Guess what’s not so dark now? My library:
Far from being the “dark ages” once disparaged by the rationalists of the Enlightenment, modern scholarship has revealed the Middle Ages as a period of profound intellectual, artistic, and spiritual vitality. The culture of the West revolved around Christianity, and the intellectual life culminated not in abstract theology, but in the sermon. It was in pursuit of better preaching that the scholars of the Middle Ages organized the Bible by chapter and verse, why they compiled countless lexicons and concordances, why they wrote their summae and their commentaries, and ultimately why they built the university system. The preaching of the Middle Ages was both exegetical and pastoral. Its purpose was to bring the Word of God to life and through it to convert the people. They believed that preaching was a grace and that the Holy Spirit spoke through the preacher, interpreting Scripture. Preaching and Spirituality were therefore intimately connected.
The Medieval Preaching and Spirituality Collection (34 vols.) offers a wide of range of important texts from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries. It includes sermons from the most acclaimed preachers of the period as well as resources commonly used in their composition. It also includes works of a more spiritual nature, allowing one to place the sermons within their context. With theMedieval Preaching and Spirituality Collection (34 vols.), the spiritual richness of the Middle Ages becomes available for contemporary Scripture study.
The Medieval Preaching and Spirituality Collection (34 vols.) – Logos Bible Software.
The highlight? So many of them, but… Boethius. Also, John Damascene and his work on icons. Maybe you icon-haters will learn something.
Joel L. Watts holds a Masters of Arts from United Theological Seminary with a focus in literary and rhetorical criticism of the New Testament. His interests include exploring the role of mimesis in human civilization, specifically in the study of religion and media, as well as science fiction and the way in which it has allowed mythology to be explored in light of scientific discoveries of the past century. He is the author of Mimetic Criticism of the Gospel of Mark: Introduction and Commentary (Wipf and Stock, 2013) and a co-editor and contributor to From Fear to Faith: Stories of Hitting Spiritual Walls (Energion, 2013).
Website: → Unsettled Christianity
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Someone at my church recently made the claim that “By the fourth century there is (was) no more preaching about the Kingdom of God in mission.”
Can your software decide the validity or invalidity of this assertion? [I don't have the reference works to investigate it.]
A friend of ours went to Belgium to translate some of the works of Boethius from the Latin for his PhD.
This was last summer. You’ve just reminded me contact him. Thanks.