Brepols Online Books Medieval Miscellanea Collection 2024 - bob2024mime

Albert the Great created a new programme of science in the thirteenth-century Latin world by extensively commenting upon Aristotle’s philosophical corpus and supplementing that corpus with works of his own wherever he saw gaps. What were the preconditions for the emergence of such a comprehensively new scientific agenda and its centuries of success at the University of Paris and Dominican study houses across Europe? One answer is found in the rich Arabic sources that Albert had at his disposal in Latin translation, including Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, as well as Isaac Israeli, Maimonides, and more.

Never before in the history of Albert scholarship has there been a collected volume that examines this inheritance from the Arabic-speaking lands in its role as a major condition for the emergence of Albert’s scientific programme. In the present volume, twelve leading scholars in the field offer studies that range from Albert’s early theological works to his late philosophical writings. The volume focuses on the teachings that Albert actively inherited from the Arabic sources, the ways in which he creatively implemented those teachings into his scientific corpus, and the effects that these implementations had on his own programmatic take on scientia.

The essays in this collection were presented at the 2020 Symposium on Apocalypticism, sponsored by the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of Tennessee. The authors offer new readings of medieval and Renaissance Apocalypticism in quotidian terms, not as ‘counterculture’ but as the pragmatic expression of spiritualities that informed both debate and practice, on subjects as mundane and diverse as warfare, pilgrimage, gender, cartography, environmentalism, and governance. Topics include the origins of imperial eschatology; reflections on cosmology and the fate of the earth; the fusion of history, prophecy, and genealogy; Joachite readings of the political landscape of Italy; the influence of the Great Schism on Burgundian art; eschatology and gender in pilgrimage literature; the late medieval interpretation of the Revelationes of Pseudo-Methodius; and the appropriation of apocalyptic tropes in the propaganda and policies of the German emperor Maximilian I. The essays that open and close this collection offer meditations on the enduring legacy of Apocalypticism by focusing on the events — pandemic, political unrest, and the proliferation of conspiracy theories manifest in both — that mark the historical era in which this symposium took place.

Brigide Schwarz (1940–2019), a leading German historian of the Renaissance papacy, is presented here for the first time in a dossier of ten previously untranslated scholarly studies.

The volume brings the mechanisms of late medieval career building back to life. Success among churchmen was measured in access to ever more lucrative ecclesiastical endowments (or benefices). As the fifteenth century progressed, their treatment assumed highly monetized and abstract dimensions. Guided by Dr Schwarz, economic historians can discern many transactions that foreshadow the asset management of present-day Wall Street.

From the 1400s, administrative positions at the papal court (or Curia) were increasingly auctioned off. This created a marketplace for bidders expecting returns by way of ‘creative’ fee regulations or through the cornering of services in monopolies.

Only recently, scholarship has begun to question older depictions of the late medieval Church as one of decay and moral corruption. Dr Schwarz points to the ‘modernity’ of the fiscal arrangements which nation states like France soon copied as an efficient model of public financing.

La théologie est née comme science métaphysique. Dès Aristote, la science la plus haute se présente comme une discipline philosophique qu’il appelle épistémè théologikè, « science théologique ». Ce que nous appelons aujourd’hui « métaphysique », c’est ce que les traductions latines d’Aristote appellent scientia divina, « science divine ». Or cette « science divine » aristotélicienne ne porte pas sur les dieux de la religion. Aristote emploie d’ailleurs un terme tout à fait différent pour désigner le discours mythique et religieux sur les dieux : il parle alors de theologia ; la theologia est une autre sorte de discours, celui des mythologies sur les dieux, tandis que la « science divine » du philosophe porte sur une substance première, séparée du monde sensible et principe de son mouvement, soit le premier moteur. Ce principe n’opère aucun salut. Il ne faut donc pas confondre le discours scientifique (la « science théologique » ou « science divine », sur le premier moteur) et le discours religieux. La difficulté est alors de comprendre quand, comment et pourquoi cette discipline philosophique suprême, la science théologique, s’est orientée vers les religions vécues par les hommes. Quand le mur séparant la theologia de la « science théologique » a-t-il été abattu ? Le présent volume s’est donné pour visée de se confronter à la nécessité d’une prise en compte, non seulement du fait religieux, mais aussi de la rationalité religieuse. Le terme « théologie » est ambigu. Il désigne tantôt la compréhension d’une religion par elle-même, tantôt la compréhension du divin par un discours rationnel. C’est pourquoi une étude comparée de la théologie comme science dans les monothéismes a un double objet : il s’agit d’abord d’étudier comment la spéculation métaphysique sur les dieux, le divin et Dieu s’est transformée en « science théologique » ; il convient ensuite de montrer comment les religions monothéistes se sont construites en théologies sur les canons de la rationalité grecque.

Epidemics, pandemics, contagion, immunity, social distance, zoonosis are just a few of the concepts that have become commonplace in the academic community and in everyday conversation since the outbreak of the Covid-19. This book aims to provide the reader with a philosophical guide to this conceptual vocabulary by investigating the meanings, implications, and history of words related to the current emergency of Covid-19.

