Medieval Worlds: Barbarians, Heretics and Artists in the Middle Ages

In Medieval Worlds: Barbarians, Heretics, and Artists, medieval historian Arno Borst offers at once an imaginatively narrated tour of medieval society. Issues of language, power, and cultural change come to life as he examines how knights, witches and heretics, monks and kings, women poets, and disputatious university professors existed in the medieval world. Clearly interested in the forms of medieval behavior which gave rise to the seeds of modern society, Borst focuses on three in particular that gave momentum to medieval religious, social, and intellectual movements: the barbaric, heretical, and artistic. Borst concludes by reflecting on his own life as a scholar and draws out lessons for us from the turbulence of the Middle Ages.

History

Borst, Arno

Europe

University of Chicago Press

The Ordering of Time: From the Ancient Computus to the Modern Computer

This book is a concise history of the use and interpretation of time, written by one of the foremost medievalists in Europe today.Arno Borst examines the various ways that time has been calculated by numbers and measured by instruments over several centuries, from the computus—an ancient method of determining times and dates—to the present-day computer. In a wide-ranging discussion, he analyzes the classical Greek concepts of divine, natural, and human time; the universal time of ancient Rome; the Easter cycle of the Middle Ages; the development of the mechanical clock in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; early modern chronology; and twentieth-century data processing.Borst argues that although many centuries and countless different instruments—sundials, horologia, abaci, astrolabes, calendars, and calculating machines—separate the medieval computus from the modern computer, each generation has had to answer the same question: how can we make the best use of our available time to improve our lives? The computer, he suggests, is merely a new instrument employed for an ancient purpose.Lively and accessible, The Ordering of Time will be welcomed by students and researchers in social and cultural history, the history of science and mathematics, as well as anyone interested in the history of time and numbers.

This book is a concise history of the use and interpretation of time, written by one of the foremost medievalists in Europe today. Arno Borst examines the various ways that time has been calculated by numbers and measured by instruments over several centuries, from the computus—an ancient method of determining times and dates—to the present-day computer. In a wide-ranging discussion, he analyzes the classical Greek concepts of divine, natural, and human time; the universal time of ancient Rome; the Easter cycle of the Middle Ages; the development of the mechanical clock in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; early modern chronology; and twentieth-century data processing. Borst argues that although many centuries and countless different instruments—sundials, horologia, abaci, astrolabes, calendars, and calculating machines—separate the medieval computus from the modern computer, each generation has had to answer the same question: how can we make the best use of our available time to improve our lives? The computer, he suggests, is merely a new instrument employed for an ancient purpose. Lively and accessible, The Ordering of Time will be welcomed by students and researchers in social and cultural history, the history of science and mathematics, as well as anyone interested in the history of time and numbers.

This book takes a broad, philosophical view of the Middle Ages. It shows how the barbaric vitality of the invaders of the Roman Empire was curbed and formalized in the routines of the High Middle Ages. It goes on to show how this closed intellectual system was broken down by the upsurge of heretical movements, and finally how the chaos and distress resultant upon this breakdown of the old system was redeemed by the flourishing of artistic virtuosity. The author is concerned in these essays to give the reader a perspective of the Middle Ages that will enlighten and inform his or her notions of present predicaments.

Medieval worlds: Barbarians, heretics, and artists in the Middle Ages

Polity Press in association with B. Blackwell, Oxford

This book is a concise history of the use and interpretation of time, written by one of the foremost historians in Europe today. Arno Borst examines the various ways that time has been calculated by numbers and measured by instruments through the ages, from the "computus" - an ancient method of determining times and dates - to the present-day computer. In a wide-ranging discussion, he analyses the classical Greek concepts of divine, natural and human time; the universal time of ancient Rome; the Easter cycle of the Middle Ages; the development of the mechanical clock in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; early modern chronology; and twentieth-century data processing. Borst argues that although many centuries and countless different instruments - sundials, horologia, abaci, astrolabes, calendars, and calculating machines - separate the "computus" from the modern computer, each generation throughout the ages has had to answer the same question: how can we make the best use of our available time to improve our lives? The computer, he suggests, is merely a new instrument employed for an ancient purpose. Lively and accessible, The Ordering of Time will be welcomed by students and researchers in social and cultural history, the history of science and mathematics, as well as anyone interested in the history of time and numbers.

Ordering of Time: From the Ancient Computus to the Modern Computer

Polity

Science & Math

Astronomy & Space Science

Computus. Zeit und Zahl in der Geschichte Europas.

dtv.

Barbaren, Ketzer, und Artisten: Welten des Mittelalters (German Edition)

Reference

Foreign Language Study & Reference

Piper

Lebensformen im Mittelalter.

Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH & Co. KG / Ullstein Tas

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