Brepols

The treatment of long-term agricultural transformation remains a lively topic for historians. Much debate arose when agricultural development patterns were discovered that did without a dominant, production-oriented cereal crop, even when it was accompanied by livestock farming. Joan Thirsk hoped to conclude this debate by putting forward the hypothesis that such “alternative agriculture” was the farmers’ way of responding to the difficulties caused by periods of low agricultural prices. This theory stirred up controversy and arguments both for and against.

The contributions to this volume take this hypothesis seriously and attempt to assess its validity. Examining a large number of “alternative agricultures” over the long term, from the fifteenth to the twentieth century, they discuss the issues encountered in tracing the links between the spread of alternative crops, such as fruits and vegetables, flowers, and industrial crops, and the general economic environment, across a vast swathe of territory stretching from Flanders to Spain and from France, through Italy and Switzerland, as far as Russia.

De 1419 à 1467, l’Etat bourguignon connut une expansion sans précédent, en partie servie par la politique diplomatique du duc de Bourgogne. Acteur central du mémorable congrès d’Arras de 1435, Philippe le Bon se posa en arbitre de l’Europe, grâce à ses alliances successives avec l’Angleterre et la France, mais aussi aux liens tissés dans toute la chrétienté.

L’enjeu de cette recherche, grâce à l’étude des moyens conceptuels, humains et matériels mobilisés par la diplomatie bourguignonne, est de resituer la place de la diplomatie dans la politique globale de Philippe le Bon.

L’étude des quelque 1412 ambassades et 621 ambassadeurs dépêchés par le duc durant son règne, la mise à jour de tactiques de négociation, de stratégies d’expertise, ainsi que la puissance financière mobilisée permettent d’éclairer un modèle de diplomatie ambitieuse, à l’heure où l’ambassadeur n’était encore qu’un « artisan de paix », où les ambassades permanentes n’existaient guère et où les concepts et le droit des gens étaient encore en pleine fixation.

Anne-Brigitte Spitzbarth est normalienne, agrégée et docteur en histoire de l’Université Lille 3 où elle a enseigné l’histoire médiévale. Elle est membre du CRHEN-O et d’IRENE. Ses recherches portent sur la diplomatie et la négociation.

Maximus the Confessor, a monk and theologian of the seventh century, was a transmitter and creative interpreter of the dogmatic and ascetical traditions of the Greek-speaking Church, and an innovative mind in his own right. An important figure on the theological landscape of his day, he became deeply involved in the post-Chalcedonian Christological controversies concerning the natures, activities (energies), and wills in Christ, eventually suffering at the hands of the imperial authorities for his rejection of certain imperial dogmatic decrees. These decrees in his view denied the principle of the salvation of the cosmos: the perfect communion of divinity and humanity - as preserved in their own proper natures - in the one Christ. He died in exile on the Black Sea coast, soon after his trial in Constantinople, in 662.

The Ambigua to Thomas are a collection of chapters devoted to the exposition of passages from Gregory Nazianzen and Ps. Denys the Areopagite. Maximus uses the texts as a means of expounding the meaning of the perfect union of divinity and humanity in the one Christ, arriving ultimately at an interpretation of the phrase from Denys, which affirmed that Christ “conducted his life among us according to a certain new theandric activity.”

The source text of this volume appeared in Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca as Maximus Confessor - Ambigua ad Thomam una cum epistula secunda ad eundem (CCSG 48). References to the corresponding pages of the Corpus Christianorum edition are provided in the margins of this translation.

Joshua Lollar is currently conducting research at the Theology Department of the University of Notre Dame (USA).

The work is a translation of the Greek text entitled Anonymus dialogus cum Iudaeis, edited by José Declerck in CCSG 30. The introduction covers the textual history, historical setting, literary setting, and other matters. The translation is divided into thirteen chapters following the original structure of the book and the edition by Declerck. Brief footnotes accompany the text in order to clarify matters of translation. Indexes of Scripture, ancient documents, names, and subjects complete the work.

The source text of this volume appeared in Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca as Anonymus - Dialogus cum Iudaeis saeculi ut videtur sexti (CCSG 30). References to the corresponding pages of the Corpus Christianorum edition are provided in the margins of this translation.

