Published just after the Second World War, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages is a sweeping exploration of the remarkable continuity of European literature across time and place, from the classical era up to the early nineteenth century, and from the Italian peninsula to the British Isles. In what T. S. Eliot called a "magnificent" book, Ernst Robert Curtius establishes medieval Latin literature as the vital transition between the literature of antiquity and the vernacular literatures (...) of later centuries. The result is nothing less than a masterful synthesis of European literature from Homer to Goethe. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages is a monumental work of literary scholarship. In a new introduction, Colin Burrow provides critical insights into Curtius's life and ideas and highlights the distinctive importance of this wonderful book. (shrink)

The present book is the result of a conference supported by the Karl-und-Gertrud-Abel-Stiftung which was dedicated to the reception of the Presocratics in the western world from the 12th to the 19th century. The chapters of the book are based on papers given at the conference. For publication, they have been revised and some of them have been amplified to a considerable extent.

The present book is the result of a conference supported by the Karl-und-Gertrud-Abel-Stiftung which was dedicated to the reception of the Presocratics in the western world from the 12th to the 19th century. The chapters of the book are based on papers given at the conference. For publication, they have been revised and some of them have been amplified to a considerable extent.

All intellectual histories of the Middle Ages note that Greek and Arabic science, medicine, commentary and philosophy had an enormous influence upon the great intellectual achievements of the later Middle Ages in the Latin West. Yet, these same histories also tend to cast the condemnations of 1277 as a watershed moment when the Christian West rejected the science and philosophy of pagans and infidels, and especially the synthesis of the two, the commentaries on Aristotle’s works (...) by Averroes. Recognizing the oddness of this narrative, one of simultaneous absorption and rejection, historians have been happy to divide the philosophers and theologians into progressives and conservatives. However, such a division seems only to compound the oddness of their original narrative, superimposing a political language popular in the 1960’s and 70’s onto the late thirteenth century. The division leaves in one corner the progressives like Siger, Thomas and Albert, who were open to the new sciences and in another corner, the conservatives, like Henry of Ghent and Robert Kilwardby, who sought to protect the old, traditional ways of thinking in 1277 by a codification of an orthodoxy. Unfortunately, this attempt to salvage the master narrative of simultaneous absorption and rejection fails to capture the intellectual positions and alliances at the time of the condemnations and their significance for later developments in the thinking of the Latin West. (shrink)

The mid-thirteenth-century theorist and rhetorician Brunetto Latini proposed a vigorous republican account of the art of government and the nature of community in his encyclopedic treatise, Li Livres dou Tresor. The interpretation of Latini's republicanism has been heavily based on its literary sensibilities, its attachment to rhetoric, and its praise for classical civic virtues. But Latini deserves to be classified as a republican insofar as he founds social and political order upon commercial principles-the production and exchange of material goods for (...) profit-and consequent economic defense of republican government. Hence, the example of Latini challenges one of the principal remaining barriers that supposedly separates medieval defenses of republicanism from Renaissance versions. The essay contends that Latini holds that self-governing institutions depend upon and are especially well suited to sustain a society whose conception of the common good includes the creation and exchange of those material necessities required for physical welfare and comfort. (shrink)

The mid-thirteenth-century theorist and rhetorician Brunetto Latini proposed a vigorous republican account of the art of government and the nature of community in his encyclopedic treatise, Li Livres dou Tresor. The interpretation of Latini's republicanism has been heavily based on its literary sensibilities, its attachment to rhetoric, and its praise for classical civic virtues. But Latini deserves to be classified as a republican insofar as he founds social and political order upon commercial principles—the production and exchange of material goods for (...) profit—and consequent economic defense of republican government. Hence, the example of Latini challenges one of the principal remaining barriers that supposedly separates medieval defenses of republicanism from Renaissance versions. The essay contends that Latini holds that self-governing institutions depend upon and are especially well suited to sustain a society whose conception of the common good includes the creation and exchange of those material necessities required for physical welfare and comfort. (shrink)

The mid-thirteenth-century theorist and rhetorician Brunetto Latini proposed a vigorous republican account of the art of government and the nature of community in his encyclopedic treatise, Li Livres dou Tresor. The interpretation of Latini's republicanism has been heavily based on its literary sensibilities, its attachment to rhetoric, and its praise for classical civic virtues. But Latini deserves to be classified as a republican insofar as he founds social and political order upon commercial principles—the production and exchange of material goods for (...) profit—and consequent economic defense of republican government. Hence, the example of Latini challenges one of the principal remaining barriers that supposedly separates medieval defenses of republicanism from Renaissance versions. The essay contends that Latini holds that self-governing institutions depend upon and are especially well suited to sustain a society whose conception of the common good includes the creation and exchange of those material necessities required for physical welfare and comfort. (shrink)

The aim of this short note is to draw the attention of scholars in the field of medieval philosophy to the publication of several volumes, already issued or in preparation, of the new Ueberweg dedicated to medieval philosophy in the Byzantine and Latin worlds. The note includes an overall description of these volumes and various references concerning the future development of the Ueberweg as a whole.

