Conrad Celtis and the “Druid” Abbot Trithemius: An Inquiry into Patriotic Humanism
1969; Iter Press; Volume: 15; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.33137/rr.v15i1.12841
ISSN2293-7374
Autores Tópico(s)Medieval Literature and History
ResumoIn the second chapter of his quasi-historical De origine, progressa et laudibus ordinis fratrum Carmelitarum (completed 1492) the Bene- dictine Abbot Trithemius (1462-1516) addresses himself to a certain knotty problem which, so he believes, is of sufficient relevance to the subject at hand to warrant a brief excursus.The question posed by Trithemius is how it can be that the Holy Order of Carmelites, taking its name from the famous mountain of Carmel in Palestine where it originated, could have been founded, not by a Christian, but by the Jewish prophet Elias.For the Carmelites rightfully trace the history of their Order to a settlement of Jewish hermits who, led by Elias, took leave of the secular world well before the birth of Jesus and migrated to the mountain whose name ever since has become virtually a synonym for the vita solitaria et contemplativa.Inasmuch, then, as the Jew Elias "inhabited this place long before the nativity of Christ," and inasmuch as this same Elias, revered among the Jews as one of their foremost prophets, "is confirmed to have been the first and noblest CarmeHte," the author of the present work feels called upon to render some kind of explanation for the paradox.*The relevance of this explanatory excursus for our purpose here does not reside in the abbot's effort to unravel the mystery of the Jewish origin of the Carmelites per se, but in a parallel he chooses to draw so as to make this mystery more comprehensible.For in his attempt to resolve this enigma Trithemius does not primarily rely, as might be expected, upon the argument of an integral Jewish-Christian affiliation based on Christ's promise to fulfil rather than abrogate Jewish law, but instead upon an analogy of the Carmel experience with another geographically much closer to the home of Teutonic Christianity.As Trithemius introduces this analogy: You should not wonder if I have declared that there were monks in Israel before the nativity of Christ who inhabited the mountain of Carmel and nearby deserts of solitude, seeing that among the gentiles in our Belgian
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