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THE CATHOLIC INTELLECTUAL TRADITION HIST 280 / HUMS 348 / RLST 160 Professors Giuseppe Mazzotta, Jeffrey Brenzel, Carlos Eire

Simon Vouet, , c. 1625, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Course description: This introductory survey seeks to provide an overview of theological, philosophical, spiritual and aesthetic elements of the Roman Catholic tradition, which understands itself as a continuous community of believers dating to the earliest origins of the Christian religion. Given the complexity of the subject and its long history, we will attempt in this course to acquaint students with a representative sample of critical passages in the life of the tradition and the principal figures associated with the creative intellectual, artistic, and literary forces that shaped those passages, with the hope of conveying the degree to which this living and vibrant religious tradition has addressed time and change in the human condition, and, in turn, also been shaped by them.

Almost all required readings for the course are original sources (in translation). The three course instructors will share the lecturing responsibilities among them, along with a few guest lecturers on topics of their special expertise. Each of the three instructors will also conduct one seminar session each week of the course, with enrollment limited to 17 students per seminar section, making for an enrollment limit of 51 for the course as a whole. Course requirements will include active participation in the seminar section, a midterm exam, final exam and three reaction papers of five pages length each.

Syllabus Outline, with reading sources:

Week 1 Catholicism, an Introduction (Selections from Augustine, , MacIntyre) Week 2 The (Luke, , John) Week 3 Talking About God (Selections from , East and West) Week 4 The End of the Ancient World (Selections from Augustine, Gregory the Great, , Benedict) Week 5 Monastic and Scholastic Theology (Selections from , Aquinas, Leclercq) Week 6 Poetry and Theology (Selections from Dante) Week 7 Mystical Theology (Selections from Richard of St. Victor, , ) Week 8 (Selections from , Machiavelli, Ignatius Loyola) Week 9 Catholicism (Selections from Pedro Calderón de la Barca, , Teresa of Avila, Week 10 Retrieving Natural (Selections from Anthony Pagden, Paul III, Francisco Suarez, Juan Gines de Sepulveda, Bartolome de las Casas) Week 11 Catholicism and Modernity (Selections from Pope Leo XIII, ) Week 12 Modern Catholic Literature (Stories of Flannery O’Connor and Graham Greene)

FACULTY

Jeff Brenzel is a Lecturer in Humanities and the Master of Timothy Dwight College. He is also the former director of the Association of Yale Alumni and the former Dean of Undergraduate Admissions at Yale, as well as a current trustee of St. Thomas More, the Catholic chaplaincy at Yale. His research interests have focused on the links between ancient and modern moral philosophy, with a particular concern for the history of ideas regarding human nature.

Giuseppe Mazzotta is the Sterling Professor in the Humanities for Italian and the Chairman of the Italian Department. He has written several books, mainly on Dante, but they all share a number of common themes: the relation between esthetic and religious experiences, the unity of knowledge, the continuity of literary and artistic traditions, and the role of art in shaping and questioning our experience of the world.

Carlos Eire is the T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies (Yale’s only endowed professorship in Catholic studies), and also chair of the Studies Program. He is a historian of the late medieval and early modern periods, and has written on both the Catholic and Protestant Reformations. His chief obsession – both personal and academic – is figuring out how beliefs have related to behavior throughout history, especially beliefs that concern the relation between the natural and supernatural realms.