www.medievalbookshop.co.uk
Bargain books on the Middle Ages and all related subjects
Contact by email or post & phone
Peter
Biller.
The
Measure of Multitude: Population in Medieval Thought.
Oxford U.P.,
2003 (previously issued in hardback, 2000).
ISBN
0199265593;
ISBN-13: 9780199265596.
Paperback,
perfect bound.
156x232x24mm.
xix,476pp.
English.
Unused
bargain.
This
item 13.50
[Publisher's
price £25.00]
756g.
How to order this book
Peter
Biller's innovative study challenges the view that medieval thought was
fundamentally abstract. He shows how, by 1300, medieval men and women
were beginning to measure multitude, counting, for example, numbers of
boys and girls being baptized. Their mental capacity to grapple with
population, to get its measure, was developing, and the author
describes how medieval people thought about population through both the
texts which contained their thought and the medieval realities which
shaped it. He asserts that they found many topics - such as the history
of population and variations between polygamy, monogamy and
virginity-through theology, and that crusade and travel literature
supplied the themes of Muslim polygamy, military numbers, the
colonization of the Holy Land, and the populations of Mongolia and
China. Translations of Aristotle provided not only new themes but also
a new vocabulary with which to think about population.
The Measure of Multitude
sets academic discussions of population
alongside the medieval facts of "birth, and copulation, and death" to
provide a challenging new approach to the study of medieval demographic
thought.
Readership: Scholars and students of society and intellectual thought
in medieval Europe.
Contents
1. Introduction to medieval demographic thought
Part 1: The Church and generation
2. Marriage and the Church's texts
3. William of Auvergne
4. An equal or unequal number of men and women
5. The precept of marriage and sufficient multiplication
6. Avoidance of offspring (i): the general picture
7. Avoidance of offspring (ii): Canon law and Sentences commentaries
8. Avoidance of offspring (iii): the pastoral picture
Part 2: The Map of the World
9. Inhabitation of the world
Part 3: Aristotle and Multitude
10. Animals and the life-span
11. The Politics (i): reception
12. The Politics (ii): age at marriage
13. The Politics (iii): multitude
The Light of the Common Day
14. The Bulging circuit of Florence
Epigraph: The Climate of Thought
Bibliography
Index of Manuscripts
General Index.
Related pages on this site:
| |
See the "book
descriptions" page for explanations of the criteria used in this
listing.
Back
to previous page
Return
to used books index page
Use these scrollbars to navigate the attic...
You need javascript
switched on for these scrollbars to work. If they don't, there's a full
set of links at the bottom of this page.
Primary
sources anthologies | anononymous
| facsimile
| A
| B
| C
| D
| E
| F
| G
| H
| I
| J
| K
| L
| M
| N
| O
| P
| Q
| R
| S
| T
| U
| V
| W
| X
| Y
| Z
Secondary
sources journals & partworks
| author
unknown | exhibition
guides & ephemera | A
| B
| C
| D
| E
| F
| G
| H
| I
| J
| K
| L
| Mc
| M
| N
| O
| P
| Q
| R
| S
| T
| U
| V
| W
| X
| Y
| Z
Reference books Reference index | general reference | bibliographies | biographical dictionaries | catalogues: auctions | catalogues: exhibitions | catalogues: museums & collections | chronology & dating | genealogy
& heraldry | guides & gazetteers | lexical: concordances, dictionaries, glossaries | maps & atlases | medievalism | name & place-name studies | pass notes & study guides | numismatics
Medievalism
main page | general non-fiction | reference books | biography & autobiography | travelogues | arcana | folklore | arts and crafts | kid's books | fiction | poetry | drama | humour
Other stuff browse by subject | browse by publisher | browse by series | gift books | kids' stuff | incomplete sets | shop returns | signed copies | unused bargains | useful non-medieval | new books (with Amazon links)