"Vaughn's well received 1984 translation is here augmented with color reproductions of over 100 of the drawings in the manuscript. Paris's Latin chronicle, covering 1247-50, is valuable for its detail and its scope, noting and commenting on events all over Europe and the Near East as well as in London and Britain. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or."--Amazon.com viewed Sept. 30, 2020.
A unique record of life & events in the 13th century with over 100 full-color reproductions of the original manuscript decorations. The autograph manuscript of the chronicle of the medieval English monk Matthew Paris is housed at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, U.K. Matthew Paris was probably born about 1200. He became a monk in the Benedictine monastery of St. Albans in 1217 & died there in 1259. Although he wrote in Latin & at times also in French, English seems to have been his native language. Europe in the 13th century was an expanding, outward-looking Europe, still living in the world of the crusades, which figure largely in these pages.
Hagiography, or writing about and illustrating the lives of saints, was one of the most creative areas for artistic inspiration in the literature and arts of the Middle Ages. This book explores the sumptuously illustrated saints' lives that were made in medieval Europe. Cynthia Hahn discusses a broad range of manuscripts and other artifacts, many of which are reproduced here, and provides an analysis of their pictorial and narrative structure. Hahn's book is a virtual compendium of images-many rarely published-as well as a learned study that deepens our understanding of the role of various types of saints, the nature of their audience, and the historical moment when individual works were produced. After two informative introductory chapters setting the historical and narrative context of pictorial hagiography, Hahn considers the Lives of Martyrs and Virgins, Bishops, Monks and Abbots, and Kings and Queens, and concludes with an examination of the extraordinary chronicles and illustrations of the lives of saints by the English monk Matthew Paris. She considers such questions as: Why were illustrated saints' lives produced in such great numbers during this period? Why were they illustrated at all given the trouble and expense of such illustration? And to whom did the saints' lives appeal, and how did their readers use them? As she addresses these and other intriguing questions, Hahn traces changes that occurred over time both in the images and the stories, and shows how their creators, mostly the intellectual elite, were finely attuned to audience reception. This important aspect of hagiographic production has received scant attention in the past, and as she considers this issue in light of contemporary narrative theory, Hahn brings us to a fresh appreciation of these intricately illustrated manuscripts and their multiple audiences.
De proprietatibus rerum, ‘On the properties of things’, has long been referred to by scholars as a medieval encyclopedia, but evidence suggests that it has been many things to many people. The sheer number of extant manuscript copies and printed editions, along with translations, adaptations, and mentions in poems and sermons, testify to its continuous significance for Europeans of all estates and different walks of life, from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries. While first compiled soon after the time of St Francis by a humble continental friar to meet the needs of his expanding religious brotherhood, by 1600 English men of letters had claimed Bartholomew as a noble compatriot and national treasure. What was it about the work that propelled it through a progression of medieval cultures and into an exalted position in the world of English letters? This reception history traces evidence for the journey of ‘Properties’ over four centuries of social, political and religious change.
