person. It is upon this conclusion that the author of A Treatie of Justification seizes and builds his argument.

This is especially evident in the author’s argumentation “that faith excludeth not Charity in
our justification, that is to saie, Faith alone justifieth no man, without the help and woorking of
Charitie.”(9) Augustine similarly wrote that “no faith profiteth, but only that which the Apostle defineth: to wit, that, which woorketh through loove and Charitie: and that the same faith without woorkes, can save no man, either without fier, or by fier.”(10) Though neither were advocating a justification by charity alone, both were advocating a theology of justification (if indeed such nomenclature can be applied anachronistically to Augustine) in which justification includes the restoration of what was lost in Adam: love, faith, hope and all the ethical implications contained therein. Clearly, the modern and largely Protestant bifurcation of justification and sanctification was an alien concept to Augustine, and one rejected by Trent and therefore by the author of the Treatie of Justification.

---

4 A Treatie of Justification goes to often extraordinary lengths to link its argument with historical precedent, and especially with that of Augustine. Indeed, Augustine’s Of Faith and Workes is published together with the Treatie, along with the sections of Trent on justification. Augustine continues to play a large role in the discussion of justification and Roman Catholic and Protestant dialogue. For example, a Joint Ecumenical Commission on the Examination of the Sixteenth-Century Condemnations comprised of Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and even a few Reformed theologians produced The Condemnations of the Reformation Era (1986). The last of four principles of interpretation employed by the Commission in its discussions was, “When interpreting Trent, ‘in case of doubt, the view closest to Augustine must be preferred.’” Cited in Anthony N. S. Lane, Justification by Faith in Catholic-Protestant Dialogue (London: T&T Clark, 2002), 104.
5 Augustine, Of Faith and Workes (Farnborough, Hants., England: Gregg Press Limited, 1967 [1569 reprint]), 22. All quotations from this particular work by Augustine are from the version available to the author of this Treatie, which was also published together with it as an appendix.
6 At this point Augustine is infamously charged with ignorance of the Greek text. His understanding of the term was apparently based on the Latin iustificatio, rather than the Greek original dikaios.
7 Augustine, The Spirit and the Letter, 26:45; J. Burnaby (ed.), Augustine: Later Works. The Library of Christian Classics, vol. 8 (London: SCM Press, 1955) 228f.
8 Augustine’s The Spirit and the Letter appears to proclaim a doctrine of justification by faith, but in later Protestant terminology is more accurately a doctrine of sanctification by faith. See Lane, op. cit., 46.
9 Reginald Pole, A Treatie of Justification (Farnborough, Hants., England: Gregg Press Limited, 1967 [1569 reprint]), 36.
10 Augustine, op. cit., 24.

Popularity: 37% [?]

This is the first of a series of posts on Cardinal Reginald Pole, the theologically schizophrenic Catholic theologian during the 16th Century Reformation. He was initially sympathetic with the Reformational perspective of justification by faith alone, and was placed in a difficult position when the Pope called on him to convene the Council of Trent. The subsequent Tridentine decrees regarding justification forced him to choose between his soteriological positions and his loyalty to Rome. He chose the latter and eventually became Archbishop of Canterbury under Bloody Mary. He never wanted to have to clarify his views, and never wanted the spotlight or a position of leadership. These things were thrust upon him, and the result was a broken man. If only his soteriology had trumped his ecclesiology instead…

---

An uneasy and unsatisfied curiosity remains to the historians of Reginald Pole. At once resolute and timid, confident and diffident, deliberate and painfully reticent, Pole’s bewildering sojourn exhibits the complexity of themes, theologies, and personal pilgrimages that so plagued his conscience. These very inconsistencies, however, are what make Reginald Pole such an appealing subject for dissection. His life, career, and theology beg for a unity which so far has proven elusive to modern attempts at identifying a consistent unifying theme. One recent proposal is that Pole was a man of loyalty.(1) This is certainly true. But where did his loyalties lie and how did he reconcile opposing loyalties? And, perhaps most importantly, why? Pole was clearly a man of opposing loyalties. The crux of contemporary scholarship lies in the reasons for his choosing one loyalty over another. Indeed, this has become the foremost point of debate and the central theme for biographers.

