Brepols Online Books Medieval Miscellanea Original Archive v2016 - bobar16mimeo

The essays collected in this volume focus on a prominent aspect of Anglo-Saxon culture: educational texts and the Insular manuscripts which have preserved them.

The English imported manuscripts and texts from the Continent, whilst a series of foreign masters, from Theodore of Tarsus to Abbo of Fleury, brought with them knowledge of works which were being studied in Continental schools. Although monastic education played a leading role for the entire Anglo-Saxon period, it was in the second half of the tenth and early eleventh centuries that it reached its zenith, with its renewed importance and the presence of energetic masters such as Æthelwold and Ælfric. The indebtedness to Continental programs of study is evident at each step, beginning with the Disticha Catonis. Nevertheless, a number of texts initially designed for a Latin-speaking milieu appear to have been abandoned (for instance in the field of grammar) in favour of new teaching tools.

Beside texts which were part of the standard curriculum, Anglo-Saxon manuscripts provide abundant evidence of other learning and teaching instruments, in particular those for a specialized class of laymen, the Old English læce, the healer or physician. Medicine occupies a relevant place in the book production of late Anglo-Saxon England and, in this field too, knowledge from very far afield was preserved and reshaped.

All these essays, many by leading scholars in the various fields, explore these issues by analysing the actual manuscripts, their layout and contents. They show how miscellaneous collections of treatises in medieval codices had an internal logic, and highlight how crucial manuscripts are to the study of medieval culture.

It was once assumed that nearly all agricultural labourers in medieval Europe were serfs. Serfdom was distinct from slavery in that serfs could contract legitimate marriages, hold personal property and could not be moved around at will. Historians more recently moved away from examining servile condition and its implications and focused on the seigneurial regime and village society with little regard for the influence of status.

In the Middle Ages and indeed in all pre-industrial societies, the vast majority of the population tilled the land. We are still not in a good position to evaluate how noble and ecclesiastical landlords received revenues from lands they were only indirectly engaged in farming, despite this being a basic factor that governed medieval society. What kind of agricultural system provided the impetus for economic growth that so dramatically increased the number of cities and volume of trade?

There is no modern, synthetic book on medieval serfdom that compares regions or draws general conclusions about it. This work attempts such a synthesis and also shows avenues of future research, but most importantly it is intended to reorient attention to the importance of serfdom in the structure of medieval society.

Gérer les finances des princes et des villes est devenu à la fin du moyen âge l’affaire de professionnels de l’argent et de ses techniques. Ces hommes dont les employeurs requièrent compétence et loyauté appartiennent au monde en pleine ascension des officiers, des «fonctionnaires». Les nécessités de la guerre et de la paix, les coûts des armées et de la diplomatie, l’entretien et le fonctionnement des rouages du gouvernement et de l’administration, les aléas et les pressions de la situation économique, tout cela donne un sens à leur travail et requiert leur vigilante attention.

Accroître des moyens matériels, par des expédients ou des réformes durables, rendre plus performants des outils de gestion, voilà des objectifs qui peuplent ces pages, à travers plus d’un siècle et demi du passé des anciens Pays-Bas. Les études publiées regorgent ainsi d’apports nouveaux pour l’histoire de l’impôt, de l’emprunt, des rentes, du crédit et du commerce de l’argent. Elles éclairent aussi une face essentielle des relations entre gouvernants et gouvernés, dictées par des recettes et dépenses mais en même temps orientées par ceux qui y pourvoient et en font carrière.

Fear is a topic that appeals to a wide audience and is particularly of interest today. In the modern world, we fear war and terrorism, economic recession, and environmental degradation: these fears make up a great portion of the fabric of our daily lives. This is a volume of essays on fear and its representations in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. In it, the authors raise and try to answer questions about the ways in which individuals, families, and nations five-hundred, one-thousand, or even fifteen-hundred years ago approached the idea of fear.

The interdisciplinary nature of this volume and its editors (an historian of late antiquity and professor of literature of the Middle Ages) motivates an analysis of fear from a multitude of perspectives and within a host of secular and religious literature, historical treatises, scholastic works, art, and political accounts. The volume covers several main topics: Defining the Nature of Fear; Fear and Religion; Fear in Politics and Cultural Identity; Fear as a Literary and Dramatic Device; The Fears of Courtly Lovers, Knights, and Poets; Fear and the Mystic.

Through its breadth, depth, and interdisciplinary focus, the present volume makes a full contribution to the study of fear in medieval and Renaissance culture for historians, art historians, students of language and philosophy and anyone interested in how people in the past have experienced fear.

This volume, containing a selection of essays from ACMRS's 1996 Conference, reflects a broad range of interests in medieval and Renaissance studies. Although most of the eleven essays address western European topics, one essay deals with Byzantine political and theological histroy, and one touches on Arabic poetry in medieval Sicily. The chronological range is also broad, extending from the seventh to the twentieth century and including topics from an early Byzantine polemicist to the recent growing interest in medievalism, and from critical readings of early texts to implications of computer technology for future manuscript study. In some significant ways the volume continues earlier discussions of the state of the profession, such as those in William D. Paden (ed.), The Future of the Middle Ages, and John Van Engen (ed.), The Past and Future of Medieval Studies. More generally, this second volume in the Arizona series extends the theme of the first, Reinventing the Past, and makes fresh contributions to the scholarship on a number of problems. If the current volume provides a reliable gauge for the future of medieval and Renaissance studies, we are on the verge of new beginnings, increasingly outward-looking, reexamining and redefining old boundaries to reach a new and sharpened understanding of the past.