Brepols Online Books Medieval Monographs Archive v2016 - bobar16mome

The aim of the present edition is to make two texts available which can throw some more light on the role of Aristotle's Metaphysics in 14th-15th academic teaching. One of them contains part of an early (hitherto unknown) version of John Buridan's Questions on Metaphysics, the other is a 15th century abbreviation of precisely this early version. Remarkably, both texts belong to the East European tradition of Buridan's works, which is the more interesting as they testify to the master's earlier activities as a Parisian teacher on the subject of metaphysics. In particular, they elucidate Buridan's ongoing semantic approach to matters of metaphysics and ontology as well as his attitude to Aristotle's authority.

L.M. de Rijk (1924) is emeritus professor of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy of Leiden University. He was a member of the Dutch Parliament (Senate 1956-1991) and is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences (KNAW}. He is the author of a large number of publications, particularly on ancient and medieval philosophy.

This book presents St Macrina the Younger (c. 327-379), eldest sister of Ss Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa. All the sources of Macrina's life are gathered together, translated afresh into English, and provided with up-to-date introductions and notes. Documents include: Testimonies of St Basil, St Gregory Nazianzen's epigrams on Macrina and her siblings; Gregory of Nyssa's letter 19 which appears in English for the first time; The Life of Macrina, a jewel of fourth-century Christian biography; and the dialogue On the Soul and Resurrection in which Macrina appears as the Teacher expounding Christian doctrine with reasoned argument. The introduction shows how Macrina gradually changed the family household of Annisa into the proto-monastic community that became model of the monasticism that has come down under Basil's name. A specially commissioned icon, a map of Central Anatolia, and a report of the author's expeditions to ancient Pontus are included.

'In contrast with those works that seek to translate the ancient texts into colloquial English with a pedestrian tone, Silvas' translations have a grand and noble quality about them that is fully fitting Gregory's rhetoric and that conveys to the reader the seriousness of the lofty subject. Silvas does not "over translate"; her translation preserves those points of ambiguity in Nyssen's writing that should be resolved (if possible) not in the translation itself but in scholarly debate'.

Warren Smith, Duke University.

Parmi tous les éléments qui composaient le domaine des comtes de Bourgogne au bas Moyen Âge, les eaux vives et les étangs formaient un ensemble non négligeable, le poisson d’eau douce étant particulièrement recherché. C’est pour mieux mettre en valeur cette partie spécifique de ses propriétés en Franche-Comté que le duc-comte Eudes IV (1330-1349) créa un office nouveau : la gruerie, chargée d’administrer et de gérer les eaux et forêts domaniales.

La comptabilité de l’institution révèle que les rivières ne furent pas toutes prises en charge par le gruyer, d’où l’examen des comptes des autres officiers domaniaux. Dans tous les cas, les eaux vives donnèrent lieu à des amodiations, dont seuls les amodiataires et les revenus sont connus. Le recours aux chartes de franchises permet de mieux percevoir les rapports entre les sujets du prince et le milieu aquatique.

Des étangs les textes décrivent avec précision la structure, la pêche et la vente du poisson. Parmi les réserves piscicoles, il y avait des plans d’eau destinés à la reproduction, d’où le titre de pisciculture utilisé dans le titre de ce livre.

L’ouvrage se termine par une analyse des « mesus » (délits) perpétrés dans les eaux comtales, curieusement inclus dans le poste des « amendes des bois banaux ».

Au total cette étude forme le second volet d’un triptyque consacré aux eaux et forêts princières dans le comté de Bourgogne aux XIVe et XVe siècles. Elle fait suite logiquement à la description de l’office de gruerie en montrant son application aux eaux courantes et " stagnantes " (les étangs), c’est-à-dire deux milieux halieutiques très différents puisque le premier, à l’état naturel, s’oppose aux réserves piscicoles construites par les hommes.

