Brepols

On 4 August 1897, farm workers in Elche — the site of ancient Ilici — discovered an Iberian sculpture of a woman that dated from the fifth– fourth centuries BCE. French archaeologist Pierre Paris dubbed this figure ‘the Lady of Elche’, and promptly purchased the sculpture on behalf of the Louvre Museum. There, she drew the attention of European scholars who were intrigued by her stylistic features, finally concluding that she bore witness to the existence of a specifically Iberian art. Since her discovery, the Lady of Elche has been a source of fascination not only for scholars, but also for artists, and she has become an icon of regional and national identity across Spain. This volume, co-written by an archaeologist and an anthropologist and translated here into English for the first time, seeks to explore the importance of the Lady of Elche, both for students of the past, and for the peoples of Iberia. The authors here explore not only what we know — and still do not know — about her creation, but also engage with key questions about what she represents for the men and women of our time who have questioned, manipulated, admired, loved, and often reinvented the singular beauty of this iconic figure.

In the late Middle Ages, the Percy earls of Northumberland and the bishops of Durham were two of the largest landholders in the North East of England. This book is a study of their estate administrations based on the extant manorial accounts from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries. Examining the documents holistically, it investigates the shapes of the records and the materials they were written upon, as well as how they were used and stored to provide new insights into late medieval lordly administration. Such a material-focussed approach explores the concurrent use of rolls, booklets, paper, and parchment for different types of manorial accounts and at different steps of the multistage production and audit process. It also examines the hands drafting, editing, and auditing the accounts, in addition to the layout and presentation of the contents of the records to further our understanding of the written burden of proof required in the management and audit of large estates in late medieval England. Studying the financial accounts of the earls of Northumberland and the bishops of Durham from a material perspective reveals two highly sophisticated administrative systems and structures of accountability.

Scriptor, Cantor & Notator is an innovative multi-author project dealing with the complex interconnections between learning, writing and performing chant in the Middle Ages. A number of different methodological approaches have been employed, with the aim of beginning to understand the phenomenon of chant transmission over a large geographical area, linking and contrasting modern definitions of East and West. Thus, in spite of this wide geographical spread, and the consequent variety of rites, languages and musical styles involved, the common thread of parallels and similarities between various chant repertoires arising from the need to fix oral repertories in a written form, and the challenges involved in so doing, are what bring this wide variety of repertoires and approaches together. This multi-centric multi-disciplinary approach will encourage scholars working in these areas to consider their work as part of a much larger geographical and historical picture, and thus reveal to reader and listener more, and far richer, patterns of connections and developments than might otherwise have been suspected.

Scriptor, Cantor & Notator is published in two books. The first, The Materiality of Sound in Chant Manuscripts in the West, brings together articles on several different families of early music scripts in the Latin West and provides a vividly diverse picture of some of the best current scholarship on the various types of ancient and medieval musical notation.

Medieval cathedrals and the various practices connected to them form an important and complex part of the European cultural heritage. The buildings themselves and their reception into the modern arts ensure their presence within today’s cultural memories and sensibilities. In the mid-twelfth century, a new archbishop’s seat was erected in the Norwegian city of Trondheim (or Nidaros) in the far north of Europe. This interdisciplinary volume, written by scholars of history, architecture, and liturgy, explores the medieval cathedral of Trondheim as a local construction in a European context. As a see of the Western Church, it was set in an international Latinate culture. At the same time, the construction of the building itself and the ritual practices in and around it were influenced by local political, religious, and cultural conditions. The relationship between the physical construction of a cathedral and its function in medieval liturgical and other ritual practices is a topic of wide relevance for architectural and liturgical scholarship. The so-called Ordo Nidrosiensis, the thirteenth-century ordinal of the province of Nidaros, is an immense help in interpreting the architectural construction and sacred space of Nidaros Cathedral and the Ordo is dealt with in many of the articles. In accordance with general medieval practice, both the Nidaros ordinal and this volume may be described as international in content but edited with regard to local considerations.

This volume asks whether there was a common structure, ideology, and image of the household in the medieval Christian West. In the period under examination, noble households often exercised great power in their own right, while even quite humble households were defined as agents of government in the administration of local communities. Many of the papers therefore address the public functions and perceptions of the household, and argue that the formulation of domestic (or family) values was of essential importance in the growth and development of the medieval Christian state.

Contributors to this volume of collected essays write from a number of disciplinary perspectives (archaeological, art-historical, historical and literary). They examine socially diverse households (from peasants to kings) and use case studies from different regions across Europe in different periods within the medieval epoch from c. 850 to c. 1550. The volume both includes studies from archives and collections not often covered in English-language publications, and offers new approaches to more familiar material. It is divided into thematic sections exploring the role of households in the exercise of power, in controlling the body, in the distribution of wealth and within a wider economy of possessions.

Medieval culture is marked by a general acceptance of the mental attitude which both recognized and accepted the truths of the dominant religion. This is, then, the ‘general paradigm’ that programmatically directs the paths and results of intellectual activity in the Middle Ages. In the various fields of scientific research, in the different epochs and in the manifold social and institutional situations, there are also produced - based on the ‘general paradigm’ - many ‘particular paradigms’, which carry out some specified and graduated effects of the general one.

The idea pursued during the Congress is an attempt to determine, describe and evaluate the general and particular results the ‘paradigm’ had on the maturation of medieval philosophical and scientific thought with regard to the relationship - that was a dynamic and reciprocal one, and was not necessarily reduced to a theological understanding -between rational inquiry and religious belief.

List of Contributors: G. Alliney, M. Bartoli, A. Bisogno, A. Cacciotti, S. Carletto, C. Casagrande, A. Conti, G. d’Onofrio, P.F. De Feo, C. Erismann, G. Fioravanti, F. Fiorentino, A. Galonnier, R. Gatti, J. Gavin, M. Geoffroy, A. Guidi, M. Laffranchi, R. Lambertini, M. Lenzi, E. Mainoldi, C. Martello, C. Mews, A. Morelli, P. Müller, F. Paparella, M. Parodi, G. Perillo, I. Peta, A. Petagine, P. Porro, F. Seller, K. Tachau, Ch. Trottmann, S. Vecchio, M. Vittorini, J. Ziegler

Le premier volume de cette collection chez Brepols est le cinquième d'une série du même nom, éditée par Roger Ellis, et publiée précédemment chez d'autres éditeurs. Comme ses prédécesseurs, il présente les communications faites lors de colloques internationaux et traitant de la théorie et de la pratique de la traduction au moyen âge. Les articles figurant au sommaire de ce volume ont été présentés lors du colloque de Conques, les 26-29 juillet 1993. Les articles sont rédigés dans une des langues internationales et sont accompagnés de résumés en anglais. Le fil conducteur est le phénomène de la traduction au moyen âge, et la série contient tant les études spécialisées que les approches plus générales. L'article phare du volume 5 (K. Ashley & P. Sheingorn, The translations of Sainte Foy: bodies, textes and places), par exemple, traite de l'interaction entre la transmission littéraire et la translation de reliques, en partant du cas de sainte Foy. D'autre part, la question des traductions post-médiévales ou contemporaines de textes mediévaux est également abordée.

