Brepols

This volume stems from a research project on medieval and sixteenth-century fragments with music carried out at CESEM–Centre for the Study of the Sociology and Aesthetics of Music, Lisbon Nova University, between 2021 and 2024, as well as from an international colloquium on fragmentology held in Cascais, Portugal, in July 2023. It brings together twenty studies that address a varied range of disjecta membra, including loose folios from dismembered manuscripts, mutilated musical-liturgical codices, incomplete sets of part-books, truncated musical settings, and even the remains of a historic organ. The aim is to invest these materials with significance beyond their condition as fragmented cultural artefacts by exploring their texts, contexts, meanings, trajectories and, when appropriate, proposing methods for their reconstitution.

In recent decades, historians attempting to understand the transition from the world of late antiquity with its unitary imperial system to the medieval Europe of separate kingdoms have become increasingly concerned with the role of early medieval gentes, or peoples, in the end of the former and the constitution of the latter.

Eleven specialists examine here the role of ethnic identity in the formation of medieval polities on the periphery of the Frankish world in the eighth through eleventh centuries. In particular, they explore the intertwined issues of ethnic identity and state formation in Scandinavia and in the western and southern Slavic regions, areas in which the new approaches to the history of ethnicity have but little penetrated traditional scholarship. They ask to what extent common identities assisted in the consolidation and creation of early medieval kingdoms and to what extent the formation of these kingdoms created a discourse of common identity as a means to centralization and control. The authors contend that the developments in Scandinavia and in Slavic areas cannot be understood except in dynamic relationship with the process of state formation and group identity within the Frankish kingdoms. This powerful, expansionist society not only interacted and influenced the development of state structures on its northern and eastern borders, but it also provided models of discourse about the relationship between centralizing power and group solidarity. Not that these discourses were simply adopted by the Franks’ neighbours, but rather they became part of the range of possible options selectively adapted to local circumstances.

Friendship, patron-client relationships, and social networks played a fundamental role in Scandinavian society from the Viking Age through to the Industrial Era. Personal ties were essential to Viking chieftains for building their power base, and such ties were equally crucial for early modern merchants, who used their personal bonds to create trade networks. Furthermore, social networks connected medieval men and women to the saints and to God.

The articles in this book emphasize the strong correlation between political developments such as the emergence of the state and the evolution of friendships and social networks. They also highlight radical changes in the importance and contexts of friendship that occurred between the Viking Age and the late eighteenth century. During this period, friendships became far more than community-based social relationships, but rather tools for the elite in social positioning and wealth acquisition.

This volume highlights the major significance of friendships and patron-client relationships to political and cultural life in medieval, early modern, and modern society. It covers social networks in Iceland, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, each of which are characterized by different societal features, ranging from the free-state republic of early medieval Iceland to the early modern kingdom of Denmark.

Les dix-sept contributions rassemblées dans ce volume se proposent d’aborder l’œuvre de Jean Froissart par le prisme de la rupture que marque la rédaction du Voyage en Béarn. Elles revisitent la cour de Gaston Febus dans ses aspects culturels, sondent le personnage de Gaston III, mesurent la distorsion entre la réalité historique et la représentation littéraire qu’en livre Froissart chroniqueur; elles s’interrogent, enfin, sur la teneur véritable des relations entre les deux hommes — l’écrivain et son mécène.

To fully understand the changes in European animal husbandry during the long twentieth century, it is necessary to examine all aspects of the food chain devoted to supplying proteins and fats to a growing population. Indeed, the twentieth century saw great changes in animal husbandry - towards a market-oriented, intensified and specialized production. This influenced and was influenced by policies, trade, aspects of animal and public health, food supply issues, aims in animal breeding, development of production systems, principles in feeding and impact of producer cooperatives.

Because it is not possible to apprehend all these global changes from a rural point of view, this book aims to bring together many different expert perspectives in fields such as: agronomy, veterinary medicine, microbiology, history of sciences, economic and cultural history, and sociology. Taking into account both national idiosyncrasies and changes from an international perspective, the book gathers scientists from Italy, Spain, France, England, The Netherlands and Sweden.

The first part of the book will be devoted to the evolution of animal husbandry and commercialization from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century. The second part of the book is devoted to the increasing medicalization of this sector with a special focus on the role of veterinarians and the on the increasing uses of antibiotics.

