Brepols

This volume is the first to delve into Norway’s history of Christianization since 1973 when Fridtjov Birkeli published his book on the topic. For the first time in over thirty years, Dr Nordeide illuminates the change from non-Christian to Christian rituals by analysing archaeological resources from c. AD 560 to c. 1150/1200. This book both asserts and challenges previous hypotheses of the chronology of Christianization, as well as offering fascinating new versions of the Norway’s eventual conversion. As well as asserting that local history leads Norway along chronological lines typical of its peripheral location, the author argues that in some ways, Norway’s history of Christianity is best located within the history of central European regions even more than has ever been suggested before.

The impingement of monastery on marketplace provides the unifying theme for this collection of nine research papers. Separation from the world, for most members of religious orders in the Middle Ages, did not imply isolation from the rest of society but, rather, a new spirituality orientated relationship which took different forms in different times and circumstances. Three of the contributors are concerned with particular aspects of the intellectual activities of the religious orders in both university and cloister. Two others examine the traumatic effects of the enforced return to secular life of thousands of men and women religious in England when monastic life was brought to an abrupt end in 1540. An individual monk's pastoral role among the laity is explored and evaluated in one paper, while another reveals the extent to which a rural English nunnery was both rooted in the local community and dependent on foreign supervision. Problems encountered by the friars are discussed by two other contributors who, on the basis of their recent research, conclude that the hostility between Franciscans and Benedictines has been overstated and that some German Dominicans risked their reputations in their involvement with contemporary heterodox movements among the laity.

Throughout the medieval period, the popular classes were always reckoned as a potential force in society even though it was usually dangerous for them to articulate divergent social, political and religious opinions. Sources on medieval political and social life seem to show us a world of order, acquiescence and consent. Otherwise, they reveal a picture of bloodshed and violent strife. During times of intense conflict, however, the human tongue was always the most frequently used weapon, much more so than the sword or the dagger. The vox populi, though often difficultly retrievable in the sources, was a ubiquitous one within the realm of later medieval politics. The essays collected in this volume deal with such speech acts of political rebels, with political languages of the ‘popular classes’ in medieval society but also with the subversive twists to speech situations such as preaching, mockery and insults.

Jan Dumolyn is a senior lecturer in medieval history at Ghent University. He publishes on the socio-economic, political and cultural history of the urban world of the medieval Low Countries.

Jelle Haemers lectures medieval history at the University of Leuven. He has published widely on the social history of medieval politics and the urban history of the Low Countries.

Hipólito Rafael Oliva Herrer is professor of Medieval History in the University of Sevilla. He has published both on medieval peasantry and popular political culture, including the making of popular ideologies and forms of popular protest.

Vincent Challet is a senior lecturer at the University of Montpellier-III, and works on the political conscience of communities. He is also the scientific coordinator of the ANR “Thalamus” project which aims to produce a scientific edition of the chronicle and urban statutes of Montpellier in the Middle Ages.

On 11 May 1625 Charles I married Henrietta Maria, the youngest sister of Louis XIII of France. The match signalled Britain’s firm alignment with France against Habsburg Spain and promised well for future relations between the two countries. However, the union between a Protestant king and a Catholic princess was controversial from the start and the marriage celebrations were fraught with tensions. They were further disrupted by the sudden death of James I and an outbreak of the plague, which prevented large-scale public celebrations in London. The British weather also played its part. In fact, unlike other state occasions, the celebrations exposed weaknesses in the display of royal grandeur and national superiority. To a large extent they also failed to hide the tensions in the Stuart-Bourbon alliance. Instead they revealed the conflicting expectations of the two countries, each convinced of its own superiority and intent on furthering its own national interests. Less than two years later Britain was effectively in a state of war against France.

In this volume, leading scholars from a variety of disciplines explore for the first time the marriage celebrations of 1625, with a view to uncovering the differences and misunderstandings beneath the outward celebration of union and concord. By taking into account the ceremonial, political, religious and international dimensions of the event, the collection paints a rounded portrait of a union that would become personally successful, but complicated by the various tensions played out in the marriage celebrations and discussed here.

Contributors: R. Malcolm Smuts, Lucinda H. S. Dean, J. R. (Ronnie) Mulryne, Karen Britland, Marie-Claude Canova-Green, Erin Griffey, Margaret Shewring, Sara J. Wolfson, Sara Trevisan, Kevin Laam, Sydney Anglo, Margaret M. McGowan, John Peacock, Gordon Higgott, Ella Hawkins .

When a monk living at the beginning of the last millennium described Europe ‘cladding itself everywhere in a white mantle of churches’, he precipitated several questions for historians to answer. Was there a surge in church-building at the time? If so, what were the causes of this, and what were the purposes? Does it help to explain our understanding of Romanesque architecture and art? Was there a connection between the ‘white mantle of churches’ and the millennium? Did people believe the world was coming to an end?

The supposition of apocalyptic expectations at the time was until recently dismissed as romantic myth, but the arrival of our new millennium has brought a revival in interest in the dawn of the second millennium, and new evidence of millennial fears. Yet millennial studies and architectural history largely continue to follow separate, parallel paths. This book therefore aims to add the architectural evidence to the millennial debate, and to examine this formative period in relation to the evolution of Romanesque architecture and art. As our own millennium gets under way with continuing hesitancy between European aspiration and national identity, it is also of interest to compare our time with the Europe of a thousand years ago.

Perhaps no author of the Latin Middle Ages has been the subject of so much controversy and even vitriol than Marsilius of Padua (c. 1275-1342/43). As author of the notorious heretical tract, the Defensor Pacis, Marsilius became an infamous figure throughout the intellectual and political centres of Europe during his own lifetime. His magnum opus, a sharply pointed dissection of the damage done to earthly political life by the incursions of the papacy and a plea for conciliar ecclesiology, was repeatedly condemned during the fourteenth century and in later years. Yet the treatise continued to be disseminated and received translation into several vernacular languages. During the Reformation, Marsilius and his Defensor Pacis enjoyed another round of acclamation and denunciation, depending upon one’s confession. In July 2003, a group comprising many of the world’s most renowned scholars of medieval political thought gathered for a ‘Marsilius of Padua World Congress’. The contents of the present volume represent a compendium of innovative scholarly contributions to the understanding of Marsilius, his life and times, and his lasting impact on Western thought. Included are chapters that reflect a range of recent, ground-breaking research by both senior scholars and the future leaders in the field. After a general survey of the current state of scholarship on Marsilius, the volume divides into three thematically organized sections, covering a variety of historical, textual, methodological, theological, and theoretical questions. In all of the essays, readers will discover the wealth and complexity of Marsilius’s thought as well as the startling range of approaches and methods of interpretation taken in the study of his work. The volume’s selection of authors is international in scope and represents the first interdisciplinary scholarly collaboration in the field of Marsilian studies to occur in the twenty-first century.

