The Medieval Python

Ivo of Chartres was one of the most learned scholars of his time, a powerful bishop and a major figure in the so-called 'Investiture Contest'. Christof Rolker here offers a major new study of Ivo, his works and the role he played in the intellectual, religious and political culture of medieval Europe around 1100 AD. Comparing Ivo's extensive correspondence to the contemporary canon law collections attributed to him, Dr Rolker provides a new interpretation of their authorship. Contrary to current assumptions, he reveals that Ivo did not compile the Panormia, showing that its compiler worked in a distinctly different mental framework from Ivo. These findings call for a reassessment of the relationship between Church reform and scholasticism and shed new light on Ivo as both a scholar and bishop.

Umberto Eco is Italy's most famous living intellectual, known among academics for his literary and cultural theories, and to an enormous international audience through his novels, The Name of the Rose, Foucault's Pendulum and The Island of the Day Before. Umberto Eco and the Open Text is the first comprehensive study in English of Eco's work. In clear and accessible language, Peter Bondanella considers not only Eco's most famous texts, but also many occasional essays not yet translated into English. Tracing Eco's intellectual development from early studies in medieval aesthetics to seminal works on popular culture, postmodern fiction, and semiotic theory, he shows how Eco's own fiction grows out of his literary and cultural theories. Bondanella cites all texts in English, and provides a full bibliography of works by and about Eco.

The Alchemy Reader is a collection of primary source readings on alchemy and hermeticism, which offers readers an informed introduction and background to a complex field through the works of important ancient, medieval and early modern alchemical authors. Including selections from the legendary Hermes Trimegistus to Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton, the book illustrates basic definitions, conceptions, and varied interests and emphases; and it also illustrates the highly interdisciplinary character of alchemical thought and its links with science and medicine, philosophical and religious currents, the visual arts and iconography and, especially, literary discourse. Like the notable anthologies of alchemical writings published in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it seeks to counter the problem of an acute lack of reliable primary texts and to provide a convenient and accessible point of entry to the field.

M. R. James (1862–1936) is probably best remembered as a writer of chilling ghost stories, but he was an outstanding scholar of medieval literature and palaeography, who served both as Provost of King's College, Cambridge, and as Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, and many of his stories reflect his academic background. His detailed descriptive catalogues of manuscripts owned by colleges, cathedrals and museums are still of value to scholars today. In this ground-breaking book, first published in 1899, James analysed 482 manuscripts in the renowned Parker Collection at Cambridge for evidence of their provenance. James argued that by discovering what books were owned by individual English monasteries in the middle ages, historians could better understand medieval English intellectual life. He established the origin of nearly 200 of the books, and the results of his investigations (one volume, for example, belonged to Thomas Becket) still make fascinating reading today.

The consumption of books is closely intertwined with the material conditions of their production. The Tudor period saw both revolutionary progress in printing technology and the survival of traditional forms of communication from the manuscript era. Offering a comprehensive account of Tudor book culture, these essays by experts in early book history consider the formative years of English printing; book format, marketing, and the reception of books; print, politics, and patronage; and connections between reading and religion. They challenge the conventional view of the 1557 foundation of the Stationers' Company as an event that marks a shift between older and newer modes of book production, sale, and reading. Both continuity and change led to the gradual development of late medieval book culture into the genuinely early modern book culture that emerged by the death of Queen Elizabeth.

The image of the Celt is one of the most emotive in the European past, evoking pictures of warriors, feasts, and gentle saints and scholars. This comprehensive and fully-illustrated book, first published in 2006, re-appraises the archaeology of the Celtic-speaking areas of Britain and Ireland from the late fourth to the twelfth century AD, a period in which the Celts were a leading cultural force in northern Europe. Drawing on recent scientific advances, the book provides a new perspective on the economy, settlement, material culture, art and technological achievements of the early medieval Celts and re-examines their interaction with the Romans and Vikings. Including a full survey of artefacts and archaeological sites, from memorial stones to monasteries, this is essential reading for any student or scholar with an interest in Celtic archaeology, history or culture.