Identifying Pole’s theology of justification in particular is a microcosm for the difficulty in understanding Pole in general. He was quite obviously reticent to express his views in written form, and did so only after much pressure from his superiors. The Tridentine statements on justification were overwhelmingly burdensome for the Cardinal, and both he and the Council grew increasingly unable to accept his nuanced positions. Neither side was satisfied with Pole and his constant reluctance to be assertive and unwavering. Eleven years after Pole’s death, a document entitled A Treatise of Justification (1568) and was attributed as having been “Founde among the writinges of Cardinal Pole.” The title page, nor anywhere else in the treatie, does not directly attribute the work to Pole’s authorship, but it clearly gives just such an impression.

The Treatie was unashamedly the offspring of Trent is its expression of the doctrine of justification. The title page indicates that the writings of Pole in which this work was found were actually “remaining in the custodie” of M. Henrie Pyning, the lately deceased secretary to the Cardinal. The clear implication is that it was intended to be received by the readership as a work of Pole, and to promote his deference to the Church of Rome over his former, and now condemned, views of justification.

Recent scholarship, however, has rightly questioned whether A Treatie of Justification was indeed authored by Pole. There would appear to be much circumstantial and critical evidence for this conclusion, the most obvious of which is that the work is not actually and directly attributed to him. Moreover, the form of the treatise is not typical for Pole in that it is overtly scholastic in its presentation as well as in its methodology.(2). It was more typical for Pole as a matter of both presentation and method, to be exegetical and to derive his argument primarily from the Scriptures. There are, however, several departures from the Tridentine theology of justification which, though not explicated at any length in the work itself, indicate some measure of uncomfortable discord with the Tridentine conclusions. It can reasonably be asserted, therefore, that although Pole possessed the work, it may not be directly attributable to his authorship with complete confidence.(3) However, attributing the authorship to Pole lends veracity to the notion that his ecclesiology did indeed trump his soteriology.

The work may be an expression of his fidelity to Rome, and therefore an explication of the aspects of the Tridentine theology of justification with which he agreed. One would not expect him to expound his now condemned perspectives on justification since his purpose may have been to illustrate his submission to Rome and not just an avoidance of the Inquisition. Incidentally, no reasonable theories have been proffered by those who tend toward the denial of the veracity of Pole’s authorship.

Be this as it may, the Treatie of Justification has not been adequately summarized and criticized in its relation to the Tridentine decrees, at least not in modern scholarship. This essay then, shall endeavor to provide a written comparison of the Treatie to the Tridentine soteriology, the question of authorship not withstanding. Though the various historians of Pole and Trent have their respective, and probably justified, conclusions on the dubious authorship of the Treatie, no significant work is in print which examines the content of the Treatie as its primary focus, even though such a comparison is not an overly burdensome task. This paper endeavors to meet that void.

---

1. Dermot Fenlon, Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy: Cardinal Pole and the Counter Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 283 “. . . loyalty, in the end, was his most signal virtue.”

2. This reason is most persuasive according to both Fenlon, op. cit., 198, and also to J. Fischer, “Essai Historique sur les Idees Reformatrices Des Cardinaux Jean Pierre Carafa (1476–1559) et Reginald Pole (1500–58),” Ph. D. Diss. (Paris: University of Paris, 1957), 364 n53. Although Fischer rejects Pole’s authorship of the work, he does argue that his views of justification were in reality not different from those of the Council. Fenlon disagrees quite strongly with Fischer at this point.

3. Fenlon rightly argues that for this reason the Treatie on Justification is not directly helpful in elucidating Pole’s theology of justification. Fenlon then turns his attention to “certain positive indications that Pole [did alter] his ideas on justification, so as to bring them into line with the decision of the Council.” Clearly, by 1554 he had indeed adopted the Tridentine soteriological decrees.

Popularity: 45% [?]