Roman wooden writing tablets, known in Latin as tabulae ceratae, have been found by archaeologists in various locations around the former capital of the civitas/municipium Tungrorum or Roman Tongeren (now the Belgian city of Tongeren-Borgloon). These rare and delicate finds are remarkable not only due to the excellent state of their preservation, but also because they are inscribed with the remnants of texts, once etched into an overlying wax layer, that can, to the discerning eye, still be deciphered. The tablets not only provide concrete information about religious, judicial and administrative practices, but they also enhance our understanding of the complex processes of Romanisation and Latinisation in the northwestern civitates and municipia of the Roman Empire.

Unearthed in the first half of the twentieth century, with a second group discovered in 2013, the Roman tablets housed in the Gallo-Roman Museum of Tongeren-Borgloon and in the city’s municipal heritage depository, became the object of an in-depth study by an international team of specialists piloted by the Gallo-Roman Museum. It is the results of this project that are presented here in this volume for the first time. The painstaking process of deciphering and interpreting the script marks and text fragments is explored via analysis of palaeography, philology and onomastics, along with key scientific techniques such as wax analysis, wood species identification, and script visualisation by Multi-Light Reflectance Imaging. Rich detail is also provided about other associated wooden finds that shed light on how and where the tablets were produced.

The result is a beautifully illustrated and insightful volume that introduces the lost world of Roman Tongeren and its writing tablets to professionals and the general public alike.

This book provides a detailed narrative history of the dynasty and confederation of the Yuezhi, whose migration from western China to the northern border of present-day Afghanistan resulted ultimately in the creation of the Kushan Empire. Although the Yuezhi have long been recognised as the probable ancestors of the Kushans, they have generally only been considered as a prelude to the principal subject of Kushan history, rather than as a significant and influential people in their own right. The evidence seemed limited and ambiguous, but is actually surprisingly extensive and detailed and certainly sufficient to compile a comprehensive chronological political history of the Yuezhi during the first millennium BCE. The book analyses textual, numismatic and archaeological evidence in an attempt to explain the probable origin of the Yuezhi, their relationship with several Chinese dynasties, their eventual military defeat and expulsion from the Gansu by the Xiongnu, their migration through the Ili Valley, Ferghana and Sogdia to northern Bactria, and their role in the conquest of the former Greco-Bactria state. All of these events were bound up with broader cultural and political developments in ancient Central Asia and show the extraordinary interconnectedness of the Eurasian historical processes. The domino-effect of the migration of the Yuezhi led to significant changes in the broader Eurasian polity.

In the twelfth to sixteenth centuries, the exploitation of landownership underwent drastic changes in various parts of Northwestern Europe. In these changes, the emergence of the lease plays a pivotal role. At the end of the Middle Ages, in a number of areas within the North Sea area, the greater part of available land was held at lease for relatively short terms. The competitive and contractual nature of such leasing has caused many to associate it with the emergence of capitalism in the countryside, seeing its rise as a key element in the transformation of the rural economy and society in the last millennium. In view of this, it is surprising that the emergence of leasing has received little systematic attention, particularly where its roots, its early development, its exact arrangements and the social and economic context of its emergence are concerned, let alone the regional and chronological differences in these elements. This volume aims to make a first step in exploring these issues.

Until the 19th century very large areas of Western Europe were subject to some degree to common rights, where individual users collectively managed resources such as pasture and wood which were central to the agrarian economy. Much scholarship has focused on the dissolution of these rights and the effects of the enclosure of common land on society and agricultural productivity. In contrast, this volume seeks to assess in a comparative framework the long-term management of the common lands and the relative success of strategies in providing the resources sought by the rural population. Chapters covering northern and southern England, France, the Netherlands, Flanders, Sweden and northern and southern Germany examine the institutional and legal framework of commoning, the resources available and their value, the sustainability of practices, and policies of inclusion and exclusion among the group of commoners. Building on the theoretical insights of recent works on commonly managed resources, this volume, the result of an international collaboration in the CORN network, provides a series of detailed historical studies and is the first major work to address this central aspect of the agrarian economy in a comparative European context.

These eleven essays, all centrally concerned with the intimate relationship between sound, religion, and society in the early modern world, present a sequence of test cases located in a wide variety of urban environments in Europe and the Americas. Written by an international cast of acclaimed historians and musicologists, they explore in depth the interrelated notions of conversion and confessionalisation in the shared belief that the early modern city was neither socially static nor religiously uniform. With its examples drawn from the Holy Roman Empire and the Southern Netherlands, the pluri-religious Mediterranean, and the colonial Americas both North and South, this book takes discussion of the urban soundscape, so often discussed in purely traditional terms of European institutional histories, to a new level of engagement with the concept of a totally immersive acoustic environment as conceptualised by R. Murray Schafer. From the Protestants of Douai, a bastion of the Catholic Reformation, to the bi-confessional city of Augsburg and seventeenth-century Farmington in Connecticut, where the indigenous Indian population fashioned a separate Christian entity, the intertwined religious, musical, and emotional lives of specifically grounded communities of early modern men and women are here vividly brought to life.

The title of this volume, “Theologica Minora”, may wrongly suggest that the essays contained herein purport an antiquarian interest in some minor theological quibbles within the vast ocean that is Byzantine theological literature. On the contrary, this volume illuminates texts and theological genres which have so far remained unexplored or underinvestigated by the vast majority of scholars. Whilst unlocking the as yet unknown troves of florilegia, religious poetry, and monastic kephalaia, this volume investigates the cultural background of these different endeavors and provides an image of Byzantine theological literature which repudiates the rigid narratives proposed to date.

Antonio Rigo is Professor of Byzantine Philology and Christianity at the University of Venice Ca’ Foscari. His research focuses on religious life in Byzantium, with special emphasis on ascetical and mystical literature, heresiology, and theology during the Paleologan period.

This collection of essays represents the most comprehensive study to date on the anthology compiled by Stobaeus (5th c. AD). It covers topics such as excerpting as a cultural practice, issues pertaining to the ms. tradition, Stobaeus' use of his sources, his evidence on specific figures (Heraclitus, Theognis, Plato, the Cynics, Aristo of Chios, and Eudorus of Alexandria), as well as thematic treatments. The contributors to the volume are, in the order of the Table of Contents: David Konstan, Denis Michael Searby, Michele Curnis, Anna Lucia Di Lello-Finuoli, Jean-Baptiste Gourinat, Elena Gritti, Serge Mouraviev, Luigi Ferreri, Graziano Ranocchia, Pedro Pablo Fuentes González, Mauro Bonazzi, Sophie Van der Meeren, Sophie Aubert, Ilaria Ramelli, Emmanuele Vimercati, and Julie Giovacchini.