This book addresses the fundamental anthropological, ethical, and political issues that have come under the spotlight of the public debate (life and death, freedom and authority, fear and protection, poverty and access to medical care). In this context, particular attention is given to the conflict between the scientific discourse on the one hand, and irrational bias, misinformation and fake news on the other.

The SARS-CoV-2 outbreak is only the latest episode in a long history of pandemics and epidemics that have constellated human history since its very beginning. Authoritative accounts have made some of these contagious plagues famous (Thucydides’ pages immortalizing the Athenian epidemic of the 5th century B.C.; Boccaccio’s description of the Black Death; Manzoni’s depiction of the Plague ravaging 17th-century Milan). Because a full understanding of the present is not possible without historical inquiry, several contributions in the book explore debates about calamitous phenomena as documented in philosophical literature from Antiquity to 20th-century philosophy.

Ce recueil d’actes est le résultat d’un atelier de recherche dans le cadre d’un partenariat entre l’université franco-allemande, l’université Goethe de Francfort-sur-le-Main et l’Institut français d’Histoire en Allemagne (désormais IFRA-SHS). Cette rencontre a réuni des chercheurs français, allemands et néerlandais autour de la question des mises en ordre opérées par et dans les cartulaires ecclésiastiques. Le parti pris fut de considérer cette dimension dans un temps long (IXe-XIIIe siècle) et dans un vaste espace géographique allant de la Souabe au diocèse de Quimper. Huit études de cas présentent différentes mises en ordres observées au sein d’un unique cartulaire ou d’un corpus. Elles considèrent entre autres la cartularisation comme une mise en ordre des archives par un classement des actes sur un support nouveau ; mais aussi comme un moment où l’établissement cartulariste ordonne de son patrimoine et se définit par rapport à ses voisins, laïcs et/ou ecclésiastiques.

Traditional accounts of Arabicization have often favoured linear narratives of language change instead of delving into the diversity of peoples, processes, and languages that informed the fate of Arabic in the early Islamic world. Using a wide range of case studies from the caliphal centres at Damascus and Baghdad to the provinces of Arabia, Egypt, Armenia, and Central Asia, Navigating Language reconsiders these prevailing narratives by analysing language change in different regions of the early Islamic world through the lens of multilingualism and language change. This volume complicates the story of Arabic by building on the work of scholars in Late Antiquity who have abundantly demonstrated the benefits of embracing multilingualism as a heuristic framework. The three main themes include imperial strategies of language use, the participation of local elites in the process of language change, and the encounters between languages on the page, in the markets, and at work. This volume brings together historians and art historians working on the interplay of Arabic and other languages during the early Islamic period to provide a critical resource and reference tool for students and scholars of the cultural and social history of language in the Near East and beyond.

Through the word corpus, the metaphor of the body is applied to a collection of works by the same author that are transmitted together. These works not only share the same skin, the manuscript, but also function organically thanks to a complex system of paracontents. It is possible to see this system at work in the case of only a very few medieval authors throughout history, cultures and languages; the Corpus Nazianzenum and the Corpus Dionysiacum are such instances.

Both Gregory of Nazianzus and Dionysius the Areopagite are super-authors, who forged their own literary identity as much as they shaped the body of their writings. This sets both corpora apart from other collections of patristic works. They are also exceptional because of the large scale and enduring character of their cultural impact in the different cultures in which the corpora were translated, commented and annotated. By confronting these two exceptional cases, it is possible to gain some new light on the intellectual and book-historical aspects of literary creation and reception in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

King Alfred the Great (r. 871–899) remains a key figure in English literary history. Although his reputation as a scholar who was personally responsible for the translation of a number of Latin works is no longer secure, the figure of the wise king nevertheless casts a long shadow over vernacular writing from the late ninth century through to the twelfth. This volume takes stock of recent developments and debates in the field of Alfredian scholarship and showcases new directions in research. Individual chapters consider how English authors before, during, and after Alfred’s reign translated and adapted Latin works, often in innovative and imaginative ways. Other contributions provide new contexts and connections for Alfredian writing, highlighting the work of Mercian scholars and expanding the corpus beyond the works traditionally attributed to the king himself. Together, these essays force us to rethink what we mean by ‘Alfredian’ and to revise the literary history of the ‘long ninth century’.

This volume focuses on the complex and often overlooked topic of crusading activities and the crusade movement on the fringes of Latin Christendom in the time frame from approximately 1300 to the beginning of the sixteenth century. It covers a period widely considered as a time of significant political, cultural and religious changes in Europe. A period in which Western Christianity was on the one hand still expanding (vide Lithuania and the western Rus and later the Spanish, Portuguese, French and English expansion in the Americas, Africa and South-East Asia) and on the other hand facing two mighty opponents: the Ottoman Empire and Muscovy. On its eastern and southeastern frontiers, Latin Christian expansion came to a gradual halt — here, the West was now largely under siege! Alone the political, logistical and ultimately also military feasibility of a large-scale crusade to liberate Jerusalem had now receded into a purely theoretical and practically almost unenforceable far distance. Ranging in scope from the Baltic Sea region to the Balkans and Iberia, this book’s nineteen papers explore how these developments influenced the continuation and adaptation of crusading ideas and activities during this later period of crusades.