Lee M. Fields holds a Ph.D. in Hebraic and Cognate Studies from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion with an emphasis in Judaic Studies in the Greco-Roman Period and is currently Chair of the Department of Biblical Studies at Mid-Atlantic Christian University (Elizabeth City, North Carolina, United States).

The earliest Old French herbal in verse, here edited for the first time, is a surprisingly comprehensive work (3188 octosyllables), based on an eleventh-century Latin treatise 'De viribus herbarum' attributed to a certain 'Macer'. It occupies a significant place in the development of herbals and is an interesting witness to writing in Western France in the thirteenth century and to the unusual syntax and concentrated style of its author. Some one hundred and twenty-five plants are described together with their medicinal uses, which cover a remarkable range of ailments. For ease of recognition the sections of text which do not seem to be based on the received text of 'Macer' are printed in italics. Quotations from the principal source and from parallels are given in the notes. This work will be of great value to all those interested in Old French, in medieval translation, the vernacular transmission of learning, and the history of medicine.

Following the first volume entitled Analogical Identities: The Creation of the Christian Self of a trilogy dedicated to Christian anthropology in a modern re-assessment, the present second volume deals with the specific content of this concept of “Analogical Identity” as a new hermeneutic retrieval of Christian anthropology in its relation with its historical roots and in the light of modern Philosophical and Psychological thought, to which we thus introduce some new conceptual tools. At the same time, a theological criticism of modern Philosophy and Psychology is initiated, and some new anthropological concepts of theological provenance are proposed.

Quelle place occupe l’humaniste André Alciat dans le panorama de la Renaissance européenne ? Comment rendre compte à la fois de la diversité et de l’unité des ouvrages qui composent le corpus alciatique, dont on ne voit souvent que le recueil d’Emblemata, en oubliant la masse des écrits juridiques ?

Pour comprendre les forces qui nourrissent et stimulent cette oeuvre protéiforme, il convenait de replacer dans leur contexte historique et culturel les étapes biographiques et les activités scientifiques multiples du grand juriste milanais, tour à tour « archéologue » précoce et historien, avocat et professeur de droit, mais aussi poète à ses heures. Alciat entretient en effet des relations mouvementées tant avec les princes qu’avec les institutions académiques. Il noue des liens avec les humanistes de toute l’Europe, tels Érasme ou Budé, et sa carrière universitaire témoigne en particulier de la dynamique des échanges entre France et Italie. Dans la genèse et la diffusion de ses travaux, il traite avec les éditeurs comme un stratège en campagne. Son oeuvre enfin remet clairement en question le statut des disciplines constituées et manifeste une authentique sensibilité aux mutations intellectuelles et religieuses de son temps. Les enjeux de la production alciatique dépassent pourtant de beaucoup ces constats. On soulignera tout spécialement l’importance accordée par Alciat au langage symbolique et à l’eikôn, deux voies privilégiées pour assimiler et interpréter l’héritage gréco-latin. On doit également mettre en avant le rôle joué par la réception contemporaine et postérieure - imitateurs, commentateurs, traducteurs et émules - qui, en réinventant, voire en trahissant parfois l’héritage intellectuel d’Alciat, en a fait fructifier les promesses.

Les contributions proposées ici mettent en évidence l’étendue des domaines d’investigation embrassés par Alciat, les multiples facettes de ses compétences, la cohérence de son travail historique, juridique et philologique, les rapports complexes qu’il entretient avec l’Antiquité gréco-romaine et les relations contrastées qu’il développe avec ses contemporains. Des chercheurs venus d’horizons très divers retracent les étapes connues et moins connues d’une existence riche en péripéties, repèrent les fils conducteurs qui assurent la cohésion d’une oeuvre profuse, soulignent le rôle de ses modèles et s’interrogent sur les modalités d’élaboration d’une méthode nouvelle où se fondent les savoirs.

