World of the Middle Ages Exam 2 – Flashcards

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sanctus (sancta)
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A saint; person who lives a holy and virtuous life. A person who is officially proclaimed as having lived a life of heroic virtue.
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Compostela
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Location of the shrine of Saint James the Great, now the city's cathedral, as destination of the Way of St. James, a leading Catholic pilgrimage route originated in the 9th century.
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Canterbury
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The city is a local government district of Kent in the UK. The city's cathedral became a major focus of pilgrimage following the 1170 martyrdom of Thomas Becket.A journey of pilgrims to his shrine served as the frame for Geoffrey Chaucer's 14th-century classic The Canterbury Tales. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the primate of the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican Communion owing to the importance of St Augustine, who served as the apostle to the pagan Kingdom of Kent around the turn of the 7th century.
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Thomas Becket
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Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 to his murder in1170. He is venerated as a saint and martyr by both the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion. He engaged in a conflict with Henry II, King of England over the rights and privileges of the Church and was murdered by the King's men in the Canterbury Cathedral. After his death, he was canonized by Pope Alexander III.
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Monasticism (origins)
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An institutionalized religious practice or movement whose members, commonly celibate and universally ascetic, separate themselves from society by living as hermits or anchorites (religious recluses). The word is derived from the Greek monachos (living alone), but a large proportion of the world's monastics live in cenobitic communities. The term implies celibacy, living alone in the sense of lacking a spouse, which is a historically crucial feature of monastic life.
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Eremitical life
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A type of monastic institution including early Christian hermits or anchorites. Emphasizes on living alone, pursuing highly regularized contemplative life etc. Also known as the Desert Theology of the Old Testament, the heremitic life is a form of monastic living with secluded prayer-focused life.
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St. Antony
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(250-357) A Christian monk from Egypt revered since his death as a saint. He is also known as the Father of All Monks, a member of the Desert Fathers and the first to go into the wilderness (270 AD). He anticipated the Rule of Benedict by 200 years and engaged himself and his disciples in manual labor. Accounts of him enduring supernatural temptation during his sojourn in the Eastern Desert of Egypt inspired the subject of the temptation of St. Anthony in Western art and literature.
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hagiography
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The body of literature describing the lives and veneration of Christian saints, including acts of martyrs, biographies of saintly monks, bishops and virgins, and accounts of miracles connected with saints' tombs, relics or icons. It has been written from the 2nd century to instruct readers and glorify the saints. The importance of hagiography derives from the vital role that the veneration of the saints played throughout medieval civilization in both eastern and western Christendom. Second, this literature preserves much valuable information not only about religious beliefs and customs but also about daily life, institutions, and events in historical periods for which other evidence is either imprecise or nonexistent.
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Cenobitic monasticism
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A monastic tradition that stresses community life. The community belongs to a religious order and the life of the cenobitic monk is regulated by a religious rule, a collection of precepts; form of monasticism based on "life in common" (Greek koinobion), characterized by strict discipline, regular worship, and manual work. St. Pachomius was the author of the first cenobitic rule, which was later developed by St. Basil the Great (c. 329-379). Cenobitic monasticism was introduced in the West by St. Benedict and became the norm of the Benedictine order.
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St. Pachomius
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(290-346) Founder of Christian cenobitic monasticism; author of the first cenobitic rule. This rule was the first instance in Christian monastic history of the use of a cenobitic, or uniform communal, existence as the norm, the first departure from the individualistic, exclusively contemplative nature that had previously characterized religious life. Pachomius, moreover, instituted a monarchic monastic structure that viewed the relationship of the religious superior's centralized authority over the community as the symbolic image of God evoking obedient response from man striving to overcome his egocentrism by self-denial and charity. By the time he died, Pachomius had founded 11 monasteries, numbering more than 7,000 monks and nuns.
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Desert Fathers
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Early Christian hermits, ascetics, and monks who lived mainly in the Scetes desert of Egypt beginning around the third century AD. Sayings of the Desert Fathers is a collection of the wisdom of some of the early desert monks and nuns. The most well known was Anthony the Great, who moved to the desert in 270-271 AD and became known as both the father and founder of desert monasticism. By the time Anthony died in 356 AD, thousands of monks and nuns had been drawn to living in the desert following Anthony's example.