ABSTRACT The midday demon, who attacked the solitary monk with vicious temptations – above all, that of acedia – is a conventional motif in late antique and medieval ascetic literature. At the noon hour, the demonic assault was vigorous and ranging. But medieval spiritual writers like Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153) and Richard of Saint Victor (d. 1173) also described noontime as the high point of mystical experience. Both notions hark back to biblical statements made in the Psalms and Song (...) of Songs and were elaborated by medieval thinkers through exegetical rumination. This paper studies the propinquity of these two notions in the symbolism and vocabulary of medieval spiritual writers, and in so doing documents the biblical and monastic contribution to unfolding ideas about melancholy. As examined in Saturn and Melancholy pathological melancholy would traditionally refer to the complex of symptoms associated with sloth and sadness that beleaguered the uprooted and antisocial ascetic. But after the introduction of the Aristotelian problem to Latin writers, a contrasting view appeared in the early thirteenth century, which held melancholy for a benediction of mystical or theophanic frenzy. This paper unmoors melancholy from its classical sources and, beginning from the ambivalence of the noonday motif, argues that the traditional literature of mystics and ascetics prepared for this remarkable shift. (shrink)

This collection of new essays locates Boethius' Consolatio Philosophiae in the medieval context of Latin learning and vernacular translations. The first part is devoted to the Latin commentary tradition, while the other parts explore the vernacular traditions.

During the Middle Ages many Greek mathematical and astronomical texts were translated from Greek into Arabic and from Arabic into Latin. There were many factors complicating the study of them, such as translation from or into other languages, redactions, multiple translations, and independently transmitted scholia. A literal translation risks less in loss of meaning, but can be clumsy. This article includes lists of translations and a large bibliography, divided into sections.

The contributors to this volume examine the diverse roles played by moral virtues in the political writings of the Later Middle Ages. Medieval political thought has a long tradition of scholarship, and its ethical dimension has always received sustained attention. This volume specifically concentrates on the meaning and function of virtues in a political context, a theme which has thus far been neglected. The authors deal with Latin texts (occasionally in combination with vernacular ones) from the 13th (...) to 15th centuries that define, legitimize, or criticize secular rule by using catalogues of virtues, originating from ancient philosophy as well as Christian moral theology. The medieval texts under discussion are of French, German, English, Italian, and Spanish origin, and vary from educational treatises and historiography to moral theology and political philosophy. (shrink)

The development of natural theology in the Middle Ages was driven by the rebirth experienced by Western Europe beginning in the 1000s owing to the emergence of stable monarchies and reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula. This expansion gave scholars access to the vast libraries of scientific and philosophical literature held in Arabic cultural centres – libraries that contained Aristotelian works on natural, ethical, and metaphysical sciences, which had for centuries been lost to the Latin West. The new (...) texts fed the growth of universities, where secular interests helped shape the curriculum, as the centre of intellectual gravity shifted from the monastery to the town. This chapter examines the figures that represent various moments in the medieval tradition, during and after these developments. Anselm and Abelard immediately predate the universities and recovery of Aristotle. Aquinas and John Duns Scotus write on either side of the Condemnations of 1277. Raymonde of Sabunde's work first applies the expression ‘natural theology’ to Christian practice, and Yves of Paris seeks late into the seventeenth century to revitalize this project. The chapter begins with a brief discussion of Aquinas' thought and influence. (shrink)

The Middles Ages are often portrayed as a time in which people with physical disabilities in the Latin West were ostracized, on the grounds that such conditions demonstrated personal sin and/or God’s judgment. This was undoubtedly the dominant response to disability in various times and places during the fifth through fifteenth centuries, but the total range of medieval responses is much broader and more interesting. In particular, the 13th-15th century treatment of three groups (martyrs, mothers, and mystics - (...) whose physical ‘defects’ were often understood as signs of special connection to God in this life, and who were often represented as retaining these signs in the life to come) challenge standard notions of beauty, disfigurement, and bodily perfection, particularly as the notion is applied to eternal life and our ultimate end. (shrink)

In this book—the first volume in his groundbreaking trilogy on the emergence of western political thought—Francis Oakley explores the roots of secular political thinking by examining the political ideology and institutions of Hellenistic and late Roman antiquity and of the early European middle ages. By challenging the popular belief that the ancient Greek and Roman worlds provided the origins of our inherently secular politics, Oakley revises our understanding of the history of political theory in a fundamental and far-reaching (...) manner that will reverberate for decades. This book lays the foundations for Oakley's next two volumes, which will develop his argument that it is in the Latin middle ages that we must seek the ideological roots of modern political secularism. (shrink)

The Renaissance of scientific thought in twelfth-century Western culture, when alchemy was introduced into the Latin schools, was largely due to the wave of translations, mainly from Arabic into Latin, but also including translations into and from Hebrew, sometimes with vernacular languages as intermediaries. Alchemy, whose tradition had been broken in the West at the end of the Hellenistic age, gained considerable attention—albeit less than astronomy/astrology and medicine—from the twelfth-century translators, who presented Latin culture with a hitherto (...) unknown doctrine that was completely different from any other science. Alchemy, as the Latin Middle Ages received it, is the philosophical search for the agent of material perfection by means of the manipulation of base materials. It thereby united theory and practice in a way unexpected by Latin scholars. In fact, alchemy as a doctrine was inseparable from laboratory practice; and this practice so much resembled well-established craftsmen's labor that for a long period the place of alchemy in the divisio disciplinarum wavered between the mechanical and the liberal arts. (shrink)

The Legacy of Aristotelian Enthymeme provides a historical-logical analysis of Aristotle's rhetorical syllogism, the enthymeme, through its Medieval and Renaissance interpretations. Bringing together notions of credibility and proof, an international team of scholars highlight the fierce debates around this form of argumentation during two key periods for Aristotle's beliefs.Reflecting on medieval and humanist thinkers, philosophers, poets and theologians, this volume joins up dialectical and rhetorical argumentation as key to the enthymeme's interpretation and shows how the enthymeme was the source of (...) a major interpretive conflict. As a method for achieving the standards for proof and credibility that persist across diverse fields of study today including the law, politics, medicine and morality, this book takes in Latin and Persian interpretations of the enthymeme and casts contemporary argumentation in a new historical light. (shrink)