The Anglo-Saxon mission to early medieval Germany and the Netherlands has long been seen as a major contribution to the foundation of Christian Europe. Encouraged by the activities of prominent Anglo-Saxons such as St Willibrord (d. 739) and St Boniface (d. 754), pious men and women left their homes in England to reform and reinvigorate the culture and politics of the Church in Northern Europe, while greatly expanding the frontiers of Christendom. Anglo-Saxons in a Frankish World, 690-900 provides the first major reassessment of the Anglo-Saxons' influence on the Frankish world for fifty years. It argues that, because figures like Boniface were so important to the cult of saints east of the Rhine, stories about them became central to the ways in which different groups responded to the rapidly changing landscape of Carolingian culture and politics. The study draws on letters, charters, and other evidence to recontextualize the numerous hagiographies written about the Anglo-Saxons on the European mainland, while providing fresh perspectives on attitudes to mission, monasticism, authority, and the secular world in East Frankish society.

Since time immemorial, animals have played crucial roles in people’s lives. In Continental and Northern Europe, especially in the Migration Period and the Early Middle Ages, animals were both feared and revered. Varying and often ambivalent perceptions of fauna were expressed through everyday practices, religious beliefs, and the zoomorphic ornamentation of a wide plethora of objects that ranged from jewellery, weapons, and equestrian equipment to wagons and ships. This timely volume critically investigates the multivalence of animals in medieval archaeology, literature, and art in order to present human attitudes to creatures such as bears, horses, dogs, and birds in a novel and interdisciplinary way.

The chapters gathered together here explore the prominence of animals, animal parts, and their various visual representations in domestic spaces and the wider public arena, on the battlefield, and in an array of ritual practices, but also examine the importance of zoomorphic art for emerging elites at a time of social and political tensions across Scandinavia and the oft-overlooked Western Slavic and Baltic societies. This innovative book draws together scholars from across Europe in order to pave the way for a nuanced international and interdisciplinary dialogue that has the capacity to substantially increase our perception of human and animal worlds of the Early Middle Ages.

This study is focused on bl ms Harley 494, a small manuscript book which can be dated between 1532 and 1535 and which has many of the features of a preces privatae volume, or private prayer book. It contains prayers in English and Latin but also a number of brief devotional treatises in English. ms Harley 494 possesses two more features of interest: it belonged to a Hampshire widow, Anne Bulkeley (and possibly later to her daughter Anne, a nun at Amesbury Priory); and it emerged from a Birgittine textual community. Barratt edits and annotates the complete manuscript to provide an accessible and informative edition of this little known manuscript. However, Anne Bulkeley and her Book is not a conventional edition of a late Middle English text. Rather, Barratt carefully contextualizes the manuscript within its historical background just before the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and meticulously investigates the varied, and often unusual, sources of many of the individual items in the book. In addition, the discussion encompasses several related manuscripts (principally Lambeth Palace ms 3600 and the so-called Burnet Psalter (Aberdeen University Library ms 25)). This broad focus enables the volume to examine not only the evolution of the manuscript as a whole, but also to answer wider questions of its owner’s identity, her family connections, and her (and her book’s) place in literary, cultural, and religious history.

This volume collects several studies on Anselm of Canterbury’s philosophical theology and ethics originally presented at the Third International Conference of Medieval Philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Porto Alegre / Brazil, 02-04 September 2009. In commemoration of the 900th anniversary of Anselm’s death, the conference facilitated a unique exchange of ideas among Latin American, North American and European scholars on current issues in Anselmian scholarship. The papers included in the volume concern diverse areas of interest: Anselm’s method in different phases of his career and his attitude towards philosophy; Anselm’s contribution to logic and semantics in De grammatico; the continuing challenge of interpreting his “proof” in Proslogion (revisited with an eye into contemporary accounts of his unum argumentum); the topic of guilt and punishment in Anselm’s works, as well as the understanding of his moral-theological project, in dialogue with contemporary discussions of deontology; the fundamental aspects of his view on human being; the reception of Anselm’s theory of perfections in Duns Scotus’s metaphysics; and the place of Anselm’s thought in Karl Barth’s understanding of theology. These contributions, through their engagement with Anselm’s works, seek to shed light on philosophical and theological issues of perennial interest.

