Brepols

This volume analyses how and why members of scholarly societies such as the Royal Society, the Society of Antiquaries of London, and the Leopoldina collected specimens of the natural world, art, and archaeology in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These scholarly societies, founded before knowledge became subspecialised, had many common members. We focus upon how their exploration of natural philosophy, antiquarianism, and medicine were reflected in collecting practice, the organisation of specimens and how knowledge was classified and disseminated. The overall shift from curiosity cabinets with objects playfully crossing the domains of art and nature, to their well-ordered Enlightenment museums is well known. Collective Wisdom analyses the process through which this transformation occurred, and the role of members of these academies in developing new techniques of classifying and organising objects and new uses of these objects for experimental and pedagogical purposes.

Colonialism tends to arouse emotional debate, often based on incomplete knowledge of the facts and context. Colonial Congo fills this gap by introducing the general reader to the latest academic thinking and research. Answering concrete questions, pre-eminent historians offer a unique insight into the history of the Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo.

How did Leopold II’s autocratic government function and what do we know about the victims of his rule? How much profit was made in the Congo and who benefitted the most? What was life like for Congolese men and women during colonial rule and how did they feel about it? Did the Congolese offer resistance, and in what ways? What was colonialism’s impact on the Congo’s natural world? How did colonial policy affect infrastructure, education, healthcare and science? Did missionaries give colonialism a more human face? Colonial Congo’s explorations of these issues and more are revealed in this eye-opening, indispensable guide.

L’Apocalypse johannique a longtemps posé problème dans l’Église ancienne, en raison de son caractère hermétique et de l’abus qu’en ont fait les sectes millénaristes. L’Orient ne l’a reçue que tardivement, non sans restriction, dans le canon des Écritures. En Occident, elle n’a pas suscité les mêmes réticences. Elle le doit à un exégète génial, qui a su en proposer une lecture à la fois politiquement correcte, théologiquement acceptable et spirituellement utile, dans un contexte historique très différent de celui où elle avait été rédigée. Tyconius, qui a vécu en Afrique du Nord dans la seconde moitié du IVe siècle, appartenait à l’Église donatiste, mais il était loin de partager sans réserve sa doctrine. Il en prenait même le contre-pied sur des points fondamentaux. Cela n’a pas empêché que son commentaire de l'Apocalypse ait subi le sort commun à la plupart des ouvrages réputés, à tort ou à raison, hérétiques: il n’a plus été recopié et s’est perdu. Cependant, les commentateurs de l’antiquité chrétienne et du haut moyen âge s’en sont inspirés de façon à ce point étroite, qu’il est possible de reconstituer, par comparaison, leur source commune. Ce texte fondateur, dont on trouvera ici la traduction, a été édité dans la série latine du Corpus Christianorum sous le numéro 107A. Des renvois aux pages correspondantes de l’édition sont fournis dans les marges de cette publication.

Monseigneur Roger Gryson, professeur émérite à l'Université catholique de Louvain, est connu notamment par ses travaux sur l'histoire des institutions ecclésiastiques dans l'antiquité, l'arianisme latin et la critique textuelle de la Bible latine.

This is a companion volume to Texts of Greek and Latin Authors on the Far East (Brepols 2010) originally compiled by George Coedès and recently translated by John Sheldon. There are nearly one hundred different authors whose writings have been quoted in the text volume. All these authors are introduced and all quotations are placed in context and given detailed literary, linguistic and historical commentary by Dr Sheldon. The Greek and Latin texts have been re-examined and a number of suggestions for improved readings are made in the Commentary. In a number of places traditional interpretations of the ancient geography of the Far East have been superseded mainly owing to an improved understanding of the text. This volume, which should be used in conjunction with the text volume, will be a useful, at times an essential, tool for future researchers in this field.

Andrew of St Victor († 1175) was an exegete of a rare quality who set out to expound Scripture according to its literal sense, guided by the examples of Jerome and Hugh of Saint Victor.

The books of Samuel and Kings had a great influence on the spirituality and theology of the Middle Ages. To the medieval mind, they were more than just historical accounts; they attested to an important period in God’s dealings with this world. When interpreted typologically, they could also relate to other periods in the history of salvation. Yet before such higher spiritual wisdom could be attained, students at the school of Saint Victor first had to study the scriptural texts at the most basic level of allegorical interpretation: their historical, or literal, sense. The Commentary on Samuel and Kings offers such a literal explanation and gives an opportunity to study Andrew at work: as a critical researcher, who used concepts of grammar, literary theory, and science to elucidate the text and who made Jewish exegesis available to Christian scholarship, and as a compiler. His meticulous scholarship on the literal sense of Scripture formed an important component of the curriculum of the school at Saint Victor, where thorough learning was seen as a preparation for mystical knowledge and spiritual understanding.

The source text of this volume appeared in the series Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis as Andreas de Sancto Victore - Expositio hystorica in librum Regum (CCCM 53A). References to the corresponding pages of the edition are provided in the margins of this translation.

