Constant J. Mews's groundbreaking work reveals 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 demands 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. Mews has also expanded our knowledge of medieval music, and its theoretical foundations. In Mews' Middle Ages, the world of ideas always belongs to a larger world: one that is cultural, gendered and politicized. The essays in this volume pay tribute to Constant, in spirit and in content, revealing a nuanced and integrated vision of the intellectual history of the medieval West.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Communities of Learning – Constant J. Mews
- Section 1: Twelfth-century Learning
- 1. Carnal Compassion
- Peter Abelard’s Conflicted Approach to Empathy
- 2. From Wisdom to Science
- A Witness of the Theological Studies in Paris in the 1240s
- 3. Authority and Innovation in Bernard of Clairvaux’s De gratia et libero arbitrio
- 4. Words of Seduction
- A Letter from Hugh Metel to Bernard of Clairvaux
- 5. The Emotional Landscape of Abelard’s Planctus David super Saul et Ionatha
- Section 2: Sanctity and Material Culture
- 6. Dirty Laundry
- Thomas Becket’s Hair Shirt and the Making of a Saint
- Karen Bollermann and Cary J. Nederman
- 7. Significatio and Senefiance, or Relics in Thomas Aquinas and Jean de Meun
- 8. The Cult of Thomas Aquinas’s Relics at the Dawn of the Dominican Reform and the Great Western Schism
- Section 3: Theological Transmissions:
Intellectual Culture after 1200
- 9. Food for the Journey
- The Thirteenth-Century French Version of Guiard of Laon’s Sermon on the Twelve Fruits of the Eucharist
- 10. A Sense of Proportion
- Jacobus Extending Boethius around 1300
- 11. Utrum sapienti competat prolem habere?
- 12. Attuning to the Cosmos
- The Ethical Man’s Mission from Plato to Petrarch
- Section 4: Gender, Power, and Virtue in Early Modernity
- 13. The Miroir des dames, the Chapelet des vertus, and Christine de Pizan’s Sources*
- 14. In Praise of Women
- Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti’s Gynevera de le clare donne
- 15. The Invention of the French Royal Mistress
- Epilogue
- Index