A revelatory new account of the magus--the learned magician--and his place in the intellectual, social, and cultural world of Renaissance Europe. In literary legend, Faustus is the quintessential occult personality of early modern Europe. The historical Faustus, however, was something quite different: a magus--a learned magician fully embedded in the scholarly currents and public life of the Renaissance. And he was hardly the only one. Anthony Grafton argues that the magus in sixteenth-century Europe was a distinctive intellectual type, both different from and indebted to medieval counterparts as well as contemporaries like the engineer, the artist, the Christian humanist, and the religious reformer. Alongside these better-known figures, the magus had a transformative impact on his social world. Magus details the arts and experiences of learned magicians including Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Johannes Trithemius, and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. Grafton explores their methods,

Alexander III of Macedon (356-323 BC) has for over 2000 years been one of the best recognized names from antiquity. He set about creating his own legend in his lifetime, and subsequent writers and political actors developed it. He acquired the surname 'Great' by the Roman period, and the Alexander Romance transmitted his legendary biography to every language of medieval Europe and the Middle East. As well as an adventurer who sought the secret of immortality and discussed the purpose of life with the naked sages of India, he became a model for military achievement as well as a religious prophet bringing Christianity (in the Crusades) and Islam (in the Qur'an and beyond) to the regions he conquered. This innovative and fascinating volume explores these and many other facets of his reception in various cultures around the world, right up to the present and his role in gay activism.

The Low Countries was collectively one of the earliest and most heavily urbanised societies in European history. Present-day Belgium and the Netherlands still share important common features, such as comparatively low income inequalities, high levels of per capita income, a balanced political structure, and a strong 'civil society'. This book traces the origins of this specific social model in medieval patterns of urbanisation, while also searching for explanations for the historical reproduction of social inequalities. Access to cheap inland river navigation and to the sea generated a 'river delta' urbanisation that explains the persistence of a decentralised urban economic network, marked by intensive cooperation and competition and by the absence of real metropolises. Internally as well, powerful checks and balances prevented money and power from being concentrated. Ultimately, however, the utmost defining characteristic of the Low Countries' urban cultures was located in their resi

The thirteenth century was a crucial period of reform in the English church, during which the church's renewal initiatives transformed the laity. The vibrant lay religious culture of late-medieval England cannot be understood without considering the re-invigorated pastoral care that developed between 1200 and 1300. Even before Innocent III called the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, reform-minded bishops and scholars were focusing attention on the local church, emphasising better preaching and more frequent confession. This study examines the processes by which these clerical reforms moulded the lay religiosity of the thirteenth century, integrating the different aspects of church life, so often studied separately, and combining a broad investigation of the subject with a series of comparative case studies. William H. Campbell also demonstrates how differences abounded from diocese to diocese, town to country and parish to parish, shaping the landscape of pastoral care as a complex mosa

The Low Countries was collectively one of the earliest and most heavily urbanised societies in European history. Present-day Belgium and the Netherlands still share important common features, such as comparatively low income inequalities, high levels of per capita income, a balanced political structure, and a strong 'civil society'. This book traces the origins of this specific social model in medieval patterns of urbanisation, while also searching for explanations for the historical reproduction of social inequalities. Access to cheap inland river navigation and to the sea generated a 'river delta' urbanisation that explains the persistence of a decentralised urban economic network, marked by intensive cooperation and competition and by the absence of real metropolises. Internally as well, powerful checks and balances prevented money and power from being concentrated. Ultimately, however, the utmost defining characteristic of the Low Countries' urban cultures was located in their resi

The thirteenth century was a crucial period of reform in the English church, during which the church's renewal initiatives transformed the laity. The vibrant lay religious culture of late-medieval England cannot be understood without considering the re-invigorated pastoral care that developed between 1200 and 1300. Even before Innocent III called the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, reform-minded bishops and scholars were focusing attention on the local church, emphasising better preaching and more frequent confession. This study examines the processes by which these clerical reforms moulded the lay religiosity of the thirteenth century, integrating the different aspects of church life, so often studied separately, and combining a broad investigation of the subject with a series of comparative case studies. William H. Campbell also demonstrates how differences abounded from diocese to diocese, town to country and parish to parish, shaping the landscape of pastoral care as a complex mosa

