Christopher M Bellitto
Biographic Data
| ID | 1133457 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christopher M Bellitto |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christopher M |
| FAMILY NAME | Bellitto |
| SIGNATURE | BELLITTO C M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Kean University |
| ORCID | 0009-0008-3279-5465 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 3 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Humility versus Clericalism
One of the hallmark targets of Pope Francis’s pontificate was clericalism and its attendant arrogance as roadblocks to the Church’s credibility, witness, and reform. In the Middle Ages, reformers were wary of the creeping worldliness and power politics that came with the creation of a papal monarchy. Looking at both history and the contemporary church, we might add caution against arrogant priests and prelates who see themselves as a cut above. W…
Nicholas of Cusa’s “On Learned Ignorance”
Pierre d’Ailly’s Vita of Celestine V
In 1408, as the Great Western Schism entered its fourth decade, the Parisian community of Celestine monks asked Pierre d’Ailly to write a life of their founder, Pietro Morrone, who served as Pope Celestine V in 1294. D’Ailly found in him an example that suited his times: a pope could resign without damage to the Church at large. With cardinals from both obediences ready to withdraw support from Avignon’s Benedict XIII and Rome’s Gregory XII, both…
Fighting Feasting Fools
The French humanist and reformer Nicolas de Clamanges (ca. 1363/64-1437) wrote a blistering treatise against new feasts, De nouis festiuitatibus, which contrasts with his related sermon praising the holy innocents, De sanctis innocentibus. This contrast is ironic because their feast during the Christmas season had become the occasion for out-of-control celebrations known as the Feast of Fools, especially in Clamanges’ northern France. This essay …
Introduction
Whither just war? It is a question scholars and activists have been asking with particular intensity and reappraisal in the last two generations. We turn here to the late medieval period, especially around the time when Muslim forces finally achieved in 1453 an earlier goal: the occupation of Constantinople. This fifteenth-century event, along with the decades before and after, focused the 19th biennial meeting of the American Cusanus Society and…
Engaging Islam
What was the proper approach to countering Islam in the late Middle Ages? If Islam was seen as a Christian heresy in accordance with a common medieval interpretation, the church’s battle against Muslims was seen in ad intra terms. If Islam was treated as a separate religion, an ad extra approach followed. In either case, would unity and peace be best achieved via negotiations or force, particularly around 1453 when Constantinople fell to Muslim f…
Reform the Pope, Reform the Papacy
Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) was not an uncritical supporter of papal authority. This essay recounts a nuanced understanding of his development by looking at a number of treatises and sermons focused on the reform of the pope as person and therefore of the reform of the papacy as institution. Cusanus believed the pope’s authority was grounded in the faith and office of Peter and not personally in Peter’s successor, who could therefore fairly be c…
The Great Western Schism, 1378–1417
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Boudet Jean-Patrice et al. (dir.), Pierre d’Ailly. Un esprit universel à l’aube du xve siècle
This volume of collected essays is a noteworthy example of the broader lens that has been turned to Pierre d’Ailly (1350-1420) in the last several decades. In fact, d’Ailly is enjoying something of a renaissance that goes well beyond the long-standing portrait of him as primarily a church statesman. He has been rescued here and in recent scholarship from both the uncritical portrait of a brilliant and noble French intellectual hero in the first m…
Late Medieval Papal Legation
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Reassessing Reform
Bellitto, Christopher and David Zachariah Flanagin (eds.). Reassessing Reform: A Historical Investigation into Church Renewal. An article from journal Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme (Volume 36, Number 2, Spring 2013, pp. 5-205), on Érudit
“The Fall of Ancient Rome and Modern U.S. Immigration
Additional informationNotes on contributorsFrank Argote‐freyreFrank Argote‐Freyre is an assistant professor of Latin American history at Kean University. Argote‐Freyre received his PhD from Rutgers University in 2004. His first book, Fulgencio Batista: From Revolutionary to Strongman, was published in 2006. His second book, A Brief History of the Caribbean, coauthored with Danilo Figueredo, was published in 2008. He was assistant editor of the En…
