Brepols

Imagining the Book offers a snapshot of current research in English manuscript study in the pre-modern period on the inter-related topics of patrons and collectors, compilers, editors and readers, and identities beyond the book. This volume responds to the recent development and institutionalization of ‘History of the Book’ within the wider discipline. Scholars working in the pre-printing era with the material vestiges of a predominantly manuscript culture are currently establishing their own models of production and reception. Research in this area is now an accepted part of twenty-first century medieval studies. Within such a context, it is frequently observed that scribal culture found imaginative ways to deal with the technological watersheds represented by the transition from memory to written record, roll to codex, or script to print. In such an ‘eventful’ environment, texts and books not infrequently slip through the semi-permeable boundaries laboured over by previous generations of medievalists, boundaries that demarcate orality and literacy; ‘literary’ and ‘historical’; ‘religious’ and ‘secular’; pre- and post-Conquest compositions, or ‘medieval’ and ‘Renaissance’ attitudes and writings. Once texts are regarded as offering indices of community- or self-definition, or models of piety and good behaviour (and the codices holding them statements of prestige and influence), the book historian is left to contemplate the real or imagined importance and status of books and writing within the larger socio-political, often local, milieux in which they were once produced and read.

Il nostro immaginario non è di grande aiuto quando cerchiamo di comprendere quello altrui, e insieme studiare i meccanismi dell’immaginazione che lo hanno elaborato. Se poi si tratta dell’Età di mezzo, lo sforzo per sgombrare la mente da pregiudizi e immagini storicamente false, ma molto di moda, dovrà essere ingente. Anche per questo nel 2008 la Società Italiana per lo Studio del Pensiero Medievale (Sispm) ha deciso di dedicare il suo convegno annuale al tema Immaginario e immaginazione nel Medioevo. Un titolo impegnativo, e anche a una prima lettura palesemente ambiguo: immaginario infatti può essere inteso come un aggettivo, ovvero il prodotto dell’immaginazione, e in senso lato è detto di qualcosa di fittizio, apparente, illusorio. Immaginario è però anche un sostantivo che indica l’insieme delle rappresentazioni del mondo e delle fantasie di un individuo o di un gruppo o di un’intera collettività. Il convegno ha preso l’avvio proprio da questa concezione di immmaginario, per proseguire sulla scia di altre possibili declinazioni: dalle immagini dell’impero ai casi dei monstra fino al ruolo della fisiognomica. Indubbiamente la deriva neoplatonica ha molto pesato sulla diffidenza almeno teoricamente espressa dagli autori medievali nei confronti dei prodotti della facoltà dell’immaginazione. Ma accanto al sospetto verso tutto ciò che proviene dalla sensibilità o ad essa riporta, si deve segnalare una forte attenzione per tutto ciò che attraverso i sensi possa aiutare l’intelletto, anche nei percorsi più arditamente teologici, e insieme un’apertura verso la realtà materiale - da un Dio buono creata e da lui così voluta -, che porta a non poter accettare in maniera totalizzante il rifiuto per una natura che si porge allo sguardo avvolta da misteriosa bellezza e che come tale viene ricostruita dalla phantasia o da una facoltà immaginativa, e poi dalle penne e dalle mani degli artisti.

Interventi di F. Amerini, M. Bettetini, G. Briguglia, F. Caldera, L. Cappelletti, M. Cristiani, G. d’Onofrio, G. Fioravanti, M. Gallarino, G. Gambale, R. Gatti, C. Motta, S. Nagel, A. Palazzo, F. Paparella, V. Perone Compagni, A. Robiglio, A. Rodolfi, J.-C. Schmitt, C. Selogna, P. Spallino, G. Zuccolin.

The subject of this publication is the treatise Aduersus Manichaeos, attributed to Evodius of Uzalis. Evodius was a friend and contemporary of Augustine of Hippo. The treatise Aduersus Manichaeos is an important source on the North African Catholic church and its polemics against the Manichaeans. Although the treatise is strongly influenced by the anti-Manichaean writings of Augustine of Hippo, it also offers much original and likely authentic information on the Manichaean movement. Thus far, however, no systematic study had been conducted on this anti-Manichaean treatise attributed to Evodius. As a result, some of its historical circumstances have been shrouded in mystery.

The present volume reconstructs the circumstances in which Aduersus Manichaeos was written, and studies the treatise in relation to its fifth-century North African context. The study offers a literary, historical and theological analysis of Aduersus Manichaeos. The publication also complements the study of Aduersus Manichaeos with a new critical edition of the original Latin text, with a facing English translation.

This volume offers a fresh approach to the structure of Bonaventure’s thought. Ruben Martello argues that Bonaventure employs the Genesis creation account as an overarching framework and fecund source for understanding nature, theology, and even Scripture itself. Beginning with Bonaventure’s view of the literal meaning of Scripture, the reception of the hexaëmeron is traced chronologically in a number of major theological works. Bonaventure is interpreted in light of the hexameral commentarial tradition like Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram, and filtered through Dionysian and Victorine inspired hermeneutics. It is proposed that reading Genesis in Bonaventure may clarify a number of contemporary disputed theological, exegetical and epistemological concerns. This study also unpacks the Bonaventurian understanding of the distinctive senses of the 'image' and 'likeness' of God, aiding in the articulation of a rich theological anthropology.

Disputation and debate have accompanied human development from its beginnings. However, what we still call ‘disputation’, technically speaking, is a particular method of reasoning and analysing, involving either a debate between two people, or of one person with himself. It is this method which is the object of this study. The disputation was one of the main methods of teaching and research during the Middle Ages. Tracing its development shows how it influenced the way in which people examined abstract problems. Reasoning and arguing about contradictory positions remained a feature of intellectual life well into the nineteenth century, and the practice remains alive even today.

For a long time the disputation was the main tool for analysing problems in a range of fields, especially in philosophy and theology. The main features were the analysis of opposite positions and thorough discussion of the various arguments for both sides, the collective search for the truth in special public disputations, the recognition that the truth may differe from the conclusion reached and the willingness to accept better arguments if they brought one closer to the truth. All this is typical of an intellectual attitude, the key features of which are critical thinking and honest collaborative research, that still marks the Western world. The history of the disputation can tell us something about the way in which we learned to think.

