Brepols

This volume examines Florentine society at crucial moments of change that are often treated separately in historical narratives: the later years of Medici government under the aegis of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the four tumultuous years of Savonarola’s religious regime from 1494 to 1498, and the unsettled early decades of the sixteenth century. Drawing upon original research conducted during the past decade, it provides important insights into the politics and conflicting ideologies in the city as experienced by different levels of society, not only by the politicians, preachers, and intellectuals whose voices are more familiar to us, but also by women and lower-class citizens. Since no single paradigm is adequate to describe these years of flux, this volume attempts to reassess the period by uncovering the debate underlying nearly all the topics it discusses. In this way, it offers a new and multifocused approach to the study of this important and influential period in Florentine history.

Fleeing his North-African homeland for Italy, Constantine the African arrived in Salerno and then joined the abbey of Monte Cassino south of Rome in c. 1077. He dedicated his life to the translation of more than two dozen medical texts from Arabic into Latin. These great efforts produced the first substantial written body of medical theory and practice in medieval Europe. His most important contribution, an encyclopedia he called the Pantegni (The Complete Art), was translated and adapted from the Complete Book of the Medical Art by the Persian physician ‘Ali ibn al-‘Abbās al-Mağūsī (d. 982). This monograph focuses on the oldest manuscript of the Pantegni,Theorica, which represents a work-in-progress with numerous unusual features.

This study, for the first time, identifies Monte Cassino as the origin of this oldest Pantegni manuscript, and asserts that it was made during Constantine’s lifetime. It further demonstrates how a skilled team of scribes and scholars assisted the translator in the complex process of producing this Latin version of the Arabic text. Several members of this production team are identified, both in the Pantegni manuscript and in other copies of Cassinese manuscripts.

The book breaks new ground by identifying a range of manuscripts produced at Monte Cassino under Constantine’s direct supervision, as evidenced by their material features, script, and contents. In rare detail, this study explores some of the challenges met by ‘Team Constantine’ as they sought to reveal new knowledge to the West, which in turn revolutionized medical understanding throughout medieval Europe.

British Library MS Harley 913 is an early fourteenth-century trilingual manuscript whose paradoxically devotional and ribald contents display many distinct aspects of the Anglo-Irish socio-political reality of the day. However, several of its texts have, in the past, suffered from repeated scholarly misreadings, in part because scholars have not taken the time to seriously consider the manuscript’s contents as a whole, and in part because fluctuations in the political, social, and religious climate between Ireland and England have prejudiced how some scholars have approached these works.

This book examines these texts, as well as their subsequent misinterpretations, in the order in which they occur in the manuscript and reveals the pattern of politicized discourse surrounding this important medieval Anglo-Irish cultural artefact that has hitherto obscured, rather than elucidated, the very personal interactions of some of the era’s key figures. For the first time, this volume allows readers to visualize the manuscript in its entirety and complexity. Texts touching on the taboos of incest, regicide, and witchcraft, together with the clandestine manoeuvrings of the power-hungry and influential, reveal a surprisingly complicated interlacing of events across medieval Ireland, England, and the Continent.

What is an autograph? How is it possible to define it? And how can we distinguish the hand of the writer, scientist, or translator - that is, of the learned person setting down his thoughts - from the hand of a pupil or copyist trained in the same style? Autographs have long been an especially challenging area of research into medieval manuscripts, for the finished product is intimately linked to both the author’s thought and his hand. Many well-known medieval authors had already been accorded scientific representations and became known as a result of these. They were joined by new names, a fact which widens the scope of research in the field of autographs and invites new questions. The XVIIth Colloquium of the Comité International de Paléographie Latine, which was held in Ljubljana between 7th and 10th September, 2010, was dedicated to autographs. In addition to scientific contributions by established paleographers, historians, literary and art historians, there were also inspiring papers by younger researchers. The colloquium was receptive to the presentation of new methods and processes of research into medieval manuscripts in general. These Proceedings of the XVIIth Colloquium contain 37 scientific papers documented with 239 illustrations as well as with further graphic elements.

Glossaries are the dictionaries of the medieval period. They were created at a time when no comprehensive dictionary of the Latin language existed, but lexicographical resources were urgently needed to engage with the writings of Classical and Late Antiquity as well as near-contemporary texts. In the non-Romance speaking areas in north-western Europe, the compilers of glossaries were quick to have recourse to their vernacular languages. Glossaries are often the places in which these languages were put into writing for the first time. Hence, the effort to explain Latin vocabulary resulted in bilingual lexicography and in the establishment of the vernaculars as written languages in their own right. The negotiation of linguistic and cultural barriers lies at the centre of the glossaries. Consequently, medieval traditions of glossography are highly interconnected.

This volume represents the first reference work dedicated to medieval glossaries in English and related traditions, including other languages spoken in the British Isles (Celtic languages, Anglo-Norman) and the Germanic languages (High and Low German, Dutch, Scandinavian, Gothic). As such, it is intended as a vademecum for researchers in order to facilitate modern approaches to medieval glossography, lexicology and lexicography, which often require some familiarity with different traditions. Written by experts in the field, the fifty chapters of this volume highlight important characteristics and themes of medieval glossaries and outline different glossographic traditions; they facilitate access to individual glossaries, or groups of related glossaries, by providing detailed discussions of the texts, their sources, relationships and transmission; they also give an account of the current state of research and highlight important resources.

