Brepols

The idea of the Nordic nations as champions of gender equality is firmly rooted in today’s perceptions of society. But how does such a modern comprehension influence our views of history? Does our understanding of gender impact on how we see the past? And do the ways in which we gender the past have an effect on our present identities?

From the Stone Age to the Early Modern period, and from warriors and queens to households and burials, this groundbreaking volume draws together research conducted as part of the project Gendering the Nordic Past, an inter-Nordic collaboration aimed at (re)evaluating and revitalizing the field of gender studies in the region. The chapters gathered in this volume, contributed by archaeologists and historians, theologians, art historians, and specialists in gender studies, aim to offer novel perspectives on the ways in which we gender the past. While many of the chapters focus explicitly on the Nordic countries, comparisons are also drawn with other regions in order to provide both internal and external views on the role of the collective past in present Nordic identities. The result, presented here, is an essential dialogue into the importance of gender in creating and maintaining past identities, as well as a new understanding of how the identities that we construct for the past can relate to heritage narratives.

Si les études de genre utilisent abondamment les notions de discrimination ou d’inégalités, il est plus rare qu’elles abordent à proprement parler celle de compétition. Le présent volume aborde ce thème avec pour but de mettre en lumière la manière dont les périodes de forte compétition sociale influent sur la place et la redéfinition des attributs sexués, en même temps que l’importance relative donnée à ceux-ci dans les situations de rivalité ou de compétition. La dizaine de travaux rassemblés présentent une vaste enquête sur la notion de genre dans l'historiographie moderne et dans les sources de la fin de l'Antiquité et du haut Moyen Âge avant d'analyser des exemples venus aussi bien de l'archéologie que des chroniques ou de l'hagiographie, essentiellement en Gaule et en Italie. Les auteurs montrent comment genres et régimes de genre sont des outils et des produits des crises et des compétitions, aussi bien pour les hommes que pour les femmes de l'Occident altimédiéval.

Depuis le XIXe siècle, les historiens français et allemands racontent une histoire fondamentalement différente de la transition entre le monde carolingien et les Xe-XIIe siècles : pour les premiers, l’apparition de principautés « territoriales » dans le monde post-carolingien est avant toute chose le signe de la désagrégation des institutions carolingiennes et représente une mutation fondamentale dans l’organisation des pouvoirs. Pour les seconds, il n’y a pas de véritable solution de continuité dans un système où le pouvoir a toujours reposé non sur la domination d’un territoire mais sur l’importance des liens interpersonnels entre le roi et l’aristocratie, et cela dès l’époque carolingienne. Le but de cet ouvrage est de montrer comment l’importance dévolue au caractère territorial du pouvoir – largement remis en question par la recherche actuelle – a influé sur la manière dont on raconte l’histoire de l’empire carolingien et des royaumes post-carolingiens à l’Est et à l’Ouest du Rhin, grâce à plusieurs mises au point historiographiques et à de nombreuses études de cas.

In George Eliot's last two novels, Middlemarch (1871-72) and Daniel Deronda (1876), she abandons the realism she had explored and articulated so carefully, most famously in Adam Bede, 'a faithful account of men and things', for an unprecedented return to 'cloud-borne angels, [...] prophets, sibyls, and heroic warriors'. This study addresses Eliot's exploitation of Victorian medievalism by considering the way in which she utilizes the discourses of medievalism, both for their potential for subversiveness and their potential for mediation, to affirm that change is possible socially, culturally, and politically, in her modern contemporary world. The various medieval discourses are revealed as interstices within what initially appears to be a continuation of the realism of her earlier novels. They permit political and cultural readings of a different, and often unexpected, kind to the realist bourgeois values of novels like Adam Bede, and to a lesser extent, Felix Holt. These political and cultural readings reveal a more determined, more obvious feminist and socialist polemic in her two last and possibly greatest novels.