Recent archaeological excavations in Scandinavia provide us with a fascinating insight into the household and its function as a social focus for people of different medieval social estates. This book investigates four excavated Swedish sites - the castles of Saxholmen and Edsholm, and the rural settlements of Skramle and Skinnerud - in order to juxtapose the daily life of nobles and peasants. The author argues that the practices of everyday life revealed by these sites offer new insights into social traditions, mentalities, and cultural patterns. In particular, she asserts that notwithstanding the huge social gulf between the peasantry and the nobility in medieval Scandinavia, the two social groups shared some fundamental experiences which point to a common cultural milieu. In turn, the author uses daily life as a prism for addressing the formation of common European cultural traits during the medieval period by comparing these excavations with material from comparable sites in Central and Western Europe. By means of this comparison, the author questions the degree to which we may talk about a process of ‘Europeanization’ taking place in this era.

Jewish martyrdom in the Middle Ages is a most intriguing social, cultural, and religious phenomenon. It was stimulated by ancient Jewish myths, and at the same time it was influenced by the Christian environment in which the Jews lived and operated. The result was a unique and unprecedented event in which the Jews did not simply refuse to convert to Christianity; they were ready to kill themselves and their children so they would not be forced to convert. The Ways of Jewish Martyrdom discusses the phenomenon of Jewish Martyrdom in medieval Germany, northern France, and England from the time of the First Crusade (1096) until the mid-fourteenth century (that is, the time of the ‘Black Death’), in light of modern research and with ample use of hitherto-neglected primary sources. In order to understand the unique phenomenon of Jewish martyrdom, the various Jewish and Christian antecedents that might have influenced the notion of Jewish martyrdom in the Middle Ages need analysis. The texts on which the analysis is based are various, ranging from chronicles through memorial books to liturgical materials and Piyyut. The last part of the book reviews the development of this phenomenon after the fourteenth century and delineates the essential changes and transformations therein at the dawn of the early modern period and beyond.

Elizabeth of Spalbeek, Christina Mirabilis, and Marie d'Oignies were three of the famous late twelfth-/early thirteenth-century 'holy women' from the region of Brabant and Liège: their life stories (written in Latin by Philip of Clairvaux, Thomas of Cantimpré, and Jacques of Vitry) were read throughout later medieval Europe, and Margery Kempe modelled her Book, and her life, upon Marie’s. The Latin lives of these beguine saints were not well known in England, but they were translated into English in the fifteenth century, and survive in a single manuscript together in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce 114.

Three Women of Liège is the first critical edition of these Lives, which represent some of the only evidence of English interest in continental female mysticism. This edition includes an introduction that discusses the role of the manuscript in England and three essays that analyze the roles of these beguines in their Low Countries home of Liège along with the English reception of their lives. The edition itself is also extensively annotated and glossed, making it accessible to any scholar of English medieval literature.

This volume includes a collection of reworked articles which the author, during the last twenty years, dedicated to the origins and conditions constitutive of Christian philosophical-theological thought. From the earliest centuries of the Christian era, human reason was submitted to a particular formal conditioning, in so far as it was necessarily obliged to confront the contents of a divine revelation recognized as necessarily ‘true’. The medieval Latin scholar was induced by the social and cultural peculiarities of his time to confront a model of thought which imposes a decisive subordination of natural knowledge - demonstrated to be imperfect and inconclusive - to the certainties assured by the faith. The production of this model of philosophia, significantly different from the dominant paradigms in the classical period, rooted itself in the critical redimensioning of reason which Cicerointroduced into the West. Departing from the observation of the failure of the philosophical aspirations of antiquity, the Christian intellectuals effected an operative ‘overturning’ of the conditions of veridical knowledge.

The new wisdom was not entirely the result of religion interfering in the field of rational science, but it was shaped by a conscious ‘conversion’ of the philosophers and reached fulfillment under two principles: faith, which requires earthly knowledge in order to defend itself from misunderstandings and heresies; and reason, which allows itself to draw upon supernatural revelation for the possession of regulatory principles which guide it in the study of natural things.

This book investigates the development of this approach during the course of the centuries which in the West precede the rediscovery of Aristotelian epistemology: from Augustine to Boethius, from John Scottus Eriugena to Anselm of Aosta. It concludes by describing the return of this methodological approach, at the end of the Medieval Scholastic period, in the results of the anti-Aristotelian critique carried out by the men of the Renaissance through the recovery of a model of thought which had dominated in the Patristic and Early Medieval periods.