Medieval Holy Women in the Christian Tradition offers the first wide-ranging study of the remarkable women who contributed to the efflorescence of female piety and visionary experience in Europe between 1100 and 1500. This volume offers essays by prominent scholars in the field which extend the boundaries of our previous knowledge and understanding of medieval holy women. While some essays provide new perspectives on the familiar names of the unofficial canon of mulieres sanctae, many others bring into the spotlight women less familiar now, but influential in their own time and richly deserving of scholarly attention. The five general essays establish a context for understanding the issues affecting female religious witness in the later Middle Ages. The geographical arrangement of the volume allows the reader to develop an awareness of the particular cultural and religious forces in seven different regions and to recognize how these influenced the writing and reception of the holy women of that area. Seventeen major figures have essays devoted exclusively to each of them; in addition, the survey chapters on each region introduce the reader to many more. The extensive bibliographies which follow each chapter encourage further reading and study.

Alastair Minnis was Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies and Head of the Department of English at the University of York, and is currently Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English at Yale University. A Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America and of the English Association, he is the author of six monographs and the editor or co-editor of fifteen further volumes.

Rosalynn Voaden (D.Phil., University of York, UK) is the author of God’s Words, Women’s Voices, and is the editor or co-editor of several volumes in the field. She was a Research Fellow at St Anne’s College, Oxford, and is currently Associate Professor of English at Arizona State University.

The fortified hilltop town of Capalbiaccio is a lost Etruscan settlement, a site that developed out of prehistory to become an important colony and grain provider for the Roman Empire, before being sacrificed to medieval intrigue and conquest by the Republic of Siena. The site, together with the castle of Tricosto, was first excavated forty-five years ago, but the results were never published. Then, in recent years, archaeologist Michelle Hobart was invited to explore the area with a new team and employ the latest techniques of remote sensing to explore the landscape and fortifications. The results of both explorations are presented here for the first time in this volume, which combines the invasive and non-invasive approaches of two generations of archaeologists to reveal what attracted settlers to this site, from the inhabitants of the late Bronze Age through to the most important families of medieval Tuscany. This book employs the best of the latest geophysical techniques and time-tested approaches to ground the history of Capalbiaccio, and to narrate how the fate of this small village was inextricably linked to regional and national networks, as control of the territory and the settlement’s reason for being evolved over time.

In medieval legal transactions the use of the written word was only one of many ways of conducting business. Important roles were played by the spoken word and by the ‘action’ of ritual. The relationship between ‘rituals’ and literacy has been the focus of much recent research. Medieval societies which made extensive use of written instruments in legal transactions have been shown to employ rituals as well. This has led to investigation of the respective functions of written instruments and legal rituals. What is the nature of legal rituals? If they included oral verbalization, how did the spoken words relate to those of the written instruments that played a role in the same legal transactions? Usually, we only have the written documents to answer these questions, and they are often silent about the rituals and oral elements of the transactions they document. Furthermore, the importance attached to written instruments and rituals may not have been the same at all levels of a society, differing, for example, between princely and local courts. The contributors to this volume discuss fifteen cases, ranging from the early Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, and from England to Galician Rus’.

The essays in this collection present new research into a variety of questions on birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, middle age, and old age, ordered in a more or less chronological manner according to the life cycle. The volume exposes attitudes and representations of the life cycle from the Anglo-Saxon period to the end of the Middle Ages as being full of inconsistencies as well as definitive categories, and of variation and stasis. This attests to the fact that medieval conceptions and representations of the stages of life and their interrelationships are much more nuanced and less idealized than is usually credited. Medieval conceptual, mental, artistic, cultural, and sociological processes are scrutinized using various approaches and methods that cross disciplinary boundaries. What is emphasized across the volume is that there were varying, context-dependent rhythms of continuity and change in every stage of life in the medieval period. The volume’s selection of authors is international in scope and represents some of the leading current scholarship in the field.

During the high Middle Ages, the bishopric of Liège found itself at a cultural crossroads between the German Empire and the French lordships. The Liègeois themselves summed up the situation when they declared that: ‘Gaul considers us its most distant inhabitants, Germany as nearby citizens. In fact we are neither, but both at the same time’. This same complexity is also echoed by present-day historians, who have described Liège as a hub of interactions between two great civilisations. Medieval monastic communities in Liège were key sites of this exchange, actively participating in the cultural developments, social networks, and political structures of both regions.

Bringing together the work of international scholars, this collection of essays addresses the problem of monastic identity and its formation in a region that was geographically wedged between two major competing socio-political powers. It investigates how monastic communities negotiated the uncertainties of this situation, while also capitalizing on the opportunities it presented. As such, this book sheds light on the agency of monastic identity formation in a small but complex region caught at the crossroads of two major powers.

The essays in this collection pertain to art history, medieval Latin culture both ecclesiastic and legal, the history of vernacular literatures, and the devotional practices of the laity. They reflect the patronage of authors and manuscript painters, from the royal through the monastic to the urban middle class, and they trace the sometimes astonishing afterlife of manuscripts. The subject matter of these studies ranges chronologically from late antiquity to the later Middle Ages, adding the emergent medievalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Its geographic breadth extends through the major Western cultures and literatures, from England to Italy, Germany, and France. Its wide range in time and space reflects the lifetime of manuscript research, teaching, and collecting by its honorees, Richard and Mary Rouse.

