BOB2025MOME

The Physiologus is the ancestor of the bestiary, a collection of chapters describing animal qualities and behaviours, usually with an allegorical meaning, which proliferated especially in England in the late Middle Ages. While much scholarly attention has been directed to the bestiary, the history of the transmission of the Physiologus has hardly been investigated. Evidence of the circulation of this treatise in the early medieval period is certainly scanty, since only two brief versions dating from this period have been preserved, one in Old English and another one in Latin. However, this monograph shows further proof of the knowledge of the Physiologus in Anglo-Saxon England. It also reveals the relationship of the only two surviving texts and their connection to the main Continental recension of the time. This study therefore demonstrates that the popularity of bestiaries in the later Middle Ages was largely due to the prominence that its predecessor, the Physiologus, enjoyed in the preceding period.

Codificata a partire da una sezione specifica del corpus aristotelico, la logica rappresentava nel Medioevo latino quell’"arte delle arti" (ars artium) che studiava le regole del ragionamento corretto e le era riconosciuta una universalità di tipo strumentale. Come notato sin dai primi biografi e commentatori, Dante dimostra in svariate occasioni una maestria e una padronanza della materia del tutto degne, per dirla col Boccaccio, di un «maraviglioso loïco». Giustamente celebri sono i versi di Inferno XXVII in cui «un d’i neri cherubini», con un raffinato ragionamento, strappa l’anima di Guido da Montefeltro all’impotente San Francesco («forse / tu non pensavi ch’io loïco fossi!», v. 123); ma è soprattutto nel Convivio, nella Monarchia e nella controversa Questio de aqua et terra che l’Alighieri sfoggia una competenza difficilmente riducibile alla consultazione occasionale di qualche ‘manuale’. Questo studio analizza sistematicamente i passaggi dell’opera dantesca riconducibili a questo specifico ambito disciplinare; e offre una panoramica sugli ambienti culturali in cui il Poeta avrebbe verosimilmente potuto formarsi (Firenze, Bologna, la Toscana occidentale, la marca Trevigiana). Da un lato, quindi, si inserisce nel fortunato filone di studi che si è occupato di valutare la conoscenza che Dante poté avere delle dottrine di Aristotele e dei suoi interpreti. Dall’altro, tenta di ricostruire i tempi, i luoghi e i modi in cui, «peregrino, quasi mendicando», poté acquisire tale competenza specialistica. In tal modo, non viene solo illuminato un lato inesplorato di questo eccezionale «amatore di sapienza», ma viene anche offerto uno scorcio privilegiato sullo stato delle conoscenze filosofiche in Italia fra XIII e XIV secolo.

This is the first comprehensive, interdisciplinary analysis to demonstrate that the representation of Infancy cycles on twelfth-and-thirteenth-century baptismal fonts was primarily a northern predilection in the Latin West directly influenced by the contemporary military campaigns. The Infantia Christi Corpus, a collection of approximately one-hundred-and-fifty fonts, verifies how the Danish and Gotland workshops modified and augmented biblical history to reflect the prevailing crusader ideology and rhetoric that dominated life during the Valdemarian era in the Baltic region. The artisans constructed the pictorial programs according to the readings of the Mass for the feast days in the seasons of Advent, Christmas and Epiphanytide. The political ambitions of the northern leaders and the Church to create a Land of St. Peter in the Baltic region strategically influenced the integration of Holy Land motifs, warrior saints, militia Christi and martyrdom in the Infancy cycles to justify the escalating northern conquests.

Neither before nor after, in the history of baptismal fonts, have so many been ornamented with the Infancy cycle in elaborate pictorial programs. A brief revival of elaborate Infancy cycles occurs on the fourteenth and fifteenth century fonts commissioned for sites previously located in the Christian borderlands east of the Elbe River with the rise of the Baltic military orders and the advancement of the Church authority. This extraordinary study integrates theological, liturgical, historical and political developments, broadening our understanding of what constituted northern crusader art in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Ugo Eteriano da Pisa (ca. 1110/1120-1182) costituisce una particolarissima figura di intellettuale occidentale: dopo una prima formazione nelle scuole logiche di Parigi, egli si ambienta a Bisanzio alla corte di Manuele Comneno, a tal punto da diventare bilingue (greco-latino), e da familiarizzarsi a fondo con la tradizione teologica e filosofica bizantina e con il pensiero antico. È autore, fra l’altro, di opere dottrinali dedicate alle psicologia (De anima), alla controversia contro i Bogomili orientali oltre che di un importante opuscolo legato alla controversia cristologica bizantina del 1166 (De minoritate). L’opera che è qui presentata con traduzione e sussidi esegetici è il De sancto et immortali Deo, un trattato in tre libri composto in via definitiva fra 1175 e 1177 su esortazione di Manuele Comneno e dedicato alla difesa del Filioque. Polemizzando contro i più importanti sostenitori della posizione antifilioquista degli orientali (in prima battuta Nicola di Metone e Fozio), Ugo Eteriano fa ampio ricorso non solo alla tradizione teologica latina (Agostino e gli altri autori sostenitori della processione dello Spirito ab utroque) ma attinge a piene mani anche ai testimonia di tutti quei padri greci che potrebbero in qualche modo avallare la posizione latina. Punto di interesse dell’opera sta anche nel rinnovato rapporto con la filosofia secolare: fra le fonti citate, in parte dal greco in parte da traduzioni latine, figurano Aristotele e i suoi commentatori greci, Platone, Plotino, gli autori neoplatonici, che sono rivisitati alla luce della passione per la logica e di un forte interesse per l’Organon già sviluppati nel corso della iniziale formazione parigina.

