This study presents research by specialists of monastic history, literature, and spirituality. Covering the period from 1150 to 1500, this volume demonstrates that monastic preaching was not only carried out in the cloister by monks, but also in public arenas by monks and nuns. The topics range from questioning if the sermons of Bernard of Clairvaux were ever preached, to an analysis of Hildegard of Bingen's preaching against the Cathars. Sermons addressed to monastic communities by secular preachers are also analysed. The diversity of monastic preaching - e.g., cloistered preaching,...

This intellectual history study locates the philosophy of history of Pierre-Simon Ballanche (1776-1847) within the intellectual, religious, and social life of Restoration and July Monarchy France, and argues for the recognition of Ballanche as an important contributor to that milieu.
Its four parts blend the topical and evolutionary approaches, analyzing dominant themes as they are developed across Ballanche's works, and charts Ballanche's complex relation of dependence and independence to the various intellectual currents of the period.
This study clarifies the thought of a notoriously...

This edited volume addresses important aspects of Paracelsian concepts within the context of contemporary science and literature, emphasizing the international dissemination and propagation of Paracelsian ideas during the 16th and 17th centuries. Its contributions analyse different aspects of Paracelsus's work and influence: for instance, his ideas on magic, medicine, and mantic art; his relation to the Jewish tradition, and the controversies caused by Paracelsian authors. Special attention is given to the impact of Paracelsus on the Rosicrucian movement. This volume will be of interst to...

John Finnis's proposal to rehabilitate Aquinas's natural law theory as an appropriate foundation of legal and moral theory rests on the assumption that Aquinas's theory can be restored by eliminating the mistaken interpretations of subsequent natural law theorists. This book challenges that assumption. After a brief analysis of Aquinas, the theories of Suarez, Grotius, and Pufendorf are investigated. It is argued that their theories are no 'mistakes', but attempts at solving problems inherent in natural law theory. As these attempts all fail, tensions remain, and ultimately lead to the demise...

This volume deals with the tracts, Latin and vernacular, published in the Netherlands on the comets of 1577 and 1618. Central to the book is the question how these cometary appearances influenced the Aristotelian world view.
Three introductory chapters on the historiography of cometology and the nature of sixteenth-century Aristotelianism are followed by a detailed examination of the Netherlandish authors' views on the nature and constitution of the universe. In the final chapter, their opinions on cometary prognostication are evaluated, and are linked to contemporary political...

This study offers a typology of the go-between across key texts from antiquity and several medieval literary traditions, analyzing the role of the third party in the poetics of love.
The work provides the indispensable context for the study of the significant transformations undergone by the go-between. Legal and scientific sources are taken into account alongside Latin, French, and English literary works and literature of the medieval Islamic period for the critique of differences and intertextual links which inform the conception of the go-between. The case of the Medieval Spanish...

This is the third and final volume of a set of studies on the development of humanism in the northern Netherlands and the adjoining parts of Germany between 1469, when, in the oldest letters preserved of Rudolph Agricola and Rudolph von Langen, first mention is made of a group of early humanist scholars at the Adwert monastery near Groningen, and 1625, when the humanist Ubbo Emmius died, who was the first rector of the university of Groningen. The earlier two volumes are Rodolphus Agricola Phrisius (1444-1485) (1988) and Wessel Gansfort (1419-1489) and Northern Humanism (1993)....

Jeanne III d'Albret (1528-1572), queen of Navarre, is a subject of great controversy and fascination, yet only two modern monographs have been written about her, and both are general biographies. This book fills the gap for scholars by concentrating on Jeanne's leading role during the Wars of Religion in the vast territory of Guyenne in southwestern France.
Part One, 'The Promised Land', portrays the growth of Protestantism in Guyenne, the rise of the Albret dynasty, and Jeanne's evangelisation. In part Two, 'Exodus', Queen Jeanne emerges as a Huguenot war leader in the attempt, shown in...

Centred on a dozen texts in Spanish or Latin composed by Spaniards - both laymen and clergy - in the Spanish Netherlands as well as Spain, this study follows the debate during Philip II's reign concerning the principles, purposes and values - both secular and religious - relevant to rulers and to society at large.
Part I examines three treatises produced in the Spanish Netherlands in the 1550s; Parts II and III respectively study works from the Kingdoms of Castile and the Crown of Aragon in the 1570s and 1580s; Part IV considers three Jesuit treatises of the 1590s.
The resultant picture...

The essays in this volume reflect the wide-ranging interests of John D. North, distinguished historian of science and philosophy. Section One has papers on horoscopes, astrolabes and time-reckoning, and it includes an edition of a twelfth-century treatise on the astrolabe and surveys of astrolabes. Section Two is devoted to the study of the medieval cosmos. These contributions discuss Calcidian astronomy, astronomy in the Spanish Jewish community, the role of God in scholastic natural philosophy, and other themes. New information is presented about previously unknown scholars such as Abd...