Shaping Authority: How Did a Person Become an Authority in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance?: 4 (Lectio) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 2503568238 ISBN 13: 9782503568232

Publisher: Brepols Publishers, 2016

Synopsis

The cultural and religious history from Antiquity through the Renaissance may be read through the lens of the rise and demise of auctoritates. Throughout this long period of about two millennia, many historical persons have been considered as exceptionally authoritative. Obviously, this authority derived from their personal achievements. But one does not become an authority on one's own. In many cases, the way an authority's achievements were received and disseminated by their contemporaries and later generations, was the determining factor in the construction of their authority. This volume focuses on the latter aspect: what are the mechanisms and strategies by which participants in intellectual life at large have shaped the authority of historical persons? On what basis, why and how were some persons singled out above their peers as exceptional auctoritates and by which processes did this continue (or discontinue) over time? What imposed geographical or other limits on the development and expansion of a person's auctoritas? Which circumstances led to the disintegration of the authority of persons previously considered to be authoritative? The case-studies in this volume reflect the dazzling variety of trajectories, concerns, actors and factors that contributed over a time span of two millennia to the fashioning of the postmortem and lasting authority of historical persons.

About this title

About the Author

Brigitte Meijns is Professor of Medieval History at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. She is a specialist of the ecclesiastical history of the Middle Ages and is a member of the international research network Conventus.

Edition details

• Publisher: Brepols Publishers
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 2503568238
• ISBN 13: 9782503568232
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 458
• Editor: Boodts Shari, Leemans Johan, Meijns Brigitte