PIMSPontifical Institute
of
Mediaeval Studies

May 2016

Power Politics in Kievan Rus': Vladimir Monomakh and His Dynasty, 1054–1246

Studies and Texts 202. xxii, 432 pp., plus 16 b/w plates. 2016. ISBN 978-0-88844-202-4 • Cloth • $95

The aim of this study is to write the political history of the dynasty of Kievan Rus′ descended from Vladimir Vsevolodovich Monomakh, which ruled from the middle of the eleventh century to the middle of the thirteenth century. In doing so, it argues, both from documented evidence and from circumstantial evidence, that Monomakh manipulated the politics of Rus′ to his advantage.

April 2016

Mediaeval Studies Volume 77 (2015)

ISSN 0076-5872
Volume 77 (2015) • ISBN 978-0-88844-679-4 • $110

An annual journal of scholarship on the Middle Ages. A description of the journal and editorial policy, as well as tables of contents for recently published volumes, and indexes in electronic form, are available on the Mediaeval Studies page elsewhere on this site.

March 2016

Notes from the School of William de Montibus / Collecta ex diuersis auditis in scola magistri Willelmi de Monte

Edited from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 860 by ANDREW N.J. DUNNING

TMLT 33. x, 122 pp. 2016. ISBN 978-0-88844-483-7 • Paper • $19.95

Preserved in a single manuscript from the abbey library of Bury St Edmunds, and here edited for the first time, Samuel Presbiter’s series of short, extensively annotated poems offers a rare record of one of the innovative formats that medieval schoolmasters used to engage students beyond conventional lectures. The text affords the reader a vivid experience of immersion in the pedagogical techniques of the twelfth-century classroom. The poems and commentary present key lessons from the doctrinal instruction of William de Montibus (c. 1140–1213), the beloved master of the school of Lincoln Cathedral.

March 2016

Building for England: John Cosin’s Architecture in Renaissance Durham and Cambridge

DMRME 4. xviii+152 pp. plus 26 plates. 2016. ISBN 978-0-88844-863-7 • Cloth • $85

Setting the architectural patronage of John Cosin (1595–1672) in the context of his ambitions for the English Church, this volume argues that his architecture sprang from a national impulse for the greater glory of England and embodies his theology of free will and authoritarian ideology.

February 2016

Peter Lombard and His Students

Studies and Texts 201; Mediaeval Law and Theology 8. xii, 302 pp. 2016. ISBN 978-0-88844-201-7 • Cloth • $90

Peter Lombard is best known for his groundbreaking theological work, the Sentences. But the exclusive focus on this work has tended to divert attention away from other aspects of his life and work. This book therefore takes a broadly biographical approach to Peter Lombard, examining him in relation to his environment and milieu.

January 2016

Art in a Time of War: The Master of Morgan 453 and Manuscript Illumination in Paris during the English Occupation (1419–1435)

Studies and Texts 197; Text Image Context: Studies in Medieval Manuscript Illumination 3. xxviii, 388 pp., including 253 colour images. 2016. ISBN 978-0-88844-197-3 • Cloth • $130

Art in a Time of War seeks to fill an important gap in our knowledge of painting in fifteenth-century France. Focusing on the work of “the Master of Morgan 453,” an accomplished, if unnamed, manuscript illuminator, Clark identifies, compares, and analyzes all extant books that can be attributed to the painter and reconstructs his career on the basis of a wide range of liturgical as well as art-historical criteria.

January 2016

Christ's Two Wills in Scholastic Thought: The Christology of Aquinas and Its Historical Contexts

ST 178; Mediaeval Law and Theology 5. 2012. viii, 358 pp.

New in Paperback (2016): ISBN 978-0-88844-424-0 • $45.00
Casebound: ISBN 978-0-88844-178-2 • $85.00

This book investigates scholastic discussions of Christ's wills from Anselm of Canterbury to John Duns Scotus, concentrating on Thomas Aquinas.

December 2015

On the Shoulders of Giants: Essays in Honor of Glenn W. Olsen

Papers in Mediaeval Studies 27. xii, 262 pp. 2015. ISBN 978-0-88844-827-9 • Cloth • $90

The allusion in the title to the dwarf on the shoulders of the giant underscores the central themes of this collection: the debt each generation owes to the intellectual achievements of those that precede it, the continuous interpenetration between the present and the past, and the place of tradition as well as change and renewal in culture and history. The topos is particularly apt for this volume, for it allows students and colleagues to express their own distinctive debts to Glenn W. Olsen, a formidable scholar, respected advisor, and cherished friend.

