Brepols

The book investigates the transformation of the architectural and visual language in Zadar, eastern Adriatic town, at the dawn of the early modern era, when the mighty mediaeval commune was being transformed by the emerging governmental structures of the Republic of Venice. These events coincided with the Ottoman Empire's takeover of the hinterland of Dalmatian cities, transforming Zadar into a city on the brink of two worlds.

A highly autonomous mediaeval commune was a lively trans-Adriatic artistic centre, a network of builders, painters, and sculptors from Dalmatia, Venice, Marche and Lombardy, so with the early adoption of humanist concepts by the local elite, this practice continued. However, the transformations the governmental structure and economic policies steadily limited its community autonomy and commercial sources. The crisis worsened in the 16th century, when the local elites lost a large portion of their revenue from the fertile hinterland captured by the Ottoman Empire.

This launched an ongoing militarisation of social structures and fortifying the town.  These events were reflected in the fields of architecture and art. The process of adopting a new architectural and artistic language began in the second half of the 15th century, as demonstrated by motifs in architectural decoration and sculpture with impulses from important Dalmatian sculptural and stonemasons’ circles, as well as Venetian models from the circles of Pietro Lombardo and Mauro Codussi. When the new classical language of architecture began spreading in the middle of the 16th century, it expressed mostly in the renovation of administrative structures, with occasional departures from the stylistic canons of artistic centres.

The storyworlds of Old Norse-Icelandic literature are multifaceted and variable, ranging from the worlds of heroic poetry and popular romance to the recognizable narrative universe built by the Sagas of Icelanders. Despite this, they have rarely been explored, and narratological theories of storyworlds or fantasy scholarship have had little impact on the field. Yet given that every story creates its own storyworld, it can be assumed that Old Norse-Icelandic literary texts, too, build worlds — and these worlds are diverse and complex, as shown by the contributors in this volume: they constantly engage with one another, exploring, shaping, and expanding, while also entering into a dialogue with the primary world from which they draw.

This volume brings together scholars from different areas of Old Norse-Icelandic studies to explore questions related to not only the storyworlds of medieval Icelandic literature, but also those of legal and learned texts, and to the way that they are built. Together they inquire into the nature of these worlds, into their preservation and transmission in manuscripts, their transmediality, transnarrativity, and reception. In doing so, these inquiries showcase the breadth of new perspectives on medieval Icelandic literature made possible by the application of narratological theory in its study.

This book is concerned with the social and gendered meanings of love in medieval Norway and Iceland. In the Viking Age, to love would most often imply a submissive social position, while being loved by a woman could elevate a man above the status of her family. Women were supposed to love upwards in the social hierarchy, but could also use their desire to negotiate the social position of men. A close reading of the skaldic poetry shows the dilemma men faced when longing for women’s love and approval. These ideas of love relations shaped Norse interpretations of courtly love and marriage formation by consent in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. However, new ideas of sexuality, gender and society affected the understanding of love and marital affection in the later Middle Ages. Men became the loving subject, but in a way that did not challenge the social order. For women, ideal love was attached to humility and submission to parents and husband. But even though the new ideology of love and marriage to some extent neutralized the tensions between consent and parental control, the sources show that both men and women could use the new conceptions of love to serve their own marital and social strategies.

Agriculture is always a struggle with the environment since agricultural production is in fact applied ecology. However, in the past the struggle with the environment was to a large extent determined by the social organisation which was regionally very diverse. The aim of this volume is to find out how, when and within which structural boundaries, land was made useful for agriculture. In the first part of each chapter, this is studied in general, focusing on the evolution of land use: how and why was land reclaimed and by whom? How intensively was this land used? Which actors played a part in this process? What were the environmental and social limits? In the second part the production techniques and production systems are scrutinized: crop choices, crop rotations, the importance of fallow and cattle, crop yields etc. All this is examined in light of different farming strategies and social conditions. The comparative approach of this volume in the Rural Economy and Society Series also enables a new and innovating perspective on the occurrence and impact of ‘agricultural’ and ‘green’ revolutions in the past.

The Studies in Byzantine Epigraphy series testifies to an ever-greater focus on inscriptions within Byzantine Studies. The present, inaugural volume includes selected papers from the two panels dedicated to Byzantine Epigraphy held at the XXIII International Congress of Byzantine Studies in Belgrade, August 2016, and the XV International Congress of Greek and Latin Epigraphy in Vienna, August/September 2017. The papers, as indeed the events for which they were initially produced, celebrate both the progress and the promise of epigraphic research within medieval and early modern scholarship as a whole.

The present volume contains the papers from the 12th International Symposium of Byzantine Sigillography, held at the State Ermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, May 27-30, 2019. The papers discuss seals as historical sources and archaeological findings, presenting their role in the Byzantine prosopography, administration, historical geography and art history.

