James M. Powell – författare

Albertanus of Brescia is an important figure in the cultural history of late medieval and Renaissance Italy. He is best known among literary scholars for the influence of his writings on Brunetto Latini, John Gower, and Geoffrey Chaucer. In addition, his sermons have received attention as part of the history of lay confraternities and lay preaching in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. James M. Powell shows that Albertanus''s contributions considerably surpass even these notable attainments.Powell contends that Albertanus was an original social theorist who drew on his experience with religious confraternities and with the law to develop a theory of consent. Albertanus developed the idea that society rested on voluntary acceptance of a rule, much as did religious life. This acceptance laid the foundation for social cohesion and legal enforcement. Albertanus''s ideas were to find great prominence in the later Middle Ages. Powell''s purpose in writing Albertanus of Brescia goes beyond the study of his eponymous subject. Through Albertanus, Powell examines how major developments of the twelfth century began to find expression in the mind of an early thirteenth-century secular thinker. In Albertanus, Powell perceives an individual bringing received, bookish authority into confrontation with lived experience. To Powell, the example of Albertanus suggests a much more complex picture of medieval approaches to social theory than that previously evident in the literature.This is the first book-length study of Albertanus and his works. It will be of particular interest to students and scholars of medieval, Italian, intellectual, and literary history, and political theory.

Covering Portugal and Castile in the West to the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem in the East, this collection focuses on Muslim minorities living in Christian lands during the high Middle Ages, and examines to what extent notions of religious tolerance influenced Muslim-Christian relations. The authors call into question the applicability of modern ideas of toleration to medieval social relations, investigating the situation instead from the standpoint of human experience within the two religious cultures. Whereas this study offers no evidence of an evolution of coherent policy concerning treatment of minorities in these Christian domains, it does reveal how religious ideas and communitarian traditions worked together to blunt the harsh realities of the relations between victors and vanquished.The chapters in this volume include "The Mudejars of Castile and Portugal in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries" by Joseph F. O''Callaghan, "Muslims in the Thirteenth-Century Realms of Aragon: Interactions and Reaction" by Robert I. Burns, S.J., "The End of Muslim Sicily" by David S. H. Abulafia, "The Subjected Muslims of the Frankish Levant" by Benjamin Z. Kedar, and "The Papacy and the Muslim Frontier" by James M. Powell.Originally published in 1990.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.