Brepols

Local churches were an established part of many towns and villages across early medieval Western Europe, and their continued presence make them an invaluable marker for comparing different societies. Up to now, however, the dynamics of power behind church building and the importance of their presence within the landscape have largely been neglected.

This book takes a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to the study of early medieval churches, drawing together archaeology, history, architecture, and landscape studies in order to explore the relationship between church foundation, social power, and political organization across Europe. Key subjects addressed here include the role played by local elites and the importance of the church in buttressing authority, as well as the connections between archaeology and ideology, and the importance of individual church buildings in their broader landscape contexts.

Bringing together case-studies from diverse regions across Western Europe (Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, France, the British Isles, Denmark, and Iceland), the seventeen contributions to this volume offer new insights into the relationships between church foundations, social power, and political organization. In doing so, they provide a means to better understand social power in the landscape of early medieval Europe.

Àl'heure de leur départ à la retraite, cinq directeurs d'études de la section des Sciences religieuses de l'EPHE ont choisi de rendre hommage à l'École : Odile Journet-Diallo, ethnologue africaniste, Christiane Zivie-Coche, égyptologue, Jean-Daniel Dubois, historien des gnostiques et des manichéens, Cristina Scherrer-Schaub, indianiste, et Jean-Paul Willaime, sociologue du protestantisme.

Chacun à sa manière retrace son parcours et ses préoccupations en soulignant, à l'occasion du 150e anniversaire de la création de l'EPHE, combien cette institution universitaire est originale et riche d'enseignements.

This volume concentrates on how the sermon, a pivotal element in mass communication, aimed to shape the people of Europe. Rather than setting up the usual binary divides, it highlights the linguistic complications, the textual inter-relationships, the confessional cross-currents, and the variations between public and private sermon dissemination operating at different rates and with variable results throughout Europe. Effectively the emphasis here is on how Catholic preachers and Catholic preaching carried on in the period between the handwritten and the printed sermon, a time when not only the mode of production was changing but when the very purpose and meaning of preaching itself would soon alter in a western Christian world that was becoming no longer completely Catholic. By examining case-studies chosen from countries with contrasting manuscript and printing traditions (Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Low Countries, Romania, Spain, and Sweden), we aim to examine some of the main historical, literary, and theological factors in the development of the sermon in Latin and the vernaculars, which is itself in the process of changing formats, and sometimes languages, at a time of religious ferment from the advent of print to the death of Martin Luther. These essays, which are effectively in dialogue with each other, are divided into geographical/linguistic sections organized along broadly chronological lines. They circulate from the peripheries of Europe to the centre, moving from areas where evidence is now scarce to situations of thriving production.

The oeuvre of Marc Boone (Ghent, 1955) has become standard reading for specialists of medieval European towns and cities, as well as for those interested in the history of state building - most notably that of the Burgundian polity. Honoring Ghent University’s venerable tradition of medieval studies begun by Henri Pirenne and building upon the work of his Doktorvater Walter Prevenier, Marc Boone also investigated taxation and the history of government spending, popular protest, and the persecution of “deviant” sexuality. Over the course of his rich career, he served as president of the European Association of Urban History and as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy of Ghent University. For more than twenty years, he taught the introductory course on historical criticism to every first-year student of the faculty, and thus had a major impact on the pensée critique of generations of young minds. Upon the occasion of his retirement in 2021, his former students have compiled this collection of some of his best historical essays, half of which have been translated from French and Dutch into English.

What did ‘religion’ mean for the Ancient Egyptians? Was the state involved in acting as a unifying and founding force for Egyptian religion or can we still identify some clashes between different religious practices? To what extent did different rituals, practices, and beliefs intersect and merge across time and space? Such questions have long preoccupied scholars working in the field, but they have often only been considered through the lens of official, ‘centralized’ texts. Yet increasingly, there is an acknowledgement that such texts require calibration from archaeological data in order to offer a more nuanced understanding of how people must have lived and worshipped.

The chapters gathered in the volume aim to offer a thorough exploration of Egyptian cultural and religious beliefs, and to explore how these impacted on other areas of daily life. Contributors explore the connection between religion and central power, the paradigms around burial and access to the afterlife, the interconnections between religion, demonology, magic, and medicine, and the impact of multicultural interaction on the religious landscape. What emerges from this discussion is an understanding that the only truly identifiable clash is that between modern, Eurocentric perspectives, and the views of the ancient Egyptians themselves.

