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.