Brepols

On 4 August 1897, farm workers in Elche — the site of ancient Ilici — discovered an Iberian sculpture of a woman that dated from the fifth– fourth centuries BCE. French archaeologist Pierre Paris dubbed this figure ‘the Lady of Elche’, and promptly purchased the sculpture on behalf of the Louvre Museum. There, she drew the attention of European scholars who were intrigued by her stylistic features, finally concluding that she bore witness to the existence of a specifically Iberian art. Since her discovery, the Lady of Elche has been a source of fascination not only for scholars, but also for artists, and she has become an icon of regional and national identity across Spain. This volume, co-written by an archaeologist and an anthropologist and translated here into English for the first time, seeks to explore the importance of the Lady of Elche, both for students of the past, and for the peoples of Iberia. The authors here explore not only what we know — and still do not know — about her creation, but also engage with key questions about what she represents for the men and women of our time who have questioned, manipulated, admired, loved, and often reinvented the singular beauty of this iconic figure.

In the late Middle Ages, the Percy earls of Northumberland and the bishops of Durham were two of the largest landholders in the North East of England. This book is a study of their estate administrations based on the extant manorial accounts from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries. Examining the documents holistically, it investigates the shapes of the records and the materials they were written upon, as well as how they were used and stored to provide new insights into late medieval lordly administration. Such a material-focussed approach explores the concurrent use of rolls, booklets, paper, and parchment for different types of manorial accounts and at different steps of the multistage production and audit process. It also examines the hands drafting, editing, and auditing the accounts, in addition to the layout and presentation of the contents of the records to further our understanding of the written burden of proof required in the management and audit of large estates in late medieval England. Studying the financial accounts of the earls of Northumberland and the bishops of Durham from a material perspective reveals two highly sophisticated administrative systems and structures of accountability.

Scriptor, Cantor & Notator is an innovative multi-author project dealing with the complex interconnections between learning, writing and performing chant in the Middle Ages. A number of different methodological approaches have been employed, with the aim of beginning to understand the phenomenon of chant transmission over a large geographical area, linking and contrasting modern definitions of East and West. Thus, in spite of this wide geographical spread, and the consequent variety of rites, languages and musical styles involved, the common thread of parallels and similarities between various chant repertoires arising from the need to fix oral repertories in a written form, and the challenges involved in so doing, are what bring this wide variety of repertoires and approaches together. This multi-centric multi-disciplinary approach will encourage scholars working in these areas to consider their work as part of a much larger geographical and historical picture, and thus reveal to reader and listener more, and far richer, patterns of connections and developments than might otherwise have been suspected.

Scriptor, Cantor & Notator is published in two books. The first, The Materiality of Sound in Chant Manuscripts in the West, brings together articles on several different families of early music scripts in the Latin West and provides a vividly diverse picture of some of the best current scholarship on the various types of ancient and medieval musical notation.

Medieval cathedrals and the various practices connected to them form an important and complex part of the European cultural heritage. The buildings themselves and their reception into the modern arts ensure their presence within today’s cultural memories and sensibilities. In the mid-twelfth century, a new archbishop’s seat was erected in the Norwegian city of Trondheim (or Nidaros) in the far north of Europe. This interdisciplinary volume, written by scholars of history, architecture, and liturgy, explores the medieval cathedral of Trondheim as a local construction in a European context. As a see of the Western Church, it was set in an international Latinate culture. At the same time, the construction of the building itself and the ritual practices in and around it were influenced by local political, religious, and cultural conditions. The relationship between the physical construction of a cathedral and its function in medieval liturgical and other ritual practices is a topic of wide relevance for architectural and liturgical scholarship. The so-called Ordo Nidrosiensis, the thirteenth-century ordinal of the province of Nidaros, is an immense help in interpreting the architectural construction and sacred space of Nidaros Cathedral and the Ordo is dealt with in many of the articles. In accordance with general medieval practice, both the Nidaros ordinal and this volume may be described as international in content but edited with regard to local considerations.

This volume asks whether there was a common structure, ideology, and image of the household in the medieval Christian West. In the period under examination, noble households often exercised great power in their own right, while even quite humble households were defined as agents of government in the administration of local communities. Many of the papers therefore address the public functions and perceptions of the household, and argue that the formulation of domestic (or family) values was of essential importance in the growth and development of the medieval Christian state.

