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Brepols Online Books Medieval Monographs Collection 2017 - bob2017mome

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Collection Contents

26 results

26 results

    • Boethius On Topical Differences

      Boethius

      This volume contains the first modern commentary to Boethius’s last logical monograph entitled , his most original work written around 522 A.D., just before the incarceration and death of the Roman philosopher. His textbook aims at providing a method for the discovery of arguments, that is an art that teaches how to solve any kind of question through the use of the topics, litteraly of our mind able to produce arguments subsequently developed into argumentations. Boethius inherited this teaching from two different traditions, the Greek and Latin. In light of the differences found in them, the Roman scholar undertook the writing of the precisely in order to show the possible way of reconciling these two philosophical traditions. In this way Boethius was able to disseminate a unified vision of this matter to the Latin world, restoring the centrality that the Topics had in the Aristotelian Logic and restoring their noblest function, that of being instruments at the service of the search for Truth. Finally, he also provided the list of the rhetorical topics by showing the differences with dialectical topics. This study provides a full reconstruction of the structure of the Boethian work, retraces and evaluates the sources, investigates the implications, and explains why the remains a foundational work for anyone who wants to understand the development of European Logic through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

    • In Hebreo

      In Hebreo

      In the twentieth century a number of scholars pointed to parallels between the or interpretations in the commentaries of Hugh and Andrew of St Victor and comments in Latin sources and in twelfth-century Jewish writers of the Northern-French school (Rashi, Joseph Qara, Rashbam, and Beckhor Shor). The scholars suggested various hypotheses on the Victorines’ direct or indirect knowledge of the Hebrew text of the Bible and the identity of the Jews on whom the Victorines reportedly drew.

      Montse Leyra’s book offers a systematic work of comparative analysis between the Victorines’ interpretations and their parallels in the Latin and Jewish sources, and between these interpretations and parallel biblical readings in the textual traditions of the Vetus Latina, the Vulgate, and the Hebrew Masoretic Text.

      In her analysis, Montse Leyra discusses parallels that have gone unnoticed by previous scholars, identifies which sources were a direct source for the Victorines and which were transmitted via later, intermediary sources, and determines whether the Victorines took up textual biblical variants coming from the Vetus Latina and the Septuagint as literal translations of the Hebrew Masoretic Text or they were transmitting the Masoretic text itself. Finally, by studying the parallels of content and exegetical method between the interpretations of the Victorines and surviving interpretations of Rashi, Rashbam, Joseph Qarah, and Bekhor Shor, she ascertains whether we can actually identify and distinguish the exegetes of the Northern-French school whose works have been transmitted to us as direct sources of Hugh and Andrew from other Jewish exegetes of their time.

    • Urban Literacy in Late Medieval Poland

      Urban Literacy in Late Medieval Poland

      From the end of the thirteenth century onwards, European towns exhibited a significant increase in the use of writing as a tool for administrative and economic purposes, as well as for social communication. The medieval towns of Poland are no exception to this pattern.

      This book surveys the development of the literacy of Polish burghers in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, revealing socio-economic and cultural processes that changed the life of Polish urban society. Polish urban literacy is examined according to the reception of Western European urban culture more generally. Town networks in medieval Poland are explained, and the literacy skills of the producers and users of the written word are discussed. Literacy skills differed greatly from one social group to another, it is shown, due to the variety of town dwellers (clerics and lay people, professionals of the written word, occasional users of writing, and illiterates). Other issues that are discussed include the cooperation between agents of lay and church literacy, the relationship between literacy and orality, and the difference between developing literacies in Latin and in the vernacular languages.

    • Water in Medieval Intellectual Culture

      Water in Medieval Intellectual Culture

      This volume provides a new contribution to the understanding of twelfth-century monasticism and medieval intellectual culture by exploring the relationship between water and the composition of thought. It provides a fresh insight into twelfth-century monastic philosophies by studying the use of water as an abstract entity in medieval thought to frame and discuss topics such as spirituality, the natural order, knowledge visualization, and metaphysics in various high medieval texts, including Godfrey of Saint-Victor’s , Peter of Celle’s letter corpus, and the .

      Through case studies of water in poetry, landscape narrative, and epistolary communication, this work traces the role of water as a uniquely medieval instrument of thought. Theoretical chapters of this book use water to explore the shaping of the medieval metaphor. Further case studies examine the differing and complex uses of water as a metaphor in various monastic texts. Focussing on the changeable power and material properties of water, this volume assesses the significance and deployment of environmental imagery in the composition, narration, and recollection of organized thought within the twelfth-century monastic community.

