Miscellanea Mediaevalia

This volume is about rehabilitating theoretical curiosity for the millennium that we refer to as the Middle Ages. What does it mean to adopt a theoretical attitude? Have there been cultural differences or changes in the meaning of curiositas? This is where two attitudes collide: curiositas as misguided curiosity and as a natural longing in the sense of an anthropological existential.

A library is not just a collection of books waiting for its users. Libraries are spaces of thought and institutions of ordered knowledge. They reflect the questions of their time and preserve them for future times. They are privileged places of participation in that knowledge to which we ourselves contribute with our books. The concept of the library thus reveals the interdependence of ideal and material culture.

The volume is a comprehensive evaluation of epistemic, practical, veridical issues from the perspective of every kind of failure, disruption, or confusion that comes under the general rubric of “error.” The analysis is not limited to the element of negativity, but rather, an inquiry about the extent that error can be transformed into a starting point or precondition for successful epistemic practices.

Practices and techniques of imparting competency and knowledge are always essential for any mediation- or transfer process. Based on the distinctive master-disciple relationship, this volume examines individual ways of life, social contexts and institutional requirements as well as discursive practices and epistemological implications of this key relationship bequeathing culturally conveyed proficiencies and culturally encoded knowledge.

This volume examines how the notion of law was transformed and reformulated during the Middle Ages. It focuses on encounters between ancient and local legal traditions and the three great revelation religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – each of which understood the written word of God as law and formulated new cultures. The work thus furnishes interdisciplinary and intercultural insight into medieval legal discourse.

A key work for research on the arts of the High Middle Ages is a book handed down under the pseudonym Theophilus Presbyter titled Schedula diversarum atrium (On Divers Arts), which furnishes a reflection on the artes mechanicae together with a comprehensive overview of all aspects of knowledge. Included in this work is a review of the textual history of the Schedula diversarum atrium as well as new hypotheses on the identity of its author.

This volume casts a new light on Byzantium as a geographical and cultural intersection. For nearly a millennium, Byzantium was an important crossroads where cultures, people, and institutions from the entire Mediterranean area came together. Key subjects of interest explored by this volume include reciprocal cultural and epistemic processes of reception and transformation and the forms of knowledge associated with them.

This volume is dedicated to the year 1308. Its object is to open new perspectives with an invitation to reconsider our habitual viewpoints, to sharpen and extend them - by considering the year 1308, but also going beyond that year and its historical periphery. Beginning with a detailed local description, attention is drawn to a variety of thematic and methodological facets: perception of events, also bearing the discovery of new worlds in mind, Johannes Duns Scotus in context, theology in Paris, philosophy in Italy, medicine and poetry, Europe’s boarders, orthodoxy and heresy, 1308 reflected in art, and from Jewish and Islamic perspectives.

This volume is based on the 35th Cologne Medieval Studies Conference on the Duration of Being.

Present-day medievalists regard it as an undisputed fact that Arabic culture – especially science – influenced the Latin Middle Ages in a multitude of ways. However, more detailed research is needed into the conditions, background and context of this ‘cultural exchange’, a task undertaken by the present volume in 44 papers from a variety of disciplines.

Meister Eckhart spent some twenty years in the Dominican convent in Erfurt, first as prior and then as first provincial of the order’s province of Saxonia. Although in recent years the great significance of Meister Eckhart’s time in Erfurt, between the periods he spent in Paris, has become increasingly more evident, Eckhart research has on the whole devoted less attention to his years in Erfurt than to his time in Paris, Strasbourg and Cologne. The present volume addresses the need for more research into Eckhart’s time in Erfurt. The 27 papers address the most important trends in recent research into Eckhart and inquire into the consequences these have for our assessment of Meister Eckhart.

The relationship between the Late Middle Ages and the beginning of modern times is still a controversial topic discussed. Some view the 14^th and 15^th century as a period of decline, others emphasize this era’s formative and innovative role in modern times. Volume 31 of Miscellanea Mediaevalia takes an interdisciplinary look at this period while addressing critical, classic evaluations.

More than 30 contributions discuss the philosophy of the Late Middle Ages (with special attention to moral and natural philosophy), scientific institutions of the Late Middle Ages, the architecture, economic and legal history, and the spirituality in the Late Middle Ages, as well as prominent figures such as Jean Gerson and Nicholas of Cusa.

In the Middle Ages more than in other periods, eschatology informed the way people understood humankind and the world. The papers in the present volume are devoted to the complexity and interconnectivty of the eschatological orientation of the Middle Ages. Central topics are questions of the influence and formation of eschatological themes in philosophy and the significance of ideas of the final end in medieval political thought. In addition, there is a consideration of further themes from history, theology, art and literature.

The 29th volume of the Miscellanea Mediaevalia contains the papers delivered to the 32nd Cologne Medieval Studies Conference plus additional contributions. The volume includes five papers on the 50-year history of the Thomas Institute, which has been organising the Cologne Medieval Studies Conference for the last half century.

The 13th century is often regarded as the epitome of the Middle Ages. The present volume aims to demonstrate new perspectives in research into this century. The main topics in the book are questions from the fields of theoretical and practical philosophy, theology, the history of institutions, problems in literature, art, learning and education, and cultural contact.

This 27th volume of the Miscellanea Mediaevalia contains the papers delivered to the 31st Medievalists’ Conference held in Cologne in September 1998, together with a number of additional contributions. In keeping with the basic idea of the Cologne Medievalists’ Conferences, the volume is divided into 10 sections containing the 38 papers from philosophy and history, literary history and theology, and the history of learning and the arts.