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2004-2005 Fellows

2004-2005 Fellow Whalen

Brett Whalen

Stanford University
Department of History

Brett Whalen was born in Montpelier, Vermont. His fascination with the Middle Ages began at the Children's Library with a book on Charlemagne and The Hobbit. Catholic school also left its stamp upon his intellectual interests. The University of Vermont, where he took his BA and MA, opened the door to the doctoral program at Stanford, located in the more salubrious climate of California. Bookish by nature, he also enjoys hiking, camping and traveling, particularly with his wife, Malissa.

Project Summary

Whalen's dissertation, tentatively entitled "Salvation History and the Division of Christendom (1050-1300)," argues that Latin Christians understood the religious division between themselves and the Greeks in much more sophisticated and ambivalent terms than simple dislike. His research examines how Western clerical authors interpreted the divergence between the churches as a part of God's historical dispensation for human redemption. Church figures presented the division of Christendom and its foreseen apocalyptic reunion as part of a divine plan for history, one which prioritized the authority of the Roman church and religion of its Western followers.

Whalen's approach to the problem of Latin and Greek difference takes us away from the narrow topic of their institutional schism and raises questions of religious identity that are usually associated with normative Christian attitudes toward heretics, Jews and Muslims. Sources for this project include works of Latin exegesis (i.e. biblical commentaries), theology and hagiography, chronicles, papal correspondence, apocalyptic commentaries, prophecies and anti-Greek polemics.