Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

ANTICLERICALISM AND CRITICISM OF CLERICS IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY-MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE

ANTICLERICALISM AND CRITICISM OF CLERICS IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY-MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE Every institution or organization in history has quickly experienced criticism as soon as it was established. The Catholic Church faced such criticism throughout the entire Middle Ages, as many literary examples demonstrate. This article traces the theme of Anticlericalism from the twelfth through the sixteenth century, focusing on the comments by the poet Walther von der Vogelweide, on the didactic tales by the poet The Stricker, on a variety of late medieval verse narratives (mæren), and early modern prose narratives (Schwänke). In fact, Walther's biting comments directed against the Holy See and the clergy at large finds surprising parallels in hateful broadsheets aimed at the Jesuits since the late sixteenth century. The literary evidence presented here offers powerful insights into the pervasive theme intimately connected with the Catholic Church, actually its very bane. 1. Introduction We generally tend to assume that the Catholic Church exerted tremendous, if not overarching or total influence over all people in the Middle Ages, at least in Western and Central Europe, which often extended especially to people's inner spirituality, since they were extremely scared about the afterlife and the well-being of their souls (Dinzelbacher 1996). But we are too easily blinded by this http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Amsterdamer Beiträge zur Älteren Germanistik Brill

ANTICLERICALISM AND CRITICISM OF CLERICS IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY-MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE

Loading next page...
 
/lp/brill/anticlericalism-and-criticism-of-clerics-in-medieval-and-early-modern-gUbRx2JWVk

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Brill
Copyright
Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
0165-7305
eISSN
1875-6719
DOI
10.1163/9789401211017_012
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Every institution or organization in history has quickly experienced criticism as soon as it was established. The Catholic Church faced such criticism throughout the entire Middle Ages, as many literary examples demonstrate. This article traces the theme of Anticlericalism from the twelfth through the sixteenth century, focusing on the comments by the poet Walther von der Vogelweide, on the didactic tales by the poet The Stricker, on a variety of late medieval verse narratives (mæren), and early modern prose narratives (Schwänke). In fact, Walther's biting comments directed against the Holy See and the clergy at large finds surprising parallels in hateful broadsheets aimed at the Jesuits since the late sixteenth century. The literary evidence presented here offers powerful insights into the pervasive theme intimately connected with the Catholic Church, actually its very bane. 1. Introduction We generally tend to assume that the Catholic Church exerted tremendous, if not overarching or total influence over all people in the Middle Ages, at least in Western and Central Europe, which often extended especially to people's inner spirituality, since they were extremely scared about the afterlife and the well-being of their souls (Dinzelbacher 1996). But we are too easily blinded by this

Journal

Amsterdamer Beiträge zur Älteren GermanistikBrill

Published: Jan 1, 2014

There are no references for this article.