In the year 721 the Anglo-Saxon missionary St Boniface came with his followers to Hessia, a small but turbulent province on the borders of the expanding Frankish kingdom. This book is the first dedicated interdisciplinary study of Boniface’s thirty-three-year mission among the Hessians. The author relates the historical sources to the rich archaeological heritage of the region in order to describe the political and cultural context of the mission and its relationship to long-term Frankish interests in the Saxon borderlands. Thanks to the survival of many letters between the missionary community and its supporters, it is also possible to examine a symbolic literary discourse that portrayed the missionaries as heroic exiles who chose to suffer torments in a distant land for the sake of Christ. Finally, fresh evidence drawn from topography and place names is used to argue for the existence of an expansive pre-Christian sacred landscape that was one of the major obstacles faced by Boniface and his followers. The result is an innovative study that brings history and archaeology into communication with the landscape, both real and imagined, in order to reconstruct a crucial moment in the conversion of Europe in all its complexity, ambiguity, and drama.          

Awarded the Josef Leinweber Prize 2009 by the Fulda Faculty of Theology.

Incubation (temple sleep) was a well-known ritual in the Near East and became increasingly popular in Classical and Hellenistic Greece, becoming attached to Asclepius and other divinities. It flourished in the Eastern Mediterranean, where it was encountered by the emergent Christianity. Temple sleep was so widespread that it was impossible to ban. The Christianization of the incubation ritual was thus a detailed and lengthy (but successful) process that encompassed several aspects of the Church’s self-definition, including important social and theological issues of the era. The list of relevant issues is extensive: the fate of Greek temples and the reinterpretation of sacred space, confronting Hippocratic medicine, and the learned Greek intelligentsia. Since disease and a search for cure is a ubiquitous human need, the early Church embraced a healing ministry, in secular terms as well as in ritual healing. Incubation records show how the Church viewed dreams, conversion, or the notions of magic and divination. All these come within the framework of writing miracles: the transformation of the cult was thus incorporated into standard Church discourse, from ritual practice to proper literary genres.

This first comprehensive monograph on Christian incubation examines the rich material of all the relevant Greek miracle collections: those of Saint Thecla, Cyrus and John, the different versions of Saint Cosmas and Damian and saint Artemios, as well as the minor incubation saints, As a result, it unfolds the transformation of healing sites and practices related to dreams as they spread across Byzantium, from rural Asia Minor to Constantinople and Alexandria.

Il realismo degli universali sostenuto nei primi decenni del XII secolo nelle scuole del Nord della Francia è stato studiato principalmente attraverso la critica di Pietro Abelardo, mentre materiale inedito a favore delle teorie realiste non sempre ha ricevuto adeguata considerazione. Questo libro analizza la teoria realista sugli universali variamente nota come ‘teoria dell’indifferenza’, ‘dell’identità’, ‘degli status’, etc., per la quale si propone qui la denominazione di ‘teoria dell’individuum’. Secondo tale posizione, infatti, l’universale è l’individuo stesso in alcuni dei suoi status.

Si tratta di una forma mitigata di realismo, sviluppatasi a partire dalla critica al più tradizionale realismo dell’essenza materiale. Elementi abelardiani sembrano incorporati nella teoria dell’individuum per un fine - la difesa del realismo - del tutto opposto a quello del maestro palatino. Lo studio considera sia fonti che criticano la teoria dell’individuum (Logica ‘Ingredientibus’, Logica ‘Nostrorum petitioni sociorum’, ‘De generibus et speciebus’), sia testi che la sostengono (il trattato ‘Quoniam de generali’ e il commento P17 all’Isagoge del ms. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 3237, ff. 123ra-130rb), analizzando nel dettaglio i trentasette argomenti presenti nella discussione.

Oggetto di indagine è inoltre l’attribuzione della teoria al maestro Gualtiero di Mortagne, attivo a Reims e Laon nella prima metà del millecento. A questo scopo sono presi in esame dati sulla vita, le opere e l’insegnamento di Gualtiero, considerando in particolare la testimonianza di Giovanni di Salisbury in Metalogicon II, 17.

Caterina Tarlazzi è British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow alla Facoltà di Filosofia dell’Università di Cambridge e College Research Associate al St John’s College, Cambridge. Ha studiato filosofia medievale alla Scuola Galileiana di Studi Superiori dell’Università di Padova, l’École Pratique des Hautes Études, l’Université Paris IV Sorbonne e l’Università di Cambridge. Le sue ricerche vertono sul pensiero del XII secolo e sui manoscritti che trasmettono le opere e l’insegnamento dei maestri di quell’epoca.

Social inequality is one of the most pressing global challenges at the start of the 21st century. Meanwhile, across the globe at least half of the world’s population lives in urban agglomerations, and urbanisation is still expanding. This book engages with the complex interplay between urbanisation and inequality. In doing so it concentrates on the Low Countries, one of the oldest and most urbanised societies of Europe. It questions whether the historic poly-nuclear and decentralised urban system of the Low Countries contributed to specific outcomes in social inequality. In doing so, the authors look beyond the most commonly used perspective of economic inequality. They instead expand our knowledge by exploring social inequality from a multidimensional perspective. This book includes essays and case-studies on cultural inequalities, the relationship between social and consumption inequality, the politics of (in)equality, the impact of shocks and crises, as well as the complex social relationships across the urban network and between town and countryside.

On 5 December 1709, in Bologna, Lucia Cremonini is accused of a terrible crime: the murder of her newborn son. This tragic episode, exhumed from the depths of time, is placed at the centre of an enthralling study by one of the leading scholars of modern history and the history of religious beliefs. During the course of a dramatic trial the crime is debated by representatives of religious, philosophical, moral, and scientific culture, all characteristic of the formative period of the modern world and all seeking a convincing answer to fundamental questions. When does life begin? When can a human being first be described as such, so that his or her killing is a crime punishable by the maximum penalty? What is the true role of baptism in the formation of the human person? These are all highly topical questions in an age like our own, where belief is subject to the powerful assaults of scientific research and new questions are being raised about the essence and the limits of human existence.

