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.

Historiography on the Vikings of the East — the Rus' and the Varangians — has been both multiform and varied, but it has been invariably focused on actual historical events, and the extent to which these are accurately reflected in written sources. In contrast, very little attention has been paid up to now to the narrators behind these medieval accounts, to their motives in writing, or to the context in which they were working.

This volume aims to redress the balance by offering a re-examination of medieval sources on the Eastern Vikings and by highlighting ongoing ‘debates’ concerning the identities of the Rus' and the Varangians in the medieval period. The chapters gathered here compare and contrast sources emanating from different cultures — Byzantium, the Abbasid Caliphate and its successor states, the early kingdoms of the Rus', and the high medieval Scandinavian kingdoms — and examine what significance these sources have attached to the Rus' and the Varangians in different contexts. The result is a new understanding of how different cultures chose to define themselves in relation to one another, and a new perspective on the history of the Scandinavian peoples in the East.

Traditionally attributed to King Solomon and defined by Rabbi Aqiva as the Holy of Holies among the sacred Scriptures, the Song of Songs is one of the most fascinating and controversial biblical books. Celebrated as a key to the supreme mystery of the union between God and the faithful, this ambivalent book, which combined a sensual celebration of love with a well-established tradition of allegorical interpretation, was a text crucial to both the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and held a particular appeal for poets. Indeed, the Song of Songs played a significant role in the development of European poetry from its very beginning, creating an exceptional convergence of sacred and secular languages and horizons of meaning.

Written by a group of distinguished international scholars, this volume explores the complex and multifaceted processes through which the Song of Songs entered, influenced, and interacted with medieval and Renaissance European poetry (twelfth to seventeenth centuries). Focusing on both individual authors – including Peter Riga, Dante Alighieri, Richard Rolle, and George Herbert – and particularly relevant poetic traditions – including Hebrew liturgical poetry and the Tristan and Ysolt tradition, Middle English and Petrarchan lyric, Renaissance verse versions and seventeenth-century musical compositions, dissident and prophetic texts – the volume unveils the relevant role played by the biblical book in the development of European poetry, thought and spirituality, highlighting its ability to contribute to different poetic genres and give voice to a variety of religious, political, philosophical, and artistic intentions.

The Belgian Dominican friar Antoninus Hendrik Thomas published a critical reconstruction of the earliest Constitutions of the Dominican Order. He identified meticulously where Saint Dominic and his first brothers had borrowed material from other religious and secular juridical systems, as well as where they had been original, thus uncovering the foundational charism of the Order. Even today, researchers in the field regard Fr Thomas’s work as indispensable. Unfortunately, many of his insights are difficult to access for a wider audience, since Fr Thomas wrote his work in his native language, Dutch. To mark the eighth centenary of the death of Saint Dominic in 2021, the Belgian Dominican province therefore decided to publish Fr Thomas’s work in an English translation, as well as to complement this with a selection of essays written by contemporary experts, who – from their particular perspectives – engage with Fr Thomas’s main insights. The essays deal with the historiographical tradition to which Fr Thomas belonged, the Premonstratensian, Cistercian and secular sources of the Constitutions, the manuscript tradition and editing process of the earliest Constitutions, and their reception in the first century of the Order and by the late medieval observant movement.

Ecocriticism and Old Norse Studies is the first anthology to combine environmental humanities approaches and the study of premodern Nordic literature and culture. The chapters gathered here present innovative research based on the most recent developments within ecologically informed literary and cultural studies. Covering a wide variety of sources, the volume provides new insights into the Old Norse environmental imagination, showing how premodern texts relate to nature and the environment - both the real-world environments of the Viking Age and Middle Ages, and the fantastic environments of some parts of saga literature. Collectively, the contributions shed new light on the role of cultural contacts, textual traditions, and intertextuality in the shaping of Old Norse perceptions and representations of nature and the environment, as well as on the modern reception and (mis-)use of these ideas. The volume moreover has a contemporary relevance, inviting readers to consider the lessons that can be learned from how people perceived their environments and interacted with them in the past as we face environmental crises in our own times.

One of the most important thinkers of the Middle Ages, the Jewish philosopher Solomon Ibn Gabirol (known in the Latin Middle Ages as ‘Avicebron’) greatly contributed to the history of metaphysics. His most famous work, the Fons vitae, was the source of sophisticated, radical doctrines (like universal hylomorphism and the plurality of substantial forms) that were rigorously debated in the Latin world for centuries.

Breaking a long period of scholarly neglect of his thought, this volume scrutinises Ibn Gabirol’s philosophical contributions by disentangling his original theories from the misconceptions originated by his medieval readers and critics, like Thomas Aquinas and Albert the Great. The first part of the volume expands on the Latin translation of Ibn Gabirol’s philosophical work, the Fons vitae, from which many of these misconceptions seems to have originated. The second part focuses on the sources used by Ibn Gabirol and reconstructs the philosophical framework of his reflections. The final two parts of the volume are dedicated to the influence on Ibn Gabirol’s thought on the Latin and Hebrew traditions, respectively.

