Brepols

Numbers, weights, and measurements, and the systems underpinning them, have always been a fundamental part of human society. Developed in different ways and at different times, such systems have provided a foundation for science, technology, economics, and new ways of engaging with and understanding the world. This volume aims to explore the background to numbers and measurements in more detail by drawing together specialists from a growing field of research. The contributions gathered here offer new and interdisciplinary insights into how the development of mathematical ideas and systems evolved, early metrological systems, the exchange of goods and their impact, the standardization of measuring tools, and the impact of such concepts. This unique volume is deliberately set broad, both geographically and chronologically, in order to compare and contrast changes over time and between peoples, and in doing so it sheds new light on the social and scientific developments among both prehistoric and early historic societies.

The present volume is the third in a series of three integrated publications, the first produced in 2013 as Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Hull Dialogue and the second in 2015 as Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Kansas City Dialogue. Whereas the first volume focused primarily on Northern Europe, the second expanded the range to include material in minority languages such as Old Norse and Old Irish and focused particularly on education and other textual forms, such as the epistolary and the legal.

The third volume expands the geographical range by including a larger selection of female religious, for instance, tertiaries, and further languages (for example, Danish and Hungarian), as well as engaging more explicitly on issues of adaptation of manuscript and early printed texts for a female readership. Like the previous volumes, this collection of essays, focused on various aspects of nuns’ literacies from the late seventh to the mid-sixteenth century, brings together the work of specialists to create a dialogue about the Latin and vernacular texts that were read, written, and exchanged by medieval nuns. Contributors to this volume investigate the topic of literacy primarily from palaeographical and textual evidence and by discussing information about book ownership and production in convents.

Artefacts and environmental remains are abundant from archaeological excavations across Europe, but until now they have most commonly been used to accompany broader narratives built on historical sources and studies of topography and buildings, rather than being studied as important evidence in their own right. The papers in this volume aim to redress the balance by taking an environmental and artefact-based approach to life in medieval Europe.

The contributions included here address central themes such as urban identities, the nature of towns and their relationship with their hinterlands, provisioning processes, and the role of ritual and religion in everyday life. Case studies from across Europe encourage a comparative approach between town and country, and provide a pan-European perspective to current debates.

The volume is divided into four key parts: an exploration of the processes of provisioning; an assessment of the dynamics of urban population; an examination of domestic life; and a discussion of the status quaestionis and future potential of urban environmental archaeology. Together, these sections make a significant contribution to medieval archaeology and offer new and unique insights into the conditions of everyday life in medieval Europe.

Les échanges entre Orient et Occident au Moyen Age ont fait l’objet de nombreux travaux récents. En histoire des sciences, l’attention a porté en priorité sur l’activité de traduction et de rédaction dans l’Espagne arabo-latine et l’Italie méridionale. Le colloque de Louvain-la-Neuve s’est proposé d’explorer les contacts scientifiques dans un contexte moins étudié, les états latins de Palestine, du XIe au XIIIe s. Les contributions intéressent les trois principales cultures en présence: arabe, byzantine et latine. L’éventail des disciplines abordées couvre l’alchimie, l’astronomie, l’histoire naturelle, les mathématiques, la médecine; une place est faite à l’histoire des techniques, ainsi qu’à certains milieux porteurs: la ville d’Antioche, la cour de Frédéric II de Hohenstaufen. On découvre ainsi que le Proche Orient des Croisades n’a pas seulement été un champ de bataille, mais qu’il y a eu place aussi pour des découvertes, des échanges, des influences réciproques.

The funerary art that was produced in Roman Palmyra, a caravan city in the Syrian steppe desert, is rightly world-renowned. The frontal depictions of the deceased, featured in torso-length portraits, and the large-scale banqueting scenes are iconic, and lent an added mystique by the absence of any literary sources that might aid in their interpretation. But while from a distance these exquisite portraits might seem rather formulaic, when examining more closely, it is clear that these scenes reveal a surprisingly rich and varied funerary décor. Alongside the more popular iconographic choices are singular scenes, motifs, and elements that deviate from the norm, while new patterns and connections between Palmyra and its surroundings are identifiable.

This volume, which draws on the vast materials gathered under the auspices of the Palmyra Portrait Project directed by Professor Rubina Raja, explores the ‘oddities’ raised by the Palmyrene corpus; it examines one-off scenes or elements, and unusual or unparalleled iconographical choices, and questions how and why such unusual choices should be interpreted. The chapters gathered here not only focus on these visual ‘hapax legomena’ in Palmyra, but also explore the city’s connections with the art of Roman centres to the west, as well as the nearby Hellenistic city states, regional centres of production, and Parthian and Persian sites to the east. Through this approach, the authors engage with the visual richness and sheer amount of choice that existed in Palmyrene funerary art, while also providing unique insights into the knowledge culture that existed within Palmyrene society.

De Bonaventure à Gerson, Hugues de Saint-Victor († 1141) fut l'un des auteurs les plus transcrits, influents et goûtés. Sans doute parce que ce «second Augustin», philosophe, théologien, mystique et pédagogue, toucha de son génie jusqu'aux artes liberales, à la géographie et à l'histoire. Quatre chefs d'œuvre ouvrent la première édition et traduction française de son œuvre. Dans l'opuscule De la formation des novices, art de vivre et de savoir-vivre, une éthique exigeante guide la maîtrise du geste et de la discipline de la parole. De la puissance de la prière analyse les formes du discours adressé à Dieu en usant des préceptes de la rhétorique classique et cherche à concilier sincérité du sentiment personnel et psalmodie liturgique. Au siècle des délicatesses de l'amour courtois et de la redécouverte de la personne, Hugues s'est complu à composer une hymne à l'amour (La louange de la charité) et à mettre en scène les intermittences du cœur dans un monologue à deux personnages: lui-même et son âme; et ce sont Les arrhes de l'âme, une des perles de la littérature spirituelle du douzième siècle.

