Brepols

Elucidating the steps that led to a finished work of art has been one of Molly Faries’ principal concerns in nearly forty years of research and teaching. A pioneer in infrared reflectography, she has demonstrated like no other scholar the importance of technical studies to art history, in the way that they provide insight into an artist’s technique and development, into collaboration within a workshop, and into master-pupil relationships. Molly Faries has taught generations of students and colleagues to view paintings not as static objects but as the results of successive choices.

The volume’s title, Invention: Northern Renaissance Studies in Honor of Molly Faries, evokes Molly’s passion for understanding an artist’s creative process. The term “invention” is here understood in the widest possible sense: How did a work of art come into being? How did an artist react to new stimuli or adapt to a new culture? Was innovation valued above adherence to a local tradition? To what degree could artists shape their patrons’ taste? How did artists transform their own inventions over time and adopt those of others? Was there a concept of invention specific to the Northern Renaissance and how did it differ from ours?

The authors who tackle these and other questions include university professors, curators, conservators, and conservation scientists, all recognized specialists in northern European art of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The artists they discuss are among the greatest painters, manuscript illuminators, printmakers, and sculptors: Johan Maelwael, the Limbourg brothers, Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling, Lieven van Lathem, Juan de Flandes, Jean Hey, Albrecht Dürer, Hieronymus Bosch, Master H.L., Jacques Du Broeucq, and Jan Brueghel the Elder.

This book, one of the few devoted specifically to the concept of invention in Northern Renaissance art, is richly illustrated with 32 color plates and 179 black-and-white reproductions; it includes an index.

Le lettere del medico fiorentino Alessandro Pini (1653-1717) e il suo trattato De moribus Turcarum fanno emergere un’immagine avvincente del popolo egiziano e della cultura ottomana. Ciò che Pini ha osservato in Egitto e nel mondo ottomano rivela una straordinaria dimensione mediterranea di commistione culturale, fatta di scambi e di incontri scaturiti dalle necessità lavorative e anche dalla semplice quotidianità. Oltre alla missione scientifica ufficiale egli doveva svolgere un’intrigante attività spionistica per Cosimo III, Granduca di Toscana, in cui si rivelò poi fallimentare. Amareggiato e osteggiato per l’insuccesso, passò poi alle dipendenze della Repubblica di Venezia e dimorò per vari anni a Istanbul e in Morea, dove senza pregiudizi e con ampiezza di vedute osservò le tradizioni e i costumi dei popoli che incontrava. Decise dunque consapevolmente di scrivere l’esaltazione di un mondo che l’Occidente vedeva come il suo alter ego negativo. Sebbene fosse stato imprigionato nella sua società di adozione, Pini rimase affascinato, forse anche ipnotizzato, da quello stesso mondo che lo aveva variamente premiato e frustrato sia nel suo lavoro ufficiale che nel suo incarico segreto.

Cet ouvrage est issu d’une rencontre scientifique, qui a eu lieu à Lyon en juillet 2014. Des biblistes et des théologiens ont cherché à interroger l’œuvre d’Irénée, particulièrement l’Adversus Haereses, sous l’angle de son rapport à une Bible juive et à une Bible chrétienne en voie de formation. Après quelques considérations générales sur l’herméneutique d’Irénée et l’autorité qu’il attribue aux documents de l’Église, particulièrement aux évangiles, les chercheurs ont examiné sa relation à certains livres privilégiés (évangiles, épîtres). Sur le fond d’une recherche statistique très complète due à L. Mellerin, la part la plus importante de l’ouvrage consiste ensuite en études de la réception de quelques lieux stratégiques, vétéro- ou néotestamentaires, chez Irénée. Le recueil est complété par des indices.

Détenteur de la chaire d’Exégèse coranique, de 1980 à 1994, à la Section des sciences religieuses de l’École pratique des hautes études à la Sorbonne, le Père Guy Monnot a renouvelé cette discipline majeure de l’islamologie classique en la considérant à juste titre comme le centre de gravité de plusieurs autres champs d’investigation scientifique : la pensée théologique, la spiritualité, la littérature, l’hérésiologie ou encore l’histoire comparée des religions. C’est la raison pour laquelle un certain nombre parmi ses amis, collègues, anciens élèves et étudiants se sont réunis ici afin de lui rendre hommage ainsi qu’à son œuvre par des contributions portant sur ses principaux domaines de recherche : étude du Coran et exégèse coranique, relations entre l’islam et les autres religions, Shahrastānī et ismaélisme, religions iraniennes et littératures persane et indo-persane. Les auteurs ont ainsi voulu témoigner leur amitié à l’égard de Guy Monnot ainsi que leur admiration pour la richesse, le rayonnement et la fécondité de son œuvre.

