Brepols

This volume explores how knowledge was made in the early medieval book in the Latin West through two interrelated practices: collecting and concealing. The contributions present case studies across cultures and subject areas, including exegesis, glossography, history, lexicography, literature, poetry, vernacular and Latin learning. Collectio underpinned scholarly productions from miscellanies to vademecums. It was at the heart of major enterprises such as the creation of commentaries, encyclopaedic compendia, glosses, glossaries, glossae collectae, and word lists. As a scholarly practice, collectio accords with the construction of inventories of inherited materials, the ruminative imperative of early medieval exegesis, and a kind of reading that required concentration. Concealment likewise played a key role in early medieval book culture. Obscuration was in line with well-known interpretative practices aimed at rendering knowledge less than immediate. This volume explores the practices of obscuring that predate the twelfth-century predilection, long recognised by historians, for reading that penetrates beneath the “covering” (integumentum, involucrum) to reveal the hidden truth. Cumulatively, the papers spotlight the currency of two crucial practices in early medieval book culture and demonstrate that early medieval authors, artists, compilers, commentators, and scribes were conspicuous collectors and concealers of knowledge.

This book retraces the nature and role of credit in the pre-industrial European countryside. As part of an ongoing examination of credit and its provision in European past societies, the nine papers collected in this volume offer further insight into the ways in which credit was provided and managed, as well as the opportunities which credit may or may not have presented in effecting economic and social change between c. 1200 and c. 1850. In these respects, the papers in this volume add to a developing investigation of the history of credit and of indebtedness in northern Europe, which also coincides with a continued interest in the structures of credit evident in studies of southern European societies. The present volume also, for a broad North Sea region, develops a concentration upon the economic and social history of credit from the late medieval period to the early nineteenth century. The themes here are deliberately focused on the nature of credit, its form and structure, as well as upon the economic and social impact of credit and the changing availability of the same.

Phillipp Schofield is Professor of Medieval History at Aberystwyth University. He has published extensively on the social, economic and demographic history of late medieval peasant society in England.

Thijs Lambrecht is postdoctoral researcher with the Research Foundation Flanders and the Department of Early Modern History at Ghent University. His research focuses on rural markets in the Southern Netherlands during the early modern period.

La violence semble une composante permanente de la vie urbaine au Moyen-Age. Dans l'espace clos que ménagent les remparts, une société particulière s'est constituée en effet, que des dissensions multiples écartèlent. Jeunes et vieux, laïcs et clercs s'y adonnent également, partageant les rivalités politiques, les querelles d'intérêt, les rancœurs des laissés-pour-compte, ou les haines que développent parmi les populations chrétiennes la présence de minorités juives ou arabes. Quelles que soient ces manifestations - rixes, assassinats, viols, crimes crapuleux, attentats contre les forces de l'ordre, insultes ou blasphèmes - la violence trouve en ville le support de solidarités constituées et s'inscrit dans les rythmes quotidiens : ceux de l'habitation, de la rue, ou des multiples lieux de rencontre qu'offre la cité. Les temps exceptionnels de la fête ou de la révolte exaspèrent ses accès, la rendent sauvage et passionnelle. Pour la prévenir ou la maîtriser afin qu'elle se maintienne en deçà d'un seuil de tolérance, les autorités imaginent bien des procédés, depuis les instances de conciliation ou les prédications de paix jusqu'à la répression policière, en dépit des faiblesses qu'elle présente. Cependant, les peines et les exécutions publiques, qui légitiment les manifestations officielles de la pire cruauté, traduisent une interprétation sélective du crime et un jugement inégal des violents. Tolérée lorsqu'elle exprime le style de vie des notables, la violence est réprimée avec ardeur quand elle se charge d'une menace pour l'ordre politique ou social. A la fin du Moyen-Age, au moment où la puissance de l'Etat se veut démonstrative, la seconde interprétation devient plus fréquente et marginalise une fraction de la population urbaine dont on exagère ou redoute les excès.

Many of the contributions here collected were presented on the International Day of Studies entitled “Cristiani, ebrei e pagani: il dibattito sulla Sacra Scrittura tra III e VI secolo”, held in Lecce (October 4th, 2013). The book explores the different approaches to the Sacred Scriptures by Christians, Jews and Heathens considered according to their various internal, geographical and chronological articulations, and more generally to the debate on the Scriptures developed between the 3rd and the 6th centuries in a society in which the interactions and meetings between peoples, religions and intellectuals were rather widespread. In particular, the contributions, which contribute to the reconstruction of a complex and articulated cultural landscape, are organized in three sections: I. Contraddizioni bibliche e cultura pagana (S. Morlet, C. Moreschini, A. Capone); II. Esegesi e polemica: Celso e Macario di Magnesia (E. Saponaro, P. De Giorgi, A. Cataldo); III. III. Ebrei, pagani e Sacre Scritture (P. Andris, G. Rinaldi, M. Ryzhik).