Coins of the Ptolemaic Empire, Part 1, Volumes 1 and 2 (Precious Metal and Bronze) by Catharine Lorber, is the massive, long-anticipated catalogue of coins struck by the first four Ptolemaic kings. It essentially rewrites the sections on these rulers in J. N. Svoronos’ classic, but now much out of date,　Ta Nomismata tou Kratous ton Ptolemaion (1904). The body of coinage catalogued by Svoronos is enlarged by more than 300 further emissions in precious metal and more than 180 emissions in bronze, recorded from subsequent scholarship, from hoards, from commercial sources, and from private collections, and constituting about a third of the total catalogue entries. Lorber’s attributions, dates, and interpretations rest on numismatic research since Svoronos, or on the latest archaeological and hoard information. She also provides extensive historical and numismatic introductions that give the coins deeper context and meaning. The coinage of Ptolemies I through IV is supplemented by a few issues possibly attributable to Cleomenes of Naucratis, the predecessor of Ptolemy I in Egypt, as well as by coinages of Ptolemy Ceraunus, Magas, and Ptolemy of Telmessus, members of the Lagid dynasty ruling their own kingdoms outside of Egypt.

This volume analyses how and why members of scholarly societies such as the Royal Society, the Society of Antiquaries of London, and the Leopoldina collected specimens of the natural world, art, and archaeology in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These scholarly societies, founded before knowledge became subspecialised, had many common members. We focus upon how their exploration of natural philosophy, antiquarianism, and medicine were reflected in collecting practice, the organisation of specimens and how knowledge was classified and disseminated. The overall shift from curiosity cabinets with objects playfully crossing the domains of art and nature, to their well-ordered Enlightenment museums is well known. Collective Wisdom analyses the process through which this transformation occurred, and the role of members of these academies in developing new techniques of classifying and organising objects and new uses of these objects for experimental and pedagogical purposes.

Colonialism tends to arouse emotional debate, often based on incomplete knowledge of the facts and context. Colonial Congo fills this gap by introducing the general reader to the latest academic thinking and research. Answering concrete questions, pre-eminent historians offer a unique insight into the history of the Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo.

How did Leopold II’s autocratic government function and what do we know about the victims of his rule? How much profit was made in the Congo and who benefitted the most? What was life like for Congolese men and women during colonial rule and how did they feel about it? Did the Congolese offer resistance, and in what ways? What was colonialism’s impact on the Congo’s natural world? How did colonial policy affect infrastructure, education, healthcare and science? Did missionaries give colonialism a more human face? Colonial Congo’s explorations of these issues and more are revealed in this eye-opening, indispensable guide.

L’Apocalypse johannique a longtemps posé problème dans l’Église ancienne, en raison de son caractère hermétique et de l’abus qu’en ont fait les sectes millénaristes. L’Orient ne l’a reçue que tardivement, non sans restriction, dans le canon des Écritures. En Occident, elle n’a pas suscité les mêmes réticences. Elle le doit à un exégète génial, qui a su en proposer une lecture à la fois politiquement correcte, théologiquement acceptable et spirituellement utile, dans un contexte historique très différent de celui où elle avait été rédigée. Tyconius, qui a vécu en Afrique du Nord dans la seconde moitié du IVe siècle, appartenait à l’Église donatiste, mais il était loin de partager sans réserve sa doctrine. Il en prenait même le contre-pied sur des points fondamentaux. Cela n’a pas empêché que son commentaire de l'Apocalypse ait subi le sort commun à la plupart des ouvrages réputés, à tort ou à raison, hérétiques: il n’a plus été recopié et s’est perdu. Cependant, les commentateurs de l’antiquité chrétienne et du haut moyen âge s’en sont inspirés de façon à ce point étroite, qu’il est possible de reconstituer, par comparaison, leur source commune. Ce texte fondateur, dont on trouvera ici la traduction, a été édité dans la série latine du Corpus Christianorum sous le numéro 107A. Des renvois aux pages correspondantes de l’édition sont fournis dans les marges de cette publication.

Monseigneur Roger Gryson, professeur émérite à l'Université catholique de Louvain, est connu notamment par ses travaux sur l'histoire des institutions ecclésiastiques dans l'antiquité, l'arianisme latin et la critique textuelle de la Bible latine.

