This study is the first modern account of the development of philosophy during the Carolingian Renaissance. In the late eighth century, Dr Marenbon argues, theologians were led by their enthusiasm for logic to pose themselves truly philosophical questions. The central themes of ninth-century philosophy - essence, the Aristotelian Categories, the problem of Universals - were to preoccupy thinkers throughout the Middle Ages. The earliest period of medieval philosophy was thus a formative one. This work is based on a fresh study of the manuscript sources. The thoughts of scholars such as Alcuin, Candidus, Fredegisus, Ratramnus of Corbie, John Scottus Eriugena and Heiric of Auxerre is examined in detail and compared with their sources; and a wide variety of evidence is used to throw light on the milieu in which these thinkers flourished. Full critical editions of an important body of early medieval philosophical material, much of it never before published, are included.

The Latin literature of Anglo-Saxon England remains poorly understood. No bibliography of the subject exists. No comprehensive and authoritative history of Anglo-Latin literature has ever been written. It is only in recent years, largely through the essays collected in the present volumes, that the outline and intrinsic interest of the field have been clarified. Indeed, until a comprehensive history of the period is written, these collected essays offer the only reliable guide to the subject. The essays in the first volume are concerned with the earliest period of literary activity in England. Following a general essay which surveys the field as a whole, the essays range from the arrival of Theodore and Hadrian, through Aldhelm and Bede, to Aediluulf.

The Latin literature of Anglo-Saxon England remains poorly understood. No bibliography of the subject exists. No comprehensive and authoritative history of Anglo-Latin literature has ever been written. It is only in recent years, largely through the essays collected in the present volumes, that the outline and intrinsic interest of the field have been clarified. Indeed, until a comprehensive history of the period is written, these collected essays offer the only reliable guide to the subject. The essays in the first volume are concerned with the earliest period of literary activity in England. Following a general essay which surveys the field as a whole, the essays range from the arrival of Theodore and Hadrian, through Aldhelm and Bede, to Aediluulf.

First edition of 10th-century compendium of grammatical lore, second only in importance to Ælfric's own Grammar. When the famous Anglo-Saxon scholar Ælfric wrote the first grammar in a European vernacular, he used as his direct source the Excerptiones de Prisciano excerpts from major curriculum authors of the medieval schools, including Donatus, Isidore and Priscian himself . The tenth-century text, probably of English origin, most probably compiled by Ælfric, is an ambitious compendium of grammatical lore, and it is, with the exception of Ælfric's own Grammar, arguably the most sophisticated Latin-learning text of the Anglo-Saxon age. Edited here for the first time, the Excerptiones appear with all scholia, an English translation, and a full contextual introduction. DAVID W. PORTER is Professor of English, Southern University, Baton Rouge.

This work is a substantial contribution to the history of philosophy. Its subject, the ninth-century philosopher John Scottus Eriugena, developed a form of idealism that owed as much to the Greek Neoplatonic tradition as to the Latin fathers and anticipated the priority of the subject in its modern, most radical statement: German idealism. Moran has written the most comprehensive study yet of Eriugena's philosophy, tracing the sources of his thinking and analyzing his most important text, the Periphyseon. This volume will be of special interest to historians of mediaeval philosophy, history, and theology.

This book explores how eleventh- and twelfth-century Anglo-Norman ecclesiastical authors attributed anger to kings in the exercise of their duties, and how such attributions related to larger expansions of royal authority. It argues that ecclesiastical writers used their works to legitimize certain displays of royal anger, often resulting in violence, while at the same time deploying a shared emotional language that also allowed them to condemn other types of displays. These texts are particularly concerned about displays of anger in regard to suppressing revolt, ensuring justice, protecting honor, and respecting the status of kingship. In all of these areas, the role of ecclesiastical and lay counsel forms an important limit on the growth and expansion of royal prerogatives.

This book of eleven essays by an international group of scholars in medieval studies honors the work of Barbara H. Rosenwein, Professor emerita of History at Loyola University Chicago. Part I, “Emotions and Communities,” comprises six essays that make use of Rosenwein’s well-known and widely influential work on the history of emotions and what Rosenwein has called “emotional communities.” These essays employ a wide variety of source material such as chronicles, monastic records, painting, music theory, and religious practice to elucidate emotional commonalities among the medieval people who experienced them. The five essays in Part II, “Communities and Difference,” explore different kinds of communities and have difference as their primary theme: difference between the poor and the unfree, between power as wielded by rulers or the clergy, between the western Mediterranean region and the rest of Europe, and between a supposedly great king and lesser ones.