Research John Arblaster

Abstract

In 2025, the Ruusbroec Institute will celebrate its centenary. Over the past century, this interdisciplinary research group at UAntwerpen has amassed an impressive collection of primary sources on the history of spirituality in the Low Countries. Academics and students easily find their way to this collection, which was recognised as a Heritage Library in June 2011, but it is less well known to the wider public. The centenary offers an excellent opportunity to reach that target audience too and to deepen our understanding of these sources on religious culture, devotion and mysticism in the Southern Low Countries. As the proverb has it, the way to one's heart is through the stomach, so why shouldn't appetite for the history of spirituality be roused by tapping into its culinary delights? A cookbook based on the recipes and dishes in our manuscripts and old prints therefore seems an ideal approach to introduce the wider public to this heritage in an accessible way. Short illuminating texts will inform the reader about the role food could play within Christian culture (as a binding agent in the social fabric, but also as a symbol in edifying texts). This will also give us the opportunity to deepen our knowledge of these sources and to draw the attention of international experts to this aspect of our exceptional heritage collection. The recipes will be reworked for the contemporary kitchen, allowing the public to try recreate the dishes themselves.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Osselaer Tine
• Co-promoter: Arblaster John
• Co-promoter: Schepers Kees

Research team(s)

• Research centre Ruusbroec Institute

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In the 14th century, the community of Groenendaal, in the Sonian Forest near Brussels, was home not only to the much-studied mystical author Jan van Ruusbroec, but also to three understudied Middle Dutch mystical writers: Jan van Leeuwen, Willem Jordaens, and Godfried Wevel. It is thus a unique hotspot of Middle Dutch mystical literature. Surprisingly, however, the (inter)relationships between these authors' texts have never been thoroughly researched. Since it forms the central 'crux' in Ruusbroec's works, this project will investigate the case study of deification in the four mystical writers from Groenendaal. The results of this study will shed new light on the degree to which these authors formed a 'textual community', as writers whose ideas were shaped and expressed in a dependent, vertical relation to Ruusbroec's, or whether they were an 'authorial community of practice', an interrelated network of authors between whom horizontal learning occurred and who did not necessarily share consensus. On the basis of traditional philology and computer assisted research, the project will probe the relationships between all four authors to establish the degree to which their writings exhibit consensus and/or dissent. It will thereby respond to repeated calls in the secondary literature and break new ground in the study of the authors in question, the history of vernacular mystical literature in the Low Countries, and late medieval (religious) communities as 'authorial communities'.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Arblaster John
• Co-promoter: Schepers Kees
• Fellow: Vandenbroucke Michiel

Research team(s)

• Research centre Ruusbroec Institute

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

On the eve of her death, the French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil (d. 1943) quoted passages in her Notebooks from The Mirror of Simple Souls, a text written by an anonymous 'fourteenth-century French mystic.' Weil makes note of The Mirror's 'image of fire and iron,' followed by a second quotation, 'exhaust the human faculties (will, intelligence, etc.) so as to pass over to the transcendent.' Weil's quotations from The Mirror address preoccupations central to her religious metaphysic, specifically her notion of 'decreation.' It was not until after Weil's death in 1946 that Romani Guarnieri reacquainted The Mirror with its true author, Marguerite Porete (d. 1310) a woman who was burned for heresy. Strong thematic parallels between the writings of Porete and Weil have been noted yet remain critically underexamined. Weil's engagement with Porete's Mirror as part of the matrix of thought in which she developed her ideas offers a vital opportunity for elucidating themes most pertinent to both Porete and Weil's corpora: affliction, 'decreation' and divine vision. A sustained, critical examination of the thematic affinities between Porete and Weil is an urgent area of research for three reasons: firstly, to consider Porete's mystical theology philosophically as religious metaphysics; secondly, to elucidate Weil's own religious philosophy; and thirdly, as an important study for the de-marginalisation of women's spiritual writings within the history of Western philosophy.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Arblaster John
• Co-promoter: Van Herck Walter
• Fellow: Griffiths Emily

Research team(s)

