Viator

"Having the King-Losing the King." Itinerant kingship is specific to the East Frankish-German kingdom. This form of rulership without a capital meant that the king continuously traveled from place to place, and providing his accommodation was the task of the royal palaces, monasteries, and the episcopal cities. Thus, a network was developed of palaces, which in addition to being royal quarters, exercised a distinctive function for the kingdom's economy. These locations held different places in a well-recognized hierarchy determined in part by proximity to the king, and contemporaries reacted to changes in their status in a very sensitive way. The example of the canonry of Saints Simon and Jude of Goslar, established by Henry III (1039-1056), shows how in the second half of the thirteenth century the canons tried to compensate for the shift from proximity to distance with a spectrum of countermeasures reaching from inventing an older past to establishing an annual procession of the relics.

"De tragoediis and the Redemption of Classical Theater." Honorius Augustodunensis is known for linking medieval liturgy with classical theatre in De tragoediis, one of 243 entries in the first book of his liturgical treatise Gemma animae (1100). Honorius suggests that the celebrant "represents by his gestures the fight of Christ in the theater of the church" in the manner of an ancient tragedian. Honorius' s analogy between the mass and classical theater remains intriguing interpretive territory as methods of analysis change. The question persists as to why Honorius used theater as a reference point for explaining the liturgy. Two themes in the Gemma animae throw light on Honorius's analogy: the mass as a kind of artifice, and the importance of labor and material objects as a means of knowing God. This paper argues that Honorius treats classical theater as artifice, on the order of painting, which is in the intellectual spirit of Hugh of St. Victor's Didascalicon (1125).

"The Virtues of Necessity: Labor, Money, and Corruption in John of Salisbury's Thought." This paper challenges the widespread view that the emergence of technical economics during the Latin Middle Ages awaited the emergence of university-based scholasticism. Twelfth-century thinkers gauged the temporal impact of the technological, commercial, and fiscal changes experienced by European society. The English churchman and author John of Salisbury (1115/20-1180), for instance, argued that the natural needs of human beings dictate the design and organization of the parts of the community. The body politic ought to be arranged so as to facilitate the intercommunication of economic tasks and functions for mutual advantage. John criticizes commercial activity aimed solely at personal profit, and he associates such commerce with the circulation of money. Money is antithetical to the "natural" circulation of goods and services necessary for the maintenance of human life. Yet ultimately John does not reject the accumulation of liquid wealth, especially by rulers, at least so long as its purpose is clearly understood to be the pursuit of the communal good.

"Talmud, Talmudisti, and Albert and Great." Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus) was one of forty Parisian ecclesiastics and scholars who participated in Odo of Chatêauroux' s investigation of the Talmud in 1247, leading to its condemnation on 15 May 1248. Although Albert the Great composed no systematic polemic against Judaism, scattered throughout his writings one finds a few references to the Talmud, to medieval Jewish scholars, and to Judaism itself. Nevertheless, no study has yet attempted to examine Albert's understanding of Judaism and the Talmud. Despite Albert's prominence in the new mendicant movement, which Jeremy Cohen has argued raised anti- Jewish polemics to a harsher, more aggressive level, Cohen remarks that Albert's attitude toward Jews and Judaism was relatively benign and traditional (i.e., Augustinian). This paper examines this claim, explores in Albert's writings his views of Jews and Judaism, and discusses his contributions to the increasingly aggressive missionary effort directed toward the Jews by his fellow Dominicans.

"Urban Diplomacy: Toulouse and Its Neighbors in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries." In the years 1202-1204, the consuls of Toulouse concluded twenty-two treaties with neighboring towns. This burst of activity is all the more interesting because it coincides with the period of ascendancy of "new men" in the town consulate. Neither the causes which led up to the conclusion of these treaties nor the arrival of this new group of citizens on the political scene have been adequately explained. This article first looks closely at the treaties to better understand the situation that produced them, and then seeks an explanation of the relationship between the treaties and the changes in the consulate's membership. A close examination of the terms of the treaties, along with an investigation into the goals and interests of the new consuls, sheds light both on this period of diplomacy and on the coming to power of these "new men."

"The Myth of the Medieval Minstrel: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Performers and the Chansonnier Repertory." The Old French trouvère song repertory, comprising about 2,400 lyrics with 1,500 extant melodies, originated ca. 1180-ca. 1250 and is mainly preserved in anthologies known as chansonniers copied between about 1250 and 1320: The editing and evaluation of these manuscripts, chiefly conducted by philologists and literary scholars, has generated copious discussions concerning lyric genres, intertextua1ities, and attribution. Although some recent editions include melodies, relatively little work has been done on reconstructing the performing traditions appropriate to this material, although these songs are among the oldest vernacular songs to have survived in written form in western Europe and are surely important in the context of cultural history. This article looks at the performers of the repertory, adducing evidence from a wide range of contemporary vernacular-literary descriptions of performances, nuances some current arguments on this basis, and suggests that the currently blurred picture derived from these eclectic testimonies could be improved when supplemented by more conventional historical evidence, including administrative records and relevant iconography.

