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Images in medieval and early modern treatises on medicine, pharmacy, and natural history often confound our expectations about the functions of medical and scientific illustrations. They do not look very much like the things they purport to portray; and their actual usefulness in everyday medical practice or teaching is not obvious. By looking at works as diverse as herbals, jewellery, surgery manuals, lay health guides, cinquecento paintings, manuscripts of Pliny's Natural History, and Leonardo's notebooks, Visualizing Medieval Medicine and Natural History, 1200-1550 addresses fundamental questions about the interplay of art and science from the thirteenth to the mid-sixteenth century: What...
This sixth volume in the AVISTA series considers medieval travel from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, placing the physical practice of transportation in the larger context of medieval thought about the world and its meaning. The papers included cover vehicle design and logistical management, the practicalities of how travellers oriented themselves, and the symbolism of the landscapes and maps created in the Middle Ages.
The contributors to this book are among those at the forefront of the emergence of new critical perspectives and new technologies. Several of the essays present dramatic reinterpretations of canonical monuments; consider broader methodological issues such as the applications of geometry, workshop practice, and the shaping of historical narratives; and others demonstrate how high-tech scanning and visualization methods can enhance our understanding of construction methods and the behavior of buildings.
The purpose of the project is to provide the most up-to-date survey on issues dealing with practical geometry and how it might have been applied in the design of medieval architecture. Chronologically, the topics cover a wide span - from early Medieval through Late Gothic. Geographically, the monuments under discussion range from Early Medieval Florence through Carolingian Germany, Crusader Cyprus, Romanesque France and Gothic England. The applications of both geometry and metrology are considered in this volume, often with illustrations generated by computer-assisted design (CAD) software. The project therefore offers recent scholarship in the field, as well as cutting-edge technology which helps propel the pursuit of such studies. To this end, the project is the first of its kind both in terms of its focus and its comprehensiveness. Such a project is sorely needed to introduce this highly specialized discipline to other historians of art, history, and science of the Middle Ages, as well as historians in most humanistic areas.
Villard's Legacy is in memory of the celebrated iconoclastic historian, Jean Gimpel, and represents a fundamental contribution to the new AVISTA series with Ashgate Publishing. AVISTA was the brainchild of Gimpel, a genius at making the right people meet to advance knowledge through a confluence of ideas drawn equally from the practical and scholarly domains. Sixteen papers and a tribute to Gimpel underscore this confluence of technology, science and art within medieval culture. Appropriately, six papers offer new interpretations on aspects of Villard de Honnecourt's portfolio, which Gimpel rightly recognized and promoted as a unique and precious record of pre-modern technology and culture. ...
Traditional histories of medieval art and architecture often privilege the moment of a work’s creation, yet surviving works designated as "medieval" have long and expansive lives. Many have extended prehistories emerging from their sites and contexts of creation, and most have undergone a variety of interventions, including adaptations and restorations, since coming into being. The lives of these works have been further extended through historiography, museum exhibitions, and digital media. Inspired by the literary category of biography and the methods of longue durée historians, the introduction and seventeen chapters of this volume provide an extended meditation on the longevity of medi...
Using an innovative approach to evidence for the medieval hospital and medical practice, this collection of essays presents new research by leading international scholars in creating a holistic look at the hospital as an environment within a social and intellectual context. The research presented creates insights into practice, medicines, administration, foundation, regulation, patronage, theory, and spirituality. Looking at differing models of hospital administration between 13th century France and Spain, social context is explored. Seen from the perspective of the history of Knights of the Order of Saint Lazarus, and Order of the Temple, hospital and practice have a different emphasis. Ext...
This volume brings together a series of papers at Kalamazoo as well as some contributed papers inspired by the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Lynn White Jr.’s, Medieval Technology and Social Change (1962), a slim study which catalyzed the study of technology in the Middle Ages in the English-speaking world. While the initial reviews and decades-long fortune of the volume have been varied, it is still in print and remains a touchstone of an idea and a time. The contributors to the volume, therefore, both investigate the book itself and its fate, and look at new research furthering and inspired by White’s work. The book opens with an introduction surveying White’s career, with a bibliography of his work, as well as some opening thoughts on the study of medieval technology in the last fifty years. Three papers then deal explicitly with the reception and longevity of his work and its impact on medieval studies more generally. Then five papers look at new cast studies areas where White’s work and approach has had a particular impact, namely, medieval technology studies and medieval rural/ ecological studies.
This collection of essays presents the exciting and innovative work being done in the field of medieval architectural history by scholars affiliated with AVISTA, one of the most active sponsors of such research in the Anglo-American scholarly community. These studies constitute a snapshot of the range of new interpretive strategies being deployed by researchers in the reassessment of previous scholarship and identification of new modes of inquiry. In recent years, the study of medieval architecture has been transformed by the emergence of new critical perspectives and new technologies. The contributors to this book are among those at the forefront of these developments. Several of the essays...