This is a translation from the original Italian publication 'Dare l'anima' (Einaudi, 2005).

Translation by Hilary Siddons.

How did societies change between the Early Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age? And what was the impetus that led to these changes — social contacts and innovation, intergenerational contacts, or perhaps simply adaptation? Taking these questions as its starting point, this richly detailed volume explores four different regions of southern Poland to compare and contrast the mechanisms that drove socio-cultural change in the region between the second and the first half of the first millennium BC. Drawing on standardized sets of archaeological data, the chapters gathered here examine the interplay of different factors influencing cultural change across five key parameters: environment; settlement patterns; settlement organization; economy; and material culture. The result is a beautifully illustrated volume that offers important insights into Central and Eastern European prehistory, made accessible for an English-speaking audience.

During the sixteenth century Antwerp was at the forefront of the Renaissance north of the Alps. Not only a new architectural style flourished in the Antwerp metropolis, but at the end of the sixteenth century sciences such as mathematics, optics, geometry and perspective became more and more important. They helped to redefine architecture and the other fine arts on a more scientific base. Their introduction in the arts at the beginning of the seventeenth century lead to new experiences, applications and even innovations in architecture. The Jesuit Order played a very crucial rule in this process. The realization of their new church in the centre of the city of Antwerp became one of the first attempts to bring together the applications of all those new ideas in one total project. Paintings by Peter Paul Rubens and sculptures by Hieronymus Duquenoy, Artus Quellinus etc. were participating in one of the first Early Baroque architectural realizations in the Low Countries. The Jesuit Church of Antwerp, currently the St Carolus Borromeus Church, was designed by François d'Aguilón, a scientist and architect of the Jesuit Order. His publication Opticorum Libri sex on optics and on the reflection of light was edited by the Officina Plantiniana in 1613, the same year he started his project for the church. This scientific and theoretical work helps us to understand the new experiences with light and space he experimented with.

It is the aim of this publication to bring together researchers to confront the results of their studies about the interpretation of the façade of this Counter-Reformation church, the phenomenon of diffuse light created by reflection and refraction on marble statues, pillars and multiple ornaments, the combination of linear and parallel perspective applications, the sacral and social use of space, the signification of the façade and towers as parts of a perspective scene in the city landscape. Special attention is also devoted to the School of Mathematics, installed in Antwerp by the Jesuits at that time.

The central question will be whether we can conclude that at the beginning of the seventeenth century the innovative sense of creating a new architecture, so typical for the sixteenth century in Antwerp, still persisted in this city during the early seventeenth century, and even lead to a new interpretation of architectural space in European context.

Some thirty years ago Michael Herren burst on the medieval Latin scene with his edition and translation of the notoriously difficult Hisperica Famina, and followed this a few years later with his translation of the prose works of Aldhelm. Notice was given that a junior scholar, unafraid to tackle some of the most obscure, complex, and arcane Latin, wished to make it accessible to non-Latinists as well as to those Latinists who lacked his particular skills. Not content with labouring alone in that field, Herren gathered scholars in Toronto to a conference on “Insular Latin Studies,” the proceedings of which he published two years later. Over the years he shed considerable light on such obscure texts and authors as Virgilius Maro Grammaticus, John Scottus Eriugena, and the Cosmographia by the pseudonymous Aethicus Ister. His research trail led him again and again to Ireland, and the Irish contribution to early medieval Latinity and to English, Carolingian, and even Italian culture. Recognizing the rich diversity of medieval Latin, Herren in 1990 founded The Journal of Medieval Latin and has, as its editor, provided a home for medieval Latinists of all stripes.

Les articles rassemblés dans ce volume ont tous trait aux manuscrits. On y retrouve la préoccupation constante du Père Boyle d'étudier le codex comme un ensemble et de l'analyser sous divers angles permettant de mieux reconstituer l'histoire du livre médiéval. Il utitlise toutes les ressources de la paléographie, de la codicologie, de l'histoire du texte et de sa décoration pour retrouver les traces du milieu d'origine et les indications nécessaires pour identifier l'auteur de(s) oeuvre(s) et pour situer les différentes étapes de composition du manuscrit. Le livre médiéval est considéré comme un objet archéologique qu'il faut étudier dans son ensemble pour retracer son histoire.

En lisant les études que le Père Boyle nous livre, on se rend compte que la recherche interdisciplinaire est indispensable pour aborder l'examen d'un codex. Tous les détails, même insignifiants à première vue, peuvent apporter un éclairage important. Si la paléographie et l'histoire de l'écriture latine sont au centre des préoccupations de l'auteur, il entend les resituer dans leur milieu d'origine. Et c'est ainsi qu'il en arrive au concept de "paléographie intégrale".

Tout chercheur engagé dans l'étude d'un manuscrit ou dans l'édition critique d'un texte devrait lire les réflexions méthodologiques faites par le Père Boyle, avant d'entreprendre son travail. Les divers exemples qu'il donne pourront servir de modèle à des recherches ultérieures. Tant les philologues que les paléographes, les codicologues que les historiens de l'art trouveront leur bien dans les articles qui ont été réunis. Après les avoir lus, ils ne regarderont plus de la même manière les manuscrits qu'ils étudient.

Puisse cette notion de "paléographie intégrale" ouvrir des horizons nouveaux aux recherches futures et faire entrevoir aux spécialistes des textes la richesse d'une telle approche. Ce serait certainement le voeu le plus cher de l'auteur de ces articles.

Starting from the hypothesis that states were crucial as agents of modernisation, this book explores why, how and with what results European states have striven to transform their agricultural sectors in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Modernising agriculture has increasingly meant emulating the new organisational models of manufacturing industry. But since agriculture continues to rely heavily on living resources (plants and animals), the results of modernising farming have often differed significantly from the manufacturing sector. Modernised agriculture, in other words, is something quite different than simply industrialised agriculture.