Fundamental to all translation work, the concept of “displacement” allows one to take into account the multiple successive states inhering in a single text, and to interpret these variations. Translation is, in effect, a form of transfer; more specifically, it involves a movement from one context to another, be it national, social, political, historical, linguistic or religious. The texts examined here illustrate, each in their unique way, the relationship between contextual change and audience. They are also the product of subtle interactions between a variety of elements, the result of which is a “reinvention” of their respective roles and uses over time. For example, a text intending to entertain may also have educational outcomes; a book of local miracles may attract pilgrims and contribute to the economic life of a monastery; a text and its translations may at some point be appropriated for polemical purposes, while a library of translated texts founded on humanist principals may also serve political ends.

Furthermore, each successive adaptation and its accompanying annotations impacts upon the tonality of a text. While this diversity of meanings may inspire some (such as the medieval poet Marie de France), it moreover raises a number of important and difficult questions for the modern translator. How, for example, does one translate the “harmonics” underlying a series of mystical puns? The “solution” usually involves a compromise that both enhances and undermines the translated text.

This volume presents a selection of twenty-eight papers delivered at the Seventh International Conference dedicated to The Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages, which took place at the University of Paris III — Nouvelle Sorbonne in July 2004. The period covered by the texts and their translations extends from antiquity to the present day. The literary and critical breadth of these papers, as well as the rigorous interrogation of the modern translation theory, illustrates the remarkable vitality and diversity of current scholarship in this field.

Au cœur de toute activité de traduction, le concept de déplacement permet de rendre compte des multiples états successifs d’un même texte et d’en interpréter les variations. Toute traduction est en effet une translation, c’est-à-dire un changement d’environnement, que ce dernier soit national, social, politique, historique, linguistique ou ecclésial. Les textes examinés ici témoignent chacun à sa manière des transformations qu’ils ont subies lorsque, changeant de langue, de style ou d’époque, ils ont changé de destinataires. La dynamique qui les traverse se nourrit de subtils côtoiements: un désir légitime de divertir peut fort bien s’accommoder d’une intention didactique; un recueil de miracles locaux peut attirer des pèlerins, contribuant ainsi à la vie économique d’un monastère; un texte et ses traductions peuvent devenir l’objet d’utilisations polémiques; se constituer en humaniste une bibliothèque de traductions peut aussi servir un dessein politique.

Par ailleurs les transpositions successives et leurs gloses, comme en musique, entraînent des changements de tonalité. Ce ‘surplus’ de sens qu’encourage Marie de France pourra cependant se heurter à des résistances: comment par exemple préserver d’une langue à l’autre toutes les harmoniques que libère un enchaînement de jeux de mots mystiques? Ainsi l’inévitable compromis qui s’imposera au traducteur sera souvent le choix d’un enrichissement doublé d’une déperdition.

Ce volume présente une sélection des communications entendues lors du septième colloque international consacré à la théorie et la pratique de la traduction des textes au Moyen Age qui s’est tenu à l’Université de Paris III — Sorbonne Nouvelle en juillet 2004. La période couverte par ces textes et leurs traductions s’étend de l’Antiquité jusqu’à nos jours. Ce sont au total vingt-huit études qui sont ici proposées. La richesse des domaines abordés, la haute technicité des analyses, de même que la place faite aux questionnements de la traductologie moderne illustrent la remarquable vitalité des études actuelles relatives aux multiples aspects de la traduction des textes médiévaux.

Jan Hus (1371-1415) gave his name to a social and religious revolution which captured the attention of Europe. The central figure in a late medieval reform movement, he died a condemned heretic. Martyrdom made him famous but his essential identity has remained a point of controversy. Who was Jan Hus?

This work explores the driving forces in the life and work of this medieval priest as he moved from obscurity to the vulnerability of a publicly accused heretic and the disgraceful prelude to martyrdom. It also focuses on the construction and facilitation of the memory of Jan Hus. Historical “facts” are often compelling but these postulations cannot be approached apart from the manner and process in which those events are remembered.This book illuminates the life and work of the medieval priest and martyr who rose from humble origins to national hero and popular saint on the platform of a unique and renewed practice of the Christian faith. So profound were his challenges to the church and so bellicose were the reactions to his untimely demise, that the name Jan Hus was destined never to fade into oblivion.

How much did Latin academic theoretical discourse inform mainstream late medieval English literature? Rather than asking this question of secular poetic fiction (Chaucer, Gower), this book investigates a more central genre, lives of Christ. Any adequate understanding of vernacular textuality, in an age when most literature was translation of some sort, cannot escape the question of the influence of theory on transactions and ideology of mainstream literary culture in negotiating authority. Where better to test this than the life of Christ?

Derived from the Gospels, this genre provided the set text for human existence. Too often, however, it has been regarded by modern scholarship as an infantilizing clerical sop to a laity deprived of Scripture and intellectual or contemplative ambition. Inquiry into the translating and the spirituality of Middle English lives of Christ yields, however, eloquent examples not of antagonism and rupture between Latin and vernacular but of productive compatibility. This challenges the common modern supposition that vernacular texts and vernacular theology are at odds with Latinate clerical culture, and restores the genre’s historic value. Like their dissenting counterparts, lives of Christ, as well as being of interest in their own right, invested in learned literary and theological norms in their textual transactions. Such reliance demands modern (re)consideration.

This book enriches our understanding of the circumstances and conditions that have made the relation between science and diplomacy a primary concern of the political landscape in the twenty first century. As western liberal democracy and its effects on the environment but also on global war politics are under question, authors in this collective volume rethink the effects that an ahistorical definition of science diplomacy has had on world politics. They document the historicity of the entanglement between, on the one hand, epistemic practices and knowledge production and, on the other, foreign policy strategies and negotiation tactics. The book is the first in a series of what Rentetzi calls 'Diplomatic Studies of Science', a highly inter- and trans- disciplinary field that analyzes science and diplomacy as historically co-produced. It primarily focuses on the entanglements of science and diplomacy after the Second World War, bridging history of science, diplomatic history and international relations

While the multilingualism of the medieval world has been at the forefront of research agendas across medieval studies in recent years, there nonetheless remain many questions to answer. What, for example, were the stakes and consequences of multilingualism for literary culture? And how do these change if we think of multilingualism through cultural, social, artistic, or material lenses? Taking such concerns as their starting point, the essays in this volume address a variety of aspects of medieval literature and literary culture related to multilingualism. They deal with multilingualism in relation to manuscripts, literary contexts, and historical contexts. The chapters gathered together here address considerations that have been overlooked in previous scholarship, and ask where the future of the study of medieval multilingualism lies. Contributions to the volume are grouped thematically, rather than by date or period, in order to draw out comparative perspectives, with the aim of encouraging innovative new approaches to future research in the field.

