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The weekly work of the seminar will be conducted in meetings
in the Seminar Rooms at No. 1 Newnham Terrace, belonging to Darwin College,
from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., three days per week:
Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. For
those who want it, lunch will be served in the college dining room at 1 p.m.,
immediately following the daily meeting of the seminar. On occasions when an excursion has been planned
to St. John's College or the Fitzwilliam Museum, the seminar will adjourn after
an hour at Darwin College and reassemble at these other sites, which are all
within walking distance of Newnham Terrace.
Two field trips are planned for the current seminar, the first to
Hardwick, which is only five miles from Cambridge, and the second to sites in
Suffolk (Hessett and Stanningfield) whose parish churches have different wall
paintings of trees of the vices. The
second trip will be combined with an afternoon visit to the nearby city of Bury
St. Edmunds.
In addition to attending the sessions of the seminar, the
participants will use the facilities of the Cambridge University Library to
work on their individual research projects which will be chosen in consultation
with the director of the seminar. The outcome of some of the research
of the 2004 NEH Seminar was presented in three sessions at the 40th
International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University,
Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 5-8, 2005. The
director will work actively to make it possible for the 2006 seminar
participants to present the results of their research in a similarly
appropriate conference setting.
During each week, the work of the seminar will focus on a
series of readings (identified in the Preliminary Bibliography, I.a-e) that
grew out of a particularly important cultural location in the history of the
sins. Sections of these texts, with
English translations where necessary, will be distributed to the participants
at the opening of the seminar. During
each week, the work of the seminar will emphasize one or more of the sins, not
to the exclusion of others, but so as to concentrate the analysis of the
connection between the specific context for that week and the content of the
sin or sins. In this way, the
flexibility of the category of moral thought will emerge as it adjusts to
changes in cultural contexts.
1. Week One: Desert and Monastery
(July 17-21).
Visiting faculty: Prof. Edward Peters
The opening session of the seminar on Monday will be taken
up with individual meetings between the director and the participants in order
to discuss the independent project that each participant will work on for the
summer and the anticipated outcomes.
The first formal session will briefly characterize the kinds
of interactions between contexts and content that the seminar will deal with in
greater detail for the next weeks. For
the early monks, sloth and tristitia (sadness) were particularly
characteristic sins, responsive to the situation of monks engaged in the
intensive work of meditation. These sins
will be the focus of the first week, illustrated by texts by Evagrius and
Cassian, in particular, with Gregory the Great serving as a transition to the
work of the next week (Preliminary Bibliography, I.a, II.d). Prof. Peters' recent work on palaeopsychology
will fit perfectly into the analysis of depression and listlessness seen in
early monastic experience.
July 17:
Introduction and short presentation by each participant of his/her research
project; individual meetings between the director and each participant in order
to discuss the independent project and the anticipated outcomes. In the evening:
opening banquet hosted by Trinity University.
July 19: Sloth
and sadness (tristitia) as
constructions of early monastic thought, documented in excerpts from Evagrius
Ponticus, Praktikos, and John Cassian, De institutis coenobiorum; visit by Prof. Edward Peters to
discuss the vices and palaeopsychology. Assigned reading: excerpt of Siegfried Wenzel,
The Sin of Sloth (Preliminary
Bibliography, II.b). In the
afternoon: tour of the city of
Cambridge.
July 20:
Ambiguity and the vices: the slippage in moral categorization as documented in
excerpts from Gregory the Great's Moralia
in Iob. Assigned reading: English
translation of Richard Newhauser, "Zur Zweideutigkeit" (Preliminary
Bibliography, II.a).
2. Week Two: Court (July
24-28).
Visiting faculty: Prof. David Ganz
The focus of the seminar this week will be the medieval
court as a factor in defining aristocratic morality. In pride, medieval moral thought identified a
sin considered particularly characteristic of noblemen and represented
pictorially in outlandish clothing.