The years 888-962 are a period in which the Kingdom of Italy was not ruled by kings from across the Alps, the only such period from the end of the eighth century to the end of the eleventh. They were for a long time accepted as a period of major political breakdown and failure, and, in north-central (not southern) Italy, the start of the long run in to the early city communes and Italy’s future history as a radically disunited peninsula. In the light of not only recent historical reanalyses but also the emergence of a large quantity of archaeological data, this image can be tested, and in this book is, by both historians and archaeologists. A far more subtle and nuanced picture emerges from the interdisciplinary work in this volume. This book will be an essential starting-point for all future work on Italy in this period.

A la fin du XIIe siècle, Hartmann von Aue, un clerc allemand originaire de Souabe, adapte Yvain ou le Chevalier au Lion de Chrétien de Troyes. Iwein constitue sans nul doute l’œuvre la plus aboutie et la plus fascinante de Hartmann. L’adaptateur y reprend les aventures autour desquelles s’organise le roman français : la fontaine merveilleuse, la conquête d’une reine et d’un pays, la folie d’Iwein, l’aide apportée aux chevaliers prisonniers du géant Harpin ou aux trois cents captives d’un château, le combat contre Gawein. Toutefois, Hartmann ne se contente pas d’adapter le roman de Chrétien à la langue allemande, il réinterprète sa source et transforme en profondeur les motivations des personnages et le sens des aventures. Ce qui prime chez Hartmann n’est plus le rapport entre fin’ amor et prouesse mais le rôle de la chevalerie et l’idéal du miles christianus. Pour la première fois, ce roman allemand est traduit en français moderne.

Patrick del Duca est Maître de Conférences et enseigne la langue et la littérature allemandes du Moyen Âge à l’Université Blaise Pascal de Clermont-Ferrand.

Le phénomène de la jalousie a fait l’objet d’études de moralistes, de psychologues et de psychanalystes. Il a également été abordé par les théologiens sous l’angle de « la jalousie divine » telle qu’elle apparaît dans la Bible hébraïque. Le projet du présent ouvrage, délibérément original, consiste à mettre en regard et en échos les multiples manifestations de ce mécanisme universel, dans le temps et dans l’espace. Il en résulte un faisceau d’approches scientifiques, sorte d’arc-en-ciel déployant la riche palette des divers aspects de la jalousie humaine et de ses reflets dans les mythes et les légendes, depuis l’Égypte pharaonique et la Mésopotamie ancienne jusqu’à l’opéra italien, aux romans de Dostoïevski et au théâtre de Claudel, en passant bien sûr par les moments essentiels que constituent la Grèce antique, avec ses philosophes et ses mythes, les études bibliques, qoumraniennes et rabbiniques, la patristique grecque, latine et syriaque face à leurs reflets négatifs, les hérésies, et l’islam, sous ses formes normative (le Coran) et mystiques.

Le regard apporté par la psychologie des profondeurs (psychanalytique et pédopsychiatrique) vient conforter les éclairages multiples présentés par l’histoire, l’exégèse et la philosophie. C’est finalement la philologie qui a le dernier mot, puisque nos termes modernes « jalousie », « gelosia » en italien, proviennent du grec zèlos, via le latin zelus. De cette approche kaléidoscopique se dégage la double face de la jalousie, aux connotations tantôt négatives, voire mortifères, tantôt fertiles et constructives.

Ce volume, fruit des travaux de chercheurs et d’universitaires, émane du colloque éponyme organisé sous l’égide du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, de l’École Pratique des Hautes Études, de l’Université Paris-Est, et de la Région Île-de-France.

