Masters of the Sacred Page: Manuscripts of Theology in the Latin West to 1274

ISBN-13: 9780268042134 / Angielski / Twarda / 2001 / 200 str.

Lesley M. Smith

Opis

Starting with the premise that the history of a medieval subject cannot be properly written without recourse to the materials it produced, Lesley Smith's Masters of the Sacred Page provides an illuminating study of theology in the Middle Ages. She focuses on the dramatic transformations of the discipline in the twelfth century and uses a collection of contemporary manuscripts as a guide to its changes and developments. Smith points out that the medieval masters of theology had a much wider view of their subject than the modern academic tendency for neatness and division can easily admit, and she places their discipline squarely within the rapidly evolving intellectual and educational context of the twelfth-century university. Her approach avoids two of the most common weaknesses of modern historical studies of medieval theology. In the first place, those histories have a tendency to be distorted by a reliance on easily available printed editions of medieval texts, the bulk of which are summae and other logical, systematic treatments. This preponderance, however, often reflects the concerns and interests of nineteenth- and twentieth-century editors more than it does the medieval m