Best of
Middle-Ages

1957

The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages


Norman Cohn - 1957
    At the dawn of the 21st millennium the world is still experiencing these anxieties, as seen by the onslaught of fantasies of renewal, doomsday predictions, and New Age prophecies.This fascinating book explores the millenarianism that flourished in western Europe between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries. Covering the full range of revolutionary and anarchic sects and movements in medieval Europe, Cohn demonstrates how prophecies of a final struggle between the hosts of Christ and Antichrist melded with the rootless poor's desire to improve their own material conditions, resulting in a flourishing of millenarian fantasies. The only overall study of medieval millenarian movements, The Pursuit of the Millennium offers an excellent interpretation of how, again and again, in situations of anxiety and unrest, traditional beliefs come to serve as vehicles for social aspirations and animosities.

The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology


Ernst H. Kantorowicz - 1957
    In The King's Two Bodies, Kantorowicz traces the historical problem posed by the King's two bodies--the body politic and the body natural--back to the Middle Ages and demonstrates, by placing the concept in its proper setting of medieval thought and political theory, how the early-modern Western monarchies gradually began to develop a political theology.?The king's natural body has physical attributes, suffers, and dies, naturally, as do all humans; but the king's other body, the spiritual body, transcends the earthly and serves as a symbol of his office as majesty with the divine right to rule. The notion of the two bodies allowed for the continuity of monarchy even when the monarch died, as summed up in the formulation The king is dead. Long live the king.Bringing together liturgical works, images, and polemical material, The King's Two Bodies explores the long Christian past behind this political theology. It provides a subtle history of how commonwealths developed symbolic means for establishing their sovereignty and, with such means, began to establish early forms of the nation-state.Kantorowicz fled Nazi Germany in 1938, after refusing to sign a Nazi loyalty oath, and settled in the United States. While teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, he once again refused to sign an oath of allegiance, this one designed to identify Communist Party sympathizers. He was dismissed as a result of the controversy and moved to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he remained for the rest of his life, and where he wrote The King's Two Bodies.

Below the Salt


Thomas B. Costain - 1957
    Time was strangely rolled back 700 years so that he was hearing an account of those stirring, violent events in England and Europe that led to Magna Charta and thus contributed so much to the liberties of future generations: with a story, most of it straight from history, of a lost princess and the recovery of a lost charter.

Intellectuals in the Middle Ages


Jacques Le Goff - 1957
    For the first time in Spain, France, England and Germany the luxury of thinking and learning ceased to be the limited preserve of the higher echelons of the Church and the Court. The effect, the author shows, was to bring about an irreversible shift in European culture.This intellectual history of medieval Europe (translated from the revised French edition of 1984) will be widely welcomed by students and scholars of the Middle Ages throughout the English–speaking world.

Eight Upanishads, with the Commentary of Sankaracarya, Vol. I


Adi Shankaracharya - 1957
    Volume One covers the Isa, Kena, Katha, and Taittiriya Upanishads. Each verse has the Devanagri Sanskrit, with English translation and commentary, with further commentary by Sankaracarya. Also included is an Index to texts in Devanagri Sanskrit.

Warwick the Kingmaker


Paul Murray Kendall - 1957
    His death, in battle with a king he put in power and then tried to overthrow, marked the end of an important era in English history.

A History of Medieval Europe: From Constantine to Saint Louis


R.H.C. Davis - 1957
    Davis provided the classic account of the European medieval world; equipping generations of undergraduate and 'A' level students with sufficient grasp of the period to debate diverse historical perspectives and reputations. His book has been important grounding for both modernists required to take a course in medieval history, and those who seek to specialise in the medieval period.In updating this classic work to a third edition, the additional author now enables students to see history in action; the diverse viewpoints and important research that has been undertaken since Davis' second edition, and progressed historical understanding. Each of Davis original chapters now concludes with a 'new directions and developments' section by Professor RI Moore, Emeritus of Newcastle University.A key work updated in a method that both enhances subject understanding and sets important research in its wider context. A vital resource, now up-to-date for generations of historians to come.

We Were There with Richard the Lionhearted


Robert N. Webb - 1957
    

Founders of the Middle Ages


Edward Kennard Rand - 1957
    The chapters of this book were delivered as lectures before the Lowell Institute of Boston in January and February 1928. The aim of the book is to make clear the importance of certain great men and of certain great movements in thought and culture during the early Christian centuries. Contents: Church and Pagan Culture: The Problem; Church and Pagan Culture: The Solution; St. Ambrose the Mystic; St. Jerome the Humanist; Boethius, the First of the Scholastics; The New Poetry; New Education; St. Augustine and Dante.