Après l’édition d’Europe, comédie héroïque, de Richelieu et Desmaretstz de Saint-Sorlin (1642), la parution de son équivalent germanique, Japeta, fera date. Les « belles infidèles » ne sont pas réservées aux auteurs français : Harsdörfer traduisit la pièce de théâtre imaginée par Richelieu dès 1643, en pleine guerre de Trente Ans, premier conflit paneuropéen dont sortira l'ordre westphalien qui dominera les relations internationales jusqu'à la Révolution française. La simple existence de cette traduction, où l’on retrouve les mêmes personnages, dont les noms sont cependant changés, mérite qu’on s’y arrête, et la version qu’il propose à son lecteur est plus fascinante encore. Les glissements de sens et de projet, de philosophie politique, de rapport à la morale et à la religion, de rapport aux Anciens, sont constants, même si le fond de l’affaire reste le même : nous avons donc Japeta, reine libre et vierge, majestueuse, qui tente d'imposer la paix à ses deux belliqueux soupirants : l'orgueilleux Iberich, mollement soutenu par son parent, le très moral Adelman, et le chevaleresque Liliwert. Italmund est là aussi, otage tantôt de l'un, tantôt de l'autre, et Austerwig court à sa perte, amoureuse de cet Iberich qui se sert d’elle, comme arme dans ce conflit qui le conduit vers sa ruine. Liliwert l’emporte, lui qui fait sienne l'ambition de Japeta d’être « libre » et non point « possédée ». La pièce figure une arène de combat, politique certes, mais aussi et peut-être surtout moral. Si la pièce de Harsdorfer est, comme celle du cardinal, une manifestation d'un sentiment européen, elle scelle peut-être encore davantage l’union entre Liliwert, la France, et Adelman, l’Allemagne. Pour autant, cette traduction, qui ne se présente jamais comme telle, si elle illustre les affirmations de Harsdörfer, selon lequel la littérature allemande doit s’enrichir aux sources étrangères, sans compter sur son seul sol, infléchit le gallocentrisme de la pièce de Richelieu, et surtout déplace son centre d’intérêt de la politique vers la morale et la dimension littéraire.

Nous voulons, avec cette édition, qui comporte le texte allemand et la première traduction française, ainsi que des notes et une introduction, contribuer à ouvrir une brèche pour les études de départements qui trop souvent s’ignorent, la littérature française, et la littérature allemande. Les chercheurs se sont par le passé trop rarement penchés sur l’influence de la France sur la littérature allemande du début de l’âge baroque, dont Harsdörfer est une figure centrale. Japeta mérite cependant l’attention non seulement parce qu’elle s’écrit à un moment où les rapports de puissance se sont transformés, en Europe, mais aussi parce qu’elle émane d’un auteur protestant adaptant la pièce d’un cardinal ministre de la France, fille aînée de l’Église, et enfin parce qu’elle est le document le plus important, dans le domaine du théâtre, de l’influence, trop longtemps négligée par la germanistique et les études littéraires françaises, du classicisme français sur la littérature allemande.

Wauquelin, «escripvaing» de ce grand mécène que fut le duc de Bourgogne, est longtemps resté dans l’ombre de son jeune confrère, David Aubert. Son œuvre embrasse cependant des champs variés, qui accueillent aussi bien des traductions que des compilations et des mises en prose. Les éditions récentes de certains de ses textes, et les études auxquelles elles ont donné lieu, permettent de mieux connaître cet auteur aujourd’hui. Répondant parfaitement aux désirs de ses différents commanditaires, son œuvre s’inscrit dans les courants de pensée et les idéologies de l’époque.

Mais Wauquelin ne fut pas seulement un auteur. Il participa lui-même aux étapes de l’élaboration matérielle des manuscrits dont son atelier assurait la transcription et la reliure, tandis que l’illustration était confiée à des artistes réputés, résidant notamment à Bruges.

Le colloque interdisciplinaire qui lui fut consacré à Tours, en septembre 2004, avait pour ambition d’éclairer toutes les facettes de son activité et de la situer dans les pratiques d’écriture mais aussi «éditoriales» de son temps. Les articles qu’il a inspirés sont accompagnés ici d’une bibliographie exhaustive.

Cette présentation en un volume de l’ensemble des connaissances que l’on peut considérer comme acquises sur Wauquelin, dans des domaines aussi divers que la philologie, la linguistique, la littérature, la codicologie ou l’histoire de l’art, voudrait susciter des interrogations et ouvrir la voie à de nouvelles recherches.

