Shaping Authority: How Did a Person Become an Authority in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance?

460 Pages·2016·1.86 MB·English

by  Shari Boodts

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Shaping Authority
How Did a Person Become an Authority
in Antiquity, the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance?
edited by
Shari Boodts
Johan Leemans
Brigitte Meijns
F
© 2016, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise
without the prior permission of the publisher.
D/2016/0095/144
ISBN 978-2-503-56823-2
Printed on acid-free paper
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Johan Leemans, Brigitte Meijns
Why are Some Greater than Others? Actors and Factors Shaping
the Authority of Persons from Antiquity to the Renaissance 9
Jan Opsomer, Angela Ulacco
Epistemic Authority in Textual Traditions: A Model and Some
Examples from Ancient Philosophy 21
Michiel Meeusen
Aristotle’s Authority in the Tradition of Natural Problems. The Case
of Plutarch of Chaeronea 47
Bram Demulder
Plato vs. Plato on the Generation of the Cosmos (Tim. 28B)
Authority in the Interpretations of Plutarch and Proclus 87
Chiara Meccariello
Deconstructing and Reconstructing Authority.
The interplay of Homer’s and Dio Chrysostom’s Authority in the
Making and Reception of the Trojan Oration 119
Michael Stuart Williams
‘But I May Be Wrong’: The Self-Conscious Construction of Episcopal
Authority in the Sermons of Ambrose of Milan 157
Christian Müller
Revisiting an Authority’s Secret(s) of Success: The Rise and Decline
of the Latin Athanasius 197
David Defries
Wonder, Mirror Neurons and Embodied Cognition in the Early
Medieval Experience of Miracles 223
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Edward M. Schoolman
Engineered Holy Authority and the Tenth-Century Vita of St. Barba-
tianus of Ravenna 251
Jelle Lisson
The Dark Side of Remembrance: How Medieval Chroniclers
Demonized Bishop Adalbero of Laon (977–1033) 281
John Van Engen
Authorship, Authority, and Authorization: The Cases of Abbot
Bernard of Clairvaux and Abbess Hildegard of Bingen 325
Eva Vandemeulebroucke, Youri Desplenter
How Jan van Leeuwen († 1378) Was Made an Author. Opera
Omnia and Authority 363
Giacomo Signore, Anna Dlabačová, Marieke Abram
Between Norms and Books. Constructing Authority in the Fifteenth
Century 389
Patricia D. Meneses
Antonio Manetti’s Brunelleschi: An Attempt at Establishing Artistic
Authority 439
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JOHAN LEEMANS - BRIGITTE MEIJNS
WHY ARE SOME GREATER
THAN OTHERS?
ACTORS AND FACTORS SHAPING
THE AUTHORITY OF PERSONS
FROM ANTIQUITY
TO THE RENAISSANCE
The cultural and religious history from Antiquity to the Re-
naissance may be read through the lens of the rise and demise
of auctoritates. Some of them have retained their aura until today,
typically on the basis of their status and personal achievements.
But this is only part of the story: one does not become – let
alone remain – an authority without the help of others who
are assenting and, even more important, actively contributing
to such a construction. The chapters in this book deal with the
actors and factors that contributed to turning historical persons
into auctoritates of transhistorical value, as well as with the self-
conscious construction of authority by some of the authorities
themselves.
A famous passage from the gripping book VIII of Augus-
tine’s Confessions makes this question more concrete. There
we read how a young Augustine and his friends met in August
386 a certain Ponticianus, a devout Christian who had served
at the imperial court residing in Trier. Ponticianus told the fu-
ture bishop of Hippo and his friends about the monastic life that
was flourishing at that time in Egypt. He also mentioned the
monk Antony as one of the leaders of this monastic move-
ment and vividly explained how two of his friends at Trier
had read the Life of Antony and how that had changed their life
dramatically: they had decided to follow Antony’s example
and had renounced the world. All of this provoked a torrent
of emotions in the young, seeking Augustine. He then runs into
the garden, where the famous ‘tolle lege’ scene occurs. 1
1 Augustine 1981, p. 121–132; 1997, p. 197–208.
10.1484/M.LECTIO-EB.5.111080
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JOHAN LEEMANS - BRIGITTE MEIJNS
Before he takes off into the garden, Augustine exclaims in
frustration: ‘What is happening to us? [...] The untaught are
rising up and taking heaven by storm, while we with all our
dreary teachings are still groveling in this world of flesh and
blood!’. 2 This entire episode and Augustine’s cry from the heart
perfectly mirrors two main features of the reception of the monk
Antony: he is a rough, uneducated, illiterate holy person and
he is a leader of Egyptian monasticism. In many liturgical and
hagiographical traditions, not to mention modern introductory
surveys, Antony is presented as the founder of the eremitic-
anachoretic type of monasticism. Often he is juxtaposed to Pa-
chomius as the founder of the cenobitic type. In reality Antony
himself and many Egyptian monks with him were far more
educated than it may seem. 3 Moreover, it is obvious from the
sources that Antony was not at all the founder of the monastic
movement. Yet, a rich and manifold tradition time and again
portrays Antony as its almost illiterate founding father. So, how
did the historical Antony become such an auctoritas? Undoubt-
edly, Athanasius’s Life of Antony, with its Latin and oriental trans-
lations and its diverse and lengthy reception history were vital
factors. 4
Antony is the type of person who becomes an auctoritas
because his or her way of life was considered exemplary. Thanks
to the endeavors of contemporaries and later generations,
this message was magnified. In this process, he evolved into
a model with a very big ‘M’, a true auctoritas. As such, auctoritates
of this type became part and parcel of a much larger and longer-
lasting cultural and intellectual milieu way beyond their own
historical context.
Without doing injustice to his ascetical pursuits, Augustine
may be considered more as a model of an intellectual auctoritas.
Already during his lifetime the bishop of Hippo was a leading
theologian and intellectual. His major theological treatises
(e.g. De Trinitate or De civitate Dei) demonstrate his formidable
creativity and intellect. His letters show his involvement as bishop
2 Augustine 1981, p. 125; 1997, p. 199.
3 Groundbreaking in this regard was Rubenson 1995.
4 Useful survey of the many images of Antony in Gemeinhardt 2013.
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