Brepols

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.

Founded in 1131 by the castellan of Cambrai, Vaucelles Abbey thrived in a borderland region, where German emperors, French kings, Flemish counts, bishops of Cambrai, and the Cistercian Order all had active interests. To understand how Vaucelles flourished, we must look at the relationships that the house created and fostered with various international, regional, and local individuals and institutions. Vaucelles used these connections to protect the vast patrimony that the monks created in the two centuries after its foundation.

This study asserts that three principal factors influenced the foundation and development of Vaucelles. First, the abbey was fortunate in its local support, beginning with the castellan family and expanding to include numerous regional families and the bishops of Cambrai. Second, the abbey was established in a political borderland, a geo-political situation that Vaucelles survived and actually turned into a positive feature of its development. And finally, Vaucelles was a Cistercian monastery, a direct daughter house of Clairvaux. Vaucelles’ Cistercian observance fostered relationships that were particularly significant to the abbey’s development from the late twelfth century onward. These factors offer exceptional tools for demonstrating many features of Vaucelles’ political, social, and economic life during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Ivan Lukačić (born around 1585, died in 1648), composer, Conventual Franciscan, long-time “maestro di cappella” of the cathedral in Split, is a typical “hero” of local historiography. As early as 1935, the Croatian-American musicologist Dragan Plamenac (real name Karl Siebenschein) prepared a selection from the only known collection of Lukačić’s compositions, the Sacrae cantiones (Venice, 1620). In the same year, Plamenac introduced Croatian Renaissance and Baroque music to the local audience for the first time at a concert held at the Croatian Music Institute. In the aftermath of Plamenac’s emigration to the USA in 1939, it took several decades for new archival, stylistic, interdisciplinary, and international research in Croatian musicology to take place. Despite the availability of earlier material as well as contemporary musical publications of Lukačić’s work (J. Andreis, Zagreb, 1970; E. Stipčević, Padua, 1986), it is not an exaggeration to say that Lukačić still remains unknown internationally. For many years, a number of studies of Lukačić and the music of his contemporaries from the “other, eastern coast of the Adriatic” published almost exclusively in Croatian and thus the international professional public had very limited access to them. This collection of studies dedicated to Lukačić and to the musical and cultural contacts between the two Adriatic coasts is the first volume to be published in both English and Italian. The echoes of the contacts between Italy and Croatia reached the Royal Palace in Portugal, shops selling printed music in Denmark and church archives in Slovenia and Poland. The aim of this book is to follow the traces of that cultural dissemination.

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.

The first monograph to appear in The Medieval Translator series, Vernacular Mysticism in the Charterhouse presents a study of London, British Library, MS Additional 37790 (Amherst), a purpose-built anthology of major mystical texts by Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich, Jan van Ruusbroec and Marguerite Porète, interspersed with shorter texts and compilations. Though the manuscript is famous mainly because it contains the only extant copy of Julian of Norwich's short text, it is an intriguing witness to the fifteenth-century spread of the vernacular into traditionally Latinate environments, in this case the Carthusian Order in England. In this process of transmission, translation plays a central part. Most of the texts in the anthology are translations from Latin or French into Middle English. In addition, the anthologist's selection and ordering of texts within the volume, intended to further the readers' spiritual lives, translates them anew for his intended audience. This study provides finely detailed analyses of the texts in the textual and material context of the Amherst anthology as well as in their religious and historical contexts. It also offers a first-time edition of Quedam introductiua extracta, a Latin compilation contained in the manuscript, and a discussion and listing of verbal marginal annotations reflecting early readers' reactions to the texts. By reading the texts in (one of) their medieval manuscript context(s), this book gives students and scholars of (translated) medieval religious texts a fresh view of the classics of mystical writing contained in the remarkable literary document that is the Amherst anthology.

Studies of the vernacular in the period 1300-1550 have tended to focus exclusively upon language, to the exception of the wider vernacular culture within which this was located. In a period when the status of English and ideas of Englishness were transforming in response to a variety of social, political, cultural and economic factors, the changing nature and perception of the vernacular deserves to be explored comprehensively and in detail. Vernacularity in England and Wales examines the vernacular in and across literature, art, and architecture to reach a more inclusive understanding of the nature of late medieval vernacularity.

The essays in this collection draw upon a wide range of source material, including buildings, devotional and educational literature, and parliamentary and civic records, in order to expand and elaborate our idea of the vernacular. Each contributor addresses central ideas about the nature and identity of the vernacular and how we appraise it, involving questions about nationhood, popularity, the commonalty, and the conflict and conjunction of the vernacular with the non-vernacular. These notions of vernacularity are situated within studies of reading practices, heresy, translation, gentry identity, seditious speech, and language politics. By considering the nature of vernacularity, these essays explore whether it is possible to perceive a common theory of vernacular use and practice at this time.

The Canons following the Rule of St Augustine at St Victor in Paris were some of the most influential religious writers of the Middle Ages. They combined exegesis and spiritual teaching in a theology that was deeply rooted in tradition but also attuned to current developments in the schools of Paris. The importance of Victorine Christology in this great age of theological speculation is unquestionable. The writings translated in this volume cover the foundational and maturing periods of Victorine Christology during the 1130s to the 1150s when Hugh of St Victor championed the paradigm of the “assumed man” (homo assumptus) and Robert of Melun advanced his Christology into the most comprehensive treatment in the twelfth century.