Books in the Variorum Collected Studies series

This volume addresses the important mediaeval dynamic of the competition between sees from an imperial Romano-Byzantine perspective. It demonstrates how the "imperator-basileus" and his deputy buttressed the late Roman and Byzantine vision of imperial vicegerency.

The papers collected in this volume all focus on medicine and science (natural philosophy) in the multicultural societies of the Spanish kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, between the 13th and the 17th centuries.

The dogmas of the divine origins of the Qur'an and the inimitable character of its language are firmly embedded in the Muslim faith - such that challenging them enters the realm of "unthinkable". However, the text has been variously interpreted and this book examines that interpretative tradition.

This volume reproduces Morimichi Watanabe's scholarly essays on Nicholas of Cusa (1401-64). Cusa was a philosopher, theologian and church statesman, and the essays in the book cover his thoughts and personal philosophy on many subjects throughout the 15th century.

By taking "space" to mean both the physical aspect of the settlement of people and the conceptions that underlie the choice of a particular type of settlement, this work looks at how the perception of space changes over time in the late antiquity and Byzantine eras.

Covering the span of Ottoman history, from the 8th century to the disappearance of its last traces of imperial structure in the early 20th century, the 16 articles in this book reflect the multitude of Ottoman pasts, and the need to challenge some of the perceived certainties about these pasts.

The investigation of power, marginality, sex and the body, and "taboo" subjects in this book provide a road into medieval Arabo-Islamic mentalities and a way of coming to grips with the textual strategies society used for grappling with them.

The main theme of this work is the interrelatedness of knowledge, of which models are prime instances, since in most, if not all, of their functions, establishing relations means cutting across lines that traditionally demarcate such separate domains as science and music.

The common focus of the essays in this book is the debate on the nature of science - often referred to as "natural knowledge" - in Britain during the first half of the 19th century. A study of the topics then discussed shows how science began to cast off some of its earlier theological supports.

The papers in this volume explore the issues of reason and belief in the age of Peter Abelard (1079-1142), focusing on the achievement both of his peers and of his little-known teacher, Roscelin of Compiegne. They synthesize the author's research into the dynamism of thinking at that time.

Scattered in tiny enclaves from Africa to Japan, Portuguese Asia included Mocambique, Goa, Macau and Nagasaki. This collection of essays relates the history of Portuguese exploration, colonization and trade in this region during the 16th and 17th centuries.

These articles concentrate on the development of Arab cities during the period of the Ottoman Empire, covering the three centuries before the time when modernization encroached and exploring the problems of space and the social and economic realities within these provincial centres.

This study seeks the origins of Italian humanism and the birth of modern republican thought in medieval poetry and prose. It examines the "Laudatio urbis florentinae" of Leonardo Bruni. The author identifies this as a shift from one rhetorical style to another - a shift reflected in other genres.

Jill Kraye's study explores how Italian Renaissance thinkers engaged with ancient philosophy and what role classical ethics played in Renaissance thought. The author also considers the authenticity of works attributed to Aristotle.

The defining characteristics of patronage relationships and their uses, especially their political uses, are the twin themes of this collection of essays. The collection examines the impact of patronage relationships on state formation and political events during the 16th and 17th centuries.

The articles collected in this volume concern the literature and culture of the ancient Chinese court. The court, especially the imperial court, was a major centre for cultural production. It played an important role in education, scholarship, thought, art, music and literature.

This text is devoted to the two main aspects of medieval warfare: men and technology. From a consideration of human strengths of the period, it goes on to discuss the evolution of technological warfare and associated areas - such as metallurgy, surgery and government centralization.

The papers in this volume fall into four sections: heresy, religious movements and the Church; Wyclif, his path into dissent and his doctrines; philosophical themes, including the decline of scholasticism in the 14th century; and Christian, Augustinian and Franciscan concepts of man.

The majority of the articles reproduced in this study are concerned with the twin illusions of cultural history - continuity and discontinuity. An examination of the translation of Christian culture, the book emphasizes how tradition is a matter of perception - a "making sense" of the past.

This text indicates the course that the author's historical interests have followed since "Past and Present in Medieval Spain". It is a combination of Spanish and Portuguese history and historiography spiced up with the history of canon law.

The articles that comprise this volume reveal the everyday lives of Cistercians living during the late 12th and early 13th centuries in Western Europe. They show how the values of the New Testament affected human attitudes and behaviour.

This volume offers insights into the history of British and European shipping in the centuries of Europe's penetration into the oceans of the world: the 15th to the 18th century. It examines the building, ownership and operation of merchantmen in the context of economic and social developments.

The 24 articles that comprise this study are grouped into four main headings. These deal with various social phenomena in later Roman Egyptian society, Christianization in Egypt, the Egyptian economy and taxation and public services in Egypt.

The subject of this volume is the social and political history of East-Central Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, with particular emphasis on Polish society in the interwar period (1918-1939) and the role of the intelligentsia.

This text examines theories of government in the medieval church, and of medieval guild and city organization and ideology. It also looks at the origins of the modern state in Europe and compares the similarities and differences in the development of political thought in Christendom and Islamdom.

These essays explore political and institutional aspects of the changing relationship between France and Brittany, within the context of Anglo-French relations, as well as social consequences of the development of a largely autonomous state within the larger French kingdom.

Through Danzig, now Gdansk, passed the greatest part of the trade that linked the West with Poland and the Baltic. This book examines the social and economic sides of this process, looking at articles of commerce and trends in urbanization, as well as patterns of poor relief and gender relations.

This collection brings together a series of studies by Peter Marshall on British imperial expansion in the later 18th century. Some essays focus on the 13 North American colonies, the West Indies and British contact with China; the majority deal with the processes and dynamics of empire-building.