The Medieval Python

This book traces the first faltering steps taken in the mathematical theorization of infinity which marks the emergence of modern mathematics. It analyzes the part played by Indian mathematics through

The concept of courtliness forms the theme of this collection of essays. Focused on works written in the Francophone world between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, they examine courtliness as both

Pier Pasolini's "trilogy of life" is a series of film adaptations of major texts of the past: The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, and One Thousand and One Nights. The movies demonstrate a film autho

This is a book about women’s interactions in the first half of the fourteenth century in Montpellier, a large urban center in southern France in the region of Languedoc. The underlying theme is that o

The Leipzig Mahzor is one of the most lavish Hebrew illuminated manuscripts of all time. A prayer book used during Jewish holidays, it was produced in the Middle Ages for the Jewish community of Worms

Giles of Rome was the archbishop of Bourges and a loyal champion of Pope Boniface VIII during the Franco-papal crisis of 1296--1303. On Ecclesiastical Power was written at the height of the conflict

From warhorses to the men-at-arms who rode them; armies that were raised to the lords who recruited, led, administered, and financed them; and ships to the mariners who crewed them; few aspects of the

Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines investigates the political and cultural significance of marriages and other sexual encounters between Christians and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula, from the Islam

Ranging chronologically from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries and thematically from Latin to vernacular literary modes, this book challenges standard assumptions about the musical cultures and

From the Gregorian reforms to the Protestant Reformation, heresies and heretics helped shape the religious, political, and institutional structures of medieval Europe. Within this larger history of re

Scribes of Space posits that the conception of space—the everyday physical areas we perceive and through which we move—underwent critical transformations between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries

In A Punishment for Each Criminal Christine Ekholst provides the first in-depth analysis of how gender influenced Swedish medieval legislation. The book explores the important legislative changes that

The essays in this volume focus on the history of formalized behavior and rituals in Europe, China and Japan. Dismissing the traditional historiography centered on geographical boundaries, it compares

The critical work of editing performance texts poses particular challenges for historians and scholars of the early periods of English literature, not least of which is the ephemerality of performance

The Settlements of Northwest Wales documents the long-term processes of social change and settlement practices in late prehistoric and early medieval Wales. It examines the settlement archaeology of n

The history of monastic institutions in the Middle Ages may at first appear remarkably uniform and predictable. Medieval commentators and modern scholars have observed how monasteries of the tenth to

The urgent debate about torture in public discourse of the twenty-first century thrusts pain into the foreground while research in neuroscience is transforming our understanding of this fundamental h

This is the first book in English to provide a comprehensive examination of the hospital movement that arose and prospered in northern Italy between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. Throughout thi

Rosenthal cites 1888 articles and books on England during the century before the accession of the Tudors, and describes or evaluates them in single sentences. After a section on bibliographies, review

The usual division of philosophy into "medieval" and "modern" may obscure very real continuities in the ideas of thinkers in the western and Islamic traditions. This book examines three areas where th

Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988), long considered one of the most important Catholic theologians of the twentieth century, is a central figure in the field of theological aesthetics. His "poetic" re

Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric: Language Arts and Literary Theory, AD 300-1475 contributes to two fields, the history of the language arts and the history of literary theory. It brings together essent

Italian historian of philosophy and theology, d'Onofrio has reworked several of his articles into a flowing history of the blending of the two subjects in Christian thought from the earliest days thro

Chosen among Women: Mary and Fatima in Medieval Christianity and Shiite Islam combines historical analysis with the tools of gender studies and religious studies to compare the roles of the Virgin Mar

Though it may not be immediately obvious why articles on topics from such distantly removed areas of western Europe - the Iberian peninsula and southern Italy - should appear in the same volume (the f

A primer on medieval justice, this book focuses on France, Germany and England and covers the thousand years between the transformation of the Roman world in Western Europe, which took place around t

Her Life Historical offers a major reconsideration of one of the most popular narrative forms in late medieval England--the lives of female saints--and one of the period's primary modes of interpreta

A dozen essays extend and elaborate arguments that Jones, who is not further identified, advanced in the 16 essays of his 1988 The Creation of Brittany as to why the late medieval duchy of Brittany

In Poetry and Music in Medieval France, first published in 2003, Ardis Butterfield examines vernacular song in medieval France. She begins with the moment when French song first survives in writing in the early thirteenth century, and examines a large corpus of works which combine elements of narrative and song, as well as a range of genres which cross between different musical and literary categories. Emphasising the cosmopolitan artistic milieu of Arras, Butterfield describes the wide range of contexts in which secular songs were quoted and copied, including narrative romances, satires and love poems. She uses manuscript evidence to shed light on medieval perceptions of how music and poetry were composed and interpreted. The volume is well illustrated to demonstrate the rich visual culture of medieval French writing and music. This interdisciplinary study will be of interest to both literary and musical scholars of late medieval culture.

Drawing on Arabic passages from Ibn Gabirol's original Fons Vitae text, and highlighting philosophical insights from his Hebrew poetry, Sarah Pessin develops a 'theology of desire' at the heart of Ibn Gabirol's eleventh-century cosmo-ontology. She challenges centuries of received scholarship on his work, including his so-called Doctrine of Divine Will. Pessin rejects voluntarist readings of the Fons Vitae as opposing divine emanation. She also emphasizes pseudo-Empedoclean notions of 'divine desire' and 'grounding element' alongside Ibn Gabirol's use of a particularly Neoplatonic method with apophatic (and what she terms 'doubly apophatic') implications. In this way, Pessin reads claims about matter and God as insights about love, desire, and the receptive, dependent and fragile nature of human beings. Pessin reenvisions the entire spirit of Ibn Gabirol's philosophy, moving us from a set of doctrines to a fluid inquiry into the nature of God and human being – and the bond between God a

Forging Communities explores the importance of the cultivation, provision, trade, and exchange of foods and beverages to mankind’s technological advancement, violent conquest, and maritime explo

Forging Communities explores the importance of the cultivation, provision, trade, and exchange of foods and beverages to mankind’s technological advancement, violent conquest, and maritime explo

Presenting papers first presented at the 2006 British Archaeological Conference, which was held in Prague, this collection offers the results of current excavations at significant architectural monume

In New Legends of England, Catherine Sanok examines a significant, albeit previously unrecognized, phenomenon of fifteenth-century literary culture in England: the sudden fascination with the Lives of

Examining French literature from the medieval period, Findley revises our understanding of medieval literary composition as a largely masculine activity, suggesting instead that writing is seen in the

Combining hagiography and the history of childhood, American medievalist Wasyliw (Cornell U.) uses specific cases of child saints to illuminate the general features expected of such sanctified childre

American and European scholars delve beneath the traditional view of courtly literature to emphasize the elements of transgression affecting love, friendship, and marriage. Courtly love, they find, wa

A comprehensive treatment of visionary experience in some of the main texts of Jewish mysticism, this book reveals the overwhelmingly visual nature of religious experience in Jewish spirituality from

A meticulously researched historical study exploring the meeting of the Zoroastrian and Muslim communities in medieval Iran. Choksy (Middle East studies, Indiana U.) considers how both groups were tr

Written by leading manuscript scholars, the 15 essays of this collection offer current research, analysis, and discoveries on a range of late medieval English manuscripts, each of them reflecting the