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This book argues that abbatial authority was fundamental to monastic historical writing in the period c.500-1500. Writing history was a collaborative enterprise integral to the life and identity of medieval monastic communities, but it was not an activity for which time and resources were set aside routinely. Each act of historiographical production constituted an extraordinary event, one for which singular provision had to be made, workers and materials assigned, time carved out from the monastic routine, and licence granted. This allocation of human and material resources was the responsibility and prerogative of the monastic superior. Drawing on a wide and diverse range of primary evidenc...
Johann Albrecht Widmanstetter (1506–1557), humanist and privy councillor to popes and kings, has remained an enigmatic figure among Christian Hebraists whose views were little understood. This study leverages Widmanstetter's remarkable collection consisting of hundreds of Jewish manuscripts and printed books, most of which survive to this day. Explore in the first half the story of Jewish book production and collecting in sixteenth-century Europe through Widmanstetter's book acquisitions, librarianship, and correspondence. Delve into his unique perspective on Jewish literature and Kabbalah as the latter half of the study contextualizes the marginal notes in his library with his published works.
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Due to the long presence of Muslims in Islamic territories (Al-Andalus and Granada) and of Muslims minorities in the Christians parts, the Iberian Peninsula provides a fertile soil for the study of the Qur’an and Qur’an translations made by both Muslims and Christians. From the mid-twelfth century to at least the end of the seventeenth, the efforts undertaken by Christian scholars and churchmen, by converts, by Muslims (both Mudejars and Moriscos) to transmit, interpret and translate the Holy Book are of the utmost importance for the understanding of Islam in Europe. This book reflects on a context where Arabic books and Arabic speakers who were familiar with the Qur’an and its exegesis coexisted with Christian scholars. The latter not only intended to convert Muslims, and polemize with them but also to adquire solid knowledge about them and about Islam. Qur’ans were seized during battle, bought, copied, translated, transmitted, recited, and studied. The different features and uses of the Qur’an on Iberian soil, its circulation as well as the lives and works of those who wrote about it and the responses of their audiences, are the object of this book.
The late middle ages was a period of great speculative innovation in Christology, within the framework of a standard Christological opinion established by the Franciscan John Duns Scotus and the Dominican Hervaeus Natalis. According to this view, the Incarnation consists in some kind of dependence relationship between an individual human nature and a divine person. The Metaphysics of Christology in the Late Middle Ages: William of Ockham to Gabriel Biel explores ways in which this standard opinion was developed in the late middle ages. Theologians offered various proposals about the nature of the relationship—as a categorial relation, or an absolute quality, or even just the divine will. A...
This volume collects essays which are thematically connected through the work of Kent Emery Jr., to whom the volume is dedicated. A main focus lies on the attempts to bridge the gap between mysticism and a systematic approach to medieval philosophical thought. The essays address a wide range of topics concerning (a) the nature of the human soul (in philosophical and theological discourse); (b) medieval theories of cognition (natural and supernatural), self-knowledge and knowledge of God; (c) the human soul’s contemplation of, and union with, God; (d) the tradition of “the modes of theology” in the Middle Ages; (e) the relation between philosophy and theology. Various articles are dedic...
The case studies presented in this volume help illuminate the rationale for the founding of libraries in an age when books were handwritten, thus contributing to the comparative history of libraries. They focus on examples ranging from the seventh to the seventeenth century emanating from the Muslim World, East Asia, Byzantium and Western Europe. Accumulation and preservation are the key motivations for the development of libraries. Rulers, scholars and men of religion were clearly dedicated to collecting books and sought to protect these fragile objects against the various hazards that threatened their survival. Many of these treasured books are long gone, but there remain hosts of evidence enabling one to reconstruct the collections to which they belonged, found in ancient buildings, literary accounts, archival documentation and, most crucially, catalogues. With such material at hand or, in some cases, the manuscripts of a certain library which have come down to us, it is possible to reflect on the nature of these libraries of the past, the interests of their owners, and their role in the intellectual history of the manuscript age.
Was it a whale or a shark that devoured Jonah? And how were the walls of Jericho brought down? In his wide-ranging study, Physica Sacra, Bernd Roling shows that the natural sciences and biblical exegesis have not always stood in stark opposition to one another. From the high Middle Ages, Bible commentators such as Albertus Magnus and Alonso Tostado made extensive use of the knowledge available in their times about zoology, medicine and astronomy to explain the wonders of revelation and to defend their historical basis. Even with the advent of modern Biblical criticism and in the age of Enlightenment, as is shown here in detail, their arguments were valid enough to refute critics like Spinoza, Isaac de la Peyrère and Voltaire.
Die Frage nach dem Verhältnis von Kartäusern und Mystik wird im vorliegenden Band auf der Basis der Überlieferung jener ‚mystischen‘ Bücher behandelt, die in einzelnen Kartausen faktisch vorhanden waren. Was dabei interessiert, ist der Umgang mit diesen Büchern im Kontext der für den Orden bzw. für einzelne Kartausen spezifischen Wissensdiskurse, Schreibpraktiken und Überlieferungskonstellationen. Die Beiträge decken mit theologia mystica, revelationes und meditationes gerade jene Bereiche ab, die auch für die moderne Diskussion um die Definition eines ‚mystischen‘ Textcorpus relevant sind.
Von Walchs Philosophischem Lexicon bis Zedlers Universal-Lexicon, von Diderots und D’Alemberts Encyclopédie bis zur Encyclopaedia Britannica: alle bedeutenden frühmodernen Wörterbücher und Enzyklopädien haben sich ziemlich viele Definitionen angeeignet, die der hugenottische Gelehrte Étienne Chauvin (1640 – 1725) in den beiden Ausgaben seines Lexicon philosophicum (1692 und 1713) bereits formuliert hatte. Chauvin verglich als erster die scholastische Tradition mit den Theorien der neuen Denker wie Descartes, Gassendi und deren Anhänger. Sein Werk befasst sich ausführlich mit der Naturphilosophie und beschreibt naturwissenschaftliche Instrumente und Experimente. Erstaunlicherweise...