This book deals with the theme of 'encounters with monsters' in early Irish texts. Three texts dealing with this theme are central to this study: the Old Irish Adventure of Fergus mac Leite, the Hiberno-Latin Life of St Columba by Adomnan, and the Old Irish Letter of Jesus. The author's investigation of the theme follows two lines. The first main line is the question of how aspects of the process of Christianization were reflected in early Irish literary texts. The second main line focusses on the development of ideas about evil in these textes. These two lines of investigations generated two approaches: firstly, a study into the origin of the descriptions of the monsters and, secondly, an analysis - by means of a hypothesis - of the ideas found in these three texts on this time. The broad scope of the process of Christianization is narrowed down to an investigation of the origin of the monsters and non-canonical scripture, encyclopedic Latin works such as Pliny's Naturalis Historia and Isidore's Etymologiae, related Latin and Old English material, Hiberno-Latin, and Old and Middle Irish texts. The author made this comparison in order to ascertain whether these descriptions were derived from sources and to classify the monsters according to three categories: "native", "imported", or "integrated". The author did this to determine if and how Christian idead influenced the symbolisation of evil in the form of monsters. In order to analyse the ideas about evil, the author distinguishes between two forms of evil: firstly, non-moral evil - evil that occurs without anyone inflicting it intentionally uppn the victims, and secondly, moral evil - evil done intentionally. According to the author's hypothesis, the monsters are said to belong originally to the realm of non-moral evil but, under the influence of Christianity, they also begin to personify moral evil.

On 25 September 1710, Pope Clement XI finally promulgated the 1704 decree Cum Deus optimus, which condemned the toleration of certain Confucian rituals among Chinese Catholic converts and the use of the Chinese terms tian and Shangdi to refer to the Christian God. This papal decision antagonised the Kangxi Emperor and devastated the Jesuit China mission. Although the Jesuits were prohibited from publicly refuting the decree, the Flemish Jesuit François Noël sought to defend the Jesuit position by publishing his voluminous scholarship on the Chinese classics. Among other works, in 1711 Noël published two seminal contributions to the history of Sinology: the Sinensis imperii libri classici sex or Libri sex, and the Philosophia Sinica, a sophisticated treatment of Chinese metaphysics, ritual, and ethics. While the Libri sex achieved some degree of influence in the Enlightenment through the French translation of the French Jesuit historian Du Halde and the writings of the philosopher Christian Wolff, the Philosophia Sinica was actively suppressed by the Superior-General of the Jesuit order. Yet it is in this latter work where the full breadth of Noël’s originality and intellectual contribution can be found. Noël reinterprets the Jesuits’ position through the lens of Neo-Confucianism, integrating concepts such as li, taiji, yin, and yang in his reading of Chinese philosophy. With contributions from Sinologists and intellectual historians, this book offers the first systematic study of this pioneering work.

Bavaria was a very important country during the early Middle Ages. Its territory included much of the modern German state but also reached across the Alps into what are now Austria and northern Italy. Bavaria thus occupied a strategic position between the rival kingdoms of the Franks and the Langobards. It was ruled by powerful dukes who had close political and personal relations with the Frankish rulers but who also vigorously resisted attempts to limit their own sovereignty. Bavaria’s independence was ended in 788 by Charlemagne who deposed his cousin, Duke Tassilo. Charlemagne’s son, the Emperor Louis the Pious, then established Bavaria as the first monarchy east of the river Rhine for his own son, Ludwig the German. This is the first full study of the entire evolution of Bavarian rule from the mid-sixth century into the early ninth century. It explores the changing strategies adopted by its dukes and then its first king to establish their authority and maintain their autonomy in face of evolving challenges to their rule. An Epilogue continues the story into the early tenth century.

Carl I. Hammer graduated from Amherst College (B.A.) and the University of Toronto (Ph.D.) and also studied at the universities of Munich, Chicago and Oxford. After a career in international business with Westinghouse and Daimler-Benz, he is now retired. He has published two other scholarly books on early-medieval Bavaria and numerous articles in academic journals in N. America and Europe. He lives in Pittsburgh.

Within the contemporary renewal of the exegetical and historical research on Jesus and early Christianity, this book stresses the importance of new epistemological and methodological perspectives in exegesis and History of Christianity (from the point of view of Cultural Anthropology and Comparative Religion). The articles of the first section present a consequent interpretation of Jesus within Jewish culture of the First century. Jesus activity is located within the Jewish movement of John the Baptizer. His words and political attitude is interpreted in the Jewish context of the Land of Israel under Roman administration. His movement is seen as a sub-group within Jewish society. The section dedicated to the first groups of Jesus’ disciples in the Land of Israel and in the ancient Mediterranean world mainly focuses on three constellations of questions: (a) the multiplicity and fractionation of Jesus’ groups, for example in Jerusalem in the period between 30 an 70 of the First century, (b) the fact that the post-Jesus Movement was sociologically characterized by a multiplicity of sub-groups of Jewish groups and movements; (c) the radical modifications provoked by the abandonment of Jewish contexts when the majority of followers was composed by Gentiles with limited relation with the daily practice of Jewish life and religion. Particular attention is dedicated to the connection of contemporary research with the interpretations of Jesus and early Christianity developed in the modern age.

