Statesman, diplomat, courtier and financier, he was, at the same time, a scholar of encyclopaedic learning, a philosopher, an exegete, a prolific author, a mystic and an apocalyptist. In Abravanel, B. Netanyahu suggests, two long lines of tradition met and concluded: that of medieval Jewish statesmen and that of medieval Jewish philosophers. In what is both a biography and an exploration of Abravanel's thought and influence, Netanyahu describes how Abravanel illuminated the grave crisis and profound transformation experienced by the Jewish people after the Spanish expulsion.

    A major player in European diplomacy and war, he acted as peacemaker during the 1280s but became involved in a bitter war with Philip IV a decade later. This book is the definitive account of a remarkable king and his long and significant reign. Widely praised when it was first published in 1988, it is now reissued with a new introduction and updated bibliographic guide.Praise for the earlier edition:"A masterly achievement. . . . A work of enduring value and one certain to remain the standard life for many years."—Times Literary Supplement"A fine book: learned, judicious, carefully thought out and skillfully presented. It is as near comprehensive as any single volume could be."—History Today"To have died more revered than any other English monarch was an outstanding achievement; and it is worthily commemorated by this outstanding addition to the . . . corpus of royal biographies."—Times Education Supplement

    

    Kidnapped by an Englishman, Catriona and her dog are forcibly removed from the wild Irish countryside to the England of Elizabeth I. There they part ways and the story traces their separate adventures.Catriona’s fate is to become the ward of a titled English family, who seek to train her as a proper English lady. She puts up a lively opposition to their efforts, but events are beyond her control. Elsewhere Holdfast also struggles to adjust to a new environment, ending up in the hands of a butcher who trains him in bear and bull baiting. In fact, Holdfast’s involvement in this sport leads to the final dramatic scene!Read nowhttp://www.beebliome.com

    

      The Heresy of the Free Spirit is often considered to have been the most important continental European heresy of the fourteenth century. Many historians have described its membership as a league of anarchistic deviants who fomented sexual license and subversion of authority. Free Spirits are supposed to have justified nihilism and megalomania and to have been remote precursors of Bakunin and Nietzsche and twentieth-century bohemians and hippies. This volume examines the Free-Spirit movement as it appeared in its own age, and concludes that it was not a tightly-organized sect but rather a spectrum of belief that emphasized voluntary poverty and quietistic mysticism. Overall, the movement was far more typical of the late-medieval search for God and godliness than is commonly supposed.

    

    Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.In the area which is now France and was then Gaul, military institutions fundamentally influenced the successes and failures of the Merovingian dynasty, from 481 to 751. Professor Bachrach examines this period in detail, studying the forms of military organization and their relation to political power. Various aspects of the subject are controversial among scholars specializing in early medieval history, yet this is the first book-length study on the subject to be published. For a hundred years scholars have equated the military institutions of Merovingian Gaul with the customs of the Franks, a minority of the population who were rapidly acculturated. Professor Bachrach's study shows the heterogeneous nature of Merovingian military organization, composed of many institutions drawn from non-Frankish people especially from the remains of the Roman Empire. By dealing with all of the significant sources he demonstrates that there was frequent change in the military institutions rather than revolutionary change. The fluid nature of the military organization also is seen to have had profound effects upon the exercise of political power. Probably the most significant finding of the study is that Merovingian military organization, like much else in Merovingian Gaul, resembled Romania far more than Germania.

    It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from GeneralBooksClub.com. You can also preview excerpts from the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Original Published by: The Macmillan Company in 1912 in 773 pages; Subjects: History / Medieval; Literary Collections / Ancient, Classical & Medieval; Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Literary Criticism / Medieval; Literary Criticism / Poetry; Poetry / General; Poetry / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh;

    and notes in English.

    Stephen Gilman's La Celestina and the Spain of Fernando de Rojas adds a new dimension to critical studies of the fifteenth-century masterpiece. Using the text of La Celestina as well as public and private archives in Spain, Mr. Oilman builds up a vivid sense of the man behind the dialogue and establishes Fernando de Rojas indisputably as its author--a figure whom critics, while ranking his novel second only to Don Quixote, have treated as semi-anonymous or non-existent.We cannot really know what the Celestina is, says Mr. Oilman, without speculating as rigorously and as learnedly as possible both on how it came to be and on how it could come to be. Thus he reconstructs the world of Rojas, country lawyer and converso, the social, religious, and intellectual milieu of Salamanca, of Spain during the Inquisition, of the converted Jew. He makes it possible for us to see the author--the law student writing feverishly during a fortnight's vacation from classes--in the context of his own times and thus to understand Rojas' achievement: his unconventionality; his sardonic judgment of the Spain in which he lived; the explosive originality, in fact, of La Celestina.Originally published in 1972.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

    The collection is wide-ranging, dealing with political theory, social history, church history, historiography, theology, history of religions, and social anthropology. Saint Augustine is, of course, the central figure; and in an important introduction Peter Brown explains how the preoccupations of these essays led him to write the prize-winning biography. Brown then goes on to explore the heart of Augustine's political theory, not only showing how it factors in Augustine's thought, but also pointing to what is different from and similar to twentieth-century political thought. Peter Brown is the undoubted master of the late antique world and its scholarly exploration, as his many classic books attest. But if he had written only this volume, originally published in 1972 and now reprinted, he would be known as a scholar of the very first rank. The essays here retain tremendous power to instruct and illuminate. --James J. O'Donnell, Georgetown University, author of 'Augustine: A New Biography' I salute Mr. Brown's achievement in bringing Augustine out of the tomb of theological doctrine and setting his mind and emotions working before our eyes. . . . I think Augustine would have been surprised by some of the clinical images in which his thought is presented. . . . But there is nothing clumsy about the modernity in which Mr. Brown clothes his Augustine. His sensitivity is controlled by fidelity to the texts and to events. . . . The connection between external events and the inner world of Augustine's thought is something that Mr. Brown never obtrudes, and never forgets. --'The New Statesman' Peter Brown, born in Dublin, Ireland, has taught in history departments at Oxford, the University of London, the University of California (Berkeley), and Princeton University. His principal concern is the rise of Christianity and the transition from the ancient to the early medieval world. His other books include 'Augustine of Hippo', 'The World of Late Antiquity', 'The Body and Society', and 'Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire'.

    Hieatt's Perceval plays a more important part in the Quest than his counterparts in the Malory-inspired collections of Arthurian legend (e.g. Picard's Stories of King Arthur and His Knights, 1955), and his impetuous exploits have been refined into a poised and polished morality tale which demonstrates the power Of good intentions when guided by the hand of fate.