Brepols Online Books Medieval Miscellanea Collection 2011 - bob2011mime

This volume presents the proceedings of the International Congress Chromatius of Aquileia and His Age which took place at Aquileia (Italy) from 22 to 24 May 2008 under the direction of Pier Franco Beatrice (University of Padova) and Alessio Peršič (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan) and was fostered by the National Commitee for the Sixteenth Centenary of the Death of Saint Chromatius Bishop of Aquileia headed by Dr. Mons. Duilio Corgnali, in common accord with the Dioceses of the Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia and the adjacent Slovenian and Austrian Dioceses of Ljubljiana, Koper / Capodistria, and Gurk-Klagenfurt.

The Congress was part of a vast range of celebratory activites inspired by the desire to create a renewed Christian historical awareness of both the significance of Aquileia and its Fathers and of the strong vitality of evangelical spirituality directed at creating a synthesis between East and West, between Greco-Roman civilization, the revealed Hebrew epos, and the disruptive diversity of the new invading peoples. The Christian communities are heirs to the long tradition of the Patriarcate of Aquileia which lasted for over a thousand years and it was the passionate interest in their Christian origins which prompted the Congress. The Aquileian metropolis—patriarcal see until the eighteenth century and a crossroads where Romans and Illyrians, Germanic peoples and Slavs all met—was a cradle of monasticism and home to some of its greatest masters (Martin, Chromatius, Rufinus, and Jerome). These scholars have proven to be the beneficiaries of earlier exegetic skills (Victorinus, Fortunatianus) as well as intrepid and creative mediators of the highest and most controversial expressions of Greek spiritual and theological culture in the Roman world and of the rediscovered veritas hebraica of Old Testament sources. Lastly, Paulus Diaconus and the Patriarch Paulinus II distinguished themselves as inspiration for a modern European identity after its slow Christian and barbarian palingenesis.

The Congress brought together scholars from Europe and America who are experts on the work of Chromatius—only recently saved from the near obscurity into which it had fallen in manuscript tradition—for the purpose of providing original contributions on an international level to Aquileian literary historiography, Chromatius in particular, not always taken into account and given due merit.

Throughout the period 800–1250, English culture was marked by linguistic contestation and pluralism: the consequence of migrations and conquests and of the establishment and flourishing of the Christian religion centred on Rome. In 855 the Danes ‘over-wintered’ for the first time, re-initiating centuries of linguistic pluralism; by 1250 English had, overwhelmingly, become the first language of England. Norse and French, the Celtic languages of the borderlands, and Latin competed with dialects of English for cultural precedence. Moreover, the diverse relations of each of these languages to the written word complicated textual practices of government, poetics, the recording of history, and liturgy. Geographical or societal micro-languages interacted daily with the ‘official’ languages of the Church, the State, and the Court. English and English speakers also played key roles in the linguistic history of medieval Europe. At the start of the period of inquiry, Alcuin led the reform of Latin in the Carolingian Empire, while in the period after the Conquest, the long-established use of English as a written language encouraged the flourishing of French as a written language. This interdisciplinary volume brings the complex and dynamic multilingualism of medieval England into focus and opens up new areas for collaborative research.