The Medieval Python

The development of medical drug therapy in medieval times is an interplay between tradition and innovation. This book tracks the changes in drug recommendations from the Arabic texts of Ibn Sina to La

How can the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be distinct and yet identical? Prompted by the doctrine of the divine Trinity, this question sparked centuries of lively debate. In the current context of renewed interest in Trinitarian theology, Russell L. Friedman provides the first survey of the scholastic discussion of the Trinity in the 100-year period stretching from Thomas Aquinas' earliest works to William Ockham's death. Tracing two central issues - the attempt to explain how the three persons are distinct from each other but identical as God, and the application to the Trinity of a 'psychological model', on which the Son is a mental word or concept, and the Holy Spirit is love - this volume offers a broad overview of Trinitarian thought in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, along with focused studies of the Trinitarian ideas of many of the period's most important theologians.

How can the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be distinct and yet identical? Prompted by the doctrine of the divine Trinity, this question sparked centuries of lively debate. In the current context of renewed interest in Trinitarian theology, Russell L. Friedman provides the first survey of the scholastic discussion of the Trinity in the 100-year period stretching from Thomas Aquinas' earliest works to William Ockham's death. Tracing two central issues - the attempt to explain how the three persons are distinct from each other but identical as God, and the application to the Trinity of a 'psychological model', on which the Son is a mental word or concept, and the Holy Spirit is love - this volume offers a broad overview of Trinitarian thought in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, along with focused studies of the Trinitarian ideas of many of the period's most important theologians.

This 1994 book offers insights into the rich and varied Dutch literature of the Middle Ages. Sixteen essays written by top scholars consider this literature in the context of the social, historical and cultural developments of the period in which it took shape. The collection includes studies of the most representative authors, genres, works and current fields of research interest, ranging from the court and the city, the world of chivalry, the literature of love, religious literature, drama and the artes texts. The essays draw on the idea of a common tradition in medieval literature, originating in France and shared by other literatures of western Europe. To facilitate the reader's understanding of the European context in which Dutch literature developed, a comparative chronological survey provides an overview of the main cultural, historical and literary events between 1150 and 1500. The bibliography includes details of published English translations of medieval Dutch texts discussed

Muhammad founded a World-State as well as a faith; as Islam spread from its first centres, Muslim political thinkers had to apply the divinely revealed law of the Prophet to new circumstances. They had to relate new realities of power and authority to the ideal constitution which he had laid down and which his immediate successors had elaborated. Against this background Dr Rosenthal discusses the later Muslim philosophers who were influenced by the political thought of Plato and Aristotle. He shows how Greek thought modified the Islamic and yet was always subordinated to Muslim categories of thought and political needs. Dr Rosenthal thus surveys the chief traditions of Islamic political thought from the eighth to the end of the fifteenth centuries. He emphasises the basic unity given by the shared faith of the writers, without diminishing the individuality of each. Orientalists will welcome the book; so will historians of the medieval West, for it shows them the religious, political an

This volume of Medieval European Coinage is the first comprehensive survey of the coinage of north Italy c.950–1500, bringing the latest research to an international audience. It provides an authoritative and up-to-date account of the coinages of Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy and the greater Veneto, which have never been studied together in such detail on a broad regional basis. The volume reveals for the first time the wider trends that shaped the coinages of the region and offers new syntheses of the monetary history of the individual cities. It includes detailed appendices, such as a list of coin hoards, indices and a glossary, as well as a fully illustrated catalogue of the north Italian coins, including those of Genoa, Milan and Venice, in the unrivalled collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum, largely formed by Professor Philip Grierson (1910–2006).

The articles in this book, reprinted from the journal Past and Present, are all, in different ways, concerned with the ownership of landed property in medieval England and with those who worked the land. Problems debated include those concerning the keeping intact of the great estates of the Anglo-Norman barons in the face of both inheritance claims and of political manipulation by the crown. Other articles show that the difficulties of knights and lesser gentry were no less complex, as social shifts resulted from economic developments as well as from their military role and their relationships with their overlords. The essays are of as much importance for those interested in the history of politics as to those concerned with the economy and society of medieval England.

The only survey of the urban, commercial and industrial history of the period between the Norman conquest and the Black Death.

Parliament and Literature in Late Medieval England investigates the relationship between the development of parliament and the practice of English poetry in the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. During this period, the bureaucratic political culture of parliamentarians, clerks, and scribes overlapped with the artistic practice of major poets like Chaucer, Gower, and Langland, all of whom had strong ties to parliament. Matthew Giancarlo investigates these poets together in the specific context of parliamentary events and controversies, as well as in the broader environment of changing constitutional ideas. Two chapters provide fresh analyses of the parliamentary ideologies that developed from the thirteenth century onward, and four chapters investigate the parliamentary aspects of each poet, as well as the later Lancastrian imitators of Langland. This study demonstrates the importance of the changing parliamentary environs of late medieval England and their centrality to t

During the course of the twelfth century, increasing numbers of Jews migrated into dynamically developing western Christendom from Islamic lands. The vitality that attracted them also presented a challenge: Christianity - from early in its history - had proclaimed itself heir to a failed Jewish community and thus the vitality of western Christendom was both appealing and threatening to the Jewish immigrants. Indeed, western Christendom was entering a phase of intense missionising activity, some of which was directed at the long-term Jewish residents of Europe and the Jewish newcomers. This 2003 study examines the techniques of persuasion adopted by the Jewish polemicists in order to reassure their Jewish readers of the truth of Judaism and the error of Christianity. At the very deepest level, these Jewish authors sketched out for their fellow Jews a comparative portrait of Christian and Jewish societies - the former powerful but irrational and morally debased, the latter the weak but r

In this important study, Trevor Dean examines the history of crime and criminal justice in Italy from the mid-thirteenth to the end of the fifteenth century. The book contains studies of the most frequent types of prosecuted crime such as violence, theft and insult, along with the rarely prosecuted sorcery and sex crimes. Drawing on a diverse and innovative range of sources, including legislation, legal opinions, prosecutions, chronicles and works of fiction, Dean demonstrates how knowledge of the history of criminal justice can illuminate our wider understanding of the Middle Ages. Issues and instruments of criminal justice reflected the structure and operation of state power; they were an essential element in the evolution of cities and they provided raw material for fictions. Furthermore, the study of judicial records provides insight into a wide range of social situations, from domestic violence to the oppression of ethnic minorities.

Greater Iranian arts from the 10th to the 16th century are technically some of the finest produced anywhere. They are also intellectually engaging, showing the lively interaction between the verbal an

In the rapidly changing world of the early Middle Ages, depictions of the cosmos represented a consistent point of reference across the three dominant states—the Frankish, Byzantine, and Islamic Empir