Professor of Religious Studies and History (2002)

Medieval Christianity; Medieval Italy

Office Hours: Tues. & Wed. 11:00-1:00

Office: B003 Halsey

Phone: (434) 924-6729

Email: A.Thompsonvirginia.edu

Education

B.A. (Hist.) Johns Hopkins (1976)
M.A. Johns Hopkins (1976)
B.A. (Phil.) Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology (1980)
M.Div. Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology (1985)
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley (1988)

Publications, Awards, and Activities

Books

Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125-1325. University Park PA: Penn State Univ. Press 2005.  Awarded the 2006 A.C.H.A. Howard R. Marraro Prize for the books in Italian history.

Revival Preachers and Politics in Thirteenth-Century Italy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. In Italian: Predicatori e politica nell'Italia del XIII secolo. Milan: Edizioni Biblioteca Francescana, 1996.

Translations and Editions

The Medieval Canon Law of Marriage: The Decretum and the Liber Extra. Edited and translated with John T. Noonan, Jr., and Charles J. Reid, Jr. Emory University Studies in Law and Religion. Grand Rapids MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans [forthcoming].

John Williamson Nevin, The Mystical Presence: A Vindication of the Reformed or Calvinist Theology of the Holy Eucharist (Eugene OR: Wiph & Stock, 2000)

John Williamson Nevin, The Anxious Bench; Antichrist; and the Sermon Christian Unity (Eugene OR: Wiph & Stock, 1999)

Gratian: Treatise on Laws (Decretum DD. 1?20); With the Ordinary Gloss. With James Gordley. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1994.

Selected Articles and Essays

“Civil and Religious Subsidiary in the Italian Republics, 1160-1300.” Subsidiarity: Origins, Development, and Applications. Ed. William E. Fahey. Ypsilanti MI: Sapientia Press [forthcoming].

“The First Witch Trial in Italy: Todi, 1428.” Medieval Italy: A Documentary History. Ed. Katherine L. Jansen, Frances Andrews, and Joanna Drell. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, [forthcoming].

“Lay versus Clerical Perceptions of Heresy: Protests against the Inquisition in Bologna, 1299.” Praedicatores Inquisitores, 1: The Dominicans and the Medieval Inquisition: Acts of the First International Seminar on the Dominicans and the Inquisition, Rome 23-25, February 2002. Rome: Istituto Storico Domenicano, 2004, pp. 701-30.

"From Texts to Preaching: Retrieving the Medieval Sermon as an Event." Preacher, Sermon and Audience in the Middle Ages. Ed. Carolyn Muessig. Leiden: Brill, 2002, pp. 13-37.

"Rethinking Hygelac's Raid in Beowulf." English Language Notes, 38.4 (June 2001), 9-16.

"Pour une compréhension théologique de la spiritualité américaine." Nova et Vetera, 74 (1999), 57-75.

"New Light on Bl. Giacomo Benfatti, Bishop of Mantua, and the Mantua Disciplinati." Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 69 (1999), 147-79.

"The Afterlife of an Error: Hunting in the Decretalists (1190-1348)." Studia Canonica, 33 (1999), 151-68.

"Misreading and Rereading Patristic Texts: The Prohibition of Hunting by the Decretists." Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law (Munich, 13-17 July 1992). Rome: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1997, pp. 135-48.

"The Debate on Universals before Peter Abelard." Journal of the History of Philosophy, 33 (1995), 409-29.

"Francisco Suarez's Theory of Analogy and the Metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas." Angelicum, 72 (1995), 353-62.

"Hildegard of Bingen on Gender and the Priesthood." Church History, 63 (1994), 350-64.

"A Reinterpretation of Joachim of Fiore's Dispositio Novi Ordinis from the Liber Figurarum." Cîteaux, 33 (1982), 195-205.

Current Research

Preparation for death in high medieval Italy, the religious life of neighborhoods in the Italian cities, lay and popular participation in the Gregorian Reform.