Augustine and the Disciplines takes its cue from Augustine's theory of the liberal arts to explore the larger question of how the Bible became the focus of medieval culture in the West. Augustine himself became increasingly aware that an ambivalent attitude towards knowledge and learning was inherent in Christianity. By facing the intellectual challenge posed by this tension he arrived at a new theory of how to interpret the Bible correctly. The topics investigated here include: Augustine's changing relationship with the (...) 'disciplines', as he moved from an attempt at their Christianization to a radical reshaping of them within a Christian world-view ; the factors that prompted and facilitated his change of perspective; and the ways in which Augustine's evolving theory reflected contemporary trends in Christian pedagogy. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 37, Issue 1, pp 23 - 44 The progress of modern editions of Erasmus’ works has brought us to a point where we can begin to reassess the significance of the turn in his career marked by the _Novum instrumentum_ in 1516. When the insights of recent research on Erasmus’ New Testament are combined with scholarship on early modern literary and print culture and in the cognitive history of neo-Latin discourse, the radical novelty of his biblical enterprise (...) appears more clearly. (shrink)