The Church in Council. Conciliar Movements, Religious Practice and the Papacy from Nicaea to Vatican II
Norman Tanner is a leading church historian, especially of the Middle Ages and general councils (and—full disclosure—a scholar that this reviewer has edited for Paulist Press). This book is not a monograph or standard history of the general councils but is rather the second collection of Tanner's articles published by I. B. Tauris. The first was The Ages of Faith: Popular Religion in Late Medieval England and Western Europe (2009), which itself i…
The Dominicans and the Pope
Early Modern Catholicism
The Life of Saint Douceline, a Beguine of Provence
Introduction The Life of Saint Douceline Interpretive Essay Douceline de Digne: The Douce et Digne Mother of Roubaud Bibliography Index
The Spirituality of Reform in the Late Medieval Church
For the Parisian humanist and Avignon papal secretary Nicolas de Clamanges, reform of the late medieval church began notin capitebut with personal reform grounded in a spirituality that was itself built on patristic principles. His colleagues, including Jean Gerson and Pierre d'Ailly at the Council of Constance, first located reform institutionallyin capiteand expected it to trickle down in membris. Clamanges by contrast applied the fathers' emph…
The Growth of the Medieval City
Part 1 Antiquity and the early-Middle Ages: the urban legacy of antiquity - Roman urbanization in the early empire, the third century crisis and its aftermath, the fourth century, Christianity and the urban fabric of late antiquity, the fifth century - the catastophe of Roman urbanization suburbanization and deurbanization in Merovingian and Carolingian Gaul, 500-830 - the economy of the early cities - the problem of the seventh century, urban li…
Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 400-1400
Religion and Devotion in Europe, c.1215-c.1515
Preface List of illustrations 1. Introduction 2. The faith and its demands 3. Access to the faith 4. Religious life 5. Devotion 6. The pilgrimage of life and death 7. Priests, people, and power 8. Inclusion and exclusion 9. The reality of religion Bibliography Index.
Incomplete Pictures
The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe
The Humiliation of Sinners
The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe
The Humiliation of Sinners
Incomplete Pictures
Religion and Devotion in Europe, c.1215-c.1515
Preface List of illustrations 1. Introduction 2. The faith and its demands 3. Access to the faith 4. Religious life 5. Devotion 6. The pilgrimage of life and death 7. Priests, people, and power 8. Inclusion and exclusion 9. The reality of religion Bibliography Index.
The Growth of the Medieval City
Part 1 Antiquity and the early-Middle Ages: the urban legacy of antiquity - Roman urbanization in the early empire, the third century crisis and its aftermath, the fourth century, Christianity and the urban fabric of late antiquity, the fifth century - the catastophe of Roman urbanization suburbanization and deurbanization in Merovingian and Carolingian Gaul, 500-830 - the economy of the early cities - the problem of the seventh century, urban li…
Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 400-1400
The Spirituality of Reform in the Late Medieval Church
For the Parisian humanist and Avignon papal secretary Nicolas de Clamanges, reform of the late medieval church began notin capitebut with personal reform grounded in a spirituality that was itself built on patristic principles. His colleagues, including Jean Gerson and Pierre d'Ailly at the Council of Constance, first located reform institutionallyin capiteand expected it to trickle down in membris. Clamanges by contrast applied the fathers' emph…
Early Modern Catholicism
The Life of Saint Douceline, a Beguine of Provence
Introduction The Life of Saint Douceline Interpretive Essay Douceline de Digne: The Douce et Digne Mother of Roubaud Bibliography Index
The Dominicans and the Pope
The Church in Council. Conciliar Movements, Religious Practice and the Papacy from Nicaea to Vatican II
Norman Tanner is a leading church historian, especially of the Middle Ages and general councils (and—full disclosure—a scholar that this reviewer has edited for Paulist Press). This book is not a monograph or standard history of the general councils but is rather the second collection of Tanner's articles published by I. B. Tauris. The first was The Ages of Faith: Popular Religion in Late Medieval England and Western Europe (2009), which itself i…
