Product Description: Before the end of the thirteenth century, theologians had little interest in demons, but with Thomas Aquinas and his formidable “Treatise on Evil” in 1272, everything changed. In Satan the Heretic, Alain Boureau trains his skeptical eye not on Satan or Satanism, but on the birth of demonology and the sudden belief in the power of demons who inhabited Satan’s Court, setting out to understand not why people believed in demons, but why theologians—especially Pope John XXII—became so interested in the subject...read more

Product Description: Brusquement, en moins de dix ans, entre 1290 et 1300, la dévotion à la Vierge Marie a pris un tour nouveau en Occident. On connaît le rôle de Duns Scot dans la formulation d''un dogme nouveau, celui de l''Immaculée Conception de Marie, vers 1298, préparée, selon l''auteur, dès 1292, chez Henri de Gand...read more

Product Description: Encore le sujet et son emergence medievale, dira-t-on! Toujours l'individu! Toujours la personne! Comment esperer apporter du neuf dans l'histoire de la pensee medievale du sujet? On doit renverser la question: comment peut-on parler d'autre chose que de la condition de sujet? Des milliers d'annees de litterature, d'histoire ou de philosophie n'ont jamais epuise l'insondable...read more

Product Description: Before the end of the thirteenth century, theologians had little interest in demons, but with Thomas Aquinas and his formidable “Treatise on Evil” in 1272, everything changed. In Satan the Heretic, Alain Boureau trains his skeptical eye not on Satan or Satanism, but on the birth of demonology and the sudden belief in the power of demons who inhabited Satan’s Court, setting out to understand not why people believed in demons, but why theologians—especially Pope John XXII—became so interested in the subject...read more

Product Description: Une des grandes originalites de l'Angleterre est d'avoir produit tres tot un systeme juridique, la Common Law, radicalement different de la tradition romaine, qui, exporte aux Etats-Unis, a encore des echos dans le monde contemporain...read more

In the ninth century, a brilliant young woman named Joan disguised herself as a man so that she could follow her lover into the then-exclusively male world of scholarship. She proved so successful that she ascended the Catholic hierarchy in Rome and was eventually elected pope. Her pontificate lasted two years, until she became pregnant and died after giving birth during a public procession from the Vatican.Or so the legend goes—a legend that was fabricated sometime in the thirteenth century, according to Alain Boureau, and which has persisted in one form or another down to the present day. In this fascinating saga of belief and rhetoric, politics and religion, Boureau investigates the historical and ecclesiastical circumstances under which the myth of Pope Joan was constructed and the different uses to which it was put over the centuries. He shows, for instance, how Catholic clerics justified the exclusion of women from the papacy and the priesthood by employing the myth in misogynist moral tales, only to find the popess they had created turned against them in anti-Catholic propaganda during the Reformation. (view table of contents)

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Product Description: Correspondence explores the history of a fascinating cultural practice: the writing of letters. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, western societies served a long apprenticeship in the culture of the written word. Although mastery of reading and writing was far from evenly distributed, many tradesmen, shopkeepers, and artisans possessed these skills...read more