Capitalizing on the rich historical record of late antiquity, and employing sophisticated methodologies from social and economic history, this book reinterprets the end of Roman slavery. Kyle Harper challenges traditional interpretations of a transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages, arguing instead that a deep divide runs through 'late antiquity', separating the Roman slave system from its early medieval successors. In the process, he covers the economic, social and institutional dimensions of ancient slavery and presents the most comprehensive analytical treatment of a pre-modern slave system now available. By scouring the late antique record, he has uncovered a wealth of new material, providing fresh insights into the ancient slave system, including slavery's role in agriculture and textile production, its relation to sexual exploitation, and the dynamics of social honor. By demonstrating the vitality of slavery into the later Roman empire, the author shows that Christianity tri

This book explores the fall of Jerusalem and restores to its rightful place one of the key explanatory tropes of early modern English culture. Showing the importance of Jerusalem's destruction in sermons, ballads, puppet shows and provincial drama of the period, Beatrice Groves brings a new perspective to works by canonical authors such as Marlowe, Nashe, Shakespeare, Dekker and Milton. The volume also offers a historically compelling and wide-ranging account of major shifts in cultural attitudes towards Judaism by situating texts in their wider cultural and theological context. Groves examines the continuities and differences between medieval and early modern theatre, London as an imagined community and the way that narratives about Jerusalem and Judaism informed notions of English identity in the wake of the Reformation. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this volume will interest researchers and upper-level students of early modern literature, religious studies and theatre.

This is the first detailed analysis of the fate of Lucretius' De rerum natura from its composition in the 50s BC to the creation of our earliest extant manuscripts during the Carolingian Age. Close investigation of the knowledge of Lucretius' poem among writers throughout the Roman and medieval world allows fresh insight into the work's readership and reception, and a clear assessment of the indirect tradition's value for editing the poem. The first extended analysis of the 170+ subject headings (capitula) that intersperse the text reveals the close engagement of its Roman readers. A fresh inspection and assignation of marginal hands in the poem's most important manuscript (the Oblongus) provides new evidence about the work of Carolingian correctors and offers the basis for a new Lucretian stemma codicum. Further clarification of the interrelationship of Lucretius' Renaissance manuscripts gives additional evidence of the poem's reception and circulation in fifteenth-century Italy.

Henry Adams (1838–1918), journalist, novelist, and historian, was the great-grandson of John Adams and grandson of John Quincy Adams, both presidents of the United States. A professor of medieval history at Harvard whose areas of research were wide-ranging, he was deeply interested in the evolution of democracy in the United States. While Adams is best remembered for his autobiography The Education of Henry Adams (1907), for which he was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer prize, his nine-volume history of the United States during the presidencies of Jefferson and Madison (1801–17), which was published 1889–91, has been hailed as one of the greatest historical works in English. Adams was an advocate of scientific history, and this monumental work adheres to its principles, considering social trends and circumstances rather than focusing on particular events. Volume 5 describes the first administration of James Madison (1809–13).

Capitalizing on the rich historical record of late antiquity, and employing sophisticated methodologies from social and economic history, this book reinterprets the end of Roman slavery. Kyle Harper challenges traditional interpretations of a transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages, arguing instead that a deep divide runs through 'late antiquity', separating the Roman slave system from its early medieval successors. In the process, he covers the economic, social and institutional dimensions of ancient slavery and presents the most comprehensive analytical treatment of a pre-modern slave system now available. By scouring the late antique record, he has uncovered a wealth of new material, providing fresh insights into the ancient slave system, including slavery's role in agriculture and textile production, its relation to sexual exploitation, and the dynamics of social honor. By demonstrating the vitality of slavery into the later Roman empire, the author shows that Christianity tri

