The Measure of Multitude

NOTE EDITORE

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.

SOMMARIO

1 - Introduction to medieval demographic thought2 - Marriage and the Church's texts3 - William of Auvergne4 - An equal or unequal number of men and women5 - The precept of marriage and sufficient multiplication6 - Avoidance of offspring (i): the general picture7 - Avoidance of offspring (ii): Canon law and Sentences commentaries8 - Avoidance of offspring (iii): the pastoral picture9 - Inhabitation of the world10 - Animals and the life-span11 - The Politics (i): reception12 - The Politics (ii): age at marriage13 - The Politics (iii): multitude14 - The Bulging circuit of Florence

ALTRE INFORMAZIONI

• Condizione: Nuovo
• ISBN: 9780198206323
• Dimensioni: 243 x 32.0 x 163 mm Ø 889 gr
• Formato: Copertina rigida
• Illustration Notes: 8 pp black and white plates
• Pagine Arabe: 506