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John Cassian
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Ascetic, monk, theologian, and founder and first abbot of the famous abbey of Saint-Victor at Marseille. His writings, which have influenced all Western monasticism, themselves reflect much of the teaching of the hermits of Egypt, the Desert Fathers. Cassian's most influential work is his Institutes of the Monastic Life (420-429); this, and his Collations of the Fathers (or Conferences of the Egyptian Monks), written as dialogues of the Desert Fathers, were influential in the further development of Western monasticism. Cassian is noted for his role in bringing the ideas and practices of Christian monasticism to the early medieval West.
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Benedict of Nursia
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(480-550) Founder of the Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino and father of Western monasticism; the rule that he established became the norm for monastic living throughout Europe. In 1964, in view of the work of monks following the Benedictine Rule in the evangelization and civilization of so many European countries in the Middle Ages, Pope Paul VI proclaimed him the patron saint of all Europe.Benedict had begun his monastic life as a hermit, but he had come to see the difficulties and spiritual dangers of a solitary life, even though he continued to regard it as the crown of the monastic life for a mature and experienced spirit. His Rule is concerned with a life spent wholly in community. Benedict's supreme achievement was to provide a succinct and complete directory for the government and the spiritual and material well-being of a monastery. The abbot, elected for life by his monks, maintains supreme power and in all normal circumstances is accountable to no one, but he must answer for his monks, as well as for himself, at the judgment seat of God.
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Monte Cassino
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St. Benedict of Nursia established his first monastery, the source of the Benedictine Order, here around 529. Upon his death in 543, he was buried in a tomb with his sister, St. Scholastica. By the 11th century, Montecassino had become the wealthiest monastery in the world. Today, Montecassino is a working monastery and continues to be a pilgrimage site by virtue of the suriviving relics of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica.
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Opus Dei
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Latin for Work of God, is the official set of prayers "marking the hours of each day and sanctifying the day with prayer", also known as the Liturgy of the Hours which forms the basis of prayer within Christian monasticism. It is composed of eight offices; this arrangement of the Liturgy of the Hours is attributed to Saint Benedict. However, it is found in Saint John Cassian's Institutes and Conferences,[12] which describe the monastic practices of the Desert Fathers of Egypt. (Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, Compline. )
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Double Monastery
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A monastery combining a separate community of monks and one of nuns, joined in one institution. The trend of early female monasticism began in the fifth century with the founding of a female monastery in Marseille by John Cassian in 410. Women abbesses were often in charge of these.
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St. Patrick
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Patron saint and national apostle of Ireland, credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland and probably responsible in part for the Christianization of the Picts and Anglo-Saxons. His works include the Confessio, a spiritual autobiography, and his Letter to Coroticus, a denunciation of British mistreatment of Irish Christians. The most popular legend is that of the shamrock, which has him explain the concept of the Holy Trinity, three persons in one God, to an unbeliever by showing him the three-leaved plant with one stalk.
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Irish Monasticism
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Monastic spirituality came to Britain and then Ireland from Gaul, by way of Lérins, Tours, and Auxerre. Its spirituality was heavily influenced by the Desert Fathers, with a monastic enclosure surrounding a collection of individual monastic cells.[76] Monasteries tended to be cenobitical in that monks lived in separate cells but came together for common prayer, meals, and other functions.
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Columba
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An Irish abbot and missionary credited with spreading Christianity in Scotland at the start of the Hiberno-Scottish mission. He founded the important abbey on Iona, which became a dominant religious and political institution in the region for centuries. He is the Patron Saint of Derry, and is remembered today as a Christian saint and one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland. Saint Columba is one of the three chief saints of Ireland, after saint Patrick and saint Brigit of Kildare. Also a leading figure in the revitalisation of monasticism.
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Columbanus
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An Irish missionary notable for founding a number of monasteries from around 590 in the Frankish and Lombard kingdoms, most notably Luxeuil Abbey in present-day France and Bobbio Abbey in present-day Italy. He is remembered as a key figure in the Hiberno-Scotish mission, or Irish missionary activity in early medieval Europe. Taught a Celtic monastic rule and Celtic penitential practices for those repenting of sins, which emphasized private confession to a priest, followed by penances levied by the priest in reparation for the sins. The Rule of Saint Columbanus embodied the customs of Bangor Abbey and other Celtic monasteries. Much shorter than the Rule of Saint Benedict, the Rule of Saint Columbanus consists of ten chapters, on the subjects of obedience, silence, food, poverty, humility, chastity, choir offices, discretion, mortification, and perfection.