Ranging from the Iberian Peninsula to Hungary and from Greece to England, the chapters of this book deal with four principal questions: Why have state elites, and their civil society allies chosen to modernise agriculture? What have they understood by agricultural modernisation? What sort of power resources have they taken as necessary for effective modernisation? And what were the consequences of the pursuit of modernising policies for the farming population and for agriculture?

Peter Moser is director of the Archives of Rural History in Bern. His research interests centre on the interaction of industrial societies with their agricultural sectors.

Tony Varley lectures in political science and sociology at the National University of Ireland, Galway. His research interests centre mainly on agrarian politics and rural social movements.

This book investigates the nature of intellectual activity in the Middle Ages from the perspective of medieval Scandinavia by discussing how a multimodal and multilingual Scandinavian culture emerged through the dynamic interchange of foreign and local impulses in the minds of creative intellectuals. By deploying cognitive theory, this volume conceptualizes intellectual culture as the result of the individual’s cognition, which incorporates physical perceptions of the world, memory and creation, rationality, emotionality and spirituality, and decision making. In doing so, it elucidates the diversity of social roles that could be assumed by people engaged in the activity of thinking. Attention is paid in particular to the key intellectual activities of negotiating secular and religious authority and identity; to thinking and learning through verbal and visual means; and to ruminating on worldly existence and heavenly salvation. These processes are explored in a series of essays that focus on various visual and textual artefacts, among them Church art and sculptures, manuscript fragments, and texts of both different languages (Latin and Old Norse) and genres (sagas, poetry and grammatical treatises, laws, liturgical explanations and theological texts). The variety of intellectual and ideational processes connected to the textual and material culture of medieval Scandinavia forms the focal point of this study. As a result, this book actively seeks to transcend the traditional cultural dichotomies of written versus oral material, Latin versus vernacular, lay versus secular, or European versus Nordic by foregrounding the cognitive and creative agency of intellectuals in medieval Scandinavia.

Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498) è una delle figure più rappresentative della realtà italiana della fine del Quattrocento. Al contrario di quanto affermato a lungo dalla storiografia passata - che lo rappresentava come 'relitto' dell'età medievale contrapposto ai 'precursori' della modernità - in lui convissero le contraddizioni e le necessità proprie della cultura del tempo: l'esigenza di rinnovamento spirituale e le tendenze profetiche, l'interesse per la filosofia e la letteratura classica, il tentativo di ritrovare un assetto politico che garantisse al tempo stesso stabilità e indipendenza. Ferrarese di nascita e fiorentino di adozione, a Firenze Savonarola dedicò tutte le sue energie fisiche ed intellettuali e lì mise in pratica per breve tempo, l'ideale della città celeste, la 'nuova Gerusalemme', che spesso evocava nella sua predicazione.

Le due raccolte di appunti filosofici di Girolamo Savonarola pubblicate in questo volume, il De doctrina Aristotelis e il De doctrina Platonicorum, dimostrano la sua conoscenza dei testi aristotelici e platonici, nonché la capacità di utilizzarli a scopo didattico e retorico, in funzione del suo specifico interesse pastorale. Il lavoro sulle fonti filosofiche e la loro elaborazione permettono di conoscere uno dei momenti essenziali della predicazione savonaroliana, lo strumento principale attraverso cui si esplicava l'attività profetica, politica e teologica dell'autore. Conservati nel codice della Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze, Conv. Soppr. D.VIII.985, gli appunti gettano luce sul passaggio che unisce la riflessione privata al discorso pubblico. L'introduzione e le appendici ai testi consentono al lettore di apprezzare la stratificazione del materiale filosofico, dagli appunti fino alle prediche e ai trattati, dove i brani annotati furono inseriti.

Prefazione di Gian Carlo Garfagnini.

Lorenza Tromboni ha conseguito il Dottorato di ricerca presso l'Università del Salento nel 2006 con una tesi sul De doctrina Platonicorum di Girolamo Savonarola; dal 2009 al 2011 ha beneficiato di una borsa di post-dottorato presso il Dipartimento di Filosofia dell'Università di Firenze, dove svolge attualmente la sua attività di ricerca. Dal 2002 collabora attivamente con la Società Internazionale per lo Studio del Medioevo Latino (S.I.S.M.E.L.), e con la Fondazione Ezio Franceschini, Firenze.

The cult of saints is one of the most fascinating religious developments of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Christians admired martyrs already in the second century, but for a long time they perceived them only as examples to follow and believed they could pray directly to God, whom they addressed as ‘Our Father’. A new attitude toward saints, now considered above all as powerful friends of God and efficient intercessors, started to emerge in the third century. Once this process gained momentum in the Constantinian era, the cult of saints constantly changed and rapidly adapted to new conditions and demands. This evolution highlighted many factors: the popularity of specific saints and the different types of sanctity, the spread of cults and customs, and the ways in which the saints were described, visualised, and represented.

This volume seeks to capture the dynamic of these adaptations, showing both those aspects of cult which evolved quickly and those which remained stable for a long time. It studies the evolution of the cults in a broad period from the third to the seventh centuries and in various regions from Gaul to Georgia, with a particular interest in the two greatest centres of the cult of saints: Rome and Constantinople. In response to changing needs and different circumstances, new generations of believers repeatedly modified the cults of established saints, even as they introduced new saints.

The Diyala region in eastern Iraq has long been a focal area of study for scholars of the Bronze Age, thanks both to its long history of human occupation, and its position as a site of strategic importance. Drawing on this strong tradition of scholarship and the results of numerous excavations and collections in the area, the seven contributions gathered in this volume aim to offer new insights into the cultures and societies of the Bronze Age Diyala by proposing new questions, problems, and approaches. Exploring subjects as widespread as architecture and iconography, cultural and economic history, the study of social networks, historiography, and the identification of ancient cities, these chapters explore the richness of the Bronze Age Diyala from a range of perspectives, and together offer important new insights into our understanding of the area.

Starting from the theory of scriptural interpretation elaborated by Hugh of St Victor, the Augustinian Canons of twelfth-century St Victor in Paris were leading theorists and practitioners of scriptural exegesis. This volume contains translations of the exegetical theories elaborated in Hugh of St Victor's (d. 1141) Didascalicon, On Sacred Scripture and its Authors, The Diligent Examiner, and On the Sacraments (prologues); Andrew of St Victor's (d. 1175) prologues to select commentaries; Richard of St Victor's (d. 1173) Book of Notes and Apocalypse commentary; Godfrey of St Victor's Fountain of Philosophy; Robert of Melun's Sentences; and the anonymous Speculum on the Mysteries of the Church.