This edition presents English translations of the accounts of three important twelfth-century travellers to the Holy Land, the Anglo-Saxon Saewulf and the Germans John of Würzburg and Theoderic, based on the edition of the Latin texts. Saewulf travelled to the Holy Land soon after its capture by the First Crusade in 1099. His travelogue, framed by accounts of his outward sea journeys from southern Italy to Jaffa and back to Constantinople, describes the buildings and holy sites of Jerusalem and its surrounding countryside as they appeared in the early years of the Frankish kingdom, before the major building works that characterized the short century of Christian rule over the city were fully under way. In contrast, the two German descriptions give more detailed accounts of the transformation that the city and surrounding landscape had undergone and of the new churches and monasteries and their artistic programmes that had been created by the 1160s and 1170s. The translated texts are preceded by an introduction placing the texts in their historical context and are accompanied by brief explanatory notes with bibliographical indications for further information.

The source texts of this volume appeared in Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaeualis as Peregrinationes tres (CC CM, 139), edited by R.B.C. Huygens. References to the corresponding pages of the Corpus Christianorum edition are provided in the margins of this translation.

This book focuses on three Italian cities in the early middle ages, Rome, Ravenna and Venice, and looks at them in a new light. The unifying element linking them was their common Byzantine past, since they remained in the sphere of imperial power after the creation of the Lombard kingdom in the late 6th century, up to 750. What happened to them when their links with the Byzantine Empire were almost entirely severed in the 8th century? Did they remain socially and culturally heirs of Byzantium in the 9th and 10th centuries in their political structures, social organisation, material culture, ideological frame of reference and representation of identity? Or did they become part of the next imperial powers of Italy, the Carolingian and the Ottonian empires? A workshop in Oxford in 2014 brought together an international group of specialists to discuss these questions in a comparative context; the excitement of their debates is captured in the discussion sections linking the papers in this volume. Early medieval Italy can be seen in a new way as a result.

This book is a conversation starter. The author is re-imagining the theological landscape of historical practices of dance in order to open up a space where further explorations can be made. This is done in a two step manner. First, the book uncovers the restrictions of earlier research on the topic of dance in and around churches. In the second step, Hellsten suggests a practice for how historical sources can be imagined in a new frame. Opening up a new field of previously neglected and much needed historical studies on Dance in the Christian churches of the Latin West this study aims at questioning old paradigms and opening new vistas rather than reinterpreting concrete liturgical manuscripts or scrutinizing all the details of the historical sources presented.

The Donner Institute for Research in Religion and Culture in Turku, Finland has awarded its Nordic Research Prize 2021 to Dr. theol. Laura Hellsten for her creative research widening our understanding of sacral dance in general and of the role of dance in the Christian church in particular.

Le programme de recherche international sur «Les élites dans le haut Moyen Âge occidental. Formation, identité, reproduction» (2002-2009) s’est donné pour objectif d’examiner dans une perspective comparative, à l’échelle européenne, les catégories sociales dominantes aussi bien laïques qu’ecclésiastiques, celles de la cour autant que celles des régions. Le sixième et dernier volume issu de ce projet fournit d’abord un bilan et une synthèse des travaux. Il associe par ailleurs à ces premiers acquis une analyse des concepts, de la perception et de la façon dont les élites se concevaient elles-mêmes. Il tente enfin de vérifier, sur la base de dossiers régionaux ou d’enquêtes sur des catégories particulières, dans quelle mesure la perception médiévale était en conformité avec les pratiques.L’étude du vocabulaire et des concepts relatifs aux élites du haut Moyen Âge s’est orientée autour du questionnement suivant: qu’est-ce qui, du point de vue moderne, relève des élites? Qui, du point de vue des contemporains, appartenait à ce(s) groupe(s) dominant(s)? Selon quels critères lexicaux et conceptuels définissait-on les élites? Par quels moyens se démarquaient-elles dans la perspective des contemporains et à leurs propres yeux? Établissait-on une hiérarchie entre les critères de distinction? Selon quels modèles théoriques étaient-ils distingués (et quel contenu donnait-on à ces modèles)? Dans quelle mesure les concepts actuels d’élites sont-ils applicables au haut Moyen Âge? Au registre des pratiques sociales, plusieurs études de cas permettent de saisir ce qui démarquait concrètement les élites par rapport au reste de la population, tout en se demandant dans quelle mesure cette réalité sociale correspondait aux représentations mentales des élites et si les concepts s’adaptaient à une réalité changeante, ou l’inverse. Plusieurs types d’élites sont envisagés, avec leurs particularités, leurs hiérarchies internes et leurs évolutions, enfin l’imbrication des groupes dominants entre eux.

The Medieval French text (9400 lines) known as Tiaudelet is here edited for the first time. It is a lively debate poem which translates Theodulus’s Ecloga and adds a lengthy commentary to each stanza. It was last investigated in 1915 when A. Parducci published five modest extracts. It is found in a manuscript which represents a sort of vernacular ‘Liber Catonianus’, offering classical texts which formed the basis of the educational curriculum in the arts in French translation. It debates the value of two traditions: the classical and biblical, with the educational aim of increasing knowledge of classical and Scriptural narratives. As an appendix to the edition is provided the text of the only other French translation of Theodulus, by Jean Le Fèvre, as represented by the unique copy in the National Library of Scotland, of the early print by Jan Brulelou of Bruges.

El interés por las formas literarias de la literatura médica ha ido creciendo progresivamente ya que atiende cada vez más a las formas de la literatura médica características de las distintas épocas, compartidas en su mayoría con otras ramas de la ciencia como la filosofía, la teología o el derecho. Pero faltaba una visión de conjunto de estos textos médicos desde el punto de vista literario. La tipología de esos tratados es un indicio revelador de su origen, finalidad, cultura del autor y demanda social. Este estudio pretende mostrar un panorama general de las formas literarias de los estudios médicos y sus medios de expresión. El estudio del comportamiento de los escritores médicos ante el hecho de escribir proporciona una dimensión, como complemento, de gran relieve para los estudios estrictamente doctrinales. El escritor es un hombre de su tiempo y, como tal, refleja sus usos y modos.