This book collates 100 exhibits with accompanying essays as an imaginary museum dedicated to the musical cultures of Renaissance Europe, at home and in its global horizons. It is a history through artefacts-materials, tools, instruments, art objects, images, texts, and spaces-and their witness to the priorities and activities of people in the past as they addressed their world through music. The result is a history by collage, revealing overlapping musical practices and meanings-not only those of the elite, but reflecting the everyday cacophony of a diverse culture and its musics. Through the lens of its exhibits, this museum surveys music’s central role in culture and lived experience in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe, offering interest and insights well beyond the strictly musicological field.

Interest in the content of this book has developed out of an examination of the prompter who operated in full view of the audience and offered all the lines to the players. In 2001 at Groningen a production of the Towneley Second Shepherds’ Play focused on an examination of this convention. Many of the audience responses then were concerned with the figure of the prompter as he was seen to operate simultaneously both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the action of the play. Such a role and its function is fascinating, not only in its own right, but also in relation to how it might inform us about the nature and purpose of presented theatre. The ability of such a figure to move in and out of the action, and thus different realities, characterizes a relationship to the action and the audience. The same fascination exists in relation to roles of the narrator and the expositor. Sometimes these roles are overt ones; sometimes they ‘double up’ with roles of actors, personages or characters. These figures are of pivotal significance in the communication of those plays in which they operate. The purpose of this book is to investigate the nature of these roles in order to identify their influence upon the performance of medieval plays.

In both popular memory and in their own histories, the Normans remain almost synonymous with conquest. In their relatively brief history, some of these Normans left a small duchy in northern France to fight with Empires, conquer kingdoms, and form new ruling dynasties. This book examines the explosive Norman encounters with the medieval Mediterranean, c. 1000-1250. It evaluates new evidence for conquest and communities, and offers new perspectives on the Normans’ many meetings and adventures in history and memory.

The contributions gathered here ask questions of politics, culture, society, and historical writing. How should we characterize the Normans’ many personal, local, and interregional interactions in the Mediterranean? How were they remembered in writing in the years and centuries that followed their incursions? The book questions the idea of conquest as replacement, examining instead how human interactions created new nodes and networks that transformed the medieval Mediterranean. Through studies of the Normans and the communities who encountered them - across Iberia, the eastern Roman Empire, Lombard Italy, Islamic Sicily, and the Great Sea - the book explores macro- and micro-histories of conquest, its strategies and technologies, and how medieval people revised, rewrote, and remembered conquest.

Since the time of Vitruvius, architects have been expected to have a broad knowledge of the arts and sciences. The need for good skills in sketching and working up drawings even led, from the sixteenth century onwards, to fierce debates on the meaning and status of ‘disegno’. While Italy saw the emergence of famous painters who excelled as architects, also in the Southern Netherlands the notion that an architect must also have a mastery of the painter’s art became widespread, owing in part to the dissemination of publications by Sebastiano Serlio and Pieter Coecke van Aelst. In the seventeenth century, Peter Paul Rubens was able to make his own contribution to this discussion as a consequence of his sojourns in Italy (1601-1608). Bringing together distinguished art and architecture historians from Europe and North America, this interdisciplinary approach will shed light on the interrelationship of architecture and painting in the Southern Netherlands.

Piet Lombaerde is professor in theory and history of architecture and urbanism at the University of Antwerp, faculty of design sciences. His research interests cover the history of fortifications (1500-1900), urban history and the history of hydraulics. He is co-editor with Krista De Jonge (KU Leuven) of the series Architectura Moderna (Brepols Publisher) and author of several books on the history and theory of architecture and urban planning.

The quarter-century that has passed since Paul Szarmach’s and Bernard Huppé’s groundbreaking The Old English Homily and its Backgrounds (1978) has seen staggering changes in the field of Anglo-Saxon homiletics. Primary materials have become accessible to scholars in unprecedented levels, whether digitally or through new critical editions, and these have generated in turn a flood of secondary scholarship. The articles in this volume showcase and build on these developments. The first five essays consider various contexts of and infuences on Anglo-Saxon homilies: patristic and early medieval Latin sources, continental homiliaries and preaching practices, traditions of Old Testament interpretation and adaptation, and the liturgical setting of preaching texts. Six studies then turn to the sermons themselves, examining style and rhetoric in the Vercelli homilies, the codicology of the Blickling Book, sanctorale and temporale in the works of Ælfric, and the challenges posed by Wulfstan’s self-referential corpus. Finally, the last entries take us past the Conquest to discuss the re-use of homiletic material in England and its environs from the eleventh to eighteenth century. Together these articles offer medieval scholars a new Old English Homily, one that serves both as an introduction to key figures and issues in the field and as a model of studies for the next quarter-century.

Thomas Percy was the first serious translator of Old Norse-Icelandic poetry into English. He published his Five Pieces of Runic Poetry in London in 1763 and in 1770 published his translation of Mallet's very influential work on early Scandinavian literature and culture as Northern Antiquities (with extensive annotations and additions by Percy himself). In publishing Five Pieces, Percy was influenced by the success of Macpherson's first volume of Ossian poetry (1760) and his own wide-ranging interest in ancient, especially 'gothic' poetry. Five Pieces had a mixed reception and was never republished as a separate work, but reappeared as an appendix to the second edn. of Northern Antiquities. Nevertheless, it was a seminal work in the history of reception and understanding of Old Norse poetry in Britain and it also has more general significance in our understanding of the development of the discipline of Old Norse-Icelandic studies. This work makes available to the modern scholarly community the work of one of the pioneers of the discipline and produces in easily accessible format a text that is currently only available as a rare book. The study comprises a facsimile of the 1763 edition, with facing-page notes to allow the modern reader to situate Percy's work in its intellectual context, together with an introduction on Percy himself, his work on Old Norse-Icelandic studies, and the contemporary context of the reception of Old Norse poetry in Britain (and to some extent in the rest of Europe). In addition, this study publishes eight other poetic translations (one from Old English and the others from Old Icelandic) that Percy completed about the same time as the translations now in Five Pieces of Runic Poetry, but did not then publish, due to the restrictions of contemporary tolerance for demanding or difficult 'ancient' poetry. This publication reveals his full range as a translator for the first time.

The annual colloquium of the SIEPM in Freiburg, Germany, was groundbreaking in that it featured a more or less equal number of talks on all three medieval cultures that contributed to the formation of Western philosophical thought: the Islamic, Jewish, and Christian traditions. Indeed, the subject of the colloquium, ‘The Origin and Nature of Language and Logic in Medieval Islamic, Jewish, and Christian Thought’, lent itself to such a cross-cultural approach. In all these traditions, partially inspired by ancient Greek philosophy, partially by other sources, language and thought, semantics and logic occupied a central place. As a result, the chapters of the present volume effortlessly traverse philosophical, religious, cultural, and linguistic boundaries and thus in many respects open up new perspectives. It should not be surprising if readers delight in chapters of a philosophical tradition outside of their own as much as they do in those in their area of expertise.

Among the topics discussed are the significance of language for logic; the origin of language: inspiration or convention; imposition or coinage; the existence of an original language; the correctness of language; divine discourse; animal language; the meaningfulness of animal sounds; music as communication; the scope of dialectical disputation; the relation between rhetoric and demonstration; the place of logic and rhetoric in theology; the limits of human knowledge; the meaning of categories; the problem of metaphysical entailment; the need to disentangle the metaphysical implications of language; the quantification of predicates; and the significance of linguistic custom for judging logical propositions.

The Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels, commonly known as the Cinquantenaire, possess a collection of about 1200 pieces of Islamic Art (not including some 1.000 potsherds from Fustat in Egypt). They originate from countries located between Spain and India, and date from the 7th to the beginning of the 20th century. The emphasis is on silk textiles. This we owe to Isabella Errera (Florence 1869 - Brussels 1929), who collected, published and eventually donated or bequeathed no less than 764 textiles to the museum, about three hundred of which are Islamic. The 43 Ottoman items in this collection form the subject of this study.

Except two, for which we cannot be certain, these Ottoman textiles were woven in the major metropolitan weaving centres of the Ottoman Empire, namely Bursa, Istanbul and their surroundings. They all date from the period between the second half of the 15th and the early 19th century. Two types of weaves are represented: velvets and kemha or lampas fabrics. One of the velvets, of which the collection numbers 25 examples, is an important çatma, probably the earliest preserved in the world. Six kemha or lampas fabrics, of which we possess 16 specimens, bear inscriptions; the others are decorated with various patterns. The third main type of Ottoman weave, the serâser or cloth of gold and silver, which is rare in Western collections, is not represented. Finally, the collection contains two silks in a distinctive weave, an extended tabby, of which one is a military banner. Although these fall slightly outside of the otherwise homogeneous group, they where included in this study because they were definitely produced within the Ottoman realm.

This catalogue is the result of a collaboration between different specialists. The technological study of the textiles was executed by Daniël De Jonghe, textile engineer, and Chris Verhecken-Lammens, both independent scientific collaborators at the Royal Museums of Art and History. Mieke Van Raemdonck, curator of the Islamic Collection and editor of the present publication, described the textiles and traced their origin. For the natural dye analysis and conservation treatment, the museum appealed to the Royal Institute for the Cultural Heritage, located in the same Cinquantenaire-complex. The study and report of the natural dyes were performed by Ina Vanden Berghe, textile engineer, and Dr Jan Wouters, chemist, Head of the Laboratory of Materials and Techniques, with the practical assistance of Marie-Christine Maquoi, lab technician. The conservation treatment took place under the responsibility of Vera Vereecken, Head of the Textile workshop, who also wrote the reports and comments on this aspect.

The aim of this catalogue is to present a status quaestionis of knowledge that was gathered the past ten years regarding this group of silks and to put it at the disposal of other museum curators and researchers. Since the scrutiny of the weaving technology and of the natural dyes can lead to a better understanding of the silk industry, special focus is laid on these aspects. They may indeed yield concrete information allowing us to delimit groups of textiles and - why not - workshops and production centres.

The present collection explores a hitherto understudied body of Nordic medieval literature which, although overlooked in traditional, language-based narratives, was in fact crucial in shaping social and religious identities.

By drawing on the ‘performance turn’ in cultural studies, the volume identifies a number of minor and peripheral literary forms and texts that had a vital connection to ritual and ritualized speech. These neglected traditions therefore offer an alternative insight into Nordic literary life and the sets of cultural expression, or storyworlds, underlying Nordic culture.

The collected studies explore different aspects of verbal performances as a primary vehicle for the Nordic storyworlds, with a preference for the Christian over the pagan traditions. Emphasis is placed on Latin, Old Norse, and Finnish traditions that were retold and reproduced over time. These ‘living’ literary forms highlight the importance of non-canonical texts for the interpretation of contact between the peripheries and centres of Nordic culture. Through the focus on the interaction between Latin and the vernacular, between eastern Baltic and western Latin influences, and between ritual and speech in religious practice, this collection demonstrates the importance of ‘minor’ texts for the re-construction of medieval Nordic culture and history.

This study of Charles d'Orléans's personal manuscript of his poetry - the first in nearly a century - paves the way not only for a new edition of the duke's œuvre (by Mary-Jo Arn, John Fox, and R. Barton Palmer) but for a new view of it. Following the first complete modern description of the manuscript, this study reconstructs the history of the manuscript, copying layer by copying layer. Codicological observations supplemented with palaeographical, historical, art-historical, and textual information reveal the approximate sequence of the manuscript’s composition, which in turn allows a re-dating of the manuscript and some of the poems in it. Charles saw lyric form differently than did his predecessors and contemporaries, a view made manifest in the poet’s own numbering of his poems. He mixed his complaintes with ballades and his rondels with chansons, each pair of forms in a numbered series, but never presenting the longer alongside the shorter forms. The analysis of the manuscript’s construction corrects the current physical disorder of the later chansons and rondels, as well as that of the ‘En la forest de longue actente’ series (including the lyric omitted from the standard edition) and re-evaluates the handful of English poems in the manuscript. In the end, we come to understand the relationship between the visual ‘messiness’ of the manuscript and the poet’s strong concept of lyric order. The technical aspects of the study are clarified by many tables and fascimile pages; the interactive cd contains an index of first lines that can be sorted in various ways to reveal a variety of kinds of manuscript relationships.

Based upon a ‘performative’ interpretation of royal charters, The Politics of Memory and Identity offers a new and surprising narrative of West Frankish history from the death of Louis the Pious in 840 to the demise of the Carolingian dynasty in 987. The key is a carefully contextualised analysis of the circumstances in which kings issued charters and an alert examination of the charters’ verbal and visual semiotics. For which monasteries and cathedrals did kings issue diplomas and under what conditions? Who were the patrons who interceded for the recipients of diplomas and what titles were they given? Which kings were named as predecessors and which were omitted? Such clues allow us to recover the meaning of events whose significance was concealed by chroniclers, and to find unsuspected continuities in 150 years of West Frankish politics. They allow us to see a ruthless exercise of power in the use of forgeries and a commitment to political reform in the reform of monasteries. They reveal the long shadow cast by the reign of Charles the Bald in West Frankish history and the importance of a handful of monasteries as ‘sites of memory’. Above all, an intertextual reading of diplomas shows that political leaders in the kingdom made decisions based on policy, where the policy was articulated in terms of lessons drawn from their understanding of the past, and diplomas were the records that conveyed the lessons.

This volume explores attempts at the popularization of philosophy and natural science in medieval Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Medieval philosophers usually wrote their philosophical books for philosophers, so the desire to convey psychological, cosmological, metaphysical, or even physical teachings to the ‘vulgus’ may seem surprising. Yet philosophy was indeed taught to non-philosophers and via a variety of literary genres. Indeed, scholars have argued that philosophy most infl uenced medieval society through popular forms of transmission. Among the questions this volume addresses are the following: Which philosophers or theologians sought to direct philosophical writings to the many? For what purposes did they seek to popularize philosophy? Was the goal to teach philosophical truths? For whom exactly were these popularized texts written? How did they go about teaching philosophy to a wide audience? In what ways did popularized philosophy impact upon society? To what extent were the considerations and problems in the medieval popularization of philosophy the same or different in the various religious traditions of philosophy? How philosophical was the popularized philosophy?

