Viator

Specialists in the political history of the early medieval German kingdom consistently present the royal government as primitive, particularly in comparison with the considerable administrative achievements of their Carolingian predecessors. An important element of this primitivist model is the contention that the kings of the Ottonian dynasty (919-1024) lacked the administrative wherewithal or even desire to manage the royal fisc, that is the panoply of properties and others sources of wealth that they inherited from the Carolingians. Instead, the Ottonian kings are presented as requiring a constant flow of plunder and tribute, derived from war, to reward their political followers and maintain their own dominant position in the realm. This study seeks to test the theory of Ottonian administrative backwardness through an investigation of the size and scope of the fiscal resources, and hence the wealth, of the kings of Germany in the tenth and early eleventh century. It finds that the Ottonian kings did not dissipate their inheritance from the Carolingians, but rather maintained a massive agglomeration of properties throughout the German kingdom. Moreover, the income derived from these fiscal resources dwarfed any potential income from either plunder or tribute acquired in war or from defeated enemies. The necessary conclusion, therefore, is that the Ottonian kings did not rule a primitive polity, as maintained by the current scholarly orthodoxy. Rather, they benefitted from the continuation of a Carolingian-style fiscal administration that assured regular and massive flows of income to the royal government.

This article reconsiders the evidence relating to the “ostentatious death” of Richard of Saint-Vanne (d. 1046), to support two arguments relating to the centrality of abbatial leadership in the ideology of the monastic reformers of the early eleventh century: first, that rituals and other forms of symbolic behavior associated with the passing of reformist abbots deserve analysis as a repertoire of acts and statements which derived their multiple meanings from the institutional and ideological contexts in which they were applied; and second, that Richard himself, his followers, and the bishop of Verdun turned Richard’s passing into a symbolic arena for the enactment of competing visions on abbatial leadership, monastic autonomy, and episcopal authority.

While the writings about Gerald of Aurillac, especially the Vita Geraldi, are an invaluable source for the history of the central Middle Ages, their dating and authorship has been erroneous. Odo of Cluny’s authentic work, written ca. 930 (BHL 3412, called the Vita brevior), is a much more limited version of the vita, little known to scholars. The more elaborately detailed version (BHL 3411, called the Vita prolixior) as well as additional miracle stories and a sermon for Gerald’s feastday all belong instead to that most infamous forger of the era, Ademar of Chabannes, writing in the 1020s. This conclusion can be made based both on internal and external evidence, including the surprisingly disproportionate inclusion of Limoges and its patron saint Martial in the longer version, its mistaken depiction of Gerald as a count, and its inclusion of wording that seems to anticipate the Peace of God and the trifunctionalism of medieval society. Correcting the dating and authorship of the two versions of the Vita Geraldi and, in particular, accepting the unreliability of the many details in the longer version, will have far ranging consequences for the history of the central Middle Ages.

The lintel of the west portal of the church of Saint-Hilaire in Semur-en-Brionnais presents a rare depiction of Saint Hilary of Poitiers and his battle against the heretic Pope Leo. Adjacent to the lintel are sculpted two images of atlants, presenting a unique combination of motifs associating them with the vice of luxuria. The article contends that the images of the Semur atlants play a meaningful role in the program of the portal and in its preoccupation with the struggle of the Church against heresy. The Semur atlants are thus studied as an example of the strategies of visual polemics against heretics practiced by the church. These strategies are compared to contemporary textual polemics, in order to discern both similarities and divergences. Furthermore, the article claims that these images reveal a profound understanding of the antique traditions and divergent meanings of the motif of the atlant. They thus exemplify the transformations of the atlant in medieval art and serve here to study the diverse ways in which classical motifs were adapted into the art of the Middle Ages.

The new approaches to global history established during the last two decades have stimulated interest in the wanderings of medieval ascetics, missionaries, and pilgrims differing quite substantially from the traditional ecclesiastical history, which has been mainly focused on monastic ideals, evangelization, and piety. Discussing the individual experiences of the Buddhist monk Ennin (9th c.), the Sufi dervish ʿAlī al-Hud̲j̲wīrī (11th c.), and the Franciscan missionary William of Rubruck (13th c.), the article explores to what extent and in which manner pious men who went abroad could become agents of cross-cultural interactions and transcultural entanglements in the Middle Ages.