La polyphonie chantée au chœur de la cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris à la fin du XIIe siècle a profondément marqué son temps et la virtuosité dont ont fait preuve les chanteurs dans le maniement de leur art, l’audace des scribes qui ont consigné l’organum dans une notation mesurée alors totalement inédite et l’intérêt que les intellectuels y ont porté, accordent à la polyphonie parisienne une place remarquable dans l’histoire de la musique occidentale.

Cet ouvrage explique comment les chantres de la nouvelle église de Paris ont réussi à exécuter ces majestueuses fresques qui enflammèrent l’imagination des médiévaux par leur étonnante splendeur et qui suscitent toujours autant d’enthousiasme de nos jours.

La musique médiévale entretient d’étroites relations avec les sciences du langage, puisant en elles les éléments de son développement technique et reposant sur une mémoire sans cesse exercée. Cette étude concerne l’ars musica dans ses relations avec les arts du trivium et la mémoire et veut ancrer les compositions dans le contexte intellectuel et éducatif qui a permis leur éclosion et leur développement. Elle montre ainsi comment les clercs de Notre-Dame ont utilisé des procédés rhétoriques d’ornementation afin d’élaborer un discours musical complexe et vise à comprendre dans quelles circonstances, comment et à quelles fins, les chantres ont composé une très haute manifestation de la Parole chantée.

Bavaria was a very important country during the early Middle Ages. Its territory included much of the modern German state but also reached across the Alps into what are now Austria and northern Italy. Bavaria thus occupied a strategic position between the rival kingdoms of the Franks and the Langobards. It was ruled by powerful dukes who had close political and personal relations with the Frankish rulers but who also vigorously resisted attempts to limit their own sovereignty. Bavaria’s independence was ended in 788 by Charlemagne who deposed his cousin, Duke Tassilo. Charlemagne’s son, the Emperor Louis the Pious, then established Bavaria as the first monarchy east of the river Rhine for his own son, Ludwig the German. This is the first full study of the entire evolution of Bavarian rule from the mid-sixth century into the early ninth century. It explores the changing strategies adopted by its dukes and then its first king to establish their authority and maintain their autonomy in face of evolving challenges to their rule. An Epilogue continues the story into the early tenth century.

Carl I. Hammer graduated from Amherst College (B.A.) and the University of Toronto (Ph.D.) and also studied at the universities of Munich, Chicago and Oxford. After a career in international business with Westinghouse and Daimler-Benz, he is now retired. He has published two other scholarly books on early-medieval Bavaria and numerous articles in academic journals in N. America and Europe. He lives in Pittsburgh.

Le roi Arthur et ses chevaliers fascinent les médiévaux. Ils connaissent un grand succès aux XII e et XIII e siècles, succès dont le secret réside dans la tension permanente qui s'établit entre deux systèmes de valeurs opposés: d'une part la royauté, centrée sur la Table Ronde, d'autre part la chevalerie celestielle, centrée sur le Graal, et qui met à l'honneur la vocation chevaleresque à la sainteté. Cette guerre des valeurs, chère à l'axiologie moderne, génère la complexité de la fiction arthurienne, et aussi celle des caractères qui y évoluent: les personnage qui ont enregistré le plus grand succès, précisément Lancelot ou Perceval, sont justement les indécis, systématiquement tiraillés entre les deux systèmes.

La royauté rend maîtrisable un expace saugrenu, peuplé de monstres et de fées. Le but est d'instaurer une sorte de pax arthuriana et de façonner le monde par la force des armes. À la violence environnante, la royauté riposte par la répression légitime. Sur ce canevas la chevalerie celestielle surgit comme valeur différente, mais aussi comme anomalie. Elle oppose la parole et la compréhension à la violence armée. Son émergence est une tentative d'aseptiser un monde qui tire son charme de son bellicisme et de son mystère.

C'est pourquoi le lecteur qui se penche sur les romans arthuriens se heurte continuellement à l'effondrement du sens dès qu'il essaie de leur donner une interprétation systématique. Cette incohérence est en grande partie le résultat du combat sourd des deux systèmes de valeurs concurrentiels, qui s'affrontent dans les profondeurs de la matière arthurienne comme les deux dragons sous la célèbre tour de Vertigier.