    • Alchemy, Medicine, and Commercial Book Production

      Alchemy, Medicine, and Commercial Book Production

      The Voigts-Sloane group of Middle English manuscripts, first described by Professor Emerita Linda Voigts in 1990, has attracted much curiosity and scholarly attention. The manuscripts exhibit a degree of uniformity that may originate from systematic copying of medical and alchemical manuscripts (possibly for speculative sale) in London or its metropolitan area in 1450s and 1460s — only decades before William Caxton established his printing press in Westminster. Some of the manuscripts share a strikingly similar mise-en-page, others present a standard anthology of medical treatises in a standard order.

      This book provides a thorough re-examination of these manuscripts through a combination of codicological and linguistic methodologies. It examines different procedures which may have facilitated the production of the manuscripts, including speculative production and copying of separate booklets. The study also addresses the dialect of the manuscripts, and code-switching between Latin and Middle English. By showing that the manuscripts sharing a similar layout are also written in the same dialect, the book thus provides important new information on the dialects of medical writing, and shows that dialect is a further defining feature for this manuscript group. The book also highlights late medieval concerns over alchemy and medicine, explaining the apparent contradiction of the inclusion of alchemy (which was illegal) in commercially copied manuscripts.

      This study thus provides both a comprehensive new description of these manuscripts, and sheds new light on the commercial and cultural contexts of book production in late medieval England.

    • Curia and Crusade

      Curia and Crusade

      The pontificate of Honorius III (1216-27) ranks among the most important papal reigns of the thirteenth century: the pope organised two large-scale crusades to recover the Holy Land, the second of which recovered Jerusalem for the first time since 1187; he presided over a ‘golden summer’ of papal-imperial relations with the medieval , Frederick II, emperor of the Romans and king of Sicily; he developed an original theological conception of his office; and he laid the foundations for a centralised papal financial machine. Yet, despite his significant impact on thirteenth-century Christendom, Honorius has often languished in the shadow of his famous predecessor, Innocent III - a balance that the present book redresses.

      Grounded in extensive original research into the manuscripts of Honorius’s letter registers, this study develops a revisionist interpretation of how the curia marshalled the crusading movement to recover the Holy Land. Questioning the utility of the historiographical construct of ‘papal policy’, this book provides new insights into crusade diplomacy, papal theology, the roles of legates, and the effectiveness of crusade taxation. It also includes a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the papal chancery and its documents, which will be of particular use to students and those approaching the medieval papacy for the first time.

    • Droit subjectif ou droit objectif ? La notion de ius en droit sacramentaire au XIIe siècle

      Droit subjectif ou droit objectif ? La notion de ius en droit sacramentaire au XII siècle

      Michel Villey situait le passage d’une conception réaliste à une conception subjective du droit (le droit conçu comme pouvoir de l’individu) au siècle, lors de la controverse sur la pauvreté franciscaine et du développement de la philosophie volontariste d’Ockham. Brian Tierney remit en cause cette hypothèse et rechercha les prodromes de la notion de droits naturels (, par opposition au droit objectif et positif, ) dès le siècle. Michel Villey signalait lui aussi l’importance du siècle, mais y voyait au contraire la renaissance de la notion réaliste de droit, à la faveur de la redécouverte du droit romain et du développement de la jurisprudence. Pour trancher cette controverse entre ces deux grands historiens et philosophes du droit, il convenait de retourner aux textes.

      Peut-on trouver dès le siècle les germes d’une conception subjective du droit ? En s’interrogeant sur la validité et la licéité des sacrements célébrés par les clercs hérétiques, schismatiques ou simoniaques, le cas des ordinations absolues et le pouvoir de lier et délier des prélats hérétiques, le droit sacramentaire offre un champ d’analyse privilégié. Dans ces situations se trouve problématisé le rapport entre la situation personnelle du ministre (à la fois morale et canonique) et sa fonction au service de l’Église, c’est-à-dire entre une situation subjective de « possession personnelle » du sacrement de l’ordre et une situation de distribution des sacrements au service de la communauté des fidèles.

      Gratien puis Roland, Rufin, Étienne de Tournai, Jean de Faenza, Simon de Bisignano, Huguccio et les (, etc.) utilisent certes un vocabulaire subjectivement façonné (), mais derrière les mots se développe une conception objective du droit, seule capable de fournir des distinctions opérantes aux questions pratiques d’un siècle crucial pour le droit canonique.

    • French in Medieval Ireland, Ireland in Medieval French

      French in Medieval Ireland, Ireland in Medieval French

      This book is a ground-breaking study of the cultural and linguistic consequences of the English invasion of Ireland in 1169, and examines the ways in which the country is portrayed in French literature of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. Works such as and , written in French in a multilingual Ireland, are studied in their literary and historical contexts, and the works of the Dominican friar Jofroi de Waterford (. 1300) are shown to have been written in Ireland, rather than Paris, as has always been assumed.