• Research centre Ruusbroec Institute

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The proposed project investigates the complex perception and reception of Angela of Foligno (d.1309) and her Liber. Angela was a penitent woman who aligned herself to the Franciscans in Umbria, and soon before her death, a collection of texts she had dictated was compiled in the so-called Liber Lelle or Liber sororis Lelle de Fulgineo de tertio ordine sancti Francisci – both titles given in the earliest extant manuscript dated ca. 1309. Angela's Liber is central to the important story of the place of women and their writings in the history of Christianity, and it has been the subject of extensive historical, literary and theological research, in part encouraged by the 700th anniversary of Angela's death in 2009 and her canonization in 2013. The reception of Angela and her book has not, however, received extensive scholarly attention, and it is this lacuna that the present research proposes to redress. By investigating a number of crucial cross-temporal and cross-confessional case studies, including within and between a variety of religious orders, the project will address the question of the ways in which Angela was perceived and received as an authoritative theological figure throughout the centuries after her death, leading to the remarkable fact that in 1624, 315 years after she died and before she had been officially beatified or canonized, she was accorded the unique title Magistra Theologorum ("Teacher of Theologians") by the Dutch Jesuit Maximilian Sandaeus.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Arblaster John

Research team(s)

• Research centre Ruusbroec Institute

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In the 14th century, the community of Groenendaal, in the Sonian Forest outside Brussels, was home not only to its much-studied first prior, the famous mystical author Jan van Ruusbroec (1293-1381), but also to three lesser-known, understudied Middle Dutch mystical authors: Jan van Leeuwen (d. 1378), Willem Jordaens (d. 1372), and Godfried Wevel (d. 1396). Groenendaal thus constitutes a unique hotspot in Middle Dutch mystical literature, with four contemporaneous vernacular mystical authors writing in the same place at the same time. The (inter)relationships between these authors texts have never been thoroughly researched, and the type of "authorial community" they formed is therefore unknown. Were they a "textual community", as authors whose ideas were shaped and expressed in a dependent, vertical relation to Ruusbroec's writing, or were they an "authorial community of practice", an interrelated, transversal network of authors between whom horizontal learning occurred and who did not necessarily share consensus? To operationalize, test, and evaluate this question, the project focuses on the case study of deification, since this constitutes the thematic 'crux' of Ruusbroec's works. Investigating this case study will determine whether and to what extent the little-known Middle Dutch authors from Groenendaal shared this central theme with Ruusbroec and how it is articulated in and across their works, shedding new light on vertical and/or horizontal learning at Groenendaal. By means of a mixed methodology combining elements of traditional philology with Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis, the project will first identify the typology of deification in each author's individual works and oeuvre. It will then conduct comparative analysis between all four Middle Dutch mystical authors from Groenendaal and visualize the degree to which they exhibit consensus and/or dissent in their semantic and conceptual articulations of the theme in question. The results of this research will enable us to challenge the enduring perception of Jan van Leeuwen, Willem Jordaens, and Godfried Wevel as Ruusbroec's (literary) subordinates who were not transversely (inter)related with one another. The research thus breaks new ground in several fields, namely the study of the history of vernacular mystical literature in the Low Countries, horizontal learning in late medieval (monastic) communities, the three specific authors in question, and the field of deification studies.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Arblaster John
• Co-promoter: Schepers Kees
• Fellow: Vandenbroucke Michiel

Research team(s)

• Research centre Ruusbroec Institute

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Women were integral to the intellectual landscape in the medieval and early modern Low Countries, in itself one of the main centres of literary and learned culture in Europe. Hundreds of manuscripts can, in one way or another, be related to female copyists, authors, commissioners, and book owners. However, the impact of women on the book culture of that period and the extent of their well-developed literary and intellectual abilities are inadequately studied. A prerequisite for future in-depth research on the roles of premodern women as cultural transmitters is the creation of an integrated, openly accessible database of current knowledge about female participation in literary culture. This proposed project intends to create such a database, which will eventually contain all the manuscripts created between c. 1250 and c. 1600, in the vernacular or in Latin, that show female involvement in any way. Heavily focused on material evidence in manuscripts, this database is the first of its kind. It will therefore serve as a pilot project that could be used to catalogue materials in other vernaculars throughout Europe. It will provide precise information on which women were particularly active in the literary field of their day, on what texts they produced and used, and on the diverse dynamics of women's literacy and erudition. It will reveal chronological, regional, and institutional patterns and unveil networks of female book production and circulation. The project will thus open up opportunities to revolutionize our understanding of the impact of women on the literary and cultural history of the premodern Low Countries, and by extension, Europe.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Arblaster John

Research team(s)

• Research centre Ruusbroec Institute

Project type(s)

• Research Project