Authored by some of the most renowned worldwide experts on Hebrew and Latin philosophy, the cutting-edge contributions included in the volume give a lively picture of a complex yet fascinating medieval philosopher and his unique interpretation of the universe.

Assembling the contributions of twenty-two authors, this volume aims at revisiting the question of the choice of burial sites throughout the Middle Ages, in their political, emotional, and devotional dimensions, across a wide chronology and in a vast palette of different social statuses. The choice of a burial site inevitably reflets very important statements, made by the living persons, not only regarding what they wished the memory of their passage on Earth to be, but equally enlightening us on what their concern for the future of their souls was and how it should be cared for, in the afterlife.

The first part of this volume is devoted to royal pantheons, considering their development and relevance in the construction of royal legitimacy. Kings and Queens were not the only ones considering their lineage and personal memory: noblemen, ecclesiastics, rich tradesmen, and their wives and daughters, were also involved in a world of changing tendencies, which are dealt with in the second part of the book. The third and last part looks at the strategies and interconnection between building a burial site and constructing collective memories, whether in stone or in writing through the performing influence of rituals, images, or symbols.

This book proposes, therefore a whole new set of approaches on the subject, addressed either in interdisciplinary and all-around syntheses or via analysis of specific case-studies, looking at panteons and other burial sites as the important witnesses of the lives, emotions, and devotions of the medieval society they served.

Contributors to this volume are Xavier Barral i Altet, Catarina Fernandes Barreira, Thiago José Borges, Maria Helena Cruz Coelho, Frederica Cosenza, Antonio Pio de Cosmo, Lorenzo Curatella, Mário Farelo, José Romón González de la Cal, Linsy Grant, Laurent Hablot, Orlindo Jorge, Emma Lano Martínez, Christian de Mérindol, Sonia Morales Cano, Jorge Morín Pablos, Pedro Redol, Martina Saltamacchia, Isabel Sánchez Ramos, Lydwine Scordia, Rosa Smurra and Christian Steer.

Understanding and influencing nature were preeminent aims of medieval Arabic science, and attracted European fascination with its accomplishments. This volume draws together studies on central themes, presenting a world of enquiry into the earth and the heavens, and ways to harness this information for divination and the occult sciences. It gives examples of how Arabic science travelled to Latin Europe through texts and instruments, and how it underwent transformation there as diverse fields were put to use and reinterpreted. The studies introduce a range of learning and perspectives: astrology conducted with planetary lots; a geography where features of the earth's surface move over time; knowledge of the elements and climates which Adelard of Bath learned from Arab masters; Avicenna’s meteorology explaining the extremes of fire storms and catastrophic floods; debates about the eternity or creation of the world; evaluations of magic as a rational, intellectual discipline, or alternatively a danger needing censorship and linked to female witchcraft; and a precious astrolabe which in the Renaissance was reused and inspired new theoretical writings. Together these studies sketch a landscape of medieval Arabic science and Latin European engagement with this new frontier.

The conjunction of medieval religious studies and gender studies in the past several decades has produced not only nuanced attention to medieval mystics and religious thinkers, but a transformation in the study of medieval culture more broadly. This volume showcases new investigations of mysticism and religious writing in the Middle Ages and the early modern period. It also presents groundbreaking explorations of the feminized divine, from medieval to modern, and the many debts of medieval secular texts and cultures to the religious world that surrounded them. Medieval crossover also defines this volume: the contributors examine the crossovers between male and female, cloister and saeculum, divine and human, and vernacular and Latin that characterized so much of the complexity of medieval literary culture. These collected chapters examine mystics from Hildegard of Bingen and Juliana of Cornillon to Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich, and Tomás de Jesús; the modern theologies of Philip K. Dick and Charles Williams; goddesses like Fame, Dame Courtesy, and Mother Church; and the role of religious belief in shaping conceptions of pacifism, obscenity, authorship, and bodily integrity. Together, they show the extraordinary impact of Barbara Newman’s scholarship across a range of fields and some of the new areas of investigation opened by her work.

Contributors: Jerome E. Singerman, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Jesse Njus, Andrew Kraebel, Nicholas Watson, Laura Saetveit Miles, Bernard McGinn, Carla Arnell, Maeve Callan, Katharine Breen, Lora Walsh, Susan E. Phillips and Claire M. Waters, Carissa M. Harris, Stephanie Pentz, Craig A. Berry, Dyan Elliott.

What did the world look like for Jews living in medieval Europe? How did they perceive and make use of the elements of their daily life, from items on the street to religious iconography within holy spaces — in particular synagogues and at the exterior of churches — and profane elements from the home? And how did they experience the visual and material cultures of their non-Jewish neighbours?