Ever since the Christianization of the planetary week in Late Antiquity, the notion of Sunday as a day of rest, as well as the rhythm of a seven-day week, has been a constant. Yet the cultural history of Sunday in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages is complex. Detailed research reveals a greater diversity than appears at first glance. For example, Sunday did not simply replace the Sabbath, nor was the Jewish Sabbath commandment directly adopted. Furthermore, the Sunday laws of Emperor Constantine officially gave the inhabitants of the Roman Empire a day of rest free of work, but the effect and reception of the laws is hard to grasp, even among Christian authors. Moreover, Sunday was by no means a central theme in the history of late antique Christianity, so that the scattered references must be interpreted.

This edited collection, based on a conference in Vienna in 2019, investigates the relevance of Sunday and the weekly rhythm in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages in the everyday life of people, in monasticism, in synods, in further imperial and ecclesiastical laws, and in disciplinary and liturgical developments. It also covers controversies with the Jewish Sabbath as well as reflections on the aspect of rest, freedom, and of charity. While exploring different views and regional differences, the contributions show the growing importance of the Lord’s Day, especially since the sixth century, as part of the Christianization of society and the sacralization of the calendar.

From Topography to Text: The Image of Jerusalem in the Writings of Eucherius, Adomnán and Bede uses topographical detail to examine the source material, religious imagination and the image of Jerusalem in three related Latin texts from the fifth, seventh and eighth centuries. The work introduces an original methodology for analyzing the Jerusalem pilgrim texts, defined by their core interest in the commemorative topography of the Christian holy places. By newly identifying the topographical material in Adomnán’s description of Jerusalem, the study exposes key distortions in the text, its exclusive intramural focus on the Holy Sepulchre and the eschatological image of New Jerusalem that emerges from its description of contemporary Jerusalem. The study verifies the post-Byzantine provenance of Adomnán’s topographical material, namely, the oral report of Arculf, thus redressing scholarly ambivalence regarding Adomnán’s contemporary source.

The new insights into Adomnán’s De locis sanctis, including its mental map of Jerusalem, provide a template with which to analyze the text’s relationship with the writings of Eucherius and Bede. While Bede’s De locis sanctis has commonly been regarded as an epitome of Adomnán’s work, when the sequence, structure and images of the texts are compared, Eucherius not Adomnán is, for Bede, the authoritative text.

From Topography to Text offers a significant discussion on the Jerusalem pilgrim texts and the Christian topography of the Holy City, while analyzing the image of Jerusalem in the writings of three remote authors who never set foot in the city.

From Topography to Text offers a significant discussion on the Jerusalem pilgrim texts and the Christian topography of the Holy City, while analyzing the image of Jerusalem in the writings of three remote authors who never set foot in the city.

Preaching is a method of exhorting the practice of virtues and the performance of one’s duties. If people are not moved to act, preachers become obsolete. Because of this, preachers in the Middle Ages understood the importance of ensuring that their words were heeded and disseminated.

The focus of this volume is the relationship, whether direct or indirect, between what was preached and what was achieved. The articles in this collection present a range of studies, from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century and, while focused on Italy, also give a broad European perspective.

The volume investigates both the tools employed by preachers and the pragmatic aims and outcomes of their sermons. It does this by exploring the various oratorical and gesticular techniques employed by preachers, as well as their methods of preparing themselves to deliver their message and preparing their audiences to receive it. Furthermore, the volume considers both hypothetical and concrete relationships between preachers’ words and civic policies and the behaviours of groups or individual citizens, as well as the question of how and when words were translated into actions.

The phrase ‘Jus Uncommon’ summarizes England’s claim to independence from Europe, a claim supported by its unique legal system and Elizabethan theatre, and their strong interconnexion. Elizabethan tragedy begins at the Inns of Court. It was no mere coincidence, but a result of the long history of intersecting processes of law, politics, and theatre. This book sets out to contextualize and explore such legal and literary intersections, charting the emergence of Elizabethan legal culture from its various English and European sources over the course of the four hundred years running from Magna Carta to Shakespeare. It encompasses the major strands of legal history and culture that formed the background to Elizabethan political drama, republican tradition, theories of monarchical sovereignty,　European and English theories of　imperium,　pedagogical and rhetorical practices of the Inns of Court,legal-antiquarian research, parliamentary privilege, and Tudor political pamphleteering.