In addressing these questions and others, this pioneering volume is the fi rst of its kind to bring together scholars of medieval Islamic, Jewish, and Christian thought to discuss the popularization of philosophy in these three religious traditions of philosophy.

Textiles were used as markers of distinction throughout the Middle Ages and their production was of great economic importance to emerging and established polities. This book explores tapestry in one of the greatest textile producing regions, the Burgundian Dominions, c. 1363-1477. It uses documentary evidence to reconstruct and analyse the production, manufacture, and use of tapestry. It begins by identifying the suppliers of tapestry to the dukes of Burgundy and their ability to spin webs between city and court. It proceeds by considering the forms of tapestry and their functions for urban and courtly consumers. It then observes the ways in which tapestry constructed social relations as part of gift-giving strategies. It concludes by exploring what the re-use, repair, and remaking of tapestry reveals about its value to urban and courtly consumers. By taking an object-centred approach through documentary sources, this book emphasises that the particular characteristics of tapestry shaped the strategies of those who supplied it and the ways it performed and constructed social relations. Thus, the book offers a contribution to the historical understanding of textiles as objects that contributed to the projection of social status and the cultural construction of political authority in the Burgundian polity.

The Prague Sacramentary is a unique liturgical manuscript which can be very precisely located in a specific social and historical context. It was written in the turbulent period when Charlemagne crossed Bavaria to fight the Avars and when his son Pippin rebelled against him, seeking support among the Bavarian nobility. The manuscript can be linked to specific groups of Bavarian elites that had to come to terms with this explosive political situation. It also elucidates the ways in which Christian culture was expressed and experienced in Bavaria at the end of the eighth century. Although Bavaria may be regarded as a periphery from a Frankish perspective, it was certainly no cultural backwater. Because of its geographical position at the crossroads of Italian, Bavarian, and Frankish culture, Bavaria produced unique and intriguing texts and artefacts.

One such object is analysed here by a team of experts, shedding renewed light on the earthly and heavenly concerns of an early medieval community in a specific region. It includes a discussion of the topics of the formal invocation of saints, vernacular understandings of Latin texts, marriage, politics, and concerns for ritual purity as well as the well-being of the conflict-ridden Carolingian family.

Over more than a thousand years since pre-Christian religions were actively practised, European - and later contemporary - society has developed a fascination with the beliefs of northern Europe before the arrival of Christianity, which have been the subject of a huge range of popular and scholarly theories, interpretations, and uses. Indeed, the pre-Christian religions of the North have exerted a phenomenal influence on modern culture, appearing in everything from the names of days of the week to Hollywood blockbusters. Scholarly treatments have been hardly less varied. Theories - from the Middle Ages until today - have depicted these pre-Christian religious systems as dangerous illusions, the works of Satan, representatives of a lost proto-Indo-European religious culture, a form of ‘natural’ religion, and even as a system non-indigenous in origin, derived from cultures outside Europe.

The Research and Reception strand of the Pre-Christian Religions of the North project establishes a definitive survey of the current and historical uses and interpretations of pre-Christian mythology and religious culture, tracing the many ways in which people both within and outside Scandinavia have understood and been influenced by these religions, from the Christian Middle Ages to contemporary media of all kinds. The present volume (I) traces the reception down to the early nineteenth century, while Volume II takes up the story from c. 1830 down to the present day and the burgeoning of interest across a diversity of new as well as old media.

The modern period has read its own contingent values into Middle English literature, and a modern canon of vernacular medieval literary texts has evolved as a result. While this book works with a selection of texts that have achieved such canonical status, it brings to light some of the ways in which they nevertheless resist the flattening domestications and expectations of modern taste. It illustrates how they formerly existed as constituents of a past world richer, stranger, and less familiar than much modern opinion has supposed. Thus the book aims to recuperate lost senses in which the age in which these texts were conceived and written was present within them, as well as ways in which they may have been present to their age. This twin idea of ‘presence’ is the thread that binds a series of chapters on English verse and prose written between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries together. While they may be read as discrete studies of individual literary land- marks, the chapters also entail an implicit and ramifying demonstration of the short- comings of some modern views of what makes certain currently prized Middle English texts worth reading, and of how the vernacular literature of medieval England is retrospectively to be defined and periodized.

The articles in this volume explore the teachings on happiness by a range of thinkers from antiquity through Spinoza, most of whom held human happiness to comprise intellectual knowledge of that which is Good in itself, namely God. These thinkers were from Greek pagan, Muslim, Jewish, and Christian backgrounds and wrote their works in Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin. Still, they shared similar philosophical views of what constitutes the Highest Good, and of the intellectual activities to be undertaken in pursuit of that Good. Yet, they differed, often greatly, in the role they assigned to deeds and practical activities in the pursuit of this happiness. These differences were, at times, not only along religious lines, but also along political and ethical lines. Other differences treated the relationship between the body and intellectual happiness and the various ways in which bodily health and well-being can contribute to intellectual health and true happiness.

This volume explores the reception of biblical figures in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, with a particular focus on Antiquity and incursions in the Middle Ages and modernity. The contributions included here offer a glimpse of the complexity of the mechanics of transmission to which these figures were subjected in extra-biblical texts, either concentrating on one author or corpus in particular, or broadening the scope across time and cultural contexts. The volume intends to shed light on how these biblical figures and their legacies appear as channels of collective memory and identity; how they became tools for authors to achieve specific goals; how they gained new and powerful authority for communities; and how they transcend traditions and cultural boundaries. As a result, the vitality and fluidity of the developments of traditions become clear and prompt caution when using modern categories.

Of all the new monastic and religious groups to settle in the British Isles in the course of the twelfth century the regular canons were the most prolific. At the heart of their existence was the vita apostolica, but even more than other such groups the regular canons became involved in active spiritual care of their communities. Perhaps as a result of this feature they also enjoyed sustained support from founders, patrons, and benefactors, and new foundations continued to be made long after the main force of the expansion of the monastic orders had declined. This interdisciplinary volume brings together scholars from Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and England who work on aspects of the history, culture, art history, and archaeology of the regular canons in the medieval British Isles. Between them, the chapters of this book consider the regular canons in their wider historical and historiographical context, assessing their role in the religious, social, cultural, economic, and political world of the medieval British Isles, and introducing new and recent research on this important religious group.

Medieval Church Studies is a series of monographs and, sometimes, collections devoted to the history of the Western Church from, approximately, the Carolingian reform to the Council of Trent. It builds on Brepols’ longstanding interest in editions of texts and primary sources, and presents studies that are founded on a traditional close analysis of primary sources but which confront current research issues and adopt contemporary methodological approaches.

Adriaan Verhulst's The Rise of Cities in North-West Europe (1999) is the last comprehensive work written by a single author on the urban genesis and spatial developments of cities in the medieval Low Countries. Since then, monographs, specialised studies and articles have been published on various cities and towns, while urban archaeologists have carried out numerous excavations. Much new knowledge has been gained, yet many gaps and the need for comparative overviews remain.Twenty-five years after Verhulst’s synthesis, The Rise of Cities Revisited takes a fresh look at the origins and developments of cities and towns in the Low Countries between the tenth and the sixteenth centuries, critically assesses progress made in scholarship and outlines future directions for research. The chapters of the book are written by senior and junior specialists from various fields, including medieval history, historical geography, economic history, archaeology and building history. The Rise of Cities Revisited presents a state of the art and provides scholars with tools to study this complex subject in future.