The volume contain the contributions of R.H. Pich (Porto Alegre), C. Viola (Paris), S. Magnavacca (Buenos Aires) , J. Müller (Bochum), Th. S. Leite (Porto Alegre), G. Wyllie (Rio de Janeiro), J. M .C. Macedo (Porto), A. Culleton (São Leopoldo), M. Tracey (Lisle - IL), L.A. De Boni (Porto Alegre), G. K. Hasselhoff (Bochum).

Les contributions réunies dans ce livre sont nées d’une collaboration et d’une proximité intellectuelle entre deux institutions de recherche : l’équipe PLH-ERASME qui travaille, à Toulouse, dans les domaines de la réception de l’Antiquité et de l’anthropologie historique, et le centre ANHIMA (Anthropologie et Histoire des mondes antiques), qui réunit, à Paris, des chercheurs engagés dans tous les domaines et toutes les périodes de l’Antiquité. Ce rapprochement s’est traduit par l’organisation de deux journées d’étude internationales à Toulouse, en mars 2010, et par la création d’une nouvelle collection : « Antiquité et sciences humaines. La traversée des frontières », accueillie par les éditions Brepols.

Ces initiatives témoignent de la vitalité et du renouvellement des perspectives anthropologiques : redéfi nir les concepts les mieux connus (comme le don, le commerce), s’attacher à un champ d’études laissé à l’écart (l’archéologie gallo-romaine), prendre en compte des déplacements de catégories entre hommes et femmes, masculin et féminin dans les études de genre, explorer des domaines nouveaux (les émotions, la perception des couleurs).

La prise en compte des différences qui nous sépare nt des hommes de l’Antiquité, l’attention portée aux spécifi cités qui marquent l’ensemble de leurs représentations et de leurs comportements dans tous les champs de la vie sociale, politique, religieuse, culturelle, la conscience des mutations qui se sont opérées sur la longue durée, c’est ce que chacun des auteurs de ce volume, dans le domaine qui lui est propre, a tenté de mettre en oeuvre.

Liste des contributeurs : Vincent Azoulay, Maurizio Bettini, Corinne Bonnet, Violaine Sebillotte-Cuchet, Ton Derks, Adeline Grand-Clément, Pascal Payen, Nicholas Purcell, Évelyne Scheid-Tissinier, Pauline Schmitt Pantel, Emmanuelle Valette, Andreas Wittenburg.

This book engages with Antwerp in the Renaissance. Bringing together several specialists of sixteenth-century Antwerp, it offers new research results and fresh perspectives on the economic, cultural and social history of the metropolis in the sixteenth century. Recurrent themes are the creative ways in which the Italian renaissance was translated in the Antwerp context. Imperfect imitation often resulted from the specific social context in which the renaissance was translated: Antwerp was a metropolis marked by a strong commercial ideology, a high level affluence and social inequality, but also by the presence of large and strong middling layers, which contributed to the city’s ‘bourgeois’ character. The growth of the Antwerp market was remarkable: in no time the city gained metropolitan status. This book does a good job in showing how quite a few of the Antwerp ‘achievements’ did result from the absence of ‘existing structures’ and ‘examples’. Moreover, the city and its culture were given shape by the many frictions, and uncertainties that came along with rapid urban growth and religious turmoil.

Au point de départ, le concept d’apocryphité suppose le concept de canonicité. C’est donc d’abord la constitution d’un corpus d’écrits dits canonisés qui génère ensuite de diverses manières une littérature définie comme apocryphe. Le concept d’apocryphité repose donc apparemment sur une simple équation - il est le produit d’un autre concept, celui de la canonicité. Même s’il convient de ne pas généraliser à tous les cas un tel paramètre, c’est, semble-t-il, une évidence. Ce phénomène a touché l’ensemble des religions dites du Livre au sens actuel de l’expression qui est bien large, mais aussi les religions grecques et romaines de l’Antiquité dans lesquelles la constitution de corpus a entraîné la formation d’une frange apocryphe. En la matière, ce qui se passe dans le christianisme provient évidemment du judaïsme, mais se déroule aussi, sous des formes plus ou moins similaires, dans le mazdéisme et le manichéisme.