Enraízados en la tradición de la Antigüedad y siguiendo una distribución armónica de la medicina diaetetica, pharmaceutica y chirurgia, los géneros literarios de la literatura médica medieval, por influjo de la filosofía y teología escolásticas, conocieron una riqueza asombrosa de formas literarias, como summae, specula, compendia, practica, concordantiae, synonyma, disputationes, problemata, accessus, tacuina, secreta, consilia, etc., que afectaron también a la tipología de su lengua. El Renacimiento fue otra época de renovación en la que continúan algunos géneros de corte tradicional, otros decaen o se transforman, mientras que toman cuerpo otras actividades más filológicas a veces que doctrinales, como las ediciones o los comentarios críticos. Cada época revela los problemas con los que se enfrentaron los escritores médicos al intentar forjar unas formas literarias y una terminología basadas en unos conocimientos médicos -en muchos casos expresados originariamente en otra lengua- y darles la forma literaria que consideraban más apropiada para publicar sus logros.

Un estudio como éste puede ser útil para todos aquellos que desde el campo de la Filología, la Historia en general o de la Historia de la Ciencia y de la Medicina o de la cultura en particular, deseen adentrarse en la literatura médica.

Jean Lefèvre de Saint-Rémy (1396-1468) fut poursuivant d’armes dans les rangs anglais à la bataille d’Azincourt, héraut Charolais puis roi d’armes de l’ordre de la Toison d’or fondé par Philippe le Bon en 1430. L’œuvre historiographique qu’il rédige à la fin de sa vie s’inspire de la prestigieuse chronique d’Enguerrand de Monstrelet et mêle souvenirs personnels et interpolations de sources diverses, brossant un tableau voulu idéal de la cour de Bourgogne entre 1408 et 1436 et particulièrement du principat de Philippe le Bon, maître auquel ce serviteur doit tout. Les particularités de son récit posent le problème du héraut d’armes écrivant l’histoire, phénomène exceptionnel qui fut favorisé par l’émulation existante à la cour des ducs de Bourgogne, reconnue comme l’un des foyers les plus prolifiques en la matière au XV e siècle.

El concepto de tolerancia no es simple y admite una multiplicidad de comprensiones y matices que se han ido desarrollando y perfeccionando a lo largo de los siglos. No se trata, por eso mismo, de un término totalmente unívoco que haya mantenido la integridad de sus notas esenciales de un modo inalterado a través del tiempo sino que ha sido justamente el tiempo, el pensamiento y la práctica de las sociedades humanas los que han modelado un valor que, en la actualidad, es indiscutido. Es precisamente por este motivo que cada época histórica ha conocido diversas conceptualizaciones y prácticas de la tolerancia.

El Coloquio Anual de la FIDEM 2011, realizado en la Universidad Nacional de Cuyo (Mendoza) discutió acerca de la teoría y la práctica de la tolerancia durante la Edad Media, y son sus resultados los que se exponen en este volumen. Esta temática puede ser abordada desde dos ángulos diversos. Por un lado, la teoría del concepto, y es por eso que varios capítulos del libro se aplican a analizarla desde el punto de vista filosófico a través de las obras de una serie de importantes autores que abarcan varios siglos de pensamiento, desde la Patrística hasta la Edad Media tardía, incluyendo también a los representantes de la denominada “escolástica colonial”. Por otro lado, la práctica de la tolerancia durante el largo periodo medieval es también tenida en cuenta a través de diversas disciplinas interesadas en el medioevo, tales como la historia y la literatura.

How can historical sociolinguistic analyses of Medieval Greek aid in the interpretation of Medieval Greek texts? This is the main question addressed by the papers collected in this volume. Historical sociolinguistics (HSL) is a discipline that combines linguistic, social, historical, and philological sciences, and suggests that a language cannot be studied apart from its social dimension. Similarly, the study of a language in its social dimension is nothing else than the study of communication between members of a given speech community by the means of written texts, the shared “signs” used by authors to communicate with their audiences.

This volume is divided into two parts. In the first, Cuomo’s and Bentein’s papers aim to offer an overview of the discipline and examples of applied HSL. Valente’s, Bianconi’s, and Pérez-Martín’s papers show how the context of production and reception of Byzantine texts should be studied. These are followed by Horrocks’ study on some features of Atticized Medieval Greek. In the second part, the contributions by Telelis, Odorico, and Manolova focus on the context of reception of texts by Georgios Pachymeres, Theodoros Pediasimos, and Nikephoros Gregoras respectively.

This volume explores the relationships and interactions between medieval urban populations and their rural counterparts across north western Europe from the seventh to sixteenth centuries. This theme has become increasingly fragmented in recent decades, resulting in scholars being largely unaware of developments outside their own areas. The present volume brings together historians and archaeologists in order to highlight the varied ways in which town–country interactions can be considered, from perspectives that include economy, politics, natural environment, material culture, and settlement hierarchy. As a whole, the papers offer innovative interdisciplinary perspectives on the topic that create a new platform from which to understand more fully the complex, bilateral relationships in which both urban and rural spheres were able to influence and challenge each other. Contributions are wide-ranging, from the activities of elite, aristocratic groups in and around individual towns, to large-scale surveys covering wide areas. With coverage from the North Sea to the western Baltic, the book will be relevant to a range of disciplines including archaeology, history, and geography, and is aimed towards both advanced students and established scholars.

The contributions collected in this volume of Instrumenta Patristica et Mediaevalia share a common focus on Saint Augustine's sermons on the New Testament and address a wide range of topics within this extended field of research. Several contributions deal with the transmission of these homilies, while others tackle questions concerning exegesis, rhetoric and theology. The foundation for this compilation was laid during the conference 'Ministerium sermonis. An International Colloquium on Saint Augustine's Sermons on the New Testament and their Reception' (September 15-17, 2011), hosted by the Academia Belgica in Rome (Italy).

The present volume may be considered a sequel to the book Ministerium sermonis. Philological, Historical and Theological Studies on Augustine's Sermones ad populum, which was published in 2009 as volume 53 of the series Instrumenta Patristica et Mediaevalia and bundled the contributions to the first Ministerium sermonis colloquium of May 2008 (Leuven - Turnhout).

List of contributors: Andrea Bizzozero, Isabelle Bochet, Pierre-Maurice Bogaert, Shari Boodts, François Dolbeau, Hubertus R. Drobner, Anthony Dupont, Alicia Eelen, Wim François, Uta Heil, Pierre-Marie Hombert, Paul Mattei, Gert Partoens, Stanley P. Rosenberg, Paul van Geest, Joost van Neer, Clemens Weidmann, Jonathan Yates

During the seventeenth century Dutch influence on the Baltic region, both economic and aesthetic, was unrivaled. In the wake of the Dutch monopoly on Baltic trade, cultural contacts between the Dutch Republic and the Baltic world flourished. The Dutch Republic was even to fulfil an exemplary function in the Baltic world (particularly in the Swedish Empire, the dominating power in the region), not solely limited to the commerce of commodities but extending to the domain of architecture and art as well.