This volume offers an in-depth exploration of the cultural connections between and across Britain, Ireland, and Iceland during the high and late Middle Ages. Drawing together new research from international scholars working in Celtic Studies, Norse, and English, the contributions gathered together here establish the coherence of the medieval Insular world as an area for literary analysis and engage with a range of contemporary approaches to examine the ways, and the degrees to which, Insular literatures and cultures connect both with each other, and with the wider European mainstream.

The articles in this collection discuss the Insular histories of some of the most widely read literary works and authors of the Middle Ages, including Geoffrey of Monmouth and William Langland. They trace the legends of Troy and of Charlemagne as they travelled across linguistic and geographical borders, give fresh attention to the multilingual manuscript collections of great households and families, and explore the political implications of language choice in a linguistically plural society. In doing so, they shed light on a complex network of literary and cultural connections and establish the Insular world not as a periphery, but as a centre.

What happens when scholars cross outside the perceived ‘boundaries’ of their discipline? What problems arise when a scholar trained in one field employs materials or methodologies from an adjacent subject area, engaging with new sources, research methodologies, and traditions, and how can such issues be resolved? Taking as its starting point the increasing shift towards interdisciplinarity seen within Viking-age studies, this collection of essays aims to explore the benefits and pitfalls that can arise from crossing disciplinary borders in this area, and to gain new knowledge about how to address issues that have occurred in previous examples of interdisciplinary combinations. The volume draws together contributions from authors in different disciplines, among them philology, history, archaeology, literary studies, folklore studies and history of religion, in order to hold a constructive and multi-perspective discussion on the benefits and issues arising from interdisciplinary research in studies of the Viking Age. Together, these chapters aim to bridge the gap that often exists between scholars from adjacent fields of research, and in doing so, to stimulate the trend in interdisciplinary approaches to research that can improve our understanding of the past.

This is the first comprehensive, interdisciplinary analysis to demonstrate that the representation of Infancy cycles on twelfth-and-thirteenth-century baptismal fonts was primarily a northern predilection in the Latin West directly influenced by the contemporary military campaigns. The Infantia Christi Corpus, a collection of approximately one-hundred-and-fifty fonts, verifies how the Danish and Gotland workshops modified and augmented biblical history to reflect the prevailing crusader ideology and rhetoric that dominated life during the Valdemarian era in the Baltic region. The artisans constructed the pictorial programs according to the readings of the Mass for the feast days in the seasons of Advent, Christmas and Epiphanytide. The political ambitions of the northern leaders and the Church to create a Land of St. Peter in the Baltic region strategically influenced the integration of Holy Land motifs, warrior saints, militia Christi and martyrdom in the Infancy cycles to justify the escalating northern conquests.

Neither before nor after, in the history of baptismal fonts, have so many been ornamented with the Infancy cycle in elaborate pictorial programs. A brief revival of elaborate Infancy cycles occurs on the fourteenth and fifteenth century fonts commissioned for sites previously located in the Christian borderlands east of the Elbe River with the rise of the Baltic military orders and the advancement of the Church authority. This extraordinary study integrates theological, liturgical, historical and political developments, broadening our understanding of what constituted northern crusader art in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Crusading and western interaction with the Holy Land is often a contentious topic, not least because modern popular perception of medieval east-west contact is that it was defined by violence, conquest, and religious persecution. Building on recent scholarship, this collection of essays takes an interdisciplinary approach to the role of crusading and contact with the Holy Land in medieval Britain in order to investigate the myriad ways in which these contacts influenced artistic, literary, visual, and social culture in medieval Britain. By looking at new material and focusing on the domestic response to crusading and the Holy Land, the contributions gathered here offer new insights into the influence of these contacts on the medieval British world view, as well as their impact on topics such as ideals about masculinity and kingship, geographical perception, and aspirational codes of conduct for the medieval British elite.