Chancelier de l’Université de Paris, Jean Gerson (1363-1429) est surtout connu comme théoricien de la théologie mystique et par son action réformatrice au sein de l’Église pendant les années difficiles du Grand Schisme, où il joua un rôle de premier plan. Or si la carrière universitaire et l’action politique de Gerson font de lui un intellectuel parisien, l’évidence de la transmission manuscrite et imprimée désigne sans équivoque le Rhin supérieur comme la région où la diffusion des œuvres du chancelier a été la plus foisonnante. Intervenant à une échelle comparable à la diffusion manuscrite des œuvres de Thomas d’Aquin, le rayonnement de l’œuvre de Gerson a ceci de spectaculaire qu’il dépasse largement le milieu universitaire et qu’il se déploie en moins d’un siècle. Le paradoxe reste pourtant intact de pourquoi l’Allemagne, et non la France, s’impose comme le lieu de rayonnement de l’œuvre de Gerson dans des proportions aussi importantes quantitativement ? Pour répondre à cette question, l’étude de la réception de l’œuvre du chancelier ne peut pas faire l’économie d’une réévaluation de la tradition manuscrite et imprimée des 15e et 16e siècles à partir des témoins préservés dans les bibliothèques du Rhin supérieur. En privilégiant le cas de Gerson comme point d’observation, ce volume se propose de renouveler les perspectives de l’histoire intellectuelle et culturelle dans le long 15e siècle en focalisant sur l’histoire des textes, les conditions et les circonstances de leur transmission, afin de dresser une cartographie des réseaux de communication dans la région rhénane dans les décennies qui entourent l’invention de l’imprimerie.

Jean sans Peur qui succède à son père Philippe le Hardi à la tête du duché de Bourgogne en 1404, dut attendre la mort de sa mère Marguerite pour hériter du comté en 1405. L’historiographie l’a longtemps montré comme détaché de son petit territoire comtois en raison de sa forte implication dans la politique du royaume de France voisin et de son plus grand attachement au duché. Si la gestion de l’ordinaire requérait peu son attention, elle permettait des rentrées d’argent que le duc-comte ne dédaignait pas. Ses interventions démontrent parfois une volonté d’améliorer la gestion, la majorité prouvant surtout son désir d’accroitre ce qu’il en retirait. Jean sans Peur n’a pas négligé son comté malgré sa faible importance au cœur de l’ensemble bourguignon. Graphiques et tableaux systématiquement employés pour appuyer la démonstration livrent des approches chiffrées du rapport de ce domaine bourguignon, mettant en lumière la gestion et l’administration d’un domaine princier en cette fin de Moyen Âge.

Gildas is the earliest insular writer who has left us a substantial legacy of theological writing. He is usually, however, not seen as a theological writer but as an historical source for ‘dark age’ Britain at the time of the Germanic invasions in the mid-sixth century. Yet the deacon Gildas saw himself as a prophet charged by God to call the rulers and clergy of his society back to being a chosen people of the covenant. The form this call took was that of an indictment of those groups based on the testimonia of the Christian scriptures.

This book is a study both of Gildas’s use of the scriptures (his text, his canon, his exegetical strategies) and of how, from the way he interprets sacred history, he created a distinctive theology of the church and of salvation.

Thomas O'Loughlin is Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Nottingham. His areas of interest are Patristic and Medieval Theology, History of Scriptural Interpretation, Early Church and Method in Historical Theology.

Giulia Gonzaga (1513-66) was renowned throughout sixteenth-century Italy as a model of pious widowhood and of female beauty. Yet over three decades she sustained a risky friendship and personal correspondence with Pietro Carnesecchi (1508-67), the one-time papal favourite who became infamous for his heretical religious beliefs and associations. Indeed, Carnesecchi was condemned to death by the Tribunal of the Roman Inquisition, implicated in part by evidence of his correspondence with donna Giulia.

This major new study traces the evolution of donna Giulia’s unorthodox religious ideas and networks. Considered alongside inquisitorial trial records and contemporary religious treatises, donna Giulia’s written dialogue with Carnesecchi and others, vividly reflects the religious tensions of mid-sixteenth-century Italy.

Giulia Gonzaga and the Religious Controversies of Sixteenth-Century Italy details donna Giulia’s important contribution to the exchange and currency of reformist ideas amongst an intellectual elite of women and men, clergy and laity that extended through the Italian peninsula and beyond.

