Conrad Leyser

Lecturer in Medieval History Conrad Leyser

Conrad Leyser examines the formation of the Christian ascetic tradition in the western Roman Empire during the period of the barbarian invasions, c.400-600. In an aggressively competitive political context, one of the most articulate claims to power was made, paradoxically, by men who hadrenounced 'the world', committing themselves to a life of spiritual discipline in the hope of gaining entry to an otherworldly kingdom. Often dismissed as mere fanaticism or open hypocrisy, the language of ascetic authority, Conrad Leyser shows, was both carefully honed and well understood in thelate Roman and early medieval Mediterranean. Dr Leyser charts the development of this new moral rhetoric by abbots, teachers, and bishops from the time of Augustine of Hippo to that of St Benedict and Gregory the Great.

Authority and Asceticism from Augustine to Gregory the Great

Lesley Smith

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.

Essays Presented to Henrietta Leyser

Motherhood, Religion, and Society in Medieval Europe, 400–1400

Kate Cooper

Examines the fundamental question of what held the societies of the post-Roman world together.

Making Early Medieval Societies

Sharon Kivland

Charles Barber

Tiré du site Internet de Book Works: ""This book occupies an uneasy space. It is neither academic text nor an artist's book and yet shares something with both. It might sit on a shelf or be equally appropriate in a pocket. It might remind one of many things - missal, rhetorical guide, a treatise on aesthetics. If it belongs in no one place, well, that is somewhat its intention - a kind of homelessness." Reading the Glass addresses the question of the gendering of the gaze through a series of words and images, exploring the act of looking, illustrating the difference between the male and female gaze, and speculating on whether a space that is not gendered can exist within an image, within language. Eight people were invited to contribute to the book, grouped into pairs, woman-man, and artist-theorist. Each pair enter into a dialogue with each other through image and text ; the sections are self-contained but each has a complex relationship with the overall design of the book."

Conrad Leyser

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