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Paperback, 373 p., 17 b/w ill., 150 x 230 mm. ISBN 9782503521329. The first monograph to appear in The Medieval Translator series, Vernacular Mysticism in the Charterhouse presents a study of London, British Library, MS Additional 37790 (Amherst), a purpose-built anthology of major mystical texts by Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich, Jan van Ruusbroec and Marguerite Porete, interspersed with shorter texts and compilations. Though the manuscript is famous mainly because it contains the only extant copy of Julian of Norwich's short text, it is an intriguing witness to the fifteenth-century spread of the vernacular into traditionally Latinate environments, in this case the Carthusian Order in England. In this process of transmission, translation plays a central part. Most of the texts in the anthology are translations from Latin or French into Middle English. In addition, the anthologist's selection and ordering of texts within the volume, intended to further the readers' spiritual lives, translates them anew for his intended audience. This study provides finely detailed analyses of the texts in the textual and material context of the Amherst anthology as well as in their religious and historical contexts. It also offers a first-time edition of Quedam introductiua extracta, a Latin compilation contained in the manuscript, and a discussion and listing of verbal marginal annotations reflecting early readers' reactions to the texts. By reading the texts in (one of) their medieval manuscript context(s), this book gives students and scholars of (translated) medieval religious texts a fresh view of the classics of mystical writing contained in the remarkable literary document that is the Amherst anthology. Languages : English.
Paperback, XXV+466 p., 2 b/w ill., 150 x 230 mm. ISBN 9782503525358. Fundamental to all translation work, the concept of 'displacement' allows one to take into account the multiple successive states inhering in a single text, and to interpret these variations. Translation is, in effect, a form of transfer; more specifically, it involves a movement from one context to another, be it national, social, political, historical, linguistic or religious. The texts examined here illustrate, each in their unique way, the relationship between contextual change and audience. They are also the product of subtle interactions between a variety of elements, the result of which is a 'reinvention' of their respective roles and uses over time. For example, a text intending to entertain may also have educational outcomes; a book of local miracles may attract pilgrims and contribute to the economic life of a monastery; a text and its translations may at some point be appropriated for polemical purposes, while a library of translated texts founded on humanist principals may also serve political ends. Furthermore, each successive adaptation and its accompanying annotations impacts upon the tonality of a text. While this diversity of meanings may inspire some (such as the medieval poet Marie de France), it moreover raises a number of important and difficult questions for the modern translator. How, for example, does one translate the 'harmonics' underlying a series of mystical puns? The 'solution' usually involves a compromise that both enhances and undermines the translated text. This volume presents a selection of twenty-eight papers delivered at the Seventh International Conference dedicated to The Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages, which took place at the University of Paris III - Nouvelle Sorbonne in July 2004. The period covered by the texts and their translations extends from antiquity to the present day. The literary and critical breadth of these papers, as well as the rigorous interrogation of the modern translation theory, illustrates the remarkable vitality and diversity of current scholarship in this field. Au coeur de toute activite de traduction, le concept de deplacement permet de rendre compte des multiples etats successifs d'un meme texte et d'en interpreter les variations. Toute traduction est en effet une translation, c'est-a-dire un changement d'environnement, que ce dernier soit national, social, politique, historique, linguistique ou ecclesial. Les textes examines ici temoignent chacun a sa maniere des transformations qu'ils ont subies lorsque, changeant de langue, de style ou d'epoque, ils ont change de destinataires. La dynamique qui les traverse se nourrit de subtils cotoiements : un desir legitime de divertir peut fort bien s'accommoder d'une intention didactique ; un recueil de miracles locaux peut attirer des pelerins, contribuant ainsi a la vie economique d'un monastere ; un texte et ses traductions peuvent devenir l'objet d'utilisations polemiques ; se constituer en humaniste une bibliotheque de traductions peut aussi servir un dessein politique. Par ailleurs les transpositions successives et leurs gloses, comme en musique, entrainent des changements de tonalite. Ce 'surplus' de sens qu'encourage Marie de France pourra cependant se heurter a des resistances : comment par exemple preserver d'une langue a l'autre toutes les harmoniques que libere un enchainement de jeux de mots mystiques ... Ainsi l'inevitable compromis qui s'imposera au traducteur sera souvent le choix d'un enrichissement double d'une deperdition. Ce volume presente une selection des communications entendues lors du septieme colloque international consacre a la theorie et la pratique de la traduction des textes au Moyen Age qui s'est tenu a l'Universite de Paris III- Sorbonne Nouvelle en juillet 2004. La periode couverte par ces textes et leurs traductions s'etend de l'Antiquite jusqu'a nos jours. Ce sont au total vingt-huit etudes qui sont ici proposees. La richesse des domaines abordes, la haute technicite des analyses, de meme que la place faite aux questionnements de la traductologie moderne illustrent la remarquable vitalite des etudes actuelles relatives aux multiples aspects de la traduction des textes medievaux. Languages : English, French.
