The Measure of Multitude

Population in Medieval Thought
Erscheinungsjahr 2000
ISBN: 978-0-19-820632-3
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 506 Seiten, Format (B × H): 163 mm x 243 mm, Gewicht: 889 g

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Biller, Peter

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein Demographie, Demoskopie
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- 1: Introduction to medieval demographic thought

- Part 1: The Church and generation

- 2: Marriage and the Church's texts

- 3: William of Auvergne

- 4: An equal or unequal number of men and women

- 5: The precept of marriage and sufficient multiplication

- 6: Avoidance of offspring (i): the general picture

- 7: Avoidance of offspring (ii): Canon law and Sentences commentaries

- 8: Avoidance of offspring (iii): the pastoral picture

- Part 2: The Map of the World

- 9: Inhabitation of the world

- Part 3: Aristotle and Multitude

- 10: Animals and the life-span

- 11: The Politics (i): reception

- 12: The Politics (ii): age at marriage

- 13: The Politics (iii): multitude

- The Light of the Common Day

- 14: The Bulging circuit of Florence

- Epigraph: The Climate of Thought

- Bibliography

- Index of Manuscripts

- General Index