A particular emphasis distinguishes this volume from other such collections: its stress on the use, and usefulness, of medieval manuscripts in the teaching of most historical disciplines in Western culture, from the broad undergraduate survey (of art, literature, history) to the specialized graduate seminar. In the last half century, public colleges and universities have increasingly appreciated the pedagogical opportunities inherent in building, through gift and purchase, collections of medieval manuscripts, formerly thought to be the province only of wealthy private schools. No similar collection of manuscript studies exhibits so clearly the role of medieval manuscripts in teaching.

The specialist authors represented in this volume have displayed, over the whole of their careers, an ability to combine the highest caliber of research with an eagerness to make their subject accessible to others through teaching and writing and public lectures. The essays offer the results of new and sometimes technical research, set forth in a manner intelligible not only to the expert but to the interested amateur.

Medieval Mausoleums, Monuments, and Manuscripts: Royal Women’s Patronage from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Centuries explores the manuscripts, monuments, and other memorabilia associated with the artistic patronage of Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204), her daughters, Marie de Champagne (1145-98) and Matilda of Saxony (1156-98), as well as works generated by three queens of France, Marie de Brabant (1254-1322), Jeanne d’Évreux (1310-71), and Blanche de Navarre (1330-98). Through this study the shift in women’s artistic patronage over the centuries may be brought to light, as well as its evolution, evincing how each generation built upon the previous one.

Further, despite the assorted shapes these women’s efforts embodied, ranging from manuscripts to stained glass windows, from funerary plaques, paintings, jewels and linens to monuments, mausoleums and endowments of institutions, including a variety of other forms, these women were notably unified in that their greatest output tellingly occurred during precarious points in their lives that threatened their positions, such as the potential political turmoil associated with the deaths of husbands or children. At these times their participation in acts of patronage solidified their places at court, in society, and within cultural memory while doubling as assertions of their political power and lineage. Thus, testaments, manuscript books, monuments, and memorials were not only a declaration or signs of one’s possessions, but also sites and documents that continued the politicking of the deceased.

They were the bestsellers of their time; in the late medieval period, a number of shorter romances and tales, such as Floire et Blancheflor, Partonopeus de Blois, Valentine and Orson, and many others, enjoyed striking popularity across different regions of Europe. In this volume, scholars from across Europe and beyond examine the processes by which medieval romances were adapted across regional and national borders. By considering how the content, form, and broader contextualisation of individual romances were altered by the transition from one region to another, the chapters variously address the role translators, narrators, editors, and compilers played in adapting the tales to different cultural and codicological settings. In this context, they discuss not only the shifting plotlines of the tales, but also the points at which the generic features of the texts shift in response to changing cultural codes. In doing so, they raise broader questions concerning the links between genre, manuscript form, cultural assimilation, and the popularity of certain romance texts in different cultural communities.

Medieval science has become an increasingly popular area of academic interest over the past couple of decades, but much of this work has up to now concentrated on France and the Mediterranean, while relatively little attention has been paid to the north of Europe. This has led to the assumption that Northern Europe stood aside from the mainstream of scientific knowledge in the Middle Ages, when in fact the region was a vital part of the medieval network of scientific scholarship. This important volume aims to redress the balance in scholarship by bringing together for the first time a collection of studies on medieval scientific knowledge that focuses on both Scandinavia and England.

The essays gathered here examine topics as wide-ranging as the intellectual network between Denmark and Paris; the role of Dominican friars in spreading scientific knowledge in Scandinavia; the practical application of technology by English armourers; fragments of scientific manuscripts found in early modern Swedish documents; the use of scientific volumes and descriptions of university life in medieval Icelandic literature; and fresh insights into the careers of the English scientists Roger of Hereford, Roger Bacon, and Robert Grosseteste. Together, these papers show the dynamism and depth of science in the medieval North, and offer new insights into how scientific wisdom travelled through, across, and between the peoples of this region.

The shaping and sharing of narrative has always been key to the negotiation and recreation of reality for individuals and cultural groups. Some stories, indeed, seem to possess a life of their own: claiming a peculiar agency and taking on distinct voices which speak across time and space. How, for example, do objects, manuscripts, and other artefacts communicate alternative or complementary narratives that transcend textual and linguistic boundaries? How are stories created, reshaped, and re-experienced, and how do these shifting contexts and media change meaning?

This volume of essays explores these questions about meaning and identity in a range of ways. As a collection, it demonstrates the importance of interdisciplinary and context-focused enquiry when approaching key issues of activity and identity in the medieval period. Ultimately, the process of making meaning through shaping narrative is shown to be as vital and varied in the medieval world as it is today.

With a wide range of different disciplinary approaches from leading scholars in their respective fields, chapters include considerations of art, architecture, metalwork, linguistics, and literature. Alongside examinations of medieval cultural productions are explorations of the representation and adaptation of medieval storytelling in graphic novels, classroom teaching, and computer gaming. This volume thus offers an interdisciplinary exploration of how stories from across the medieval world were shaped, transformed, and transmitted.

The papers gathered in this volume focus on ‘Medieval Translations and their Readership’, the special strand of the 11th Cardiff Conference on the Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages. The volume discusses the role of the reader in the process of translation, communities of readers and their active participation in translators’ choices, and the translation as a result of a dialogue between author, text and its reader.

Translations of works of theology and religious education, the focus of most of the contributions to this volume, constitute excellent material for research into medieval lay audiences. Vernacular religious educational texts from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century show a great deal of conformity. Individual authors resorted to similar strategies and techniques to meet any translation challenges, to fulfil educational aims, or to relate to their readers and to accommodate their expectations. Simultaneously, the readers played a crucial role as they shaped the production of texts in many ways.