Paperback, IV+460 p., 7 b/w ill., 150 x 230 mm. ISBN 9782503526553. Les medievistes connaissent bien les sens que les Arts poetiques latins du Moyen age attribuent au mot translatio : transfert de langues et de cultures, mais aussi transplantation de lettres d'un monde a un autre monde, greffe vitale du passe sur le present, donation de sens du present au passe. Environ deux tiers des traductions medievales sont faites entre le xive et le xve siecle. Bien avant que la Renaissance ne revendique son ouverture sur le monde de l'Antiquite, le Moyen Age, et en particulier les clercs de ses deux derniers siecles ont greffe sur la langue et la civilisation francaises tout un pan de la culture et de la litterature du passe, jusqu'en a en modifier pour toujours le code genetique. Reflechir sur la traduction vers le moyen francais, y compris celle de l'oc vers l'oil, comme nous avons voulu le faire lors du IIe colloque de l'AIEMF (Association Internationale d'Etudes sur le Moyen Francais), c'est etre au coeur de la genese de ce moyen francais, de sa double proximite : avec l'ancien francais et avec le francais moderne. Le role joue par la traduction en moyen francais apparaitra encore plus clairement lorsque les medievistes disposeront d'un repertoire global des traductions medievales. Ce volume s'inscrit ainsi dans un projet plus vaste : Translations medievales : cinq siecles de traductions en francais, xie-xve siecles (Brepols, 2010), qui recensera et interpretera les informations bibliographiques sur l'ensemble des textes traduits en francais entre le xie et le xve siecle, offrant ainsi un repertoire exhaustif des textes translates, de leurs traducteurs, de leurs commanditaires et de leurs horizons de reception. Languages : French.
Paperback, XX+382 p., 38 b/w ill., 150 x 230 mm. ISBN 9782503531397. The contributions to this volume are organised in a way that bear out the vitality of translation activity in the medieval period and the resourcefulness of modern scholarship in addressing the phenomenon of translation at large. No other period relies so heavily on this literary process to construct its cultural identity. Translations from Latin into the vernacular, or from one vernacular into another, or even from a vernacular into the Latin language, are just a few of the many forms medieval translation can take. The codification of the translation process as appropriation, transformation, or accommodation does not sufficiently emphasize the overarching curiosity and interest that motivates any translation activity. Rather, preceding the stages of appropriation and re-interpretation, it is positive inquisitiveness and openness towards linguistic and cultural difference that generate the production of a new text and the transference of culture from one sphere to another. Translation practice creates a dialogic exchange between cultures, it recognises difference and diversity, both linguistic and cultural, yet it also shapes its new product for the use of an audience or readership that is concurrently aware of the reciprocal need to participate in that exchange, in order to improve its own culture. It is that positive inquisitiveness which this volume emphasizes. The volume initially addresses the way in which translators dealt with texts from the early medieval period. It then considers the phenomenon of bilingualism and the privileged relationship that England held with the continent, especially the Italian and French literary traditions. The third part of this volume tackles the problem of fifteenth-century religious translation in England and, to a lesser extent, France, and complicates it by showing its inevitable political implications. Understood more particularly as an act of cultural transfer, translation activity can also be considered beyond the linguistic process. The fourth part of the volume deals with several instances of translations from one genre into another, and from one media into another. The contributions to this volume provide some answers to conundrums in the theory and practice of translation encountered during the medieval period. They also point to new ways of considering this literary process, and by praising diversity and difference, they suggest a less traumatic way of reading Babel than is usually implied. Languages : French, English.