It is impossible to understand societies without looking at their technological underpinnings. Technology constitutes the very fabric of societies' political, economic, cultural, and everyday realities. Building on recent historiography, this book offers the first overview of the global history of contemporary technology.

Gathering more than fifty specialists of the history of technology, the collection of essays presents an overview of technological evolutions on a global scale. The book challenges both teleological approaches on progress and eurocentric perspectives. It explores the complex socio-economic implications of ‘techniques’ (and not simply technology) as well as the systems of representation and power structures that led to the emergence of today’s world.

The purpose of the collected essays is to offer a new history of technology. In this perspective, a central question concerns the very category of the history of technology, i.e. the term ‘technology’ itself. Refusing both the limitations of ‘technology’ and of ‘useful knowledge’, the book stresses the necessity to study technology as embodying human activity as a whole. In that sense, history of technology, envisioned as techniques rather than purely technologies, is intrinsically linked to anthropology and ethnology.

This book is divided into three sections. The first section opens with a world tour of techniques, restoring the complexity of regional historiographies and of the meanings given to technological activities in different societies. The second part focuses on sectors of activity, processes, and products with a strong emphasis on means of production and communication, the exploitation of natural resources, major technological systems, infrastructures and networks. The final section provides access to major cross-related issues. It pays particular attention to the role played by technology/techniques in the process of globalization, particularly through colonization, imperialism, and the development of large technological systems.

From the twelfth century onwards, notable advances in the theoretical development occur in independent treatises on syntax, which on their side are intimately linked with medieval commentaries on the last two books, the so-called Priscian Minor, of the Institutiones Grammaticae I-XVIII, where Priscian deals with syntax. A number of the independent treatises on syntax are now available. But of the many commentaries on Priscian Minor known, only a few have been edited, so let me start by editing an interesting 12th c. gloss on Priscian Minor, called the Glosa Victorina. Priscian Minor itself begins with introducing the notion of what is a perfect sentence, what is a well-formed utterance and which parts of speech are indispensable or the most important, stating their order of importance : noun, verb, participle, pronoun, and the indeclinable word classes. As the argumentation unfolds, comparisons between letters, syllables and words are introduced providing a continuity and refinement on what was taught earlier in the so-called Priscian Maior, and how this concerns grammar on the level of syntax. Very quickly, this leads to an interdisciplinary discussion of what constitutes a perfect sentence (according to the grammarians and the dialecticians), involving the commentators in redefinitions of the principal parts of speech and explaining their distinguishing features. In this process, notions of substance, of person, of deixis, of reference - signification, and many other important grammatical issues are discussed. So in principle, the beginning of any commentary on Priscian Minor provides its author with scope for developing his particular doctrines and ideas of prime importance in linguistics.

Here the Glosa Victorina deserves a closer look, because it provides us with insights into discussions normally only hinted at by Abelard, or a use of terminology which then becomes refined and partially rejected by William of Conches and Petrus Helias.

À l'occasion du départ à la retraite de Jean-Daniel Dubois de la direction d'études « Gnose et Manichéisme » à l'École pratique des hautes études en 2015, plusieurs de ses collègues et amis ont tenu à lui rendre hommage. La diversité des thèmes, des écrits et des communautés culturelles et linguistiques étudiés dans les quarante-quatre contributions ici publiées, témoigne de la richesse du parcours intellectuel de Jean-Daniel Dubois, lequel s'étend des oasis d'Égypte jusqu'à la Route de la Soie.

Ce volume s'adresse aux spécialistes de la Méditerranée, du Proche-Orient et de l'Extrême-Orient anciens. Il intéressera les historiens des religions, particulièrement ceux des mouvements chrétiens - dont les courants gnostiques -, du manichéisme, des cultes polythéistes et de l'islam, les philologues ainsi que les historiens de la philosophie de l'Antiquité tardive.

The systematic formulation of the status of the People of Israel as the Chosen People of God stands at the heart of Judah Halevi’s famous theological and polemical treatise - the Kuzari.

