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When one thinks of the Church in the West, St. Augustine of Hippo immediately comes to mind as one of the great pillars upon which much of Latin theology was built. Therefore, in a discussion about the Arian controversy in the Western Church one would expect that Augustine's thought would emerge as important to the dispute. However, very little scholarship, past and present, has given much attention to the African bishop's works against the Arians. Granted, Augustine was not directly involved in any of the major Arian disputes of the fourth century as were St. Hilary of Poitiers or St. Ambrose of Milan. Nor can it be denied that during most of his life Augustine's knowledge of Arianism was mostly academic, having been gleaned from orthodox refutations of heresy. Nevertheless, Augustine's Christian life actually lay several great struggles with Arianism. First of all, the year before Augustine's baptism, during Easter week of 386A.D., the Arian empress Justina Augusta, mother of Valentinian II, had ordered troops to siege Ambrose and his congregation in one of his basilicas to try to get him to surrender the church to the Arians. Augustine's mother, Monica, was among the besieged congregation. Moreover, in 406A.D., Augustine was encountered with Pascentius, called himself an arian. Though rudimentary dispute of its content, it was Augustine's directly involved confrontation. At the end of Augustine's life, he undertook a debate with the Arian bishop Maximinus. As Possidius, Augustine's comtemporary biographer, informed us that the Contra Maximinum Arianorum episcopum probably was commenced by Augustine in 427A.D. and occupied the whole space of his remaining days. Augustine also alluded to the Arians in several of his other works. As a result, Arianism was not unimportant to Augustine's life experience. And we can say about what Augustine was confronted with Arianism was homoians, which was popular in the West until his later days.

There were several problems of the byzantine defence system concerning byzantine Syria in the early 7th century. They are largely divided in two parts. The one is military defence system, the other is psychological defence system. Military defence system was faced with problems in the decrease of number of army, no establishment of thema in Syria, the absence of positiveness of emperor to be at war, the tactical failure to be at war, the mental condition of soldiers and a little reinforcement of fortification. Psychological defence system was faced with problems in the oppressive measure of byzantine government against Monophysites and Jews who had a lack of confidence to policy of government, and a psychological unrest on the heavy tax which byzantine government imposed on local economy which was decreasing in the early 7th century in the area of Syria. So military defence system and psychological defence system, concerning byzantine Syria in the early 7th century, which were caused by the war between Byzantium and Persia mean that the wrong policy of byzantine government on local area caused troubles which made finally to turn syrian people to Arab.

The status of villein in medieval England merits study for its importance as one factor in a man's standing within his community. This paper seeks to expound and explain the procedure of 'suit of kin', which was the main common law method to establish in court whether a man or woman was free or villein. A party of litigants produced suit of kin by bringing into court relatives of those alleged to be villeins. The relatives then acknowledged their own legal status. Since all legal status was hereditary, and the alleged villein's status, therefore, the same as that of his family, the court could then declare whether he was free or villein. In principal, the procedure was quite simple. Its special interest, however, lies in its archaic nature which is illuminated by the details of how it worked. Suit of kin recalls a time before the birth of the common law when law in England was much more continental in flavor than was the case in the thirteenth century and thereafter. The assumption behind the procedure, therefore, required a degree of stability in family and village life which had demonstrably disappeared by the time common law records permit its study. Above all, the families of those alleged to be villeins were seldom without at least some undoubtedly free members. English lawyers never successfully solved the puzzles posed by those mixed marriages to make actions about status a practical proposition for the lord seeking to enforce his rights over his serfs. Their efforts to deal with mixed marriages illustrate the interplay between law and society in thirteenth-century legal innovation. In this paper, first, the suit of kin will be set in its European context, and the details of its working will then be examined in order to discover what kind of procedure it was. Secondly, this paper will examine the rules that the lawyers, Bracton in particular, adopted in order to deal with mixed marriages, and we shall then be able to see what general lessons emerge from study of this rather unusual procedure.

