Brepols

This bookaddresses the issue of political celebration in early modern Venice. Dealing with processional orders and iconographic programs, historiographical narratives and urbanistic canons, stylistic features and diplomatic accounts, the interdisciplinary contributions gathered in these pages aim to question the performative effectiveness and the social consistency of the so called ‘myth’ of Venice: a system of symbols, beliefs and meanings offering a self-portrait of the ruling elite, the Venetian patriciate. In order to do so, the volume calls for a spatial turn in Venetian studies, blurring the boundaries between institutionalized and unofficial ceremonial spaces and considering their ongoing interaction in representing the rule of the Serenissima. The twelve chapters move from Ducal Palace to the Venetian streets and from the city of Venice to its dominions, thus widening considerably the range of social and political actors and audiences involved in the analysis. Such multifocal perspective allows us to challenge the very idea of a single ‘myth’ of Venice.

Que peut faire un clerc de l'administration royale, à la fin du XIIe siècle, s'il est doté d'un humour féroce, d'une langue agile, d'une culture vaste et éclectique, d'un goût irrépressible pour les bonnes histoires colorées et corsées, face à la montée en force des nouvelles modes littéraires de la littérature en français et des romans courtois? Il prend une plume et rédige de "bonnes histoires pour les gens de cour", pour montrer qu'on peut s'amuser en latin, de façon moins ridicule à ses yeux que ceux qui pâlissent d'amour aux pieds des dames. Gautier Map, clerc anglais richement prébendé, grand conteur et amuseur des milieux de la cour de Henri II Plantagenêt, est à la fois attiré et agacé par les thèmes fantastiques, merveilleux et amoureux qui font les délices de la cour anglaise lorsque la reine Aliénor y séjourne. Il veut faire encore mieux: plus varié, plus subtil, plus savant, plus drôle et moins naïf. S'il méprise l'amour courtois, ce n'est pas par pudibonderie; s'il écrit dans la langue savante de son temps, ce n'est pas par timidité. Son oeuvre, que par nonchalance sans doute il garda dans ses papiers personnels, est fantaisiste, insolente, ironique; c'est pour les ethnologues un réservoir de renseignements sur des coutumes et des traditions que personne avant lui n'avait notées, pour les historiens de la littérature un témoignage d'une époque où rien n'était encore joué entre la langue vulgaire et le latin (qui pouvaient encore se donner la réplique), pour tous un moment privilégié de l'émergence dans la littérature européenne d'un art du récit qui aboutit de temps en temps, dans ce recueil jamais ennuyeux ni banal, à d'éblouissantes réussites.

The essays in this book tap the potential of the historical analysis of social contexts in which property rights are embedded - social relations, power and agency, political institutions, culture - to understand how landed resources are actually appropriated. This exploratory approach seeks both to take advantage of the existing theory of property rights, as it is applied by the institutionalist outlook on economic history, and to go beyond it by explicitly incorporating social processes and factors in the analysis of property institutions. With this common aim in mind, the book covers a wide variety of historical cases throughout space and time, from the late Middle Ages in the Czech lands and in Tuscany to the very recent de collectivisation of the countryside in former socialist countries, which will contribute rich and grounded insights to the discussion of the topic and of its implications.

Rosa Congost is senior researcher at the Centre de Recerca d'Història Rural and teaches at Facultat de Lletres in Universitat de Girona. Her research interests cover the history of landed property and agrarian social relations.

Rui Santos is senior researcher at CESNOVA and teaches at Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas in Universidade Nova de Lisboa. His research interests cover historical and economic sociology and rural studies.

