Brepols

Definitions of Inner Asia vary greatly. Inner Asia includes those lands that have linked the major agrarian civilisations of Eurasia, from China to India to the Mediterranean and Europe, since the late Neolithic period. In the 19th century, it became customary to refer to the trade routes between these regions as the 'Silk Roads'. But silk was just one of the goods exchanged through Inner Asia. religions, diseases, coins, cuisines, artistic fashions, political titles, all travelled the Silk Roads, as did Buddhism, Christianity, Manichaeism and Islam. Seen in this way, Inner Asia appears as the central knot in the vast tapestry of Eurasian history. To take Inner Asian history seriously is to see the underlying unity of Eurasian history. S.N.C. Lieu, From Iran to South China: The Eastward Passage of Manichaeism, L. Cansdale, Jews on the Silk Roads, C. Benjamin, An Introduction to Kushan Research, D. Christian, State Formation in the Inner Eurasian Steppes, S. Helms, Ancient Chorasmia: The Northern Edge of Central Asia from the 6th Century B.C. to the mid-4th Century A.D., H. Hendrischke, Chinese Concerns with Central Asia, C. Mackerras, Some observations on Xinjiang in the 1990s, W. Maley, The Dynamics of Regime Transition in Afghanistan, K. Nourzhanov, Traditional Kinship Structures in Contemporary Tajik Poilitics, S. Akbarzadeh, Reformism in the Bukharan Khanate, G. Lafitte, Re-orienting Mongolia, F. Patrikeef, Baron Ungern and the Eurasian Empire, R. Pitty, Russia and Eurasia in International Relations, A. Van Tongerloo, Turkestan: a Treasury of Civilisations, G. Watson, Central Asia as Hunting Ground: Sporting Images of Central Asia, T. Matthew Ciolek, 'Digital Caravanserais': Essential Online Resources for Inner Asian Studies.

As Britain’s global interests expanded from the mid-sixteenth century, geographic mobility encouraged many forms of multilingual practices in English writings. Translations, lexical borrowings, and records of exchanges between travellers and far-off lands and peoples diversely registered, communicated, engaged and politicised encounters with alterity. Meanwhile, earlier continental European translations also influenced and complicated the reception of distant otherness, entailing questions of linguistic hybridity or pluralism.

This volume explores some of the practices and strategies underpinning polyglot encounters in travel accounts produced, translated, or read in England, as well as in artistic and educational materials inflected by those travels. Drawing on linguistic, lexicographic, literary, and historical methodologies, the twelve chapters in this volume collectively look into the contexts and significances of textual contact zones. Particular attention is paid to uses of multilingualism in processes of identity construction, defining and promoting national or imperial agendas, appropriating and assimilating foreign linguistic capital, or meeting resistance and limits from linguistic and cultural otherness refusing to lend itself to a subjected or go-between status. Treating of indigenous languages, newly anglicized words, and new artistic and instructional materials, the volume makes the case for the vibrancy and influence of early modern English engagements with polyglossia and the need for multiple scales of approach to – and interdisciplinary perspectives on – the subject.

This volume presents an in-depth analysis of the Chronica Polonorum, one of the greatest works of the twelfth-century renaissance which profoundly influenced history writing in Central Europe. The Chronica Polonorum was written by Poland’s first native historian Vincentius of Cracow. Educated in Paris and Bologna, he was the first canonically elected bishop of Cracow and a participant of the Fourth Lateran Council. The eyewitness accounts given in the Chronica Polonorum offer insights into the development of twelfth-century Poland, the ambitions of its dynasty, the country’s integration into Christendom, and the interaction between the Polish and Western elites. Vincentius’s work is considered a masterpiece in literary erudition grounded in classical training. The historical evidence it presents illuminates the socio-cultural interaction between Poland and the West during the period. Vincentius’s chronicle demonstrates the strong, enduring influence of the history, law, and traditions of ancient Rome in twelfth-century Europe.

This book deals with several subjects which have increasingly gained in prominence in English-language scholarship in recent years, such as the development of political culture, the diffusion and growth of ideas, the Christianization of the peripheral regions of Europe, and the interaction between cultural, political, and economic changes. In analysing the work of Vincentius and the Polish historiography of the Chronica Polonorum, this volume provides important insights into the development of the so-called peripheral regions of twelfth-century Europe and Poland’s engagement in the twelfth-century renaissance.

This volume proposes a framework for reflection on practices of writing personal names in medieval sacred spaces, uniting historians, art historians, and specialists in written culture (both epigraphers and palaeographers). It traces the forms and functions of names that can be found within the space of early medieval churches and cemeteries, focusing mainly, but not solely, on inscriptions. By examining names written in various kinds of media, from liturgical books to graffiti and more formal inscriptions, the contributors investigate the intentions and effects of the act of writing one’s own name or having one’s name written down. Their interest resides less in the name itself than the interactions it had with its spatial, iconographic, linguistic, ritual, and cultural context, and what this indicates about medieval graphical practices. What is a name from a graphic point of view? What are the specificities of the epigraphic manifestations of names? By whom were names written, and for whom were they intended (if they were even meant to be accessed)? Addressing these and other questions, this volume shows the importance of inscriptions as historical sources and the contribution they give to the study of medieval societies at the intersection of history, anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, and semiology.

In medieval towns, written statements of law and administration appear more prevalent than in non-urban spaces. Certain urban milieus participating in written culture, however, have been the focus of more scholarship than others. Considering the variety among town dwellers, we may assume that literacy skills differed from one social group to another. This raises several questions: Did attitudes towards the written word result from an experience of the urban educational system? On which levels, and in which registers, did different groups of people have access to writing? The need and the usefulness of written texts may not have been the same for communities and for individuals. In this volume we concentrate on the institutional written records that were most indispensable to communal order, including collections of written law, charters of liberties, and municipal registers.

