The leitmotiv in the mathematical thought of Gerbert of Aurillac

Gerbert of Aurillac, a noted tenth-century scholar, churchman and politician, studied mathematics, because, as he once said, it curbed the impulses] of tumultuous minds. Mathematics taught that the world of physical reality was an orderly arrangement of structures, of parts fitting together into wholes. Gerbert appears to have sincerely believe such a thing, for his mathematics was closely elected to God and His work. It was a metaphorical representation of God and thus possessed religious sanction. Its method of abstracting from physical reality trained the mind to see in this world the reflection of God Himself and His spiritual world, where peace, harmony and unity were the commanding principles. There everything was extensive and equal. In the midst of violence, would not these ideas appear particularly attractive? Men like Gerbert, who were concerned with the violence of their time, saw in these ideas, long embodied in various traditions, hopes for the future.     

Honour, community and hierarchy in the feasts of the archery and crossbow guilds of Bruges, 1445-81

Archery and crossbow guilds first appeared in the fourteenth century in response to the needs of town defence and princely calls for troops. By the fifteenth century these guilds existed across northern Europe. Despite this they have not received the attention they deserve, and have even been dismissed as little more than militias. An analysis of the uniquely detailed account books of the two Bruges guilds, the archers of St Sebastian and the crossbowmen of St George, reveals much about their social activities, and especially their annual meals. Feasts were important to the guilds in three main ways. Firstly, they demonstrated the guild's status and wealth. Secondly, meals helped to strengthen the bonds of the community. The guild's community could include not just members resident in Bruges, but also shooters from other towns and even leading noblemen. Thirdly, and in contrast to this, communal meals were an occasion to exhibit the hierarchy present within these guilds. Hierarchy is shown through the range of foods purchased, and through the seating plans preserved in the St Sebastian's guild accounts.     

The campus as a public space in the American college town

With its concert halls, museums, sports stadiums, landscaped grounds, and busy calendars of events, the college campus is a hub of activities that serves not only students and staff, but the larger population of a town and region. As such, the campus serves as both an environment for learning and a public space. This is especially true of campuses located outside big cities, because metropolitan institutions often face significant security concerns and demand for their facilities. Campuses in small cities, in contrast, tend to be open and inviting, and help to make the college town a distinctive type of urban place. This study will examine the multifaceted role of the campus, using the University of Oklahoma campus as an example, as a way to demonstrate the centrality of the campus to college town life.     

Challenging intellectual hierarchies. Hegel in Risorgimento political thought: an introduction

ABSTRACT

The introduction to this special issue rethinks Italy’s liberal tradition and nineteenth-century Italian political thought in transnational perspective, with particular focus on the role of Italian Hegelianism during the emergence of the modern Italian nation state. Starting from an attempt to recast the transnational dimension of the Risorgimento, this co-authored article relates existing studies of Italian Hegelianism to wider trends in intellectual history elsewhere in Europe. Introducing the different contributions to this special issue, our approach challenges notions of centre and periphery in the history of intellectual flows, and helps to free the history of the Risorgimento from self-incurred exceptionalism.     

Forms of lay association with the Order of the Temple

The present study investigates the development of three concepts of lay association with the Order of the Temple that have hitherto often been considered as distinctive from each other but that are, in fact, in many ways interconnected: the confrater, the donatus and the miles ad terminum. Examining the motivation of lay men and women to associate with the Temple, as well as the various implications of the forms of association they chose, the study argues that at the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the constellation of the Order's confraternities underwent drastic changes and that these had been instigated by canon lawyers and formulated in the decrees of Lateran III and IV. As a response the donats, as a particular category of confratres, established themselves as the most prominent expression of lay association with the Temple. What is more, since the concept of the donat gained prominence when that of the Templar novice was in decline, it will also be argued that, for very different reasons, the concept of the Templar donat as well as that of the ‘temporary knight’ (miles ad terminum), which was as old as the Order itself, could eventually have been conceived and employed as two forms of novitiate in disguise, which helped attract the attention of laymen who would have otherwise been reluctant to profess fully into a military order.     

明代以来江南市镇的内涵与发展——太湖南部四镇的个案剖析

明代以来江南地区出现了众多的市镇,各市镇的经济内涵是有所不同的,市镇经济内涵的形成与市镇发生的历史背景以及所处的地理位置有着十分重要的关系,而市镇的经济内涵又决定着市镇的发展前景.     

古镇遗产分类及资源型古镇的保护性利用模式初探

古镇是人类主要聚落形态之一,按其成因和社会功能可把古镇分为聚落型村镇、区域贸易中心型集镇、资源型或资源—产业型集镇、军事重镇型集镇和文化景观型集镇等。资源型古镇通常是在对某地自然资源进行开发利用的过程中发展起来的场镇,它的发展历程直接折射出区域社会变迁及其关联的社会背景,构成地方文化和历史记忆的重要载体。对资源型古镇的保护性利用旨在服务当地,在内容和形式上旨在使古镇的"形"与"神"与其生存空间达到高度的融合与统一,从而准确传达古镇所蕴含的历史信息及遗产价值。     

The history of the book and publishing in eighteenth-century Italy

Based on published and untapped sources, the article sets out to explore the cultural and material conditions of the book trade in Italy during the eighteenth century. Special concern is given to the import of French printed works and pamphlets as a means to diffuse the Enlightenment south of the Alps. The text does not address problems of authorial status, but provides a general assessment of the literary market and its impact on the reading habits of the elites. Critical and bibliographical information is also provided about the renewal of interest for the history of the book and reading in Italy since the 1980s.     

