Browse Books

The focus of the Latin Vulgaire – Latin Tardif book series lies on the complex and multifaceted problem of late and so-called vulgar Latin. Specifically starting out from a wide range of methodological approaches involving all levels of language the series’ main purpose is to investigate how Classical Latin (i.e. the language used in the period from ca. 100 BC to AD 100 by authors such as Cicero Horace and Vergil) underwent the changes during the late period (i.e. mainly between the 3rd and the 7th century AD) that resulted in (the early stages of) the Romance languages. To this purpose three main types of linguistic sources are taken into consideration. First direct Latin sources which include for instance texts written by people with a lesser level of literacy (e.g. inscriptions soldiers’ letters) or by fully literate authors reproducing colloquial language deliberately (e.g. Petronius Apuleius). Second indirect Latin sources which consist of metalinguistic testimonies of ancient authors (mainly but not exclusively grammarians) dealing with the language variation typical of their time and region. And third the Romance idioms themselves: by comparing sources in at least two Romance varieties one may reconstruct Latin words or forms which were used widely in spoken usage but for different reasons are not attested in any extant source.

On 20 October 1870 pope Pius IX adjourned the First Vatican Council because of the Italian Rissorgimento troops approaching the city of Rome. Given that the Council had only opened less than a year prior on 8 December 1869 the act was emblematic. The council as the Catholic Church’s protective response against all things new – rationalism liberalism naturalism materialism and pantheism – was overtaken by history. Given its premature end not all documents prepared were completed and those that were promulgated became among the most controversial documents in the nineteenth and twentieth-century Catholic Church strongly defining its relations to other Christian confessions and modernity. Similarly around one hundred years after the suspension of the First Vatican Council its historical and theological study was overtaken by the event of the Second Vatican Council known for its rapprochement to the modern world. The history and results of the First Vatican Council were either forgotten or reinterpreted in light of this subsequent council’s decisions. In light of the 150th anniversary of this council the editors and authors of this volume set themselves the goal of re-examining this tradition of historical and theological reception (and forgetting) of the First Vatican Council.

In this volume scholars from North America and Europe explore the intersection of medieval identity with ethnicity religion power law inheritance texts and memory. They offer new historiographical interventions into questions of identity but also of ethnonyms conflict studies the feudal revolution gender and kinship studies and local history. Employing interdisciplinary approaches and textual hermeneutics the authors represent an international scholarly community characterized by intellectual restlessness historiographical experimentation and defiance of convention.

En devenant le principal support pédagogique des grammatici l’œuvre de Virgile a joué un rôle central dans la formation intellectuelle de la jeunesse lors de l’Antiquité romaine tardive y compris dans la formation rhétorique : les discours - principalement ceux de l’Énéide - ont fourni aux commentateurs du grand poète l’occasion d’expliquer des notions rhétoriques et d’analyser des exemples précis de situations oratoires. Les contributions du présent volume explorent les différentes facettes de cet art virgilien de la parole tel qu’il a été compris par les professionnels de la littérature et de l’éducation de l’Antiquité tardive.

The Victorines were scholars and teachers of philosophy liberal arts sacred scripture music and contemplation at the Abbey of Saint-Victor in Paris. This collection focuses on the three greatest Victorines: Hugh (d. 1141) who established the direction of the school; Richard (d. 1173) who developed Victorine contemplation; and Thomas Gallus (d. 1246) who culminated Victorine contemplative thought and transmitted it to other schools especially the Franciscans. They offer an innovative revival of the Christian spiritual and intellectual tradition for their reforming pastoral mission in their urban setting and for the Church.

Their contemporaries saw the Victorines as beacons of spiritual love and intellectual richness. Later reformers and thinkers held their writings as touchstones of contemplative love including for example Bonaventure Thomas Aquinas Jean Gerson Thomas à Kempis the Devotio Moderna and many others. The writings of the Victorines found broad appeal among later medieval readers as well as praise among early modern reformers Protestant and Catholic alike. In recent decades the Victorines have returned to scholarly attention and renewed appreciation. Scholarly studies critical editions and translation projects reveal the treasures of Victorine thought and spirituality.

This volume showcases the findings of recent research and scholarly advances in Victorine studies offering new readers a status quaestionis of the field. It also features new research by eminent experts in Victorine thought that points out promising directions for future research thus offering important new findings for established specialists.

Christians have observed vigils in both East and West from earliest times. In the broad liturgical tradition of Christianity the idea of keeping vigil appears to manifest the Church’s eschatological nature. Documentary evidence from the earliest centuries reveals that some Christians kept a night watch at the graves of martyrs and other heroes of the faith as to anticipate that dawn when the rising Sun of Justice would return in fulfilment of his promise. Eventually vigils appear not just for Easter Pentecost and saints’ days but also for Christmas the dedication of a church building and on Saturday evening of the uniquely Roman quarterly Ember Weeks.

