The 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.
- 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