Studies in Medieval Thought and Learning From Abelard to Wyclif


Book Description

These fifteen essays range from Peter Abelard to John Wyclif. Beryl Smalley brings these men to life, uncovering what they read and what they thought and putting them into their historical context.




Studies in Medieval Thought and Learning From Abelard to Wyclif


Book Description

These fifteen essays range from Peter Abelard to John Wyclif. Beryl Smalley brings these men to life, uncovering what they read and what they thought and putting them into their historical context.




Studies in Medieval Thought and Learning From Abelard to Wyclif


Book Description

These fifteen essays range from Peter Abelard to John Wyclif. Beryl Smalley brings these men to life, uncovering what they read and what they thought and putting them into their historical context.




A Companion to Lollardy


Book Description

The last twenty-five years have seen an explosion of scholarly studies on lollardy, the late medieval religious phenomenon that has often been credited with inspiring the English Reformation. In A Companion to Lollardy, Patrick Hornbeck sums up what we know about lollardy and what have been its fortunes in the hands of its most recent chroniclers. This volume describes trends in the study of lollardy and explores the many individuals, practices, texts, and beliefs that have been called lollard. Joined by Mishtooni Bose and Fiona Somerset, Hornbeck assesses how scholars and polemicists, literary critics and ecclesiastics have defined lollardy and evaluated its significance, showing how lollardy has served as a window on religion, culture, and society in late medieval England.




Peter Lombard. 1


Book Description

The first general study of Peter Lombard (c. 1100-1160) in a century, this book places Peter's thought in the context of the intellectual debates of his time in the effort to understand the substance of Lombardian theology and the reasons why his principal work, the Sentences , immediately became a classic of early scholastic theology with a durable influence, doing more to shape the education of university theologians and philosophers than any other work of systematic theology for the next four centuries. Attention is paid to the sentence collection as a genre of theological literature, the problem of theological language with which Peter and his contemporaries wrestled, and his contribution to early scholastic biblical exegesis as well as to the development of his systematic theology in the Sentences .




The Clarity of Scripture


Book Description

IS SCRIPTURE CLEAR? IF IT IS, WHY DO PORTIONS OF IT SEEM SO OBSCURE? IF IT ISN’T, WHY HAVE THEOLOGIANS SPENT SO MUCH TIME DEFENDING THE NOTION OF ITS CLARITY? AND MORE IMPORTANT, ARE CHRISTIANS ENGAGED IN A FUTILE EFFORT IN TRYING TO READ AND UNDERSTAND IT? JAMES CALLAHAN OFFERS VALUABLE INSIGHT INTO THE COMPLEX NOTION of biblical perspicuity. He sets the issues within the history of the church and traces how the Bible's clarity has been understood practically and theologically over time. With precision and care he clarifies the role of historical context, authorial intent and reader response in a constructive articulation of how we come to understand Scripture's meaning. Contemporary literary studies inform his discussion and suggest the importance of intertextuality and intratextuality in the reading of Scripture. Ultimately, Callahan argues, Scripture must be viewed as a privileged text within a privileged community. Nevertheless, it must be read, not arrogantly, but with humility under the searching glance of the God who caused it to be written.




Women Medievalists and the Academy, Volume 2


Book Description

Long overlooked in standard reference works, pioneering women medievalists finally receive their due in Women Medievalists and the Academy. This comprehensive edited volume brings to life a diverse collection of inspiring figures through memoirs, biographical essays, and interviews. Covering many different nationalities and academic disciplines—including literature, philology, history, archaeology, art history, theology or religious studies, and philosophy—each essay delves into one woman’s life, intellectual contributions, and efforts to succeed in a male-dominated field. Together, these extraordinary personal histories constitute a new standard reference that speaks to a growing interest in women’s roles in the development of scholarship and the academy. The collection begins in the eighteenth century with Elizabeth Elstob and continues to the present, and includes—among more than seventy profiles—such important figures as Anna Jameson, Lina Eckenstein, Georgiana Goddard King, Eileen Power, Dorothy L. Sayers, Dorothy Whitelock, Susan Mosher Stuard, Marcia Colish, and Caroline Walker Bynum, among others.




Thinking about Animals in Thirteenth-Century Paris


Book Description

Exploring what theologians at the University of Paris in the thirteenth century understood about the boundary between humans and animals, this book demonstrates the great variety of ways in which they held similarity and difference in productive tension. Analysing key theological works, Ian P. Wei presents extended close readings of William of Auvergne, the Summa Halensis, Bonaventure, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas. These scholars found it useful to consider animals and humans together, especially with regard to animal knowledge and behaviour, when discussing issues including creation, the fall, divine providence, the heavens, angels and demons, virtues and passions. While they frequently stressed that animals had been created for use by humans, and sometimes treated them as tools employed by God to shape human behaviour, animals were also analytical tools for the theologians themselves. This study thus reveals how animals became a crucial resource for generating knowledge of God and the whole of creation.




The Work of Jacques Le Goff and the Challenges of Medieval History


Book Description

Essays on medieval history inspired by, and engaging with, the work of Jacques Le Goff. The essays in this volume arise from the proceedings of a conference held in 1994 to celebrate the life and work of the eminent French medievalist Jacques Le Goff. Set within thematic sections -popular religion and heresy, the body, royalty andits mystique, intellectuals in medieval society, and others -many of the challenges raised by Le Goff are reassessed and reapproached. There is an explicit historiographical focus in a section on the reception and influence of Le Goff, with particular reference to the Annales school of history with which he is strongly identified; the volume also indicates the problems which animate current research in medieval studies, especially in certain areas of social and cultural history. MIRI RUBIN is Professor of History, Queen Mary, University of London. Contributors: ALEXANDER MURRAY, PETER BILLER, ANDRÉ VAUCHEZ, R.I. MOORE, OTTO GERHARD OEXLE, LESTER K. LITTLE, WALTER SIMONS, ADELINE RUCQUOI, ALAIN BOUREAU, JEAN DUBABIN, WILLIAM CHESTER JORDAN, PETER LINEHAN, MIRI RUBIN, GABOR KLANICZAY, AARON GUREVICH, ROBIN BRIGGS, STUART CLARK




Theophilus and the Theory and Practice of Medieval Art


Book Description

In this study of the rare twelfth-century treatise On Diverse Arts, Heidi C. Gearhart explores the unique system of values that guided artists of the High Middle Ages as they created their works. Written in northern Germany by a monk known only by the pseudonym Theophilus, On Diverse Arts is the only known complete tract on art to survive from the period. It contains three books, each with a richly religious prologue, describing the arts of painting, glass, and metalwork. Gearhart places this one-of-a-kind treatise in context alongside works by other monastic and literary thinkers of the time and presents a new reading of the text itself. Examining the earliest manuscripts, she reveals a carefully ordered, sophisticated work that aligns the making of art with the virtues of a spiritual life. On Diverse Arts, Gearhart shows, articulated a distinctly medieval theory of art that accounted for the entire process of production—from thought and preparation to the acquisition of material, the execution of work, the creation of form, and the practice of seeing. An important new perspective on one of the most significant texts in art history and the first study of its kind available in English, Theophilus and the Theory and Practice of Medieval Art provides fresh insight into the principles and values of medieval art making. Scholars of art history, medieval studies, and Christianity will find Gearhart’s book especially edifying and valuable.