Research into Middle English pastoral and devotional literature and the conditions of its production still dominates scholarly work in the field. Religious texts in vernaculars other than Middle English have so far received little attention. This volume tries to tackle this lacuna by offering a careful comparative analysis of relevant vernacular texts across Europe, including Slavonic works, using historiographical, philological, and linguistic methods as well as literary scholarly approaches.

The sixteen chapters are organized in three sections. The first one, ‘Authors and Readers’, brings together articles examining the idea of a model reader as expressed in translations of biblical texts and texts of religious instruction. The contributions in the second section, on the ‘Dissimination of Knowledge’, focus on how translators addressed readers, how people read, and how they used the manuscripts and printed books made for them. The target audience or model reader of the first section is here put into perspective with the help of discussions of reading practices. The last section, ‘Religious Education in Transition’, comprises contributions which focus on textual material from the period when printed books gradually changed, the relationship between languages, texts, authors, and readers.

In this themed collection by literary, historical and archaeological scholars, the study of medieval women is confidently and freshly mainstream. Profiting from the development of newly flexible models of gender, literacy, the political, the social, and the domestic, the volume is non-separatist, exploratory both of new source materials and new readings of established sources, and able to consider the broadest implications for the study of medieval culture without simply re-absorbing medieval women into invisibility. Grouped under the headings of matters of reading, of conduct and place, the essays move from legal cases to actual buildings and conceptions of the household, from conduct books to chronicles and romances, from saints’ lives to the medieval unconscious and back again, exemplifying the mature interdisciplinarity of current work on medieval women.

Ce volume est une contribution à l'histoire de la transition entre la science médiévale et la science moderne, en ce qui concerne les mathématiques et la science du mouvement. Le processus de cette transformation a été relativement peu étudié: les études historiques se sont concentrées de façon dominante sur la description de la phase finale de ce processus; le travail historique a établi une description très documentée et structurée de la situation de la philosophie naturelle à l'aube de la science classique. Au cours des dernières décennies des travaux sur des auteurs et des oeuvres du XVIe siècle peu étudié font cependant apparaître que cette description est altérée structurellement par des interprétations anachroniques de certains concepts qui y occupent manifestement une place centrale. Les études présentées dans ce volume sont un reflet des travaux effectués récemment dans ce sens sur deux aspects singuliers d'un tel programme: l'oeuvre scientifique de MAurolico d'une part, et l'émergence de la science galiléenne du mouvement d'autre part.

This book brings to life an impressively broad array of performances in the Eastern Mediterranean. It covers many traditional types of performance, including singers, dancers, storytellers, street performers, clowns, preachers, shadow-puppeteers, fireworks displays, and semi-theatrical performances in folk and other celebrations. It explores performance of the secular as well as of the sacred in its many forms, including Sunni, Shiite, Sufi, and Alevi Muslims; Sephardic Jews and those in the Holy Land; and Armenian, Greek, and European Catholic Christians. The book focuses on the Medieval and Early Modern periods, including the Early Ottoman. Some papers reach backward into Late Antiquity, while others demonstrate continuity with the modern Eastern Mediterranean world.

The articles discuss evidence for performers and performance coming from archival sources, architectural and manuscript images, musical notation, historical and ethnographic accounts, literary works, and oral tradition. Across the broad range of issues, chronology, and geography, certain fundamental topics are central: concepts of drama and theatricality; varied definitions of ‘performance’ and related terms; the sacred and the profane, and their frequent intersection; and complex relations between oral and written traditions.

The twenty-six essays in this volume have been written by a select number of experienced practitioners of medievalism, most of whom also happen to be friends and/or collaborators of Leslie J. Workman. While using different approaches and discussing topics in a variery of specialised fields, all the contributors clearly centre on negotiating the reception of medieval culture in the Early Modern, Modern, and Contemporary periods, thus presenting a broad and representative picture of current research in medievalism. The essays examine the process of creating the Middle Ages. In so doing they honour Workman by leading the academic study of medievalism towards the comprehensiveness which Lord Action as early as 1859 had promised: 'Two great principles divide the world, and contend for the mastery: antiquity and the Middle Ages. These are the two civilizations that have preceded us, the two elements of which ours is composed. All political as well as religious questions reduce themselves practically to this. This is the great dualism that runs through our society. '

Zum Gedenken an Person und Wirken von Otto Gerhard Oexle (28. August 1939 - 16. Mai 2016).

Die Erforschung der Erinnerungskultur der vormodernen Gesellschaften Europas ist untrennbar mit Otto Gerhard Oexle, Direktor des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte in Göttingen von 1987 bis 2004, verknüpft: Er hatte das Totengedenken des Ancien Régime als ‘totales soziales Phänomen’ und ‘Memoria’ als Exempel der transdisziplinären Historischen Kulturwissenschaften erkannt und erforscht. Dieser Band vereint Beiträge von Kollegen, Freunden und Schülern, die Themen, Thesen und Anregungen von Otto Gerhard Oexle aufgreifen - erweiternd, vertiefend und fortführend. Der Band führt einen Nachruf mit Beiträgen zusammen: eine ‘Schülerbiographie’ in Auseinandersetzung mit Otto Gerhard Oexle, zu Stiftung und Memoria in universalhistorischer Perspektive, über Memoria in textilen Schenkungen des Früh- und Hochmittelalters, zu Deutungsschemata der ‘mittelalterlichen Gesellschaft’ in Weltgerichtsbildern, über Stadtbau und Memoria im Italien des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts, zu Ernst Robert Curtius und den Mittelalterbildern des 20. Jahrhunderts, zum Historismus, über das Gesetz vom Sinai in literarischen Verarbeitungen, bis hin zur Kultur der Erinnerung an die verfolgten und ermordeten Juden in den Niederlanden unter dem NS-Regime.