The twenty-eighth annual conference of CEMERS, held on 21-22 October 1994 at Binghamton University, featured thirty-three panel sessions and approximately 150 presentations. The ten essays in this volume consist of the five plenary speakers - leaders in their field - and five panel essays, each of which was reviewed for this volume. The volume comprises a body of work organised around a governing theme - modes of historicisation. Each of the essays demonstrates the practice of, or a commentary upon, a distinctive historicized criticism. By 'historicized' as contrasted with 'historical' criticism, it is meant that these essays problematicize, stretch or reconceive traditional historical practices. Challenging the notion that the production of paintings, dramatic texts or even conduct books can be read against a stable historical ground, they show that paintings, works of literature, and treatises not only participate in history but are exemplars of textual instability. The very content of these texts can be shown, in various editions, to change over time - and yet each bears a single, determinate title. In such ways the contributions gathered here all show that they have been affected by 'the new history'.

This volume explores the question of continuities and disruptions between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Rather than addressing the question in a general way, it brings together a number of case studies, dealing with the changing interest in, and knowledge of Stoicism, the variations in the manuscripts of medical texts, the changing emphases within the penitential genres of 'Mirrors', developments in the philosophy of love and in attitudes towards pagans, and the transformation of the art of disputation between the Middle Ages and Renaissance. One article considers the interpretation by a Renaissance scholar (Girolamo Cardano) of the ideas of a medieval scholar (Pietro d'Abano) concerning nature and demons, while another looks at the 16th-century School of Salamanca as a synthesis of the two periods. These papers were originally presented at the second colloquium of the Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Études Médiévales with the same title, organised jointly by two institutes that embody between them Renaissance and Medieval Studies: the Warburg Institute of London, and the Gabinete de Filosofia Medieval of Porto.

The volume includes papers by J. Marenbon (Cambridge), G. Giglioni (London), J. Kraye (London), O. Merisalo (Jyväskylä), S. Orrego-Sánchez (Santiago de Chile), A. Passot-Mannooretonil (Paris), J. J. Vila-Chã (Braga) and O. Weijers (Den Haag).

Rédigé en 363-364, le traité Contre les manichéens de Titus de Bostra est la plus importante réfutation chrétienne du manichéisme. Elle se distingue par sa composition en deux volets (réfutation rationnelle et réfutation scripturaire) et par la richesse de sa documentation (on y dénombre quelque 150 « citations manichéennes »). Préservé en grec aux deux-tiers et intégralement dans une version syriaque de la fin du IV e ou du début du V e siècle, cet ouvrage est d’une importance capitale pour l’histoire de la théologie chrétienne ancienne et du manichéisme.

Ce volume offre une double traduction française annotée du grec et du syriaque, la première dans une langue moderne, établie sur une base philologique sûre. L’édition critique gréco-syriaque et sa traduction française permettent désormais une nouvelle approche des sources manichéennes et de leur réfutation.Le texte qui a servi de base à cette traduction est celui qui a paru dans la Series Graeca du Corpus Christianorum (vol. 82, 2013). Il s’agissait de la première édition critique synoptique intégrale des textes grec et syriaque de cette oeuvre, accompagnée d’une édition critique des extraits préservés en grec dans les Sacra Parallela de Jean Damascène.

Agathe Roman est agrégée de lettres et docteur en littérature grecque (Montréal).

Thomas S. Schmidt est professeur de langue et littérature grecques à l'Université de Fribourg (Suisse).

Paul-Hubert Poirier, membre de l'Institut, est professeur d'histoire du christianisme ancien à l'Université Laval (Québec).

Il Contro gli Acefali del diacono romano Rustico, composto fra il 553 e il 564, si inserisce nel contesto della controversia dei Tre Capitoli e si propone di confutare la cristologia monofisita ('acefali' era infatti il nome con cui all'epoca si indicavano, appunto, gli esponenti di questa fazione). L’opera si presenta come un dialogo, preceduto da un breve prologo, fra due interlocutori, un ortodosso (indicato con il nome dell’autore), portavoce di una cristologia strettamente calcedonese, ed un monofisita di stampo severiano, qualificato come ‘eretico’. Nel corso della discussione Rustico sviluppa una approfondita ed originale riflessione sui concetti di natura, persona, sostanza e sussistenza, nella quale si possono riconoscere significativi punti di contatto, sia nel metodo che nei contenuti, con i trattati teologici di Boezio; e proprio nel complesso rapporto con il modello boeziano, importantissimo punto di riferimento ma anche oggetto di critica, risiede il particolare interesse di un’opera purtroppo ancora poco conosciuta, ma che sta suscitando negli ultimi anni una rinnovata attenzione da parte degli studiosi.

