William of Conches

In these essays Peter Dronke looks at some of the relations between sacred and profane ideas and images, and Christian and pagan motifs, particularly in the early Middle Ages. The first two parts of the book dwell on aspects of (in the widest sense) Christian Platonism, the one part focussing on themes, the other on some of the greatest thinkers in the Latin world, from Boethius in the sixth century to Thierry of Chartres in the twelfth. The emphasis throughout is on transformations and syncretisms far more than disjunctions. The final group of essays is concerned with poetic texts, Latin and vernacular, in which non-sacred elements make their way into the sacred, the biblical and the saintly realms. A brief Epilogue glances at early medieval profane poetry outside as well as within Europe.

The Mystic Ark is a forty-two page description of the most complex work of art from the entire Middle Ages: a painting also known as The Mystic Ark.  The purpose of the painting was to serve as the basis of a series of brilliant lectures undertaken by Hugh--who was considered to be the leading theologian of Europe during his life--from around 1125 to 1130 at Saint Victor, a Parisian abbey of Augustinian canons, whose school, along with those of Notre-Dame and Ste-Geneviève, acted as the predecessor of the University of Paris.  The purpose of the text (which I have translated from the Latin) was to enable others outside of Saint Victor--teachers, advanced students, scholars, monks, canons--to undertake similar discussions themselves by providing the information necessary to produce the image.  Containing all time, all space, all matter, all human history, and all spiritual striving, this highly political image dealt with a series of crucial cultural issues in the education of society's elite during one of the great periods of intellectual change in Western history.  Essentially a visualization of Hugh's summa-like systematic theology, De sacramentis, the multiplication and systematization of imagery in The Mystic Ark bridged the gap between literature's potential for complex expression and such expression in large-scale public art, an achievement that led to the creation of the Gothic portal: the major means of public communication apart from the spoken word, and the most significant, fully indigenous expression of Northern European, public figural art of the Middle Ages.
    Hugh of Saint Victor's Mystic Ark: Illustrations: http://mysticark.ucr.edu.  This site presents a collection of images of The Mystic Ark that repeat in greater visual detail the same illustrations published in my study The Mystic Ark: Hugh of Saint Victor, Art, and Thought in the Twelfth Century for those who would like to study the image of The Mystic Ark more closely than is possible with the printed illustrations.

La place que tient Orphée dans la mythologie et la religion gréco-romaines est connue depuis fort longtemps. Ce qu'on savait moins jusqu'à une époque récente, c'est que le chantre thrace n'a jamais disparu de la culture occidentale. On le retrouve en effet dans la littérature pseudépigraphique de l'époque hellénistique et romaine, chez les Pères de l'Église, dans l'art paléochrétien, la philosophie médiévale et les littératures en langues latine et vernaculaires du Moyen Âge. Le livre de John Block Friedman s'interroge sur les raisons de cette survivance et étudie les métamorphoses de la figure mythique au cours quelque dix-huit siècles qui séparent le judaïsme hellénisé de la Renaissance écossaise.
Cet ouvrage ne met pas seulement à disposition des lecteurs francophones un classique des études médiévales, il présente en outre plusieurs traductions françaises inédites de textes écrits originellement en grec, en latin et dans diverses langues vernaculaires du Moyen Âge.
Une postface intitulée "De l'Orphée juif à l'Orfée écossais" propose un bilan des travaux effectués depuis la publication de l'ouvrage et fait le point sur les perspectives qui s'offrent encore aux chercheurs.

Note: The PDF does not exactly match with the printed book and the page references in the index are not right.

Book Web site:
https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis-geschichte-hypothesen.htm

The history of Atlantis hypotheses now completely revised:
* Finally all authors from Antiquity!
* Finally a detailed discussion of the authors from Antiquity, doing justice to their statements, with all the secondary literature.
* Additionally many until now unknown authors from Antiquity, who clearly allude to Plato's Atlantis without mentioning this explicitly.
* For the first time many authors from the Middle Ages!
* Many important yet until now unknown authors from the Renaissance until Modernity!

