Sacramental life

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521811064.017

15 - Sacramental life

from PART IV - SHAPES OF A CHRISTIAN WORLD

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2010

Miri Rubin

Edited by

Miri Rubin and

Walter Simons

Show author details

Miri Rubin: Affiliation:
Queen Mary University of London
Walter Simons: Affiliation:
Dartmouth College, New Hampshire

Book contents

Get access

Summary

Some time between 1445 and 1450 the Flemish artist Rogier van der Weyden (b. 1400, Tournai, d. 1464, Brussels) painted three oak panels which have come to be known as the Seven Sacraments Altarpiece. The artist had made a pilgrimage to Rome in the Jubilee year of 1450, and his subsequent work – including this panel – displays a new-found vibrancy and colour. The trip to Rome may have also inspired a state of mind which is evident in the work: for Rogier offers a summa, a visual summary, of the Christian life as a sacramental journey from cradle to grave. This was a vision conceptualised and promoted by popes since the twelfth century, one which had become, by van der Weyden’s time, the elementary framework for Christian lives.

The history of the sacraments begins, of course, much earlier. Already the second-century Tertullian (c. 160–c. 225) attempted to use the Roman legal term sacramentum – oath – to describe religious commitment. He also developed sacramentum to mean ‘symbol, figure, allegory, symbolic virtue or power, a symbolic order or person’. Sacraments were those gestures or practices which denoted a commitment, or signified events of great importance. The next important stage in the discussion was, as is so often the case, the treatment offered by Augustine of Hippo (354–430). As part of his thoroughgoing conceptualization of a Christian society and polity, of the processes which he witnessed all around him in the regions of the Roman Empire, he explored the nature of sacraments.

Keywords

church law baptism Augustine of Hippo Rogier van der Weyden sacramental theory Seven Sacraments Altarpiece Roman Empire Hugh of St Victor eucharist early Christian legacy

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of Christianity , pp. 217 - 237

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521811064.017 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alexander, Jonathan J. G., ‘Chastity, Love and Marriage in the Margins of the Wharncliffe Hours’, in Muir, Bernard J., ed., Reading Texts and Images: Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Art and Patronage in Honour of Margaret M. Manion (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2002).Google Scholar

Angenendt, Arnold, Geschichte der Religiosität im Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1997)

Avril, Joseph ed., Les statuts synodaux de l’ancienne province de Reims, (Collection de documents inédits sur l’historie de France 23; Paris: Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 1997), no. 5.

Baldwin, J. W., Masters, Princes and Merchants: The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and his Circle, 2 vols., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970.

Bennett, Judith M., ‘Conviviality and Charity in Medieval and Early Modern England’, Past and Present 134 (1992).Google Scholar

Boyle, Leonard E., ‘The Fourth Lateran Council and Manuals of Popular Theology’, in Heffernan, Thomas J., ed., The Popular Literature of Medieval England (Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 1985).Google Scholar

Brooke, Christopher N. L., The Medieval Idea of Marriage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).

Clark, Elizabeth A., ‘“Adam’s Only Companion”: Augustine and the Early Christian Debate on Marriage’, in Edwards, Robert R. and Spector, Stephen, eds., The Olde Daunce: Love, Friendship, Sex, and Marriage in the Medieval World (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991)Google Scholar

Colish, M., Peter Lombard, Brill Studies in Intellectual History 41, Leiden: Brill, 1994.

Cramer, Peter, Baptism and Change in the Early Middle Ages, c. 200–c. 1150 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

De Vos, Dirk, Rogier van der Weyden: The Complete Works (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999)

Fletcher, R. A., ‘Reconquest and Crusade in Spain c.1050–1150’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series 37 (1987).Google Scholar

Trans. Scott, H. E. and Bland, C. C. Swinton, The Dialogue on Miracles, 2 vols., London: Routledge, 1929.

Harding, Catherine, ‘The Miracle of Bolsena and the Relic of the Corporal at Orvieto Cathedral’, in Weston, H. and Davies, D., eds., Essays in Honour of John White (London: University of London Press, 1990).Google Scholar

Häring, N., ‘The Interaction between Canon Law and Sacramental Theology in the Twelfth Century’, in Kuttner, S., ed., Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law (Monumenta iuris canonici ser. C, Subsidia 5; Vatican: Apostolic Library of the Vatican Press, 1976).Google Scholar

Mansi, Iohannes Domenicus, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, Florence and Venice: Antoni Zatta, 1759–98.

Murray, Alexander, ‘Religion among the Poor in Thirteenth-Century France: the Testimony of Humbert of Romans’, Traditio 30 (1974).Google Scholar

Neusner, J. and Dupuis, J., eds., The Christian Faith in the Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Church, rev. edn (New York: Alba House, 1982), no. 28 (p.).

Newman, Barbara, trans., The Life of Juliana of Mont-Cornillon (Peregrina Translation Series 13; Toronto: Peregrina, 1988), c.12.

Nichols, Ann Eljenholm, Seeable Signs: The Iconography of the Seven Sacraments, 1350–1544 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994).

Paxton, Frederick S., Christianizing Death: The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe, (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990)

Payer, Pierre J., The Bridling of Desire: Views of Sex in the Later Middle Ages (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993).

Lombard, Peter, Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, Grottaferrata: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1971–81.

Pixton, Paul B., The German Episcopacy and the Implementation of the Decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council, 1216–1245: Watchmen on the Tower, Leiden and New York: Brill, 1995.

Pontal, O. and Avril, J., eds., Les statuts synodaux français du XIIIe siècle, Collection des documents inédits sur l’histoire de France, 5 vols., Paris: C.H.T.S., 1971–2001.

Porète, Marguerite, Le mirouer des âmes simples, ed. Guarnieri, Romana (CCCM 69; Turnhout: Brepols, 1986).

Porete, Marguerite, The Mirror of Simple Souls, trans. Edmund Colledge, J. C. Marler and Judith Grant, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999.

Powicke, F. M. and Cheney, C. R., eds., Councils and Synods and other Documents Relating to the English Church II/2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964).

Quarré, Pierre, ‘Le triptyque des Sept Sacraments de Rogier van der Weyden, en Bourgogne’, Publication du centre européen d’études burgundo-médianes 17 (1976).Google Scholar

Reynolds, P.L., Marriage in the Western Church: The Christianization of Marriage During the Patristic and Early Medieval Periods, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 24, Brill: Leiden, 1994.

,Robert of Flamborough, Liber poenitentialis, ed. Francis, J. J. Firth (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies and Texts 18; Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1971).

Saxon, E., The Eucharist in Romanesque France: Iconography, and Theology, Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006.

Schoolmeesters, E., ed., Les statuts synodaux de Jean de Flandre, évèque de Liège (Liège: Cormaux, 1908).

Shahar, Shulamith, Childhood in the Middle Ages (London and New York: Routledge, 1991).

Stock, Brian, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.

Tanner, Norman, ed., The Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols., London: Sheed and Ward; Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990.

Tanner, Norman, ed., Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, 1428–31, Camden Society, 4th series, 20, London: Royal Historical Society, 1977.

Winston-Allen, Anne, Stories of the Rose: The Making of the Rosary in the Middle Ages, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997.

Book contents

15 - Sacramental life

Summary

Keywords

Access options

References

Save book to Kindle

Save book to Dropbox

Save book to Google Drive