      After exploring how the dissemination and translation of early Latin texts of Irish origin concerning Ireland led to the country acquiring a reputation as a land of marvels, this study argues that increasing knowledge of the real Ireland did little to stymie the in French vernacular literature. On the contrary, the image persisted to the extent of retrospectively associating central motifs and figures of Arthurian romance with Ireland. This book incorporates the results of original archival research and is characterized by close attention to linguistic details of expression and communication, as well as historical, codicological, and literary contexts.

    • Healing not Punishment

      Healing not Punishment

      The entire conception of repentance and penance in the Oriental Church in the first six centuries is a remedial one: sin represents an ailment of the soul. The confessor is called upon to meet the confessing person as a spiritual physician or soul-friend. Penance does not mean punishment, but healing like a salutary remedy. Nevertheless the lack of privacy led to the unwanted practice of postponing repentance and even baptism to the deathbed. An alternative procedure of repentance arose from the sixth century onwards in the Irish Church as well as in the Continental Church under the influence of Irish missionaries, and in the South-West-British and later the English Church (Insular Church). In treatises about repentance, called penitentials, ecclesiastical authorities of the sixth to the eight centuries wrote down regulations on how to deal with the different capital sins and minor trespasses committed by monks, clerics and laypeople. Church-representatives like Finnian, Columbanus, the anonymous author of the , Cummean and Theodore developed a new conception of repentance that protected privacy and guaranteed a discrete, affordable as well as predictable penance, the . They established an astonishing network in using their mutual interrelations. Here the earlier penitentials served as source for the later ones. But it is remarkable that the authors appeared as creative revisers, who took regard of the pastoral necessities of the entrusted flock. The aim of the authors was to enable the confessors to do the healing dialogue qualitatively in a high standard. The penitents should feel themselves healed, not punished.

    • Islands in the West

      Islands in the West

      This monograph traces the history of one of the most prominent types of geographical myths of the North-West Atlantic Ocean: transmarine otherworlds of blessedness and immortality. Taking the mythologization of the Viking Age discovery of North America in the earliest extant account of (‘Wine-Land’) and the Norse transmarine otherworlds of (‘The Land of White Men’) and the (‘Field of the Not-Dead’/‘Shining Fields’) as its starting point, the book explores the historical entanglements of these imaginative places in a wider European context. It follows how these Norse otherworld myths adopt, adapt, and transform concepts from early Irish vernacular tradition and Medieval Latin geographical literature, and pursues their connection to the geographical mythology of classical antiquity. In doing so, it shows how myths as far distant in time and space as Homer’s Elysian Plain and the transmarine otherworlds of the Norse are connected by a continuous history of creative processes of adaptation and reinterpretation. Furthermore, viewing this material as a whole, the question arises as to whether the Norse mythologization of the North Atlantic might not only have accompanied the Norse westward expansion that led to the discovery of North America, but might even have been among the factors that induced it.

    • Les 'Mort d’Arthur' moyen-anglaises en vers

      Les 'Mort d’Arthur' moyen-anglaises en vers

      Les deux poèmes moyen-anglais réunis ici relatent, chacun à sa manière, la mort tragique du roi Arthur. Le donne une place prépondérante aux amours de Lancelot et Guenièvre, aux effets catastrophiques. Dans l, par contraste, Arthur est un chef de guerre, d’abord favorisé, puis abandonné par la fortune. Les divergences entre les deux poèmes s’expliquent en grande partie par la nature de leurs sources : roman français en prose pour Le , corpus de chroniques pour l.

      Ces deux poèmes constituent des jalons importants dans l’histoire de la geste arthurienne en raison notamment de l’infl uence qu’ils ont exercée sur Malory, auteur de la vaste compilation connue sous le nom de (1485). Or celle-ci nourrit l’imaginaire arthurien depuis plus de cinq cents ans : voir , de Tennyson (1859), ou le fi lm de John Boorman (1981).

      Ces deux ont été éditées en un seul volume en 1972 (Larry Benson). Il était, de fait, utile de rassembler deux poèmes portant sur le même sujet, mais issus de traditions différentes. Cette traduction française s’inscrit dans la lignée du travail de Benson. Elle est assortie d’un ensemble de notes.

    • L’écriture et la sainteté dans la Serbie médiévale

      L’écriture et la sainteté dans la Serbie médiévale

      Le livre porte pour l’essentiel sur un riche corpus de sources serbes, qui s’échelonnent de la fin du jusqu’au siècle. Il s’agit bien d’une étude d’hagiographie, dans laquelle l’auteur a eu pour ambition de montrer comment, dans les textes hagiographiques, a été construite l’image de la royauté serbe. Smilja Marjanović-Dušanić, partant de ce corpus impressionnant, décrit à la fois sa genèse et son originalité. La dette à l’égard de l’hagiographie byzantine est sensible, mais l’auteur a raison d’insister sur l’aspect profondément original de l’hagiographie royale serbe pour laquelle elle trouve des parallèles en Hongrie ou ailleurs dans l’Europe centrale.