Frans van Liere holds a Ph.D. in medieval studies from Groningen University and is Professor of History at Calvin College (USA). His critical edition of the latin text appeared in 1996.

Il commento di Girolamo di Stridone all’Epistola ai Galati, composto nel 386 a Betlemme all’indomani della definitiva (e burrascosa) partenza da Roma, è un’impresa senza precedenti, come lo Stridonense dichiara nel prologo: applicando con coerenza tecniche note a Roma, ma guardate fino a quel momento con sospetto, lo Stridonense si propone di spiegare un’epistola paolina non più mediante la semplice parafrasi con qualche rara digressione filosofica che orienti il lettore (com’ era il caso dei predecessori latini Mario Vittorino e Ambrosiaster), bensì, alla maniera di Origene, come dibattitto aperto tra una pluralità di interpretazioni fra le quali il lettore può liberamente orientarsi. L’intuizione geronimiana ha, tra l’altro, il merito di dare nuova linfa ad un fenomeno culturale di grande portata per la letteratura latina in età tardoantica, che vede, nell’arco di pochi decenni, la fioritura a Roma, e più in generale in Occidente, di numerosi commentari paolini. Impossibile per noi moderni individuare gli autori greci delle molteplici spiegazioni menzionate da Girolamo; ma è certo che Origene è la fonte principale e che per questo l’opera geronimiana rappresenta uno dei frutti più belli della fortuna dell’Alessandrino nel IV secolo. L’interesse per il commento a Galati è infine accresciuto dalla diatriba a distanza che s’innesca tra Girolamo e Agostino a proposito della spiegazione dello Stridonense di Gal 2, 11-14: forse riprendendo da Origene una spiegazione assai peculiare dell’incidente di Antiochia, lo Stridonense finisce col provocare un’articolata e più volte reiterata protesta epistolare da parte di Agostino, il quale non ammette la novità geronimiana.

La versione latina originale del testo proposto in traduzione in questo volume è pubblicata nella collana Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina con il titolo Hieronymus - Commentarii in epistulam Pauli apostoli ad Galatas (CCSL 77A). I rimandi alle pagine corrispondenti dell’edizione sono forniti a margine di questa traduzione.

Giacomo Raspanti è Professore a contratto di Letteratura Cristiana Antica presso l'Università di Palermo (Italia). Si occupa di esegesi biblica patristica e di oratoria pagana e cristiana in età tardoantica.

This volume investigates the vivid and emotionally intense commemoration of the Passion of Christ as a key element in late medieval religious culture. Its goal is to shed light on how the Passion was communicated and on its socio-religious function in late medieval Europe. By adopting a multidisciplinary approach, the volume analyses the different media involved in this cultural process (sermons, devotional texts, lively performances, statues, images), the multiple forms and languages in which the Passion was presented to the faithful, and how they were expected to respond to it. Key questions concern the strategies used to present the Passion; the interaction between texts, images, and sounds in different media; the dissemination of theological ideas in the public space; the fashioning of an affective response in the audience; and the presence or absence of anti-Jewish commonplaces.

By exploring the interplay among a wide range of sources, this volume highlights the pervasive role of the Passion in late medieval society and in the life of the people of the time.

Communities of Learning: Networks and the Shaping of Intellectual Identity in Europe, 1100-1500 explores the fundamental insight that all new ideas are developed in the context of a community, whether academic, religious, or simply as a network of friends. The essays in this volume consider this notion in a variety of contexts and locations within Europe, from the pioneering age of translation activity in twelfth-century Toledo, when Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholars came together to discuss Aristotle, to the origins of the University of Paris in the thirteenth century, and up to the period of great cultural renewal in France, Germany, and Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The collected essays bring together disciplinary approaches that are often discussed quite separately, namely that of the history of ideas, and the sociologies of both intellectual and religious life, with a view to exploring the multiplicity of communities in which ideas are pursued. Underpinning these various essays is an awareness of the delicate relationship between education and the diversity of religious practice and expression within Europe from 1100 to 1500. The collection emphasizes the fundamental continuity of intellectual concerns, which were shaped by both classical thought and monotheist religious tradition, but interpreted in a variety of ways.

The title of this volume recalls the famous 1977 book by David Abulafia, The Two Italies, about the origins of the so-called ‘unequal exchange’ and ‘dual economy’ between Northern and Southern Italy. These are supposed to have provided the ground for the so-called ‘Southern question’ (‘questione meridionale’), one of the foremost topics in the whole of Italian history. However, trade is not the only relevant theme in a comparison between the Italy of Communes and the Kingdom of Sicily. This collection of essays points to different interpretative paths, which concern not only trade networks, but also less well-known aspects of the interrelation, such as the rise of civic tradition, the spread of Mendicant Orders, and the circulation of wealth through family relationships, women, marriage and patrimonial assets.