Sara Petri si è laureata ed ha conseguito il dottorato di ricerca in Filologia e Letteratura Greca e Latina presso l'Università di Pisa, sotto la direzione del prof. C. Moreschini. Attualmente insegna materie letterarie presso il Liceo Classico di Grosseto. Si occupa di letteratura cristiana antica di lingua latina, in particolare delle controversie cristologiche fra V e VI secolo.

La versione latina originale del testo proposto in traduzione in questo volume è pubblicata nella collana Corpus Christianorum Series Latina con il titolo Rusticus Diaconus, Contra Acephalos (CCSL 100). I rimandi alle pagine corrispondenti dell’edizione sono forniti a margine di questa traduzione.

Sara Petri si è laureata ed ha conseguito il dottorato di ricerca in Filologia e Letteratura Greca e Sara Petri si è laureata ed ha conseguito il dottorato di ricerca in Filologia e Letteratura Greca e Latina presso l’Università di Pisa, sotto la direzione del prof. C. Moreschini. Attualmente insegna materie letterarie presso il Liceo Classico di Grosseto. Si occupa di letteratura cristiana antica di lingua latina, in particolare delle controversie cristologiche fra V e VILatina presso l’Università di Pisa, sotto la direzione del prof. C. Moreschini. Attualmente insegna materie letterarie presso il Liceo Classico di Grosseto. Si occupa di letteratura cristiana antica di lingua latina, in particolare delle controversie cristologiche fra V e VI

The walls of early modern convents suggested the existence of absolute conditions that seldom existed in reality. While the built enclosure communicated the convent’s isolation from the world outside, connections between women religious and individuals or groups outside their communities extended into and from these houses, with each constituency exploiting these associations to serve its own aims.Likewise, the walls conveyed the presence of a homogeneous and unified community where, often, differences in status, power, and other interests led to the development of internal alliances and factions.

Building on an upsurge of scholarly interest in convent networks that previously has not been focused in a single volume, this collection of interdisciplinary essays examines how and why such associations existed. The collection examines personal, spatial, and temporal networks that emerged in, among, and beyond convents in Italy during the early modern period. These ties were established, cultivated, or even rejected in a variety of ways that influenced nuns’ devotional lives, their relationships with patrons, and their cultural engagement and production.

These essays cover the time period before and after the Council of Trent, permitting an analysis of convents’ responses to changing power dynamics, both inside and outside the enclosure. The book also engages a broad geographical and cultural range, with chapters focusing on the centres of Florence, Venice, and Rome, the courts of Urbino, Ferrara, and Mantua, and smaller cities across Northern Italy, offering unprecedented insights into early modern Italian convent life and its varied forms and modes of expression.

This volume presents a state-of-the-art collection of essays on the socio-cultural aspects of the conversion to Christianity in Viking-Age Scandinavia and the Scandinavian colonies of the North Atlantic. The nine scholars, drawn from the disciplines of history, archaeology, and literary studies, have been brought together to address the overarching topic of how conversion affected peoples’ identities - both as individuals, and as members of broader religious, political, and social groups - on either side of the ‘divide’ between paganism and Christianity. Central to this exploration is the question of how existing and changing identities shaped the progress of conversion as a process of societal, and more specifically cultural, change.

Each of the papers in this volume provides examples of the complicated patterns of interaction, influence, and identity-modification that were characteristic of the transition from paganism to Christianity in the Viking world. The authors look for new ways of understanding and describing this gradual intermingling between the two fuzzy-edged religious communities, and they provide a challenging redefinition of the nature of conversion in the Viking Age that will be of interest both to a wide variety of medievalists and to all those who work on conversion in its theoretical and historical aspects.