From Capture to Sale illuminates the experience of African slaves transported to Spanish America by the Portuguese in the early seventeenth century. It draws on exceptionally rich accounts of one of the most prominent slave traders, Manuel Bautista Perez. These papers cover the whole journey of the slaves from Africa, through Colombia and Panama to their final sale in Peru. The prime focus of the study is on the diet, health and medical care of the slaves. It will not only be of interest to scholars of the slave trade, but also to those interested in the impact of the Columbian...

The twenty-nine Buddhist caves near Ajanta form a devotional complex which ranks as one of the world's most startling achievements, created at the very apogee of India's Golden Age. Ajanta: History and Development, appears as part of the series Handbook of Oriental Studies, present the reader with a systematic treatment of all aspects of the site, the result of forty years of painstaking research in situ by Walter M. Spink. Volume one deals with the historical context in which this dramatic burst of pious activity took place under the reign of Vakataka emperor Harisena, (c. 460...

This volume offers a range of innovative approaches to Solon of Athens, legendary law-giver, statesman, and poet of the early sixth century B.C. In the first part, Solon's poetry is reconsidered against the background of oral poetics and other early Greek poetry. The connection between Solon's alleged roles as poet and as politician is fundamentally questioned. Part two offers a reassessment of Solon's laws based on a revision of the textual tradition and recent views on early Greek lawgiving. In part three, fresh scrutiny of the archeological and written evidence of archaic Greece results in...

The Companion to John Wyclif contains eight substantial essays covering the central aspects of John Wyclif's life and thought. The volume's authors have drawn on an extensive amount of primary material, as well as the most recent secondary sources, so as to present a comprehensive picture of Wyclif in his times. Topics covered include a detailed life and career of Wyclif, and close analyses of his logic and metaphysics; doctrine of the Trinity and Christology; political views; Christian life and piety; sacraments; the Bible; and an examination of his medieval opponents. Experts and...

The Companion to Jean Gerson provides a guide to new research on Jean Gerson (1363-1429), theologian, chancellor of the University of Paris, and church reformer. Ten articles outline his life and works, contribution to lay devotion, place as biblical theologian, role as humanist, mystical theology, involvement in the conciliar movement, dilemmas as university master and conflicts with the mendicants, views on women and especially on female visionaries, participation in the debate on the "Roman de la Rose," and the afterlife of his works until the French Revolution. Some of the...

This multi-authored volume, by an authoritative team of international scholars, examines the transmission of Ciceronian rhetoric in medieval and early Renaissance Europe, concentrating on the fortunes, in particular, of the two dominant classical rhetorical textbooks of the time, Cicero's early De inventione, and the contemporary 'pseudo-Ciceronian' Rhetorica ad Herennium. The volume is unprecedented in range and depth as a presentation of the place of classical rhetoric in medieval culture, and will serve to revise views of a period seen until recently as largely indifferent to...

Jan van Ruusbroec (1293-1381), the most influential medieval Dutch author, is generally acknowledged to be one of the key figures in the tradition of Christian mysticism. This book concentrates on the medieval dimensions of Ruusbroec's authorship. Warnar offers a comprehensive analysis of Ruusbroec's oeuvre within the social, religious and literary frameworks of the fourteenth century Low Countries. Ruusbroec emerges as an author who was fully engaged in contemporary discussions on the contemplative life and mystical theology, as a charismatic guide who attracted a growing number of disciples...

First inspired by Vaudes in around 1170, the Waldensians formed a religious dissent which survived into the sixteenth century. Respecting the Gospel to the letter, their rejection of oaths, falsehood, the death penalty, purgatory and the intercession of saints marginalized them in the society of the times. Their survival depended on their will to adapt. Organisation became necessary to withstand the pressures of time and space as their community extended across Europe (France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Bohemia, Poland). Preachers, called "barbes" in the diaspora's Romance wing, embodied...

Introduction to Public Law is a historical and comparative introduction to public law. The book traces back the origins of the res publica to Roman law and analyzes the course of its development, first during the monarchical age in continental Europe and England, and then during the republican age that began at the end of the eighteenth century with the democratic revolutions in the United States and France. For each period and country, the book analyzes the major concepts of public law and their transformations: sovereignty, the state, the statute, the separation of powers, the...

The present volume provides a comprehensive guide to one of the most difficult authors of classical antiquity. All the major aspects of Propertius' work, its themes, the poetical technique, its sources and models, as well as the history of Propertian scholarship and the vexed problems of textual criticism, are dealt with in contributions by Joan Booth, James Butrica, Francis Cairns, Elaine Fantham, Paolo Fedeli, Adrian Hollis, Peter Knox, Robert Maltby, Tobias Reinhardt and Richard Tarrant; due space is also given to the reception of the author from antiquity and the renaissance (Simona...