The story of the beliefs and practices called 'magic' starts in ancient Iran, Greece, and Rome, before entering its crucial Christian phase in the Middle Ages. Centering on the Renaissance and ...Marsilio Ficino - whose work on magic was the most influential account written in premodern times - this groundbreaking book treats magic as a classical tradition with foundations that were distinctly philosophical. Besides Ficino, the premodern story of magic also features Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, Aquinas, Agrippa, Pomponazzi, Porta, Bruno, Campanella, Descartes, Boyle, Leibniz, and Newton, to name only a few of the prominent thinkers discussed in this book. Because pictures play a key role in the story of magic, this book is richly illustrated.
Schon längere Zeit mehren sich die Stimmen in der Mediävistik, die für eine stärkere Öffnung des Fachs über seine übliche Perspektivenbeschränkung auf Europa hinaus plädieren und eine Ausrichtung hin ...zu einer Bestimmung der Rolle der Zeit vor 1500 im Rahmen der größeren Globalgeschichte anstreben. Dies ist zunächst vor allem durch eine neue Konzentration auf den Mittelmeerraum geschehen, der gerade den Handlungsradius der Kaufleute aus italienischen Seerepubliken, allen voran Venedig und Genua, erneut in den Fokus der Forschung gerückt hat. Zudem erkennt man auch einen neuen Blick der Mediävistik auf Eurasien, wie ihn etwa Hermann Kulke eindringlich forderte – ein Blick, der insbesondere das Wissen um Asien in Europa, die spätmittelalterliche Kartographie, die franziskanische Mission und die Asienreiseberichte neuerlich zum Thema der Forschung machte. Die Interaktion mit der islamischen und byzantinischen Welt erfuhr ebenfalls eine größere Aufmerksamkeit, doch entstand hier jüngst auch der Widerspruch gegen eine Verwendung oder Ausdehnung des Mittelalter-Begriffes an sich für Kulturkreise außerhalb Lateineuropas (Thomas Bauer). Das verbindet sich mit dem zugleich spürbaren Unbehagen in der Zunft, das Mittelalter aus seinem europäischen Kontext zu lösen. Eine in der Quellenkunde besonders bewanderte Teilepoche der Geschichte wird aus guten Gründen besonders vorsichtig und bedacht mit einem Perspektivwechsel umgehen, der den Blick von außen auf Europa wirft und damit auch neue Sprach- und Quellenkompetenzen erfordert, die nur in interdisziplinärer Perspektive zu erlangen sind. Die Kooperation mit der Sinologie und Indologie haben hier bereits erste Wege eröffnet.
Abstract
The article discusses the Europe-wide late medieval phenomenon of the cult of the Holy Name, using it as a case study to discuss the relationship of micro-and macro-historical ...transformations by scrutinizing the enormous success of a religious innovation which managed to spread to many different local contexts and social groups. After pointing out contradictions in earlier explanations of this success, the article gives a detailed reading of several different realizations of this form of devotion, discussing authors like Richard Rolle, but also religious compilations and documentary evidence. This evidence suggests that the meaning and significance of devotion to the Holy Name remained open, malleable and unstable. It therefore appears necessary to engage with the whole range of its representations, and their transmission at different social levels, in order to understand its larger significance in the religious transformations of the long fifteenth century.
Published just after the Second World War,European Literature and the Latin Middle Agesis 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 Agesis 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.
Drawing from the works of Dante, Catherine of Siena, Boccaccio, Aquinas, and Cavalcanti and other literary, philosophic, and scientific texts, Heather Webb studies medieval notions of the heart to ...explore the "lost circulations" of an era when individual lives and bodies were defined by their extensions into the world rather than as self-perpetuating, self-limited entities.
Walking Corpses Miller, Timothy S; Nesbitt, John W
04/2014
eBook
Leprosy has afflicted humans for thousands of years. It wasn't until the twelfth century, however, that the dreaded disease entered the collective psyche of Western society, thanks to a frightening ...epidemic that ravaged Catholic Europe. The Church responded by constructing charitable institutions called leprosaria to treat the rapidly expanding number of victims. As important as these events were, Timothy Miller and John Nesbitt remind us that the history of leprosy in the West is incomplete without also considering the Byzantine Empire, which confronted leprosy and its effects well before the Latin West. In Walking Corpses, they offer the first account of medieval leprosy that integrates the history of East and West.
In their informative and engaging account, Miller and Nesbitt challenge a number of misperceptions and myths about medieval attitudes toward leprosy (known today as Hansen's disease). They argue that ethical writings from the Byzantine world and from Catholic Europe never branded leprosy as punishment for sin; rather, theologians and moralists saw the disease as a mark of God's favor on those chosen for heaven. The stimulus to ban lepers from society and ultimately to persecute them came not from Christian influence but from Germanic customary law. Leprosaria were not prisons to punish lepers but were centers of care to offer them support; some even provided both male and female residents the opportunity to govern their own communities under a form of written constitution. Informed by recent bioarchaeological research that has vastly expanded knowledge of the disease and its treatment by medieval society, Walking Corpses also includes three key Greek texts regarding leprosy (one of which has never been translated into English before).
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