The battle of Stirling Bridge was a landmark victory that restored Scottish confidence and pride, erasing the memory of the debacle at the Dunbar war. The problem of Wallace's election in 1298 is that he was sole Guardian and that he was chosen because he had proved himself the military champion of his country. Between Murray's death in November and the battle of Falkirk in the following July, Wallace alone was in command. Scots had fought to rid their land of foreign invaders and to restore their lawful king. In 1298 Edward I had won in the Falkirk war and destroyed the authority of William Wallace. Wallace may have been moving towards the conclusion that the Scots could never achieve victory by their own efforts, for a year later he left for Paris to lobby the French king for support. The whole force of the Scottish diplomatic effort at Paris and Rome had been concentrated on the recognition of King John's legitimate title to kingship and the necessity of his restoration. On August 1305 Wallace was captured by John of Menteith. He committed for the robberies, homicides and felonies in the realm of England and in the land of Scotland. No opportunity was given for him to answer the charges. The sentence was to be carried out immediately. He responded to the treason charge, "I could not be a traitor to Edward, for I was never his subject.” On 23 August 1305 Wallace was taken from the Westminster Hall. He was hanged, drawn and quartered. His head was placed on London bridge, and the body quartered, with parts dispatched to Newcastle, Berwick, Stirling, and Perth. Wallace had done his work right well and truly, as builder of the foundations of Scottish Independence. The historical consensus regarding Wallace that emerged during the nineteenth century was that he inspired the national awakening of Scotland. The creation of an image of William Wallace is very important to the nationalist and the Scottish political party, especially members of Scottish National Party. They think that the Union of 1707 would be to finish the work of Wallace. So the story of Wallace came to be most associated with the nationalist movement in the 19th and 20th centuries.

This article examines how the 13th-century Parisian clergies and theologians responded to the uncloistered religious women known as "beguines," highlighting the way in which clerics employed the term "beguine" in sermons and the other materials. Clerics used the beguine as a positive examplar of the contemplative life, often comparing their own intellectual approaches to divine knowledge with the beguines' mystical knowledge. However, clerics also expressed misgivings about the beguines claiming the right to teach based on their direct knowledge of the divine. These phenomena should be understood in the context of the religious mood of the 13th century, notably the pervasive anti-pope and anti-clerical attitude spread by mendicant monks through, sermons. The theologians' and clerics' responses to the beguines' religious movement helps illuminate the religious climate of the 13th century.

The purpose of this article is to highlight the medieval representation of books as a social and political medium between author and patron. This study deals particularly with two iconographical themes in the illuminated manuscript frontispieces of the Middle Ages - book dedications from author to patron and book commissions by patron from author. The book dedication scene is one of the most frequent iconographical themes in medieval frontispieces and has its origins in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Despite the quantity of studies made by art historians who have classified iconographical types and transformations in space and time, it is only recently that historians have accessed this iconographical subject in light of the social relationship between author and patron and the anthropological theory of Gift Exchange as inspired from the work of Marcel Mauss. These grandiose dedications enhanced the patron’s power and prestige. At the same time, they also occasioned the author the opportunity to further seek his patron’s favor through this strategy of ‘Gift-giving’ in public and private spaces. Book commissions are another iconographical theme that demonstrate the author-patron relationship. However, commissions appear only rarely in manuscript frontispieces and thus have not been a main focus of historical discussion. A book commission emphasizes the patron’s direct involvement in the production of the book and his inspiration behind the book's conception. It also bestows upon the book’s author a certain prestige and authority of his own especially in the scene of the commissioner's visiting to his atelier. It also testifies the enhancement of the lay author's status in the Late Middle Ages. These iconographies provide an example of how the relationship between author and patron had come to the forefront and played a crucial role in medieval symbolism when book culture had been secularized by the Late Middle Ages.