The editors of this volume are Franklin T. Harkins (PhD, Notre Dame; Theology Dept. Fordham University), author of Reading and the Work of Restoration: History and Scripture in the Theology of Hugh of St Victor (2009) and Frans van Liere (PhD, Groningen; Dept. of History, Calvin College), editor of Andrew of St Victor’s commentaries on Samuel and Kings (1996 ; ET 2010) and on the Twelve Prophets (2007, with Mark Zier) (Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis), and author of a forthcoming book on the Bible in the Middle Ages.

Les prolégomènes à la philosophie a été le tout premier ouvrage abordé par les étudiants en philosophie dans l’Antiquité tardive. Cette œuvre, à caractère propédeutique et déclinée en plusieurs versions au fil des générations, nous donne un bon aperçu du raffinement pédagogique qui était alors en usage dans l’école néoplatonicienne. Les définitions et les divisions de la philosophie qu’on y lisait avaient pour but de donner un avant-goût du cursus philosophique et de l’orientation exégétique adoptée par l’enseignant. Cette littérature isagogique dont l’influence s’est étendue jusqu’aux sphères culturelles de langue arabe et syriaque, reste encore le « parent pauvre » des études néoplatoniciennes, alors qu’elle renferme encore des aspects méconnus qui demandent à être élucidées et approfondis. Ce volume, qui réunit cinq contributions, vise donc à clarifier certaines questions clés susceptibles d’apporter un éclairage nouveau sur la naissance, l’évolution et la diffusion de cette œuvre représentative du savoir-faire pédagogique de l’Antiquité tardive.

During the Middle Ages, new past narratives emerged, but several of these narratives are not based on the archaeological rediscovery of a lost history. On the contrary, in many cases that impression of a unique, grandiose, and ancient past is partly the result of accurate dissimulation. Yet, it would not be exact to consider the myth of Venice as a fiction or, somehow, as a fabricated invention – an apocryphal creation that does not include any historical component. Instead, the myth of Venice has been generated through an intricate operation of composing unconnected pieces, through a process of attributing new meanings to previously unconnected pieces of different histories or objects from other pasts. The result is a patchwork that, through the longue durée, has been articulated around both new and ancient stories, local and foreign myths, reconstructed or rediscovered objects and narratives. By the late Middle Ages Venice becomes the main stage of a national and international myth: while enhancing its historical role in the past, the city demonstrates the legitimacy of its role in the present. In light of such phenomenon, this volume will try to demonstrate that Venetian past narratives bring together heterogeneous materials to achieve a common result: that of celebrating Venice’s triumph and erasing its weaknesses and defeats.

Elucidating the steps that led to a finished work of art has been one of Molly Faries’ principal concerns in nearly forty years of research and teaching. A pioneer in infrared reflectography, she has demonstrated like no other scholar the importance of technical studies to art history, in the way that they provide insight into an artist’s technique and development, into collaboration within a workshop, and into master-pupil relationships. Molly Faries has taught generations of students and colleagues to view paintings not as static objects but as the results of successive choices.

The volume’s title, Invention: Northern Renaissance Studies in Honor of Molly Faries, evokes Molly’s passion for understanding an artist’s creative process. The term “invention” is here understood in the widest possible sense: How did a work of art come into being? How did an artist react to new stimuli or adapt to a new culture? Was innovation valued above adherence to a local tradition? To what degree could artists shape their patrons’ taste? How did artists transform their own inventions over time and adopt those of others? Was there a concept of invention specific to the Northern Renaissance and how did it differ from ours?

The authors who tackle these and other questions include university professors, curators, conservators, and conservation scientists, all recognized specialists in northern European art of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The artists they discuss are among the greatest painters, manuscript illuminators, printmakers, and sculptors: Johan Maelwael, the Limbourg brothers, Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling, Lieven van Lathem, Juan de Flandes, Jean Hey, Albrecht Dürer, Hieronymus Bosch, Master H.L., Jacques Du Broeucq, and Jan Brueghel the Elder.

This book, one of the few devoted specifically to the concept of invention in Northern Renaissance art, is richly illustrated with 32 color plates and 179 black-and-white reproductions; it includes an index.

Le lettere del medico fiorentino Alessandro Pini (1653-1717) e il suo trattato De moribus Turcarum fanno emergere un’immagine avvincente del popolo egiziano e della cultura ottomana. Ciò che Pini ha osservato in Egitto e nel mondo ottomano rivela una straordinaria dimensione mediterranea di commistione culturale, fatta di scambi e di incontri scaturiti dalle necessità lavorative e anche dalla semplice quotidianità. Oltre alla missione scientifica ufficiale egli doveva svolgere un’intrigante attività spionistica per Cosimo III, Granduca di Toscana, in cui si rivelò poi fallimentare. Amareggiato e osteggiato per l’insuccesso, passò poi alle dipendenze della Repubblica di Venezia e dimorò per vari anni a Istanbul e in Morea, dove senza pregiudizi e con ampiezza di vedute osservò le tradizioni e i costumi dei popoli che incontrava. Decise dunque consapevolmente di scrivere l’esaltazione di un mondo che l’Occidente vedeva come il suo alter ego negativo. Sebbene fosse stato imprigionato nella sua società di adozione, Pini rimase affascinato, forse anche ipnotizzato, da quello stesso mondo che lo aveva variamente premiato e frustrato sia nel suo lavoro ufficiale che nel suo incarico segreto.