Old English Heroic Poems and the Social Life of Texts develops the theme that all stories- all 'beautiful lies', if one considers them as such- have a potentially myth-like function as they enter and re-enter the stream of human consciousness. In particular, the volume assesses the place of heroic poetry (including Beowulf, Widsith, and The Battle of Maldon) in the evolving society of Anglo-Saxon England during the tenth-century period of nation-building. Poetry, Niles argues, was a great collective medium through which the Anglo-Saxons conceived of their changing social world and made mental adjustments to it. Old English 'heroic geography' is examined as an aspect of the mentality of that era. So too is the idea of the oral poet (or bard) as a means by which the people of this time continued to conceive of themselves, in defiance of reality, as members of a tribe-like community knit by close personal bonds. The volume is rounded off by the identification of Bede's story of the poet Cædmon as the earliest known example of a modern folktale type, and by a spirited defense of Seamus Heaney's recent verse translation of Beowulf.

The mythology of the Norse world has long been a source of fascination, from the first written texts of thirteenth-century Iceland up to the modern period. Most studies, however, have focused on the content of the narratives themselves, rather than the broader political contexts in which these myths have been explored. This volume offers a timely corrective to this broader trend by offering one of the first in-depth examinations of the political uses of Norse mythology within specific historical contexts. Tracing the changing interests and usages of Norse myths from the medieval period, via the nineteenth century and the importance of ancient Norse beliefs to both the Romantic and völkisch movements, up to the co-option of mythology and symbolism by political groups across the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the papers gathered here offer new and critical insights into the changing nature of historiography and the political agendas that Old Norse myths are made to serve, as well as shedding new light on the way in which ‘myths’ are conceptualized.

This volume is the first close examination of the rich and diverse body of medievalist texts produced in late colonial and early Federal (ie post-1901) Australia. It examines the many ways in which early Australian novelists, poets, and dramatists drew on the motifs, events, and personages of the medieval past, and places particular emphasis on how they used the European past to illuminate their sense of the Australian present. Broadly stated, the book argues that a study of early Australian medievalist literature and theatre uncovers a rich and revealing drama in which the forces of cultural nostalgia and cultural amnesia sometimes contended against one another, and sometimes harmonised, to produce a unique and distinctive corpus. The book significantly extends current knowledge about nineteenth-century literary and theatrical medievalism by offering an exploration of how medievalist discourses and idioms came to be taken up within a major, but as yet under-examined, branch of Anglophone literature. It aims also to broaden the cultural ambit of nineteenth-century medievalism by offering analyses of popular and ephemeral instances alongside more ‘serious’ medievalist texts. The study balances an interest in how this medievalism responded to local conditions with an interest in its international complexion, examining how Australian medievalist novels, poems, and plays, participated in imperial and transpacific intellectual and entertainment circuits. While the emphasis of the volume is on close, historically-contextualising interpretations of texts, it has woven through its arguments a series of meditations on such theoretical matters as how we determine the boundaries of medievalism, how we might develop an account of colonial medievalism as non-derivative, whether medievalist discourses are equally amenable across gender, class, and ideological lines, and how the premodern past is evoked as a means for formulating the present and the future.

Historians have considered medieval oligarchic groups as part of a hierarchical social structure in urban societies. Frequently the interpretation of oligarchy as an isolated faction makes it difficult to understand its capacity in processes of incorporation and integration. M. Asenjo-González’s study of different cities in Northern Castile - Segovia, Soria, Valladolid and Toledo — attempts to identify bonding processes and the relationships among individuals or groups. In the city of Cuenca, J. A. Jara-Fuente stresses the importance of mechanisms for the attribution of social spaces of projection (related to individuals, lineages or collectivities), because it is through the analysis of the social expectations and of the degree of satisfaction reached in that process that other patterns of relationship come to light. Y. Guerrero-Navarrete deals with the connections between financial groups and the oligarchic policy of the elite in the case of Burgos. In Granada, A. Galán-Sánchez analyzes the Islamic elites’ behaviour, considering their economic and political interests, related to the goodwill of the Christian conquerors, and, their functions as representatives of the second-class citizens who were the moriscos. F. Sabaté focuses his research on the social consequences of the merchant oligarchy investments in the urban surroundings that contributed to establishing a flow of capital between the city and the region in Catalonia. E. Ramírez-Vaquero analyzes aspects of great relevance such as the relationship that oligarchies had with other systems linked to the noble and court spheres in the cities of Navarra. Finally Marc Boone offers an historiographic reflection on Iberian urban elites and analyzes some comparative perspectives about oligarchy and patronage in the Late Middle Ages.

Founded at the beginning of the twelfth century on the outskirts of Paris, the Parisian school of Saint-Victor soon became an intellectual centre on a European scale: through the international recruitment of its masters; through the wide handwritten dissemination of their works, in particular those of Hugh and Richard; and finally through the extent of its doctrinal contribution to a common European culture, on a large number of points: the importance of acquiring a "general culture"; the need for a rigorous historical approach to biblical texts, open to rabbinic exegesis; a contagious interest in the writings and thought of the pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita; a major contribution to the constitution of a theological discipline; an effort to reconcile fervour in spiritual life and psychological finesse in the analysis of contemplation and its stages. In short, a curiosity for all fields of knowledge and, at the same time, an effort to unify them into a universal and unified wisdom.

The Book gathers new studies on original sources concerning Hugh of St. Victor, as the intellectual founder or the Victorine school; several of his Victorine brothers and disciples: Richard, Achard, Andrew, Godfrey, Absalon, up to late and little known Victorine masters as Pierre Leduc and Henri le Boulangier, at the time of the Great Schism (with critical edition of inedited texts); their influences on twelfth century texts as Ysagoge in theologiam or Speculum Ecclesiae, on Franciscan authors including Antony of Padua, Bonaventure, Rudolf of Biberach, and Duns Scotus, on romance literature of troubadours, on Carmelite authors of the sixteenth centruy and - a still uncharted territory - on　Polish culture from Middle Ages to contemporary times.

