The Measure Of Multitude : Population In Medieval Thought Paperback

Peter Biller

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 this book describes how medieval people thought about population through both the texts which contained their thought and the medieval realities which shaped it. They found many topics, such as the history of population and variations between polygamy, monogamy and virginity, through theology. 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. In this innovative new study Peter Biller challenges the view that medieval thought was fundamentally abstract. He investigates medieval thought's capacity to deal with concrete contemporary realities, and sets academic discussions of population alongside the medieval facts of 'birth, and copulation, and death

9780199265596

English

Oxford University Press

18 Dec 03

496

an impressive piece of scholarship. * Social History of Medicine * There are many strengths to this book, not least the imaginative lateral thinking required to conceive the topic in the first place ... an outstanding and original study, which approaches the high middle ages (in its reality as well as its thought worlds) from an unexpected but remarkably productive direction. Its heterogeneous interests should inspire a wide readership. * History * a trail-blazing book, packed with intellectual fireworks. It fuses diverse sources and scraps of information to detonate an explosion of insights. * Medical History * Review from previous edition Peter Biller ends his book with a question: is medieval demographic thought recognisably there? He has left his readers with only one possible answer - and in doing so changed the way we must think not just about the medieval past but about what has come after in terms of understanding the world. * Janet Nelson, History Today *