Paperback, 358 p., 156 x 234 mm. ISBN 9782503535791. La comparaison de la chronique latine de Guillaume de Tyr, Historia Rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum (XIIe siecle), avec sa version francaise anonyme, L'Estoire de Eracles (XIIIe siecle), fait apparaitre des differences capitales. Les nombreuses initiatives syntaxiques, lexicales et thematiques, conditionnees par les gouts du traducteur et de son public, ainsi que par les exigences du travail de traduction et les possibilites offertes par la langue, temoignent principalement des difficultes rencontrees au contact du monument historiographique le plus complexe de la Croisade. Les observations decisives qu'elles permettent de conduire confirment que la notion medievale de translatio correspond souvent moins au concept moderne de traduction qu'a celui d'adaptation. Languages : French, Latin.
Hardback, XIV+350 p., 160 x 245 mm. ISBN 9782503507682. The essays in this volume examine not only the beguinage religious life in the southern Low Countries, but also the impact of this movement on later medieval Sweden, England and France, the new modes of influence by women in their religious lives, and the revivals of feminine spirituality. Was there a women's movement in the thirteenth century and is such a question meaningful in its medieval context? Far from being resolved, the issue of whether women had a thirteenth-century renaissance has still decisively to unsettle the periodization of Western European history in twelfth and sixteenth-century humanist renaissances. Herbert Grundmann long ago demonstrated the participation of women in the eremitically-inspired reforming movements of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and in the production of vernacular literature. Yet it is upon his work that this volume builds, for the diocese of Liege is the key area in this development. It was from Liege that Jacques de Vitry approached the papacy to secure permission for the women of this bishopric of Liege, France and Germany to live together and to promote holiness in each other by mutual example. The seventeen contributors to this volume examine not only the beguine religious life in the southern Low Countries, but also the impact of this movement on later medieval Sweden, England and France, the new modes of influence exerted by women in their religious lives, and the revivals of feminine spirituality in the late medieval West through to contemporary North America. Research does not yet allow for a whole new synthesis, but this volume directs scholars to detailed work on specific localities and persons, with an awareness of the problems and possibilities of wider European comparisons. The contributors are: Jocelyn Wogan-Browne and Marie-Elisabeth Henneau, Anne Blonstein, Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen, Alexandra Barratt, Penny Galloway, Brenda Bolton, Bridget Morris, Marjorie Curry Woods, Carolyne Larrington, Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Katie Normington, Jane Chance, Ulrike Wiethaus, Luce Irigaray and Antonia Lacey. Languages : English.
Hardback, XXVIII+300 p., incl. 2 maps, 2 site-plans and 3 genealogical tables, 160 x 245 mm. ISBN 9782503507798. This book is a comprehensive collection of biographical sources, all translated from the latest critical editions, relating to Jutta of Disibodenberg (1092-1136) and Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). This book is a comprehensive collection of biographical sources, all translated from the latest critical editions, relating to Jutta of Disibodenberg (1092-1136) and Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). Except for the Life of Hildegard they have never been translated before. The Life of Jutta in particular is a major source recently discovered, throwing new light on the early life of Hildegard. The contents include translations with scholarly introductions of the following documents: The Chronicles of Disibodenberg (selections); Charters of Disibodenberg; Documents of Sponheim; The Life of Jutta; Guibert's Letter 38 to Bovo (including his incomplete Life of Hildegard); the Life of Hildegard; Eight Readings to be read on the Feast of St Hildegard; Guilbert's Revision of the Life of Hildegard; Charters of Rupertsberg; Canonisation Proceedings. Languages : English.