This is a companion volume to Texts of Greek and Latin Authors on the Far East (Brepols 2010) originally compiled by George Coedès and recently translated by John Sheldon. There are nearly one hundred different authors whose writings have been quoted in the text volume. All these authors are introduced and all quotations are placed in context and given detailed literary, linguistic and historical commentary by Dr Sheldon. The Greek and Latin texts have been re-examined and a number of suggestions for improved readings are made in the Commentary. In a number of places traditional interpretations of the ancient geography of the Far East have been superseded mainly owing to an improved understanding of the text. This volume, which should be used in conjunction with the text volume, will be a useful, at times an essential, tool for future researchers in this field.

Andrew of St Victor († 1175) was an exegete of a rare quality who set out to expound Scripture according to its literal sense, guided by the examples of Jerome and Hugh of Saint Victor.

The books of Samuel and Kings had a great influence on the spirituality and theology of the Middle Ages. To the medieval mind, they were more than just historical accounts; they attested to an important period in God’s dealings with this world. When interpreted typologically, they could also relate to other periods in the history of salvation. Yet before such higher spiritual wisdom could be attained, students at the school of Saint Victor first had to study the scriptural texts at the most basic level of allegorical interpretation: their historical, or literal, sense. The Commentary on Samuel and Kings offers such a literal explanation and gives an opportunity to study Andrew at work: as a critical researcher, who used concepts of grammar, literary theory, and science to elucidate the text and who made Jewish exegesis available to Christian scholarship, and as a compiler. His meticulous scholarship on the literal sense of Scripture formed an important component of the curriculum of the school at Saint Victor, where thorough learning was seen as a preparation for mystical knowledge and spiritual understanding.

The source text of this volume appeared in the series Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis as Andreas de Sancto Victore - Expositio hystorica in librum Regum (CCCM 53A). References to the corresponding pages of the edition are provided in the margins of this translation.

Frans van Liere holds a Ph.D. in medieval studies from Groningen University and is Professor of History at Calvin College (USA). His critical edition of the latin text appeared in 1996.

Il commento di Girolamo di Stridone all’Epistola ai Galati, composto nel 386 a Betlemme all’indomani della definitiva (e burrascosa) partenza da Roma, è un’impresa senza precedenti, come lo Stridonense dichiara nel prologo: applicando con coerenza tecniche note a Roma, ma guardate fino a quel momento con sospetto, lo Stridonense si propone di spiegare un’epistola paolina non più mediante la semplice parafrasi con qualche rara digressione filosofica che orienti il lettore (com’ era il caso dei predecessori latini Mario Vittorino e Ambrosiaster), bensì, alla maniera di Origene, come dibattitto aperto tra una pluralità di interpretazioni fra le quali il lettore può liberamente orientarsi. L’intuizione geronimiana ha, tra l’altro, il merito di dare nuova linfa ad un fenomeno culturale di grande portata per la letteratura latina in età tardoantica, che vede, nell’arco di pochi decenni, la fioritura a Roma, e più in generale in Occidente, di numerosi commentari paolini. Impossibile per noi moderni individuare gli autori greci delle molteplici spiegazioni menzionate da Girolamo; ma è certo che Origene è la fonte principale e che per questo l’opera geronimiana rappresenta uno dei frutti più belli della fortuna dell’Alessandrino nel IV secolo. L’interesse per il commento a Galati è infine accresciuto dalla diatriba a distanza che s’innesca tra Girolamo e Agostino a proposito della spiegazione dello Stridonense di Gal 2, 11-14: forse riprendendo da Origene una spiegazione assai peculiare dell’incidente di Antiochia, lo Stridonense finisce col provocare un’articolata e più volte reiterata protesta epistolare da parte di Agostino, il quale non ammette la novità geronimiana.

La versione latina originale del testo proposto in traduzione in questo volume è pubblicata nella collana Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina con il titolo Hieronymus - Commentarii in epistulam Pauli apostoli ad Galatas (CCSL 77A). I rimandi alle pagine corrispondenti dell’edizione sono forniti a margine di questa traduzione.

Giacomo Raspanti è Professore a contratto di Letteratura Cristiana Antica presso l'Università di Palermo (Italia). Si occupa di esegesi biblica patristica e di oratoria pagana e cristiana in età tardoantica.