Medieval communication followed rules that were defined, negotiated, and altered in processes of exchange. Conflicts resulting from different communication practices, as well as forms of innovation, revolve around rules that are not self-evident. Political actors such as princes and cities, chanceries, secretaries, ambassadors, and councillors formed rules of political participation, which became visible in written documentation. These rules were both formed and negotiated via processes of communication. Medieval chanceries can thus be understood as a vast field of experimentation where different solutions were tested, passed on, or discarded.

This book explores communication practices in German, French, Italian, Tyrolian, and Gorizian chanceries, as well as at diets from the tenth to the sixteenth century. Its chapters examine royal, monastic, princely, and communal chanceries. For the early and high Middle Ages, a close analysis of documents will reconstruct negotiation and communication from within the documents themselves. For the later Middle Ages, focus will turn to the chancery, with the appearance of chancery orders and chancery annotations that provide explicit insight in communication between the chancellors, secretaries, and political authorities. The growing amount and variety of documents issued in the late Middle Ages allows us to retrace conflicts resulting from differing chancery practices as well as attempts to reorganise the chancery into a political instrument for the prince. The processes of political communication will be followed in three parts. Part I focuses on the rules within documents. Part II looks at administrative processes within specific chanceries, while Part III explores forms of exchange between the chancery and other political actors.

This groundbreaking study takes one of London’s most iconic buildings and deconstructs it to offer new insights into the society that produced it. As part of the new cultural quarter built in South Kensington on the proceeds from The Great Exhibition of 1851, the Royal Albert Hall was originally intended to be a ‘Central Hall of Arts and Sciences’. Prince Albert’s overarching vision was to promote technological and industrial progress to a wider audience, and in so doing increase its cultural and economic reach.Placing materiality at its core, this volume provides an intellectual history of Victorian ideas about technology, progress, and prosperity. The narrative is underpinned by a wealth of new sources – from architectural models and archival materials to 19th century newspapers. Each chapter focuses on a particular element of the Royal Albert Hall’s construction, chronicling the previously overlooked work of a host of contributors from all walks of life, including female mosaic-makers and the Royal Engineers.Lighting, ventilation, fireproofing, ‘ascending rooms’, cements, acoustics, the organ, the record-breaking iron dome, and the organisation of internal spaces were all attempts to attain progress - and subject to intense public scrutiny. From iron structures to terracotta, from the education of women to the abolition of slavery, in the making of the Royal Albert Hall scientific knowledge and socio-cultural reform were intertwined.This book shows, for the first time, how the Royal Albert Hall’s building was itself a crucible for innovation. Illustrious techniques from antiquity were reimagined for the new mechanical age, placing the building at the heart of a process of collecting, describing, and systematising arts and practices. At the same time, the Royal Albert Hall was conceived as a ‘manifesto’ of what the Victorians thought Britain ought to be, at a crucial moment of its socio-economic history: a symbolic cultural hub for the Empire’s metropole.This is the Royal Albert Hall: a central piece of the puzzle in Britain’s march towards modernity.

The sixteenth century in Europe was a time of profound change, the threshold between the ‘medieval’ and the ‘modern’, as new technologies were introduced, distant lands explored, oceanic trade routes opened, and innovative ideas pursued in fields as varied as politics, science, philosophy, law, and religion. But sweeping transformations also occurred in the rural world, profoundly altering the countryside in both appearance and practices. Crucially for historians, there is abundant documentary evidence for these changes but, while they are less well-documented, their impact can also be traced archaeologically.

This cutting-edge volume is the first to explore the archaeology of the rural world across the ‘long’ sixteenth century and to investigate the changing innovations that were seen in landscape, technology, agriculture, and husbandry during this period. Drawing together contributions from across Europe, and from a range of archaeological disciplines, including zooarchaeology, archaeobotany, landscape archaeology, material culture studies, and technology, this collection of essays sheds new light on a key period of innovation that was a significant precursor to modern economies and societies.

The ancient city of Neapolis (modern Kavala, Greece) was founded by Thasos in the seventh century BCE at a strategic location where the Thracian hinterlands meet the Aegean Sea. The patron deity of this North Aegean polis was Parthenos (the Maiden), a goddess often associated with Artemis and known to us through epigraphic and archaeological evidence. Her sanctuary came to light in the twentieth century, during rescue excavations, and yielded numerous finds, most of which date from the Archaic period.

This edited volume draws together the material evidence from the Sanctuary of Parthenos, with a particular focus on the ceramic wares, stone inscriptions, and small finds from the site. Published as a counterpart to an earlier publication in this series, Amalia Avramidou’s monograph, The Sanctuary of Parthenos at Ancient Neapolis (Kavala): Incised and Painted Ceramic Inscriptions from the Sanctuary and in Aegean Thrace, the essays gathered here nonetheless form a stand-alone volume that sheds light on both the importance of the site as a place of cult, and more broadly the role that it played within the commercial networks and cultural dynamics of the Aegean.

A seminal article published by Giles Constable in 1953 focused on the genesis and expansion in scope of the Second Crusade with particular attention to what has become known as the Syrian campaign. His central thesis maintained that by the spring of 1147 the Church “viewed and planned” the Second Crusade as a general Christian offensive against and the Muslims of Syria and the Iberian Peninsula and the pagan Wends of the southern Baltic lands. Constable's work remains extremely influential and provides the framework for the recent major works published on this extraordinary twelfth-century phenomenon. This volume aims to readdress scholarly predilections for concentrating on the venture in the Near East and for narrowly focusing on the accepted targets of the crusade. It aims instead to place established, contentious, and new events and concepts associated with the enterprise in a wider ideological, chronological, geopolitical, and geographical context.

Jason T. Roche is a Lecturer in Medieval History at Manchester Metropolitan University. His research interests cover the history of the crusades and the Latin East and the topography of medieval Anatolia and the Near East.

Janus Møller Jensen is head of department at Nyborg Castle, Museums of Eastern Funen, Denmark. His main research interests cover the history and historiography of the Crusades and Scandinavian medieval history.

For many years, the Septuagint of Ruth (LXX-Ruth) has been considered a literal translation. Several authors have emphasized the similarities between the Greek text and the Masoretic Text, while others have also noted the divergences. In the wake of this second stream, this book seeks to answer the crucial question: How can we nuance the definition of “literalism” for LXX-Ruth, and which innovations and specifics can be detected in this text? A fresh analysis of the Greek rendering of the Hebrew proper names, toponyms, hapax legomena as well as legal aspects makes it possible to develop new perspectives on the translation technique of LXX-Ruth and to highlight several characteristics of this text. This volume, moreover, extends the discussion by including the analysis of the theological accents of LXX-Ruth and an up-to-date presentation of its textual history including the fragments of the book in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Overall, this volume enhances our understanding of the linguistic and literary background of the LXX, as well as its specific features.