Cet ouvrage est issu d’une rencontre scientifique, qui a eu lieu à Lyon en juillet 2014. Des biblistes et des théologiens ont cherché à interroger l’œuvre d’Irénée, particulièrement l’Adversus Haereses, sous l’angle de son rapport à une Bible juive et à une Bible chrétienne en voie de formation. Après quelques considérations générales sur l’herméneutique d’Irénée et l’autorité qu’il attribue aux documents de l’Église, particulièrement aux évangiles, les chercheurs ont examiné sa relation à certains livres privilégiés (évangiles, épîtres). Sur le fond d’une recherche statistique très complète due à L. Mellerin, la part la plus importante de l’ouvrage consiste ensuite en études de la réception de quelques lieux stratégiques, vétéro- ou néotestamentaires, chez Irénée. Le recueil est complété par des indices.

Détenteur de la chaire d’Exégèse coranique, de 1980 à 1994, à la Section des sciences religieuses de l’École pratique des hautes études à la Sorbonne, le Père Guy Monnot a renouvelé cette discipline majeure de l’islamologie classique en la considérant à juste titre comme le centre de gravité de plusieurs autres champs d’investigation scientifique : la pensée théologique, la spiritualité, la littérature, l’hérésiologie ou encore l’histoire comparée des religions. C’est la raison pour laquelle un certain nombre parmi ses amis, collègues, anciens élèves et étudiants se sont réunis ici afin de lui rendre hommage ainsi qu’à son œuvre par des contributions portant sur ses principaux domaines de recherche : étude du Coran et exégèse coranique, relations entre l’islam et les autres religions, Shahrastānī et ismaélisme, religions iraniennes et littératures persane et indo-persane. Les auteurs ont ainsi voulu témoigner leur amitié à l’égard de Guy Monnot ainsi que leur admiration pour la richesse, le rayonnement et la fécondité de son œuvre.

The years 888-962 are a period in which the Kingdom of Italy was not ruled by kings from across the Alps, the only such period from the end of the eighth century to the end of the eleventh. They were for a long time accepted as a period of major political breakdown and failure, and, in north-central (not southern) Italy, the start of the long run in to the early city communes and Italy’s future history as a radically disunited peninsula. In the light of not only recent historical reanalyses but also the emergence of a large quantity of archaeological data, this image can be tested, and in this book is, by both historians and archaeologists. A far more subtle and nuanced picture emerges from the interdisciplinary work in this volume. This book will be an essential starting-point for all future work on Italy in this period.

A la fin du XIIe siècle, Hartmann von Aue, un clerc allemand originaire de Souabe, adapte Yvain ou le Chevalier au Lion de Chrétien de Troyes. Iwein constitue sans nul doute l’œuvre la plus aboutie et la plus fascinante de Hartmann. L’adaptateur y reprend les aventures autour desquelles s’organise le roman français : la fontaine merveilleuse, la conquête d’une reine et d’un pays, la folie d’Iwein, l’aide apportée aux chevaliers prisonniers du géant Harpin ou aux trois cents captives d’un château, le combat contre Gawein. Toutefois, Hartmann ne se contente pas d’adapter le roman de Chrétien à la langue allemande, il réinterprète sa source et transforme en profondeur les motivations des personnages et le sens des aventures. Ce qui prime chez Hartmann n’est plus le rapport entre fin’ amor et prouesse mais le rôle de la chevalerie et l’idéal du miles christianus. Pour la première fois, ce roman allemand est traduit en français moderne.

Patrick del Duca est Maître de Conférences et enseigne la langue et la littérature allemandes du Moyen Âge à l’Université Blaise Pascal de Clermont-Ferrand.

Le phénomène de la jalousie a fait l’objet d’études de moralistes, de psychologues et de psychanalystes. Il a également été abordé par les théologiens sous l’angle de « la jalousie divine » telle qu’elle apparaît dans la Bible hébraïque. Le projet du présent ouvrage, délibérément original, consiste à mettre en regard et en échos les multiples manifestations de ce mécanisme universel, dans le temps et dans l’espace. Il en résulte un faisceau d’approches scientifiques, sorte d’arc-en-ciel déployant la riche palette des divers aspects de la jalousie humaine et de ses reflets dans les mythes et les légendes, depuis l’Égypte pharaonique et la Mésopotamie ancienne jusqu’à l’opéra italien, aux romans de Dostoïevski et au théâtre de Claudel, en passant bien sûr par les moments essentiels que constituent la Grèce antique, avec ses philosophes et ses mythes, les études bibliques, qoumraniennes et rabbiniques, la patristique grecque, latine et syriaque face à leurs reflets négatifs, les hérésies, et l’islam, sous ses formes normative (le Coran) et mystiques.

Le regard apporté par la psychologie des profondeurs (psychanalytique et pédopsychiatrique) vient conforter les éclairages multiples présentés par l’histoire, l’exégèse et la philosophie. C’est finalement la philologie qui a le dernier mot, puisque nos termes modernes « jalousie », « gelosia » en italien, proviennent du grec zèlos, via le latin zelus. De cette approche kaléidoscopique se dégage la double face de la jalousie, aux connotations tantôt négatives, voire mortifères, tantôt fertiles et constructives.

Ce volume, fruit des travaux de chercheurs et d’universitaires, émane du colloque éponyme organisé sous l’égide du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, de l’École Pratique des Hautes Études, de l’Université Paris-Est, et de la Région Île-de-France.

Après l’édition d’Europe, comédie héroïque, de Richelieu et Desmaretstz de Saint-Sorlin (1642), la parution de son équivalent germanique, Japeta, fera date. Les « belles infidèles » ne sont pas réservées aux auteurs français : Harsdörfer traduisit la pièce de théâtre imaginée par Richelieu dès 1643, en pleine guerre de Trente Ans, premier conflit paneuropéen dont sortira l'ordre westphalien qui dominera les relations internationales jusqu'à la Révolution française. La simple existence de cette traduction, où l’on retrouve les mêmes personnages, dont les noms sont cependant changés, mérite qu’on s’y arrête, et la version qu’il propose à son lecteur est plus fascinante encore. Les glissements de sens et de projet, de philosophie politique, de rapport à la morale et à la religion, de rapport aux Anciens, sont constants, même si le fond de l’affaire reste le même : nous avons donc Japeta, reine libre et vierge, majestueuse, qui tente d'imposer la paix à ses deux belliqueux soupirants : l'orgueilleux Iberich, mollement soutenu par son parent, le très moral Adelman, et le chevaleresque Liliwert. Italmund est là aussi, otage tantôt de l'un, tantôt de l'autre, et Austerwig court à sa perte, amoureuse de cet Iberich qui se sert d’elle, comme arme dans ce conflit qui le conduit vers sa ruine. Liliwert l’emporte, lui qui fait sienne l'ambition de Japeta d’être « libre » et non point « possédée ». La pièce figure une arène de combat, politique certes, mais aussi et peut-être surtout moral. Si la pièce de Harsdorfer est, comme celle du cardinal, une manifestation d'un sentiment européen, elle scelle peut-être encore davantage l’union entre Liliwert, la France, et Adelman, l’Allemagne. Pour autant, cette traduction, qui ne se présente jamais comme telle, si elle illustre les affirmations de Harsdörfer, selon lequel la littérature allemande doit s’enrichir aux sources étrangères, sans compter sur son seul sol, infléchit le gallocentrisme de la pièce de Richelieu, et surtout déplace son centre d’intérêt de la politique vers la morale et la dimension littéraire.