History is today an established academic discipline, characterized by the use of footnotes and references to support claims. However, attempts to codify history and impose disciplinary rigour were made in the Middle Ages, even before the introduction of the modern apparatus. One such attempt was the use of the source mark, a precursor of the modern footnote. Initially used in the works of lawyers and theologians, the source mark indicated that a text and its ideas belonged to a named authority. The application of the source mark to historical writings marked a change in the way history was perceived.

This volume explores how history was transformed into a discipline by focusing on four key twelfth-and thirteenth-century sources: the anonymous Status Imperii Iudaici, the Chronicle of Hélinand of Froidmont, the Chronicle of Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, and Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum Historiale. By focusing on these four texts and examining the influences of surrounding disciplines such as law and theology, the author explores how these historical writers drew on a wide range of different sources of information to provide a truthful account of the past. Furthermore, the aim of producing a reliable narrative was combined with an awareness of the status of the author. Through these case studies, this volume offers a fascinating reassessment of our modern understanding of the origins of the study of history.

The Pore Caitif is a popular, late-fourteenth-century, carefully crafted compilation of biblical, catechetical, devotional and mystical material drawing on patristic and medieval sources, in Middle English, consisting of a Prologue and a variable number of sections of differing lengths according to each manuscript, assembled probably by a clerical writer for an increasing literate lay readership/audience.The Prologue sets out the reason for writing and its overall structure as an integrated ladder leading the reader to heaven. The text begins with basic catechetical instruction modelled on John Peckham’s Lambeth Constitutions of 1281 before continuing with more affective material, meditating, for example, on the Passion, and concludes with a treatise on virginity, leading the reader from an active to a contemplative way of life.

The Pore Caitif was written about the time the Lollards were starting to propagate their programme of universal vernacular education. The writer believes in the need to educate his readers in the truths necessary for salvation without necessarily subscribing to Lollard positions.   

Although referred to in a number of secondary articles and books, and serving as the focus of three doctoral dissertations, an edition of the work was not published until 2019. Penkett's publication is the first Modern English translation based on the 2019 publication and is in a readily accessible format for the modern reader, accompanied by a series of ground-breaking essays.

The chronicle of Henry of Livonia has long been recognized as the single most important source on the early history of Livonia and Estonia in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.

The chronicler describes in great detail how the people of the region were subjected to intense campaigns of crusading and mission from the 1180s until the 1220s, primarily at the hands of ecclesiastical and secular powers of Northern Germany (Saxony), Denmark and Sweden. The chronicler himself, a German cleric named Henry (Henricus), was not only active in recording the events that happened around him. He also took a very active role as a missionary and interpreter among the indigenous population as well as joining the armies of crusaders on campaign, making this chronicle both a first-hand account and a very intriguing narrative. Papal missionary politics and theological ideas are intermingled in the chronicle with detailed descriptions of military campaigns, raids and sieges, making the entire chronicle a fascinating read.

The aim of this book is to clarify the ways in which Henry construes the historical events that he describes, portraying them as the continuation of a form of sacred history that was initiated by God in biblical times and continued by clerics and crusaders among Henry’s own peers.

Hildebert of Lavardin is one of the great poets of the Middle Ages, praised for his elegant style by his contemporaries and by modern scholars alike. He occupies a seminal position in the revival of learning in the late Middle Ages known as the Twelfth Century Renaissance, and his mastery of classical Latin style was so refined that some of his works were long considered products of Antiquity. This collection of Hildebert's biblical epigrams and short poems introduces English-speaking readers to the best works of this neglected poet and places them in the context of his life and literary career. The translations attempt to bring the reader as close as possible to experiencing these poems in their original Latin while still being readable and comprehensible, facilitated by notes and commentary. Hildebert's poetry is sometimes challenging, dense and complicated, yet his rhetoric is often beautiful, even magnificent.