Widely spread misconceptions concerning the history of Atlantis reception are rectified!
* In Antiquity, Plato's Atlantis was not at all considered predominantly as an invention.
* The Middle Ages was not at all silent about Atlantis.
* The establishment of academic Atlantis skepticism did not happen until the 19th century and is based on the fiction of an allegedly matured academic theory.
* The crazy explosion of localization hypotheses did not start until the end of the 19th century, and clearly not with the discovery of America.
* Predominant misconceptions of Atlantis supporters as well as Atlantis skeptics concerning many authors are rectified.
* Many pseudo-scientific speculations are rejected.

Interesting details are clarified:
* At the start and at the end of the Middle Ages, the debate about Plato's Atlantis played an important role in the battle between science and superstition.
* The crazy explosion of localization hypotheses and the establishment of academic Atlantis skepticism are closely interrelated.
* The alleged connection of National Socialism and Atlantis is meticulously analysed and disproved.

With more than 1000 source-indicating footnotes, a bibliography with more than 550 entries, and an index of persons with ca. 750 entries.

This is an afterword to the French translation of John Block Friedman's book on "Orpheus in the Middle Ages," Harvard, 1999.

The format of this PDF does not exactly mirror the printed version.

La place que tient Orphée dans la mythologie et la religion gréco-romaines est connue depuis fort longtemps. Ce qu'on savait moins jusqu'à une époque récente, c'est que le chantre thrace n'a jamais disparu de la culture occidentale. On le retrouve en effet dans la littérature pseudépigraphique de l'époque hellénistique et romaine, chez les Pères de l'Église, dans l'art paléochrétien, la philosophie médiévale et les littératures en langues latine et vernaculaires du Moyen Âge. Le livre de John Block Friedman s'interroge sur les raisons de cette survivance et étudie les métamorphoses de la figure mythique au cours quelque dix-huit siècles qui séparent le judaïsme hellénisé de la Renaissance écossaise.
Cet ouvrage ne met pas seulement à disposition des lecteurs francophones un classique des études médiévales, il présente en outre plusieurs traductions françaises inédites de textes écrits originellement en grec, en latin et dans diverses langues vernaculaires du Moyen Âge.
Une postface intitulée "De l'Orphée juif à l'Orfée écossais" propose un bilan des travaux effectués depuis la publication de l'ouvrage et fait le point sur les perspectives qui s'offrent encore aux chercheurs.

Le formatage de ce PDF n'est pas tout à fait le même que celui de la version imprimée

A new reading and transcription of Ausiàs March’s poem 71,
including explanations to previously misunderstood passages. Poem 71 is presented in the context of the medieval literary debate for and against women, and its particularities within it are remarked. Attention to its cultural sources focuses especially in an unexpected one: William of Conches’s Dragmaticon Philosophiae, on the role of memory as sexual stimulus in women.

The prefaces to many translations of texts from Arabic into Latin or even into Castilian reflect many of their authors’ opinions. The translators focussed on some important areas of knowledge: in religion, on apologetics and controversy connected with the study of Islamic doctrine and the life and work of the prophet Muhammad; and in philosophy and science. This anthology offers a rich series of medieval scholarly testimonies on the persistence of Islam in Spain and in particular in Toledo. Texts are provided both in their original Latin or Castilian and also in English translation.

Title: The idea of Logos and Nature in the School of Chartres. Heuristic functions of the Christian concept of the Logos in the formation of the modern notion of nature. The analysis of texts form the School of Chartres from the perspective of philosophy of science.
Abstract: the book is a detailed analysis of the concepts of Logos and nature and their relationships in the writings of William of Conches and Thierry of Chartres, representatives of the XII century School of Chartres. Basing on the Christian concept of the Logos and its relation to the world the authors from Chartres developed a coherent vision of the autonomy of nature and the related idea of epistemological pluralism. Using the apparatus of modern philosophy of science, I am showing, that both of these categories played an important role in the formation of the modern concept of nature, and thus (indirectly) in the emergence of modern science.