Contributors to this volume of collected essays write from a number of disciplinary perspectives (archaeological, art-historical, historical and literary). They examine socially diverse households (from peasants to kings) and use case studies from different regions across Europe in different periods within the medieval epoch from c. 850 to c. 1550. The volume both includes studies from archives and collections not often covered in English-language publications, and offers new approaches to more familiar material. It is divided into thematic sections exploring the role of households in the exercise of power, in controlling the body, in the distribution of wealth and within a wider economy of possessions.

Medieval culture is marked by a general acceptance of the mental attitude which both recognized and accepted the truths of the dominant religion. This is, then, the ‘general paradigm’ that programmatically directs the paths and results of intellectual activity in the Middle Ages. In the various fields of scientific research, in the different epochs and in the manifold social and institutional situations, there are also produced - based on the ‘general paradigm’ - many ‘particular paradigms’, which carry out some specified and graduated effects of the general one.

The idea pursued during the Congress is an attempt to determine, describe and evaluate the general and particular results the ‘paradigm’ had on the maturation of medieval philosophical and scientific thought with regard to the relationship - that was a dynamic and reciprocal one, and was not necessarily reduced to a theological understanding -between rational inquiry and religious belief.

List of Contributors: G. Alliney, M. Bartoli, A. Bisogno, A. Cacciotti, S. Carletto, C. Casagrande, A. Conti, G. d’Onofrio, P.F. De Feo, C. Erismann, G. Fioravanti, F. Fiorentino, A. Galonnier, R. Gatti, J. Gavin, M. Geoffroy, A. Guidi, M. Laffranchi, R. Lambertini, M. Lenzi, E. Mainoldi, C. Martello, C. Mews, A. Morelli, P. Müller, F. Paparella, M. Parodi, G. Perillo, I. Peta, A. Petagine, P. Porro, F. Seller, K. Tachau, Ch. Trottmann, S. Vecchio, M. Vittorini, J. Ziegler

Le premier volume de cette collection chez Brepols est le cinquième d'une série du même nom, éditée par Roger Ellis, et publiée précédemment chez d'autres éditeurs. Comme ses prédécesseurs, il présente les communications faites lors de colloques internationaux et traitant de la théorie et de la pratique de la traduction au moyen âge. Les articles figurant au sommaire de ce volume ont été présentés lors du colloque de Conques, les 26-29 juillet 1993. Les articles sont rédigés dans une des langues internationales et sont accompagnés de résumés en anglais. Le fil conducteur est le phénomène de la traduction au moyen âge, et la série contient tant les études spécialisées que les approches plus générales. L'article phare du volume 5 (K. Ashley & P. Sheingorn, The translations of Sainte Foy: bodies, textes and places), par exemple, traite de l'interaction entre la transmission littéraire et la translation de reliques, en partant du cas de sainte Foy. D'autre part, la question des traductions post-médiévales ou contemporaines de textes mediévaux est également abordée.

Fundamental to all translation work, the concept of “displacement” allows one to take into account the multiple successive states inhering in a single text, and to interpret these variations. Translation is, in effect, a form of transfer; more specifically, it involves a movement from one context to another, be it national, social, political, historical, linguistic or religious. The texts examined here illustrate, each in their unique way, the relationship between contextual change and audience. They are also the product of subtle interactions between a variety of elements, the result of which is a “reinvention” of their respective roles and uses over time. For example, a text intending to entertain may also have educational outcomes; a book of local miracles may attract pilgrims and contribute to the economic life of a monastery; a text and its translations may at some point be appropriated for polemical purposes, while a library of translated texts founded on humanist principals may also serve political ends.

Furthermore, each successive adaptation and its accompanying annotations impacts upon the tonality of a text. While this diversity of meanings may inspire some (such as the medieval poet Marie de France), it moreover raises a number of important and difficult questions for the modern translator. How, for example, does one translate the “harmonics” underlying a series of mystical puns? The “solution” usually involves a compromise that both enhances and undermines the translated text.