Liturgical sources of the sixth seventh and eighth centuries reveal that such practices became relatively standardized with the assignment of specific Mass texts and scriptural readings yet we know very little about the precise elements which comprised a vigil liturgy and of their theological significance. At the same time these vigils were so important that they attracted to themselves the celebration of major sacramental liturgies during them. Hence the Paschal Vigil which existed for centuries as a vigil liturgy of scriptural readings and prayers gradually became the setting for the annual baptismal celebration. This book examines the nature of Roman vigil liturgies in the early centuries of Christianity to unravel the most primitive structure of keeping vigil and to provide a better understanding of the Paschal Vigil which Augustine of Hippo affirms as the ‘mother of all vigils.’

The North has long attracted attention not simply as a circumpolar geographical location but also as an ideological space a place that is ‘made’ through the understanding imagination and interactions of both insiders and outsiders. The envisioning of the North brings it into being and it is from this starting point that this volume explores how the North was perceived from ancient times up to the early modern period questioning who where and what was defined as North over the course of two millennia.

Covering historical periods as diverse as Ancient Greece to eighteenth-century France and drawing on a variety of disciplines including cultural history literary studies art history environmental history and the history of science the contributions gathered here combine to shed light on one key question: how was the North constructed as a place and a people? Material such as sagas the ethnographic work of Olaus Magnus religious writing maps medical texts and illustrations are drawn on throughout the volume offering important insights into how these key sources continued to be used over time. Selected texts have been compiled into a useful appendix that will be of considerable value to scholars.

Village communities were the heart of the medieval countryside. But how did they operate? This book seeks to find some answers to that question by focusing on late medieval Drenthe a region situated in a remote corner of the Holy Roman Empire and part of the prince-bishopric of Utrecht. Drenthe was an overwhelmingly localized rural world. It had no cities and consisted entirely of small villages. The social and economic importance of traditionally privileged sections of medieval society (clergy and nobility) was limited; free peasant landowners were the dominant social class.

Based on a careful reading of normative sources (Land charters) and thousands of short verdicts given by the so-called ‘Etstoel’ or high court of justice in Drenthe this book focuses on three types of conflict: conflicts between villages feud-like violence and litigations about property. These three types coincide with three levels of involvement: that of village communities as a whole that of kin groups and that of households.

The resulting comprehensive analysis provides a rigorous interrogation of generalized notions of the pre-industrial rural world offering a snapshot of a typical peasant society in late medieval Europe.

This book provides a richly documented study of vernacular translators as agents within the literary culture of Italy during the fifteenth century. Through a fresh and careful examination of these early modern translators Rizzi shows how humanist translators went about convincing readers of the value of their work in disseminating knowledge that would otherwise be inaccessible to many. The translators studied in this book include not only the well-known ‘superstars’ such as Leonardo Bruni but also little-known and indeed obscure writers from throughout the Italian peninsula.

Rizzi demonstrates that vernacular translation did not cease with the rise of ‘humanism’. Translations from Greek into Latin spurred the concurrent production of ‘new’ vernacular versions. Humanists challenged themselves to produce creative and authoritative translations both from Greek and occasionally from the vernacular into Latin and from Latin into the vernacular. Translators grew increasingly self-assertive when taking on these tasks.

The findings of this study have wide implications: they trace a novel history of the use of the Italian language alongside Latin in a period when high culture was bilingual. They also shed further light on the topic of Renaissance self-fashioning and on the workings of the patronage system which has been studied far less in literary history than in art history. Finally the book gives welcome emphasis to the concept that the creation and the circulation of translations (along with other literary activities) were collaborative activities involving dedicatees friends and scribes among others.

When reading a text our understanding of its meaning is influenced by the visual form and material features of the page. The chapters in this volume investigate how visual and material features of early English books documents and other artefacts support - or potentially contradict - the linguistic features in communicating the message. In addition to investigating how such communication varies between different media and genres our contributors propose novel methods for analysing these features including new digital applications. They map the use of visual and material features - such as layout design or choice of script/typeface - against linguistic features - such as code-switching lexical variation or textual labels - to consider how these choices reflect the communicative purposes of the text for example guiding readers to navigate the text in a certain way or persuading them to arrive at a certain interpretation. The chapters explore texts from the medieval and the early modern periods including saints’ lives medical treatises dictionaries personal letters and inscriptions on objects. The thematic threads running through the volume serve to integrate book studies with discourse linguistics the medieval with the early modern manuscript with print and the verbal with the visual.