The less it is part of everyday life, the more the appeal of handwriting grows. This wonderful selection of treasures from the Bodleian Library introduces remarkable individuals through documents written by their own hands. From the second century BCE to the present, individual lives and relationships are illuminated through the writing that has been left behind. We see Elizabeth I attempting to win over her new stepmother, Alan Bennett working out the character of Mr Toad, Henry Moore advising soap and water for cleaning sculpture and Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin balancing childcare with discovering the structure of penicillin. Here you will find letters, first drafts, autograph albums and hastily scribbled notes, fair copies, marked-up proofs and doodles. Divided into themed categories, the entries feature novelists Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Arthur Conan Doyle and Raymond Chandler; scientists Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein; reformers Emmeline Pankhurst, Florence Nightingale and Mohandas Gandhi; and explorers Walter Ralegh, T.E. Lawrence and Patrick Leigh Fermor among many others. Each of these extraordinary people has passed on a manuscript or document with a fascinating story to tell.

The variety of experience available to medieval scholars and the vitality of medieval thought are both reflected in this collection of original essays by distinguished historians. Intellectual Life in the Middle Ages is presented to Margaret Gibson, whose own work has ranged from Boethius to Lanfranc and to the study of the Bible in the middle ages.

Studies of women's roles in the secular literary world, as patrons, authors, readers, and characters in secular literature. This second volume of proceedings from the `Women and the Book' conference, held at St Hilda's College, Oxford in 1993, brings together fifteen papers dealing with women's experience in the secular literary world. It covers the whole variety of roles women might take, as patrons, authors, readers, and characters in secular literature; encompassed in its range are well-known characters, real and fictional, such as Christine de Pisan and the Wife of Bath, and the more obscure but no less fascinating topic of women in Chinese medieval court poetry. Like its predecessor Women, the Book, and the Godly(Brewer, 1995), this volume illuminates the world of medieval women with carefulscholarship and attention to sources, producing new readings and new materials which shed fresh light on an increasingly important field of study. Contributors: PATRICIA SKINNER, PHILIP E. BENNETT, JENNIFER GOODMAN, CHARITY CANNON-WILLARD, BENJAMIN SEMPLE, ANNE BIRRELL, JEANETTE BEER, MARK BALFOUR, CAROL HARVEY, HEATHER ARDEN, KAREN JAMBECK, JULIA BOFFEY, JENNIFER SUMMIT, MARGARITA STOCKER

Who can concentrate on thoughts of Scripture or philosophy and be able to endure babies crying ... ? Will he put up with the constant muddle and squalor which small children bring into the home? The wealthy can do so ... but philosophers lead a very different life ... So, according to Peter Abelard, did his wife Heloise state in characteristically stark terms the antithetical demands of family and scholarship. Heloise was not alone in making this assumption. Sources from Jerome onward never cease to remind us that the life of the mind stands at odds with life in the family. For all that we have moved in the past two generations beyond kings and battles, fiefs and barons, motherhood has remained a blind spot for medieval historians. Whatever the reasons, the result is that the historiography of the medieval period is largely motherless. The aim of this book is to insist that this picture is intolerably one-dimensional, and to begin to change it. The volume is focussed on the paradox of motherhood in the European Middle Ages: to be a mother is at once to hold great power, and by the same token to be acutely vulnerable. The essays look to analyse the powers and the dangers of motherhood within the warp and weft of social history, beginning with the premise that religious discourse or practice served as a medium in which mothers (and others) could assess their situation, defend claims, and make accusations. Within this frame, three main themes emerge: survival, agency, and institutionalization. The volume spans the length and breadth of the Middle Ages, from late Roman North Africa through ninth-century Byzantium to late medieval Somerset, drawing in a range of types of historian, including textual scholars, literary critics, students of religion and economic historians. The unity of the volume arises from the very diversity of approaches within it, all addressed to the central topic.

Who can concentrate on thoughts of Scripture or philosophy and be able to endure babies crying ... ? Will he put up with the constant muddle and squalor which small children bring into the home? The wealthy can do so ... but philosophers lead a very different life ... So, according to Peter Abelard, did his wife Heloise state in characteristically stark terms the antithetical demands of family and scholarship. Heloise was not alone in making this assumption. Sources from Jerome onward never cease to remind us that the life of the mind stands at odds with life in the family. For all that we have moved in the past two generations beyond kings and battles, fiefs and barons, motherhood has remained a blind spot for medieval historians. Whatever the reasons, the result is that the historiography of the medieval period is largely motherless. The aim of this book is to insist that this picture is intolerably one-dimensional, and to begin to change it. The volume is focussed on the paradox of motherhood in the European Middle Ages: to be a mother is at once to hold great power, and by the same token to be acutely vulnerable. The essays look to analyse the powers and the dangers of motherhood within the warp and weft of social history, beginning with the premise that religious discourse or practice served as a medium in which mothers (and others) could assess their situation, defend claims, and make accusations. Within this frame, three main themes emerge: survival, agency, and institutionalization. The volume spans the length and breadth of the Middle Ages, from late Roman North Africa through ninth-century Byzantium to late medieval Somerset, drawing in a range of types of historian, including textual scholars, literary critics, students of religion and economic historians. The unity of the volume arises from the very diversity of approaches within it, all addressed to the central topic.