      Les analyses proposées sont indissociablement hagiographiques et politiques. L’auteur montre bien l’importance de l’écriture hagiographique dans le projet qu’ont eu les souverains serbes de sacraliser leur dynastie et leur pouvoir en organisant le culte de saints rois, en particulier celui du « couple » que forment Sava et Syméon. L’évolution idéologique peut être étudiée aisément grâce à la continuité qui s’établit entre les œuvres. L’étude des réécritures permet à l’auteur de mettre en évidence l’importance accrue des récits de miracles. Ce livre est important pour deux raisons principales. Du point de vue de l’hagiographie, il fait connaître un riche corpus de textes souvent ignorés dans le monde occidental, qui constituent un développement inattendu de l’hagiographie byzantine et un pont avec l’Europe catholique. Surtout, ce corpus est important pour comprendre comment s’est constituée, autour de la figure des saints rois et des lieux conservant leur mémoire, l’identité serbe.

    • Sins of the Tongue in the Medieval West

      Sins of the Tongue in the Medieval West

      As modern medievalists have repeatedly established, harmful speech conduct (‘sins of the tongue’) aroused considerable interest among medieval authors. Lying, boasting, flattering, railing, backbiting, grumbling, false swearing, and garrulous and incendiary speech were but a few of the speech acts that provoked moral condemnation all over Western Europe from the thirteenth century onward.

      This study examines medieval notions of harmful speech conduct as reflected in Middle Dutch ecclesiastical, secular-ethical, and legal textual sources. According to these texts, the tongue was able to ‘break bones’ and inflict considerable damage on the speaker, on listeners, and on other relevant participants in speech situations.

      The book utilises two novel approaches. First, the subject is systematically explored in terms of three different types of behaviour in order to discover an overarching discourse: harmful speech as a sin, as moral misbehaviour, and as a crime. Second, ideas from modern language theory are used to analyse the textual sources. By adopting these two approaches, the book asserts that an overarching discourse of harmful speech can be found in the Middle Dutch ecclesiastical, secular-ethical, and legal domains, a discourse coined in this study as ‘the discourse of the untamed tongue’.

    • The Sermons of William Peraldus

      The Sermons of William Peraldus

      The French Dominican William Peraldus or Guillaume Peyraut (died . 1275), well known for his long on the vices and virtues, also produced several cycles of sermons, of which two deal with the Epistle and the Gospel readings for the Sundays of the Church year. This study analyzes the latter in some detail and argues that, rather than collecting sermons he had preached earlier, Peraldus wrote these sermons systematically for the use of other preachers. The Epistle sermons for the first Sunday in Advent and the Gospel sermons for the third Sunday in Advent are presented in their original Latin text together with an English translation in order to demonstrate how Peraldus dealt with the biblical text as well as his moral concerns and his literary style. The selected texts are then compared with several other major cycles produced in France in Peraldus’s time. Like his on the vices and the virtues, Peraldus’s sermons became very popular in medieval Europe, as is witnessed by selective copying and citations that can be seen in a number of instances primarily from the sermon literature of later medieval England. One aspect of this popularity is the adaptation of his material into a genuine sermon, as it can be found in the sermons attributed to Repingdon, of which one is here examined in detail.

    • Vaucelles Abbey

      Vaucelles Abbey

      Founded in 1131 by the castellan of Cambrai, Vaucelles Abbey thrived in a borderland region, where German emperors, French kings, Flemish counts, bishops of Cambrai, and the Cistercian Order all had active interests. To understand how Vaucelles flourished, we must look at the relationships that the house created and fostered with various international, regional, and local individuals and institutions. Vaucelles used these connections to protect the vast patrimony that the monks created in the two centuries after its foundation.

      This study asserts that three principal factors influenced the foundation and development of Vaucelles. First, the abbey was fortunate in its local support, beginning with the castellan family and expanding to include numerous regional families and the bishops of Cambrai. Second, the abbey was established in a political borderland, a geo-political situation that Vaucelles survived and actually turned into a positive feature of its development. And finally, Vaucelles was a Cistercian monastery, a direct daughter house of Clairvaux. Vaucelles’ Cistercian observance fostered relationships that were particularly significant to the abbey’s development from the late twelfth century onward. These factors offer exceptional tools for demonstrating many features of Vaucelles’ political, social, and economic life during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

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