Between 350 and 850 Constantinople emerged as both the greatest city of the Mediterranean world and a monastic centre of unparalleled importance. Drawing upon a wide range of sources, including a rich body of hagiographical evidence, this study documents the historical relationship between the city and its monks during this crucial formative period. Monks and nuns played a key role from the beginning. In 350 their numbers were few, yet their impact on local politics and the church was significant. By 850 their presence was felt everywhere - from the world of the imperial court and church, to the local economy, elite culture, social services and popular piety. This dramatic rise in the influence of local monasticism was the result of its impressive numerical growth over time, and hard-won success in adapting the singular call of the monastic life to the challenges of the great medieval metropolis and imperial capital.

What are international orders, how are they destroyed, and how can they be defended in the face of violent challenges? Advancing an innovative realist-constructivist account of international order, Andrew Phillips addresses each of these questions in War, Religion and Empire. Phillips argues that international orders rely equally on shared visions of the good and accepted practices of organized violence to cultivate cooperation and manage conflict between political communities. Considering medieval Christendom's collapse and the East Asian Sinosphere's destruction as primary cases, he further argues that international orders are destroyed as a result of legitimation crises punctuated by the disintegration of prevailing social imaginaries, the break-up of empires, and the rise of disruptive military innovations. He concludes by considering contemporary threats to world order, and the responses that must be taken in the coming decades if a broadly liberal international order is to surviv

What were the attitudes to diplomacy and kingship in the medieval Islamic world? Anne Broadbridge examines struggles over ideology in the Middle East and Central Asia from 1260 to 1405. She explores two very different ideological worlds: the Islamic world of the Mamluk Sultans of Egypt and Syria, and the Mongol world inhabited by the Golden Horde in Central Asia, the Ilkhanids in Iran and Anatolia, the Ilkhanids' successors, and Temür. The relationships among these rival rulers were often highly charged, and diplomatic missions were exchanged in an effort to promote each ruler's ideology. This was the first book to explore what it meant to be a monarch in the pre-modern Islamic world, and how ideas about sovereignty evolved across the period. This groundbreaking work will appeal to scholars of Middle Eastern and Central Asian history, Mongol history, and Islamic history, as well as historians of diplomacy and ideology.

John Horace Round (1854–1928) published Feudal England in 1895. The volume is a collection of Round's articles on feudalism, most of which had been previously published in the English Historical Review. The essays cover the period 1050–1200. They are linked by Round's overarching argument that it was the Norman Conquest that transplanted feudalism to England and that during the Anglo-Saxon period England had no real feudal institutions. The volume includes Round's groundbreaking article 'The Introduction of Knight Service into England', first published in the English Historical Review for 1891–1892; a number of his important essays on the Domesday Book, a topic on which he was long regarded as the leading expert; and several essays challenging the historical methods of Professor Freeman, the main opponent of Round's ideas. Feudal England was highly influential in medieval scholarship, and is still an important resource for researchers.

Between 350 and 850 Constantinople emerged as both the greatest city of the Mediterranean world and a monastic centre of unparalleled importance. Drawing upon a wide range of sources, including a rich body of hagiographical evidence, this study documents the historical relationship between the city and its monks during this crucial formative period. Monks and nuns played a key role from the beginning. In 350 their numbers were few, yet their impact on local politics and the church was significant. By 850 their presence was felt everywhere - from the world of the imperial court and church, to the local economy, elite culture, social services and popular piety. This dramatic rise in the influence of local monasticism was the result of its impressive numerical growth over time, and hard-won success in adapting the singular call of the monastic life to the challenges of the great medieval metropolis and imperial capital.