In this intensive cultural traffic, an important role was set aside for Dutch immigrants, architects, artists, and their agents. Apart from their regular activities as diplomats or news correspondents, agents mediated in cultural affairs for patrons in the North. As such, they occupied a key role in the relations between the Baltic world and the Dutch Republic. The pivotal element in these networks, they negotiated between Baltic commissioners and Dutch architects, artists, and suppliers of luxury items, including sculptures, tapestries, paintings, as well as a wide range of books and prints - all of which were available on the Amsterdam market. These extensive networks mark the Dutch Republic as a major centre of architecture, art, and information, crucial to the cultural development of northern Europe.

The history of this lively trade in good taste is told on the basis of rich archival material, including drawings, book and art collection inventories, correspondence, travel journals, and diaries.

Badeloch Noldus is a Senior Researcher at Frederiksborg Castle, the Danish Museum of National History. Her interests cover art, agency and art trade in early modern Northern Europe. Recent publications include Your Humble Servant. Agents in Early Modern Europe (2006).

Dans les premières années du XIVe siècle, Jean de Saint-Victor entreprend la rédaction d'une chronique qu'il fait précéder d'une courte description des régions et des royaumes. Conduit à réviser ce travail et à lui donner l'envergure d'une histoire universelle depuis la Création, désormais intitulée Memoriale historiarum, il développe l'introduction initiale en un véritable traité, fruit d'une réflexion longuement mûrie au contact des sources sollicitées pour l'élaboration de son premier texte. Il y expose, à l'aide de tous les exemples historiques qu'il a pu rassembler, ce qui lui apparaît commun l'une des lois fondamentales de l'histoire, la divisio regnorum : tels des organismes naturels, les royaumes, mais aussi les empires, naissent, vivent et meurent. Ainsi fait-il place à la pensée aristotélicienne dans une lecture traditionnellement augustinienne de l'Histoire sainte.

Le traité De predicatione crucis, composé vers 1266-1268 par Humbert de Romans, le cinquième maître général de l’ordre dominicain, est sans doute l’instruction la plus détaillée pour les prédicateurs de la croix dont nous disposons. L’auteur donne ses commentaires sur les questions qu’il croit d’être les plus essentielles pour prêcher la croisade, sans pourtant donner des sermons prêts à être prononcés: le prédicateur est censé composer le sermon lui-même en utilisant le traité comme manuel. Il procure aussi des extraits de la Bible et des textes non-bibliques pour le même but.

Le texte latin, dont on trouvera ici la traduction, a été édité dans Humbertus de Romanis, De predicatione crucis (Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaeualis 279). Des renvois aux pages correspondantes de l'édition sont fournis dans les marges de cette publication.

This volume, the first in the new series Transcultural Medieval Studies, draws together scholars from around the world to offer new insights into the importance and role of the Bible across the varied cultures of medieval Europe. The papers gathered here take a comparative and multidisciplinary approach to the subject, focusing on the biblical background of perceptions of the religious and cultural ‘Self ’ and ‘Other’ in the Mediterranean, in Latin Europe, and in the Baltic. In doing so, the contributions identify commonalities and differences of the ‘uses of the Bible’ in these various worlds, combining and contrasting studies on Bible manuscripts, their exegesis, and their use for historical writing.

The thematic framework of this special issue is an examination of the impact Russian émigrés had on the humanities and art. From art history to philosophy, artistic creation to ecumenical dialogue, the volume is dedicated to figures who, through their emigration from Russia, transformed their places of arrival and relevant fields. The articles in the volume assess these topics from an interdisciplinary point of view, extending the usual horizons of Convivium to other fields as well. The volume was published as the proceedings of the conference Transformed by Emigration. Welcoming Russian Intellectuals, Scientists, and Artists 1917-1945 held at the Hans Belting Library in February 2019.

Transforming Space deals with visible and invisible changes in premodern cities, their causes and the way in which they were perceived and received. The chapters in this book analyse the development and management of urban space, combining case studies and insights from a range of cities from all over Europe. Several contributions deal with the impact of major events on the urban tissue: geopolitics; disasters such as fires or wars; expropriation or redevelopment projects directed by urban governments; religious change such as the Dissolution in England, and the Reformation and Counter-Reformation on the continent. On closer scrutiny, however, some of these major events were only an accelerator of already ongoing processes of change. By shifting the perspective from the city as a whole, to neighbourhoods, urban blocks or even plots of land, other chapters reveal how functional change or real estate dynamics changed the urban landscape almost imperceptibly. This book is written from a comparative perspective that takes into account path-dependency. Pre-existing power relations, ideology and mentality, the resilience of property structures, the impact of building regulations, subsidies, or the effects of real estate markets are shown to have had different outcomes for different social groups and the evolution of neighbourhoods.

The transitions of the title are those in the life and intellectual development of one of the leading historians of late antiquity and Byzantium. Averil Cameron recounts her working-class origins in North Staffordshire and how she came to read Classics at Oxford and start her research at Glasgow University before moving to London and teaching at King’s College London. Later she was the head of Keble College Oxford at a time of change in the University and its colleges. She played a leading role in projects and organisations even as the flow of books and articles continued, in an array of publications that have been fundamental in shaping the disciplines of late antiquity and Byzantine studies in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The volume deals with the issue of translation automatisms in early vernacular texts predating 1650. It introduces the novel concept of ‘translation clusters’, first defined in machine translation theory, but equally considering a wider array of situations that involve ‘translation units’, ‘language automatisms’, ‘culturemes’, and ‘formulaic borrowings’ in vernacular texts. Contrary to contemporary languages, where translation units, clusters, and automatisms appear frequently due to the influence of standard language varieties or dialects, the vernacular idioms of the Middle Ages and Early Modern period are often pluricentric. Consequently, automatisms are limited to specific cases where diachronic, diatopic, diastratic, and diaphasic variants align similarly in two otherwise different translations. This is a crucial topic for philology, as it can explain accidents that ecdotic methods tend to mistake for variant readings of a single ‘redactio’. The volume aims to determine the organic interplay between three primary situations in which common coincidences between translations or texts occur. Firstly the volume explores the shared elements resulting from the transfer of textual units between multiple translations or adaptations (quotations, corrections, formulas). Secondly chapters study the shared elements arising from the existence of a common source text (translation clusters, based on translation units); and lastly, the volume questions the fixed, inherent, and unchangeable aspects of the target language (language automatisms, often coinciding with translation units). The chapters of this volume focus on numerous vernacular languages and a multitude of case studies, with a particular emphasis on biblical translation—a cornerstone of contemporary translation studies. The chapter format encourages diverse perspectives to push the boundaries of philology, translation studies, and “vernacular theologies”.