Penance and confession were an integral part of medieval religious life; essays explore literary evidence. Penance, confession and their texts (penitential and confessors' manuals) are important topics for an understanding of the middle ages, in relation to a wide range of issues, from medieval social thought to Chaucer's background. These essays treat a variety of different aspects of the topic: subjects include the frequency and character of early medieval penance; the summae and manuals for confessors, and the ways in which these texts (written by males for males) constructed women as sexual in nature; William of Auvergne's remarkable writing on penance; and the relevance of confessors' manuals for demographic history. JOHN BALDWIN's major study `From the Ordeal to Confession', delivered as a Quodlibet lecture, traces the appearance in French romances of the themes of a penitent's contrition, the priest's job in listening, and the application of the spiritual conseil and penitence. PETER BILLER is Professor of Medieval History at the University of York; A.J. MINNIS is Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English, Yale University. Contributors: PETER BILLER, ROB MEENS, ALEXANDER MURRAY, JACQUELINE MURRAY, LESLEY SMITH, MICHAEL HAREN, JOHN BALDWIN

Starting with the premise that the history of a medieval subject cannot be properly written "without recourse to the materials it produced," Lesley Smith's Masters of the Sacred Page provides an illuminating study of theology in the Middle Ages. She focuses on the dramatic transformations of the discipline in the twelfth century and uses a collection of contemporary manuscripts as a guide to its changes and developments. Smith points out that the medieval masters of theology had a much wider view of their subject than the modern academic tendency for neatness and division can easily admit, and she places their discipline squarely within the rapidly evolving intellectual and educational context of the twelfth-century university. Her approach avoids two of the most common weaknesses of modern historical studies of medieval theology. In the first place, those histories have a tendency to be distorted by a reliance on easily available printed editions of medieval texts, the bulk of which are summae and other logical, systematic treatments. This preponderance, however, often reflects the concerns and interests of nineteenth- and twentieth-century editors more than it does the medieval masters. Biblical commentaries, sermons, and manuals for pastoral use have only recently begun to be edited and printed in numbers reflecting their importance and widespread use in the Middle Ages; Smith includes such material in her study. In the second place, traditional histories have a tendency to remove the study of theology from the actual environment of the medieval university and therefore fail to account for the complex relations between theology, the arts, and the burgeoning disciplines of medicine and law. By refusing to follow this trend, Smith has greatly improved our awareness of the situation of medieval theology. Using the manuscript books themselves as witnesses, Smith shows how theology competed with other disciplines for students (as well as teachers), how it attempted to define itself, and how it cooperated with other disciplines to foster new development in book technology-and new traditions in the social and intellectual culture of the medieval university.

"Codices Boethiani" is a catalogue of all the Latin manuscripts of the works of Boethius, including his translations of Aristotle and Porphyry. When completed, it is expected to comprise seven volumes arranged geographically, and a general index (although each volume will also be indexed separately). The conspectus includes fragmentary texts, as witnesses to once-complete versions, but not excerpts, abbreviations and vernacular translations. Each entry comprises a short physical description of the manuscript, a complete list of contents, a note of any glosses present, a brief summary of any decoration, the provenance of the manuscript and a select bibliography. Particular attention is paid to the use of the manuscripts. Since Boethius was a pillar of artes teaching, these manuscripts give a particularly interesting insight into who was taught what, where, to what level, and in what way. The three volumes published so far are: "I Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland (WI Surveys & Texts 25)"; "II Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland (WI Surveys & Texts 27)"; and, "III Italy and the Vatican City (WI Surveys & Texts 28)". The number of Boethian manuscripts in the Iberian Peninsula is modest compared with those in the British Isles and Italy, partly, perhaps, because of the Arab domination there; the oldest manuscripts come from Ripoll in Catalonia, which was always under Christian control. The Portuguese manuscripts contain 5 Boethian items, the Spanish, 153, of which the De Consolatione Philosophiae occurs most often. Some of these manuscripts are of exceptional quality, and many of them include extensive glosses.