The three-volume project Cohesion in Multi-Ethnic Societies in Europe from c. 1000 to the Present explores and seeks to find solutions to a crucial problem facing contemporary Europe: in what circumstances can different ethnic groups co-operate for the common good? They apparently did so in the past, combining to form political societies, medieval and early modern duchies, kingdoms, and empires. But did they maintain their ethnic traditions in this process? Did they pass on elements of their cultural memory when they were not in a dominant position in a given polity?

This first volume of the project focuses on the cohesive function of memory, tradition, and identity politics in multi-ethnic societies. Featuring chapters written by authors from Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe, it presents sixteen case studies of the co-habitation or co-operation of different ethnic groups from the so-called ‘peripheries’ of medieval and early modern Europe that resulted in peaceful acculturation or the birth of a new identity on the basis of multi-ethnic political society. The volume suggests that ethnic identities were consciously accepted as one among various forms of identity that were possessed by social groups: they were rarely absolutized, and members of these groups preferred pragmatic approaches in their relations with other ethnicities.

In the early modern period, Poland–Lithuania stood as a realm where the echoes of a storied past intertwined with the ambitions of a dynamic present. This volume illuminates how its diverse populace navigated the complexities of their shared heritage, weaving tradition with innovation to craft a uniquely multi-layered identity. The essays presented here examine the dual nature of historical inheritance in this vast polity. On the one hand, the past served as a treasure trove of enduring ideas, compelling narratives, and time-tested practices that enriched cultural and political life. On the other, it posed formidable challenges, requiring creative adaptation to meet the demands of changing times. By exploring established narratives, performative traditions, and historical frameworks, the contributors uncover the intricate ways in which memory influenced decision-making and societal evolution. They reveal how the past was neither static nor simply an obstacle, but was an active force that shaped contemporary aspirations and inspired visions of the future. Through the lenses of rulers, nobles, intellectuals, and commoners, this collection offers fresh perspectives on how the people of Poland–Lithuania harnessed the power of history to craft a legacy that transcended their era. Essential reading for scholars and enthusiasts alike, this work examines the enduring dialogue between memory and identity in one of Europe’s most compelling early modern states.

The eleven interdisciplinary essays that comprise this book complement and expand upon a significant body of literature on the history of the Franciscan and Dominican orders during the later Middle Ages and the early modern period. They elucidate and examine the ways in which mendicant friars established, sustained, and transformed their institutional identities and shaped the devotional experiences of the faithful to whom they ministered via verbal and visual culture. Taking primary texts and images as their point of departure, these essays break new scholarly ground by revising previous assumptions regarding mendicant life and actions and analysing sites, works of art, and texts that either have been neglected in the existing literature or that have not been examined through the lens of current methodologies such as sermon studies, ritual, gender, and cross-cultural interactions. Indeed, the varied methods and subjects of these essays demonstrate there is still much to be learned about the mendicant orders and the ways and spaces in which they operated and presented themselves on the local, regional, and global stages.

Primary sources from the Frankish kingdom during the Merovingian era (ca. 500-750) are few and far between. This volume is a survey of more than 600 Latin letters, selected by the author, that were exchanged between persons in Gaul during that time period. Many are almost entirely unknown and have never been translated into any modern language. While most of the letters were authored by clerics and highly-placed laymen, a small but significant number was composed by women, both religious and lay.

For elite individuals, letter networks were the social media of their day. Letters were written to maintain the bonds of friendship, to seek or extend patronage and political alliance, to instruct, rebuke, defend, console, and recommend. Many have come down to us in collections; others are strays embedded in other texts or deperdita that come to light only in the replies of others.

This book is a valuable tool for scholars and students alike. In seven readable chapters, the author discusses numerous aspects of the letters and explores how they fit with, and enlarge upon, the better-known sources of the period such as the works of Gregory of Tours, Fredegar, the anonymous History of the Franks (LHF), and various saints’ vitae. An appendix containing a summary of each letter in translation renders these texts more readily accessible to the English speaker.

La culture écrite médiévale se caractérise par la diversité et l’originalité de ses formes et de ses fonctions. Au sein de cet éventail très large des pratiques de l’écriture, les inscriptions tracées sur la pierre, le bois, le verre ou le métal dans le but de communiquer un message pour la plus longue durée occupent une place particulière bien qu’encore assez mal définie aujourd’hui. Née en France à la fin des années 1960, l’épigraphie médiévale s’est jusqu’à présent principalement attachée au texte de l’inscription et à son contenu, en étudiant la forme des lettres, les sources de la composition et les informations transmises par le document.