The idea of the Chosen People is an ancient one and is deeply rooted in Judaism. Through a wide-ranging textual and phenomenological investigation, this book highlights the novel and systematic presentation of the Chosen People in the Kuzari and shows how Judah Halevi draws, in a creative manner, on terms, concepts, and themes borrowed from the Shī‘ī doctrine of the Imām as presented in Shī‘ī literature.

This book presents a historical perspective for understanding the basis of Judah Halevi’s attraction to Shī‘ī theology, with its unique category of God’s Chosen. The polemical argument over the issue of the legitimate successor to leadership in early Islam, as well as the debate around the legitimate successor-group in medieval interreligious disputes, emerges as the historical background for the seemingly surprising link between the Shī‘ī Imām doctrine and the idea of the Chosen People in Judah Halevi’s thought. This link on the one hand portrays Halevi as a bold, original thinker and, on the other, portrays the Shī‘ī Imām doctrine as exceedingly fruitful and reaching beyond the bounds of Islam.

The archaeological excavations conducted from one end of the Mediterranean zone to the other have illuminated the place of gods in the ritual practices in the dwellings of the Graeco-Roman era. The discovery of multiple artefacts, dedicated spaces, and figurative paintings support new avenues of historical, anthropological, and social reflection with the aim of better understanding domestic religious practices in the polytheistic contexts of antiquity. This collective volume organizes those reflections around three axes.The first axis centres on identifying the deities that were favoured in domestic sanctuaries. Which gods are represented and which are not? The second axisconcerns the interrelationships evident within domestic ritual spaces and sanctuaries.The third axis is dedicated to the anthropology of rituals. Lines of inquiry informed by anthropological, social, and phenomenological approaches are assuming ever-greater importance in scholarship on Antiquity. It is from this perspective that the authors explore the role that domestic ritual spaces play in shaping the lived environment.

In the year 2007, the Raimundus-Lullus-Institut at the University of Freiburg celebrated its 50th anniversary. To mark this occasion, an international congress was held on 25–28 November 2007, titled Vision of God and Contemplation of the World. Interpretations of Ramon Lull’s »Liber contemplationis«. The congress papers assembled in the present volume offer an informative survey of the Liber contemplationis in Deum (Catalan: Llibre de contemplació en Déu), the most comprehensive and probably most significant work of Lull’s. The Liber contemplationis comprises 366 chapters: one chapter for each day of the year, including one for the additional day of the leap year. The contents of the work have often been described as ‘encyclopaedic’. Its aim, however, is not to offer a comprehensive account of all that is known about reality, but rather to recognise and describe reality in the context of contemplating God, knowing the articles of faith as well as attaining a virtuous life agreeable to God.

The volume contains introductory studies of the Latin tradition of the text as well as detailed commentaries on individual chapters.

Im Jahr 2007 konnte das Raimundus-Lullus-Institut der Universität Freiburg sein 50-jähriges Bestehen feiern. Aus diesem Anlass fand vom 25.–28. November 2007 ein internationaler wissenschaftlicher Kongress unter dem Titel Gottes Schau und Weltbetrachtung. Interpretationen zum »Liber contemplationis« des Raimundus Lullus statt. Die 20 Referentinnen und Referenten wurden bewusst nicht nur aus dem Kreis namhafter Lull-Spezialisten gewählt, sondern repräsentieren ein breites Spektrum internationaler mediävistischer Forschung. Mit ihren Tagungsbeiträgen, die in diesem Band gesammelt vorliegen, bieten sie eine informative Tour d’Horizon durch Ramon Lulls umfangreichstes und wohl bedeutendstes Werk, den Liber contemplationis in Deum (katalanisch: Llibre de contemplació en Déu).

Der Liber contemplationis umfasst 366 Kapitel: ein Kapitel für jeden Tag des Jahres und eines für den zusätzlichen Tag im Schaltjahr. Der Inhalt des Werkes ist oft als ‚enzyklopädisch‘ bezeichnet worden. Sein Ziel besteht jedoch nicht in einer umfassenden Darstellung des Wissens über die gesamte Wirklichkeit, sondern in der Bestimmung und Beschreibung der Wirklichkeit in Bezug auf die Betrachtung Gottes, die Erkenntnis der Glaubensartikel sowie die Erlangung eines tugendhaften, gottgefälligen Lebens.