This article argues that Gossuin de Metz’s Image du monde is indebted to both the Latin encyclopedic tradition and vernacular narrative, particularly the romances of Chrétien de Troyes. As the first vernacular encyclopedia, the Image du monde forges space as a new genre by combining these previous forms through the key notion of translatio studii. Not only is the medieval encyclopedia dependent on the transfer of knowledge from one language and culture to another, but Gossuin’s deployment of the translatio topos throughout his work evokes vernacular narratives. In this way, the Image du monde performs a transmission of learning from Latin to the vernacular as well as a transfer of scientific knowledge from a clerical audience to a broader audience familiar with narrative. The three different redactions of the Image du monde, although not all attributed to Gossuin, relate to Old French narratives particularly through the prosification of romance.

This article explores the creation and communication of memory during and immediately after the Stedinger crusade (1232-1234). Remembrance of the crusade is shown to be manifested in the creation of special memorial liturgies, in the foundation and patronage of local monasteries around Bremen and in the writing of chronicles and annals in northern Germany and Friesland. The article illuminates the complex relationships between local powerbrokers and peasant farmers, and demonstrates how the category of “holy war” was used to support the colonization of Stedinger land. The article also argues that control of the memory of this crusade was an important act of legitimizing the war against the Stedinger farmers. This article thus reveals both the possibilities and limitations of investigating the difficult and various processes of war memorialization in the thirteenth century.

This article examines the mystical language of sensation in the writings of Gertrude the Great of Helfta (1256-1302). In particular, it considers Gertrude’s gustatory language in the context of that presented in the reception history (Wirkungsgeschichte) of the established Christian spiritual tradition, especially innovations made by each Augustine’s and Bernard’s rhetoric of taste. The article argues that Gertrude leaves behind the more dualist aspects of their rhetoric by exploiting their more affirmative concepts of the bodily forms of knowing. Such body affirmative concepts fundamentally form the vocabulary that Gertrude uses to articulate a unique, somatic journey from human knowing to divine wisdom, as well as the carefully crafted discussion of Eucharistic devotion from which it flows. Thus, the article ultimately reveals the linguistic strategies and singular ideas that make Gertrude strike out on her own in relation to conventions that precede her and even to her contemporary thirteenth- and fourteenth-century religious women.

The article argues for the importance of the Arno Valley as a feature of backgrounds in paintings on pagan and Christian subjects. It shows how the Arno Valley is an expression of the benevolent participation of the Medici family in the state affairs of their native city and as a manifestation of the fear of Arno floods. The fluvial landscape was not portrayed uniformly but was adjusted according to the subject of the painting or text, revealing the impact of the Valley on the history and culture of Florence and those writers, patrons, and artists who worked to represent it. The fluvial landscape in the Nativity and Baptism frescoes by Baldovinetti and Ghirlandaio showed a view of the Arno Valley spreading in direction of neighboring Prato, a perspective differing from the view in Pollaiuolo’s paintings of Hercules, a formative tale in the early history of Florence. The zigzag shoreline of the Arno River is emphasized by Botticelli. Descriptions of the Arno River by Landino, Lorenzo de’ Medici, and Poliziano illuminate the depiction of its valley in contemporary paintings.

One of the main sources for our understanding of Pierre d’Ailly’s (1351-1420) apocalyptic conceptualization of ecclesiastical history and reform is the Tractatus de falsis prophetis II (DFP II). This article shows how the apocalyptic content of this work is entirely comprised of carefully rewritten passages from William of Saint-Amour’s (1200-1272) Collectiones. Given d’Ailly’s promotion of the mendicant ideal and his use of Joachite prophecy, his repurposing of the antimendicant and anti-Joachite apocalypticism of the Collectiones to speak of the danger of hypocritical ecclesiastical prelates during the Western Schism is surprising. Both d’Ailly and Saint-Amour, however, made extensive use of the prophecies of Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). This article argues that it was the Hildegardian nature of Saint-Amour’s apocalypticism-particularly his emphasis on an alliance between false religious and secular rulers of which Hildegard had prophesied in her “Cologne Prophecy” - that explains d’Ailly’s use of the Collectiones in DFP II.

This article examines unions of convents, both within and across monastic orders, to understand the priorities of religious women in those communities. Unions could be negotiated between the houses involved or could occur at the instigation of one nunnery over the objection of the other. The cases in this study, drawn from fourteenth and fifteenth century Bologna, demonstrate two important patters in monastic unions: the importance of maintaining the nunnery as an autonomous unit, if possible, and a surprising willingness of religious women to change monastic observance and order affiliation to gain an acceptable situation for themselves when unions with other communities became necessary.

