This book, based on a wide range of eighteenth-century works, concerns European attitude towards North Africa in the century preceding the French conquest of Algiers in 1830. It studies the radical transformation of perceptions of Barbary during the period, essentially by placing them in the context of the different eighteenth-century systems of classification of the world. We see that uncertainty as to how to classify this region, its inhabitants, its form of government and social evolution - which led to its absence from most contemporary anthropological discussions - was resolved in the...

The editors of this volume have collected a large number of texts, most of them previously available only in manuscript, of a wide range of scholastic views on the problem of the eternity of the world. These selections range from William of Durham in the 1220s to John of Jandun in 1315. They illustrate the continuity of medieval discussions of this crucial topic and present the major arguments on all sides of the question. Several of the authors are anonymous, and many of those whose names are known have been little studied. The notes not only identify the fontes but also, through...

Using Darwin's "The Origin of Species" as a casepoint, this book shows that the language of scientists does remain "language" and that a skilful use of its rhetorical and poetic aspects often determines the 'facts' and the transmission of information.

Wessel Gansfort (1419-1489) is the author of a number of astute but difficult texts which indicate the high level of late-medieval spirituality and scholarship in northern Europe. Together with his younger friend Agricola (1444-1485) he ushered in the beginning of modern intellectual life in the northern part of the Netherlands (the province of Groningen) and adjoining Germany. This volume contains eight contributions on Gansfort, enlarging the range of perceptions of his work and personality for the first time since the major studies of 1917 and 1933 by Maarten van Rhijn. There are three...

This book makes available to scholars the unpublished proto-scholastic Commentary on the Psalms, composed by one of the outstanding figures of the early twelfth century, Gilbert of Poiters (Gilbert Porreta). The commentary had its origins in the atmosphere of experimentation which characterized the schools of Laon, Chartres and Paris in the first decades of the century. Its unique mise en page, its methodology and its connection to other texts - especially glossed classical texts, the Glossa ordinaria and the writings of Peter Lombard - are explored. Gilbert's...

Early medieval religious communities were filled with monks and nuns who spent almost their entire lives within the monastic confines. Many had arrived in childhood, through an irrevocable act of parental sacrifice (oblatio). According to Benedict's Rule, parents were to donate their sons 'to God in the monastery', following the biblical example of Hannah offering her son Samuel at the Temple.
From the twelfth century onwards, this once widespread practice became increasingly controversial. Why did parents give away their children? Were they driven by economic necessity?
This book...

These studies respond to the challenge posed twenty years ago by John E. Murdoch, in whose honor they have been assembled: to interpret ancient and medieval mathematical and scientific texts not just as isolated intellectual productions but as responses to particular settings or contexts. Two broad settings are explored here: that of the wider intellectual culture, where relations among mathematics, astronomy, natural philosophy - and also theology, logic and astrology - are shown to have shaped individual texts; and the context of lay society, where institutional structures, patronage, even...

A study of the Protestant utopian movement that began in Germany, inspired in large measure by the writings of Johann Valentin Adreae, and came to England through the efforts of the emigre Samuel Hartlib. The first chapters examine Andreae's utopian writings, including the Rosicrucian manifestos, as part of his lifelong commitment to found a Societas Christiana, a spiritual elite that would improve religious and intellectual life. His writings sparked a transnational movement in early modern Europe. The most significant of the German learned societies are discussed: The Societas Ereunetica,...

This is an unparalleled investigation of the theory and practice of interpretation. Concentrating on interpretive allegory, the volume simultaneously opens and organizes new approaches to over two thousand years of critical change. Its diverse topics extend from pagan, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic perspectives to postmodern inquiries. Its intersecting lines of analysis are drawn by scholars whose specialities range from ancient and modern literature to art history, comparative religion, and the history of philosophy. Framed by introductory essays assessing changes in scholarly research on...

The volume discusses important chapters of Platonic philosophy, including its pre-Socratic origins and later developments. It particularly focusses on the relationship between Plato's logico-semantics and his metaphysics. Plato's linguistic views are deeply rooted in the Platonic metaphysical system, and vice versa. The strong connection between the two and its development into the Middle Ages form a major subject of this volume. Other themes featuring in this book are Plato's philosophy of nature, his epistemology, his theology, his cosmology, as well as his conception of the soul and his...