In this book Philippa Hoskin offers an account of the pastoral theory and practice of Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln 1235-1253, within his diocese. Grosseteste has been considered as an eminent medieval philosopher and theologian, and as a bishop focused on pastoral care, but there has been no attempt to consider how his scholarship influenced his pastoral practice. Making use of Grosseteste’s own writings – philosophical and theological as well as pastoral and administrative – Hoskin demonstrates how Grosseteste’s famous interventions in his diocese grew from his own theory of personal obligation in pastoral care as well as how his personal involvement in his diocese could threaten well-developed clerical and lay networks.

Examines how thirteenth-century clergymen used pastoral care - preaching, sacraments and confession - to increase their parishioners' religious knowledge, devotion and expectations.

For over seven hundred years, bodies of writing in vernacular languages served an indispensable role in the religious and intellectual culture of medieval Christian England, yet the character and extent of their importance have been insufficiently recognized. A longstanding identification of medieval western European Christianity with the Latin language and a lack of awareness about the sheer variety and quantity of vernacular religious writing from the English Middle Ages have hampered our understanding of the period, exercising a tenacious hold on much scholarship. Bringing together work across a range of disciplines, including literary study, Christian theology, social history, and the history of institutions, Balaam's Ass attempts the first comprehensive overview of religious writing in early England's three most important vernacular languages, Old English, Insular French, and Middle English, between the ninth and sixteenth centuries. Nicholas Watson argues not only that these texts comprise the oldest continuous tradition of European vernacular writing, but that they are essential to our understanding of how Christianity shaped and informed the lives of individuals, communities, and polities in the Middle Ages. This first of three volumes lays out the long post-Reformation history of the false claim that the medieval Catholic Church was hostile to the vernacular. It analyzes the complicated idea of the vernacular, a medieval innovation instantiated in a huge body of surviving vernacular religious texts. Finally, it focuses on the first, long generation of these writings, in Old English and early Middle English.

This volume brings together major scholars in medieval Franciscan history, hagiography and art to commemorate Dr Rosalind B. Brooke’s (1925-2014) life and scholarly achievement, especially in the study of St Francis of Assisi and his followers.

International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) is pleased to bring out Journey to Islamicisation of Human Knowledge: A Festschrift in Honour of Mohd. Kamal Hassan. The publication of this festschrift – first of its kind by IIUM Press – marks a tribute to the late Emeritus Professor Tan Sri Dr Mohd. Kamal Hassan (1942-2023) and a recognition of his many contributions to the university. He served IIUM and its community – both formally and informally – in various capacities including being its third Rector. His attachment to IIUM spanned a long period from its inception in 1983 to the end of his active life. I hope this festschrift will help readers appreciate Kamal Hassan’s contributions and will encourage more scholarly work on his legacy. It will increase their interest in his ideas as well as in the mission and philosophy of IIUM. I congratulate the editors of and the contributors to this book for their inspired efforts to prepare its content, and IIUM Press for publishing this significant work.

This book explores the different functions and metaphorical concepts of alchemy in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Middle English poetry and bridges them together with the exempla tradition in late medieval English literature. Such poetic narratives function as exemplary models which directly address the ambiguity of medieval English alchemical practice. This book examines the foundation of this relationship between alchemical narrative and exemplum in the poetry of Gower and Chaucer in the fourteenth century before exploring its diffusion in lesser-known anonymous poems and recipes in the fifteenth century, namely alchemical dialogues between Morienus and Merlin, Albertus Magnus and the Queen of Elves, and an alchemical version of John Lydgate’s poem The Churl and the Bird. It investigates how this exemplarity can be read as inherent to understanding poetic narratives containing alchemy, as well as enabling the reader to reassess the understanding and expectations of science and narrative within medieval English poetry.

