Brepols Online Books Medieval Monographs Archive v2016 - bobar16mome

This volume provides an advanced survey of Dante studies and offers a new, detailed, and accessible reading of his Purgatorio, making this very rich text freshly available to an English-speaking readership. Through analysis of a variety of emotional states across Dante’s three major works - the Purgatorio, Inferno, and Paradiso, and in his minor works, such as the Rime and the Convivio - Dante in Purgatory: States of Affect contends that emotions are historically constructed at different moments. The book also demonstrates that while Dante presents some emotions as defined and distinct, he depicts others as blends of several states of feeling, as emotions which are in process or metamorphosis. In particular, the author examines the seven cardinal vices (‘seven deadly sins’) amid a wider discussion of states of affect. He argues that the emotional states associated with these vices are different from contemporary conceptions of affective states. He compels us to acknowledge that there is a history of both the emotional states themselves and the methods with which we describe them. Above all, his study shows that there is a history of emotions which is part of the history of a European acquisition of a subjective sense of the self. To historicize emotion thus requires that the ‘human’ becomes increasingly defined, as the subject is ascribed further interior qualities which must be named. Dante in Purgatory is thus relevant not only to readers of Dante, but also to any reader interested in thinking about emotion and affectual states and how these can be described, and how they can be conceptualized.

This volume discusses the controversy surrounding the dating of the Christian Era in the Middle Ages and its effect on the ‘emergence’ of the individual in medieval society. It focuses on eight medieval authors (Heriger of Lobbes, Abbo of Fleury, Marianus Scottus, Gerland the Computist, Hezelo of Cluny, an anonymous author in Limoges, Sigebert of Gembloux, and Heimo of Bamberg), all of whom attempted to correct the date of Christ’s incarnation according to the Easter tables of the Scythian monk Dionysius Exiguus (c. 540). As this volume argues, these authors entered into a duel with the past, attempting to reassign the year of Christ’s birth and in the process negotiating contradictory authoritative traditions. On a superficial level these scholars appeared to be unsuccessful in their attempts to reconstruct history, as none of their proposed corrections replaced the existing (erroneous) Christian era that had been established in the Latin West. On a practical level, however, this defeat can be counterbalanced by the conclusion that the corrections provided by these authors acted as an important step in the increasing movement of medieval authors towards intellectual autonomy. In Duelling with the Past, Verbist’s analysis explores the links between computistical sources and the ‘emergence’ of the individual in the Middle Ages.

The liturgical celebration of the Mass, a multifarious spiritual, artistic, and intellectual manifestation, had a central position in the cultural life of medieval Europe. The ‘Gregorian Chants’, mostly words from passages of the Old Testament, were reinterpreted and ornamented by means of new lyrics, and became the basis for new literary and musical genres, such as tropes, sequences, and other new lyrics. In spite of all the unifying efforts made by the Carolingian reformers, a rich variety in practice came to characterize the performance of the Mass in the ninth through the twelfth centuries. Extensive repertories of new texts and melodies were spread in manuscripts all over Europe. Until now this fascinating material has been the preserve of a small circle of specialists in musicology and philology. With this volume, the author introduces and analyses these hidden treasures to make them available to a wider public. It is directed to those with an interest in the philosophy, theology, and history of medieval Latin literature, and in the expressions of spiritual, poetic, and musical creativity of the European Middle Ages.

Le huitième fascicule du répertoire des maîtres ès arts parisiens, de leurs oeuvres et de leurs lectures comprend ceux dont le nom commence par la lettre R. Il est un peu plus gros encore que le précédent, avec la lettre P, et il est probable que le dernier fascicule de la série, qui sera consacré aux maîtres dont le nom commence par la lettre S, T, U ou V, sera plus important encore.Les principes du répertoire ont été expliqués dans les fascicules précédents. Un réseau international de spécialistes, dont les conseils et les critiques sont indispensables, continue de soutenir les travaux. Ce huitième fascicule comprend des personnages plus ou moins célèbres comme Raymondus Lulllus, Robertus Grosseteste, Robertus Kilwardby, Roger Bacon, mais aussi une série de maîtres plus modestes comme les divers maîtres appelés simplement Robertus ou Robertus Anglicus. D’autres personnages, bien connus dans le contexte de l’Université de Paris, mais qui n’ont pas laissé des œuvres relatives à l’enseignement à la Faculté des arts, notamment Richard de Fournival et Robert de Sorbon, sont traités dans l'introduction, qui contient, comme d’habitude, une liste de maîtres qui ont été exclus, parce qu'aucun lien entre leurs oeuvres et la Faculté des arts de Paris n'a pu être établi.

This interdisciplinary study presents a two-part survey of the production and ownership of luxury manuscripts in the late-medieval Netherlands.

Part I analyses a corpus of 3,700 illustrated manuscripts produced between 1400 and 1550 in the Low Countries. The result is a cornucopia of information about many aspects of manuscript production: chronological, geographical and gender distribution, the genres of texts, the languages used, the dimensions of books, the number of illustrations, and the relationship between the making of hand-written and printed books.

