This article investigates a series of additions made to JRL Gaster MS 2037, a newly identified copy of Peter of Poitier‘s Compendium historiae in genealogia Christi. Following a detailed description and dating of the manuscript, it investigates two sets of additions to the roll in depth. It establishes that the first motive behind the inclusion of such additions was educative – serving to extend the historic information given in the Compendium, while the second motive was devotional – elevating the status (...) of the Virgin Mary through the enhancement of her genealogical record. Given the fact that the manuscript was produced in the mid-fifteenth century, this focus on the Virgin likely had a polemic purpose, situating the manuscript in the context of debates over the Immaculate Conception, and using Alexander Nequams Expositio super Cantica canticorumto this end. In identifying the sources used, as well as the limits on the compiler imposed by the physical form of the roll, this examination of Gaster MS 2037 offers an insight into the later reception of this popular text. (shrink)

CHAPTER ONE Augustine the Philosopher There are, according to Augustine in the early work entitled soliloquia, two principal (indeed, strictly speaking, ...

In his great poemThe Wreck of the DeutschlandGerard Manley Hopkins evokes the conversions of Paul and Augustine as two contrasting examples of the way in which God may intervene in human affairs:With an anvil-dingAnd with fire in him forge thy willOr rather, rather then, stealing as SpringThrough him, melt him but master him still:Whether at once, as once at a crash Paul,Or as Austin, a lingering-out sweet skill….

Prefrontal cortex is dysregulated in women with restricting anorexia nervosa . It is not known whether appetitive non-conscious stimuli bias cognitive responses in those with RAN. Thirteen women with RAN and 20 healthy controls completed a dorsolateral PFC working memory task and an anterior cingulate cortex conflict task, while masked subliminal food, aversive and neutral images were presented. During the DLPFC task, accuracy was higher in the RAN compared to the HC group, but superior performance was compromised when subliminal food (...) stimuli were presented: errors positively correlated with self-reported trait anxiety in the RAN group. These effects were not observed in the ACC task. Appetitive activation is intact and anxiogenic in women with RAN, and non-consciously interacts with working memory processes associated with the DLPFC. This interaction mechanism may underlie cognitive inhibition of appetitive processes that are anxiety inducing, in people with AN. (shrink)

Research on social influences often distinguishes between social and quality incentives to ascribe meaning to the value that popularity conveys. This study examines the neural correlates of those incentives through which popularity influences preferences. This research reports an functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment and a behavioral task in which respondents evaluated popular products with three focus perspectives; unspecified focus, focus on social aspects, and focus on quality. The results show that value derived with a social focus reflects inferences of approval (...) and reward value, and positively affects preferences. Value derived with a quality focus reflects inferences of quality and negatively affects preferences. This study provides evidence of two distinct inferential routes on both a neurological level, represented by different regions in the brain, and a behavioral level. These results provide the first evidence that a single popularity cue can in different ways influence the value derived from product popularity. (shrink)

It is appropriate that, following volumes devoted to Plato and Aristotle, the latest Cambridge Companion on an ancient Greek philosopher should be about Plotinus, who is generally regarded as the first fully fledged Neoplatonist thinker of antiquity, and of whom it can be reasonably claimed that he "is probably the dominant philosopher in the 700-year period between Aristotle and Augustine of Hippo". That claim—like the term "Neoplatonism" itself—is distinctly modern: as Martha Nussbaum rightly insists, the tradition of Western thought from (...) Descartes to Marx owes more to the Hellenistic philosophers—Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics—than any other ancient thinkers. The importance of Plotinus and other Neoplatonists to certain Western thinkers—the Florentine Platonists of the fifteenth century, the seventeenth-century Cambridge Platonists, the Idealist Berkeley in the eighteenth century, Hegel, German and English Romantic writers —has long been recognized, and modern scholarship has delineated the influence of Plotinus, his disciple and editor Porphyry, and the fifth-century Neoplatonist Proclus on some authors of late antiquity whose prestige in the mediæval period was paramount: Augustine, Macrobius, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Plotinus's complex style and method have become considerably more accessible, thanks to the magisterial critical edition of his Enneads by Paul Henry and Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer. Readers of English now have a generally reliable translation, based on the Henry-Schwyzer text, by A. H. Armstrong, and two outstanding commentaries on individual treatises, by Michael Atkinson and Barrie Fleet. It is, therefore, a good time to take stock of Plotinus's philosophical achievement in a volume of this kind. (shrink)