Hardback, X+476 p., 1 b/w ill., 156 x 234 mm. ISBN 9782503528366. Saints Edith and AEthelthryth: Princesses, Miracle Workers, and their Late Medieval Audience narrates the lives of two Anglo-Saxon princesses who were venerated as saints long after their deaths. St Edith, the daughter of King Edgar, was renowned as a patron of the arts and the church during her lifetime; her posthumous miracles included protection of Wilton Abbey and the English royal family. St AEthelthryth, who retained her virginity through not one but two royal marriages, also worked numerous miracles at her tomb at the Abbey of Ely. The poems, composed at Wilton Abbey in the early fifteenth century, allow us to see how late medieval religious women practised their devotion to early medieval women saints. The Middle English verse texts are presented here in the original and in translation with explanatory notes and glossary. A thorough introduction provides extensive contextualization and analysis of the two poems as well as description of the manuscript and its language and prosody. These primary source texts are important contributions to the study of English history, language, literature, religion, and women's studies. Languages : English, Middle English.
Hardback, XVI+436 p., 160 x 245 mm. ISBN 9782503509792. Profiting from the development of newly flexible models of gender, literacy, the political, the social, and the domestic, this volume on medieval women considers the broadest implications for the study of medieval culture without simply re-absorbing medieval women into invisibility. In this themed collection of 24 articles by literary, historical and archaeological scholars, the study of medieval women is confidently and freshly mainstream. Profiting from the development of newly flexible models of gender, literacy, the political, the social, and the domestic, the volume is non-separatist, exploratory both of new source materials and new readings of established sources, and able to consider the broadest implications for the study of medieval culture without simply re-absorbing medieval women into invisibility. Grouped under the headings of matters of reading, of conduct and place, the essays move from legal cases to actual buildings and conceptions of the household to conduct books and chronicles to romances and saints' lives to the medieval unconscious and back again, exemplifying the mature interdisciplinarity of current work on medieval women. Languages : English.
Hardback, XII+169 p., 160 x 240 mm. ISBN 9782503510736. This study comprises a critical edition, using all the five extant MSS, of the most popular of the Middle English gynaecological texts deriving from the Latin Trotula-text. This study comprises a critical edition, using all the five extant MSS, of the most popular of the Middle English gynaecological texts deriving from the Latin Trotula-text. The Knowing of Women's Kind in Childing is a short fifteenth-century prose treatise which claims to be translated from Latin texts (or Latin and French, according to some manuscripts) that derive ultimately from the Greek. It has a unique importance as it was written by a woman, for a female audience, and on the subject of women. The text considers women's physical constitution, what makes them different from men (primarily the possession of a womb) and, in particular, the three types of problem that the womb causes. That it was written for a female audience is made explicit in the Prologue where the writer explains that he has translated this text out of French and Latin into English because literate women are more likely to read English than any other language and can then pass on the information it contains to illiterate women. More controversial must be the claim that this text was written by a woman. The text is a translation, no doubt by a man, but one of his ultimate sources was a text attributed to 'Trotula', in the Middle Ages believed to be the name of a midwife or gynaecologist from Salerno, who wrote extensively on women's ailments, childbirth and beauty care. Recent work shows that such a woman, probably named Trota, did exist and that she did write a gynaecological treatise, the Trotula or 'little Trota', which became closely associated with two other texts not by her. All three however became very popular and were widely disseminated under her name. Large sections of The Knowing of Woman's Kind come, via an Old French translation, from a version of the Liber de Sinthomatibus Mulierum (the Cum auctor), the first element in this Trotula ensemble. Languages : English.
Hardback, XII+474 p., 6 b/w ill., 175 x 255 mm. ISBN 9782503522968. This edition contains two texts by Julian of Norwich (c. 1343-c. 1416): A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love. Julian of Norwich (c. 1343-c. 1416) is the earliest woman writer of English we know about. Although she described herself as 'a simple creature unlettered', Julian is now widely recognized as one of the great speculative theologians of the Middle Ages, whose thinking about God as love has made a permanent contribution to the tradition of Christian belief. This book presents a much needed new edition of Julian's writings in Middle English, one that makes possible the serious reading and study of her thought not just for specialists but for all medievalists. This edition includes separate texts of both Julian's works, A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love, with modern punctuation and partly regularized spelling; a second, analytic edition of A Vision printed underneath the text of A Revelation to facilitate study of the relationship between the works; facing-page explanatory notes, with translations of difficult words and phrases, cross-references to other parts of the text, and citations of biblical and other sources; an appendix of life-records and early responses to Julian's thought; and an analytic bibliography. The volume also provides an accessible introduction to Julian's life and writings. Languages : English, Middle English.