Papers on women and religion in the middle ages, drawn from archive, manuscipt and early printed sources. Taking a variety of critical approaches, the papers in Women, the Book and the Godlyanalyse the subject of women and religion, illustrating clearly the wealth of previously untapped material on this topic, whether in archive, manuscript or early printed source. The volume examines writing by women, writing which excludes women, and writing which ignores them, as well as women readers, women patrons, and women who were read to. Archaeology, canon and civil law, and trial depositions are all represented. The common determinants of marital and social status are, of course, explored, but so also are the problems of women and language, women's various roles as creators, recipients, and objects, and women's positions on the sliding scale between the orthodox, the reforming, and the heterodox churches. The essays thus represent something of the variety and range of work being done on medieval women today. Contributors: ALCUIN BLAMIRES, JACQUELINE MURRAY, WYBREN SCHEEPSMA, ANNEM. DUTTON, ROSALYNN VOADEN, GRACE JANTZEN, ELIZABETH A. ANDERSEN, THOMAS LUONGO, BENEDICTA WARD, GOPA ROY, GEORGES WHALEN, CATHERINE INNES-PARKER, HELENPHILLIPS, SHANNON McSHEFFREY, PETER BILLER

Penance and confession were an integral part of medieval religious life; essays explore literary evidence. Penance, confession and their texts (penitential and confessors' manuals) are important topics for an understanding of the middle ages, in relation to a wide range of issues, from medieval social thought to Chaucer's background. These essays treat a variety of different aspects of the topic: subjects include the frequency and character of early medieval penance; the summae and manuals for confessors, and the ways in which these texts (written by males for males) constructed women as sexual in nature; William of Auvergne's remarkable writing on penance; and the relevance of confessors' manuals for demographic history. JOHN BALDWIN's major study "From the Ordeal to Confession", delivered as a Quodlibet lecture, traces the appearance in French romances of the themes of a penitent's contrition, the priest's job in listening, and the application of the spiritual conseil and penitence. PETER BILLER is Professor of Medieval History at the University of York; A.J. MINNIS is Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English, Yale University. Contributors: PETER BILLER, ROB MEENS, ALEXANDER MURRAY, JACQUELINE MURRAY, LESLEY SMITH, MICHAEL HAREN, JOHN BALDWIN

This is part of a catalogue of all Latin manuscripts of the works of Beothius, including his translations of Aristotle and Porphyry. The six volumes are arranged geographically and are accompanied by a general index, although each volume is also indexed separately. The conspectus includes fragmentary texts, as witnesses of a once-complete version. Each entry includes a short physical description of the manuscript, a complete list of contents, a note of any glosses present, a brief summary of any decoration, the provenance of the manuscript and a select bibliography for each codex. Particular attention is paid to the use of the manuscripts. Since Boethius was an advocate of "artes" teaching, these manuscripts give an insight into who was taught what, where, to what level, and in what way.

This is part of a catalogue of all Latin manuscripts of the works of Beothius, including his translations of Aristotle and Porphyry. The six volumes are arranged geographically and are accompanied by a general index, although each volume is also indexed separately. The conspectus includes fragmentary texts, as witnesses of a once-complete version. Each entry includes a short physical description of the manuscript, a complete list of contents, a note of any glosses present, a brief summary of any decoration, the provenance of the manuscript and a select bibliography for each codex. Particular attention is paid to the use of the manuscripts. Since Boethius was an advocate of "artes" teaching, these manuscripts give an insight into who was taught what, where, to what level, and in what way.

This is part a catalogue of all Latin manuscripts of the works of Beothius, including his translations of Aristotle and Porphyry. The six volumes are arranged geographically and are accompanied by a general index, although each volume is also indexed separately. The conspectus includes fragmentary texts, as witnesses of a once-complete version. Each entry includes a short physical description of the manuscript, a complete list of contents, a note of any glosses present, a brief summary of any decoration, the provenance of the manuscript and a select bibliography for each codex. Particular attention is paid to the use of the manuscripts. Since Boethius was an advocate of "artes" teaching, these manuscripts give an insight into who was taught what, where, to what level, and in what way.

The first modern biography of medieval French scholar and bishop William of Auvergne.   Today, William of Auvergne (1180?–1249) is remembered for his scholarship about the afterlife as well as the so-called Trial of the Talmud. But the medieval bishop of Paris also left behind nearly 600 sermons delivered to all manner of people—from the royal court to the poorest in his care. In Fragments of a World, Lesley Smith uses these sermons to paint a vivid picture of this extraordinary cleric, his parishioners, and their bustling world. The first modern biography of the influential teacher, bishop, and theologian, Fragments of a World casts a new image of William of Auvergne for our times—deeply attuned to both the spiritual and material needs of an ever-changing populace in the medieval city.