"Vernacular Poems and Inquisitors in Languedoc and Champagne, ca. 1242-1249." The relationship between inquisitors active in Languedoc in the first half of the thirteenth century and the troubadour sirventes has been little studied. A group of poems related by ideological intention and form may give clues to how the inquisitors Bernard de Caux and Friar Ferrer responded to this important aspect of Occitan culture in the light of the Avignonet massacre of 1242. A confessional poem, "Dona sancta," and a debate between a heretic and a preacher (Las Novas de I'Heretge) are two texts which operate in a gray area between preaching and poetry, aiming to impress their audience with the threat posed by heresy. These poems may be in dialogue with a similar poem produced in the Champagne region during the same period, the "Chantepleure," which may be the product of the inquisitorial activity of Robert le Bougre.

"Justice in the Margins: Punishment in Medieval Toulouse." A remarkable sequence of drawings was added to the lower margins of a manuscript containing the Coutumes de Toulouse and its only surviving commentary, written in 1296. Deploying clothed and naked human figures, the drawings are explicit representations of public punishments in force at the time. This illustration cycle is unique for several reasons: it is an unexpected complement to the conventional miniatures at the main text divisions; it bears witness to rarely depicted medieval penal practices; and most enigmatically, the criminal character of this pictorial testimony is entirely at odds with the norms and procedures of municipal administration described in the text. This essay discusses the depicted punishments and the crimes for which they were invoked, setting the images into historical and visual contexts and analyzing what they may reveal about society in thirteenth-century Toulouse. In light of the conjectured identities of the text commentator and the manuscript's patron, the author suggests why the marginal illustrations might have been placed in the manuscript.

"The Splendor of the World's Tree: The Angelic Language of Salvation in Jacopone of Todi." This essay examines the mystical language of Jacopone of Todi, one of the most important poets of the Middle Ages. For many scholars, the essential contradiction of Jacopone's Lauds is the apparently unsettled relationship between apophasis and language. Jacopone's mystical poetry is usually seen as contradictory and unsystematic. The author believes that in the lauds revolving around the tree image Jacopone expresses a unique form of apocalyptic poetics. Read in the light of Bonaventure's theology, the author shows that Bonaventure's concept of "hierarchic" man is the foundation of Jacopone's expression. For Jacopone, Francis of Assisi symbolizes a human being who has climbed a divine tree of spiritual and linguistic purification and has thus acquired an angelic nature. However, in order to complete his mystical ascension the "concordant" man must share his spiritual insight with us; that is, he must preach the good news. In other words, the "hierarchic" man must overcome silence and express the Word to us.

"A Consilium of Fredericus and Oldradus on Super cathedram." This article discusses the consilium, Questiones proposite, written by two fourteenth-century jurists, Fredericus Petruccius (d.p. 1343) and Oldradus de Ponte (d.p. 1337). Quaestiones proposite defended parts of the mendicant friars' revenues against a quarter-subvention imposed originally in 1300 by Pope Boniface VIII through the constitution Super cathedram. The author argues that Fredericus's consilium was deficient and that Oldradus's was brought in to complete it. Quaestiones proposite appears in Fredericus's consilia collection bearing many traces of a true consilium. But it also appears in two different, longer forms: one in printed editions of Oldradus's consilia collection; and another in a unique manuscript, Cordoba, Catedral 40. The author analyzes the textual and doctrinal issues and argues that Oldradus revised the original consilium in two stages for classroom use. Contrary to papal policy and the judgment of some more illustrious colleagues, Oldradus's revisions attempted to shield the friars' revenues from the quarter-subvention.

"Spiritual Ambition and the Translation of the Cloister: The Abbey and Charter of the Holy Ghost." Through the translation, adaptation, and augmentation of a short spiritual guide, a series of late fourteenth-century English authors responded with optimism and caution to bourgeois desires to emulate the vowed religious life. The Abbey of the Holy Ghost was translated from a French source in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, and soon after a sequel was composed: The Charter of the Abbey of the Holy Ghost. Together these texts render the process of meditation and contemplation more accessible to lay readers while working to impose specific limits on lay spiritual power and autonomy. Fifteenth-century manuscripts featuring the Abbey and Charter reveal that during a period of acute concern over heterodoxy, the composite work was deployed in multiple orthodox ways, channeling bourgeois lay readers toward self-regulation while encouraging elite laywomen and nuns to seek contemplative perfection.