This volume brings together contributions from fifteen historians and art historians working on the history of the crusades, focusing on Iberia and the Baltic region. The subjects treated include the historiography of the Iberian and Baltic crusades; the transfer of crusading ideas from the Holy Land to Iberia and the Baltic region and the use of such ideas in local rhetoric and propaganda; the papal attitudes towards the Iberian and Baltic campaigns; the papal attitudes towards Muslims living in Christian Spain; the interaction between conquered and conquerors as reflected in art and architecture; and the exchange of information about the crusades in Iberia and the wider Baltic Region. The collection thus throws further light not only onto events in the Iberian Peninsula and the Baltic region but also onto the development of the crusade movement in general. It constitutes a valuable resource for both undergraduates and postgraduates studying the crusade movement in the Middle Ages.

Torben Kjersgaard Nielsen is Associate Professor in Medieval History at Aalborg University, Denmark. His main research interests cover the history of the Baltic Crusades, the medieval papacy, and Denmark in the Middle Ages.

Iben Fonnesberg-Schmidt is Professor (MSO) of Medieval History at Aalborg University, Denmark. Her research interests focus on papal communication and papal involvement in mission and crusades in the central Middle Ages.

La Crónica latina de los reyes de Castilla es una historia de los reinos de Castilla y León desde la muerte del conde Fernán González (970) hasta 1236. Transmitida sin nombre de autor, hoy día existe un cierto consenso en atribuirla al obispo Juan de Osma (†1246). No obstante, el estilo diferente de su última parte (capp. 60-75) sugiere la existencia de un segundo redactor que habría trabajado sobre materiales del autor principal. La Historia de la traslación de san Isidoro es un relato hagiográfico anónimo elaborado verosímilmente en el monasterio de San Isidoro de León a finales del s. xii o comienzos del xiii. Se ocupa del traslado de las reliquias del santo desde Sevilla a León en 1063, de los últimos años de Fernando I (†1065) y de los milagros acaecidos junto a la tumba del santo en tiempos de Alfonso VI (1065-1109). El Poema de Julia Rómula, en versos goliárdicos, es obra de Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada, abad de Sahagún (1129-1232), luego privado de su cargo y fallecido en la mayor pobreza en el monasterio de San Zoilo de Carrión. Centrado en la conquista de Sevilla en 1248 por Fernando III (1230-1252), el poema fue dedicado en 1250 al infante don Alfonso, el futuro Alfonso X el Sabio.

El texto latino en el que se basa este volumen apareció en la serie Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis bajo el título de Chronica Hispana saeculi XIII (CCCM 73). En los márgenes de esta traducción pueden encontrarse las referencias a las páginas correspondientes de la edición.

Luis Charlo Brea es profesor emérito en el Departamento de Filología Clásica de la Universidad de Cádiz. Juan Antonio Estévez Sola es profesor titular de Universidad en el Departamento de Filologías Integradas de la Universidad de Huelva. Rocío Carande Herrero es catedrática de Universidad en el Departamento de Filología Griega y Latina en la Universidad de Sevilla.

Graffiti, scratched or drawn on the walls of religious shrines, provide unique unmediated evidence of how ordinary men and women, many of them pilgrims, invoked and sought the help of God and the saints in Late Antiquity. The papers in this volume document and discuss cultic graffiti across the entire late antique Mediterranean, and into Nubia and Arabia. The principal focus is the Christian world, but there are also papers that look back to pre-Christian practice, and into the world of early Islam. Presenting evidence that is often unfamiliar, this is an important volume for anyone interested in the History and Archaeology of Late Antiquity. In examining cultic practice, we are almost always compelled to view the actions of devotees through texts written by the ecclesiastical elite, often with a clear hagiographical agenda in mind - cultic graffiti are evidence produced by the protagonists themsleves.

While the medieval regions that form modern-day Britain, Ireland, Iceland, and the Scandinavian states were, very much like today, home to diverse ethnic and linguistic groups, it is evident that the peoples who inhabited the north-western Atlantic seaboard at this time were nonetheless connected by key cultural, environmental, historical, and ideological experiences that set them apart from other regions of Europe. This volume is the first to focus specifically on these cultural and linguistic connections from the perspective of the history of emotions. The contributions collected here examine cultural encounters among medieval North Atlantic peoples with regard to the gradual development of shared emotional models and the emergence of early cross-cultural emotional communities in this region. The chapters also explore how the folk psychologies illustrated in the oldest European vernacular writing traditions (Irish, English, and Scandinavian) bear witness to cultural models for emotions that first took shape in pre-Christian times.

Read often, learn all that you can. Let sleep overcome you, the roll still in your hands; when your head falls, let it be on the sacred page.

- St Jerome, 384 AD

With these words, the Church Father Jerome exhorted the young Eustochium to find on the sacred page the spiritual nourishment that would give her the strength to live a life of chastity and to keep her monastic vows. His call to read does not stand alone. Books and reading have always played a pivotal role in early and medieval Christianity, often defined as ‘a religion of the book’.