December 2015

Sin, Interiority, and Selfhood in the Twelfth-Century West

Studies and Texts 200. xii, 172 pp. 2015. ISBN 978-0-88844-200-0 • Cloth • $85

A common refrain in twelfth-century thought is that God alone knows the secrets of the heart. Originating in Scripture, the principle was elaborated exegetically to imply two distinct domains: one of external actions open to human perception and judgment and the other including thoughts, intentions, and sentiments – the products of internal acts – visible only to God. But changes in medieval penance, especially in the Fourth Lateran Council’s demand in 1215 that all Christians fully confess their sins to a priest, reveals a shift in attitude towards the secrecy of the heart. A close reading of twelfth and thirteenth-century texts from the cathedral and monastic schools shows that oral confession was to include not only visible, external acts, but also the merely internal actions formerly limited to God’s knowledge.

November 2015

Embracing Wisdom: The Summa theologiae as Spiritual Pedagogy

xii, 222 pp. 2015. ISBN 978-0-88844-422-6 • Paper • $35

That the exercise of our intellectual powers in the service of the Gospel can prove life-transforming is a principle that both informs the writings of Thomas Aquinas and, at the same time, marks the horizon of his thought. Yet the contemporary interpretation of Aquinas’ thought, with a few notable exceptions, continues to suffer from the modern divorce between systematic theology and spirituality. Even among those studies that link Aquinas’ systematic and spiritual purposes, few have asked how Aquinas sets about composing his text in such a way that it orders spiritual operations of memory, affect, imagination, understanding, judgment, and decision to each other and to the purpose of Christian spiritual development.

November 2015

John of Morigny. Liber florum celestis doctrine / The Flowers of Heavenly Teaching

Studies and Texts 199. xxii, 632 pp., plus 8 colour plates. 2015. ISBN 978-0-88844-199-7 • Cloth • $115

This volume provides the first edition and systematic study of the Liber florum celestis doctrine by the Benedictine John of Morigny. Until recently this work was known only through a chronicle report of its burning at Paris in 1323, on the grounds that it revived a condemned ritual called the Ars notoria. However, it survives in three versions in more than twenty copies from across Europe, few of which indicate doubt as to its orthodoxy.

October 2015

The Making of the Historia scholastica, 1150–1200

Studies and Texts 198; Mediaeval Law and Theology 7. xvi + 322 pp. • 2015 • ISBN 978-0-88844-198-0 • Cloth • $95

In the theological landscape of the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica stands out as a conspicuous yet strangely overlooked landmark. Like the Sentences of Peter Lombard, the History towers over the early scholastic period, and it was the extraordinary success of these twin towers that ensured the joint ascendancy of the reputations of the two masters. Indeed, we find one medieval writer after another testifying to the greatness of the man whose nickname had become synonymous with a voracious appetite for knowledge, and the encyclopedic work whose extraordinary dissemination and influence over several centuries made it the medieval popular Bible.

July 2015

Symeon of Thessalonika. The Liturgical Commentaries

ST 168. 2011. viii, 302 pp.

New in Paperback (2015): ISBN 978-0-88844-423-3 • $42.00
Casebound: ISBN 978-0-88844-168-3 • $90.00

This volume contains an edition and facing English translation of Explanation of the Divine Temple and “On the Sacred Liturgy,” the two commentaries on the pontifical (hierarchal) Byzantine Divine Liturgy by St. Symeon of Thessalonika (†1429).

June 2015

Art of Documentation: Documents and Visual Culture in Medieval England

Studies and Texts 194; Text Image Context: Studies in Medieval Manuscript Illumination 2. xviii, 242 pp. 147 colour and b&w images • 2015 • 8x10 in. • ISBN 978-0-88844-194-2 • Cloth • $100

The later Middle Ages was a time of profound connection between the spheres of bureaucracy and art. By discussing the two together, this book argues that art-historical methods offer an important contribution to diplomatics, and that works of art are important sources for the cultural reception of documentary practices. Documents are also an important model for representation, and an understanding of the paradigmatic role of the document suggests alternative dimensions to the interpretation of late-medieval art.