Hardback, L+258 p., 4 b/w ill., 160 x 240 mm. ISBN 9782503514352. This volume is comprised of translations of a trilogy of Cistercian lives composed by the same hagiographer at the celebrated abbey of Villers in Brabant. In the early thirteenth century the diocese of Liege witnessed an extraordinary religious revival, known to us largely through the abundant corpus of saints' lives from that region. Cistercian monks, nuns, beguines, and recluses formed close-knit networks of spiritual friendship that easily crossed the boundaries of gender, religious status, and even language. Holy women such as Mary of Oignies and Christina the Astonishing were held up by their biographers as models of orthodoxy and miraculous powers. Less familiar but no less fascinating are the male saints of the region. In this volume Martinus Cawley, ocso, has translated a trilogy of Cistercian lives composed by the same hagiographer, Goswin, who was a monk and cantor at the celebrated abbey of Villers in Brabant. Although all three of these saints were connected with the same order, their versions of holiness represent a study in contrasts, from the compassionate nun Ida of Nivelles, remarkable for her eucharistic raptures, to the fiercely ascetic lay brother Arnulf, to the gentle monk Abundus, renowned for his deep liturgical and Marian piety. The title Send Me God derives from a revealing catch-phrase that devout men and women used to request prayers from their spiritual friends. Languages : English.
Hardback, XII+260 p., 1 b/w ill., 160 x 240 mm. ISBN 9782503517032. This volume contains translatiuons of all of the relevant medieval sources on Mary of Oignies (1177-1213), was one of the first holy women to transform religious life in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Mary of Oignies (1177-1213) was one of the first holy women to transform religious life in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Living as a beguine and a free anchoress she guided those who came to speak with her, both high clerics and common people alike. In the oral world of medieval Christianity one disregarded her word at considerable risk. This volume contains all of the relevant medieval sources on Mary of Oignies, translated by Margot King and Hugh Feiss OSB. They include: the Life written by her confessor, James of Vitry, and the Supplement thereof by Thomas of Cantimpre; the liturgical office of her feast-day; and the 'History of the Priory of Oignies'. Also included are an introductory essay about her life and significance, written by Anneke Mulder-Bakker; a study about Mary as a 'friend to the saints' by Brenda Bolton; and the manuscript transmission of her Life, by Suzan Folkerts. The volume therefore provides a comprehensive 'companion' to Mary of Oignies and her wider significance in medieval and modern scholarship. Languages : English.
Hardback, XIV+257 p., 15 b/w ill., 160 x 245 mm. ISBN 9782503512907. This volume contains an interdisciplinary collection of essays on St Katherine of Alexandria and her followers. St Katherine of Alexandria was one of the most popular saints in Medieval Europe. This book constitutes the first interdisciplinary collection of essays to explore her cult and the range of meanings which St Katherine embodied for her devotees. The essays between them consider a wide range of evidence, from visual representations (wall paintings, manuscript illuminations, stained glass, and seals), to literary texts (lives of the saint, prayers, hymns, devotional manuscripts, and breviaries) as well as documentary evidence (wills, chronicles, ecclesiastical records and antiquarian writings) and the physical remains of churches and chapels dedicated to St Katherine. These sources are interpreted as part of wider manifestations of devotion to the saint in England, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Wales. The authors approach the cult from varying disciplinary and methodological perspectives, but all seek to uncover the various religious, social and cultural messages contained within the different versions of St Katherine which these particular texts and contexts offer. The volume as a whole therefore sheds light not only on devotion to St Katherine, but also on a much wider range of issues and ideologies governing the lives of her devotees and the societies in which they lived. Languages : English.