Wrath, however, was also frequently attributed to the nobility, though
as we will see by reading the works of Prudentius, Martin of Braga, and Alcuin
(Preliminary Bibliography, I.b), the potential ambiguity of moral designations
can also be seen here. Wrath, in fact,
was a defining characteristic of masculinity (Barton in Anger's Past – Preliminary Bibliography, II.b), and as much praised
for its God-like qualities as condemned for its irrationality. The seminar will explore the ways in which
the tensions here respond to tensions in the court, especially in the
Carolingian period. During this week,
the seminar will visit the parish church of St. Mary in Hardwick, near
Cambridge. The church has the remains of
a wall painting on the theme of the vices and will clarify for the participants
questions surrounding the teaching of penitence. Professor Ganz, an expert on the Carolingian
church, will open the discussion of penitence and the vices.
July 24: Wrath
conceived as a defining feature of the nobility, documented in excerpts from
Prudentius, Psychomachia, and Martin
of Braga, De ira. Assigned reading: Barton in Anger's Past (Preliminary Bibliography,
II.b)
July 26: Pride
as a construction designed to enlist noblemen in the project of moral renewal
during the Carolingian Renaissance, documented in Alcuin, Liber de virtutibus et vitiis; visit by Prof. David Ganz to discuss
penance in the Carolingian church. Assigned reading: excerpt of Richard Newhauser,
The Treatise on Vices
and Virtues in Latin and the Vernacular (Preliminary Bibliography, II.a).
July 27: Field
trip to the parish church of St. Mary in Hardwick, near Cambridge to view the
remains of a wall painting on the theme of the vices; lunch at The Blue Lion, a
local pub.
3. Week Three: University (July
31-August 4).
Visiting faculty: Dr. István Bejczy, Dr. Miriam Gill
With the growth of the universities one can note a tendency
to refashion moral thought as a theology of virtue rather than an analysis of
sin, as can be observed fully formed in the sections of Aquinas's Summa
theologiae the seminar will read and which Dr. Bejczy will emphasize in his
lecture. Partially as a pedagogic
device, and partially as a presentation of mental acuity, parallel lists of
sins and their virtuous opponents (often depicted as trees) were drawn up by
authors like Hugh of St. Victor and Alan of Lille (Preliminary Bibliography, I.c). At the same time, the importance
of intention central to Peter Abelard's work, in particular in understanding
envy, raises the question that anthropologists ask about what right is invoked
to allow an interpreter to say s/he has seen the truth of another's inner state
(Newhauser, "Zur Zweideutigkeit," Preliminary Bibliography, II.a). Under the tutelage of Dr. Gill,
the seminar will visit churches in Hessett and Stanningfield in Suffolk, both
of which have wall paintings with trees of vices used to instruct the
congregations in moral theology.
July 31: The
development of parallel lists of sins and their opposing virtues (often
depicted as trees) drawn up by authors like Conrad of Hirsau, Liber de fructu carnis et spiritus, Hugh
of St. Victor, De quinque septenis,
and Alan of Lille, De virtutibus et de
vitiis et de donis spiritus sancti; visit by Dr. István Bejczy to discuss
intentionality and the development of a theology of virtue in the twelfth
century. Assigned reading: excerpt from Alasdair
MacIntyre, After Virtue (Preliminary Bibliography, II.a).
August 2: The
status of envy in academic theology and the question of who is allowed to
determine the nature of another's inner state, documented in excerpts from
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae.
Assigned reading: excerpt of Bonnie Kent, Virtues of the Will (Preliminary Bibliography, II.a).
August 3: Visit to
parish churches in Hessett and Stanningfield (Suffolk), organized by Dr. Miriam
Gill, to view wall paintings with trees of vices used to instruct the
congregations in moral theology; lunch in Bury St. Edmunds.
4. Week Four: Church and
Pastoralia (August
7-11).