During the fifteenth century, the cult of Virgin Mary was at its peak in Sweden, as well as all over the Western world. This article discusses the manifestation of the learned cult within Swedish popular culture in this period by analyzing contemporary prayers and art works from Swedish parish churches. The texts and the visual arts are discussed with reference to Speculum Virginum (5th chap.), an important didactic work that was translated from Latin to Old Swedish during the second half of the fifteenth century. It is clear that the arguments found in the popular cult of Virgin Mary are much simpler and more dogmatic, than in the learned cult. Nevertheless themes from the learned cult are frequently used in vernacular prayers and in the visual arts, especially as seen in the praise of Virgin Mary as intercessor. Probably this had something to do with St. Birgitta of Sweden and her revelations that made a strong impact on Swedish late medieval church life.

This article highlights the organic metaphors in “De concordantia catholica” of Nicholas of Cusa. Using these metaphors, he describes the functions of power, as well as the relations between pope and emperor and the relations between king and emperor; furthermore he wants to illustrate the crucial role of the concepts of “hierarchy” and “unity” inside the Church. In “De concordantia catholica” are found important examples of the transposition of the metaphor of corpus mysticum from the Church to the empire. Indeed, according to the theory of Ernst Kantorowicz, this metaphor expresses a deeply rooted vision of political theology and the passage from the ecclesiastical world to secular world.

Jean Gerson and Nicholas of Cusa equally venerate Pseudo-Dionysius, the presumed disciple of St. Paul, but differ greatly with regard to the intellectual context in which they situate him. For Gerson Pseudo-Dionysius is the exemplary proponent of the (Augustinian) tradition that emphasizes man’s inability to work for his salvation. Gerson presents Dionysian theology as a model that stands diametrically opposed to Platonism, which he condemns as a theory that supposes that it is in man’s own power to rise up to God. Nicholas of Cusa on the other hand, being aware of the affinities of Dionysian mysticism with Platonic philosophy, praises Pseudo-Dionysius as both the greatest of the Christian theologians and of the Platonic philosophers. He arrives at a theology in which mystical union is situated beyond the dichotomy of nature and grace.

Scholastic discussions concerning conjoined twins turned to issues unarticulated by early medieval authors and brought into sharp focus the biological causes of these anomalous births based on Aristotelian natural philosophy. For Albert the Great, irregular or excessive movement during intercourse and a ruptured membrane in the womb may bring about either a complete division of the sperm, resulting in separated twins, or a partial division, resulting in conjoined fetuses. Following Albert, philosophers and theologians reflected upon theories of personhood when they concluded that conjoined twins with two heads may be two persons with two rational souls, and therefore should be baptized separately or even may contract separate marriages. This determination demanded consideration of empirical signs of personhood and focused attention on a Galenic-Aristotelian debate between “physicians” and “philosophers” to assert the heart’s priority over the head as the body’s principal organ and as the essential “seat” for the rational soul.

The Virtutes apostolorum comprise a series of Latin rewritings of the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, with sections on each of the twelve apostles, that started to circulate in the West from the early Middle Ages. The earliest manuscripts are found on the continent in the second half of the eighth century. Little is known with certainty about the authorship of the individual sections, and as little can be said about the redactor(s) or collector(s) of the series as a whole. This article presents an attempt to shed more light on transmission and use of these texts through a study of their paratexts, more specifically titles and intertitles. These elements turn out to be helpful instruments in the endeavor to know more about the approach to the apostles as martyrs, as well as the use of these texts in the ritual context of commemoration in monastic (and cathedral) communities.

This article examines the cultural history of the name in early modern England, focusing in particular on the laudatory surname, anonymity, and un-naming in Othello. Reading across generic boundaries, Shakespeare’s play text is aligned with John Ferne’s 1586 treatise, The Blazon of Gentrie; Robert Tofte’s 1615 annotated translation, The Blazon of Jealousy; and Sir Edward Dering’s seventeenth-century alteration of a thirteenth-century heraldic roll of arms, the “Dering Roll.” A masterwork of semiotic freeplay, Othello presents a broadly diffused inquiry into the potential for destruction embedded in the name’s vulnerable manipulability. Through a reading of the play’s engagement with the form of the blazon, described by Ferne as a means to “open up and spread out” the subject’s identity, the analysis explores how deep-seated anxieties surrounding the early modern name combine with acts of misrepresentation to appropriate, subvert, or utterly destroy that specialized sign’s considerable cultural power.