The French Dominican William Peraldus or Guillaume Peyraut (died c. 1275), well known for his long summae on the vices and virtues, also produced several cycles of sermons, of which two deal with the Epistle and the Gospel readings for the Sundays of the Church year. This study analyzes the latter in some detail and argues that, rather than collecting sermons he had preached earlier, Peraldus wrote these sermons systematically for the use of other preachers. The Epistle sermons for the first Sunday in Advent and the Gospel sermons for the third Sunday in Advent are presented in their original Latin text together with an English translation in order to demonstrate how Peraldus dealt with the biblical text as well as his moral concerns and his literary style. The selected texts are then compared with several other major cycles produced in France in Peraldus’s time. Like his summae on the vices and the virtues, Peraldus’s sermons became very popular in medieval Europe, as is witnessed by selective copying and citations that can be seen in a number of instances primarily from the sermon literature of later medieval England. One aspect of this popularity is the adaptation of his material into a genuine sermon, as it can be found in the sermons attributed to Repingdon, of which one is here examined in detail.

Elves and dwarves, trolls and giants, talking dragons, valkyries and werewolves: all these are familiar in modern movies and commercial fantasy. But where did the concepts come from? Who invented them? Almost two centuries ago, Jacob Grimm assembled what was known about such creatures in his work on 'Teutonic Mythology', which brought together ancient texts such as Beowulf and the Elder Edda with the material found in Grimm's own famous collection of fairy-tales. This collection of essays now updates Grimm, adding much material not known in his time, and also challenges his monolithic interpretations, pointing out the diversity of cultural traditions as well as the continuity of ancient myth.

Between 1000 and 1536 Scandinavia was transformed from a conglomerate of largely pre-state societies to societies with state governments. The state increasingly monopolised ‘legitimate’ violence. Church and state used literacy to strengthen social control in central and important areas: jurisdiction, religion and accounting. Written laws made social norms more precise and easier to change, a necessity in an increasingly complex society. The basic social transformations of the period cannot be attributed to increasing literacy alone, but the written word rendered them more peaceful and gradual, and strengthened social conformity and cohesion. Writing in Roman letters was introduced late to Scandinavia (ca. 1000 ad); consequently the transition from orality to literacy is better documented than in many other European societies. The rich saga literature from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries emerged at the time that administrative literacy was introduced. Until the fourteenth century, literacy was mainly promoted by church and state in their efforts to pacify and control society. Then the literate elites grew, encompassing ever larger groups of officials, clerks, merchants and artisans, many of whom were now educated in town schools. The resulting elite culture prepared the ground for the development of a proto-national identity.

Traditionally attributed to King Solomon and defined by Rabbi Aqiva as the Holy of Holies among the sacred Scriptures, the Song of Songs is one of the most fascinating and controversial biblical books. Celebrated as a key to the supreme mystery of the union between God and the faithful, this ambivalent book, which combined a sensual celebration of love with a well-established tradition of allegorical interpretation, was a text crucial to both the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and held a particular appeal for poets. Indeed, the Song of Songs played a significant role in the development of European poetry from its very beginning, creating an exceptional convergence of sacred and secular languages and horizons of meaning.

Written by a group of distinguished international scholars, this volume explores the complex and multifaceted processes through which the Song of Songs entered, influenced, and interacted with medieval and Renaissance European poetry (twelfth to seventeenth centuries). Focusing on both individual authors – including Peter Riga, Dante Alighieri, Richard Rolle, and George Herbert – and particularly relevant poetic traditions – including Hebrew liturgical poetry and the Tristan and Ysolt tradition, Middle English and Petrarchan lyric, Renaissance verse versions and seventeenth-century musical compositions, dissident and prophetic texts – the volume unveils the relevant role played by the biblical book in the development of European poetry, thought and spirituality, highlighting its ability to contribute to different poetic genres and give voice to a variety of religious, political, philosophical, and artistic intentions.

This volume includes papers presented during a symposium on the spreading of the scientific revolution outside Western European countries, which was held during the XXth International Congress of History of Science in Liège in 1997.

The contributions aim to answer some recent historiographical questions such as the modalities of the spreading of science in different countries, the reception of the new science by different cultures, the kind of changes this reception set in motion, the periodisation in adopting the new scientific knowledge, the structures set up for this adoption.

Three geographical areas are presented here: the European countries in the border of the "scientific center", Latin America countries and East Asian regions.

The volume constitutes the first attempt at making a synthesis at an international level on the important question of the spreading of the "new science" throughout the world.

The Christian practice of the Stations of the Cross has historically largely been the purview of devotional authors. In this academic study, the Reverend Doctor Sarah Lenzi revisits the evidence-based history of the western European development of the Stations as it was laid out at the turn of the twentieth century. She begins with a discussion of how this history is often neglected in favor of a mythic history that places the development in Jerusalem at the time of the Crusades and she then reestablishes the western origins. While the early twentieth-century authors who worked on the Stations are invaluable for the history they uncovered, there were gaps in the analyses they offered based on that history. In the chapters that follow, Rev. Dr. Lenzi works to debunk those interpretations and to offer a new understanding of the development of the Stations of the Cross. A close examination of pilgrimage texts as well as medieval meditation manuals puts this particular practice in the broader context of Medieval Christian history and ritual, and works to place it appropriately on the spectrum of pietistic behavior. With a new understanding of the development of the Stations of the Cross, Rev. Dr. Lenzi helps to explore notions of time, place, and space in Medieval Christianity, arguing for an understanding of placelessness in Christian piety that is enabled through intentional ritualized use of imagination, narrative, body, and word.

From the last quarter of the eighth until the beginning of the tenth century, Carolingian monasteries, cathedrals, and courts were the sites of a vigorous scholarship grounded in the study of sacred Scripture. The significance of Bible studies in this epoch is evident from the many extant Carolingian commentaries on virtually every book of the Old and New Testaments. More works of this kind survive from the period, often in multiple copies, than is true for any other genre of literature. Although scholars used to dismiss the Carolingian Bible commentaries as uncreative compilations of material borrowed from the Church Fathers, in recent years appreciation of these tracts’ essential creativity has grown significantly. In addition, there is now increased recognition of the degree to which the ‘exegetical’ culture nurtured within the Carolingian schools fertilized other aspects of contemporary intellectual and cultural endeavour.

The essays in this collection offer a fresh look at the range of biblical studies and their impact on diverse domains of Carolingian culture and learning. The bibliography provides a record of critical editions of Carolingian-era Bible commentaries and secondary scholarship in the field published within the last twelve years.

Medieval astronomers used tables to solve most of the problems they faced. These tables were generally assembled in sets, which constituted genuine tool-boxes aimed at facilitating the task of practitioners of astronomy. In the early fourteenth century, the set of tables compiled by the astronomers at the service of King Alfonso X of Castile and León (d. 1284), reached Paris, where several scholars linked to the university recast them and generated new tables. John of Lignères, one of the earliest Alfonsine astronomers, assembled his own set of astronomical tables, mainly building on the work of previous Muslim and Jewish astronomers in the Iberian Peninsula, especially in Toledo. Two major sets had been compiled in this town: one in Arabic, the Toledan Tables, during the second half of the eleventh century, and the Castilian Alfonsine Tables, under the patronage of King Alfonso.