Visiting
faculty: Prof. Siegfried Wenzel, Dr. Richard Beadle,
Dr. Sylvia Huot
The material for this week's work will allow the seminar to
examine the class and gender distinctions implicated in some of the ways the
sins of the flesh were presented to penitents, especially in the popular work
of William Peraldus and vernacular treatises in English and French, in
particular Guillaume de Deguilleville,
Le pelerinage de vie humaine (Preliminary
Bibliography, I.d). Both lords and
peasants drank to excess and had erotic experiences, but they did not get drunk
or have intercourse in the same way.
Both Dr. Beadle and Dr. Huot will help the seminar focus on whose social,
political, and gender interests were served by insisting on these
distinctions. Both speakers will also
present the participants with manuscripts with vernacular pastoral works in
Cambridge libraries. During Dr. Beadle's
presentation, the seminar will meet in the Old Library at St. John's College,
one of the outstanding examples of college library architecture in Cambridge. During Dr. Huot's presentation, the seminar
will meet in the Fitzwilliam Museum.
Prof. Wenzel, who is an authority on preaching in England in the Middle
Ages, will help the seminar focus on homiletic techniques in the presentation
and teaching of the vices in the later Middle Ages.
August 7: The
construction of gluttony among the sins of the tavern as a vice of the
peasantry, documented with excerpts from Guillaume de Deguilleville, Le pelerinage
de vie humaine; visit to the Fitzwilliam Museum, organized by Dr. Sylvia Huot,
to view the representation of the Seven
Deadly Sins in a copy of the Pelerinage and
the miniatures referring to this text that appear in the Hours of Isabelle
Stuart (Fitzwilliam Museum, MS. 62). Assigned reading: Vincent-Cassy
in In the Garden of Evil (Preliminary
Bibliography, II.a)
August 9: Class
and gender distinctions in the construction of the sin of lust, documented with
excerpts from William Peraldus, Summa virtutum ac vitiorum; visit to the Old Library, St.
John's College, organized by Dr. Richard Beadle, to view English and Latin
manuscripts on the vices. Assigned
reading: Joan Cadden, " 'Nothing
Natural Is Shameful' " (Preliminary Bibliography, II.b)
August 10:
Late-medieval penitential manuals and the developing casuistry of the vices,
documented with excerpts from Chaucer's "The Parson's Tale"; visit by
Prof. Siegfried Wenzel to discuss sermons on the vices in English preaching of
the late Middle Ages. Assigned
reading: John Bossy, "Moral
Arithmatic" (Preliminary Bibliography, II.a).
5. Week Five: City (August 14-18).
Visiting faculty: Dr. Nigel Harris
The work of this week will return the seminar to the topic
of sloth, but now conceived in connection with, or at a distance to, economic
activity. Work, as a profit-making
activity in late-medieval cities, will be the focus of this week's seminar
study, both in its relationship with leisure and in its problematic connection
with avarice. Both Chaucer and Dante, in
particular, are conscious of the ways in which the wealth of cities is the
result of the acquisitive urge. They can
both condemn avarice, but they also evince ways of valorizing the search for
profit as necessary for the functioning of the city and essential to their
literary well being (Preliminary Bibliography, I.e). Dr. Harris will focus the attention of the
seminar on the ways in which urban politics in the Austrian/Bavarian area
influenced the production of a civic ethics that also emptied avarice of some
of its onerousness. The seminar will
close with presentations by the participants during the Wednesday and Thursday
sessions.
August 14: The
construction of sloth and avarice as sins of commercial withdrawal or excess,
documented with reference to Chaucer's "The Shipman's Tale," Dante's
Inferno, and the reception of the German Etymachia; visit by Dr. Nigel
Harris to discuss the ways in which urban politics in the Austrian/Bavarian
area influence the production of a civic ethics that also empties avarice of
some of its onerousness. Assigned
reading: Lester Little, "Pride Goes
before Avarice" (Preliminary Bibliography, II. b).
August 16:
Presentation and Discussion of the Initial Results of the Research by the
Participants.
August 17:
Presentation and Discussion of the Initial Results of the Research by the
Participants. In the evening: closing banquet.
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