The Sacro Monte (Holy Mountain) at Varallo is a sanctuary in the Italian Alps west of Milan. It was founded in the late fifteenth century by a Franciscan friar, with the support of the town’s leading families. He designed it as a schematic replica of Jerusalem, to enable the faithful to make a virtual pilgrimage to the Holy City if they could not undertake the perilous journey to visit it physically. The Sacro Monte consists of a sequence of chapels containing tableaux of life-size painted terra-cotta figures with fresco backgrounds recounting the life and Passion of Christ. A century later, in the era of the Counter-Reformation, a ‘second wave’ of Sacri Monti was constructed in the north-western Alps, modelled on Varallo, but dedicated to other devotional themes, like the Rosary or the life of St Francis. All these sanctuaries, like Varallo, were the result of local initiatives, initiated by the clergy and the leaders of the communities where they were situated. Like Varallo, they were the work of artists and craftsmen from the alpine valleys, or from nearby Lombardy. Long dismissed as folk art unworthy of serious critical attention, the Sacri Monti are now recognised as monuments of unique artistic significance. In 2003 UNESCO listed nine of them in its register of World Heritage Sites. This book studies their development as the products of the religious sensibilities and the social, economic, and political conditions of the mountain communities that created them.

Among all the different theories that currently explore the religious milieu of Late Antiquity to elucidate the origins of the Islamic religion, there is a group of scholars supporting that Jewish Christianity must have played a role in its formation, reviving the question of a potential link between Early Islam and the beliefs and practices of those followers of Jesus that maintained or adopted certain Jewish beliefs and practices, either Jews that believed in the messianism and/or the prophecy of Jesus, groups whose existence and nature is still a matter of debate. In any case, the question is still subject of passionate debate among specialists. This volume collects the papers of a two-day colloquium held in Washington DC in October 2015 about the question of Jewish Christianity and Early Islam and highlights the vitality of this field of studies. The contributions included here cover a broad range of topics, and they offer new ideas, interpretations and understandings of the question.

The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) was groundbreaking for having introduced to medieval Europe a series of canons that sought to regulate encounters between Christians and Jews and Muslims. Its canon 68 demanded that Jews and Muslims wear distinguishing dress, in order to prevent Christians from entering into illicit sexual relations with them, restricted the movement of Jews in public spaces during Holy Week, and exhorted secular authorities to punish Jews who in any way “insult” or blaspheme against Christ himself. Other canons sought to exercise greater control over moneylending, to provide relief to Christian borrowers, to extract tithes from Jews who held Christian properties as pledges, and prohibited Jews from exercising power as public officials over Christians. The canons condemned converts who preserved elements from their former religion, promoted a fifth Crusade to the East, exempted Crusaders from taxes and from interest payments to Jewish moneylenders, restricted trade with Muslims or Saracens, and condemned Christians who provided arms or assistance to Saracens. The Council’s canons affected the missionary efforts of the late medieval Church and its attempts to convert Jewish and Muslim minorities, and established essential guidance on minority relations not to be surpassed until Vatican II in the 1960s.

A thorough analysis of the sinuous ‘peregrinatio academica’ of Johann Terrentius Schreck (1576-1630) between 1600-1618 through (South-, Central- and NW-) European universities, academies and courts (at Freiburg /Br.; Paris; Rome; Basel; Padua; Strasbourg, Prague, Kassel, etc.) and his rich correspondence displays a widespread network of contacts, covering a broad range of domains, from medicine to alchemy, pharmacy, botany, and through engineering to (pure and applied) mathematics, and calendar making. In all these domains of the contemporary ‘Republic of Letters’, this former student of François Viète (Paris), Galileo (Padua) and ex-Lincean, adept of Copernicus and Paracelsus showed himself to be a passionate scholar with multi-faceted and versatile talents. After 1611, with this very rich experience he entered the Society of Jesus, and shortly afterward he was appointed as companion of Nicolas Trigault, who was touring through

Europe (1615-1618) as procurator on behalf of the fledgling Jesuit Mission in China, seeking funds, men, books and scientific instruments. This second phase of intensive travelling through European centers of scholarship, patronage, and printing (including Rome; Venice; Basel; Frankfurt; Cologne, Antwerp, etc.) resulted in an enormous collection of books and instruments, which were dispatched to Lisbon from various points in 1617/1618. Shipped to China, these materials arrived in Macau in 1619, and in Peking in 1625, becoming the core of the Jesuit libraries, mainly in Peking, and the basis for the scholarly activities of the Jesuits over the following decades in the domains of mathematics, calendar making, medicine, etc.