These questions form the core of this volume, which explores pre-modern Jewish approaches to images and material objects from a variety of perspectives. From clothing to manuscripts, and from lighting devices to the understanding of the invisible, the chapters gathered together in this multifaceted volume combine analyses of images and artefacts together with in-depth analyses of texts to offer fresh insights into the visual cultures that informed the world of European Jews in the Middle Ages.

Que représente la Grèce et les Grecs, pour les auteurs et les artistes des xiv e au xvi e siècle, en Europe occidentale ? Le présent volume explore cette question du point de vue de la perception et de l’imagination spatiales et géographiques. Il porte ainsi sur les représentations de l’espace grec, ancien et « moderne » du xiv e au xvi e siècle. En privilégiant des œuvres latines, françaises et italiennes, écrites principalement en Italie, en France, dans les Pays-Bas bourguignons et en Grèce, il étudie comment les auteurs et les artistes figurent textuellement et visuellement la géographie de la Grèce / de l’espace ou des espaces grec(s). Les difficultés pour définir, nommer et représenter la Grèce comme entité territoriale sont nombreuses durant ces siècles marqués par de très profonds bouleversements, avec du côté grec l’effondrement de l’empire byzantin et, du côté de l’Europe occidentale, des évolutions nombreuses dans les connaissances géographiques, historiques et aussi linguistiques, ainsi que dans les formes d’expression textuelles et iconographiques. La perception d’une identité spatiale, géographique, de la Grèce est d’autant plus délicate que plusieurs temporalités sont en jeu, celle de la Grèce ancienne, celle de la Grèce contemporaine aux auteurs, celle aussi de la Grèce médiévale antérieure au xiv e siècle. Les études réunies s’interrogent sur les différentes perceptions et représentations de l’espace grec, dans son unité et/ou sa diversité, qui s’expriment et se renouvellent durant ces trois siècles, ainsi que sur la nomination des lieux grecs et de la Grèce qui les accompagnent.

Scriptor, Cantor & Notator is an innovative multi-author project dealing with the complex interconnections between learning, writing and performing chant in the Middle Ages. A number of different methodological approaches have been employed, with the aim of beginning to understand the phenomenon of chant transmission over a large geographical area, linking and contrasting modern definitions of East and West. Thus, in spite of this wide geographical spread, and the consequent variety of rites, languages and musical styles involved, the common thread of parallels and similarities between various chant repertoires arising from the need to fix oral repertories in a written form, and the challenges involved in so doing, are what bring this wide variety of repertoires and approaches together. This multi-centric multi-disciplinary approach will encourage scholars working in these areas to consider their work as part of a much larger geographical and historical picture, and thus reveal to reader and listener more, and far richer, patterns of connections and developments than might otherwise have been suspected.

Scriptor, Cantor & Notator is published in two books. The first, The Materiality of Sound in Chant Manuscripts in the West, brings together articles on several different families of early music scripts in the Latin West and provides a vividly diverse picture of some of the best current scholarship on the various types of ancient and medieval musical notation.

Dissent, polemics and rivalry have always been at the centre of intellectual development. The scholarly Streitkultur was given a fresh impetus by the newly founded universities in the High Middle Ages and later turned into a quintessential part of early modern intellectual life, with the emergence of the Protestant Reformation creating a new momentum. It was not only mirrored in various well-known intellectual disputations and controversies, but also embodied in numerous literary genres and non-literary modes of expression, as well as discursive or political strategies. Moreover, the harsh debates notwithstanding, consensus was also actively searched for, both within particular disciplines and within society as a whole.

This volume collects thirteen contributions offering a very rich variety of topics with regard to the negotiation of disagreements from the twelfth till the eighteenth centuries. They reflect inter alia upon the rules and conventions of the intellectual debate, upon the media used to negotiate dissent, as well as upon the role of formal institutions created to judge and decide in cases of dissent. The contributions are offered by scholars from fields as diverse as history of literature, political history, history of philosophy, history of Church and theology, and legal history.

Music in the Carolingian World stems from a conference honoring the career and wide-ranging research of Prof. Charles M. Atkinson, leading scholar in early-medieval studies and author of the award-winning monograph, The Critical Nexus (2010). The volume brings together seventeen essays to explore the broad ramifications of music as an arena of study in early-medieval culture; taken together, they manifest the status of music not just as a field of research, but as a metadiscipline that embraces numerous fields and specializations in medieval studies, including philosophy, theology, literature, philology, paleography, liturgy, education, political and institutional history, as well as the practice, theory, and transmission of chant and related musical repertories. The essays are grouped into the four thematic categories of Verbum, Numerus, Ars, and Cultus, bookended by three keynote essays that touch in different ways on the theme of metadisciplinarity.