This book brings together views from various disciplines on the concept of authority in Greek and Latin literature from Antiquity to the Renaissance. More specifically it deals with the questions how texts attempt to gain authority, and if and how they use-or abuse-earlier writings in the construction of their own authority. Moreover, this volume examines to what extent a text’s authoritative claims influence its transmission and reception and how these claims themselves are subject to evolution over time. In this context, special attention is devoted to compilation literature (such as anthologies and commonplace books), which is characterized by extensive use of existing source material and thus specifically poses the problem of the role played by compilers in transmitting and establishing authority. The volume contains fifteen articles in which the contributors discuss various cases and texts that illustrate the different factors at stake in dealing with and constructing authority.

List of contributors: S. Boodts, L. Bossina, M. Crab, E. De Bom, E. De Ridder, I. De Vos, S. Delmas, I. Draelants, B. Flusin, E. Gielen, J. Hamesse, U. Kenens, K. Levrie, J. Mansfeld, S. Morlet, L. Waelkens.

The version of the Rule of St Augustine used at the Abbey of St Victor began with the command to love God above all things and one’s neighbor as oneself. Not surprisingly, then, love was a pervasive theme in the writings produced there, many of which are introduced and translated here : (1) five lyrical essays by Hugh of St Victor (d. 1141): ThePraise of Charity; The Betrothal Gift of the Soul; In Praise of the Spouse; On the Substance of Love; What Truly Should Be Loved ?; (2) On the Four Degrees of Violent Love, by Richard of St Victor (d. 1173), which traces the likenesses and differences between romantic love and the love of God; (3) Achard of St Victor (d. 1170), Sermon 5 and two of Adam of St Victor’s sequences are examples of how these authors wove love into their writings ; (4) excerpts from the Microcosmus by Godfrey of St Victor (d. ca. 1195), summarize the central place of love in his humanistic theological anthropology.

Hugh Feiss, OSB (STD, Anselmianum, Rome; Monastery of the Ascension), the editor of this volume, translated Achard of St Victor, Works (2001).

The De corpore et sanguine Domini by Paschasius Radbertus was the first monograph ever written solely on the Eucharist. This English translation of the De corpore, along with its companion piece the Letter to Fredugard, make an important contribution to our understanding of the development of Eucharistic theology in the Carolingian era and after. Because of their place in history and the nature of their doctrine, these works give an important witness to the received tradition on the Eucharist, as well as demonstrate an early substantial change theory that contributed to the development of the doctrine of transubstantiation. The translation, along with its extensive commentary and notes, makes this volume in the Corpus Christianorum in Translation series an important resource for the study of Eucharistic theology. The source text of this volume appeared in Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis as Pascasius Radbertus - De corpore et sanguine Domini, cum appendice Epistola ad Fredugardum (CCCM, 16). References to the corresponding pages of the Corpus Christianorum edition are provided in the margins of this translation.

The Canons Regular of St Victor were important contributors to the theology of the sacraments in the twelfth century. This volume introduces and translates much of Hugh’s treatment on the Christian Sacraments, as contained in De sacramentis 1.9 and 2.5-9, 11-12 and 14, as well as his treatise on the Virginity of the Blessed Virgin, two treatises on penance by Richard of St Victor, and the penitential of Peter of Poitiers. The historical introductions and annotated translations make this volume suitable for courses on the development of the theology of the sacraments through the twelfth century.

On the Virgin Birth and On the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary are two key Mariological treatises by the ninth-century Carolingian theologian Paschasius Radbertus. Written at a time when scholarship and erudition during the Carolingian Renaissance were at their height and prominence in the great monastery of Corbie, these two works offer important insights into ninth-century reception of the doctrines of Mary’s perpetual virginity and her assumption into heaven. Written for the nuns of the monastery of Notre-Dame de Soissons, they also provide important source material for the study of female spirituality during the Carolingian Reformation era.

This work presents for the first time an English translation with introduction and commentary of these texts, based on the critical editions found in Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis　(CC CM, 56C). References to the corresponding pages of the Corpus Christianorum edition are provided in the margins of this translation.

Recueil d'articles de Marcel Richard publiés entre 1934 et 1976. Contient une bibliographie de Marcel Richard p. 23-28.

L'ouvrage qui paraît sous le titre " Optics and Astronomy " groupe un ensemble de communications présentées lors du XXe congrès international d'histoire des sciences. Toutes relèvent de ces domaines intimement liés au cours du temps. Qu'aurait été l'évolution de l'astronomie sans le développement de l'optique ? Quant à ce dernier domaine il a trouvé un terrain de prédilection dans les applications qu'en ont fait les astronomes. Dans l'antiquité, d'Euclide fonde en géomètre une optique qui trouve un premier aboutissement chez Ptolémée. La grande école arabe prend le relais en renouvelant la théorie de la lumière et de la vision. Le premier XVIIe siècle européen invente la lunette, analyse ses implications optiques et construit des instruments qui modifient l'idée même qu'on se faisait des choses et des cieux. Mécanique céleste s'appliquant principalement au système solaire, marginalisation d'une tradition astrologique pourtant rémanente, création de modèles, analyse de données..., tout concourt à former les esprits - au siècle des Lumières notamment - à la compréhension du Monde que viennent renforcer les découvertes de l'astrométrie et de l'astrophysique. L'unité du volume, confortée par la variété des sujets traités, doit permettre au lecteur qui n'a pu se rendre à Liège en 1997, d'apprécier l'influence réciproque précoce des deux domaines de la recherche qu'il couvre.

The construction (and application) of models that order complex phenomena such as ‘the world’ is not a ‘neutral’ activity: theoretical models and ideas help us to perceive and categorize the information conveyed by experience and tradition alike; in turn, they also influence the behaviour and actions of individuals and groups.

