Die Lehre von den Elementarqualitäten gehört auch zu den Grundlagen der antiken griechischen Medizin und Biologie. Dies gilt sowohl für die Hippokratiker als auch für Galen aus Pergamon (129–ca. 200 n. Chr.). Der Pergamener entwickelte die Aristotelische Qualitätenlehre zu einem der wichtigsten Prinzipien seines philosophisch-biologischen Systems, so dass er selbst in der neueren Forschung “Qualitativist” und sein System “Qualitativismus” genannt werden.

In 634, the freshly consecrated bishop Birinus, having promised Pope Honorius that he would spread the faith in “the remotest. regions of England,” arrived in the territory of the West Saxons (or the Gewisse, as they were then still known). He found them so thoroughly pagan (“paganissimas”) that he opted to remain there to preach the gospel. The following year he baptized Cynegils, the first of the West Saxon kings to accept Christianity. The Brytenwalda, Oswald of Northumbria, stood sponsor. Together, the two kings endowed Birinus with the civitas of Dorchester-on-Thames as his see. Over the next few years, both Cynegils's son Cwichelm and his grandson Cuthred were baptized, the latter in 639 by Birinus in Dorchester. It would have been in or near this year that Aldhelm was born,” though his native area was said by William of Malmesbury to have been Sherborne, in the southwest of Wessex, on the border with the British kingdom of Dumnonia (Devon and Cornwall) and, thus, far from Birinus's episcopal seat in the upper Thames valley. Would this be an indication of the rapid spread of Christianity in the West Saxon kingdom? Notably, well within a generation a West Saxon became the first native-born archbishop of Canterbury when Deusdedit was consecrated in 655 (his Anglo-Saxon name was remembered as Friduwine).” But where Deusdedit received his ecclesiastical training is unknown; Bede can tell us only that he was a “West Saxon by race” (“de gente Occidentalium Saxonum”).” Or was Aldhelm's being Christian due to his royal status? It may be that another of Cynegils's sons, Centwine, who became king in Wessex in 676, was Aldhelm's father.” By this time, Aldhelm was a senior cleric in the West Saxon church.

Chaucer's Summoner tells the tale of a corrupt friar who, while trying to obtain a donation from his bedridden and irate patron Thomas, demonstrates his hypocrisy by giving Thomas's wife a very specific dinner order and immediately following it up with a long sermon on the importance of fasting. Like most medieval preachers, Friar John appeals to biblical exempla:

For nearly a century, scholars have ascribed a short treatise known as the De octo quaesiionibus to the Venerable Bede. In this work they have found unusual and important information about Bede and Anglo-Saxon England. It may preserve an exegetical teaching of Theodore of Canterbury, the seventh-century archbishop who figures so largely in Bede's Hisioria Ecclesiasiica. It includes a description of an illustration in an early manuscript of Paul's epistles. Yet another passage has interested historians of liturgy. All of this is in addition to the information that the treatise is considered to provide about Bede's thought and exegetical methods. As scholars have discovered and digested this material, the De octo quaestionibus has become a work of growing importance for the study of Bede.

More or less covering lines 1071a-1159a (not counting the introductory verses), the Finnsburg digression comprises the longest and most intensively studied episode in Beowulf. Its context in the poem may be summarized briefly. Beowulf has mortally wounded Grendel. War-leaders from surrounding territories follow Grendel's tracks to the mere, now boiling with gore. On the way back a warrior sings of Sigemund and Heremod. Horse races are held, and the Danes and their guests gawk at Grendel's arm, which has been hung from a beam in Heorot. Hroðgar acknowledges Beowulf as an adoptive “son,” and a lavish celebration honors the hero, who secures five dynastic treasures not only in recognition of his valor and but also as confirmation of retainership and possibly of Hroðgar's adoption. Immediately following the bestowal of these gifts, a poet recites Finnsburg “fore Healfdenes I hildewisan” (“before Healfdene's warriors,” 1064). The tale commemorates a Danish victory over Frisians, a triumph which all agree should compliment Danish resolve. In fact, just before the episode opens, the Scylding Hntef is called a “hæleð Healf-Dena” (“hero of the Half-Danes,” 1069a), an epithet explicitly linking audience and characters.

