Der vorliegende Band widmet sich in 44 Einzelstudien aus unterschiedlichen Fachbereichen dem kulturellen Austausch zwischen arabischem und lateinischem Mittelalter. Aus verschiedenen Perspektiven werden die Voraussetzungen und Hintergründe des Wissenstransfers ebenso beleuchtet wie dessen Grenzen - etwa religiöse Vorbehalte oder divergierende kulturelle Leitbilder -, aber auch seine konkreten Auswirkungen auf die Strukturen und Inhalte der Wissenschaft im lateinischen Mittelalter. Besonderes Interesse gilt dabei Fragen der Übersetzung sowie den Bereichen der Philosophie, Medizin und Kunst. Durch seinen breiten, Fächer übergreifenden Ansatz, der eine Vielzahl neuer Sichtweisen und Fragestellungen generiert, wird der Band auf die weitere Erforschung des mittelalterlichen ,Kulturaustausches' zwischen arabischer und lateinischer Welt sicherlich anregend wirken.
Dieser Band wirft ein neues Licht auf Byzanz - als geographischen, aber vor allem als kulturellen Knotenpunkt. Denn wie kaum eine andere Region ist Byzantium über gut ein Jahrtausend durch seine ebenso zentrale wie fragile geographische Lage, aber auch durch sein Prestige wichtig für die Begegnung von Kulturen, Personen und Institutionen rund um das Mittelmeer. Hierbei stellt sich aus byzantinischer Perspektive die "antike" und "mittelalterliche" Welt als ein in wesentlichen Zügen kontinuierlicher Kulturraum dar, der bis an die Schwelle der Neuzeit reicht und sich vor allem durch seine große Rezeptivität auszeichnet. Thematisiert werden daher vor allem die Wechselseitigkeit kultureller und epistemischer Rezeptions- und Transformationsprozesse und ihre jeweiligen Wissensformen. Diese Wissensformen beziehen sich auf die Ordnungsstrukturen, die der Erkenntnis und den Wissenschaften, der Sprache und medialen Repräsentation sowie den institutionellen und soziologischen Bedingungen zugrundeliegen, sowie auf die diesen korrespondierenden Gegenstände des Wissens. In diesem Austausch begegnet Byzanz auch den transformierten Spuren, welche die griechische Kultur zuvor bei ihren eifrigen Nachahmern hinterlassen hat.
Helmut Lemke was born in 1926 in East Prussia. He recounts, often humorously, his life at the boarding school in Marienburg, in the Hitler-youth, the workforce and the military. In the last year of the war he was stationed at the eastern front and was wounded in East Prussia. In a suspenseful way he takes the reader along on his adventurous, dangerous journey from the military hospital in Schwerin back into his home village in East Prussia, where he hoped to find his mother again. He gives an insight into the life conditions and circumstances in his home village, now under Russian occupation, shortly after the end of the war as he observed and experienced them. Expelled from his home by Polish authorities, he lives for a short time as refugee in communist East Germany and flees to West Germany. There he studies at the Technical University of Braunschweig and at the university of Bluffton USA. He describes interesting happenings on his trip hitch- hiking through the United States. After he finished his studies with a degree in Architecture, he emigrates to Canada. In Canada he worked as an architect and art instructor. He married Hildegard and they have three children. He described his life as an immigrant in his second book 'A Life Fully Lived (Loving Hildegard)' He lives now in Vancouver at the west coast of Canada. =========================== In German: Helmut Lemke wurde 1926 in Ostpreußen geboren. Er erzählt, oft humorvoll, über seine Zeit im Internat in Marienburg, in der HJ, im Arbeitsdienst und Militär. Im letzten Kriegsjahr wurde er an der Ostfront eingesetzt und später in Ostpreußen verwundet. In spannender Weise nimmt er den Leser mit auf seine abenteuerliche, gefahrenvolle Reise vom Lazarett in Schwerin zurück in sein Heimatdorf in Westpreußen, wo er hoffte, seine Mutter zu finden. Er gibt einen Einblick in die Lebensbedingungen und Zustände, wie er sie kurz nach dem Krieg in seinem Heimatdorf vorfand und miterlebte. Er schildert schreckliche Erlebnisse unter russischer Militärbesatzung und polnischer Verwaltung. Von den Polen ausgewiesen, lebt er kurze Zeit als Flüchtling in Ostdeutschland, flieht nach Westdeutschland und studiert an der Technischen Universität Braunschweig und der Bluffton Universität in den USA. Er schildert interessante Erfahrungen von seiner Fahrt per Anhalter quer durch die Vereinigten Staaten. Nach abgeschlossenem Architekturstudium, wandert er 1955 nach Kanada aus. In Kanada arbeitete er als Architekt und Kunsterzieher. Er heiratet Hildegard und sie haben drei Kinder. Er beschreibt sein Leben als Immigrant in seinem zweiten Buch, A Life Fully Lived. (Loving Hildegard) Er lebt jetzt in Vancouver, an der Westküste Kanadas.