Weber's city-study began with his questions why the modern captitalism and the modern civil society could have emerged only in europe and why their origins could be found decisively in medieval cities of europe, but not in ancient cities. It was associated naturally with the 19th century historiography which have sought the historical identity of the modern citizenship. In the 󰡔Stadt󰡕 he showed the arguments which depend largely on the his peculiar city concept as a idealtype. Through a idealtypical city concept of macroscopic and static perspectives he informed us of the way which enabled us to understand the city as a universal phenomenon in comparison with different cultural areas or epochs, although it had not originated from his own thinking. From various viewpoints his concept has come in for criticism. Methodologically it has been pointed out that the idealtype could not really comprehend the processes of historical phenomena. One criticized that historical phenomena could not in general be understood by a theoretical scheme. Furthermore, it was stated that all of the city-theories were useless for the city studies, so that they must be abolished. There remains still the controversy on the leading groups of communes who should have acted, according to Weber, appropriate on medieval economy. In recent studies the communes are regarded as social products with historical contexts rather than as political creatures which had been emerged with some events since the 11th century. The city-rural relatioship, in which the rural society should be dependent on th city, would be transferred with the formulation ‘the conquest of the city by the rural society’. Even it is pointed out that the difference between homo politicus and homo oeconomicus is simply a theoretical scheme. In spite of such different criticisms Weber has provided the historical city-study a new horizon of the cultural aspect in contrast to the 19th century urban history which had paid attention to the institutional and regal aspects. In the other hand it is due mainly to his city concept that the 20th century historiography of medieval city have developed in various directions. Therefore it should be continued to investigate his city concept with historical data or in historical contexts.

The Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH) is an institute for the study of medieval German history which is officially called “Deutsches Institut für Erforschung des Mittelalters”. Often the abbreviation MGH means the great series of carefully edited and published source materials of the medieval German empire from the end of ancient Roman empire to 1500 which are sponsored by the above mentioned institute. The institute MGH goes back to the society, called “Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichskunde” which was established by the Prussian reformer Heinrich Friedreich Karl Freiherr vom Stein in 1819. He had initiated the great project of collecting, editing and publication of the basic sources for the study of medieval German history. The first volume of this series appeared in 1826. The project MGH is the best example of the coincidence of the Romantic nationalism and highly professional scholarship in history of modern Germany in the 19th century. The motto of MGH, Sanctus amor patriae dat animum (Holy love for the fatherland give the spirit) indicated especially the patriotic passion of German nationalism. The first editor from 1826 until 1874 was Georg Heinrich Pertz who put the critical study of historical sources of the times into practice. He brought the project MGH on the solid foundation. The scheme of the collection designed by him continued to be followed up to now with some minor modification. The method and mode of operation in MGH were also stabilized under his leadership. The collection consists of five main areas: Scriptores, Leges, Diplomata, Epistolae as well as Antiquitates. Pertz was succeeded by Gerog Waitz who was a pupil of Ranke and had been for a long time active as a member of editorial board. Many eminent medievalists from Germany and, eventually other countries of Europe, joined in the MGH project of searching out and comparing manuscripts and producing scholarly editions. With the appointment of Waitz as the chief editor of MGH, the project and the society itself from the end of the 19th century became gradually institutionalized into the national academic system of united German Empire. The MGH was transformed from the autonomous association of private intellectuals and patrons into the national academic organization. The state financed the project and designated its head. After the troublesome era under Nazi regime, the institute of MGH was finally stabilized. It was situated under the aegis of Bavarian government and was ensured the autonomous status as a public corporate institute. The project, one of the greatest group efforts of historical scholarship, continues in the 21st century. In 2004, the MGH took a step which makes it even more extraordinary: all of its publications which have been in print for more than five years can now be read online, in photo-digital reproduction, via a link on the MGH homepage. As a whole the fate of MGH showed the possibilities and the limits of the great scholarly project of modern times. Well organized, it can produce enormous outcome of which an individual scholar cannot be capable. On the other hand such a great project is forced to be independent on the help of outer influences, i.e. the financial and administrative aids of the state.