This collection of essays and translations brings together two closely related works by an important but little studied late eleventh-century author, Goscelin of Saint-Bertin. His Liber confortatorius (the earliest work of spiritual instruction for a female recluse known to have been written in England) is addressed to Eve. Goscelin, who may have been a chaplain at Wilton, had been Eve’s spiritual mentor since her childhood. Eve, however, left Wilton in her early twenties to become a recluse in Angers without even informing him of her plans, and in the Liber confortatorius, written in the form of an extended letter (c. 1082), Goscelin attempts to reassert and reconfigure their former close relationship.

Goscelin's account of the life and translation of St Edith, who was a member of the Wilton community until her death (in c. 986) at the age of twenty-three, was commissioned by the Wilton nuns and based on their oral report. Completed in c. 1080, the Legend gives a portrait of Edith and her mother Abbess Wulfthryth, and an account of the community’s posthumous relationship with its saint up until the time that Goscelin began work on it. It is (with the exception of Goscelin’s Life of Wulfhild of Barking) our only near contemporary narrative account of a late Anglo-Saxon women’s community.

The essays in this collection present a closely integrated account of some of the most central and striking aspects of the two texts. The essays and accompanying translations are the result of a collaborative research project undertaken at the University of Auckland.

The Canons following the Rule of St Augustine at St Victor in Paris were some of the most influential religious writers of the Middle Ages. They combined exegesis and spiritual teaching in a theology that was deeply rooted in tradition but also attuned to current developments in the schools of Paris. This selection of their writings on the spiritual life is divided into three sections. The first presents three works by Achard and Richard which treat the development of Christian life from the beginnings of conversion to the perfection of love and contemplation. Prayer, meditation and the gifts of the Holy Spirit are the subjects of the works by Hugh and Richard included in the second section. The final section presents poetical, exegetical and homiletic works honoring Mary by Hugh, Adam, Richard and Godfrey. This rich and representative sampling of Victorine works is a clear window into a world that still has much to offer modern readers interested in spirituality, medieval or modern.

The editor of this volume is Christopher P. Evans (PhD, St Louis University; Department of Theology, University of St. Thomas, Houston, TX), the editor of Hildegard of Bingen’s Explanatio symboli sancti Athanasii (2007), Vita sancti Disibodi, Vita sancti Ruperti and the Triginta octo questionum solutiones (forthcoming; Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis) and Radulphus Ardens: The Questions on the Sacraments (2010).

John Wyclif (d. 1384), famous Oxford philosopher-theologian and controversialist, was posthumously condemned as a heretic at the Council of Constance in 1415. Wyclif’s influence was pan-European and had a particular impact on Prague, where Jan Hus, from Charles University, was his avowed disciple and the leader of a dissident reformist movement. Hus, condemned to the stake at Constance, gathered around him a prolific circle of disciples who changed the landscape of late medieval religion and literature in Bohemia, just as Wyclif’s own followers had done in England.

Both thinkers, and the movements associated with them, played a crucial role in the transformation of later medieval European thought, in particular through a radically enlarged role of textual production in the vernaculars (especially Middle English and Old Czech), as well as in Latin, in the philosophical, theological, and ecclesiological realms.

This interdisciplinary volume of essays brings together cutting-edge research from scholars working in these and contiguous fields and asks fundamental questions about the methods that informed Wycliffite and Hussite writings and those by their interlocutors and opponents. Viewing these debates through a methodological lens enables a reassessment of the impact that they had, and the responses they elicited, across a range of European cultures, from England in the west via France and Austria to Bohemia in the east.

Ce petit roman chrétien, composé en grec vraisemblablement autour du v e siècle et manifestement influencé par les Actes apocryphes des apôtres, se compose de deux parties, chacune centrée sur une femme. L’héroïne du premier récit, Xanthippe, épouse d’un notable, est tournée vers l’ascèse et, bien que païenne, aspire à connaître le Dieu de Paul. Or, il se trouve que l’apôtre se rend en Espagne dans sa ville. Surmontant plusieurs épreuves avec détermination et faisant preuve d’un remarquable discernement spirituel, la chaste Xanthippe est baptisée par Paul et contribue à la conversion de son mari. Polyxène, sa jeune sœur, est l’héroïne du second récit, fort différent, qui se présente comme un véritable roman d’aventures et de voyages. Victime d’un enlèvement et emmenée en Grèce, elle voit sa virginité maintes fois menacée. Mais elle bénéficie de plusieurs aides efficaces, dont celles des apôtres Pierre, Philippe et André. Elle s’en retourne saine et sauve dans sa ville d’Espagne pour rester désormais attachée à l’apôtre Paul. L’ensemble de ce roman présente la particularité de fournir l’unique récit conservé des faits et gestes de Paul en Espagne.

Research on the practices and impacts of literacy has revolutionized the study of medieval history and culture. After initially having focused on investigating the modernising aspects of the development of literacy during the Middle Ages, the discussion now involves a large variety of topics, such as the performance of writing and reading, the use of the written word in political ritual and, on a general level, the ‘otherness’ of medieval communication. The volume presents essays dealing with a wide range of social and political uses of the written word during the Middle Ages, from the Carolingian era to late medieval Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Burgundy. It presents a panorama of the current state of the research and also offers new insights into the current conceptual debates about the history of communication in premodern Europe.