The idea of natural law, which has ancient roots in the Stoic philosophical heritage and in the Roman legal tradition, is the subject of a large and complex process of elaboration which starts in the end of the 11th century and goes up to the age of the great scholastic authors.

The book is concerned with arguably the single harshest subsistence crisis in Europe in the last two millennia: the Great Famine of 1315-17.

This book is the first in-depth, diachronic philosophical study of some of the most important thirteenth-century theories of faith, including those of Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, Aquinas, Peter John Olivi, Henry of Ghent, Godfrey of Fontaines and John Duns Scotus.