Hardback, XII+454 p., 160 x 240 mm. ISBN 9782503514369. This volume contains translations of Goscelin of Saint-Bertin's Liber confortatorius and life of St Edith, with new essays about his life and work. This collection of essays and translations brings together two closely related works by an important but little studied late eleventh-century author, Goscelin of Saint-Bertin. His Liber confortatorius (the earliest work of spiritual instruction for a female recluse known to have been written in England) is addressed to Eve. Goscelin, who may have been a chaplain at Wilton, had been Eve?s spiritual mentor since her childhood. Eve, however, left Wilton in her early twenties to become a recluse in Angers without even informing him of her plans, and in the Liber confortatorius, written in the form of an extended letter (c. 1082), Goscelin attempts to reassert and reconfigure their former close relationship. His account of the life and translation of St Edith, who was a member of the Wilton community until her death (in c. 986) at the age of twenty-three, was commissioned by the Wilton nuns and based on their oral report. Completed in c. 1080, the Legend gives a portrait of Edith and her mother Abbess Wulfthryth, and an account of the community?s posthumous relationship with its saint up until the time that Goscelin began work on it. It is (with the exception of Goscelin?s Life of Wulfhild of Barking) our only near contemporary narrative account of a late Anglo-Saxon women?s community. The essays in this collection present a closely integrated account of some of the most central and striking aspects of the two texts. The essays and accompanying translations are the result of a collaborative research project undertaken at The University of Auckland. Languages : English.
Hardback, XII+494 p., 2 colour ill., 160 x 240 mm. ISBN 9782503514529. This collection of prose vitae of four virgins and scholars - Saints John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, Jerome, and Katherine of Alexandria - was almost certainly copied, and the texts very likely composed, at Syon Abbey or Sheen Charterhouse in the mid-fifteenth century. The lives cover a wide range of hagiographic modes, from hagiographic romance to affective, devotional appreciation to doctrinal treatise in narrative form. From the life of Jerome, composed by a monk for his aristocratic spiritual daughter, to the life of Katherine, reputedly translated for Henry V, to those of John the Baptist and John the Evangelist, which set their subjects in a recognizably Birgittine context, they show the interaction of men and women, lay and monastic, in the production of devotional literature. The diversity of their approaches and sources, moreover, shows the links between English dynastic politics and continental religious literature and spiritual traditions. As examples of translation practices, of monastic politics, and of religious instruction, these lives provide a window onto the devotional culture and literary worlds of fifteenth-century Europe. Languages : English, Middle English.
Hardback, X+205 p., 1 b/w ill., 160 x 240 mm. ISBN 9782503514482. The studies within this volume apply insights gained from gender studies to re-consider the way knowledge and learning was transmitted in medieval Europe 1200-1550. Traditional scholarship has largely concentrated on the clerical and academic context of conventional learning. It tended to focus on the contents and methods of formal education, as well as on a small group of educational institutions from which women were excluded. In this volume, authors consider how learning was transmitted outside the schools, in particular within women's communities. They raise a range of questions: how was knowledge transmitted in an oral context, what varieties of knowledge were available to communities of women? What kinds of learning are characteristic of such communities? What techniques did women develop to preserve and transmit their knowledge and how was it valorized both within their communities, and by 'authoritative' outsiders? Under what circumstances could women themselves gain authority in passing on knowledge to a wider audience? Languages : English.
Hardback, XVI+338 pages., 160 x 240 mm. ISBN 9782503517773. This text constitutes the first in-depth study of Hildegard of Bingen's Expositiones and of her exegesis, preaching, and use of sources. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), the only medieval woman known to have authored systematic works of exegesis, composed fifty-eight little-studied Expositiones euangeliorum, homilies on twenty-seven Gospel passages. Hildegard described her divine charge to restore the tottering faith of her era through the revelation of hidden mysteries in the Scriptures. She was to continue the exegetical tradition of the Fathers and to construct moral fortifications with the words of Scripture in order to defend her sisters against the forces of evil. Hildegard of Bingen and her Gospel Homilies constitutes the first in-depth study of Hildegard's Expositiones and of her exegesis, preaching, and use of sources. It explores the Expositiones in the context of Hildegard's intellectual and cultural milieu and underscores the central role of biblical interpretation in the seer's works. Furthermore, this book re-examines Hildegard's self-depiction in the context of monastic education for women, the magistra's exchange with her mentors and friends, and her rich use of divine voice to empower her own expression. This is a new, exciting, and erudite study on one of the most influential female mystics. Languages : English, Latin, German.