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William the Conqueror
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Duke of Normandy (as William II) from 1035 and king of England from 1066, one of the greatest soldiers and rulers of the Middle Ages. He made himself the mightiest noble in France and then changed the course of England's history by his conquest of that country. He left a profound mark on both Normandy and England and is one of the most important figures of medieval English history. His personal resolve and good fortune allowed him to survive the anarchy of Normandy in his youth, and he gradually transformed the duchy into the leading political and military power of northern France. His support for monastic reform and improved episcopal organization earned him respect from church leaders and further strengthened his hand in the duchy. His conquest of England in 1066 altered the course of English history. He imposed a new aristocracy on England that was French in language and culture and very much involved with affairs in Normandy and France.
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Normandy Conquest
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The military conquest of England by William, duke of Normandy, primarily effected by his decisive victory at the Battle of Hastings (Oct. 14, 1066) and resulting ultimately in profound political, administrative, and social changes in the British Isles. William's claim to the English throne derived from his familial relationship with the childless Anglo-Saxon King Edward the Confessor, when Edward died in January 1066 he was succeeded by his brother-in-law Harold Godwinson. The Norwegian King weakened King Harold's forces but was killed at the Battle of Stamford Bridge; days later William landed in southern England and his army successfully defeated and killed Harold in the Battle of Hastings.
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Domesday survey
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A manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William the Conqueror. The survey's main purpose was to determine what taxes had been owed during the reign of King Edward the Confessor. Divided into two parts, the manuscript contains details of the taxable goods in the land (no record of London, Winchester and other tax-exempt lands) down to number of livestock. No survey approaching the scope and extent of Domesday Book was attempted again in Britain until the 1873 Return of Owners of Land.
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Hugh Capet, Capetians
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The first King of the Franks of the House of Capet from his election in 987 until his death. He succeeded the last Carolingian king, Louis V. Capetians were also called the House of France, or the "third race of Kings" preceding the Merovingians ad Carolingians. The Capetian dynasty, itself a derivative dynasty from the Robertians, ruled the Kingdom of France from 987 to 1328. The direct succession of French kings, father to son, from 987 to 1316, of thirteen generations in almost 330 years, was unique in recorded history.
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Reconquista
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A series of campaigns by Christian states to recapture territory from the Muslims (Moors) in medieval Spain and Portugal, who had occupied most of the Iberian Peninsula in the early 8th century. After a failed invasion of Muslim Spain in 778, in 801 Charlemagne captured Barcelona and eventually established Frankish control over the Spanish March.
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Castile
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Traditional central region constituting more than one-quarter of the area of peninsular Spain. Castile's northern part is called Old Castile and the southern part is called New Castile. The region formed the core of the Kingdom of Castile, under which Spain was united in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. An attempt in 1383-85 by Castile to annex Portugal by force failed, but in 1412 a Castilian prince, Ferdinand I, was successfully placed on the Aragonese throne, partly as a result of Castilian financial support and military force. The Spanish part of the Kingdom of Navarre was annexed by Castile in 1512, thus completing the formation of modern Spain.
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Aragon
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Sancho III (the Great) of Navarre left to his third son, Ramiro I, the small Pyrenean county of Aragon and established it as an independent kingdom. To this mountain domain Ramiro added the counties of Sobrarbe and Ribagorza to the east. By 1104 Aragon's kings had doubled its size by conquests southward toward the Ebro River. Zaragoza, a major city controlled by the Almoravids, fell to Alfonso I of Aragon (1104-34) in 1118, and it soon became the capital of the kingdom of Aragon. The reconquest of present-day Aragon from the Muslims had been completed by the late 12th century. In 1179 Aragon reached an agreement with the neighbouring Christian kingdom of Castile under which those parts of Spain remaining in Muslim hands were divided into two zones—one for each kingdom to reconquer.
