Hardcover. London, Hutchinson and Company, First Edition, 1896, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 307 pages. Hardcover. Navy cloth covered boards with stunning embossed decoration to cover and bright gilt titles to spine. Toning throughout, tear to bottom of p. 211. Fraying to spine head & heel edges, light wear to corners. Tight signatures, tight binding, clean & unmarked pages throughout.
Softcover. UK, Liverpool University Press, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 479 pages. From the patristic age until the Gregorian calendar reform of 1582, computus - the science of time reckoning and art of calendar construction - was a subject of intense concern to medieval people. Bede's The Reckoning of Time (De temporum ratione) was the first comprehensive treatise on this subject, and the model and reference for all subsequent teaching, discussion and criticism of the Christian calendar. The Reckoning of Time is a systematic exposition of the Julian solar calendar and the Paschal table of Dionysius Exiguus, with their related formulae for calculating dates. But it is more than a technical handbook. Bede sets calendar lore within a broad scientific framework and a coherent Christian concept of time, and incorporates themes as diverse as the theory of tides and the threat of chiliasm. This translation of the full text includes an extensive historical introduction and a chapter-by-chapter commentary. The Reckoning of Time also serves as an accessible introduction to the computus itself. Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. London, UK, Routledge & Kegan Paul, Reprint, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 404 pages. Hardcover. Volume 2 ONLY. Red cloth cover boards, gilt title on spine. Foldout family trees of the House of Medici, etc. attached. Previous owner's notes/underlining on a few pages in pencil. Top edge dyed orange. Dust jacket price clipped. Some tape outlines on front flyleaf and back page. First published in 1950, this classic translation by the late Leslie J. Waker has been out of print for some years. It is now reissued complete, together with an introductory essay by Cecil H. Clough which places Father Walker's contribution in the context of current researches.
Softcover. UK, Sutton, Revised Ed., 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 216 pages. Joachim of Fiore has been described as the most singular and fascinating figure of mediaeval Christendom. This title explores his unique understanding of history and looks at the powerful influence of his ideas.
Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 354 pages. From the turn of the fifth century to the beginning of the eighteenth, Christian writers were fascinated and troubled by the "Problem of Paganism," which this book identifies and examines for the first time. How could the wisdom and virtue of the great thinkers of antiquity be reconciled with the fact that they were pagans and, many thought, damned? Related questions were raised by encounters with contemporary pagans in northern Europe, Mongolia, and, later, America and China. Pagans and Philosophers explores how writers-philosophers and theologians, but also poets such as Dante, Chaucer, and Langland, and travelers such as Las Casas and Ricci-tackled the Problem of Paganism. Augustine and Boethius set its terms, while Peter Abelard and John of Salisbury were important early advocates of pagan wisdom and virtue. University theologians such as Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, and Bradwardine, and later thinkers such as Ficino, Valla, More, Bayle, and Leibniz, explored the difficulty in depth. Meanwhile, Albert the Great inspired Boethius of Dacia and others to create a relativist conception of scientific knowledge that allowed Christian teachers to remain faithful Aristotelians. At the same time, early anthropologists such as John of Piano Carpini, John Mandeville, and Montaigne developed other sorts of relativism in response to the issue. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Columbus OH, Ohio State University Press, 1st, 1980, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, dark blue cloth, giltlettering on spine.861 pages including index. Pencil underling to a few pages. Name on front fly leaf.