Nous voulons, avec cette édition, qui comporte le texte allemand et la première traduction française, ainsi que des notes et une introduction, contribuer à ouvrir une brèche pour les études de départements qui trop souvent s’ignorent, la littérature française, et la littérature allemande. Les chercheurs se sont par le passé trop rarement penchés sur l’influence de la France sur la littérature allemande du début de l’âge baroque, dont Harsdörfer est une figure centrale. Japeta mérite cependant l’attention non seulement parce qu’elle s’écrit à un moment où les rapports de puissance se sont transformés, en Europe, mais aussi parce qu’elle émane d’un auteur protestant adaptant la pièce d’un cardinal ministre de la France, fille aînée de l’Église, et enfin parce qu’elle est le document le plus important, dans le domaine du théâtre, de l’influence, trop longtemps négligée par la germanistique et les études littéraires françaises, du classicisme français sur la littérature allemande.

Wauquelin, «escripvaing» de ce grand mécène que fut le duc de Bourgogne, est longtemps resté dans l’ombre de son jeune confrère, David Aubert. Son œuvre embrasse cependant des champs variés, qui accueillent aussi bien des traductions que des compilations et des mises en prose. Les éditions récentes de certains de ses textes, et les études auxquelles elles ont donné lieu, permettent de mieux connaître cet auteur aujourd’hui. Répondant parfaitement aux désirs de ses différents commanditaires, son œuvre s’inscrit dans les courants de pensée et les idéologies de l’époque.

Mais Wauquelin ne fut pas seulement un auteur. Il participa lui-même aux étapes de l’élaboration matérielle des manuscrits dont son atelier assurait la transcription et la reliure, tandis que l’illustration était confiée à des artistes réputés, résidant notamment à Bruges.

Le colloque interdisciplinaire qui lui fut consacré à Tours, en septembre 2004, avait pour ambition d’éclairer toutes les facettes de son activité et de la situer dans les pratiques d’écriture mais aussi «éditoriales» de son temps. Les articles qu’il a inspirés sont accompagnés ici d’une bibliographie exhaustive.

Cette présentation en un volume de l’ensemble des connaissances que l’on peut considérer comme acquises sur Wauquelin, dans des domaines aussi divers que la philologie, la linguistique, la littérature, la codicologie ou l’histoire de l’art, voudrait susciter des interrogations et ouvrir la voie à de nouvelles recherches.

The Sacro Monte (Holy Mountain) at Varallo is a sanctuary in the Italian Alps west of Milan. It was founded in the late fifteenth century by a Franciscan friar, with the support of the town’s leading families. He designed it as a schematic replica of Jerusalem, to enable the faithful to make a virtual pilgrimage to the Holy City if they could not undertake the perilous journey to visit it physically. The Sacro Monte consists of a sequence of chapels containing tableaux of life-size painted terra-cotta figures with fresco backgrounds recounting the life and Passion of Christ. A century later, in the era of the Counter-Reformation, a ‘second wave’ of Sacri Monti was constructed in the north-western Alps, modelled on Varallo, but dedicated to other devotional themes, like the Rosary or the life of St Francis. All these sanctuaries, like Varallo, were the result of local initiatives, initiated by the clergy and the leaders of the communities where they were situated. Like Varallo, they were the work of artists and craftsmen from the alpine valleys, or from nearby Lombardy. Long dismissed as folk art unworthy of serious critical attention, the Sacri Monti are now recognised as monuments of unique artistic significance. In 2003 UNESCO listed nine of them in its register of World Heritage Sites. This book studies their development as the products of the religious sensibilities and the social, economic, and political conditions of the mountain communities that created them.

Among all the different theories that currently explore the religious milieu of Late Antiquity to elucidate the origins of the Islamic religion, there is a group of scholars supporting that Jewish Christianity must have played a role in its formation, reviving the question of a potential link between Early Islam and the beliefs and practices of those followers of Jesus that maintained or adopted certain Jewish beliefs and practices, either Jews that believed in the messianism and/or the prophecy of Jesus, groups whose existence and nature is still a matter of debate. In any case, the question is still subject of passionate debate among specialists. This volume collects the papers of a two-day colloquium held in Washington DC in October 2015 about the question of Jewish Christianity and Early Islam and highlights the vitality of this field of studies. The contributions included here cover a broad range of topics, and they offer new ideas, interpretations and understandings of the question.

The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) was groundbreaking for having introduced to medieval Europe a series of canons that sought to regulate encounters between Christians and Jews and Muslims. Its canon 68 demanded that Jews and Muslims wear distinguishing dress, in order to prevent Christians from entering into illicit sexual relations with them, restricted the movement of Jews in public spaces during Holy Week, and exhorted secular authorities to punish Jews who in any way “insult” or blaspheme against Christ himself. Other canons sought to exercise greater control over moneylending, to provide relief to Christian borrowers, to extract tithes from Jews who held Christian properties as pledges, and prohibited Jews from exercising power as public officials over Christians. The canons condemned converts who preserved elements from their former religion, promoted a fifth Crusade to the East, exempted Crusaders from taxes and from interest payments to Jewish moneylenders, restricted trade with Muslims or Saracens, and condemned Christians who provided arms or assistance to Saracens. The Council’s canons affected the missionary efforts of the late medieval Church and its attempts to convert Jewish and Muslim minorities, and established essential guidance on minority relations not to be surpassed until Vatican II in the 1960s.

