Bücher der Reihe Fordham Series in Medieval Studies

Ecstasy in the Classroom analyzes the early thirteenth century theological discourse about Paul's rapture and other modes of cognizing God. It reconstructs the perceptions of transformation and self they imply, and demonstrate their role in establishing the peculiar professional identity of scholastic theologians compared with other seers of God.

King Alfonso VIII of Castile: Government, Family and War brings together a diverse group of scholars whose work concerns the reign of Alfonso VIII (1158-1215). This was a critical period in the history of the Iberian peninsula, when the conflict between the Christian north and the Moroccan empire of the Almohads was at its most intense, while the political divisions between the five Christian kingdoms reached their high-water mark. From his troubled ascension as a child to his victory at Las Navas de Tolosa near the end of his fifty-seven-year reign, Alfonso VIII and his kingdom were at the epicenter of many of the most dramatic events of the era.Contributors: Martin Alvira Cabrer, Janna Bianchini, Sam Zeno Conedera, S.J., Miguel Dolan Gómez, Carlos de Ayala Martínez, Kyle C. Lincoln, Joseph O'Callaghan, Teofi lo F. Ruiz, Miriam Shadis, Damian J. Smith, James J. Todesca

The twenty-five original essays in this remarkable book constitute both a state of the art survey of Dante scholarship and a manifesto for new understandings of one of the world's great poets.

Medievalists have long considered topics of cultural contact such as antagonism or exchange between western Europe and the Islamic world and the west's debts to Byzantium. This text aims to pose new questions, exploring how the meeting of cultures promotes historical change.

This volume offers studies on medieval education in the formal academic sense typical of schools and universities, and in a broader cultural sense that includes law, liturgy, and the religious orders of the high Middle Ages. Essays explore the transmission of knowledge during the middle ages in various kinds of educational communities.

Rashi's commentary and the Glossa Ordinaria both developed in the late eleventh and early twelfth century with no known contact between them. Nevertheless, they shared a way of reading text that shaped their interpretations of the near-sacrifice of Isaac. This work compares them both with each other and their respective sources to show their similarity.

Clearly written, this incisive critical study opens a new analytic window not only to the rhetoric of medieval Italian poetry but also to a richer understanding of one of the most important strands of medieval European culture.