This volume investigates the vivid and emotionally intense commemoration of the Passion of Christ as a key element in late medieval religious culture. Its goal is to shed light on how the Passion was communicated and on its socio-religious function in late medieval Europe. By adopting a multidisciplinary approach, the volume analyses the different media involved in this cultural process (sermons, devotional texts, lively performances, statues, images), the multiple forms and languages in which the Passion was presented to the faithful, and how they were expected to respond to it. Key questions concern the strategies used to present the Passion; the interaction between texts, images, and sounds in different media; the dissemination of theological ideas in the public space; the fashioning of an affective response in the audience; and the presence or absence of anti-Jewish commonplaces.

By exploring the interplay among a wide range of sources, this volume highlights the pervasive role of the Passion in late medieval society and in the life of the people of the time.

Communities of Learning: Networks and the Shaping of Intellectual Identity in Europe, 1100-1500 explores the fundamental insight that all new ideas are developed in the context of a community, whether academic, religious, or simply as a network of friends. The essays in this volume consider this notion in a variety of contexts and locations within Europe, from the pioneering age of translation activity in twelfth-century Toledo, when Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholars came together to discuss Aristotle, to the origins of the University of Paris in the thirteenth century, and up to the period of great cultural renewal in France, Germany, and Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The collected essays bring together disciplinary approaches that are often discussed quite separately, namely that of the history of ideas, and the sociologies of both intellectual and religious life, with a view to exploring the multiplicity of communities in which ideas are pursued. Underpinning these various essays is an awareness of the delicate relationship between education and the diversity of religious practice and expression within Europe from 1100 to 1500. The collection emphasizes the fundamental continuity of intellectual concerns, which were shaped by both classical thought and monotheist religious tradition, but interpreted in a variety of ways.

The title of this volume recalls the famous 1977 book by David Abulafia, The Two Italies, about the origins of the so-called ‘unequal exchange’ and ‘dual economy’ between Northern and Southern Italy. These are supposed to have provided the ground for the so-called ‘Southern question’ (‘questione meridionale’), one of the foremost topics in the whole of Italian history. However, trade is not the only relevant theme in a comparison between the Italy of Communes and the Kingdom of Sicily. This collection of essays points to different interpretative paths, which concern not only trade networks, but also less well-known aspects of the interrelation, such as the rise of civic tradition, the spread of Mendicant Orders, and the circulation of wealth through family relationships, women, marriage and patrimonial assets.

Les actes du colloque « Compétition et sacré au haut Moyen Âge : entre médiation et exclusion » constituent le deuxième volume de la série de publications du groupe international de recherches sur la compétition dans les sociétés médiévales (400-1100). Ce programme de recherche considère les objets de la compétition, les moyens et les formes de la compétition qui dépendent des capacités de régulation de cette même compétition : règles du jeu édictées par les autorités, mécanismes de médiation plus ou moins forts, équilibre de la terreur, la performativité des moyens : résultats en termes d’objets et d’enjeux, les possibilités de mobilité sociale, de changement de statut ou de position qui sont plus ou moins grandes selon les périodes et les espaces. La rencontre de Limoges place le sacré au centre de la réfl exion sur la compétition, mais il est nécessaire de ne pas restreindre le sacré à ce qui est consacré par l’autorité ecclésiastique. Si le sacré est bien ce qui est doté d’une force surnaturelle et qui isole, la distinction sacré-profane ne passe pas complètement par l’opposition clercs-laïcs. Avec le sacré on touche au pouvoir, puisqu’il ne peut y avoir de pouvoir légitime au Moyen Âge sans lien avec le sacré, quelle que soit la forme prise par la relation. Même si les clercs tendent à monopoliser de plus en plus le sacré par le biais du « consacré », la spécifi cité de la période prégrégorienne tient précisément à ce que le sacré n’est pas encore entièrement contrôlé par les clercs et qu’il est donc objet de compétition. En même temps, le sacré est un instrument de la compétition et il est facteur d’exclusion.