This volume focuses on aspects of Carthusian history and culture of the later Middle Ages, a period of growth and vitality within the order. There is a primary but not exclusive focus on the English Province, which to date has received at best unbalanced attention. While the fundamental ambitions and ideals of Carthusianism formulated, articulated, and lived by the disciples of St Bruno between the late eleventh and the thirteenth centuries changed very little, the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries witnessed developments stimulated by and often commensurate with the progress of external culture. In such areas as devotional practice, literature, art and architecture, patronage, and monastic-lay relations generally, the houses of the order grew increasingly sophisticated: in some cultural spheres Carthusians were in the vanguard. The late Middle Ages thus offer rich opportunities for assessment of how a religious organization defined and justified by essentially reactionary conventions responded to constant forinsec evolution.

The volume’s approach is multi-disciplinary, involving both senior and younger Carthusian scholars in investigation of the main facets of Carthusian life for which significant data survives. This permits a thorough analysis of the order’s character, one that reflects concern with synoptic understanding of medieval Carthusianism rather than partial assessment through a specifically devotional, literary, or more narrowly historical approach. Subject areas covered include the historical growth of individual Charterhouses, patronage of Carthusians by secular agents, Carthusian architecture and manuscript decoration, devotional practice, and textual culture.

In the framework of the 20th International Congress of History of Science (Liège 1997), a symposium was devoted to the historical work of Adolph P. Youschkevitch (1906-1993). The present volume includes the papers read during the symposium as well as contributions on current issues in the history of mathematics : mathematics as a cultural strength, mathematics from antiquity to the classical period, probability theory and its applications, mathematics in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The compelling world of the Vikings and their descendants, preserved in the sagas, poetry, and mythology of medieval Iceland, has been an important source of inspiration to artists and writers across Europe, as well as to scholars devoted to editing and interpreting the manuscript texts. A variety of creative ventures have been born of the processes of imagining this distant ‘hyperborean’ world. The essays in this volume, by scholars from Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany, and the UK, examine the scholarly and artistic reception of a variety of Old Norse texts from the beginnings of the manuscript tradition in twelfth-century Iceland to contemporary poetry, crime fiction, and graphic novels produced in Britain, Ireland, Italy, and Iceland. The influence of Old Norse literature is further explored in the context of Shakespeare’s plays, eighteenth-century Italian opera, the Romantic movement in Sweden and Denmark, and the so-called ‘nordic renaissance’ of the late nineteenth century (including the works of August Strindberg and William Morris), as well as in some of the political movements of twentieth-century northern Europe. Interest in Old Norse literature is charted as it spread beyond intellectual centres in Europe and out to a wider reading and viewing public. The influence of the ‘hyperborean muse’ is evident throughout this book, as the idea of early Nordic culture has been refashioned to reflect contemporary notions and ideals.

This volume honours F. W. (Bill) Kent (1942–2010), internationally renowned scholar of Renaissance Florence and founding editor of the Europa Sacra series. Kent belonged to an energetic generation of Australians who, in the late 1960s, tackled the Florentine archives and engaged key issues confronting historians of that ever-fascinating city.

With his meticulous archival findings and contextual interpretations spanning a scholarly career of more than forty years, Kent engaged with, indeed drove, the scholarly response to many of the issues that have shaped not just our current and emerging understanding of Florence and other urban centres of Italy, but along with that, a more nuanced view of the role of frontier towns and the countryside.

Interdisciplinary in scope and grounded in visual, literary, and archival materials, the essays presented here explore a variety of facets of the society of Renaissance Italy, confronting and extending themes that have been emerging in recent decades and exemplified by Kent’s work. These themes include the role of kinship and networks, power and agency in Laurentian Florence, gender, ritual, representation, patronage, spirituality, and the generation and consumption of material culture.

This volume presents the first English translation of Harald Ingholt’s seminal work Studier over Palmyrensk Skulptur, together with a number of studies that contextualize this important volume in the light of current research. Almost a century after its publication in 1928, Ingholt’s ground-breaking Danish-language monograph remains essential reading for all scholars of Palmyrene archaeology and iconography, setting out observations on the typology and style of securely dated Palmyrene portraits, and establishing a stylistic and chronological sequence that remains in use today. Included alongside the translation of Ingholt’s writings are contributions by leading scholars in the field who seek to introduce Harald Ingholt and explore the impact of his work in Palmyra, as well as presenting a survey of all the portraits from Palmyra that can be securely dated by inscription. The translation and commentary have been realized as part of the Palmyra Portrait Project, directed by Prof. Rubina Raja.

The interest of the Latin texts of the Gospels from Ireland lies in the light they may shed on the transmission of the Gospel texts in a particular area of the Latin Church. The essays published in this book will give an idea of the extent of the material to be studied, as well as an indication of its importance.