The concept of woman

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Pierre J. Payer

The later Middle Ages saw the emergence of an integral theory of human sexuality, a systematic account of its origins, role, and significance in the divine plan. Instead of simply dismissing medieval views of sex as misogynist and guilt-ridden, Pierre Payer urges a re-examination of medieval writers' understanding of sexuality within the context of their cosmological perspective. He traces the developing consensus about what was thought to be the nature, purpose, and morality of sex as conceived by writers and theologians during this period. Concentrating on the positive dimension of medieval thought on sexuality, Payer first examines views on Paradise, the Fall, and original sin and its transmission. There follows an extended discussion of marriage as the sole outlet for legitimate sexual intercourse. He then turns to the broader question of the control of sexual impulses and desires through the virtue of temperance. The book concludes with a description of the virtue of virginity, which was seen to be the apex of temperance and the ideal of Christian living. Payer has assembled a vast number of textual sources from the late medieval period, presenting to the reader a variety of opinions, their development, and underlying presuppositions.

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Carolinne White

"This is the first substantial overview of the Golden Age of Christian Latin poetry, from the fourth to sixth centuries." "Carolinne White's study sets the works in their literary and historical context, and shows how these poets were motivated by a desire to convey the truth of the Christian message. Questions of form and content, continuity with classical culture, theological issues and contemporary heresies are all explored, prior to clear, sensitive translations of over thirty poems and excerpts, many of which have never before been translated into English."--Jacket.

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Quentin Skinner

A two-volume study of political thought from the late thirteenth to the end of the sixteenth century, the decisive period of transition from medieval to modern political theory. The work is intended to be both an introduction to the period for students, and a presentation and justification of a particular approach to the interpretation of historical texts. Volume One deals with the Renaissance, Volume Two with the Age of Reformation. Quentin Skinner gives an outline account of all the principal texts of the period, discussing in turn the chief political writings of Dante, Marsiglio, Bartolus, Machiavelli, Erasmus and more, Luther and Calvin, Bodin and the Calvinist revolutionaries. But he also examines a very large number of lesser writers in order to explain the general social and intellectual context in which these leading theorists worked. He thus presents the history not as a procession of 'classic texts' but are more readily intelligible. He traces by this means the gradual emergence of the vocabulary of modern political thought, and in particular the crucial concept of the State. -- Publisher description

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Philip Hughes

This second volume concentrates on the West from the time of Constantine's conversion, when the the Church was beginning to make a world of its own, and it pursues the Church's history in this world of its making to the end of the thirteenth century, when the high point was reached and a new secular order was already appearing.