Der vorliegende Band umfasst neben einführenden Untersuchungen zur lateinischen Textüberlieferung und zur Struktur des Werkes sowohl detaillierte Kommentare zu ausgewählten Kapiteln als auch Diskussionen von Einzelfragen vor dem Hintergrund von Lulls Gesamtwerk in seinem historischen Kontext.

La Légende dorée de Jacques de Voragine constitue à n’en pas douter une œuvre centrale et incontournable de la littérature européenne. Le nombre considérable de ses témoins manuscrits dans toutes les langues de l’Occident médiéval permet largement de le mesurer, tout autant que la foule des œuvres qui s’en sont inspiré.

On ne peut manquer pourtant de s’étonner : la Légende dorée a certes circulé à travers les milieux sociaux, les aires linguistiques et les territoires les plus divers, mais au prix de substantielles transformations, dans sa matérialité, dans sa composition, dans ses significations et ses usages. Pourtant, sans devenir absolument méconnaissable, la compilation hagiographique confectionnée à la fin du xiii e siècle a rapidement constitué une matrice textuelle accueillante et ouverte aux interventions que ses lecteurs ultérieurs ont apportées pour mieux l’actualiser au gré de leurs besoins et selon les nécessités des contextes. Tel est bien le paradoxe d’une œuvre si plastique et polyvalente qu’avec une singulière longévité littéraire elle parvient à perdurer non pas malgré, mais grâce aux modulations considérables qu’elle connait.

C’est ainsi que la Légende dorée a pu s’imposer comme un instrument à la fois souple et robuste de la pastorale, tout à la fois tourné vers l’édification de l’individu et assurant l’interface entre la collectivité de tous les hommes et la grande Cour des saints.

Celebrating the work of Brian J. Levy in the realm of comedy and humour in the Middle Ages, this collection of twenty essays explores unusual, unexpected or unacknowledged elements of humour in medieval literature and art. Scholars from Britain, France, Italy, the USA, Denmark, and the Netherlands consider comic elements taking an unusual form; a comic presence in unexpected places; comic elements intentionally or unintentionally hidden; comic elements surprisingly vaunted; a comic presence in standard contexts which stands out for a particular reason; comic elements which are for some reason controversial; comic elements as yet unidentified or unacknowledged; a commonly acknowledged comic presence which is in fact no such thing. Essays in English and French deal with a broad range of subjects. If the Roman de Renart is particularly well represented amongst these essays, other subjects make up the majority of the book. These include: Cicero’s De Oratorei; the Mannekin pis; late-medieval wall paintings; German and French Drama; fabliaux; vernacular pious tales and dits; the romance epic Richard Coeur de Lyon; Les Quinze joyes de mariage; bestiaries; and misericords. Sometimes shocking, often surprising, and always intriguing, the medieval comic presence rarely corresponds to our expectations and assumptions. This book shows that in numerous cases the medieval joke is actually on the modern scholar.

What do we really know about Greek alchemy throughout the ages? Certain periods, such as the Byzantine and post-Byzantine, have been somewhat overlooked. This volume engages in the the effort to shed light on certain aspects of Greek Alchemy from the 1st century CE to the 18th century, discussing and presenting relative sources, as well as the reception, transformation and use of this ‘art.’ The book also examines newly discovered manuscripts and offers a commented translation of Stephanos of Alexandria’s prayers. Furthermore, to better understand the material aspect of alchemy, it addresses the expectations and problems of laboratory replication and chemical explanation of early alchemical processes, and presents educational activities that use historical texts for the reconstruction of apparatuses in the school laboratory in secondary education.

Agricultural production has been the basic and single most important factor for the well-being of mankind since the Neolithic revolution. Insufficient agricultural output has led to deficient means of subsistence and sometimes even starvation, while rich harvests brought about plenty and prosperity. Continuous increases in agricultural output have transformed whole societies and continents, bringing about radical changes in people’s lives and economic prospects.