Legal texts, discourses, and social practices constructed a pervasive intellectual culture from which Elizabethan drama – like Shakespeare’s – emerged. Shakespeare is not the central object of this study, but he is central to its argument. What he knew about law was what collective memory had stored from centuries past at home and abroad. The issues, characters, themes, theories, and metaphors dramatized by the Elizabethan playwrights followed the way opened at the Inns. Emblematic figures of lawyers-writers and their Senecan patterns paved the way to Gorboduc and to Shakespeare’s histories.

The first uses of the term frontiere in thirteenth-fourteenth-century French were military, referring to the first line of troops in a battle. In architecture it meant the front of a building, and at the end of the fourteenth century it was first used as a geographical term, in Spain specifically about the divide between the Christians and the Muslims. More than obstacles, medieval frontiers - whether geographical, political, military, intellectual or artistic - seem to have been bridges and points of contact.

Frontiers was the theme of the Third European Congress of Medieval Studies organised by the FIDEM in Jyväskylä, Finland, in 2003. True to the nature of the FIDEM, it was highly interdisciplinary, bringing together scholars from all over the world, addressing problems ranging from Byzantine administration to Icelandic vernacular scribal culture, during a week of extraordinary intellectual excitement.

This volume brings together forty-four contributions by specialists of history, history of ideas, medieval philosophy, philology, linguistics, literature as well as manuscript and archival studies.

Comment définir les liens adelphiques? À quelles réalités biologiques, sociales, politiques, renvoient-ils dans l’Occident antique et médiéval?

Les textes rassemblés dans ce volume tentent d’éclairer les liens entre frères et soeurs en se fondant sur des approches linguistiques, historiques, juridiques et littéraires.

Ils abordent des aspects aussi divers et complexes que le rôle du frère aîné, le choix du nom, le lignage, les pratiques successorales, les liens du sang, la défense de l’honneur familial et la solidarité, les affinités, mais aussi les antagonismes, le fratricide et la vengeance.

L’exploration de cette problématique est inévitablement pluridisciplinaire car toute réflexion sur les liens adelphiques doit interroger aussi bien l’histoire, le droit, que les textes littéraires.

Published anonymously in 1733, Memoirs of the Twentieth Century is one of the earliest futuristic novels known in Anglophone and Euro-American literature. It foregrounds an acceleration of history brought about by an increasing degree of global interconnectedness, and the exclusion of prophetism and astrology as credible ways to know the future. The work of Samuel Madden, an Irish writer and philanthropist of Whig sympathies, it consists of a collection of diplomatic letters composed in the 1990s, which the narrator claims were brought to him from the time to come by a supernatural entity. Through these correspondences, twentieth-century world scenarios are spread out before the reader, in which British naval power rules the waves and international commerce, while the transnational scheming of the Jesuits threatens the independence of weaker European courts.

This book — which includes a study followed by an annotated edition of the text — assesses the cultural significance of this literary work, as an apt observatory on how historical time as a cultural construction was shaped, during the eighteenth century, by new forms of transnational circulation of information, and by the dubious space carved out in European culture by seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century debates on the nature of historical knowledge.

Through and by means of the Memoirs case study, this volume aims to contribute to a wider cultural history of the future and speculative fiction. The novel’s ironic distancing of beliefs considered to be superstitious and absurd — such as divination techniques and occult and magical disciplines — offers an exceptional testimony to the negotiation of the boundaries of verisimilitude and credibility within a religious enlightenment.

Vingt-quatre contributions portant sur toutes les périodes historiques et sur des thématiques chères au jeune émérite: l’histoire de la théologie et du christianisme, l’histoire de la Wallonie, l’histoire de l’Université catholique de Louvain, la bande dessinée et la littérature de jeunesse en tant que sources historiques.

Gaspar van Weerbeke was one of the most successful Franco-Flemish musicians of the second half of the fifteenth century, holding prestigious positions in the Sforza court in Milan, the Burgundian court chapel, and the papal chapel in Rome. His compositions were widely transmitted in manuscript and print sources throughout Europe, and he was one of the best represented composers in the early Italian music prints of Ottaviano Petrucci. Despite the high esteem of his contemporaries, Gaspar has up to now played only a peripheral role in Renaissance music historiography. This book is the first collection of research articles dedicated exclusively to the life and works of Gaspar. While the basic facts of Gaspar's life have long been known, the book fleshes out the details, presenting a more differentiated and complex picture of his biography. Analysis of a wide range of Gaspar's compositional output leads to new interpretations of his approach to different genres: masses, motets, and motet cycles. His relatively small quantity of songs is revisited in light of the confusion—both then and now—over the meaning and validity of their attributions. This book seeks to promote further research on this composer and place him in his appropriate place in music history.