The nineteenth century saw the rapid development of textual criticism for establishing the “best” and “most authentic” forms of both Ancient and Mediaeval texts thanks to the method perfected by Karl Lachmann, who based himself on the insights gained during the eighteenth century. Lachmann’s method has been further refined by later philologists, with, most interestingly, the use of computers in establishing the mutual relations of manuscript witnesses since the last decades of the twentieth century. However, the interest in what form the texts, both Ancient and Mediaeval, were actually circulating in the Late Middle Ages and in the Renaissance, has been slow to emerge as an area of scholarly interest. In other words: what did the readers actually get in front of their eyes, and acted upon as, say, doctors, historians, theologians between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries?

This volume explores the Late Medieval and Renaissance transmission of texts of different genres, languages and periods from the book historical point of view, taking into consideration not only the textual but also the material aspect of the traditions.

The authors include eminent specialists as well as mid- and early career scholars.

1066 is one of the most well-known dates in English history: but how far do we understand the mental and emotional lives of those who experienced it? In just over a month, England was rocked by two separate invasions, multiple pitched battles, and the deaths of thousands. The repercussions of these traumatic events would echo through the history and literature of northern Europe for centuries to come.

Drawing on studies of trauma and cultural memory, this book examines the cultural repercussions of the year 1066 in medieval England, Normandy, and Scandinavia. It explores how writers in all three regions celebrated their common heritage and mourned the wars that brought them into conflict. Bringing together texts from an array of languages, genres, and cultural traditions, this study examines the strategies medieval authors employed to work through the traumas of 1066, narrating its events and experiences in different forms. It explores the ways in which history and memory interacted through multiple generations of writers and readers, and reveals how the field of trauma studies can help us better understand the mental and emotional lives of medieval people.

This collection of research, which brings together contributions from scholars around the world, reflects the range and variety of work that is currently being undertaken in the field of travel and mobility in the European Middle Ages. The essays draw on diverse methodological approaches, from the archival and literary to the art historical and archaeological. The collection focuses not just on key medieval modes of travel and mobility, but also on themes whose relevance continues to resonate in the modern world. Topics touched upon include religious and diplomatic journeys, migration, mobility and governance, gendered mobilities, material culture and mobility, mobility and disability, travel and status, and notions of home and abroad. Broad themes are approached through case studies of individuals, families, and groups, ranging from kings, queens, and nobles to friars, exiles, and students. The geographical reach of the collection is particularly broad, encompassing travellers from Southern, Western, Northern, Central and Eastern Europe and journeys to destinations as diverse as Scandinavia, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean. A wide-ranging and detailed introduction situates the collection in its scholarly context.

Discovered by the French scholar, Marcel Richard, on one of his photographic expeditions to the monastic libraries of Mount Athos, the Thesaurus was entrusted to a young scholar, Joseph Munitiz, who prepared the editio princeps for his doctoral thesis, defended at the Sorbonne in 1976. The work was shown to have been composed by a little-known spiritual author, thought to have been active in the fourteenth century, but placed, thanks to a passing reference in his Treasury, in the middle of the thirteenth century. This semi-encyclopaedic work was intended to provide an overview of the sort of knowledge considered essential for a young prince, as one chapter is an exhortation to a future emperor. Thus it contains a summary of the Old Testament, with curious reflections (e.g. on female wickedness and the ingenuity of Solomon), and chapters on dogmatic questions: the divinity of Christ; the value of Holy Scripture; the sacraments, icons, the Theotokos, and the key role of the Ecumenical Councils. A large part is made up of moral exhortations attributed partly to Amphilochios and backed by pious stories. There are also florilegia, so popular in Byzantine spiritual writings, focused around the eucharist, the priesthood, sexual morality and confession. At the end, some questions-and-answers (another popular Byzantine genre) deal with items of general knowledge (ranging from theology, through astronomy, to alms-giving). In general, the work opens a window into the mind of the ordinary believer in mediaeval Constantinople.

The source text of this volume appeared with the title Theognosti Thesaurus as volume 5 in Corpus Christianorum Series graeca, in 1979. References to the corresponding pages of the edition are provided in the margin of this translation, along with a list of corrections of the Greek.

For centuries, the Council of Trent has been studied as a fundamental episode in European history wherein doctrinal and institutional unity was lost. Although the Council decrees nowhere refer to the contexts of the peoples met by Christopher Columbus, nor to the Cathay regions rediscovered by missionaries, nor to their religions, their superstitions or their political systems, the Council was nonetheless a global event. The Roman Church, which lost doctrinal control of the considerable part of Europe captured by different forms of Protestantism, imposed itself upon its followers through the application of conciliar decrees. Freed of its exclusively European perspective it opened up to cultures of the rest of the world. The customs and traditions thus encountered, the relationships with political authorities, possibilities for the construction of a new Christianity offered by New Worlds, disclosing spaces and contexts to the Tridentine Church, with accommodations and cross-fertilizations, with a return to origins and tradition, obliged that it begin to think of itself, perhaps for the first time, as a universal Church.

The Council and Beyond suggests not only reconsideration of Europe through the prism of the Tridentine decrees and the long processes of their dissemination, but also through an intercontinental consideration, a spatial perspective that would become universal to the Church and to the normative texts that had been elaborated at Trent.

In 1517, the Brabant city of Louvain witnessed the foundation of the Collegium Trilingue (Three Language College). Funded by means of the legacy of the humanist and diplomat Jerome of Busleyden (d. 1517) and steered by guiding spirit Erasmus of Rotterdam, this institute offered courses in the three so-called sacred languages Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, which students could attend for free. However, this kind of initiative was not unique to Louvain in the early 16th century. In a time span of barely twenty years, Greek and Hebrew were also offered in Alcalá de Henares (near Madrid), Wittenberg, and Paris, among other places. It would not take long before these ‘sacred’ languages were also on the educational agenda at universities throughout the whole of Europe.

The present volume examines the general context in which such polyglot institutes emerged and thrived, as well as the learning and teaching practices observed in these institutes and universities. Devoting special attention to the study of the continuity, or rather the discontinuity, between the 16th-century establishment of language chairs and the late medieval interest in these languages, it brings together fifteen selected papers exploring various aspects of these multilingual undertakings, focusing on their pedagogical and scholarly dimensions. Most of the contributions were presented at the 2017 LECTIO conference The Impact of Learning Greek, Hebrew, and ‘Oriental’ Languages on Scholarship, Science, and Society in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which was organized at the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the foundation of the Louvain Collegium Trilingue.

