The first title in the Variorum Collected Studies series was published in 1970. Since then over 1000 titles have appeared in the series, and it has established a well-earned international reputation for the publication of key research across a whole range of subjects within the fields of history. The history of the medieval world remains central to the series, with Byzantine studies a particular speciality. Other major strands include Islamic studies and the histories of philosophy, science and medicine.
Each title in the Variorum Collected Studies series brings together for the first time a selection of articles by a leading authority on a particular subject. These studies are reprinted from a vast range of learned journals, Festschrifts and conference proceedings. They are an essential resource making available research that is scattered or inaccessible in all but the most specialized libraries.
For further information about contributing to the series please contact Michael Greenwood at [email protected]
By Robert S. Nelson
January 12, 2007
Written over nearly three decades, the fifteen essays involve the three a's of the title, art, agency, and appreciation. The first refers to the general subject matter of the book, Byzantine art, chiefly painting, of the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries, the second to its often human-like ...
By Benjamin Z. Kedar
November 28, 2006
Steven Runciman characterized intellectual life in the Frankish Levant as 'disappointing'; Joshua Prawer claimed that the Franks refused to open up to the East's intellectual achievements. The present collection, the second by Benjamin Kedar in the Variorum series, presents facts that require a ...
By Donald F. Duclow
November 28, 2006
The medieval Christian West's most radical practitioners of a Neoplatonic, negative theology with a mystical focus are John Scottus Eriugena, Meister Eckhart and Nicholas Cusanus. All three mastered what Cusanus described as docta ignorantia: reflecting on their awareness that they could know ...
By Richard Kay
September 28, 2006
Dante's Comedy is a puzzling poem because the author wanted to lead his readers to understanding by engaging their curiosity. While many obscure matters are clarified in the course of the poem itself, others have remained enigmas that have fascinated Dantists for centuries. Over the last ...
By Frank A. D’Accone
September 28, 2006
Based on previously unpublished documents, Frank D'Accone sets the background for the musical efflorescence that occurred in Florence in the later 15th century and the emergence in the early 16th century of a new Florentine school of composers. Tracing the origins and development of musical chapels...
By Roger S. Bagnall
August 28, 2006
This second collection by Roger Bagnall brings together a further two dozen of his studies, this time covering Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Egypt, published over the last thirty years. Many of the articles deal with issues of historical and papyrological method: the restoration of papyrus ...
By Hugh Kennedy
August 28, 2006
The essays in this volume deal with the history of the Middle East from c.550 to 1000 AD. There are three main themes: Syria in Late Antiquity and the changes and continuities with the early Islamic period; relations between Muslims and the Byzantine Empire from the 8th to the 11th centuries; and ...
By James Howard-Johnston
July 28, 2006
The last, longest and most damaging of the wars fought between East Rome and Sasanian Persia (603-628) brought the classical phase of west Eurasian history to a dramatic close. Despite its evident significance, not least as the distant setting for Muhammad's prophetic mission, this last great war ...
By F. Edward Cranz, Nancy Struever
July 28, 2006
The previous Variorum collection of studies by the late F. Edward Cranz focused specifically on Nicholas of Cusa. The present selection has an equally clear focus, but a far broader scope: it brings together materials on his major thesis, of a fundamental reorientation of the categories of thought ...
By Mario Esposito, Michael M. Gorman
July 28, 2006
The twenty papers by Mario Esposito (1887-1975) reprinted here date from 1909 to 1961, and complete the collection of his Hiberno-Latin studies presented in the first two volumes of his papers, published in the Variorum Collected Studies Series in 1988 and 1990. The studies exemplify Esposito's ...
By J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz
June 28, 2006
The essays in this second collection of articles by Professor Liebeschuetz deal with several aspects of the history of Late Antiquity. One theme is the prehistory of Late Antique ethical monotheism, which is illustrated by studies of pagan cults, Mithraism and Judaism. Several essays discuss the ...
By Pauline Stafford
June 28, 2006
This collection of studies by Pauline Stafford brings together a series of essays on Anglo-Saxon and early Norman England. Virtually all focus on political life, and with the highest levels of English society: with the king, the royal family and the elites, though one hitherto unpublished essay ...