This book is focused on measuring and explaining agricultural growth in Europe. For most countries statistics on agricultural production are either non-existing or shaky for the period up to the end of the nineteenth century. Consequently, researchers dealing with historical farming have been forced to put a lot of effort into reconstructing reliable data on inputs and outputs. The last decades have seen major progress, and new approaches to quantify and explain agricultural development have been adopted. The book is the result of these efforts and it encompasses estimations and explanations of European historical agriculture over time, from the ninth to the twentieth century, and over space, from the Iberian Peninsula to Scandinavia and from the British Isles to Russia.

Mats Olsson and Patrick Svensson are associate professors in Economic History at Lund University. Their major research area is the agricultural transformation of Sweden and its social and demographic consequences, covering the manorial system, peasant production and labour productivity, social mobility, and preindustrial land and capital markets.

Depuis l’invasion arabo-berbère de la Péninsule ibérique en 711, les sociétés hispaniques chrétiennes sont très affectées par la guerre. Aux alentours de l’an mil, cette guerre prend une nouvelle dimension. Après une période de conflits internes et de défaites, culminant lors des fameux raids d’al-Mansûr, les principautés chrétiennes prennent l’offensive.

A cet égard, l’an mil constitue bien un tournant dans l’histoire de l’Espagne chrétienne. Vers le milieu du onzième siècle, la Reconquista est en marche, tandis que quatre forces politiques s’imposent: les royaumes de León, de Pampelune et d’Aragon, et les comtés catalans. La multiplication des conflits influe très fortement sur l’organisation des pouvoirs civils, et implique des enjeux fondamentaux dans la genèse des Espagnes chrétiennes médiévales, qui connaissent alors de profondes mutations culturelles, juridiques et idéologiques.

Les 26, 27 et 28 septembre 2002, plusieurs historiens et historiens de l’art venus de France, d’Espagne et d’Allemagne se sont retrouvés au Centre d’Etudes Supérieures de Civilisation Médiévale de Poitiers et à Angoulême pour travailler sur ces thèmes. Ils ont suivi trois axes de recherche, qui structurent les actes de ce colloque: la rencontre des mondes chrétien et musulman, la guerre comme enjeu de pouvoir et la dimension religieuse des idéologies.

Many of our oldest and best-loved stories are about killing guests and betraying hosts. Hospitality is celebrated, in medieval texts and in medieval studies, as a way of binding individuals together and strengthening social cohesion, but both the practice and narration of hospitality was shot through with ambiguity and ambivalence.

This volume shifts the scholarly gaze from the high table — where kings, queens, and honoured guests are graciously served by skilled servants — to the shadowy corners of the hall, the places where gossip and complaint are exchanged, where outlaws hide under the guise of hospitality, where hostages and troublesome strangers are benched, where the light from the hall-fire reflects on drawn blades: prompting difficult reflections on the processes of extraction and predation that provided the material foundations for the feast.

The chapters in Guests, Strangers, Aliens, Enemies range from Silk Road caravanserais in Armenia and crusader relations in the Latin East, through ambassadorial and papal receptions in the Mediterranean, treatment of merchants and the poor in Scandinavia, elite feasts in Latin Europe, to hosting of outlaws and hostages in Eurasia. The authors explore ambiguities of hospitality in the Middle Ages through a wide range of sources and methodological approaches.

The Catalan philosopher and theologian Guido Terreni (ca. 1270-1342) is one of the most outstanding fi gures in the history of the Carmelite order. The articles gathered in the first part of this volume explore the extremely rich, though still understudied, oeuvre of the Bishop of Majorca and Elne which comprises philosophicotheological, polemical, biblical and juridical texts. Since many of these works remain unedited, the second part of the volume contains selected text editions from Guido’s commentaries on Aristotle’s Physics and the Decretum Gratiani, as well as from his influential Quodlibetal Questions. Altogether, the sixteen contributions in this volume offer a comprehensive and up-to-date appraisal of Guido’s major contribution to the intellectual and political debates of his age and beyond.