Collecting a global series of case studies on premodern societies, this volume proposes new research into premodern models of world-order and their effects. With its focus on the period between c. 1300 and 1600, it seeks to open up fresh perspectives for premodern Global History and the analysis of phenomena of transcultural contact and exchange.

Focussing on religious, political, and geographical ideas and models, the contributions explore whether and how large-scale concepts influenced or even determined concrete actions. The examples include socio-religious concepts (Christianity, terra paganorum, dār al-harb), political concepts (empire) and geographical notions. A special section is dedicated to comparative insights into societies in Sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, and pre-Columbian America. Taken together, the contributions underline the importance and effects of historically shaped cultural traits in the long term.

Through the word corpus, the metaphor of the body is applied to a collection of works by the same author that are transmitted together. These works not only share the same skin, the manuscript, but also function organically thanks to a complex system of paracontents. It is possible to see this system at work in the case of only a very few medieval authors throughout history, cultures and languages; the Corpus Nazianzenum and the Corpus Dionysiacum are such instances.

Both Gregory of Nazianzus and Dionysius the Areopagite are super-authors, who forged their own literary identity as much as they shaped the body of their writings. This sets both corpora apart from other collections of patristic works. They are also exceptional because of the large scale and enduring character of their cultural impact in the different cultures in which the corpora were translated, commented and annotated. By confronting these two exceptional cases, it is possible to gain some new light on the intellectual and book-historical aspects of literary creation and reception in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Abraham Ecchellensis (Ibrahîm Al-Hâqilânî) est sans doute le plus représentatif des chrétiens orientaux qui contribuèrent à la formation de l’orientalisme européen au xvii e siècle. Après une première éducation dans un couvent libanais, il arriva au collège maronite de Rome en 1620, où il fut très jeune reconnu pour ses talents dans l’enseignement de l’arabe et du syriaque, et dans l’expertise des questions orientales. Ses études achevées, il mena quelques aventures militaires et commerciales au service de l’emir libanais Fakhraddîn et de la croisade, en se plongeant brièvement dans les trafics méditerranéens liés à la course et au rachat des captifs. Il tenta aussi d’ouvrir un collège au Liban.

Mais c’est surtout par une carrière d’érudit qu’il se fit connaître. Ce volume s’attache moins à la biographie d’Abraham; Ecchellensis qu’à la place qu’il occupa dans la République des Lettres du xvii e siècle, entre Pise, Rome et Paris (où il enseigna au Collège Royal). Il sut bénéficier d’un réseau de protecteurs, qui estimaient sa capacité à cataloguer et publier des manuscrits, enseigner les langues, ou servir d’expert et d’interprète : Les Médicis, les Barberini, Richelieu, Mazarin et le chancelier Séguier veillèrent successivement sur sa carrière. Il fut l’ami et le collaborateur de savants de son temps, comme Jean Morin, Marin Mersenne, Lucas Holsten ou Athanase Kircher.

Il contribua aux grands chantiers intellectuels du xvii e siècle, comme la bible polyglotte de Paris et la bible arabe de Rome. Il composa des outils pour l’apprentissage de l’arabe et du syriaque. Mais il fut surtout un traducteur d’ouvrages en langues orientales. Chez lui, la controverse et l’apologétique ne se distinguaient guère de l’érudition, et il entendait mettre sa science au service de la foi catholique, contre les protestants. Mais ses origines orientales et arabophones l’amenèrent aussi à défendre la dignité des Orientaux et à valoriser leur culture face aux milieux savants européens. Il contribua à l’élaboration du « récit national » maronite et libanais. Il voulut faire connaître la « sagesse arabe » et l’intégrer dans la science européenne, en la distinguant de l’islam, qu’il ne pouvait accepter. Il collabora avec le professeur «galiléen» de Pise Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, pour traduire à partir de manuscrits arabes le traité d’Apollonius de Perga sur le Coniques.

Ses travaux érudits furent utilisés dans les controverses théologiques du second xvii e siècle. Mais, au début du xviii e siècle, la connaissance des langues orientales était suffisamment avancée en Europe pour qu’on pût se passer des « médiateurs » issus du Collège de Rome.

Bernard Heyberger, directeur d’études à l’École Pratique des Hautes Études, est professeur à l’université François-Rabelais de Tours et membre de l’Institut Universitaire de France. Ses travaux portent sur le christianisme de langue arabe et sur les relations entre le christianisme et l’islam. Il a notamment publié Les chrétiens du Proche-Orient au temps de la Réforme catholique (1994) et Hindiyya, mystique et criminelle (2001).

Sont reproduits dans ce volume en intégralité les comptes rendus des séminaires de Simon Claude Mimouni publiés régulièrement de 1992 à 2018 dans l’Annuaire de l’École pratique des Hautes études, Section des sciences religieuses. Ils ont été parfois réécrits et complétés, mais non actualisés. Ils représentent les étapes du développement de ses recherches durant vingt-cinq ans, permettant de comprendre leur déroulé au fil des ans. Ils sont évidemment lacunaires par rapport au travail effectivement mené lors des séminaires du jeudi matin, seuls ceux qui y ont assisté, auditeurs et étudiants, le savent.

Directeur d’études Émérite à la Section des sciences religieuses de l’École pratique des Hautes études où il a été titulaire de la chaire « Origines du christianisme », Simon Claude Mimouni a étudié l’histoire de la formation du mouvement des disciples de Jésus dans et hors du judaïsme aux Ier et IIe siècles. Il a traité durant de longues années la délicate et difficile question, mais ô combien fondamentale, des « origines juives » du christianisme, car le christianisme est une sorte de judaïsme - évidemment un judaïsme messianique et mystique, centré sur Jésus de Nazareth considéré tour à tour comme prophète et comme messie, puis comme personnage uniquement divin ou uniquement humain ou encore à la fois humain et divin, ce qui l’a obligé à réformer nombre de ses observances et préceptes.