This monograph provides for the first time an edition of the Tables of 1322 by John of Lignères. It is the earliest major set of astronomical tables to be compiled in Latin astronomy. It was widely distributed and is found in about fifty manuscripts. A great number of the tables were borrowed directly from the work of the Toledan astronomers, while others were adapted to the meridian of Paris, and many were later transferred to the standard version of the Parisian Alfonsine Tables. Therefore, John of Lignères’ set can be considered as an intermediary work between the Toledan Tables and the Parisian Alfonsine Tables.

In the recent past, critical discussions concerning notions such as ‘cultural area’ and ‘area studies’ - as well as their relativization by means of conceptions that avoid splitting clearly identified areas (inter alia, ‘third space’, ‘hybridity’, ‘diaspora’, or ‘cosmopolitanism’) - have drawn attention to the long history of cultural territorialization. This book attempts to open the history of philosophy to reflexive and globalizing tendencies elaborated in the field of ‘world history’. From the seventeenth century onward, in both modern Europe and North America, historical sciences - notably philosophical historiography and cultural history - colonized both the past (or national pasts) and the ‘rest’ of the world. The contributions gathered in this volume address both phenomena to the extent that they have been linked with modern historicization of philosophy, sciences, and culture.

El interés que los autores de estos trabajos demuestran por las complejidades y consecuencias de la traducción en la Edad Media, o de la traducción de textos medievales en el período moderno, ha dado como resultado un volumen diverso y estimulante intelectualmente. Los trabajos del presente volumen, escritos en inglés, francés y español, se centran en el tema de la traducción desde muchas perspectivas, ofreciendo una amplia gama de interpretaciones del concepto de traducción. El volumen contiene trabajos que abarcan en el tiempo desde el período Anglo-Sajón hasta el presente, y en temática desde libros de recetas medievales hasta argumentos a favor de que las mujeres administren la Eucaristía. Las lenguas que se estudian incluyen no sólo lenguas no europeas sino también el Latín y numerosas vernáculas europeas, ya sean como lengua origen o lengua meta. Como cualquier traductor o estudioso de la traducción puede rápidamente constatar, es imposible separar lengua de cultura. Todos los autores de este volumen han analizado en profundidad las complejidades de la traducción como hecho cultural, aún cuando el foco de atención pareciera ser específicamente lingüístico. Son estas complejidades las que dotan al estudio de la teoría y práctica de la traducción en la Edad Media de su perdurable fascinación.

The interest of the writers of these essays in the intricacies and implications of translation in the Middle Ages, or of the translation of medieval texts in the modern period, has resulted in a diverse and intellectually stimulating volume. The papers in this volume, written in either English, French, or Spanish, approach translation from a wide variety of perspectives and offer a range of interpretations of the concept of translation. The volume contains essays ranging in time from the Anglo Saxon period to the present, and in topic from medieval recipe books to arguments in favour of women administering the sacrament. Languages studied include non-European languages as well as Latin and numerous European vernaculars as both source and target languages. As any translator or student of translation quickly becomes aware, it is impossible to divorce language from culture. All the contributors to this volume struggle with the complexities of translation as a cultural act, even when the focus would seem to be specifically linguistic. It is these complexities which lend the study of the theory and practice of translation in the Middle Ages its enduring fascination.

Complexité et fascination: deux mots qui reviennent souvent à l’esprit au contact des textes médiévaux, au point qu’ils pourraient servir à caractériser la nature des rapports qui unissent ces textes à leurs traducteurs. Dans leur diversité, les communications entendues à Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle illustrent, chacune à sa manière, de nombreux aspects de cette complexité, qu’il s’agisse des sujets traités ou des problèmes techniques soulevés. Le rapport au temps qu’impose le texte médiéval se double d’un rapport à la distance, car la différence culturelle se présente au traducteur comme un éloignement, ce qui, dans le travail de rapprochement que constitue alors la traduction, introduit la notion d’interprétation. A son tour cette interprétation, avec ses degrés, est étroitement dépendante des objectifs pédagogiques, culturels, politiques ou religieux que s’est fixés le traducteur, comme cela apparaîtra clairement à la lecture d’un certain nombre de ces communications. Plusieurs études de ce recueil confirment également que la traduction, loin d’être un travail de solitaire, est avant tout un acte social, une activité de mise en relations. C’est cette patiente recherche d’adaptation à des publics différents, en fonction d’époques et de goûts différents, accompagnée de choix tour à tour réjouissants et frustrants, qui constitue le travail de tout traducteur, qu’il appartienne au Moyen Âge ou au monde moderne. C’est aussi cette richesse, venue du passé mais toujours actuelle, et cette recherche sans cesse reprise d’un équilibre toujours instable, qui font que la traduction, dans sa pratique comme dans sa théorie, exerce sur tant d’esprits une réelle fascination.

With its vital character - growing, flowering, extending its roots into the ground, and its branches and leaves to the sky - the tree is a polyvalent metaphor, a suggestive symbol, and an allegorical subject. During the Middle Ages, a number of iconographic schemata were based on the image and structure of the tree, including the Tree of Jesse and the Tree of Virtues and Vices. From the late eleventh century onwards such formulae were increasingly used as devices for organizing knowledge and representing theoretical concepts. Despite the abstraction inherent in these schemata, however, the semantic qualities of trees persist in their usage.

The analysis of different manifestations of trees in the Middle Ages is highly instructive for visual, intellectual, and cultural history. Essays in this volume concentrate on the formative period for arboreal imagery in the medieval West, that is, the eleventh to fifteenth centuries. Using a range of methodological strategies and examining material from different media, ranging from illuminated manuscripts to wall painting, stained glass windows, and monumental sculpture, the articles in this volume show how different arboreal structures were conceived, employed, and appropriated by their specific contexts, how they functioned in their original framework, and how they were perceived by their audience.

In the region that was to become Moldavia and Wallachia, there are almost no traces of the use of writing for the millennium after the Roman Empire withdrew from Dacia. Written culture surfaces only by the second half of the fourteenth century, after the foundation of state institutions. This book surveys the earliest extant documents, their issuers, and the motives that triggered the development of documentary culture in Moldavia and Wallachia. By the fifteenth century, Moldavians were already accustomed to the use of charters. In Wallachia, noblemen also appealed to written records, but at that stage mainly in extraordinary circumstances. Women could not inherit land, and noblemen requested princely charters confirming a legal fiction that turned their daughters into sons. After the mid-sixteenth century, Wallachia experiences a steep growth in the number of charters issued. In this period of economic and social upheaval, charters proved an extraordinary means for the protection of landed property. Yet neither principality held secular archives - the storage of documents for later use in private hands suggests an early stage in the development of documentary culture.

By covering the ‘birth’ and spread of pragmatic literacy in medieval Moldavia and Wallachia, this book thus fills an important lacuna in what is known about the development of literacy in the later Middle Ages.