Two serious internal challenges to Carolingian royal authority disturbed the middle years of Charlemagne's reign. Neither is mentioned in the officially approved recensions of the Frankish Royal Annals, but Einhard tells us about both of them in the twentieth chapter of that ruler's “Life,” and various information was included in other annalistic traditions (Exhibit 1). In 785/86 a group of magnates in Eastern Francia and Thuringia opposed royal policies and denied or renounced their loyalty to the king; their opposition was aggravated, no doubt, by the demands of Charlemagne's campaigns against the Saxons, which placed heavy burdens on their adjacent territories.” The second, in 792, was centered around the royal palace at Regensburg on the Danube where Charlemagne had been since the spring of 791 in order to direct operations against the Avars and to suppress any lingering opposition in Bavaria, which he had annexed barely three years earlier in 788. The most noteworthy aspect of this second domestic insurrection was participation by a senior member of the Carolingian family itself: Charlemagne's oldest son, Pippin, who was born in the mid-to-Iate 760s and, thus, certainly of major age and a responsible adult capable of independent rule.

During late antiquity, an interesting doctrinal shift can be observed: Aristotelian logic and its Neoplatonic complements, in particular the teachings of Aristotle's Categories and Porphyry's Isagoge, were progressively accepted as a tool in Christian theology. This acceptance met drawbacks and was never unanimous. Among the authors who used concepts that originated in logic in order to support their theological thinking, we can mention, on very different accounts, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, John Philoponus, Leontius of Byzantium, Maximus the Confessor, Theodore of Raithu, and John of Damascus, the author of an important Dialectica. In the Byzantine context, handbooks of logic were written specifically for Christian theologians, showing that logic was perceived to be an important tool for theological thinking.

The conferral of sainthood was no light matter in the late Middle Ages. An increasing emphasis on the papacy's right to discern between “authentic” and “false” sanctity meant that while many men and women were locally venerated as saints, few were officially recognized to have formally achieved this pinnacle of holiness. Out of the hundreds of new saints that emerged between 1198 and 1431, only thirty-five individuals were canonized.' Part of the reason for the dearth of holy men and women created by papal mandate in this period was the intrusion of political concerns, which had a tremendous impact on who attained the status of “saint.” Spiritual merit, as evidenced by moral virtues and attested miracles, was only one aspect of the medieval canonization process. Another integral facet was compliance with papal ends; in other words, successful candidates often were supported by communities willing to submit to papal wishes.” Thus when official recognition of sanctity occurred, it came at the cost of not only religious but also political obedience to the papacy. Conversely, those towns whose loyalty to the pope was suspect often found their petitions for a canonization inquiry ignored. Habitually recalcitrant towns might even find their veneration of a putative saint actively opposed by papal agents such as inquisitors. These types of situations occasionally led to protracted battles in which the saint's followers refused to capitulate to authorities and cease venerating the person in question.

Entre las prácticas y creencias varias que compartieron el nombre de magia en la baja edad media descollan la nigromancia y la magia natural como las dos principales corrientes de la magia medieval de tradición escrita. La nigromancia era conceptualmente más próxima a la religión, en el sentido de que pretendía obtener la ayuda de unos poderes sobrenaturales — espíritus, demonios — por medio de ritos, si bien − o quizás por esto mismo — era la más combatida por la Iglesia. En cambio, la magia natural resultaba más próxima a las ciencias medievales, puesto que su finalidad era conocer y explotar los mecanismos de la naturaleza. Aún así los escolásticos medievales distinguian entre un conocimiento racional bien explicado en el marco de su concepción física del universo y un conocimiento, a menudo también muy útil, que solo se podía adquirir por experiencia porque escapaba a la razón, Es de este tipo de conocimiento del que se ocupaba la magia natural, fundamentada en las propiedades ocultas existentes en la na turaleza.