Part II examines the libraries of the pre-eminent owners of illustrated manuscripts in the Netherlands: the ducal family and the noble elite. The great bibliophile Philip the Good set an example of book collecting that was emulated by the nobles of the court, creating a typical ‘Burgundian’ fashion in book ownership by which a small elite demonstrated a well defined group identity.

Part III draws together these various lines to offer conclusions about the book market and fashions in book ownership. Luxury Bound charts this new vogue in books and reading, an important aspect of cultural change in the late-medieval Low Countries.

Loué par ses contemporains et critiqué par le seul Pierre Abélard, Anselme de Laon († 1117) constitue l’une des figures majeures de la « Renaissance du xiie siècle ». Anselme n’est pas seulement l’auteur probable de gloses et de commentaires bibliques, il est aussi le rédacteur de sentences théologiques à la diffusion manuscrite non négligeable. Afin de comprendre cette figure magistrale, il convient de restituer la carrière d’Anselme, de suivre la transmission de ses sentences théologiques et d’étudier la constitution des recueils rattachés à son enseignement. Il devient alors possible de montrer la manière dont un maître aussi prestigieux a fait école, de son vivant et jusque dans les dernières décennies duXIIe siècle.

Cédric Giraud, ancien élève de l’École nationale des chartes et agrégé d’histoire, est maître de conférences à l’université de Nancy 2 (ERL 7229 de Médiévistique). Ses recherches portent sur l’histoire culturelle du Moyen Âge central et la philologie médiolatine.

The Costuma d’Agen (customary laws of the Agenais, in south-west France) compiled in Occitan at various times in the thirteenth century and preserved in the Livre Juratoire, or swearing copy (Bibliothèque municipale d’Agen, MS 42), is here transcribed with an English translation on facing pages. An introduction and an index are included. Appendices provide the text of five chapters “missing” from this manuscript, along with several pertinent charters from Agen and a fuller description of the Livre juratoire by Professor M. Alison Stones, University of Pittsburgh. The manuscript contains many colored illustrations and capitals.

The Costuma emphasizes the power of the local city council, which often seems to override that of the local count. The laws or customs written in the book deal with many topics including jurisdiction, citizenship and military duties, crime, property, civil and criminal procedure, the local wine and salt trades, and local feudal law.

F. R. P. (Ron) Akehurst (B.A. Oxford, 1962, Ph.D. Colorado, 1967, in French; J.D., Minnesota, 1986). A professor of French at Minnesota since 1968. He has published translations of two other medieval French customaries.

The Trinity and Creation are central themes in the theology of the Augustinian Canons of the Abbey of St Victor during its time of greatest flourishing in the twelfth century. In this volume, three of the most important Victorine theological works are introduced and completely translated into English for the first time: On the Three Days, by Hugh of St. Victor (d. 1141), a lyrical yet philosophical study of how the power, wisdom, and goodness of God can be known from the things God has made; Hugh’s Sentences on Divinity, lecture notes which show how the divine ideas (“primordial causes”) serve God in creation; and On the Trinity, by Richard of St. Victor (d. 1173), one of the enduring classics of Christian theology, which analyzes the Trinity in terms of love. Also included are two of Adam of St. Victor’s sequences in praise of the Trinity.

This volume is edited by Boyd Taylor Coolman (PhD, Notre Dame University; Theology Dept. Boston College), author of The Theology of Hugh of St. Victor: An Interpretation (2010), and Dale M. Coulter (DPhil, Oxford; School of Divinity, Regent University), author of Per Visibilia ad Invisibilia: Theological Method in Richard of St. Victor (d. 1173) (2006).

This volume examines the late medieval devotional text Meditationes Vitae Christi through an analysis of its most important manuscript, known by its present location and catalogue number as Paris Bibliothèque Nationale Ms. ital. 115. As Flora argues, Ms. ital. 115, the oldest and most extensively illustrated copy of the Meditationes, was originally made in or near Pisa c. 1350 and tailored very specifically for a group of Franciscan nuns. Flora suggests the manuscript’s probable uses in practices of performative devotion and affective response, and the relationship between its imagery and other works of art made for religious women, shedding new light on the history of female monasticism in medieval Italy.

Holly Flora is Assistant Professor of Art History at Tulane University, and is the author of Cimabue and Early Italian Devotional Painting (The Frick Collection, 2006) as well as studies on illustrated manuscripts and devotional art in late medieval Italy.

The earliest Old French herbal in verse, here edited for the first time, is a surprisingly comprehensive work (3188 octosyllables), based on an eleventh-century Latin treatise 'De viribus herbarum' attributed to a certain 'Macer'. It occupies a significant place in the development of herbals and is an interesting witness to writing in Western France in the thirteenth century and to the unusual syntax and concentrated style of its author. Some one hundred and twenty-five plants are described together with their medicinal uses, which cover a remarkable range of ailments. For ease of recognition the sections of text which do not seem to be based on the received text of 'Macer' are printed in italics. Quotations from the principal source and from parallels are given in the notes. This work will be of great value to all those interested in Old French, in medieval translation, the vernacular transmission of learning, and the history of medicine.