This book reveals a tradition of thought overlooked in our intellectual history but enormously influential even now: the tradition of odious praise. Distinct from more conventional rhetorical exercises, such as panegyric or the funeral oration, odious praise uses acclaim to censure or to critique. This book reassesses the genre of praise-and-blame rhetoric by considering the potential of odious praise to undermine consensus and to challenge a society’s normative values. Surveying literature from ancient Greece to Renaissance Europe, Eric MacPhail identifies a tradition of epideictic rhetoric that began with the sophists but was cultivated and employed most vigorously by Renaissance political thinkers. Presenting examples from the writings of Lorenzo Valla, Niccolò Machiavelli, Desiderius Erasmus, Michel de Montaigne, Joachim du Bellay, and Jean Bodin, among others, MacPhail shows that by inscribing a positive value to an object worthy of blame, cultural values are turned on their head. MacPhail traces the use of this technique to critique the values of the classical and scholastic traditions. Recognizing and engaging with this tradition, MacPhail argues, can reinvigorate our study of the history of social thought and reveal further the roots of modern social science. Rigorous and lucid, Odious Praise presents a rhetoric capable of suspending and thus critiquing the values of a culture, and in doing so, it uncovers the first serious attempts at social thought and the seedbed of modern social science. It will be welcomed by scholars of Renaissance literature and culture, the history of rhetoric, and political thought.

Challenging the familiar view of Francesco Petrarca as the ‘father of humanism’, this book offers a comprehensive re-interpretation of Petrarch’s debt to the theology of St. Augustine, and advances a provocative new reading of the development of humanism in Italy.

Peter Adamson presents an engaging and wide-ranging introduction to two great intellectual cultures: Byzantium and the Italian Renaissance. First he tells the story of philosophy in the Eastern Christian world, from the 8th century to the 15th century, then he explores the rebirth of philosophy in Italy in the era of Machiavelli and Galileo.

John Milton's Paradise Lost has long been celebrated for its epic subject matter and the poet's rhetorical fireworks. In Between Worlds, William Pallister analyses the rhetorical methods that Milton uses throughout the poem and examines the effects of the three distinct rhetorical registers observed in each of the poem's major settings: Heaven, Hell, and Paradise. Providing insights into Milton's relationship with the history of rhetoric as well as rhetorical conventions and traditions, this rigorous study shows how rhetorical forms are used to highlight and enhance some of the poem's most important themes including free will, contingency and probability. Pallister also provides an authoritative discussion of how the omniscience of God in Paradise Lost affects Milton's verse, and considers how God's speech applies to the concept of the perfect rhetorician. An erudite and detailed study of both Paradise Lost and the history of rhetoric, Between Worlds is essential reading that will help to unravel many of the complexities of Milton's enduring masterpiece.

The culmination of a lifetime's scholarly work, this study by Sister Prudence Allen traces the concept of woman in relation to man in Western thought from ancient times to the present. This volume is the second in her study, in which she explores claims about sex and gender identity in the works of over fifty philosophers (both men and women) in the late medieval and early Renaissance periods.

The Companion to the Theology of John Mair explores the major theological themes present in Mair's commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Mair is often noted for his importance as a leading sixteenth-century Parisian intellectual. The essays in this volume explore his influence as a teacher and thinker in this critical place and time. The volume gives special consideration to his attitude toward humanism and his deep familiarity with the scholastic past. The book is divided into four sections. It explores Mair's attitude toward faith and theology, his theological metaphysics, his ethics and role in the development of moral casuistry, and his views on justification and sacramentology. The volume likewise includes a substantial appendix (including an edition of the table of questions for all four books of Mair's commentary) aimed to assists scholars in further exploration of Mair's Theology.

Scholars of religion have always been fascinated by asceticism. Some have even regarded this radical way of life-- the withdrawal from the world, combined with practices that seriously affect basic bodily needs, up to extreme forms of self-mortification --as the ultimate form of a true religious quest. This view is rooted in hagiographic descriptions of prominent ascetics and in other literary accounts that praise the ascetic life-style. Scholars have often overlooked, however, that in the history of religions ascetic beliefs and practices have also been strongly criticized, by followers of the same religious tradition as well as by outsiders. The respective sources provide sufficient evidence of such critical strands but surprisingly as yet no attempt has been made to analyze this criticism of asceticism systematically. This book is a first attempt of filling this gap. Ten studies present cases from both Asian and European traditions: classical and medieval Hinduism, early and contemporary Buddhism in South and East Asia, European antiquity, early and medieval Christianity, and 19th/20th century Aryan religion. Focusing on the critics of asceticism, their motives, their arguments, and the targets of their critique, these studies provide a broad range of issues for comparison. They suggest that the critique of asceticism is based on a worldview differing from and competing with the ascetic worldview, often in one and the same historical context. The book demonstrates that examining the critics of asceticism helps understand better the complexity of religious traditions and their cultural contexts. The comparative analysis, moreover, shows that the criticism of asceticism reflects a religious worldview as significant and widespread in the history of religions as asceticism itself is.

The work of Lorenzo Valla (1406-57) has enjoyed renewed attention in recent years, as have new critical editions of his texts. One of the most interesting interpreters of Valla, Salvatore I. Camporeale, O.P., had a following among scholars who read Italian, but very little of his work saw the light in English before his death in 2002. This book presents two of Camporeale’s studies on Valla in English, which examine in detail two of Valla’s works: his treatise on the Donation of Constantine (undoubtedly the work for which Valla is best known) and his Encomium of Saint Thomas Aquinas, delivered publicly in the last year of Valla’s life and, in Camporeale’s reading, summing up Valla’s multi-faceted thought.

The authors strive to illuminate every aspect of Erasmus’ life, work, and legacy while providing an expert synthesis of the most inspiring research in the field. There is no volume to compare or to compete with this compendium of all Erasmian knowledge.