Si elles ont permis des avancées considérables dans la connaissance des formes de l’écriture épigraphique, ces études, en se concentrant sur le contenu du texte, ont isolé le document de sa fonction réelle dans la communication médiévale. Le public des inscriptions, la façon dont il appréhende, par les sens et par l’esprit, le texte vu dans le paysage graphique quotidien, et l’utilisation qu’il peut en faire échappent encore pour beaucoup à la connaissance du médiéviste. C’est en posant l’inscription au cœur du système culturel médiéval et en essayant de déterminer sa place effective dans la transmission des informations que ce livre entend discuter la réalité de la fonction publicitaire du texte épigraphique et déterminer les modalités de lecture, de compréhension et d’utilisation de l’écriture exposée. Au tournant des xiii e-xiv e siècles, alors que se met en place une nouvelle culture écrite, définie par une diffusion plus profonde du texte dans la société médiévale, l’inscription devient un élément incontournable dans la ville et y joue des rôles très différents (affichage des décisions, commémoration des événements, structuration des espaces, affirmation des autorités) qui constituent autant d’occasions pour le public d’exercer sa familiarité avec l’écriture et de s’affirmer en tant que lecteur potentiel.

Docteur en histoire médiévale, ingénieur de recherche au CNRS spécialisé en analyse des sources anciennes et membre du Centre d’études supérieures de civilisation médiévale de Poitiers, Vincent Debiais est l’auteur depuis 2005 du Corpus des inscriptions de la France médiévale et participe aux activités de recherche du CESCM sur la culture écrite au Moyen Âge.

John of Salisbury has long been celebrated as one of the foremost humanists of the twelfth-century renaissance, an erudite correspondent, legal expert, historian, poet, diplomat and political thinker, and clerk to two successive archbishops of Canterbury, Theobald and Thomas Becket. His Metalogicon, ostensibly a defence of the role of logic and of Aristotle’s Organon in the educational syllabus of the day, makes a powerful argument for an educational system of real practical utility for society, one whose intellectual coherence and rigour should underpin political morality and rational governance. As such, it has been seen to stand alongside the more famous Policraticus as an integral part of the intellectual contribution of one of Europe’s great political theorists. Based on John’s own experiences as a student and a teacher, the treatise offers unique evidence of the educational system of twelfth-century Paris at a critical stage in the early development of the schools, and of the earliest reception of the Aristotelian texts of the ‘new logic’. It is also an important contribution to the tradition of pedagogical and educational thought, with its unique attention to teaching methods and its belief in the purpose of education both for the formation of the person and for the good of society. The treatise has been accorded an important place in many modern scholarly debates, including those on the origins of the universities, on medieval philosophy and on medieval humanism. This new translation is based on the edition of J.B. Hall, auxiliata K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, which appeared in Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis as Iohannes Saresberiensis - Metalogicon (CCCM 98), and so makes available to the student and general reader for the first time a translation of a text of this important work established on modern critical principles. References to the corresponding pages of the Corpus Christianorum edition are provided in the margins of this translation.

Professor J.B. Hall is Hildred Carlile Professor of Latin Emeritus, University of London. Apart from John of Salisbury, he has published books on the textual criticism of Claudian, Ovid and Statius.

Dr Julian P. Haseldine is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Hull. He has edited the letters of Peter of Celle and published widely on medieval friendship and friendship networks.

Throughout the centuries Byzantium's ambitious authors were conscious of the significance of literary registers for the reception of their texts. They deliberately made use of stylistic elements or refrained from using certain features in order to reach their target audience. There are certain groups of texts dating from various periods where these stylistic elements can be tracked precisely by comparison of two or even more versions with their model text. Such examples of rewriting can be found particularly within genres with a broader audience appeal, namely hagiography and historiography. It is in both genres that we encounter metaphrastic processes, in terms of stylistic elaboration and in terms of stylistic simplification.

As well as stylistic reshaping, metaphrasis may also encompass the addition or removal of literary and/or thematic aspects. All these processes signify intent as well as authorial interpretation. Frequently, the ideological orientation of a text is refurbished through rewriting. Teasing out these strands for exploration helps to supply a potential wealth of information on the author (if known), cultural (social, religious, historical) context, and creative ability, as well as levels of education and literacy.

En la Italia del Renacimiento, Michele Savonarola, abuelo del famoso Girolamo, es llamado a la corte de los Este en Ferrara, donde ejercerá como médico de la familia gobernante y como profesor de la universidad de la ciudad. Poco a poco la escritura se convertirá en su principal ocupación, dando lugar a una prolija y variada producción literaria que acoge temas políticos, religiosos, históricos o morales, sin descuidar su principal interés: la medicina. En este ámbito dedica escritos a materias tan dispares como la ginecología o la parasitología, y acoge todos ellos en su obra enciplopédica Practica. Analizamos en el presente trabajo su obra monográfica sobre el termalismo y los baños de Italia, texto fundamental que marca un punto de inflexión en la evolución del género de balneis, al incluir en su estudio de los baños de Italia termas ubicadas en Sicilia y gran parte de la península itálica, desde Padua hasta Nápoles, además de analizar los diversos tipos de baños y la composición química de las aguas mineromedicinales.

It is only in recent years that Byzantine poetry - a long-neglected aspect of Byzantine literature - has attracted the attention of philologists, literary and cultural historians. This holds true especially for the poetry written in middle and late Byzantium.Though many collections of poems are available in modern critical editions, a considerable amount of texts still remains completely unedited or accessible only in outdated and unreliable editions. Moreover, many works of this period have never been studied thoroughly with regard to their cultural impact on society. Issues of authorship and patronage, function, literary motives, generic qualities, and manuscripts still await further study.

