Search

This is a critical edition of the Latin text of Book I of the De Institutione Feminae Christianae of Juan Luis Vives together with facing English translation. The work was written in 1523 and dedicated to Catherine of Aragon for the instruction of her daughter Princess Mary. It was later thoroughly revised and the changes introduced are of great interest for the history of the text. The De Institutione is considered to be the most important treatise of the Renaissance on the education of women, cited and imitated throughout the sixteenth century. Although Vives sometimes betrays traditional attitudes towards the status of women, he gives expression to many liberalizing humanistic ideas. In all, it is a clear public acknowledgment of women's probity, dignity and capability for learning.

Johann Michael Wansleben's Travels in Turkey, 1673–1676 is a hitherto unpublished version of a remarkable description of Istanbul, Izmir, and Bursa by the German scholar traveller Wansleben. Wansleben was in the Ottoman Empire to buy manuscripts, statuary, and curios for the French king, but it is his off-hand observations about Ottoman society that often make Wansleben's account such a valuable historical source. His experiences add to our knowledge of such diverse topics as prostitution in the Ottoman Empire, taxation, and the French consular system. His visit to Bursa is also noteworthy because few Western travellers included the first Ottoman capital in their tours of the East or described it at such length.

In 1602 the German nation of the University of Orléans decided to separate the registration of new members from the texte des rapports in the Livres des procurateurs, 1444-1602. The registres matricules that were subsequently used show that in the seventeenth century many young people from a great diversity of European countries found their way to Orléans. Apart from the genuine students, many were'tourists', though considered by the authorities as'étudiants universitaires'. Joining the German nation offered the newly enrolled the privilege of being part of a university community that had traditionally been favoured by the French kings with special privileges, such as royal protection in time of war and, more importantly, freedom of religion. A majority of these student-tourists came from the nobility or from urban patrician families.

Vives'tract on the education of Women, De Institutione Feminae Christianae (1524, revised 1538) became a model for cunduct books in various Protestant traditions and as such has always been of interest to historians of education. However, the treatise also made a very important contribution to the querelle des femmes of its time and has consequently generated much interest among modern historians of women and gender. It consists of 3 books, one for each stage of woman's life –maidenhood, marriage and widowhood. The only English translation of the text on offer till now was the inaccurate and free version of Richard Hyrde (a friend of Thomas More), published early in the 20th century by Foster Watson, but now unavailable. De Institutione Feminae Christianae, 2, contains the critical edition of the Latin text of Books II and III with a double apparatus and a facing-page English translation with notes. It starts with a special introduction to this edition. Volume 1 covering Book 1 was published in 1996. By publishing the 2nd volume the complete text of this important treatise by Vives is now available.

This book traces the history of one of the central actors in the transformation of the Western educational system between the 9th and 13th centuries: the cathedral schoolmaster. Originally responsible for running the episcopal school, this ecclesiastical official eventually became a true school administrator with a territorial monopoly and coercive powers, including in particular issuing ‘licentia docendi'to masters under his jurisdiction. Using a wide range of sources and taking in thirty-nine dioceses in northern France, the study analyses the construction of the office from the Carolingian period, the place of the schoolmaster within the canonical community and in feudal society, and the institutionalisation of his function with the Gregorian Reform and the birth of universities.

This book examines the social, institutional and cultural setting of medical practices in the medieval town of Montpellier which boasted one of the first universities of the middle ages and a famous school of medicine. Some of its most celebrated masters and their medical works have been thoroughly studied but few of them try to put these in context with a thriving urban community of merchants and craftsmen that were at the core of the city council. Their concurrent efforts will endow Montpellier of a rich health care system featuring not only the university masters but also the city's barber-surgeons and apothecaries. Their collective fate is revealed here in an integrated picture of health and society in the middle ages.

This book addresses a question that has been somewhat neglected in the many studies of the mercantile operations of the ‘merchant of Prato', Francesco di Marco Datini, in the years around 1400: the operations of his firm in the Maghrib, a region in which he and his colleagues had to operate through agents, rather than by means of branches or sister companies based in the region. Thanks to the voluminous material of the Datini archive in Prato, it offers a reconstruction of commercial strategies through the study of networks, of economic actors, their identity and their practices, and of the link between trade and the State, especially the Florentine one.

The four Livres des procurateurs de la nation germanique de l'Université d'Orléans (1444-1602) are a unique source for the history of European universities. The quarterly reports of the presidents of the association of law students allow us to reconstitute in detail the everyday life of students from the Germanic countries during the Renaissance. From the published first and second'Livres'between 1444-1567 (same authors, Brill 1971 and 1988) it appears that the alumni got key positions in Church and State in their homelands. The reports of the third'Livre'for the years 1567-1587 describe the fortunes of the German Nation and the University and offer a unique look at the role of Orleans and its graduates in the religious wars and the growing confessionalisation of Europe.

In Honorius III et l'Orient (1216-1227), Pierre-Vincent Claverie offers a large-scale study of the oriental policy developed by Pope Honorius III at the time of the Fifth Crusade. His book is enriched by 150 unpublished bulls presenting Honorius III as a worthy successor of Innocent III and a constant defender of the Holy Land. Its scope embraces also the relations of the Holy See with the Latin clergy in the East, the different oriental christian faiths and the military orders.

Based on a vast body of archival sources, this book examines the development and the operations of the Lausanne Academy, the first Protestant Academy of Higher Education created in a French-speaking territory, and an essential milestone in the history of European education.

Unlike most theologians of his age, Martin Bucer proved to be farsighted with respect to European affairs: In addition to his contacts within Alsace and Germany he established relations with almost every European country. It was his ecumenical attitude that always led him to mediate between the parties in the religious battles of his time. His deep commitment to the goal of reaching agreement can be traced in all his activities, works and letters.Since the first editor, Jean Rott (Strasbourg), died in 1998, Bucer's correspondence has been edited in Erlangen. This academic edition of source material provides future research with a broad basis for significant aspects of Reformation history about which very little is known. Volume VII covers the period from October 1531 to March 1532.

It is well known that medieval Europe owes most of its scientific learning to the translations of Arabic treatises made in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The earliest Arabic infiltrations in Latin science are however much older. They can be traced back to the tenth century and to the making, in Catalonia, of a large corpus of astrological treatises: the Alchandreana. Based mainly on Arabic sources, but also on Hebrew and Latin sources, the Alchandreana constitute an exceptional testimony of cross-cultural exchanges between Christian, Arabic and Jewish scholars before the turn of the first millenium. This book offers a historical study, a technical analysis and a critical edition of the whole corpus.Brill's Texts and Sources in Intellectual History, vol. 2