Herausgegeben von Michael Schmaus†, Werner Dettloff, Richard Heinzmann, Ulrich Horst Das Grabmann-Institut ist eine im deutschsprachigen Raum einzigartige Einrichtung zur Erforschung und Lehre der Theologiegeschichte. Es wurde 1953 von Michael Schmaus als Institut zur Erforschung der mittelalterlichen Theologie und Philosophie gegründet, das die Forschungen und die Tradition des Vorgängers von Schmaus auf dem Münchener Lehrstuhl für Dogmatik, Martin Grabmann, fortführen soll. In der Reihe „Veröffentlichungen des Grabmann-Instituts“ werden Editionen und Studien publiziert, die entweder am Grabmann-Institut selbst entstanden sind oder einen wertvollen Beitrag zu dessen Forschungsschwerpunkten beinhalten. Das Schwergewicht der Publikationsreihe liegt auf der mittelalterlichen Theologie, wobei sich der zeitliche Bogen aber von der ausgehenden Antike bis in die Neuzeit spannt. Das historische Interesse verbindet sich mit dem systematischen Blickwinkel. In den Bänden werden Themen der Dogmengeschichte (etwa Sakramententheologie, Christologie) behandelt, sowie herausragende und bisher weniger bekannte Theologen mit ihren Werken und ihrem Einfluss vorgestellt. Gebührende Berücksichtigung finden auch die Gebiete Philosophie und Spiritualität (z.B. ordensspezifische Ausprägungen, Texte der Mystik, der christlichen Dichtung und Liturgie), die wesentlich zur mittelalterlichen Theologie gehören. Zum Martin-Grabmann-Forschungsinstitut für Mittelalterliche Theologie und Philosophie: http://www.kaththeol.uni-muenchen.de/einrichtungen/stud_for_einh/grabmann/index.html

In a book that offers a fresh perspective on the complex relationship between thirteenth-century institutional power and evangelical devotion, Adam J. Davis explores the fascinating career of Eudes Rigaud, the Franciscan theologian at the University of Paris and archbishop of Rouen. Eudes's Register, a daybook that he kept for twenty-one years, paints a vivid picture of ecclesiastical life in thirteenth-century Normandy. It records the archbishop's visits to monasteries, convents, hospitals, and country parishes, where he sought to correct a wide range of problems, from clerics who were unchaste, who gambled, and who got drunk, to monasteries that were financially mismanaged and priests who did not know how to conjugate simple Latin verbs. Davis describes the collision between the world as it was and as Eudes Rigaud wished it to be, as well as the mechanisms that the archbishop used in trying to transform the world he found. The Holy Bureaucrat also reconstructs the multifaceted man behind the Register, reuniting Eudes Rigaud the intellectual, Franciscan preacher, church reformer, judge, financial manager, and trusted councillor to King Louis IX. The book traces the growth of a complex bureaucracy in Normandy that insisted on discipline and accountability and relied on new kinds of written administrative records. The result is an absorbing study of the interplay between religious values and practices, institutions and individuals during the age of Saint Louis.

Bishop Robert Grosseteste and Lincoln Cathedral is an in-depth investigation of Grosseteste?s relationship to the medieval cathedral at Lincoln and the surrounding city. This book will contribute to the understanding of Gothic architecture in early thirteenth century England - most specifically, how forms and spaces were conceived in relation to the cultural, religious and political life of the period. The architecture and topography of Lincoln Cathedral are examined in their cultural contexts, in relation to scholastic philosophy, science and cosmology, and medieval ideas about light and geometry, as highlighted in the writings of Robert Grosseteste - Bishop of Lincoln Cathedral (1235-53). At the same time the architecture of the cathedral is considered in relation to the roles of the clergy and masons; the policies of the bishop; matters of governance, worship and education; ecclesiastical hierarchy, church liturgy, politics and processionals. The book explores Grosseteste?s ideas in the broader context of medieval and Renaissance cosmologies, optics/perspective, natural philosophy and experimental science, and considers historical precedents in regard to religious, political and symbolic influences on church building. The contributors to this volume make an important contribution to our current understanding of the relation between architecture, theology, politics and society during the Middle Ages, and how religious spaces were conceived and experienced.