中国美学思想在书法中的表现

无论是在东方还是西方,美学思想都对各门艺术的创作与表现起着重要的作用。博大精深的中国文化孕育了完善而独到的中国美学理论,书法家运用了这些蕴含辩证思想的美学原理,在书法艺术表现中充分地展示出他们特有的审美意识,形成了书法独特的艺术风格。继承与创新书法艺术要懂得中国的美学思想,只有运用中国传统美学思想指导着书法的发展与创新,才能弘扬中国书法艺术,真正体现出书法特有的艺术魅力。     

The judicialization of politics,Italian style

Abstract

The recent dramatic changes in the Italian political scene have been related to the expanding role of the judiciary. The judicialization of politics is a process at work in many other democracies, but in Italy the judicial revolution has been supported by an institutional setting of increasing independence and by the strong powers entrusted to public prosecutors. However, until 1992 judicial power was somewhat balanced by the strength of the political class. But the political crisis that came to a head in 1992 has opened a political vacuum that the judiciary has been able to fill.

The 1996 elections have brought to power a new and stronger political alliance, the Ulivo. A new political stability could lead to a containment of judicial power but it is unlikely that the Italian judiciary will be brought back to its traditional passive role. Judicialization has to be considered a permanent trait of the Italian political system.     

Anti-ism thinkers: The post-May Fourth schism in political thought

Abstract

This article is a continuation of “Advent of the Age of Isms,” which primarily discusses a period teeming with various “isms” (主義 zhuyi). During this time, there were in fact a number of figures who held overtly or covertly opposing attitudes, in both cases giving rise to a phenomenon of fragmentation and asystematicness. Whether consisting of negative responses to the new political theory of “isms,” this “remedy for all ills,” or of piecemeal, asystematic criticism, the phenomenon itself served as a foil to the colossal intellectual forces of the Age of “Ismization.” This article offers a preliminary discussion of this phenomenon.     

Impoverished mothers and poor widows: negotiating images of poverty in Marseille's courts

In the early fifteenth century, in Marseille's court of first instance, a sailor's wife Margarida Gramone sued her son-in-law's estate to recoup money she had spent nursing her dying daughter and granddaughter. She justified her claim on the money by arguing that she had been completely impoverished by the medicine, doctors and wet nurses that her sick family had needed. She called witnesses to attest to her impoverished state and they told a story of a woman unable to pay her bills and reliant on the charity of her neighbours. Other witnesses in the same case, however, suggest Margarida was not poor, but a woman of means. Attempting to reconcile this discrepancy, this article will examine how Marseille's legally savvy citizens negotiated between at least two different attitudes towards the poor: a Christian celebration of charity and a legal scepticism of a pauper's word. The legal records from late medieval Marseille show a multivalent attitude towards the poor. They suggest that the city's citizens were able to draw on different narratives about poverty in order to win over the presiding judge. At the same time, witness testimony about the poor reminds us that the burden of charity was not always welcomed by Marseille's citizens.     

The history of modern and contemporary Italy: Made in France (from the late 1970s to the late 1990s)

Abstract

Over the past three centuries Italy has been the focus of numerous studies by French historians, who have taken advantage of the great wealth of sources available there. While no new synthesis has yet been achieved, we can identify certain main lines of development in French historiography. In the late 1970s and into the 1980s international relations and, especially, the relations between France and Italy were given the greatest attention, before a new focus on forms of sociability and political pedagogy began to be more common. However, the shifting of focus of historical studies to the centres of political decision making often coincided with less attention being paid to social stratification. Beyond these major themes, some researchers have reconstructed ‘global’ historical models, which have been characteristic of the renewal of post‐war French historiography.     

20世纪初沪郊南汇市镇成长之动因

近代上海城市交通网络的扩张、工业技术和资本的渗透以及中心市场的整合作用,不仅强化了周边市镇对上海城市的向心力,也将沪郊南汇乡村发展融入上海的城市化进程,凸现出20世纪初中心城市现代化发展直接带动周边市镇成长的新趋势。     

论古镇旅游开发的五种关系

本文分析了在古镇旅游开发中必须正确把握的五种关系,即共性与特色、传统与当代、挖掘与创新、居民与游客、观光与休闲,涉及对资源的认识、对产品的定位、对社区的兼顾和对产业的发展等方面,为古镇旅游开发提供了系统理论支撑。旅游开发必须对这五种关系进行深度思考和正确把握,才能实现古镇旅游的永续发展。     

The archaeological study of neighborhoods and districts in ancient cities

The spatial division of cities into residential zones is a universal feature of urban life from the earliest cities to the present. I propose a two-level classification of such zones that archaeologists can use to analyze preindustrial cities. Neighborhoods are small areas of intensive face-to-face social interaction, whereas districts are larger areas that serve as administrative units within cities. I review comparative historical data on neighborhoods and districts and outline archaeological methods for their identification and analysis. Illustrative cases are drawn from Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica, and I conclude with a review of the major top-down and bottom-up social forces that generate and shape neighborhoods and districts in preindustrial cities.     

洋务时期整体外交思想研究 --兼论中法交涉中义利结合外交思想

本文立足于洋务运动史、近代外交思想史既有研究,利用近年来出版的有关档案,考察中法越南交涉这一洋务时期具有代表性的重大外交个案,探讨洋务时期整体外交思想,认为义利结合的整体外交思想为洋务时期清朝政府的基本外交指导思想,从而反思中国近代外交思想史研究中若干误区.