This volume aims to take a step to fill this gap. Although it includes studies on poetry from the early tenth to the fifteenth centuries, the main focus is placed on the Komnenian and Palaeologan times. It presents editions of completely unknown texts, such as a twelfth-century cycle of epigrams on John Klimax. It includes studies on various types of poetry, including didactic, occasional, and even poetry written for liturgical purposes. By analysing these works and placing them within their literary and socio-cultural context, we can draw conclusions about the cultural tastes of the Byzantines and acquire a more nuanced picture of middle and late Byzantine poetry.

Migrations of Concepts brings together the results of an experimental research on the migration of philosophical concepts into the languages of the arts. The monograph explores the intersection of philosophy, literature and art and presents a theoretical-performative investigation on the transposition of philosophical contents into theatrical and musical performance. Starting with Giambattista Vico and Samuel Beckett, a first part elaborates the paradigm of the ‘Disbelonging’ of the I – which is the condition of the I who realizes that it is both its own and foreign at the same time –, shows how this is transposed into the language of sounds, and reflects on the significance of public performance of a philosophical work. The second and third parts further explore the transposition of philosophical thought into art by presenting the theatrical performances written and directed by the author. More specifically, the book contains the text of two theatre readings on Vico and Gorgia, and the libretto of two melologues dedicated to Hegel and the Prince of Sansevero, with the corresponding scores of music composed by Rosalba Quindici. By exploring the boundaries of adaptation studies this monograph radically proposes a new and innovative way to study and communicate philosophical concepts.

The Sermones ad populum are a part of Augustine’s work that, especially in its relation to the rest of the Augustinian corpus, deserves more attention. Frequently studied topics are the transmission of the sermons, the bishop’s homiletic methodology, his use of Scripture and classical rhetoric, his view on the episcopate, his theology of proclamation and his opinions about the cult of the martyrs. Augustine’s sermons also serve as an invaluable source for the study of the North African Church and its liturgical practices at the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century. The dating and the chronology of the sermons have likewise been the object of many publications. As a matter of fact, they are still much debated.

On May 29-31, 2008, the research units History of Church and Theology and Literary Studies: Latin Literature of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven organized an international conference on Augustine’s Sermones ad populum in collaboration with the Scientific Committee of the Series Latina of Corpus Christianorum (Brepols Publishers), the Revue bénédictine (Maredsous) and the Augustinian Historical Institute (Heverlee). The conference was intended to bring together scholars who have recently made important contributions to the study of Augustine’s work in general and his preaching in particular, as well as specialists in the field of Early Christian homiletics.

This volume elaborates the contributions presented during the conference and includes articles by I. Bochet, P.-M. Bogaert, L. De Coninck, R. Dodaro, V.H. Drecoll, H. Drobner, A. Dupont, M. Lamberigts, G. Partoens, E. Rebillard, P. Tombeur, P. Van Geest, H. Van Oort, D. Weber, C. Weidmann, J. Yates.

What is a minority? How did members of minority groups in the medieval Mediterranean world interact with contemporaries belonging to other groups? In what ways did those contacts affect their social positions and identities? The essays collected in this volume approach these questions from a variety of angles, examining polemic, social norms, economic exchange, linguistic transformations, and power dynamics.

These essays recast the concept of minority - as a mutable condition rather than a fixed group designation - and explore previously-neglected collective and individual interactions between and among minorities around the medieval Mediterranean basin. Minorities are often defined as such because they were in some way excluded from access to resources or denied participation as a consequence of a group affiliation or facet of their identity. Yet, at times their distinctiveness also lay less in their exclusion than in particular ways of relating to spheres of power, whether political or moral, and in certain dissenting conceptions of the world. Through these contributions we shed light on both the continuities that such interactions displayed across intervals of space and time, and the changes that they underwent in particular locales and historical moments.

When a beneficiary or an eye-witness to a miracle met a scribe at a saint’s shrine or a notary at a canonization hearing, it was necessary to establish that the experience was miraculous. Later, the same incident may have been re-told by the clergy; this time the narration needed to entertain the audience yet also to contain a didactic message of divine grace. If the case was eventually scrutinized at the papal Curia, the narration and deposition had to fulfil the requirements of both theology and canon law in order to be successful. Miracle narrations had many functions, and they intersected various levels of medieval society and culture; this affected the structure of a collection and individual narration as well as the chosen rhetoric.

This book offers a comprehensive methodological analysis of the structure and functions of medieval miracle collections and canonization processes as well as working-tools for reading these sources. By analysing typologies of miracles, stages of composition, as well as rhetorical elements of narrations and depositions, the entertaining, didactic, and judicial aspects of miracle narrations are elucidated while the communal and individual elements are also scrutinized.

From the English Civil War to the Fronde, from Masaniello to Robespierre, this book is one of the first attempts to create a European, transnational approach to the problems of the early modern age. It proposes a detailed reconstruction of the main interpretative tendencies that have developed around the English Civil War, the French Revolution, the so-called ‘Seventeenth-Century Crisis’: the Fronde and the Neapolitan revolt of Masaniello. And yet, Mirrors of Revolution agrees with neither the traditional social interpretations of the causes of revolt, nor with revisionist approaches that privilege the influence of discursive registers. Instead, it proposes an original interpretation of revolution based on the concept of political identity. In the terms of this analysis, revolutions do not reveal previously hidden social groups. Rather, revolutions become the central ground upon which new identities coalesce. With its usage of the Fronde and Masaniello as case-studies for extensive investigation, Mirrors of Revolution outlines a challenging and exciting reformulation of the concept, and causes, of revolution.