The present volume presents a new critical edition of Buridan’s Sophismata based on a collection of six manuscripts and an incunabulum. It forms part of an international project to edit the whole of John Buridan’s Summulae dialecticae, the most extensive version of which consists of nine treatises (tractatus). The treatise on sophisms is the ninth treatise of the Summulae dialecticae and deals with most of the major subjects discussed by the fourteenth century logicians (signification, supposition, appellation, truth-conditions, insolubles, etc.). Although it illustrates how some of the theorems of the preceding treatises may be put to use, it can not be considered a systematic practical companion to the preceding collection of theorems. It is nevertheless one of the most important pieces among Buridan’s works.

John Buridan (ca. 1300-1361) was one of the most influential philosophers of his time. During his long career at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Paris, he taught many logic courses, for which he wrote a textbook, entitled Summulae dialecticae. This work consists of nine treatises; the present volume contains the first critical edition of the Preface and the first treatise of the Summulae: De propositionibus. As the bearers of truth and falsity, propositions are the primary concern of logic, the art that serves as a general tool for reaching truth and avoiding falsity in any field of knowledge, whether in contemplative or practical contexts. Most important is Buridan’s commitment to the semantic primacy of mental language and the treatment of written and spoken propositions as conventional signs, which designate the primary bearers truth and falsity, namely mental propositions. In De propositionibus Buridan develops his nominalist conception of the relations between mind, language, and reality, which he goes on to employ in the subsequent treatises of the Summulae.

De syllogismis is the fifth treatise of John Buridan’s Summulae dialecticae, a textbook he wrote for his logic course in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Paris. De syllogismis contains material related to Aristotle’s Analytica Priora and Boethius’s De hypotheticis syllogismis. The textbook discusses inferences involving not only propositions de inesse, but also propositions featuring oblique, reduplicative and infinite terms. Buridan displays a keen interest in modal inferences and inferences involving propositional attitudes. Buridan’s De syllogismis continues along the lines of his nominalist conception of the relations between mind, language and reality.

The essays collected here represent the current state of research into the works of John Gower, poet, philosopher, and contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer. They assess Gower’s literary output within the context of manuscript production and readership/ownership in late medieval England and the triangle of Latin, French, and English as literary and official languages in Ricardian England. Sections of the volume focus on manuscripts and the circulation of Gower’s works in languages other than English. In addition, the literary and philosophical contexts that inform Gower’s poetics and politics are considered here, resulting in readings of the poet’s rhetorical and ethical agenda as well as his texts’ intervention in and reaction to social outsiders in his contemporary London. A wide variety of critical discourses inform the readings presented here, including medieval English, French, and Latin literary studies, art history, manuscript production and reception, postmodern ethics, and historical studies.

This is the first translation in any language of John of Garland’s poem about the historical events of his lifetime (c. 1195- c. 1258), together with revised Latin text, introduction and notes. This work gives a vivid picture of Anglo-French relations, of studies in Toulouse after the Albigensian Crusade, and of the need for faith following Louis’ catastrophic defeat in the Seventh Crusade. John gives us insights into his own life, and a stream of stories, holy and profane. The translation and notes bring to life for a wide range of medievalists this eye-witness account by an Englishman in France of major events of the age, especially 1242-52. They make clear John’s debts to classical authors and to contemporaries, especially Alan of Lille and Matthew Paris. Through re-ordering the lines, this edition now generates clarity from the single manuscript. It also offers fresh insights and a new perspective on John of Garland himself.

The Dominican scholar John of Paris was one of the most controversial members of the University of Paris in the later Middle Ages. The author of over twenty works, he is best known today for On Royal and Papal Power, a tract traditionally linked to the explosive confrontation that took place between the French king Philip IV and Pope Boniface VIII in the early years of the fourteenth century. Although his role as a royal apologist has been questioned in recent years, John’s tract is often considered the first great defence of the independence of nation-states in the face of the claims to universal authority made by popes and emperors.

Bringing together a team of international scholars with a wide range of expertise, this volume offers the first collection of essays in any language to be dedicated to an exploration of John’s thought. It re-examines his view of the relationship between Church and state, and his conception of political organization. It considers the role played by John’s background as a member of the Dominican order in shaping his ideas and breaks new ground in exploring the relationship between his various works, the origins of his thought, its development, and its legacy.