"Pierre de Liffol and the Manuscripts of Froissart's Chronicles." Pierre de Liffol was a Parisian libraire or book contractor previously known for the sale of a French language Valerius Maximus to Jean Sans Peur in 1410. An effaced flyleaf quittance, visible under ultraviolet light, now shows Liffol as the libraire producing ca. 1411 1418 an illuminated manuscript of book I of Jean Froissart's Chronicles (Bibliothèque nationale de France fro 2663). Its frontispiece indicates a probable descent from a manuscript which Froissart had commissioned to present to Richard II of England but which, instead, was confiscated by Louis d' Anjou in Paris in 1381. Two other manuscripts of book I of the Chronicles with this same frontispiece and with close textual affiliation, Besançon Bibliothèque municipale 864 and Stonyhurst College 1, were presumably produced by Liffol as well. At least five more contemporary Froissart manuscripts, with the same frontispiece and made by some of the same illuminators and scribes who worked on Liffol's manuscript, may eventually be attributable to Liffol's efforts.

"Richard Rolle's English Psalter and the Making of a Lollard Text." Richard Rolle's English Psalter was frequently copied and, by the early fifteenth century, was a source of religious controversy, as one writer complained that Lollard scribes had contaminated an otherwise orthodox text by introducing heretical glosses. Modem scholars, largely content to accept this claim, have struggled to identify exclusively Lollard elements in the manuscripts. This essay reexamines the problem of defining heterodoxy in the English Psalter by focusing less on the putative sources of interpolated passages than on how features of Rolle's original text-notably its emphasis on personal confession and its ambivalence about clerical authority-made it susceptible to both Lollard theology and ecclesiastical scrutiny. The author concludes that, while manuscript variation undoubtedly raised suspicion, the "heresy" of the English Psalter should also be seen as the product of historical change, as an ambitious vernacular text collided with a church hierarchy that was increasingly aware of the need of-and difficulty in-controlling any authoritative religious text in English.

"The Remains of the Royal Dead in an English Carthusian Manuscript, London, British Library, MS Additional 37049." This essay contextualizes two illustrations of the royal dead in an English devotional miscellany (London, British Library, MS Additional 37049), ca. 1460-1470. The illustrations, inspired by contemporary examples of tomb art, show the royal dead lying in state atop majestic tombs, while beneath we see corpses or transis, sewn into shrouds and attacked by worms, snakes, and macabre vermin. This essay discusses how these drawings might have been read and understood by the Carthusian community of readers who produced, compiled, and read this manuscript. More specifically, these images are read against what we know of contemporary social relations between the Carthusian order and secular society, including the controversial incursion of dead bodies of lay donors and patrons into burial spaces within English charterhouses. The drawings are used as a way of exploring some of the broader tensions between the Carthusian desert and the world outside the cloister, especially those tensions intensified through acts of patronage and beneficence.

"Merchants in Spite of Themselves: The Incidental Building of a Genoese Merchant Network, 1514-1557." This study traces Giovanni Brignole's textile manufacturing enterprise as it branched out to acquire a steady source of supplies, evolving into a firm increasingly based on long-distance commerce. By tracing the evolution of Giovanni Brignole's trades some observations not predicted by the extant business literature become apparent. Long distance trade does not seem to be dependant on closely-knit coalitions of traders working in concert with each other; neither does it seem to be reliant on infinite series of trades, such that the risk of the loss of the aggregate gain discourages the marginal gain from fraud. Sixteenth-century traders relied on a combination of long-term and short-term partners, and both were crucial to the flexibility and therefore the viability of trading networks. Giovanni begins his career as a junior associate of older relatives; his network evolves utilizing a majority of transient traders. Giovanni then sets his sights on creating a tight core of closely-knit associates. The author speculates that the economic environment of Mediterranean trade in the first half of the sixteenth century is characterized by scores, if not hundreds, of similar cores of traders interacting with each other through temporary self-regulating associations over the breadth of the western Mediterranean.

"'What is a man': Hamlet and the Problematics of Man." The Poststructuralist tendency toward erasure of agency and decentering of the subject contrasts sharply with the intense emphasis on agency during debates of the Renaissance- Reformation-Counter Reformation period: the era in which Hamlet is located. In contrast to the Aristotelian-Thomist paradigm which answers the question "what is a man" by emphasizing the primacy of reason, the play dramatizes the perplexity of reason-a condition which ultimately signifies a radical rethinking of thought. Selfhood is no longer based on principle on sameness, but on the principle of otherness. One consequence of this shift concerns a reinterpretation of the classical doctrine of hamartia or fault. Ironically, Hamlet the character becomes the instrument by which Hamlet the tragedy bursts the paradigms of hamartia and constancy of identity which Hamlet himself invokes.