Description
Book SynopsisThe essays in The Intellectual Dynamism of the High Middle Ages pay tribute to the work and impact of Constant J. Mews, in spirit and in content, revealing a nuanced and integrated vision of the intellectual history of the medieval West. Mews's groundbreaking work has revealed the wide world of medieval letters: looking beyond the cathedral and the cloister for his investigations, and taking a broad view of intellectual practice in the Middle Ages, Mews has demanded that we expand our horizons as we explore the history of ideas. Alongside his cutting-edge work on Abelard, he has been a leader in the study of medieval women writers, paying heed to Hildegard and Heloise in particular. In Mews' Middle Ages, the world of ideas always belongs to a larger world: one that is cultural, gendered, and politicized.
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Communities of Learning (Clare Monagle)
Section 1: Twelfth-century Learning
Chapter 1: Carnal Compassion: Peter Abelard's conflicted approach to empathy (Juanita Feros Ruys)
Chapter 2:From Wisdom to Science: A witness of the theological studies in Paris in the 1240s (Riccardo Saccenti)
Chapter 3: Authority and Innovation in Bernard of Clairvaux's De gratia et liberio arbitrario (Marcia Colish)
Chapter 4: Words of Seduction - a Letter from Hugh Metel to Bernard of Clairvaux (Rina Lahav)
Chapter 5: The Emotional Landscape of Abelard's Planctus David super Saul et Ionatha (Carol Williams)
Section 2: Sanctity and Material Culture
Chapter 6: Dirty Laundry: Thomas Becket's hair-shirt and the making of a Saint (Karen Bollermann and Cary Nederman)
Chapter 7: Relics in Thomas Aquinas and Jean de Meun (Earl Jeffrey Richards)
Chapter 8: The Cult of Thomas Aquinas's Relics at the Dawn of the Dominican Reform and the Great Western Schism (Marika Räsänen)
Section 3: Theological Transmissions: Intellectual Culture after 1200
Chapter 9: Food for the Journey: The thirteenth-century French version of Guiard of Laon's sermon on the twelve fruits of the Eucharist (Janice Pinder)
Chapter 10: A Sense of Proportion: Jacobus extending Boethius around 1300 (John Crossley)
Chapter 11: Utrum sapienti competat prolem habere? An Italian debate (Sylvain Piron)
Chapter 12: Attuning to the Cosmos: The ethical man's mission from Plato to Petrarch (Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides)
Section 4: Gender, Power and Virtue in Early Modernity
Chapter 13: The Miroir des dames, the Chapelet des vertus, and Christine de Pizan's Sources (Karen Green)
Chapter 14: In Praise of Women: Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti's Gynevera de le clare donne (Carolyn James)
Chapter 15: The Invention of the French Royal Mistress (Tracy Adams)
Epilogue (Peter Howard)
Index