Orthodox Christian theology is based on a living tradition that is deeply rooted in Greek Patristic thought. However, few systematic proposals about how this theology can respond to questions that arise from modern science have yet appeared. This volume, consisting of eleven essays by different authors about how this response should be formulated, therefore represents a significant contribution to Orthodox thinking as well as to the broader science-theology dialogue among Christians. The variety of approaches in the essays indicates that there does not yet exist among Orthodox a consensus about the methodology that is appropriate to this dialogue or about how the questions that arise from specific scientific insights should be answered. Nevertheless, they indicate the ways in which Orthodox approaches to science differ significantly from most of those to be found among Western Christian scholars, and in this way they point to an underlying unity of perspective that is rooted in the Orthodox Tradition.

"Une musique indéchiffrable pour toute autre nation." Depuis Rousseau, la musique française d’Ancien Régime est vue comme une étrange exception culturelle dans une Europe baroque toute acquise à la musique italienne. Cependant, les nombreux exemples d’acclimatation du style français dans l’espace germanique entre 1660 et 1730, de Georg Muffat à Johann Sebastian Bach en passant par Johann Sigismund Kusser et Georg Philipp Telemann, nous invitent à ouvrir les yeux sur un phénomène trop longtemps méconnu. La migration de nombreux musiciens français dans l’Empire, leur engagement dans de prestigieuses chapelles ducales et princières, la circulation de sources musicales manuscrites et imprimées, sont autant de phénomènes essentiels que ce livre aborde pour la première fois de façon conjointe et systématique. À la croisée de l’histoire des migrations, de l’anthropologie historique et de la musicologie, il déploie les routes empruntées par la musique et les musiciens français dans l’espace germanique, parcourt leur destin et reconstruit leur vie quotidienne dans ce nouvel environnement. L’ouvrage s’organise en cinq grands chapitres consacrés à l’Europe galante comme marché du travail, à l’administration de la musique française, aux carrières et aux mobilités des musiciens, à la circulation des sources musicales, et à l’invention allemande du style français.

Michel Sittow was born in Reval c. 1469, today the Estonian capital city of Tallinn. Possibly trained in the workshop of Hans Memling in Bruges, he subsequently moved to work in the Iberian Peninsula, where he first held the position of court painter. This monograph undertakes research on this phase of his career. In the Kingdom of Castille, Michel Sittow was appointed painter to Queen Isabella and became a member of her household with an impressive annual salary. Thanks to the analysis of archival documents and formal and iconographical studies on Sittow’s paintings, it is possible to explain the court painter’s life circumstances and describe the benefits he enjoyed and the difficulties he faced. The Castilian period was crucial for Michel Sittow’s career since over the course of his professional life, he also resided at the courts of Philip the Fair, Margaret of Austria, Christian II of Denmark and Charles V, all relatives of his first royal patron. While serving European monarchs, he transferred Memling’s techniques and visual language beyond the Low Countries and developed his artistic practice and style. The analysis of the various contexts Michel Sittow worked in sheds light on his oeuvre and his possible privileged status as a courtier, which provided opportunities to establish a flourishing and ambitious career in northern and southern Europe.

This study examines the process of commercialization of art which took place in Antwerp during the long sixteenth century, an era of rapid expansion of both the city’s economy and its art market. Indeed, Antwerp carved altarpieces, paintings, tapestries, books and other luxury items were exported to an area stretching from the Baltic region to the Mediterranean Basin during this time period. The key development that explains the success of Antwerp as an export center for the arts, the author argues, lies not only in the strength of the Antwerp economy and the artistic tradition of the Southern Netherlands, but specifically in the shift from ordering artwork on commission to the production for the open market. In other words, Antwerp artists were much more inclined to produce art on spec and, consequently, art was commercialized at an early stage and became the subject of intense trading.

Focusing on painting and to some degree on other art forms such as sculpture and tapestry, the author surveys the various factors that contributed to this phenomenon: proto-industrial workshops engaged in standardized production of popular images, and the sophisticated commercial infrastructure that the city could boast allowed art to be sold wholesale to an international clientele at the panden (specialized sales halls). However, the flourishing of the art market was ultimately a direct result of the increased demand for luxury goods, both foreign and domestic, and Antwerp was essentially the locale where supply and demand for art converged.

The booming art market led to increased commodization of works of art; art dealers entered on the scene and further professionalized the art trade during the second half of the sixteenth century. In painting, commercialization led to a diversification of the genres, a form of product innovation that generated new demand. Clearly, Antwerp’s pivotal position in the European trade network and its pioneering role in introducing capitalist commercial techniques had transformed the way art was marketed and produced.

The outbreak of the Dutch Revolt during the last third of the sixteenth century severely disrupted the economy of the Southern Netherlands, and as a result, the Antwerp art market collapsed in the mid-1580s. However, in the difficult closing years of the sixteenth century, a transformation process began to take shape in which the foundations were laid for yet a new era of cultural eminence for the city of Antwerp.

The famous oasis city of Palmyra, located in the Syrian Desert, has long been the subject of scholarly research; and over the last decade, it has been the focus of three key projects based at Aarhus University in Denmark. Together, these projects have yielded results that have shed new light on Palmyra and have profoundly changed what we know about both the city itself, and its place in the wider Roman Empire, through a focus on sculptural production and the sustainability and economy that underpinned this, urban development, excavation history, and legacy data. This volume, based on a conference organized under the auspices of the Palmyra research projects in Aarhus, draws together papers that reflect on our understanding of Palmyra up to now, and pave the way for new lines of enquiry. Experts in the field engage with discussions of best practice, offer new perspectives on the city, its society, and its environs, and outline approaches that will allow research to continue to break new ground in our understanding of Palmyra.