“The Fall of Ancient Rome and Modern U.S. Immigration
Additional informationNotes on contributorsFrank Argote‐freyreFrank Argote‐Freyre is an assistant professor of Latin American history at Kean University. Argote‐Freyre received his PhD from Rutgers University in 2004. His first book, Fulgencio Batista: From Revolutionary to Strongman, was published in 2006. His second book, A Brief History of the Caribbean, coauthored with Danilo Figueredo, was published in 2008. He was assistant editor of the En…
Reassessing Reform
Bellitto, Christopher and David Zachariah Flanagin (eds.). Reassessing Reform: A Historical Investigation into Church Renewal. An article from journal Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme (Volume 36, Number 2, Spring 2013, pp. 5-205), on Érudit
Late Medieval Papal Legation
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Boudet Jean-Patrice et al. (dir.), Pierre d’Ailly. Un esprit universel à l’aube du xve siècle
This volume of collected essays is a noteworthy example of the broader lens that has been turned to Pierre d’Ailly (1350-1420) in the last several decades. In fact, d’Ailly is enjoying something of a renaissance that goes well beyond the long-standing portrait of him as primarily a church statesman. He has been rescued here and in recent scholarship from both the uncritical portrait of a brilliant and noble French intellectual hero in the first m…
Reform the Pope, Reform the Papacy
Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) was not an uncritical supporter of papal authority. This essay recounts a nuanced understanding of his development by looking at a number of treatises and sermons focused on the reform of the pope as person and therefore of the reform of the papacy as institution. Cusanus believed the pope’s authority was grounded in the faith and office of Peter and not personally in Peter’s successor, who could therefore fairly be c…
The Great Western Schism, 1378–1417
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Fighting Feasting Fools
The French humanist and reformer Nicolas de Clamanges (ca. 1363/64-1437) wrote a blistering treatise against new feasts, De nouis festiuitatibus, which contrasts with his related sermon praising the holy innocents, De sanctis innocentibus. This contrast is ironic because their feast during the Christmas season had become the occasion for out-of-control celebrations known as the Feast of Fools, especially in Clamanges’ northern France. This essay …
Introduction
Whither just war? It is a question scholars and activists have been asking with particular intensity and reappraisal in the last two generations. We turn here to the late medieval period, especially around the time when Muslim forces finally achieved in 1453 an earlier goal: the occupation of Constantinople. This fifteenth-century event, along with the decades before and after, focused the 19th biennial meeting of the American Cusanus Society and…
Engaging Islam
What was the proper approach to countering Islam in the late Middle Ages? If Islam was seen as a Christian heresy in accordance with a common medieval interpretation, the church’s battle against Muslims was seen in ad intra terms. If Islam was treated as a separate religion, an ad extra approach followed. In either case, would unity and peace be best achieved via negotiations or force, particularly around 1453 when Constantinople fell to Muslim f…
Humility versus Clericalism
One of the hallmark targets of Pope Francis’s pontificate was clericalism and its attendant arrogance as roadblocks to the Church’s credibility, witness, and reform. In the Middle Ages, reformers were wary of the creeping worldliness and power politics that came with the creation of a papal monarchy. Looking at both history and the contemporary church, we might add caution against arrogant priests and prelates who see themselves as a cut above. W…
Nicholas of Cusa’s “On Learned Ignorance”
Pierre d’Ailly’s Vita of Celestine V
In 1408, as the Great Western Schism entered its fourth decade, the Parisian community of Celestine monks asked Pierre d’Ailly to write a life of their founder, Pietro Morrone, who served as Pope Celestine V in 1294. D’Ailly found in him an example that suited his times: a pope could resign without damage to the Church at large. With cardinals from both obediences ready to withdraw support from Avignon’s Benedict XIII and Rome’s Gregory XII, both…
History (17 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Theology (11 works) · Art (9 works) · Classics (9 works) · Medieval Literature and History (9 works) · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity (9 works) · History (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Ancient history (7 works)