Cet ouvrage, qui est le fruit d’un projet collectif du Centre d’études des religions du Livre (Unité mixte de recherche EPHE-CNRS), concerne non seulement les antiquisants et les médiévistes, mais aussi les modernistes. C’est aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles, en effet, que certains corpus d’apocryphes chrétiens, non des moindres, ont pris forme.

Le Moyen Âge a vu naître les langues romanes. L’émergence progressive de ces nouveaux systèmes linguistiques, puis leur accession à l’écrit et à la littérature, n’a pourtant pas rendu caduc l’usage du latin. Témoignent de cette résistance du latin la diglossie de nombreux locuteurs, auteurs ou copistes médiévaux, ainsi que le bilinguisme courant de leurs énoncés et de leurs productions textuelles. Ces phénomènes ont été éclairés et illustrés par d’abondants travaux dont l’apport est régulièrement signalé par les auteurs de ce volume.

L’originalité du présent recueil tient au fait qu’y sont analysées les modalités de cohabitation du latin et de la langue d’oïl dans les textes du Moyen Âge central et tardif. Cette réflexion collective, adossée à un souci permanent de définition théorique, se montre attentive à l’évolution chronologique, depuis les Psautiers bilingues du xii e siècle jusqu’aux imprimés du xvi e siècle. Elle est sensible aussi à des enjeux variables, depuis l’enseignement élémentaire de la grammaire ou du vocabulaire jusqu’à la mise en œuvre de dispositifs esthétiques complexes. En s’appuyant sur les témoins — pour la plupart manuscrits — qu’a pu susciter la double compétence linguistique médiévale, les auteurs du volume interrogent la conception des textes bilingues, leurs conditions d’élaboration, leur transmission, leur réception. L’insertion souvent discrète de fragments latins au sein de textes français, tout comme la présence plus rare de la langue d’oïl au sein de manuscrits latins, se lit alors comme un mode d’expression aussi raffiné que spontané, susceptible d’enrichir les usages prévus pour le texte enchâssant. Au-delà, l’ensemble de ces études permet d’entrevoir la conscience linguistique des locuteurs du Moyen Âge.

This book presents a thorough re-examination of Apuleius’ Platonic philosophy, encompassing both his philosophical and literary works. Its primary concern lies in demonstrating how there is no significant gap between the Platonic philosophy of the Opuscula (De deo Socratis, De Platone et eius dogmate, De mundo) and the literary tastes of his rhetorical and most important output, such as the Apologia, the Florida, and foremost the Metamorphoses. Apuleius’ Middle-Platonism did not limit itself to technical works, but also influenced his literary interests.

Up to now, Apuleius’ Platonism has been very poorly investigated. It had attracted the attention of only a few - although prominent - scholars (Festugière, Dodds, Theiler), before being taken briefly into consideration in the monographs by John Dillon (The Middleplatonists, London 1977) and Stephen Gersh (Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism. The Latin Tradition, Notre Dame 1986). Because of his multifaceted interests and brilliant style, which is reflected in his conferences, judicial orations and in the novel, Apuleius was mainly treated as a sophist. In the wake of a recent revival of interest in Greek Middle Platonism and in its predecessors (such as Philo of Alexandria or Plutarch), the rhetor of Madauros is worthy of a new examination. This book aims at considering Apuleius as a Philosophus Platonicus who, at the same time, is a Latin Sophist, showing how the two aspects are closely intertwined.

Examining only one aspect would be easy, but would not do justice to Apuleius’ personality. In particular, it is necessary to insert him into a philosophical line, which runs from the first to the third century AD, thus outlining the specifics of Latin Platonism. On the other hand, it is necessary to take into account the concerns of the Second Sophistic in philosophy, though in a somewhat trivialized and less systematic way.

The title of the book (Apuleius and the Metamorphoses of Platonism) indeed underlines how Apuleius’ chameleonic Platonism ‘transforms’ itself, both in his philosophical and his literary works. While challenging the current scholarly trend that overrates the philosophical presence in the Metamorphoses, this book suggests new outlooks, as well as providing a new perspective on many hypotheses previously considered as a given. In order to do this, it investigates the literary, religious and philosophical, Graeco-Roman / African milieu in which Apuleius lived from a literary, religious and philosophical point of view, while considering his influence on authors from Late Antiquity.