Table of Contents

Contents: Introduction. Part I The History of Political Thought [in the Patristic Period]: De civitate Dei, XV, 2 and Augustine's idea of the Christian society; Kingdom and polity in Eusebius of Caesarea; The development of Augustine's ideas on society before the Donatist controversy. Part II The Fundamental Reorientation of Western Thought c. 1100 AD: Augustine and Anselm of Canterbury; Boethius and Abelard. Part III The Elaboration of the 1100 AD Thesis: St Paul and ancient modes of thought; Some Petrarchan paradoxes; Some historical structures of reading and allegory; The eyes of the mind: antiquity and the Renaissance; Two debates about the intellect: 1) Alexander of Aphrodisias and the Greeks; 2) Nifo and the Renaissance philosophers; The Renaissance reading of the De anima; Quintilian as ancient thinker; The studia humanitatis and litterae in Cicero and Leonardo Bruni. Index.

About the Author

Nancy Struever is Professor Emerita, The Humanities Center, The Johns Hopkins University, USA

Reviews

’These are profound and disturbing essays, shedding enormous light on one of the deeper elements of the 'twelfth-century renaissance'. They deserve to be widely read.’ Journal of Ecclesiastical History ’... the book gives the reader a wonderful view of the rigors and joys of intellectual history, ripe with insights into both the mind of western thinking and as well of numerous discrete thinkers.’ Sixteenth Century Journal