Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378-1417
256 pages | 14 illustrations/2 maps | 6 x 9 | 2006
ISBN 978-0-271-02749-4 | cloth: $45.00 sh
Paperback edition is not available
"Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski tells the story of the Great Schismnot as a political or ecclesiastical event, but rather as a disturbingcrisis profoundly felt by ordinary Christians at all levels of society.Her innovation is to focus on what she calls 'the imaginaire,' emotionalresponses to the division of Christendom expressed in visions, letters,poetry, prophecies, and artistic representations. Blumenfeld-Kosinskiwrites with a real sympathy for her subjects, who emerge as flesh-and-bloodhumans struggling to make sense of a profound crisis that threatensto undermine their faith in the clergy. No book more vividly tellsthe story of the Great Schism or brings together a more fascinatingset of characters and texts from the period. I can think of no finerintroduction to the workings of the minds of medieval people thanPoets, Saints, and Visionaries." —Laura Ackerman Smoller,University of Arkansas at Little Rock
"Many scholars have claimed that the two principal kinds ofmedieval visions, the 'experience-based' religious and the 'literary-poetic'ones have to be examined together, but up to this moment no suchanalysis has been done. With an impressive tour de force and a smart,enjoyable narrative, Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski examines the commonmotifs and the peculiar metaphors of saintly, prophetic, and poeticvisionaries during the period of the Great Schism. This specificcontext also allows her the exploration of the different lobbiesand pressure groups promoting and using those visions. It also givesan opportunity for a witty, incisive analysis, reaching back to theexperiences of a previous schism in the twelfth century, with Hildegardof Bingen and Elisabeth Schönau taking stands on it, and thengoing into details with Birgitta of Sweden, Catherine of Siena, Philippede Mézières, Christine de Pizan, and several otherfascinating prophets, visionaries, mystics, and poets, exploringthe limits of our imaginary. This book is the first to analyze thisensemble together, and its perspicacious observations will be thestarting point of any future research on this subject."—GaborKlaniczay, Central European University
For almost forty years, from 1378 to 1417, the Western Church wasdivided into rival camps headed by two—and eventually three—competingpopes. The so-called Schism provoked a profound and long-lastinganxiety throughout Europe—an anxiety that reverberated throughoutclerical circles and among the ordinary faithful. In Poets, Saints,and Visionaries of the Great Schism, Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinskilooks beyond the political and ecclesiastical storm and finds anoutpouring of artistic, literary, and visionary responses to oneof the great calamities of the late Middle Ages.
Modern historians have analyzed the Great Schism mostly from theperspective of church politics. Blumenfeld-Kosinski shifts our attentionto several groups that have not before been considered together:saintly men and women (such as Catherine of Siena, Pedro of Aragon,Vincent Ferrer, and Constance de Rabastens), politically aware andcommitted poets (such as Philippe de Mézières and Christinede Pizan), and prophets (for example, the mysterious Telesphorusof Cosenza and the authors of the anonymous Prophecies of theLast Popes). Not surprisingly, these groups often saw the Schismas an apocalyptic sign of the end times. Images abounded of the dividedChurch as a two-headed monster or suffering widow.
A twelfth-century “prelude” looks at the schism of 1159and the role the famous visionaries Hildegard of Bingen and Elisabethof Schönau played in this earlier crisis in order to definecommon threads of “mystical activism” as well as theprofound differences with the later Great Schism.
Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism willbe of interest to students and scholars of medieval and early modernhistory, religious studies, and literature.
Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski is Professor of French at the University of Pittsburgh. Her books include Not of Woman Born: Representations of Caesarean Birth in Medieval and Renaissance Culture (1990) and Reading Myth: Classical Mythology and Its Interpretations in Medieval French Literature (1997).
Contents
Acknowledgments
Popes During the Great Schism
Maps
Introduction
1 A Twelfth-Century Prelude: Hildegard of Bingen, Elisabeth of Schönau, John of Salisbury, and the Schism of 1159
2 Saints and Visionaries I: From the 1360s to the Beginnings of the Schism
3 Saints and Visionaries II: The Later Schism Years
4 Poetic Visions of the Great Schism I: Philippe de Mézières and Eustache Deschamps
5 Poetic Visions of the Great Schism II: Honoré Bovet and Christine de Pizan
6 Prophets of the Great Schism
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index