Les pancartes sont des textes diplomatiques, fréquents aux Xle et Xlle siècles, qui consignent plusieurs actions juridiques, liées ou indépendantes, et qui éventuellement les renforcent par la confirmation d'une autorité laïque ou ecclésiastique. Elles constituent un état intermédiaire entre la charte et Je cartulaire, entre la notice de donation et la charte confirmative. Elles n'éclairent donc pas seulement la constitution ou la gestion du temporel d'un monastère, mais surtout le rapport que les moines entretenaient avec l'écrit : comment, sous quelle autorité, dans quel but mettait-on par écrit les actions juridiques dont on bénéficiait ? Comment gérait-on les archives monastiques ? Elles montrent aussi souvent les différentes étapes nécessitées, entre donation, contestation, renonciation et confirmation, par les cessions de biens et les procès.

Peu étudiées jusqu'a présent, ces sources pourtant très riches ont été placées au centre des débats d'une table ronde tenue en 1994 à l'Université Nancy 2. Par le biais d'études régionales (Normandie, Poitou, Bourgogne, Languedoc, Artois), mais aussi au moyen d'une synthèse sur l'originalité et la constitution de ces documents. L'ensemble de ces travaux permet de préciser ce que pouvait être une pancarte, d'attirer l'attention sur la diversité des types de textes diplomatiques, particulièrement au Xle siècle, et de montrer l'importance des notices de tradition, aujourd'hui presque toutes disparues, mais qui jouèrent un rôle central dans la mémoire monastique aux Xle et Xlle siècles.

For a long time we have naively talked about the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and other periods, but at closer analysis all those terms prove to be constructed models to help us understand in rough terms profound changes that affected human conditions throughout time. As the contributions to the present volume indicate, paradigm shifts have occurred regularly and constituted some of the critical developments in human existence. The notion of paradigm shift as first developed by Thomas Kuhn is here considerably expanded to address also literary, religious, scientific, and cultural-historical phenomena, to deal with contrasting conceptions of various parts of the world (China versus Europe), conflicts between genders, economic changes pertaining to women's roles, social and political criticism, models of how to explain our existence, ideological positions, and epistemological approaches. The study of paradigm shifts makes it possible to grasp fundamental movements both horizontally (the present world in global terms) and vertically (from the past to the present), exposing thereby central forces leading to shifts in power structures and in the mental-historical world-views. Focusing on paradigm-shifts allows us to gain deep insight into conflicting discourses throughout time and to illuminate the struggle between dominant and competing models explaining or determining reality.

Parisian Confraternity Drama of the Fourteenth Century is the first volume of studies devoted solely to the Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages. These anonymous plays, found in a single luxury manuscript, comprise the only major corpus of dramatic works in French that have survived from the fourteenth century. They derive from a rich diversity of sources: narrative miracle accounts, saints’ lives, epic chansons de geste, vernacular romances, and history. Each play is preceded by a richly detailed miniature, some two dozen include a sermon in prose, and each includes at least one rondel to be sung by the cortege accompanying the Virgin. They constitute both a collective demonstration of the fervent late-medieval devotion to the Virgin, and a substantial archive of contemporary insights into the issues of power, authority, and influence that struggled for dominance in fourteenth-century Paris. As this extraordinary collection has, in its entirety, attracted little critical attention to date, this volume will be of significant interest to scholars wishing to explore the plays in their literary context, as well as those interested in medieval drama, the Marian tradition, and the role of confraternities in fourteenth-century French culture.

The idea of participation in heavenly worship is a fascinating perspective on the Christian Eucharistic liturgy. Although somewhat forgotten in modern times, the early church knew it as a central aspect of meaning in interpretations of the Eucharistic rite. Through this rite worshippers could see themselves in communion with angels and saints in the eternal liturgy of heaven. Interpretations along such lines emerge clearly in catechesis and homilies from the fourth century onwards, and continue to develop in the following centuries, especially in the eastern liturgical traditions. The question remains, however, what are the origins of this concept?

In Participation in Heavenly Worship, Sverre Lied explores how the relations between the earthly and heavenly realms were understood within the context of Christian worship during the first three centuries CE. He argues that the idea of participation is an aspect of Christian worship that may be traced back to Jewish Christian apocalyptic mysticism, and shows how this concept, with considerable variations, was preserved and developed during the following centuries. These observations also shed new light on the appearance of the Sanctus in the Eucharistic liturgy.

If the word « culture » comes from the Latin word cultura, the concept itself, which means general knowledge acquired through schools, books and cultural institutions, is related, in the Roman world of the first centuries ad to Greek paideia. As for paideia, which was then restricted to social elite, it covered literary education formulated and conveyed by sophists and grammarians in the time of the Roman Empire, as well as other forms of Greek culture like music, philosophy and sports.

This book focuses on cultural mediators, first of all professors, who are examined from various points of view: social and cultural status, teaching practices or ambivalent representations. Nevertheless, transmission of knowledge exceeds the environment of school; it is performed through literary and intellectual productions, within specialized disciplines, and through reinterpretations which convey a singular world view.

The present collection of essays displays the circulation of culture between the Greek and Roman worlds, throughout an Empire whose epicentre is paideia.

Much of the Christian empire established by the Carolingians in the eighth century was not only built through royal initiative, but also through the work of local priests. Living among the laity, these clerics provided pastoral care and religious instruction. Yet despite their vital contribution to the development of Christianity in Western Europe, these clergymen and the communities they served remain understudied.

This book investigates the manuscripts they used, offering a glimpse into everyday life around the local church. Far from being poor and illiterate, priests had access to texts specifically adapted to their needs. By examining how these materials were compiled, this study reveals what mattered most in the early medieval countryside. Drawing on excerpts from collections of liturgy, canon law, and patristic expositions — often preserved in the great monastic and court libraries — it uncovers the diversity of local religious practice. These texts reflect how the efforts instigated by Carolingians to foster ‘good Christianity’ were interpreted and implemented outside the centres of power. In exploring these seemingly modest manuscripts, this study opens new pathways into the world of the Carolingian local church and the people who inhabited it.

