EMISCA

The scientific knowledge that Irish, English, and continental European scholars nurtured and developed during the years c. AD 500 to c. AD 1200 was assimilated, in the first place, from the wider Roman world of Late Antiquity. Time-reckoning, calendars, and the minute reckonings required to compute the date of Easter, all involved the minutiae of mathematics (incl. the original concept of ‘digital calculation’) and astronomical observation in a truly scientific fashion. In fact, the ‘Dark Ages’ were anything but dark in the fields of mathematics and astronomy.

The first Science of Computus conference in Galway in 2006 highlighted the transmission of Late Antique Mathematical Knowledge in Ireland & Europe, the development of astronomy in Early Medieval Ireland & Europe and the role of the Irish in the development of computistical mathematics. The proceedings of that conference should, therefore, appeal equally to those interested in the history of science in Ireland and Europe, and in the origins of present-day mathematical and astronomical ideas.

The Festschrift volume Classica et Beneventana, presented to Virginia Brown on the occasion of her 65th birthday, brings together eighteen insightful new essays by leading scholars devoted to the fields of classical reception and Latin palaeography. The authors investigate a wide-range of topics such as the development and application of the Beneventan script, comparative codicology, use of early liturgical manuscripts, medieval artes and biblical texts and their readers, and the reception and dissemination of classical texts during the Italian Renaissance.

Since 1970, Virginia Brown has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. She is recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities in classical reception and Latin palaeography. Her numerous publications on the Beneventan script have dramatically altered our knowledge of the dissemination of this southern Italian book hand from 800 to 1600. Her editorial work for the Catalogus translationum et commentariorum, as a member of the Editorial Board and since 1986 as Editor-in-Chief, has resulted in several learned volumes tracing the fortuna and study of classical authors from antiquity to the year 1600. As editor of Mediaeval Studies from 1975 to 1988, she single-handedly produced tomes noted for their scholarly rigor and acumen. This collection of essays serves as fitting tribute to a scholar who, via her scholarly research and editorial work, has done so much to advance the fields of palaeography, codicology, and the history of classical scholarship.

This collection of essays examines the ‘Grimmian Revolution’, the paradigm shift in the humanities that came with the publication of Jacob Grimm’s Deutsche Grammatik. In doing so, it honours T. A. Shippey, who has been a leading figure in reconsidering the contributions of the Old Philology and its impact on the humanities, particularly the rediscovery of the ancient languages and literatures of Northern Europe; the role this has played in the creation of national and regional identities; the attempts to extend the methods of comparative philology to comparative mythology; and the collection of folktales, folk-ballads, and the development of folkloristics. The sixteen essays in this collection focus on the impact made by nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century philology in the fields of medieval studies and language studies, and in the construction of Northern European national identities, mythologies, and folklore.

This volume fills a major desideratum in historical scholarship on the religious history of the Holy Land. It presents a synthesis of our knowledge of the history of Christianity and the various churches that coexisted there from the beginnings of Christianity to the fall of the Crusader Kingdoms. It also offers analytical studies of major topics and problems. While the first part is organized chronologically, the second follows a thematic plan, dealing with the major themes pertaining to the topic, from various points of view and covering several disciplinary fields: history, theology, archaeology, and art history. The volume represents the outcome of an international project initiated by Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi of Jerusalem, and the contributors are leading experts in their fields.

En 2003, le Centre d’Études supérieures de Civilisation médiévale de Poitiers a célébré ses cinquante années d’existence par la tenue d’une série de manifestations scientifiques et culturelles dont un grand colloque international au titre évocateur, retenu pour la présente publication: Cinquante années d’études médiévales. À la confluence de nos disciplines.

Les Actes de ce colloque, qui a reflété la place prééminente du CESCM au sein des études médiévales internationales ainsi que la diversité et la richesse du travail interdisciplinaire produit par les équipes de recherche et les services documentaires du Centre, constituent donc un ouvrage de référence non seulement pour les domaines abordés mais aussi pour la médiévistique en général.

This volume explores the Viking Age colonization and exploration of the North Atlantic, from Arctic Norway to Vinland in eastern North America. Its contributors, predominately archaeologists by training, bring new evidence and an interdisciplinary perspective to a subject often dominated by sources of variable historicity. They explore the creation and transformation of ethnicity in new lands - some occupied, others empty. They also address the historiography of Norse Landnám, unravelling the processes by which scholarly interpretations of the Viking Age have been created. The result illuminates the consequences of migration in the early Middle Ages and the interplay of local and large-scale socio-economic processes. In concluding, the volume assesses the relationship between Norse expansion and later European ‘rediscovery’ of the New World.

Historien de la philosophie et de la théologie du Moyen Âge tardif, spécialiste des xiv e et xv e siècles, Zénon Kaluza a profondément marqué les études médiévales des dernières décennies. Ses travaux portent sur plusieurs grands thèmes de l’histoire doctrinale du Moyen Âge, notamment le «platonisme» parisien et pragois, les méthodes et les langages de la philosophie et de la théologie, les contextes institutionnels du savoir et, enfin, la question du rapport entre l’Église et l’État. Pour rendre hommage à l’homme et à son œuvre, ses collègues et amis lui offrent ce recueil d’articles. Réunies sous le titre de Chemins de la pensée médiévale, ces études explorent différents aspects de l’histoire de la philosophie et de la théologie ainsi que, dans une perspective plus large, de l’histoire intellectuelle et sociale du Moyen Âge. Par l’ampleur de son orientation thématique, le présent volume offre une excellente présentation de l’état actuel de la recherche sur la pensée médiévale.

The anniversary of Augustine’s arrival in Kent in 597, and the subsequent christianization of England, made conversion an obvious theme for the 1997 International Medieval Congress. It was also a theme which attracted massive interest, and not just from early medievalists interested in the christianization of England and its near-contemporary parallels. This volume presents reworkings of 28 of these contributions.

The Early Middle Ages are represented in a number of papers concerned with Central and Eastern Europe and as far east as Georgia. Interest in the Baltic region took this aspect of the christianization of Europe well into the fourteenth century. Papers on these regions constitute a good proportion of the present volume, and they provide a very useful point of entry into work currently being done on christinization in areas which are less well known to most historians than is Western Europe not least because of the range of languages involved.

With respect to later periods of the Middle Ages two issues predominated: one was the interface between Christians and Muslims in Spain and in the Holy Land and also between Christians and Jews once again in Spain, but also in England, and more generally in Western Europe. The other was the rather more theological question of the nature of conversion, as discussed by Aquinas, and in Franciscan writings. This wide-ranging volume concentrates on historical approaches to the topic. The different types of questions posed and materials used are a fascinating indication of the different interpretations to be found among specialists in different fields.

Christianization, as a process affecting complete peoples, or at least large groups, attracts attention, as does conversion of the individual. By putting these varying approaches together, this collection indicates the range of current work on christianization and conversion history and the range itself, quite apart from the individual studies, is an eye-opener.

In this book, a dozen distinguished scholars in the field of the history of philosophy and science investigate aspects of the commentary tradition on Aristotle’s De generatione et corruptione, one of the least studied among Aristotle’s treatises in natural philosophy. Many famous thinkers such as Johannes Philoponus, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, John Buridan, Nicole Oresme, Francesco Piccolomini, Jacopo Zabarella, and Galileo Galilei wrote commentaries on it. The distinctive feature of the present book is that it approaches this commentary tradition as a coherent whole, thereby ignoring the usual historiographical distinctions between the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the seventeenth century.