This book investigates theories of interpretation and meaning in Renaissance jurisprudence. How do they relate to the institutions of the law, especially pedagogical institutions? What characterizes the most commonly adopted theories of the legal profession? In what form were they published? How do they relate to modern canons of interpretation found in the trivium of grammar, dilaectics and rhetoric? In what ways, if any, do they mark a departure from medieval approaches? How do they relate to modern canons of interpretation? And how do they relate to similar issues in modern semantics and the philosophy of language, such as speech act theory or the 'logic of the supplement'? An answer to these questions is sought through an investigation of Renaissance problems concerning the authority of interpreters, the questions of signification, definition, verbal propriety and verbal extension, the problem of cavillation, the alternative interpretative strategies of ratio legis and mens legisla

This book investigates theories of interpretation and meaning in Renaissance jurisprudence. How do they relate to the institutions of the law, especially pedagogical institutions? What characterizes the most commonly adopted theories of the legal profession? In what form were they published? How do they relate to modern canons of interpretation found in the trivium of grammar, dilaectics and rhetoric? In what ways, if any, do they mark a departure from medieval approaches? How do they relate to modern canons of interpretation? And how do they relate to similar issues in modern semantics and the philosophy of language, such as speech act theory or the 'logic of the supplement'? An answer to these questions is sought through an investigation of Renaissance problems concerning the authority of interpreters, the questions of signification, definition, verbal propriety and verbal extension, the problem of cavillation, the alternative interpretative strategies of ratio legis and mens legisla

From the mighty halls of ancient Alexandria to the coffered ceilings of the Morgan Library in New York, human beings have had a long, enraptured relationship with libraries. Like no other concept and like no other space, the collection of knowledge, learning, and imagination offers a sense of infinite possibility. It's the unrivaled realm of discovery, where every faded manuscript or mighty clothbound tome might reveal a provocative new idea, a far-flung fantasy, an ancient belief, a religious conviction, or a whole new way of being in the world.In this new photographic journey, Massimo Listri travels to some of the oldest and finest libraries to reveal their architectural, historical, and imaginative wonder. Through great wooden doors, up spiraling staircases, and along exquisite, shelf-lined corridors, he leads us through outstanding private, public, educational, and monastic libraries, dating as far back as 766. Between them, these medieval, classical, baroque, rococo, and 19th-cent

A "sharp and entertaining" (The Wall Street Journal) exploration of fashion through the ages that asks what our clothing reveals about ourselves and our society. Dress codes are as old as clothing itself. For centuries, clothing has been a wearable status symbol; fashion, a weapon in struggles for social change; and dress codes, a way to maintain political control. Merchants dressing like princes and butchers' wives wearing gem-encrusted crowns were public enemies in medieval societies structured by social hierarchy and defined by spectacle. In Tudor England, silk, velvet, and fur were reserved for the nobility, and ballooning pants called "trunk hose" could be considered a menace to good order. The Renaissance-era Florentine patriarch Cosimo de Medici captured the power of fashion and dress codes when he remarked, "One can make a gentleman from two yards of red cloth." Dress codes evolved along with the social and political ideals of the day, but they always reflected struggles for po

The Bobbio Missal was copied in south-eastern Gaul around the end of the seventh and beginning of the eighth century. It contains a unique combination of a lectionary and a sacramentary, to which a plethora of canonical and non-canonical material was added. The Missal is therefore highly regarded by liturgists; but, additionally, medieval historians welcome the information to be derived from material attached to the codex, which provides valuable data about the role and education of priests in Francia at that time, and indeed on their cultural and ideological background. The breadth of specialist knowledge provided by the team of scholars writing for this book enables the manuscript to be viewed as a whole, not as a narrow liturgical study. Collectively, the essays view the manuscript as physical object: they discuss the contents, they examine the language, and they look at the cultural context in which the codex was written.

This book is the first full-scale analysis of the social and political transformation of the nobility of Holland during the revolt against Spain. In the late medieval county of Holland the nobility played a significant role, but in the seventeenth century it appears to have been obliterated by bourgeois merchants and urban regents. The author argues that this 'decline' needs re-examination and bases his study on three key aspects: the demographic evidence for the decline of the nobility; the economic vicissitudes of the sixteenth century, which gave rise to the myth of its impoverishment; and finally the political and administrative powers of the nobility in the reigns of Charles V and Phillip II during the Dutch Revolt in the Republic. The conclusions are surprising. The nobility of Holland was extremely successful in maintaining its position in a bourgeois republic. In conjunction with the urban regents, the nobles formed the country's administrative, political and economic elite and