Medieval and early modern cultural history has witnessed a recent shift from the study of manuscripts and early printed books as vehicles of texts and images towards their study as cultural objects in their own right. Rather than focusing solely on original authorship, scholars have turned to subjects such as the patronage, production, circulation, and consumption of texts. Codicological features, annotations, glosses, ownership notes, deeds of sale, and other traces have revealed countless insights into the social worlds of texts - their patrons, producers, and readers.

This book contributes to this area of scholarship with respect to Jewish texts and Jewish social contexts by focusing on select cases in the production of Bibles, Haggadot, religious poetry, and translations of and commentaries on scripture in the Eastern and Western Mediterranean between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. Individual essays consider models of patron-client relationships, interconfessional patronage scenarios, manuscript production through ‘multiple hands’, the (incomplete) transition from manuscript production to printed books, and relationships among text, image, and reader as suggested by codicological features.

En 1958 Edmond-René Labande donnait, dans les Cahiers de Civilisation médiévale qu’il venait de fonder, les grands traits d’un projet «de recherche sur les pèlerins dans l’Europe des XIe et XIIe s iècles». Ce projet allait retenir prioritairement son attention pendant plus de trente ans, s’affiner au cours de nombreux séminaires, de congrès, de lectures, de comptes rendus.

Son travail l’aura retenu jusqu’à la fin de sa vie, mais il n’aura pu mener jusqu’au bout son dernier ouvrage, puisque les derniers chapitres de sa dernière partie n’auront pas été rédigés.

Fallait-il laisser perdre cette longue et patiente recherche dans les chroniques, récits de pèlerinage, vies de saints, cartulaires, dans la liturgie, la littérature, etc., et naturellement une considérable masse de lectures ? Ses proches et ses amis se sont longuement et longtemps interrogés. La décision a finalement été de mettre cette riche documentation sur le pèlerin chrétien à travers les âges à la disposition des chercheurs. Son fils François a fait une très soi gn euse préparation du texte. Marie-Thérèse Camus, Marie-Hélène Debiès, Claude Arrignon, Georges Pon et Robert Favreau ont revu le manuscrit pour compléter les références, faire toutes les vérifications possibles et établir une liste des sources et une bibliographie. Il restera quelques incertitudes et lacunes, mais elles sont secondaires par rapport à la synthèse qui pourra être ainsi disponible. Travail inachevé, et donc imparfait, mais combien précieux. Tel a été le sentiment des initiateurs, et la raison de la publication de ce travail d’un homme qui leur fut cher, qui «traversa cette vie comme un pèlerinage, double pèlerin qu’il fut de la connaissance et de la foi».

Emperor Wu is generally recognized as the greatest ruler of the Han Dynasty, and his wars against the steppe warrior Xiongnu as one of his greatest undertakings. To the chief narrator of these events, ancient Chinese historian Sima Qian, the turning point in Han Dynasty history was the way Emperor Wu had abandoned the policy of peaceful relations with the Xiongnu, and launched China on a series of campaigns that would last for decades. This has been almost universally accepted as “truth” in modern scholarship, but these claims cannot be taken at face value.

Firstly, this book identifies ways in which the Shiji account is riddled with inconsistencies and deliberately misleading information, and provides explanations for this. He hid signs of rising disquiet with the peace policy of earlier rulers, and concealed indications that for at least two decades China’s leadership had been searching for alternatives.

Secondly, the work reconstructs a more accurate narrative of events for one hundred years of Han - Xiongnu relations than can be gained by a straight-forwarding reading of individual chapters of the Shiji. A narrative emerges of an historian with an agenda, and of a century of Han - Xiongnu relations that is markedly different from any previously produced.

In the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period open fields could be found in many if not most countries in Europe. They took a wide variety of forms, but can in essence be defined as areas of cultivated land in which the intermingled plots of different cultivators, without upstanding physical boundaries, were subject to some degree of communal management, in terms of cropping and grazing. Sometimes such fields occupied a high proportion of the land in a district, but often they formed a relatively minor element in landscapes which also contained enclosed fields, woodland or expanses of pasture. In some areas, open-field agriculture had already been abandoned before the end of the Middle Ages, but in others it continued to flourish into the nineteenth or even twentieth centuries.

Although open fields have long been studied by geographers, historians and archaeologists, much about their origins, development and rationale remains contentious. Why, across wide areas of Europe, did such fields sometimes become central to the experience of so many of our ancestors, shaping not only farming practices but also the basic structures of their everyday lives? And why, in contrast, did they fail to develop, or have a less significant role, elsewhere?

Over recent decades open fields have been investigated in new, interdisciplinary ways, and as a Europe-wide phenomenon. In this book, more than ever before, their development and operation are explained in terms of economic, social, agrarian and environmental developments which were shared, to varying degrees, by all parts of the continent. It contains ten new studies from a wide range of regions, together with important comparative research from South America and Japan. This collection of essays represents a milestone in the study of open-field agriculture, and is a major contribution to the study of the rationale of field systems more generally.

Sans conteste, l’amitié innerve le monde médiéval. Le vocable sature les textes tant pratiques que théoriques. Il concerne toute la société, l’élite, les milieux princiers et la noblesse autant que les humbles et le monde ordinaire. Au regard de l’insistance des sources médiévales à dire l’amitié dans sa factualité et sa réalité, il s’avère nécessaire de s’interroger sur la pensée de l’amitié au Moyen Âge. A-t-on pensé l’amitié au Moyen Âge? Plus exactement posé: quels sont les cadres intellectuels, institutionnels et structurels qui poussent les hommes des XIIIe-XVe siècles à penser l’amitié; quelles sont les conditions historiques et les événements culturels qui façonnent les contours d’une telle conceptualisation?

Les médiévaux puisent à la source aristotélicienne un matériau exceptionnellement dense: la philia de l’Éthique à Nicomaque est par excellence le lien social qui unit les citoyens. Penser l’amitié au Moyen Âge à partir de l’auctoritas aristotélicienne, c’était, en quelque sorte, nommer l’expérience proprement médiévale de l’amitié elle-même, définie par la précellence de son acception sociale.