A thorough analysis of the sinuous ‘peregrinatio academica’ of Johann Terrentius Schreck (1576-1630) between 1600-1618 through (South-, Central- and NW-) European universities, academies and courts (at Freiburg /Br.; Paris; Rome; Basel; Padua; Strasbourg, Prague, Kassel, etc.) and his rich correspondence displays a widespread network of contacts, covering a broad range of domains, from medicine to alchemy, pharmacy, botany, and through engineering to (pure and applied) mathematics, and calendar making. In all these domains of the contemporary ‘Republic of Letters’, this former student of François Viète (Paris), Galileo (Padua) and ex-Lincean, adept of Copernicus and Paracelsus showed himself to be a passionate scholar with multi-faceted and versatile talents. After 1611, with this very rich experience he entered the Society of Jesus, and shortly afterward he was appointed as companion of Nicolas Trigault, who was touring through

Europe (1615-1618) as procurator on behalf of the fledgling Jesuit Mission in China, seeking funds, men, books and scientific instruments. This second phase of intensive travelling through European centers of scholarship, patronage, and printing (including Rome; Venice; Basel; Frankfurt; Cologne, Antwerp, etc.) resulted in an enormous collection of books and instruments, which were dispatched to Lisbon from various points in 1617/1618. Shipped to China, these materials arrived in Macau in 1619, and in Peking in 1625, becoming the core of the Jesuit libraries, mainly in Peking, and the basis for the scholarly activities of the Jesuits over the following decades in the domains of mathematics, calendar making, medicine, etc.

The present volume presents a new critical edition of Buridan’s Sophismata based on a collection of six manuscripts and an incunabulum. It forms part of an international project to edit the whole of John Buridan’s Summulae dialecticae, the most extensive version of which consists of nine treatises (tractatus). The treatise on sophisms is the ninth treatise of the Summulae dialecticae and deals with most of the major subjects discussed by the fourteenth century logicians (signification, supposition, appellation, truth-conditions, insolubles, etc.). Although it illustrates how some of the theorems of the preceding treatises may be put to use, it can not be considered a systematic practical companion to the preceding collection of theorems. It is nevertheless one of the most important pieces among Buridan’s works.

John Buridan (ca. 1300-1361) was one of the most influential philosophers of his time. During his long career at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Paris, he taught many logic courses, for which he wrote a textbook, entitled Summulae dialecticae. This work consists of nine treatises; the present volume contains the first critical edition of the Preface and the first treatise of the Summulae: De propositionibus. As the bearers of truth and falsity, propositions are the primary concern of logic, the art that serves as a general tool for reaching truth and avoiding falsity in any field of knowledge, whether in contemplative or practical contexts. Most important is Buridan’s commitment to the semantic primacy of mental language and the treatment of written and spoken propositions as conventional signs, which designate the primary bearers truth and falsity, namely mental propositions. In De propositionibus Buridan develops his nominalist conception of the relations between mind, language, and reality, which he goes on to employ in the subsequent treatises of the Summulae.

De syllogismis is the fifth treatise of John Buridan’s Summulae dialecticae, a textbook he wrote for his logic course in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Paris. De syllogismis contains material related to Aristotle’s Analytica Priora and Boethius’s De hypotheticis syllogismis. The textbook discusses inferences involving not only propositions de inesse, but also propositions featuring oblique, reduplicative and infinite terms. Buridan displays a keen interest in modal inferences and inferences involving propositional attitudes. Buridan’s De syllogismis continues along the lines of his nominalist conception of the relations between mind, language and reality.

The essays collected here represent the current state of research into the works of John Gower, poet, philosopher, and contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer. They assess Gower’s literary output within the context of manuscript production and readership/ownership in late medieval England and the triangle of Latin, French, and English as literary and official languages in Ricardian England. Sections of the volume focus on manuscripts and the circulation of Gower’s works in languages other than English. In addition, the literary and philosophical contexts that inform Gower’s poetics and politics are considered here, resulting in readings of the poet’s rhetorical and ethical agenda as well as his texts’ intervention in and reaction to social outsiders in his contemporary London. A wide variety of critical discourses inform the readings presented here, including medieval English, French, and Latin literary studies, art history, manuscript production and reception, postmodern ethics, and historical studies.

This is the first translation in any language of John of Garland’s poem about the historical events of his lifetime (c. 1195- c. 1258), together with revised Latin text, introduction and notes. This work gives a vivid picture of Anglo-French relations, of studies in Toulouse after the Albigensian Crusade, and of the need for faith following Louis’ catastrophic defeat in the Seventh Crusade. John gives us insights into his own life, and a stream of stories, holy and profane. The translation and notes bring to life for a wide range of medievalists this eye-witness account by an Englishman in France of major events of the age, especially 1242-52. They make clear John’s debts to classical authors and to contemporaries, especially Alan of Lille and Matthew Paris. Through re-ordering the lines, this edition now generates clarity from the single manuscript. It also offers fresh insights and a new perspective on John of Garland himself.

The Dominican scholar John of Paris was one of the most controversial members of the University of Paris in the later Middle Ages. The author of over twenty works, he is best known today for On Royal and Papal Power, a tract traditionally linked to the explosive confrontation that took place between the French king Philip IV and Pope Boniface VIII in the early years of the fourteenth century. Although his role as a royal apologist has been questioned in recent years, John’s tract is often considered the first great defence of the independence of nation-states in the face of the claims to universal authority made by popes and emperors.

Bringing together a team of international scholars with a wide range of expertise, this volume offers the first collection of essays in any language to be dedicated to an exploration of John’s thought. It re-examines his view of the relationship between Church and state, and his conception of political organization. It considers the role played by John’s background as a member of the Dominican order in shaping his ideas and breaks new ground in exploring the relationship between his various works, the origins of his thought, its development, and its legacy.