The Ten Commandments in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

Over the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as more and more vernacular commentaries on the Decalogue were produced throughout Europe, the moral system of the Ten Commandments gradually became more prominent. The Ten Commandments proved to be a topic from which numerous proponents of pastoral and lay catechesis drew inspiration. Gods commands were discussed and illustrated in sermons and confessors manuals, and they spawned new theological and pastoral treatises both Catholic and Reformed. But the Decalogue also served several authors, including Dante, Petrarch, and Christine de Pizan. Unlike the Seven Deadly Sins, the Ten Commandments supported a more positive image of mankind, one that embraced the human potential for introspection and the conscious choice to follow Gods Law.

Youri Desplenter, Ph.D. (2004), is Professor of Historical Dutch Literature (Middle Ages) at Ghent University. He has published on Middle Dutch religious literature, including De Bijbel in de Lage Landen. Elf eeuwen van vertalen (Heerenveen: 2015; edited with P. Gillaerts a.o.).

Jürgen Pieters, Ph.D. (2000), is Professor of Literary Theory at Ghent University. He is the author of several books on the methodology of New Historicism and of a recent monograph on Constantijn Huygens: Op zoek naar Huygens. Italiaanse leesnotities (Gent, 2014).

Walter Melion, Ph.D (1988), is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Art History at Emory University in Atlanta. He has published extensively on Dutch and Flemish art and art theory of the 16th and 17th centuries, including The Meditative Art: Studies in the Northern Devotional Print, 1550-1625 (Philadelphia: 2009).