Dr%20Conrad%20Leyser: List of publications

This essay sets the development of Christian thinking about law and clerical office in the wider context of the discussion of office in the later Roman empire. It offers a reassessment of the work of Dionysius Exiguus, a well‐known translator from Greek into Latin of the Acts of the fourth‐ and fifth‐century church councils, and a compiler of papal decretals. The essay attempts to place Dionysius’ work in its immediate Roman context, in the context of fifth‐century canonical activity, especially in North Africa, and in the more general context of the political culture of office‐holding in the late Roman polity. Central here is the tension between bureaucratic regulation and autocratic room for manoeuvre. Dionysius did not attempt fully to resolve this tension, though he did attempt to contain it.

<a href=""></a>

A Companion to Augustine presents a fresh collection of scholarship by leading academics with a new approach to contextualizing Augustine and his works within the multi–disciplinary field of Late Antiquity, showing Augustine as both a product of the cultural forces of his times and a cultural force in his own right. Discusses the life and works of Augustine within their full historical context, rather than privileging the theological context Presents Augustine’s life, works and leading ideas in the cultural context of the late Roman world, providing a vibrant and engaging sense of Augustine in action in his own time and place Opens up a new phase of study on Augustine, sensitive to the many and varied perspectives of scholarship on late Roman culture State–of–the–art essays by leading academics in this field

Dedicated as a memorial to the great historian of England and the Continent in the eighth century, Wilhelm Levison, this book provides the widest and most in-depth exploration to date of relations between England and the Continent during an ...

This volume focuses on the paradox of motherhood in the European Middle Ages: to be a mother is at once to hold great power, and by the same token to be acutely vulnerable. The essays analyse the powers and the dangers of motherhood.

Who can concentrate on thoughts of Scripture or philosophy and be able to endure babies crying ... ? Will he put up with the constant muddle and squalor which small children bring into the home? The wealthy can do so ... but philosophers lead a very different life ... So, according to Peter Abelard, did his wife Heloise state in characteristically stark terms the antithetical demands of family and scholarship. Heloise was not alone in making this assumption. Sources from Jerome onward never cease to remind us that the life of the mind stands at odds with life in the family. For all that we have moved in the past two generations beyond kings and battles, fiefs and barons, motherhood has remained a blind spot for medieval historians. Whatever the reasons, the result is that the historiography of the medieval period is largely motherless. The aim of this book is to insist that this picture is intolerably one-dimensional, and to begin to change it. The volume is focussed on the paradox of motherhood in the European Middle Ages: to be a mother is at once to hold great power, and by the same token to be acutely vulnerable. The essays look to analyse the powers and the dangers of motherhood within the warp and weft of social history, beginning with the premise that religious discourse or practice served as a medium in which mothers (and others) could assess their situation, defend claims, and make accusations. Within this frame, three main themes emerge: survival, agency, and institutionalization. The volume spans the length and breadth of the Middle Ages, from late Roman North Africa through ninth-century Byzantium to late medieval Somerset, drawing in a range of types of historian, including textual scholars, literary critics, students of religion and economic historians. The unity of the volume arises from the very diversity of approaches within it, all addressed to the central topic. © Conrad Leyser and Lesley Smith 2011. All rights reserved.