Hardback, X+262 p., 160 x 240 mm. ISBN 9782503517780. The essays within this volume unite study of the medieval household with that of women's religious practices, providing a new avenue of enquiry the history of the church. Both as God's house and as the dwellings of his monastic and other followers, the history of the church is in part that of an institution conceived as a household. In recent years, secular life and lifestyles in late antiquity and the Middle Ages have been illuminated through renewed attention to the economic and social history of households, while scholarship on women has produced studies of the lives and the devotional reading of laywomen and women religious. This volume is a pioneering collection that unites study of the household with women's religious practices as a focus of enquiry. It moves beyond consideration of the church's roles in women's history to the impact of women's householding on the history of the church. Languages : English.
Hardback, VI+218 p., 160 x 240 mm. ISBN 9782503518008. This volume draws on political and gender theories to provide fresh readings of a variety of texts centred in the power and agency of women during the period 1385 to 1620. Reading a variety of texts centred in the power and agency of women during the period 1385 to 1620, this book examines changing ideals of gender within the context of changing ideologies of governance and polity. Together the essays that comprise this book lay out three lines of thinking about women and polity: that the ideology of late medieval gender roles articulated in Anglo-French texts of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries outlined important roles for women?s voice and agency in supporting the larger polity as well as the smaller household; that the acceptance and the value of those roles diminished as models of polity in both Church and State in England changed in the early modern period; that to see this change merely in terms of change in expectations of gender roles is to miss the vital link between the status of women and the political construction of individual relationship to authority. Woman is the site on which society delineates the degree of freedom and independence it will tolerate in the political subject. The attention directed to women?s roles in the plethora of woman-centred stories, courtesy books, prayer books, sermons and tracts in the period 1385-1620 is an index to shifting alignments of power that replaced medieval models of partnership and co-operation with models of obedience. Languages : English, French.
Hardback, VIII+256 p., 160 x 240 mm. ISBN 9782503518060. This volume contains the first critical edition of the latest of the three medieval French adaptations of the Song of Songs. There are three medieval French adaptations of the Song of Songs, each reflecting a distinct exegetical tradition. The latest of these three, here edited for the first time (from BNF fr. 14966), adopts the tropological interpretation according to which the Song depicts the relationship of the individual soul with God. The mystical, contemplative approach owes much to Bernard of Clairvaux, William of St Thierry, and Thomas the Cistercian, and this Cistercian tradition also has close links with the Beguines, a connection which receives detailed exploration in the editor's extensive Introduction. Writing in the late-thirteenth century in north-eastern France, the author of the Cantiques is aware of such an association and not only engages in the familiar procedures of allegorization, but, more originally, inserts into his commentary eight lyrics which are modelled on known secular chansons which receive full attention from the editor. Within the text, which covers Song 1. 1 to Song 3. 11 in 2544 octosyllables arranged in eight-line stanzas, speeches are assigned to Sponsus, Sponsa, Magister, and Religio. The Cantiques Salemon is the work of a poet rather than of a theologian, reflecting many elements associated with 'la courtoisie mystique', which in turn is characteristic of writing for the Beguines. The editor provides a detailed summary of the text, full glossary and notes as well as an account of the language. To these is added a study of the poet's principal literary techniques, involving both the varied processes of translation and the elaboration of a network of links between stanzas together with the imprint of a personal, lyric quality on the whole. Languages : English, Middle French.
Hardback, X+218 p., 160 x 240 mm. ISBN 9782503519029. This volume analyses the role of allegory in Marguerite Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls, the oldest known mystical work written in French, and the only surviving medieval text by a woman writer executed as a heretic. Marguerite Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls, dating probably to the 1290s, is the oldest known mystical work written in French, and the only surviving medieval text by a woman writer executed as a heretic. This volume analyses its use of interconnected allegories that describe the soul's approach toward God in terms of human social relationships. These include romantic love between lovers in same-sex and mixed-sex pairs, relations among people of differing social rank such as servants and nobles, and rich and poor engaged in economic transactions such as taxation and gift-giving. Gender, rank, and exchange serve as remarkably versatile allegories for spiritual states. Porete uses comparison as an organizing principle that underlies her supple and creative use of allegory, personification, parables, metaphors, similes, proverbs, and glosses. The theologian invites her audience to cross boundaries among literal and figurative registers of meaning, in ways that are emblematic of the soul's ultimate leap toward the divine. Porete's social allegories, the author contends, can provide us with valuable evidence of a medieval thinker's conceptions of God, gender, language, and human capacity for change. Languages : English, Middle French.