Bénédicte Sère, est agrégée d’histoire et docteur de l’Université de Paris-I Panthéon Sorbonne.

L'icône prit une importance croissante dans les religions indiennes dès avant l'ère chrétienne, qu'il s'agisse du védisme tardif, de l'hindouisme, du bouddhisme ou du jaïnisme. Si les spéculations philosophiques l'ignorèrent largement jusqu'au XIIe siècle de notre ère environ, 1'icône fut depuis une époque ancienne l'objet de débats dans une civilisation qui était encline aux discussions critiques.

La société harappéenne (vallée de l’Indus, vers 2500-1800 av. J.-C.) connaissait un iconisme qui est aujourd’hui d’une interprétation difficile. Le védisme ancien, qui lui succéda, associe les dieux non à des représentations plastiques, mais à leur révélation par la parole du Veda, conçue comme une véritable substance . Les milieux qui se réclament du védisme pourraient avoir connu une sorte de crise de conscience iconologique du IVe au IIe siècle avant notre ère environ. L’icône matérielle devint progressivement l’objet d’un consensus social, en dépit des réserves, du scepticisme, voire des critiques que l’on émit à son égard dans certains cercles.

Cet ouvrage, qui ne traite pas d’histoire de l’art, examine la pensée fragmentaire de l’icône en Inde ancienne jusqu’au XIIe siècle : parfois conçue comme étant un être vivant ou un sujet juridique, parfois suscitant des résistances théoriques (notamment dans le bouddhisme ancien, en comparaison avec la relique), inscrite dans le réseau des signes divinatoires favorables, emplie de conscience divine au moyen du rite, l’icône est restée - jusqu’à nos jours d'ailleurs - une composante majeure de la société indienne.

À l’occasion du 70e anniversaire de Michel Tardieu, un certain nombre d’amis et de collègues ont voulu manifester un hommage particulier à celui qui fut un maître, un ami, un professeur estimé. Cet anniversaire correspond aussi à son départ à la retraite du Collège de France. La diversité des contributions de ce volume illustre le genre de domaines qu’il s’est plu à fréquenter, tout autour du Bassin méditerranéen et dans les contrées plus lointaines de l’Orient et de l’Extrême-Orient.

Ce volume d’hommage à Michel Tardieu s’adresse aux spécialistes de l’Antiquité et du Proche-Orient ancien, aux historiens des religions ; il intéressera les historiens de la philosophie, les spécialistes des papyri magiques, des mouvements gnostiques, du manichéisme, de l’islam, du monde iranien, de l’Asie centrale, des christianismes orientaux.

Philosophe et historien des religions, Michel Tardieu entra comme chercheur au CNRS en 1972. Il occupa la direction d’études « Gnose et manichéisme » à la Section des Sciences religieuses de l’Ecole pratique des hautes études, de 1976 à 1990, et la chaire « Histoire des syncrétismes de la fin de l’Antiquité » au Collège de France, de 1990 à 2008.

Visual representations were deeply involved in medieval traditions related to the dissemination and teaching of philosophy and science. Consequently, they were not only examples of theological or philosophical interpretation, but rather brought together manifold intellectual activities, illuminating various perceptual, cognitive, and spiritual concerns. Visual tools, which appear frequently in medieval manuscripts, have often been considered as “illustrative material” intended to facilitate the comprehension and interpretation of texts. These “visual aids” offer something more than a straightforward correspondence between a conceptual interpretation and its figurative depiction. They are, in fact, key to understanding the methods of acquiring and shaping knowledge through visual frameworks with didactical, disputational or heuristic purposes. The aim of this volume is to deepen our understanding of medieval visual tools that represented and demonstrated philosophical and scientific knowledge and, to an extent, the accumulation of empirical information.

L’œuvre lyrique du troubadour Daude de Pradas a déjà fait l’objet d’une édition intégrale publiée par Alexander H. Schutz en 1933. Quatre-vingts ans après, une mise à jour et une révision des résultats présentés par le savant américain semblent nécessaires. Tenu par son premier éditeur pour un auteur tardif et peu original, Daude de Pradas est aujourd’hui à considérer comme un poète actif d’entre la fin du xii e　et le début du xiii e　siècle, presque contemporain de la génération dite «　classique　» des troubadours. Les contenus ainsi que la forme de son œuvre sont bien plus intéressant que ce que l’on croyait. Cette nouvelle édition vise à proposer un texte plus fiable que celui établi par M. Schutz. Elle tente de résoudre les conflits d’attribution de certains textes, de les rectifier à l’aide des études les plus récentes des hypothèses chronologiques et biographiques considérées désormais comme acquises. Enfin elle s’efforce d’expliquer, au moins en partie, à l’aide d’un apparat de notes interprétatives et à l’aide des traductions intégrales des textes, les nombreux vers obscurs et difficiles d’un auteur lu seulement de façon superficielle.

Silvio Melani a étudié la Philologie romane aux Universités de Pise et de Florence et a été Lecteur de langue et littérature italiennes à l’Université de Stockholm. Parmi ses travaux, il a publié l’édition critique de Philippe de Novare (Guerra di Federico II in Oriente, Napoli 1994) et le recueil d’essais historiques Ospitalieri, monaci e guerrieri, Turku 2002. En ce moment, il termine son deuxième Doctorat à l’Université de Udine.

What did the world look like for Jews living in medieval Europe? How did they perceive and make use of the elements of their daily life, from items on the street to religious iconography within holy spaces — in particular synagogues and at the exterior of churches — and profane elements from the home? And how did they experience the visual and material cultures of their non-Jewish neighbours?

These questions form the core of this volume, which explores pre-modern Jewish approaches to images and material objects from a variety of perspectives. From clothing to manuscripts, and from lighting devices to the understanding of the invisible, the chapters gathered together in this multifaceted volume combine analyses of images and artefacts together with in-depth analyses of texts to offer fresh insights into the visual cultures that informed the world of European Jews in the Middle Ages.