This book offers unprecedented insights into the richness of Scottish culture in the early modern period, studying triumphal entries — that is, processional civic welcomes offered to royal guests — staged in Edinburgh in the period between 1500 and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Based on a comprehensive and imaginative analysis of the written and archival sources available for these events, it also brings renewed attention to the country’s artistic, architectural, and literary traditions. The analysis of comparable events staged in England and continental Europe — in France, the Italian peninsula, and the Low Countries — helps frame Scotland’s distinctiveness within a network of international connections. The book explores how the urban space of early modern Edinburgh was employed with changing fortunes to address potentially explosive power dynamics, expressed by civic and royal, secular and religious (pre and post Reformation), Scottish and post-1603 pan-British worldviews. Scottish triumphal culture is presented as profoundly embedded in the urban context within which it is set, rich in politicised rituals of negotiation and mutual acknowledgement, and visually vibrant through temporary structures, decorations, pageants, and costumed performers. This book offers a well-rounded answer to the still relevant question of Scottish identity, and how identity and power — individual, communal, national, royal — can be performed through active engagement with civic space.

Dissent, polemics and rivalry have always been at the centre of intellectual development. The scholarly Streitkultur was given a fresh impetus by the newly founded universities in the High Middle Ages and later turned into a quintessential part of early modern intellectual life, with the emergence of the Protestant Reformation creating a new momentum. It was not only mirrored in various well-known intellectual disputations and controversies, but also embodied in numerous literary genres and non-literary modes of expression, as well as discursive or political strategies. Moreover, the harsh debates notwithstanding, consensus was also actively searched for, both within particular disciplines and within society as a whole.

This volume collects thirteen contributions offering a very rich variety of topics with regard to the negotiation of disagreements from the twelfth till the eighteenth centuries. They reflect inter alia upon the rules and conventions of the intellectual debate, upon the media used to negotiate dissent, as well as upon the role of formal institutions created to judge and decide in cases of dissent. The contributions are offered by scholars from fields as diverse as history of literature, political history, history of philosophy, history of Church and theology, and legal history.

Throughout the nineteenth, and for much of the twentieth century, archives were considered to be containers of knowledge, holding material that was deemed to be objective and unbiased. In more recent years, however, as scholars have begun to engage more with archival material, this perception has changed, and archives have increasingly been recognized as sites of contention, holding curated historical documents — a re-evaluation that, in turn, has led to a new understanding of the role and significance of both archives and archiving practices, as well as to revived interest in their contents.

Taking renewed scholarly interest in archives as its starting point, this volume highlights the importance of archival material both as a source of study, and as a way of unleashing hitherto ‘lost’ knowledge. The chapters gathered here present previously unpublished material for the first time, as well as offer new insights into archival and curatorial practices. Through this approach, the authors not only reveal unknown aspects and histories of both past and ongoing excavations, but also shed light on the creation processes of an archive, an element that is typically lost by the time the material is designated as an archive by those who study it. The result is a volume that can shape best archival practices and approaches for the future.

The clash between Pope Paul II ( 1464-1471) and Bologna was one of two opposed concepts of government and 'state'. Paul II held to a high concept of princely sovereignty, and to a vision of the papal temporal dominions as a genuinely co-ordinated territorial state, an enduring public; entity. Inevitably he clashed with the Commune of Bologna, second city of the Papal State, over which he aspired to more jurisdiction. The political vision of the Bolognese regime had a. local focus which precluded the sacrifice of independence in favour of integration into a wider entity, and sprang from a view of government as rightfully the private preserve of a restricted oligarchic group, from the 1440s consolidated in the magistracy of the 'Sixteen Reformers of the Regime of Liberty'. Paul II regarded the regime of the Sixteen as a 'tyranny', and declared that no such ty rannies should flourish 'under the mantle of St Peter'. But his intervention failed and, instead, Paul modified the constitution which gave the long-developing predominance of the Bentivoglio family an institutional basis. This 'signorial' regime aggravated the tension between collegiality and despotism and paved the way for the eventual destruction of the Bentivoglio dominance and later the fuller incorporation in the sixteenth century of Bologna into the Papal State.

People have been living in Uist’s island landscapes for millennia; shaping and shaped by the unique environments of machair and moorland we see today. Uist Unearthed tells the story of 5000 years of the islands’ prehistory and history through five key archaeological sites.

Based on the award-winning Uist Virtual Archaeology Project, this interactive book brings Uist’s past to life. Readers are invited to dig deeper and discover Uist’s unique archaeology through colourful and creative mixed media including illustrations, infographics, and photography, enhanced with state-of-the-art augmented reality.

This book provides an excellent introduction to Uist’s archaeology for novices and professionals alike. It discusses the importance of Gaelic language and culture in our interpretation and understanding of archaeological landscapes. It is for all those interested in exploring alternative ways of reimagining, interpreting, and presenting the past through digital storytelling.

Le Moyen Âge a inlassablement commenté le Cantique des cantiques comme dialogue spirituel entre l'âme et son Époux divin. Superposer à cette mystique nuptiale la mystique métaphysique du Pseudo-Denys fut une initiative du victorin Thomas Gallus, promise à une grande faveur dans le monde cartusien. Le présent commentaire du Cantique («Deiformis animae gemitus»), s'inscrit dans cette tradition, en y ajoutant l'expression d'une dévotion au Christ crucifié aux accents franciscains. Un temps attribué à Thomas Gallus lui-même, l'ouvrage doit probablement être restitué à un autre religieux de son abbaye, un «Vercellensis» dont nous ne saurons peut-être jamais le nom complet. L'édition princeps jadis procurée par Jeanne Barbet a été revue et remaniée grâce à un nouveau recours aux manuscrits et assortie d'une traduction française due au P. Francis Ruello.

Pierre naît à Vérone, au tournant du XIIe et du XIIIe siècle, d’une famille cathare. Il est dit « de Vérone » ou « Martyr ». Il étudie à Bologne, où il rencontre les frères prêcheurs et entre dans l’ordre, en recevant l’habit probablement des mains de saint Dominique lui-même, vers 1220 ou 1221. Son activité essentielle est celle de prédicateur itinérant. Il prêche à Rome, à Florence, dans la Romagne et la Marche d’Ancône, à Venise et en Toscane, et peut-être même à Paris. En juin 1251, Innocent IV le charge d’une mission contre les hérétiques de Crémone. Quelques mois plus tard, en septembre 1251, il devient inquisiteur pontifical à Milan, à Côme et dans leurs districts. Il assume cette tâche pendant les derniers mois de sa vie. Le 6 avril 1252, il est tué sur le chemin de Côme à Milan par un tueur à gages, loué par les hérétiques. Pierre est canonisé le 9 mars 1253.