The Mediterranean has, for millennia, formed the heart of an intensive trading network of ideas, goods, and people. For the ancient populations of the Levant, Cyprus, and Southern Anatolia, interactions with the sea — from fishing to seafaring, and from trade to dye production — were a constant presence in their life. But how did the coastal peoples of the Bronze Age understand the sea? How did living on the shore influence their lives, from daily practices to mythological beliefs? And what was the impact on their conceptual world? This volume seeks to engage with these questions by addressing the relationship between environment, diet, material production, perception, and thought formation through a combination of archaeological analysis and engagement with primary sources, and in doing so, it offers unique insights into the conceptual world of the ancient Mediterranean maritime cultures of the 2nd millennium BCE.

Despite the prominence of conflicts in all mythological and heroic literature, perceptions of these conflicts and their participants are shaped by different cultural influences. Socio-economic, political, and religious factors all influence how conflict is perceived and depicted in literary form. This volume provides the first comparative analysis to explore conceptions of conflict and otherness in the literary and cultural contexts of the early North Sea world by investigating the use of metaphor in Old English, Old Norse, and Early Irish poetry. Applying Conceptual Metaphor Theory together with literary and anthropological analysis, the study examines metaphors of conflict and alterity in a range of (pseudo-)mythological, heroic, and occasional poetry, including Beowulf, Old Norse skaldic and eddic verse, and poems from the celebrated ‘Ulster Cycle’. This unique approach not only sheds new light on a wide spectrum of metaphorical techniques, but also draws important conclusions concerning the common cultural heritage behind these three poetic corpora.

Isabel Alfonso is one of the finest scholars on the rural and political history of the European Middle Ages. She is widely known for her contributions to the study of the peasantry, social conflict, and political discourses. Her research has transcended the boundaries of medieval studies, incorporating insights from disciplines beyond including legal anthropology, philology, and discourse analysis, among others. Over her academic career Isabel Alfonso has made a continued effort to make the work of international scholars known in Spain and to communicate advancements in Spanish historiography to international audiences; and yet most of her own research has only been published in Spanish. As a means to acknowledge her long-standing commitment to bridge different historiographies and overcome national boundaries, this unusual Festschrift offers a selection of her most relevant publications, many of which appear in English for the very first time. Each paper is preceded by commentaries by leading scholars that discuss the enduring relevance of Isabel Alfonso’s work, its richness and complexity, and its potential to inspire further research along a vast array of lines.

Commentaries by Jean Birrell, François Bougard, Warren Brown, Peter Coss, Wendy Davies, Chris Dyer, Ros Faith, François Foronda, Paul Freedman, Piotr Gorécki, John Hudson, André Evangelista Marques, Jesús Rodríguez-Velasco, Phillipp Schofield, Stephen D. White, Chris Wickham.

La théologie est née comme science métaphysique. Dès Aristote, la science la plus haute se présente comme une discipline philosophique qu’il appelle épistémè théologikè, « science théologique ». Ce que nous appelons aujourd’hui « métaphysique », c’est ce que les traductions latines d’Aristote appellent scientia divina, « science divine ». Or cette « science divine » aristotélicienne ne porte pas sur les dieux de la religion. Aristote emploie d’ailleurs un terme tout à fait différent pour désigner le discours mythique et religieux sur les dieux : il parle alors de theologia ; la theologia est une autre sorte de discours, celui des mythologies sur les dieux, tandis que la « science divine » du philosophe porte sur une substance première, séparée du monde sensible et principe de son mouvement, soit le premier moteur. Ce principe n’opère aucun salut. Il ne faut donc pas confondre le discours scientifique (la « science théologique » ou « science divine », sur le premier moteur) et le discours religieux. La difficulté est alors de comprendre quand, comment et pourquoi cette discipline philosophique suprême, la science théologique, s’est orientée vers les religions vécues par les hommes. Quand le mur séparant la theologia de la « science théologique » a-t-il été abattu ? Le présent volume s’est donné pour visée de se confronter à la nécessité d’une prise en compte, non seulement du fait religieux, mais aussi de la rationalité religieuse. Le terme « théologie » est ambigu. Il désigne tantôt la compréhension d’une religion par elle-même, tantôt la compréhension du divin par un discours rationnel. C’est pourquoi une étude comparée de la théologie comme science dans les monothéismes a un double objet : il s’agit d’abord d’étudier comment la spéculation métaphysique sur les dieux, le divin et Dieu s’est transformée en « science théologique » ; il convient ensuite de montrer comment les religions monothéistes se sont construites en théologies sur les canons de la rationalité grecque.