This collection of essays examines how the paratextual apparatus of medieval manuscripts both inscribes and expresses power relations between the producers and consumers of knowledge in this important period of intellectual history. It seeks to define which paratextual features - annotations, commentaries, corrections, glosses, images, prologues, rubrics, and titles - are common to manuscripts from different branches of medieval knowledge and how they function in any particular discipline. It reveals how these visual expressions of power that organize and compile thought on the written page are consciously applied, negotiated or resisted by authors, scribes, artists, patrons and readers. This collection, which brings together scholars from the history of the book, law, science, medicine, literature, art, philosophy and music, interrogates the role played by paratexts in establishing authority, constructing bodies of knowledge, promoting education, shaping reader response, and preserving or subverting tradition in medieval manuscript culture.

In the course of the 11th century, the Papacy increasingly claimed a universal authority over all Christians. Even if this programme was not fully implemented, it is still the most successful example of territorial claims being staked in medieval Europe. The present volume of collected papers approaches this topic from a number of directions, dealing above all with the organisation of papal power, legal processes and the ways in which religious ideas were communicated. The basic approach of the papers is to examine the history of communication and to analyse the paths of information exchange and the barriers to communication in a Church which regarded itself as having universal authority and laboured to establish this claim.

Hospitaler entwickelten sich erst im 12. Jahrhundert zu eigenstandigen Institutionen, wurden dann aber zu den wichtigsten Einrichtungen privater und offentlicher caritas. Durch unterschiedliche methodische Ansatze und aus verschiedenen Quellengattungen wird hier die Heterogenitat und institutionelle Vielfalt mittelalterlicher Hospitaler in den Blick genommen. Dies fuhrt zu einem Themenspektrum, das von der inneren Verfassung dieser Einrichtungen, von den fur sie geltenden Normen uber die Finanzierung und die Memoria bis hin zu ernahrungsgeschichtlichen und medizinhistorischen Fragen reicht. Dabei lassen sich die Autoren von der Erkenntnis leiten, dass es das mittelalterliche Hospital nicht gab, sondern dass jede einzelne Einrichtung ihr eigenes Gesicht besass."