Focussing on individuals whose ideas shaped intellectual life between 400 and 1500, Fifty Key Medieval Thinkers is an accessible introduction to those religious, philosophical and political concepts central to the medieval worldview. Including such diverse figures as Bede and Wyclif, each entry presents a biographical outline, a list of works and a summary of their main theories, alongside suggestions for further reading. Chronologically arranged, and with an introductory essay wh...

Legal actions by students against universities are growing in number, and the issues such actions raise are becoming a major concern for both teaching and administrative staff. This handbook is designed to clarify the legal framework that binds the student with the university or college.

An unrivalled introduction to a fascinating subject, Law and Theology in the Middle Ages explores the relationship between law and theology in medieval Europe. Focusing on legal and theological responses to justice, mercy, fairness, and sin, this text examines the tension between ecclesiastical and secular authority in medieval Europe, illustrating areas of dispute in a clear and accessible way.

The intertwined stories of the great English 'Varsity' universities have many colourful aspects in common, yet each also boasts elements of true distinctiveness. So while the histories of Oxford and Cambridge are both characterised by seething town and gown rivalries, doctrinal conflicts and heretical outbursts, shifts of political and religious allegiance and gripping stories of individual heroism and defiance, they are also narratives of difference and distinctiveness. G R Evans explores...

What did people really believe in the Middle Ages? Much of our sense of the medieval period has come down to us from the writings of the learned: the abbots, priors, magnates, scholastic theologians and others who between them, and across Christendom, controlled the machinery of church and state. For G R Evans too much emphasis has been placed on a governing elite and too little on those - the great mass of the semi-literate and illiterate, and the emergent middle classes - who stood outsi...

From the earliest centuries of the church, asceticism and the contemplative life have been profoundly important aspects of western Christianity. And in assessing the glories of western civilization, perhaps the best place to start is within medieval monastic institutions, not outside of them. For while monasteries withdrew from the main currents of their societies, until the rise of universities in the 12th century they provided fertile soil and sanctuary to the liberal arts and sciences a...

A generation or so ago, the Inklings - C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Williams - met regularly in an Oxford pub to encourage one another in the writing of fictions set in fantasy worlds... Philip Pullman's Gyptians live on an Oxford canal and it is from Oxford that his characters gain entry to another world... It is true that Oxford is a world to itself, a village where everyone stops in the Broad or the High to exchange local gossip... The visitor walking among the golden colleges...

Did the universe start with a bang, or has it existed always? Was there a supernatural being behind it all, or just mindless forces? The beginning of things has forever tested the limits of curiosity, and such questions have both challenged atheists and inspired believers. Ancient cultures resorted to myth and symbolism to tell vibrant stories about human origins. Later civilizations added philosophical and scientific explanations: but these are not definitive. The nature and meaning of ex...

The creation of a new history of the Church at the beginning of the third millennium is an ambitious but necessary project. Perhaps nowhere is it needed more than in re-describing the Church's development - its life and its thinking - in the period that followed the end of the 'early Church' in antiquity. The cultural, social and political dominance of Christendom in what we now call 'the West', from about 600-1300, made the Christian Church a shaper of the modern world in respects which g...

The name of John Wyclif is surrounded by mythology. The ideas associated with his name had a huge influence and their effects were felt in the sequence of events which eventually led to the Reformation. This major biography offers fresh insights into Wyclif the man, his preoccupations and his achievements. The author follows Wyclif through his childhood and university days at Oxford to his life as a writer, preacher and lecturer, and - in his later years - a campaigner against the abuse of...

How did Christianity come to have such an extraordinary influence upon Europe? Gillian R. Evans' The History of Christian Europe offers a fascinating portrayal of the development and spread of Christianity in the context of over 2,000 years of European history.Beginning with the transmission of Jesus' teaching throughout the Roman world, Evans shows how Christianity transformed not only the thinking but also the structures of society, in a Christendom that was, unt...

In this book the renowned medievalist G.R. Evans provides a concise introduction to St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), a figure of towering importance on the twelfth-century monastic and theological scene. After a brief overview of Bernard's life, Evans focuses on a few major themes in his work, including his theology of spirituality and his theology of the political life of the Church. The only available introduction to Bernard's life and thought, this latest addition to the Great ...