A second important stage in the development of the ‘religion of the book’ can be attested in the late Middle Ages, when religious reading was no longer the exclusive right of men and women living in solitude and concentrating on prayer and meditation. Changes in the religious landscape and the birth of new religious movements transformed the medieval town into a privileged area of religious activity. Increasing literacy opened the door to a new and wider public of lay readers. This seminal transformation in the late medieval cultural horizon saw the growing importance of the vernacular, the cultural and religious emancipation of the laity, and the increasing participation of lay people in religious life and activities.

This volume presents a new, interdisciplinary approach to religious reading and reading techniques in a lay environment within late medieval textual, social, and cultural transformations.

These twelve essays by leading scholars in the field are products of an international research project on early modern Cyprus and its relation to cultural developments in the West, started in November 2009.

Cyprus, an independent ‘Frankish’ kingdom from 1191 to 1473, became a Venetian protectorate, then, in 1489, a　Venetian colony until its conquest by the Ottomans in 1570. Its population was diverse and rich in religious experience - preponderantly followers of the Greek rite, but also Latins, Eastern Christians and Jews.

Its heritage from Antiquity, as well as from the Byzantine and Frankish periods, its monasteries (which received, reproduced and produced manuscripts) and its geopolitically pivotal site on East-West trade routes attracted numerous Westerners. The cultural magnet drew deeper interests than those of pilgrimage and tourism.

The continuous to and fro of Europeans, many of them Venetian, the island’s importance to economic and military strategies, and the allure conferred by a mythological past stimulated and fostered a generous descriptive and allusive literature.

The present collection is the first of its kind, centered on written culture and exchanges during the Renaissance period, deepening their source-based documentary study, as well as our knowledge of the island’s culture and heritage in relation to cultural developments in Western countries.

La Dacia Ripensis fu una provincia danubiana la cui esistenza si data fra gli anni ‘80 del III secolo e i primi anni del VII. Il suo territorio funse da cerniera fra il medio ed il basso corso del Danubio e, al tempo stesso, da raccordo fra il barbaricum e l’entroterra illirico. L’urbanizzazione vi ebbe un modesto successo; cionondimeno essa favorì la romanizzazione della provincia dove la militarizzazione si manifesta invece in modo evidente grazie a quanto noto dalla Notitia dignitatum e dall’archeologia. L’attenzione per la difesa dell’area era, del resto, giustificata per via della pressione esercitata da popolazioni come Goti, Unni, Slavi e Avari, che condizionarono la storia dell’intera penisola proprio attraversando la Dacia Ripensis.

Dalle fonti letterarie è noto che la provincia fu anche interessata dalla diffusione della religione cristiana, le cui prime testimonianze si datano ai primordi del IV secolo. Il processo rese possibile l’ascesa di sedi vescovili assai implicate nelle dispute teologiche e nella lotta a dottrine eretiche localmente diffuse ancora nel VI secolo. L’archeologia ha permesso di riconoscere la graduale formazione di questa rete ecclesiastica che, in forme monumentali, è riconoscibile sia in ambito urbano che rurale. Nonostante la sua importanza, questa provincia è stata finora studiata solo occasionalmente e questo volume vuole ovviare a questo problema proponendo uno studio aggiornato, mirato a definire le conoscenze storiche e archeologiche necessarie alla comprensione generale della topografia provinciale così come alla contestualizzazione del processo di cristianizzazione di questa porzione dell’area danubiana.

This volume provides an advanced survey of Dante studies and offers a new, detailed, and accessible reading of his Purgatorio, making this very rich text freshly available to an English-speaking readership. Through analysis of a variety of emotional states across Dante’s three major works - the Purgatorio, Inferno, and Paradiso, and in his minor works, such as the Rime and the Convivio - Dante in Purgatory: States of Affect contends that emotions are historically constructed at different moments. The book also demonstrates that while Dante presents some emotions as defined and distinct, he depicts others as blends of several states of feeling, as emotions which are in process or metamorphosis. In particular, the author examines the seven cardinal vices (‘seven deadly sins’) amid a wider discussion of states of affect. He argues that the emotional states associated with these vices are different from contemporary conceptions of affective states. He compels us to acknowledge that there is a history of both the emotional states themselves and the methods with which we describe them. Above all, his study shows that there is a history of emotions which is part of the history of a European acquisition of a subjective sense of the self. To historicize emotion thus requires that the ‘human’ becomes increasingly defined, as the subject is ascribed further interior qualities which must be named. Dante in Purgatory is thus relevant not only to readers of Dante, but also to any reader interested in thinking about emotion and affectual states and how these can be described, and how they can be conceptualized.