The standard image of Indian society emphasizes its largely agrarian economy and parochial outlook, yet this image ignores the major economic and political role of commerce and artisan production. This book presents a study of one of the most important artisan-merchant communities, the weavers, who form the second largest sector of the south Indian economy. It thus offers an important corrective to the unbalanced picture that we have of Indian social organization from those accounts that have focused almost exclusively on agrarian society. Professor Mines traces the role of the weaver-merchants in the organization, of south Indian states and society from the medieval period to the present, and shows that at times in their history they rivalled the status and power of the agriculturalists. He also demonstrates that, far from being provincial, the weavers have for centuries maintained supralocal organizations to administer their affairs and represent their interests. As the political eco

Pastor and Laity in the Theology of Jean Gerson explores the pastoral teaching of one of Europe's most influential churchmen of the early fifteenth century. Chancellor of the University of Paris from 1395 to 1429, Gerson is probably best known for his activities towards ending the Great Schism. But behind his public life lay a deep concern for the spiritual welfare of the people. Through an examination of Gerson's sermons and writings for the laity, and of his many works giving guidance to bishops and parish priests about their roles as pastors, preachers and confessors, the book throws light on what the late medieval, pre-Reformation Church was teaching the laity, and also on popular religious mentality in the period. The topics dealt with range from matters of high theological import such as justification, predestination and mysticism to the seven capital sins and all their branches, the art of preaching, women, marriage and children.

A Rural Society after the Black Death is a study of rural social structure in the English county of Essex between 1350 and 1500. It seeks to understand how, in the population collapse after the Black Death (1348–1349), a particular economic environment affected ordinary people's lives in the areas of migration, marriage and employment, and also contributed to patterns of religious nonconformity, agrarian riots and unrest, and even rural housing. The period under scrutiny is often seen as a transitional era between 'medieval' and 'early-modern' England, but in the light of recent advances in English historical demography, this study suggests that there was more continuity than change in some critically important aspects of social structure in the region in question. Among the most important contributions of the book are its use of an unprecedentedly wide range of original manuscript records (estate and manorial records, taxation and criminal-court records, royal tenurial records, and th

Pastor and Laity in the Theology of Jean Gerson explores the pastoral teaching of one of Europe's most influential churchmen of the early fifteenth century. Chancellor of the University of Paris from 1395 to 1429, Gerson is probably best known for his activities towards ending the Great Schism. But behind his public life lay a deep concern for the spiritual welfare of the people. Through an examination of Gerson's sermons and writings for the laity, and of his many works giving guidance to bishops and parish priests about their roles as pastors, preachers and confessors, the book throws light on what the late medieval, pre-Reformation Church was teaching the laity, and also on popular religious mentality in the period. The topics dealt with range from matters of high theological import such as justification, predestination and mysticism to the seven capital sins and all their branches, the art of preaching, women, marriage and children.

Sheds light on the complex web of allusions that link medieval authors to their literary predecessors

Numerical computation, knowledge discovery and statistical data analysis integrated with powerful 2D and 3D graphics for visualization are the key topics of this book. The Python code examples powered

Edition of the register of Thomas Appleby completes the set of the surviving medieval episcopal registers of Carlisle.

Presents a day in the life of a medieval lord as he runs the land over which he holds power

THE must-have book for every Monty Python fan is now in paperback! Monty Python's Flying Circus: Complete and Annotated... All the Bits includes every script from every episode of the innovative, hil

What is the meaning of life? It is a question that has intrigued the great philosophers--and has been hilariously lampooned by Monty Python. Indeed, the whole idea strikes many of us as vaguely pompou

Throughout Western civilization, animals have decorated heraldic shields, populated medieval manuscripts, and ornamented baroque pottery. Animals have also been our companions, our correctives, and ou

This introduction to Luther's sacramental theology explores the medieval church's understanding of the seven sacraments, the Protestant rationale for keeping or eliminating each sacrament, and implica