June 2015

Monk-Bishops and the English Benedictine Reform Movement

Reading London, BL, Cotton Tiberius A. iii in Its Manuscript Context

Studies and Texts 193. xviii, 368 pp., including 5 colour plates. 2015. ISBN 978-0-88844-193-5 • Cloth • $95

London, BL, Cotton Tiberius A. iii is a compilation manuscript made at Christ Church, Canterbury, (arguably) in 1020–1023. Its ninety-four texts and two illustrations initially seem to present an incompatible miscellany: a monastic customary and texts concerning pastoral care; private prayers and public liturgical forms; scientific treatises and prognostics. This book argues that when viewed as a product of the third generation of the English Benedictine Reform, and an episcopate that was almost entirely monastic, however, the codex begins to make sense as a reflection of a reform movement that involved much more than the ejection of some clerks and the establishment of a few Benedictine monasteries and monastic sees.

April 2015

Mediaeval Studies Volume 76 (2014)

ISSN 0076–5872
Volume 76 (2014) • ISBN 978-0-88844-678-7 • $105 

An annual journal of scholarship on the Middle Ages. A description of the journal and editorial policy, as well as tables of contents for recently published volumes, and indexes in electronic form, are available on the Mediaeval Studies page elsewhere on this site.

April 2015

John Prise. Historiae Britannicae Defensio / A Defence of the British History

Studies and Texts 195; British Writers 6 • liv, 336 pp. • ISBN 978-0-88844-195-9 • Cloth • $150

Co-published with The Bodleian Library (ISBN 978-1-85124-436-2).  

The present work brings John Prise’s Historiae Britannicae Defensio back into print for the first time since 1573, when an edition was published by the author’s son, Richard Prise. The 1573 printing forms the copy-text, critically edited in the light of the one surviving manuscript (Oxford, Balliol College, MS 260) of a version which is very close to it, and drawing also on an earlier draft (in BL MS Cotton Titus F. III). The facing English translation is the first published translation of the Defensio. The work is accompanied by an extensive introduction and elucidatory notes.

April 2015

Religion, Reformation, and Repression in the Reign of Francis I: Documents from the Parlement of Paris, 1515–1547

Volume 1: Documents 1515–1543 • Volume 2: Documents 1544–1547

Studies and Texts 196. 760 + 768 pp. (2 volumes). ISBN 978-0-88844-196-6 • Cloth • $210

The vast treasure of manuscript archives of the Parlement of Paris – the Supreme Court of justice in ancien régime France – has been exploited over the centuries by a number of scholars in several disciplines. The notable exception is that very few historians of religion in sixteenth-century France have delved into these rich and remarkable resources. This edition of nearly 1200 documents – the great majority previously unpublished – is based on an examination of more than 100,000 manuscript pages in over a hundred of the Court’s registers and cartons.

March 2015

Réécritures: Regards nouveaux sur la reprise et le remaniement de textes, dans la littérature française et au-delà, du Moyen Âge à la Renaissance

Studies and Texts 190; Toronto Studies in Romance Philology 2. 2015. viii, 396 pp. ISBN 978-0-88844-190-4 • Cloth • $95

Des variantes manuscrites aux traductions, des changements de forme ou de genre aux adaptations idéologiques, non seulement la réécriture est omniprésente dans la production littéraire de la période médiévale, mais elle se situe au cœur même de la conception de la littérature au Moyen Âge. Ce volume réunit quinze articles qui se proposent d’approfondir notre connaissance de ce phénomène dans le contexte français et roman, en l’étudiant aussi bien dans son évolution que sous l’angle des techniques d’adaptation, de l’intertextualité et de la performance.

March 2015

Historia calamitatum: Consolation to a Friend

Edited from Troyes, Médiathèque du Grand Troyes, MS 802 by ALEXANDER ANDRÉE

TMLT 32.  x, 108 pp. 2015. ISBN 978-0-88844-482-0 • $19.95

Peter Abelard’s Letter to a Friend, frequently known as The Story of My Calamities, recounts the meteoric and disastrous career of one of the driving forces of the twelfth-century renaissance. The son of a minor Breton noble family, a public intellectual who turned the academic establishment on its head, lover of Heloise, and sometimes his own worst enemy, Abelard produced in elegant prose one of the signal works of medieval autobiography. This new edition presents the Latin text as it appears in the earliest manuscript—until recently misdated by a hundred years—studded with a commentary that explicates the circumstances of its composition, context, and language.