„Der Liber Quare ist ein Traktat über Fragen der Liturgie in Katechismus-Form“, so charakterisiert Pater Götz, der Herausgeber der kritischen Edition, das Buch, geschrieben von einem anonymen Autor im 11. Jahrhundert. In 253 Fragesätzen und Antworten werden für Geistliche die Gründe für die Gestaltung des Offiziums und des Kirchenjahres behandelt. Die Gliederung ist locker: Die Zeit von Septuagesima bis Pfingsten (Fragen 1-118). Das Quatemberfasten und die Weihen der Kleriker (Fragen 119-139). Vom Advent bis Lichtmess (Fragen 140-154). Das Offizium bei Tage (Fragen 155-186) und bei Nacht (Fragen 187-217). Die Hierarchie der Kleriker (Fragen 218-241). Die liturgischen Gewänder (Fragen 242-253).

Der Ausgabe und Übersetzung des Liber Quare wurden auch Texte beigefügt, die in den Handschriften thematisch den einzelnen Fragen zugehörig sind. Sie ergänzen den knappen Test und entsprachen offenbar den Interessen der damaligen Schreiber. In den „Einfügungen“ (12./13. - 15. Jh.) stechen die Erläuterungen zum Vaterunser und die Aufnahme des bekannten Hymnus O Redemptor heraus. Bei den „Zusätzen“ im Anschluss an das Buch, ebenfalls aus dem 12./13. bis 15. Jh., werden manche Themen in den verschiedenen Handschriften ähnlich oder gegenteilig dargestellt: Stundengebet, Advents- und Weihnachtszeit, Fasten- und Osterzeit, liturgisches Brauchtum, allegorisch-aszetische Betrachtungen, Messfeier, Totengedächtnis, Weiheordines, liturgische Kleidung.

Die drei Teile des Bandes - Liber Quare, Einfügungen und Zusätze - ermöglichen einen kulturhistorischen Blick auf die Deutung der Liturgie in Antike und Mittelalter.

Der zugrundeliegende Text dieses Bandes erschien 1983 in der Reihe Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaeualis als Liturgica. Liber Quare (CC CM, vol. 60), herausgegeben von Georg Polykarp Götz OFMConv. Die Ziffern am Seitenrand verweisen auf die entsprechenden Seiten der Edition.

The missionary enterprise of the so-called Nestorian christianity in Asia is an amazing chapter of the religious history. Without any support by rulers or states and independent from the important western church centers Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria and Antioch, the Assyrian Church did not only survive so many centuries but it spread by the Silk Road through many parts of the Asian continent. The present book focuses for the first time on a limited region, the northern branch of the Silk Road in the modern state Kyrghyzstan. This concentration makes it possible to understand the conditions of expansion, survive and eclipse of Christianity there. The reader is introduced in the political and religious environment which its competition of Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Buddhism, Shamanism and Islam. Archaeological and literal sources and especially many tombstone inscriptions are not only introduced and discussed, but raised to live. The reader gets an intime impression of the society in the Kyrghyzstan of the 7th to the 14th century with its important Christian minority. This society was more similar to our's today than to that of the Middle Ages in Europe because in Europe Christianity was a state religion. Therefore the experiences of Christianity at the Silk Road can help us to understand the evolution of our own modern world.

Dans la veine de la « nouvelle histoire militaire », cette étude consacrée à l’artillerie « bourguignonne », de la guerre menée par Philippe le Bon contre les Gantois (1451-1453) à la mort de Charles le Hardi devant Nancy (5 janvier 1477), vise à cerner l’organisation d’un instrument militaire alors en plein essor, engendrant d’importantes dépenses - relevant également des domaines du génie et de la logistique - qu’une administration compétente devait encadrer au mieux. Au centre de l’objectif se trouve un personnel sans cesse croissant d’artisans-soldats dont la professionnalisation et la spécialisation reflètent les changements technologiques auxquels l’artillerie fut alors soumise sous l’impulsion des politiques des ducs de Bourgogne, et, en particulier, de Charles le Hardi, prince désirant disposer d’une artillerie puissante, efficace et à la pointe du progrès pour réaliser ses ambitions.

Michael Depreter , aspirant du F.R.S.-FNRS, étudie actuellement, à l’Université libre de Bruxelles, l’impact des relations entre l’artillerie, ses artisans et les pouvoirs, sur la construction de « l’Etat moderne ».