Le présent livre contient neuf versions de sa légende, rédigées en français ancien (XIIIe-XVe siècles) par des auteurs anonymes. Les textes, qui procèdent du chapitre 61 de la Légenda aurea de Jacques de Voragine, n’ont jusqu’à présent jamais été édités. Dans la majorité des cas, on a affaire à des adaptations libres, parfois très libres, de la vita contenue dans la Legenda aurea, pour lesquelles celle-ci n’est qu’un point de départ. Il s’agit de textes autonomes : chacun des auteurs a exploité sa source à sa propre façon ; ce sont des jeux de la variante, tellement caractéristiques de la littérature médiévale.

Achard de Saint-Victor (†1171) est un représentant moins connu de l’école de Saint-Victor, élève d’Hugues, chanoine régulier, maître, abbé de Saint-Victor à Paris (1155-1161), évêque d’Avranches (1161-1171). Son œuvre principal, le De unitate et pluralitate creaturarum, consiste en deux parties qui portent sur la doctrine trinitaire et sur la doctrine de la pluralité des raisons éternelles dans le Verbe de Dieu.

Cette recherche entend rétablir les thèses principales exposées par Achard de Saint-Victor dans son livre De unitate et pluralitate creaturarum pour montrer que les capacités métaphysiques de ce penseur ne le cèdent pas aux philosophes plus connus de son époque. Notamment, l’autrice étudie la façon dont le De unitate recourt aux doctrines médio et néoplatoniciennes pour résoudre la question d’une coexistence de l’unité et de la pluralité en Dieu et dans les créatures. L’enjeu est de mieux comprendre la place de la métaphysique platonicienne dans l’école de Saint-Victor, et ce malgré la rareté des sources au XIIe siècle, en particulier des œuvres de Platon ou de ses disciples grecs.

Le présent ouvrage contribue à résoudre deux problèmes de l’histoire de la philosophie : quels éléments et sources platoniciens ont été reçus au XIIe siècle et quelle place la pensée victorine fait à l’héritage platonicien. Les problèmes philosophiques soulevés sont la multiplication des objets intelligibles et sensibles, la définition de la chose et l’identité des êtres.

S’il est difficile d’ignorer les chapitres nobles lorsqu’on aborde l’histoire des noblesses européennes au xviii e siècle, notamment dans les rapports qu’elles entretenaient avec l’Église, ces instituts restent toutefois peu étudiés. Plus marqué que pour les chapitres nobles masculins, le dynamisme de ceux de femmes intrigue. Le cas des chapitres nobles de chanoinesses de Franche-Comté, demeurés réguliers en un siècle qui ne passe pas pour avoir été favorable à l’Église régulière, comme le confirme la sécularisation d’un certain nombre de ces compagnies, est très éclairant sur les raisons de leur faveur. Celle-ci ne réside pas dans cette fonction d’asile et de secours matériel à destination d’une ancienne noblesse paupérisée que décrivaient leurs contemporains, mais dans leurs réponses précoces aux attentes de reconnaissance d’un groupe social convaincu de son déclin ainsi que dans leur aptitude à contenter une spiritualité en phase avec celle des Lumières et adaptable à la personnalité de chaque dame noble. L’effort accompli par les chapitres de chanoinesses, à l’apogée de la Réforme post-tridentine, pour conserver et développer leur spécificité en dépit de l’hostilité du clergé nous conduit par ailleurs à relativiser le concept de « Dorsale catholique » toujours très débattu chez les historiens, la plupart de ces établissements étant pourtant implantés dans ce front de catholicité identifié par René Taveneaux, reliant les anciens Pays-Bas à l’Italie du Nord.

This book investigates how medieval and early modern Europeans constructed, understood, and articulated emotions. The essays trace concurrent lines of influence that shaped post-Classical understandings of emotions, through overlapping philosophical, rhetorical, and theological discourses. They show the effects of developments in genre and literary, aesthetic, and cognitive theories on depictions of psychological and embodied emotion in literature. They map the deeply embedded emotive content inherent in rituals, formal documents, daily conversation, communal practice, and cultural memory. The contributors focus on the mediation and interpretation of pre-modern emotional experience in cultural structures and institutions - customs, laws, courts, religious foundations - as well as in philosophical, literary, and aesthetic traditions.

The volume thus represents a conspectus of contemporary interpretative strategies, displaying close connections between disciplinary and interdisciplinary critical practices drawn from historical studies, literature, anthropology and archaeology, philosophy and theology, cognitive science, psychology, religious studies, and gender studies. The essays stretch from classical and indigenous cultures to the contemporary West, embracing numerous national and linguistic groups. They illuminate the complex potential of medieval and early modern emotions in situ, analysing their involvement in subjects as diverse as philosophical theories, imaginative and scholarly writing, concepts of individual and communal identity, social and political practices, and the manifold business of everyday life.

Les nouveautés culturelles qui se répandent en Europe latine aux xii e et xiii e siècles sont les expressions les plus hautes d’une longue période de croissance. Bien que déjà largement documentée, cette expansion pluriséculaire mérite d’être reprise et précisée.

Un cercle vertueux s’est enclenché aux alentours de l’an mil dans l’Europe latine, sans qu’il y ait simultanéité de dates et de rythmes sur tout le territoire. Pour être multiples, les composantes de cet essor se réduisent à un même thème: ce sont autant de triomphes de l’homme européen sur son environnement et sur lui-même: amélioration de l’outillage et des techniques agricoles, poussée démographique, défrichements, nouveaux sites de peuplement, renouveau urbain, renforcement de l’artisanat, essor de l’économie monétaire, développement et diffusion de l’écrit, promotion des langues vernaculaires.

Véhicule déterminant du nouveau savoir, les traductions surviennent dans un monde latin à l’essor multiforme. Elles l’accompagnent et le transfigurent. Elles en décuplent les possibilités. Elles expriment un engouement dévorant pour l’étude, dont en retour elles accroissent l’intensité et rehaussent le niveau. Les clercs sont aspirés par cette spirale, dont le terme marque la fin du Moyen Âge. Les acquis des siècles précédents servent aux hommes du xv e à renouer directement avec l’hellénisme et avec le classicisme latin, tout en franchissant les océans d’une terre maintenant centrée sur le soleil.

La polysémie du mot «monde» rend compte de la totalité des nouveautés qui, apparues au cours du xii e siècle de Europe latine, transforment en quelques cent ans le continent: le xii e siècle latin s’est transfiguré en véritable Nouveau Monde.