Details

Subject(s)

• Civilization, Medieval—12th century [Browse]
• Philosophy, Medieval [Browse]
• Social history—Medieval, 500-1500 [Browse]
• Middle Ages—Historiography [Browse]
• Europe—Intellectual life [Browse]

Series

• Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters ; Bd. 63. [More in this series]
• Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 0026-9832 ; Band 63 [More in this series]

Summary note

Considering the many seminal innovations that took place in the Central Middle Ages, this epoch can be regarded as an?axis time? of European history. Previous scholarship has so far mostly focused on descriptions of what appeared to be new within the diverse areas of material and spiritual life. The present book, by contrast, analyzes the structural foundations of those innovations from the standpoint of the history of mentality, identifying general categories such as differentiation, psychologization, rationalization, and desacralization. The numerous changes in the thought patterns, the emotional set-ups, the aesthetics, and in the behavior of the medieval elite demonstrate more similarities to the main features characteristic of modern times than to those typical of the second half of the first millennium.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-319) and indexes.

Contents

• Preface
• Introduction
• Varieties of mutation during the high middle ages
• Expansion
• Spatial expansion
• Temporal expansion
• Antiquity
• Future
• Religious expansion
• Religious aggressivity
• Differentiation
• The holy and the profane
• Social transformations
• Lay-folk becoming visible
• Women becoming visible
• Children becoming visible
• Diversity in religious life
• Romanesque and gothic architecture
• Music
• Further examples of diversification
• Rationalization
• Theology and philosophy
• Law and polities
• Intellectual management
• Ingenium
• Abstraction
• Realistic observation
• Desacralization
• Death
• Nature, fortune and fate
• Psychologicalization
• Discovering the self
• Doubt and inner conflict
• Ethics
• Love emotions
• Men and women
• Mysticism
• Compassion
• Friendship
• Summary
• Contemporaries reacting
• Rethinking the problems of approach and interpretation
• Some methodical considerations on the quest for historical reasons
• Causal explanations
• The investiture struggle
• General theories of cultural development and their adaptation to the high middle ages
• The 'materialistic' point of view
• The sociological point of view
• The psychohistorical point of view
• External cultural influences
• Conclusion
• Excursus : the court as a centre for the transfer of mental attitudes
• Postscript
• A very short note on the history of scholarship
• And a final note, viz. on this book's language
• Abbreviations
• Bibliography
• Index to ancient and medieval names and to anonymous texts
• Index to authors of secondary works.

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ISBN

• 9783777217048 ((hd. bd. ; : alk. paper))
• 3777217042

LCCN

2017366171

OCLC

982490974

International Article Number

• 9783777217048

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