by Matthew Gaetano Recent events have brought to mind the stories of the injustices and violence of the original encounters of Christians with native Americans in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Dominicans Antonio de Montesinos (d. 1540) and Bartolomé de las Casas (d. 1566) spoke out against the unjust enslavement of these peoples, while… Read More Voices Crying in the Wilderness – Moirans, Jaca, and Silva
by Matthew Gaetano Herman Bavinck (1854-1921), a major Dutch Reformed theologian, professor at the Free University of Amsterdam, and author of the profoundly erudite Reformed Dogmatics in four volumes, gave the Stone Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary in the 1908-1909 academic year. He had already traveled to the United States to meet B. B. Warfield… Read More Resurrection and History in Herman Bavinck
by Matthew Gaetano I’m continuing the series on Contenson’s seventeenth-century Thomist meditations on Christ’s Passion. Part 1 is here. Speculation 1: The Fourfold Excess in the Passion of Christ: Of Sadness, Dejection, Pain, and Love The human race labors in a threefold disease: the lust (concupiscentia) of the eyes, that is, vain pleasure; the pride… Read More Contenson and the Passion of Christ
by Matthew Gaetano As we anticipate Holy Week, I thought that it might be of some interest to present Vincent Contenson’s (1641-1674) remarks on the Passion and Death of Christ from his Theology of the Mind and the Heart. Despite his death at the early age of 33, Contenson was a famous Dominican preacher, Thomist… Read More Baroque Thomism and the Passion of Christ
by Andrew Kuiper We are continuing Andrew Kuiper’s series on religious freedom and religious dialogue. For the previous posts, see here and here. 1.Introduction In a previous installment of this series, I suggested that Wilken’s account of the Christian origins of religious liberty becomes rather thin when treating the medieval period. Most noticeably absent are… Read More Nicholas Cusanus and Religious Peace
by Andrew Kuiper Editor’s Note: This is the first post in a series on religious freedom. See Kuiper’s previous post at TRF on a related topic here. Robert Louis Wilken’s most recent work Liberty in the Things of God sketches an outline of the origin and development of religious freedom in Christian thought. Though Wilken… Read More Review: Robert Louis Wilken’s Liberty in the Things of God
by Matthew Gaetano After a rich conversation with a good friend, I decided to post something about a remarkable passage in Cardinal Cajetan’s defense of the sacrifice of the Mass. Cajetan (d. 1534), a major Thomist theologian, was one of the earliest opponents of Luther, though, as Jared Wicks argues quite effectively in his introduction… Read More The Eucharist and the Atonement in Cardinal Cajetan
by Garrett Robinson “Heureux l’Empire / Qui suit ses lois!”[1] So goes one of the lines from one of Jean-Baptiste Lully’s lyrical tragedies exulting, in an only slightly indirect manner, the power of Louis XIV and his state. A later work echoes the same sentiment: “Chantons, chantons, la douceur de ses lois / Chantons, chantons, ses gloreiux… Read More The Early Modern State, Religion, and Political Life
by Garrett Robinson For previous entries in this series, see here and here. Throughout the latter Middle Ages, the city of Lyon would receive a visit from the king every year. During this visit, the citizens of Lyon would fête their king and bestow upon him gifts. In turn, the king, whether or not he needed or desired the gifts, recognized the privileges of the city.… Read More The Birth of the State and the Decline of the Common Good
by Garrett Robinson This essay continues a line of inquiry and reflection begun here. Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, while riding with the lawyers Bulgarus and Martinus, asked them whether he was “lord of the world.” Bulgarus replied that he was not lord over private property; Martinus simply told him: “You are lord.” Martinus was rewarded with a horse, and Bulgarus with nothing. Variations of the… Read More Medieval Kingship