Hardback, X+324 p., 160 x 240 mm. ISBN 9782503520780. This volume contains tranlations of four lively and eventful lives recorded by the Dominican hagiographer Thomas of Cantimpre (c. 1200-c. 1270). The Dominican Thomas of Cantimpre (c. 1200-c. 1270) was a key figure in the 'evangelical awakening' of the thirteenth century. A prolific hagiographer, he lauded such diverse subjects as the abbot and apostolic preacher John of Cantimpre; the teenage saint Margaret of Ypres, an urban recluse who died at 21; Lutgard of Aywieres, a Cistercian nun and mystic; and the theatrical, mentally troubled Christina 'the Astonishing' of St-Trond. Thomas had few peers in portraying the ritual theatre of penance. He gives us such memorable scenes as a naked moneylender led out of a pit by a rope, a formerly rapacious prince kissing his peasants? feet as he restores their stolen goods, St Christina leaping into fires and boiling cauldrons to save souls in purgatory, and the deceased Pope Innocent III in agony, begging St Lutgard for her prayers. In this volume readers will find all four lively and eventful lives between the same covers for the first time. The Life of Abbot John of Cantimpre has been newly translated by Barbara Newman, who has also supplied a new introduction. The other three Lives are reprinted from Margot H. King's Peregrina Translations Series. Languages : English, Latin.
Hardback, IX+416 p., 156 x 234 mm. ISBN 9782503520773. This volume presents translations, with accompanying introductions, of the Lives of three thirteenth-century figures: Yvette of Huy, Margaret the Lame of Magdeburg, and the anchoress Juliana of Cornillon. This volume presents the Lives of three women of the thirteenth century, all written by contemporaries. In the late Middle Ages, almost every town in Northern Europe had its own anchoress, who would keep in touch with the citizens through a window looking onto the churchyard or through a door and window looking into the church (as shown in the cover illustration). Such women, along with the beguines, Cistercian nuns and monks, reform-minded clergy, and devout laywomen, formed what Barbara Newman has termed 'close-knit networks of spiritual friendship that easily crossed the boundaries of gender, religious status, and even language'. This volume presents the lives of two recluses, Yvette of Huy, whose life was recorded by her spiritual friend, the Premonstratensian Hugh of Floreffe, and Margaret the Lame of Magdeburg, whose lessons were recorded by her confessor, the Dominican John of Magdeburg (introduced and translated by Jo Ann McNamara, and Gertrud Jaron Lewis and Tilman Lewis respectively). The anchoress Eve of Saint-Martin was an author herself. Her memoir in French on her friend Juliana's and her own labour for the new Feast of Corpus Christi forms the basis of the Latin Life of Juliana of Cornillon (introduced and translated by Barbara Newman). Languages : English, Latin.
Hardback, XIV+264 p., 1 b/w line art, 160 x 240 mm. ISBN 9782503523903. This book presents new translations and introductions to all sources related to the life of St Macrina the Younger (c. 327-379). This book presents St Macrina the Younger (c. 327-379), eldest sister of Ss Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa. All the sources of Macrina's life are gathered together, translated afresh into English, and provided with up-to-date introductions and notes. Documents include: Testimonies of St Basil, St Gregory Nazianzen's epigrams on Macrina and her siblings; Gregory of Nyssa's letter 19 which appears in English for the first time; The Life of Macrina, a jewel of fourth-century Christian biography; and the dialogue On the Soul and Resurrection in which Macrina appears as the Teacher expounding Christian doctrine with reasoned argument. The introductory shows how Macrina gradually changed the family household of Annisa into the proto-monastic community that became model of the monasticism that has come down under Basil's name. A specially commissioned icon, a map of Central Anatolia, and a report of the author's expeditions to ancient Pontus are included. Languages : English, Greek.