Le déroulement de la consécration ou dédicace d’une église est codifié dans l’Église latine aux vii e et viii e siècles pour devenir, au Moyen Âge central, un rituel fastueux. La consécration apparaît alors comme l’acte fondateur d’un nouvel espace-temps polarisé par le bâtiment ecclésial. Les paroles prononcées et les gestes effectués lors du rituel contribuent à manifester cette nouvelle naissance et les transformations qu’elle implique. Les mesures prises pour en conserver le souvenir inscrivent l’événement dans la mémoire de la communauté liée au lieu consacré.

Œuvre commune d’un groupe d’historiens, d’historiens de l’art et d’archéologues médiévistes, le présent ouvrage propose une réflexion sur les implications sociales de la consécration de l’église au Moyen Âge central. Il s’agit tout d’abord de comprendre la dynamique du rituel et ses effets sociaux, en étudiant les déplacements des protagonistes, les gestes des célébrants, tant furtifs (bénédictions, signes de croix, onctions) que durables (marquages au sol ou sur les murs), les paroles prononcées, la musique, les chants et les odeurs qui plongent le rituel dans une atmosphère multi-sensorielle. Il s’agit ensuite d’examiner les conditions de production d’un commentaire normatif et exégétique sur la consécration, tant en amont qu’en aval de la célébration, et de comprendre les liens qui unissent ces différents modes de discours sur le rituel. Il s’agit enfin de comprendre les formes et les effets sociaux des narrations de l’événement-consécration, tant par le verbe (de la notice à la chronique) que par l’inscription monumentale et l’image peinte ou sculptée. Ces trois axes de la réflexion sont envisagés de manière croisée et complémentaire.

Les auteurs ayant contribué à cet ouvrage sont implantés dans des structures universitaires ou de recherche en France, Suisse, Belgique, Canada et États-Unis.

Hommes, femmes, catholiques, protestants, Européens, Américains, appartenant à des congrégations missionnaires prestigieuses ou membres de sociétés plus modestes, les missionnaires auteurs des textes réunis dans cette anthologie vivent tous en terre d’islam au contact, même distant, des musulmans : hommes de pouvoir et plus rarement de religion, élèves ou étudiants fréquentant leurs établissements scolaires, malades soignés dans leurs dispensaires ou leurs hôpitaux. Quelles étaient leurs relations avec ces musulmans ? Que savaient-ils de l’islam ? Ces différentes questions ont guidé les choix des textes de cette anthologie qui évoquent l’Algérie, la Tunisie, la Syrie, la Palestine, l’Anatolie et l’Iran.

Chantal Verdeil est maître de conférences en histoire du Moyen-Orient contemporain à l’INALCO (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales). Elle a notamment publié en 2011 La mission jésuite du Mont-Liban et de Syrie (1830-1864) et, en collaboration avec A.-L. Dupont et C. Mayeur-Jaouen, Le Moyen-Orient par les textes.

Die vorliegende Übersetzung gilt einer um 1200 verfassten Gesamtdarstellung der Liturgie. Der Autor Sicard (etwa 1150-1215) war in seiner Zeit ein bedeutender Bischof, Politiker, Historiker und Jurist. In jahrelanger Arbeit erforschte er die Riten nicht nur der römischen, sondern auch der regionalen und lokalen Kirchen. Er verarbeitete dafür die Fachliteratur besonders des 12. Jahrhunderts. Bei der Deutung von Herkunft und Sinngebung der einzelnen Formeln und Formen legt sich Sicard nicht auf eine einzige Theorie fest. Neben historischen Aspekten bietet er stets umfangreiche christologische Bezüge. Seine profunde Kenntnis der Bibel, gerade des Alten Testaments, hilft ihm dabei sichtlich. Auch die Perikopen bezieht er in seine Kommentierung ein. Im Zentrum seiner Betrachtung steht immer Christus als Herr der Kirche. Darum wählt er auch den ausgefallenen Titel ‚Mitralis’ (zu ergänzen ‚liber’): Christus ist der sichtbare Oberste Bischof in der Mitra. Seine wissenschaftliche Methode ist, wie in der damaligen Zeit üblich, die Allegorie. In neun Büchern werden geschildert: I das Kirchengebäude (einschließlich des künstlerischen Schmucks), II die Kleriker (Ordination und Tracht), III die Messe, IV das Offizium, V - VIII das Kirchenjahr (gegliedert nach den Festkreisen), IX Heiligenfeste. Mit seiner anspruchsvollen Darstellung möchte Sicard durch bessere Kenntnis der Materie zur Wertschätzung der Liturgie einladen. Er hat dabei ein einzigartiges literarisches Werk geschaffen.

Der zugrundeliegende Text dieses Bandes erschien 2008 in der Reihe Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis 228 Sicardi episcopi Cremonensis Mitralis de officiis, herausgegeben von Dr. Gábor Sarbak, Mitarbeiter der Akademie der Wissenschaften Budapest, und Lorenz Weinrich, ehem. Professor für mittelalterliche Geschichte an der Freien Universität Berlin. L. Weinrich hat u. a. zahlreiche Übersetzungen mittellateinischer Werke veröffentlicht. Die Ziffern am Seitenrand verweisen auf die entsprechenden Seiten der Edition.