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communes
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Towns in medieval western Europe that acquired self-governing municipal institutions. During the central and later period of the Middle Ages most of the towns west of the Baltic Sea in the north and the Adriatic Sea in the south acquired municipal institutions that have been loosely designated as communal. Most were characterized by the oath binding the citizens or burghers of a town to mutual protection and assistance. The general importance in European history of the medieval commune lies perhaps in the social and political education acquired by the citizens through their exercise of self-government. The life of all the towns was characterized by a struggle for control, as a result of which the wealthiest and most powerful citizens were usually more or less successful in monopolizing power. Within the communes oligarchy was the norm.
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Ottonians
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The Ottonian dynasty (German: Ottonen) was a Saxon dynasty of German monarchs (919-1024), named after its first Emperor Otto I, but also known as the Saxon dynasty after the family's origin in the German stem duchy of Saxony. The Ottonian rulers were successors of the Carolingian dynasty in East Francia. Henry the Fowler was arguably the founder of the imperial dynasty when East Francia under the rule of the last Carolingian kings was ravaged by Hungarian invasions. Otto I, Duke of Saxony upon the death of his father in 936, was elected king within a few weeks. He continued the work of unifying all of the German tribes into a single kingdom, greatly expanding the powers of the king at the expense of the aristocracy. The defeat of the pagan Magyars earned King Otto the reputation as the savior of Christendom and the epithet "the Great".
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Papal reform
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The hierarchical and sacerdotal structure of the late medieval and modern church owes much to the 11th-century reformers. A number of the movements for ecclesiastical reform that emerged in the 11th century attempted to sharpen the distinction between clerical and lay status. By the middle of the 11th century, Henry III appointed a candidate of his own, Pope Clement II, and thus removed the papal office from the influence of the local Roman nobility, which had largely controlled it since the 10th century. A series of Popes promoted Gregorian Reform, named after Gregory VII, restructuring the hierarchy, placing the papal office at the head of reform efforts and articulating a systematic claim to papal authority over clergy and, in very many matters, over laity as well.
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Lay investiture
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Conflict during the late 11th and the early 12th century involving the monarchies of what would later be called the Holy Roman Empire (the union of Germany, Burgundy, and much of Italy) France, and England on the one hand and the revitalized papacy on the other, on the issue of the right of rulers to invest and install bishops and abbots with the symbols of their office. Bishops and abbots were nominated and installed by rulers in a ceremony known since the second half of the 11th century as investiture. Gregory VII eventually banned completely the investiture of ecclesiastics by all laymen, including kings.
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Gregory VII
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One of the greatest popes of the medieval church, who lent his name to the 11th-century movement known as the Gregorian Reform or Investiture Controversy. Gregory VII was the first pope to depose a crowned ruler, Emperor Henry IV (1056-1106). With this revolutionary act, Gregory translated his personal religious and mystical convictions regarding the role of the papacy into direct action in the world at large. He was canonized by Pope Paul V in 1606.
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Henry IV
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Duke of Bavaria, German king (from 1054), and Holy Roman emperor (1084-1105/06), who engaged in a long struggle with Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII) on the question of lay investiture, eventually drawing excommunication on himself and doing penance at Canossa (1077). His last years were spent countering the rebellion of his sons Conrad and Henry (the future Henry V). He, after defeating the Saxons, violated the agreement of renouncing his right of investiture. He then ignored the Pope's letter of warning and on the same day deposed the pope and persuades an assembly of 26 bishops to Worms to refuse obedience to the pope. This reaction turned the problem of investiture to a fundamental dispute between church and state, and Gregory replied by excommunicating (dethroning) Henry and absolving king's subjects from oaths of allegiance. Henry eventually did penance but he had given up the king's traditional position of authority that was superior to that of the church and relations between the church and state were changed forever.
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Concordat of Worms 1122
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Compromise arranged in 1122 between Pope Calixtus II (1119-24) and the Holy Roman emperor Henry V (reigned 1106-25) settling the Investiture Controversy, a struggle between the empire and the papacy over the control of church offices. It had arisen between Emperor Henry IV (1056-1106) and Pope Gregory VII (1073-85). The concordat marked the end of the first phase of the conflict between these two powers.