Exploring and understanding how medieval Christians perceived and constructed the figure of the Prophet Muhammad is of capital relevance in the complex history of Christian-Muslim relations. Medieval authors writing in Latin from the 8th to the 14th centuries elaborated three main images of the Prophet: the pseudo-historical, the legendary, and the eschatological one. This volume focuses on the first image and consists of texts that aim to reveal the (Christian) truth about Islam. They have been taken from critical editions, where available, otherwise they have been critically transcribed from manuscripts and early printed books. They are organized chronologically in 55 entries: each of them provides information on the author and the work, date and place of composition, an introduction to the passage(s) reported, and an updated bibliography listing editions, translations and studies. The volume is also supplied with an introductory essay and an index of notable terms.
The Renaissance marked a turning point in Europe’s relationship to Arabic thought. On the one hand, Dag Nikolaus Hasse argues, it was the period in which important Arabic traditions reached the peak of their influence in Europe. On the other hand, it is the time when the West began to forget, and even actively suppress, its debt to Arabic culture. Success and Suppression traces the complex story of Arabic influence on Renaissance thought. It is often assumed that the Renaissance had little interest in Arabic sciences and philosophy, because humanist polemics from the period attacked Arabic learning and championed Greek civilization. Yet Hasse shows that Renaissance denials of Arabic influence emerged not because scholars of the time rejected that intellectual tradition altogether but because a small group of anti-Arab hard-liners strove to suppress its powerful and persuasive influence. The period witnessed a boom in new translations and multivolume editions of Arabic authors, and European philosophers and scientists incorporated—and often celebrated—Arabic thought in their work, especially in medicine, philosophy, and astrology. But the famous Arabic authorities were a prominent obstacle to the Renaissance project of renewing European academic culture through Greece and Rome, and radical reformers accused Arabic science of linguistic corruption, plagiarism, or irreligion. Hasse shows how a mixture of ideological and scientific motives led to the decline of some Arabic traditions in important areas of European culture, while others continued to flourish.
The fifteenth-century Italian artist Piero della Francesca painted a familiar world. Roads wind through hilly landscapes, run past farms, sheds, barns, and villages. This is the world in which Piero lived. At the same time, Piero’s paintings depict a world that is distant. The subjects of his pictures are often Christian and that means that their setting is the Holy Land, a place Piero had never visited. The Realism of Piero della Francesca studies this paradoxical aspect of Piero’s art. It tells the story of an artist who could think of the local churches, palaces, and landscapes in and around his hometown of Sansepolcro as miraculously built replicas of the monuments of Jerusalem. Piero’s application of perspective, to which he devoted a long treatise, was meant to convince his contemporaries that his paintings report on things that Piero actually observed. Piero’s methodical way of painting seems to have offered no room for his own fantasy. His art looks deliberately styleless. This book uncovers a world in which painting needed to validate itself by cultivating the illusion that it reported on things observed instead of things imagined by the artist. Piero’s painting claimed truth in a world of increasing uncertainties.
Aristotle's highly influential work on the soul, entitled De anima, formed part of the core curriculum of medieval universities and was discussed intensively. It covers a range of topics in philosophical psychology, such as the relationship between mind and body and the nature of abstract thought. However, there is a key difference in scope between the so-called "science of the soul," based on Aristotle, and modern philosophical psychology. This book starts from a basic premise accepted by all medieval commentators, namely that the science of the soul studies not just human beings but all living beings. As such, its methodology and approach must also apply to plants and animals. The Science of the Soul discusses how philosophers from Thomas Aquinas to Pierre d'Ailly dealt with the difficult task of giving a unified account of life and traces the various stages in the transformation of the science of the soul between 1260 and 1360. The emerging picture is that of a gradual disruption of the unified approach to the soul, which will ultimately lead to the emergence of psychology as a separate discipline.
This study examines the motivations and doctrinal coherence of the Commentary on the Elements of Theology of Proclus written by Berthold of Moosburg, O.P. († c. 1361/1363). It provides an overview of Berthold’s biography and intellectual contexts, his manuscript remains, and a partial edition of his annotations on Macrobius and Proclus. Through a close analysis of the three prefaces to the Commentary, giving special attention to Berthold’s sources, it traces the Dominican's elaboration of Platonism as a soteriological science. The content of this science is then presented in a systematic reconstruction of Berthold’s cosmology and anthropology. The volume includes an English translation of the three fundamental prefaces of the Commentary. The publication of this volume has received the generous support of the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme through the ERC Consolidator Grant NeoplAT: A Comparative Analysis of the Middle East, Byzantium and the Latin West (9th-16th Centuries), grant agreement No 771640 (www.neoplat.eu). "This is, indeed, a precious insight into the spirit of Berthold’s philosophical thinking. Overall, the monograph’s ambition seems to be both to represent a starting point for new readers interested in Berthold, and to stress the philosophical value of the Commentary: both goals are most certainly reached." -Giuseppe Thomas Vitale, Thomas-Institut der Universität zu Köln, Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales 89.2
This is the first reference ever devoted to medieval philosophy. It covers all areas of the field from 500-1500 including philosophers, philosophies, key terms and concepts. It also provides analyses of particular theories plus cultural and social contexts.
