The priest, theologian and Münster professor of church history Arnold Angenendt was the Jacob Burckhardt of denominational cultural history.

His monumental “History of Religiosity in the Middle Ages” (1997) and “The Early Middle Ages.

The Occidental Christendom from 400–900 ”(1990) draw up cultural counter-balances that should at least counteract the current disappearance of religion from society.

In “Tolerance and Violence” (2007) and under the biblical title “Let both grow up to the harvest” (2018) he devoted himself to the indisputable history of violence and crime, but also to tolerance in Christianity, which Jesus' parable of wheat alongside the Resemble weeds.

Stefan Trinks

Editor in the features section.

  • Follow I follow

But anyone who is interested in the cult of the saint in the Middle Ages should read his book “Saints and Relics. The history of their cult from early Christianity to the present day ”on the shelf. Since 1994 the volume has been the gold standard in relic research. What sounds like an exclusively Catholic topic also includes the Lutheran reliquary criticism and extends the preoccupation with the remains of venerated people - as the subtitle already promises - into the present, for example with the numerous missionaries killed in Africa and Islamic countries.

And rightly so, because all the souvenirs of idols and stars such as locks of hair or worn clothing follow the ancient human longing to hold onto the finite.

Since in this human longing of critics often too weak a belief in the resurrection could and was assumed, Angenendt's debilitating chapter on Protestant criticism is so important.

A Carthusian monk as an ardent advocate of carnal marital lust

His book on "Marriage, Love and Sexuality in Christianity" from 2015 also had this basic humanistic and optimistic coloration: Angenendt specifically approved of the Catholic Church's sexual doctrine, which is considered hopelessly outdated, with future prospects by - not only, but also - emphasized the positive contribution of Christianity to the history of marriage and thus a certain protection of women. As a comprehensively educated Medievalist, the exact knowledge of the writings of Thomas Aquinas with their positive attitude to sexuality suited him, just as Angenendt also found permissive statements such as those of the theologian Dionysius the Carthusian from the fifteenth century, who gave the readers of his treatise “On the praiseworthy life of the married couple ",Married people should “love each other with carnal lust”.

Because he never saw an outmoded, even closed era in the Middle Ages, but rather the many strands that lead into our time, he was able to present alternative approaches like hardly anyone else. Angenendt's death last Sunday shortly before his 87th birthday is a great loss. However, one does not need to be a prophet to predict that his works such as "Saints and Relics" will still be read at a profit a hundred years from now.