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Innocent III
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The most significant pope of the Middle Ages. Elected pope on January 8, 1198, Innocent III reformed the Roman Curia, reestablished and expanded the pope's authority over the Papal States, worked tirelessly to launch Crusades to recover the Holy Land, combated heresy in Italy and southern France, shaped a powerful and original doctrine of papal power within the church and in secular affairs, and in 1215 presided over the fourth Lateran Council, which reformed many clerical and lay practices within the church. King John of England refused to accept an archbishop , and Innocent finally excommunicated the king for his obstinacy in 1209. However, a settlement was concluded between Innocent and John in 1213. In return for Innocent's support, John subjected his kingdom to the pope and swore homage and fealty to him.
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Fourth Lateran Council
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In November 1215, 412 bishops obeyed the pope's summons and gathered in Rome at the Church of St. John Lateran. The council issued 72 canons, which dealt with heresy and the new Crusade, imposed new restrictions on the Jews, and legislated other matters of belief and practice. The purpose of the council was twofold: reform of the church and the recovery of the Holy Land.
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Canon law
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Body of laws made within certain Christian churches by lawful ecclesiastical authority for the government of both the whole church and parts thereof and of the behavior and actions of individuals. In a wider sense the term includes precepts of divine law, natural or positive, incorporated in the canonical collections and codes.
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Papal decretals
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An answer of the pope when he has been appealed to or his advice has been sought on a matter of discipline. Not necessarily general laws of the Church, but frequently the pope ordered the recipient of his letter to communicate the papal answer to the ecclesiastical authorities of the district to which he belonged; and it was their duty then to act in conformity with that decree when analogous cases arose.
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Boniface VIII
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pope from 1294 to 1303, the extent of whose authority was vigorously challenged by the emergent powerful monarchies of western Europe, especially France. Among the lasting achievements of his pontificate were the publication of the third part of the Corpus Juris Canonici, the Liber Sextus, and the institution of the Jubilee of 1300, the first Holy Year. The violent attack on Boniface VIII marks the first open rejection of papal spiritual dominance by the rising national monarchies of the West and, above all, by France. Boniface's assertions of papal plenitude of power did not go beyond those of his predecessors in the 13th century. They were in fact more moderate than, for instance, those of Innocent IV and were in any case well within the range of the opinions gradually elaborated in the schools of theology and canon law in the period between the age of Gregory VII, the great 11th-century reformer, and that of Boniface.
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Abelard
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French theologian and philosopher best known for his solution of the problem of universals and for his original use of dialectics. He is also known for his poetry and for his celebrated love affair with Héloïse. He produced further drafts of his Theologia in which he analyzed the sources of belief in the Trinity, and also a book called Ethica or Scito te ipsum ("Know Thyself"), a short masterpiece in which he analyzed the notion of sin and reached the drastic conclusion that human actions do not make a man better or worse in the sight of God.
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Problem of universals
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Abelard provoked bitter quarrels with two of his masters, Roscelin of Compiègne and Guillaume de Champeaux, who represented opposite poles of philosophy in regard to the question of the existence of universals. Roscelin was a nominalist who asserted that universals are nothing more than mere words; Guillaume in Paris upheld a form of Platonic realism according to which universals exist. Abelard in his own logical writings brilliantly elaborated an independent philosophy of language. While showing how words could be used significantly, he stressed that language itself is not able to demonstrate the truth of things (res) that lie in the domain of physics.
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Sic et Non
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His reading of the Bible and of the Fathers of the Church led him to make a collection of quotations that seemed to represent inconsistencies of teaching by the Christian church. He arranged his findings in a compilation entitled Sic et non ("Yes and No"); and for it he wrote a preface in which, as a logician and as a keen student of language, he formulated basic rules with which students might reconcile apparent contradictions of meaning and distinguish the various senses in which words had been used over the course of many centuries.
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scholasticism
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the system of theology and philosophy taught in medieval European universities, based on Aristotelian logic and the writings of the early Church Fathers and having a strong emphasis on tradition and dogma. scholasticism places a strong emphasis on dialectical reasoning to extend knowledge by inference, and to resolve contradictions. scholasticism began as an attempt at harmonization on the part of medieval Christian thinkers: to harmonize the various authorities of their own tradition, and to reconcile Christian theology with classical and late antiquity philosophy, especially that of Aristotle but also of Neoplatonism.
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