En 1629 Pierre Gassendi se lance dans un projet qui devait l’occuper jusqu’à sa mort en 1655 et avoir une profonde influence sur sa propre philosophie. Ce projet était la préparation d’un traité détaillé de la totalité de la philosophie d’Épicure sous le titre de Philosophia Epicuri. Cependant, il modifia deux fois son projet initial, au niveau de la disposition et de la présentation des textes. Au terme de la première révision, le travail se vit attribuer le titre de De Vita et Doctrina Epicuri. Les résultats de la seconde révision, élaborée entre 1633 et 1645, sont parvenus jusqu’à nous sous différentes formes, soit publiées, soit manuscrites.

Les livres I - VII furent publiés en 1647 sous le titre de De Vita et Moribus Epicuri ; le livre VIII, « De philosophia Epicuri universe » est conservé à la British Library, Ms. Harley 1677, ff. 1v - 55r ; les livres XII - XXV consacrés à la Physique sont conservés à Tours, Mss. 707-710. Nous présentons ici pour la première fois le texte des livres IX - XI, qui portent sur la Canonique, composé par Gassendi à Aix-en-Provence en 1636, conservé à Carpentras, Bibliothèque Inguimbertine, Ms. 1832,ff. 205r - 256r.

Gassendi considérait que la logique était une branche importante de la philosophie, ce qu’il a affirmé à divers moments de sa carrière. Le manuscrit de Carpentras est important parce que, rédigé à miparcours entre la polémique de jeunesse de Gassendi contre la dialectique d’Aristote et l’Institutio Logica de sa maturité, il permet de comprendre comment, à un moment crucial de sa vie, l’attachement croissant de Gassendi pour la doctrine d’Épicure l’a aidé à formuler sa propre vision philosophique sur des questions aussi importantes que l’existence de la vérité, la valeur de l’observation et de l’investigation scientifiques, et la possibilité du progrès.

Le texte, bien évidemment traduit en français, est ici précédé par une introduction destinée à éclairer les principales caractéristiques des livres IX - XI ; il s’agit de replacer l’exposé de la Canonique par Gassendi à l’intérieur du contexte philosophique plus large.

Gautier de Coinci (c. 1177-1236) was a Benedictine prior, a poet and composer, and the author of several very popular religious works, including a large collection of Miracles of the Virgin in French, which enjoyed a wide circulation during the Middle Ages. Gautier drew on multiple Latin sources for his work, embellishing and personalizing them as he adapted them to his poetic design. Conceiving of his collection of miracles as a complete work, Gautier carefully organized the tales into two books, framing each with authorial exordia and lyrics praising the Virgin. In addition to its obvious literary interest, the subsequent manuscript tradition offers a remarkable panorama of medieval manuscript production, in particular due to the fascinating combination of text, music and illustration. Bringing together a select group of scholars from multiple disciplines (including art history, musicology, and literary studies), this collection of essays explores complementary aspects of Gautier, his works, and his manuscripts. The volume offers both breadth and depth in its examination of Gautier de Coinci and his Miracles de Nostre Dame. It promises to redefine Gautier studies through its interdisciplinary consideration of the varied facets of his work as it makes available to scholars and students the first interdisciplinary examination of this key figure in medieval vernacular religious culture.

Gandhāran art developed around the first century BCE till the fourth century CE in parts of present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan and has been the focus of intense scholarly debates in both Classical and South Asian Studies for many decades. In this book, Ashwini Lakshminarayan offers for the first time a specialized study on gender using Gandharan material culture and convincingly proposes new readings of visual culture beyond Eurocentric and postcolonial interpretations.

This book sets the stage with a detailed overview of the contexts in which Gandhāran art was located in Buddhist sites by analysing the gendered use of space, and the gender and activities of donors and administrators. At its core, the book gives prominence to the stone reliefs of Gandhāra and examines how male and female bodies are represented, how they interact, and how gender symbolised ideals and values.

With an important comparative overview of the Gandhāran artistic production and new illustrations, this work is indispensable for all those interested in the study of gender in ancient art, the interaction between Graeco-Roman and Indic cultures, and the development of the early Buddhist artistic tradition in South and Central Asia that also shaped Buddhist visual culture eastwards in China.