This volume presents a selection of twenty-eight papers delivered at the Seventh International Conference dedicated to The Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages, which took place at the University of Paris III — Nouvelle Sorbonne in July 2004. The period covered by the texts and their translations extends from antiquity to the present day. The literary and critical breadth of these papers, as well as the rigorous interrogation of the modern translation theory, illustrates the remarkable vitality and diversity of current scholarship in this field.

Au cœur de toute activité de traduction, le concept de déplacement permet de rendre compte des multiples états successifs d’un même texte et d’en interpréter les variations. Toute traduction est en effet une translation, c’est-à-dire un changement d’environnement, que ce dernier soit national, social, politique, historique, linguistique ou ecclésial. Les textes examinés ici témoignent chacun à sa manière des transformations qu’ils ont subies lorsque, changeant de langue, de style ou d’époque, ils ont changé de destinataires. La dynamique qui les traverse se nourrit de subtils côtoiements: un désir légitime de divertir peut fort bien s’accommoder d’une intention didactique; un recueil de miracles locaux peut attirer des pèlerins, contribuant ainsi à la vie économique d’un monastère; un texte et ses traductions peuvent devenir l’objet d’utilisations polémiques; se constituer en humaniste une bibliothèque de traductions peut aussi servir un dessein politique.

Par ailleurs les transpositions successives et leurs gloses, comme en musique, entraînent des changements de tonalité. Ce ‘surplus’ de sens qu’encourage Marie de France pourra cependant se heurter à des résistances: comment par exemple préserver d’une langue à l’autre toutes les harmoniques que libère un enchaînement de jeux de mots mystiques? Ainsi l’inévitable compromis qui s’imposera au traducteur sera souvent le choix d’un enrichissement doublé d’une déperdition.

Ce volume présente une sélection des communications entendues lors du septième colloque international consacré à la théorie et la pratique de la traduction des textes au Moyen Age qui s’est tenu à l’Université de Paris III — Sorbonne Nouvelle en juillet 2004. La période couverte par ces textes et leurs traductions s’étend de l’Antiquité jusqu’à nos jours. Ce sont au total vingt-huit études qui sont ici proposées. La richesse des domaines abordés, la haute technicité des analyses, de même que la place faite aux questionnements de la traductologie moderne illustrent la remarquable vitalité des études actuelles relatives aux multiples aspects de la traduction des textes médiévaux.

Jan Hus (1371-1415) gave his name to a social and religious revolution which captured the attention of Europe. The central figure in a late medieval reform movement, he died a condemned heretic. Martyrdom made him famous but his essential identity has remained a point of controversy. Who was Jan Hus?

This work explores the driving forces in the life and work of this medieval priest as he moved from obscurity to the vulnerability of a publicly accused heretic and the disgraceful prelude to martyrdom. It also focuses on the construction and facilitation of the memory of Jan Hus. Historical “facts” are often compelling but these postulations cannot be approached apart from the manner and process in which those events are remembered.This book illuminates the life and work of the medieval priest and martyr who rose from humble origins to national hero and popular saint on the platform of a unique and renewed practice of the Christian faith. So profound were his challenges to the church and so bellicose were the reactions to his untimely demise, that the name Jan Hus was destined never to fade into oblivion.

How much did Latin academic theoretical discourse inform mainstream late medieval English literature? Rather than asking this question of secular poetic fiction (Chaucer, Gower), this book investigates a more central genre, lives of Christ. Any adequate understanding of vernacular textuality, in an age when most literature was translation of some sort, cannot escape the question of the influence of theory on transactions and ideology of mainstream literary culture in negotiating authority. Where better to test this than the life of Christ?

Derived from the Gospels, this genre provided the set text for human existence. Too often, however, it has been regarded by modern scholarship as an infantilizing clerical sop to a laity deprived of Scripture and intellectual or contemplative ambition. Inquiry into the translating and the spirituality of Middle English lives of Christ yields, however, eloquent examples not of antagonism and rupture between Latin and vernacular but of productive compatibility. This challenges the common modern supposition that vernacular texts and vernacular theology are at odds with Latinate clerical culture, and restores the genre’s historic value. Like their dissenting counterparts, lives of Christ, as well as being of interest in their own right, invested in learned literary and theological norms in their textual transactions. Such reliance demands modern (re)consideration.