Brepols Online Books Medieval Monographs Collection 2014 - bob2014mome

Rédigée dans la première moitié du XIII e siècle, la Suite Vulgate du Merlin en prose constitue la dernière pièce du cycle du Graal. Partagée entre le déroulement de la vie de Merlin, qui lui donne une unité de type biographique, et la peinture de la jeunesse héroïque du roi Arthur, cette suite rétrospective sert de transition vers le Lancelot. Elle expose la dynamique d’écriture et l’émulation suscitées par le développement de la prose arthurienne et l’effort de mise en cycle. L’étude de la mise en recueil, de la mise en page et de l’illustration des manuscrits éclaire le mode de production et de réception d’ oeuvres qui continuent d’être copiées et enluminées tout au long du Moyen Âge. Le Merlin et la Suite Vulgate, le plus souvent intégrés à des compilations centrées sur l’histoire du Graal, entretiennent un lien particulier avec le Joseph d’Arimathie, l’Estoire del saint Graal et les Prophéties de Merlin, mais circulent aussi dans des recueils d’ambition didactique ou historique.

Si l’écriture de la Suite Vulgate favorise l’intégration cyclique du Merlin propre, ces textes et leurs programmes iconographiques développent une veine militaire et historique qui interroge leur appartenance générique et tranche avec l’orientation religieuse ou courtoise des autres œuvres de la Vulgate arthurienne.

The conquest and settlement of lands in eastern England by Scandinavians represents an extreme migratory episode. The cultural interaction involved one group forcing themselves upon another from a position of military and political power. Despite this seemingly dominant position, by 900 CE the immigrants appear to have largely adopted the culture of the Anglo-Saxons whom they had recently defeated. Informed by migration theory, this work proposes that a major factor in this assimilation was the emigration point of the Scandinavians and the cultural experiences which they brought with them.

Although some of the Scandinavians may have emigrated directly from Scandinavia, most of the first generation of settlers apparently commenced their journey in either Ireland or northern Francia. Consequently, it is the culture of Scandinavians in these regions that needs to be assessed in searching for the cultural impact of Scandinavians upon eastern England. This may help to explain how the immigrants adapted to aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture, such as the issuing of coinage and at least public displays of Christianity, relatively quickly. The geographic origins of the Scandinavians also explain some of the innovations introduced by the migrants, including the use of client kings and the creation of ‘buffer’ states.

The three daughters of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine all undertook exogamous marriages which cemented dynastic alliances and furthered the political and diplomatic ambitions of their parents and their spouses. It might be expected that the choices made by Matilda, Leonor, and Joanna with regard to religious patronage and dynastic commemoration would follow the customs and patterns of their marital families, yet in many cases these choices appear to have been strongly influenced by ties to their natal family. Their involvement in the burgeoning cult of Thomas Becket, their patronage of Fontevrault Abbey, the names they gave to their children, and the ways in which they were buried, suggests that all three women were able, to varying degrees, to transplant Angevin family customs to their marital lands.

By examining the childhoods, marriages, and programmes of patronage and commemoration of Matilda, Leonor and Joanna, this monograph compares and contrasts the experiences of three high-profile twelfth-century royal women, and advances the hypothesis that there may have been stronger emotional ties within the Angevin dynasty than has previously been allowed for.

This volume presents a study of the library of the Cistercian abbey of La Trappe in Normandy from the twelfth century to the French Revolution, together with an annotated edition of the library catalogue of 1752. The abbey was founded as a Savigniac house, became Cistercian in 1147, and is inseparably linked with the name of Armand-Jean de Rancé, the great monastic reformer and founder of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance. When he became abbot of La Trappe in 1664, he brought with him many of his own books and had a new library built to house the monastic collection. Rancé died in 1700. Other books were then added over time until, in 1752, the abbey possessed about 4,300 volumes. The detailed catalogue is divided into two parts. The first part lists the books by subject, beginning, as might be expected, with bibles; the second part lists the same books by author. The information presented in this study of the abbey and its library is of first importance not only for understanding the nature and development of Cistercian intellectual and spiritual life, but also for the history of early modern libraries and the development of library cataloguing.

Heureux, vous les pauvres : le Royaume des cieux est à vous. […] Mais malheureux, vous les riches : vous tenez votre consolation (Luc, 6, 20 et 24). Les appels à la pauvreté et au partage, les mises en garde contre les richesses s'avèrent extrêmement fréquents dans les textes évangéliques les plus célèbres de nos jours encore. L'objet de cet ouvrage est d'étudier leur écho dans la société occidentale des XII e et XIII e siècles, où les richesses issues du commerce commencent à affluer dans les villes et où les inégalités se creusent, tandis que la Bible demeure l'autorité par excellence.

L'auteur s'intéresse tout d'abord à l'élaboration par les moines et les clercs d'un idéal de pauvreté volontaire, qui ne s'impose qu'à partir du XII e siècle. Il étudie les étapes, les acteurs et les enjeux de cette construction, qui concerne tout à la fois l'interprétation de passages fondamentaux de l'Évangile, la place accordée aux laïcs et l'expression de la hiérarchie dans l'Église. L'affirmation de la pauvreté y apparaît indissociable de celle d'une forme de domination. Il pose ensuite la question de l'articulation de ce discours aux réalités sociales. L'exaltation de la pauvreté se traduit-elle par une hostilité à l'égard des richesses et des riches ? Par une condamnation des activités lucratives ? Par une revalorisation de l'image des miséreux ? Il apparaît plutôt - et c'est la thèse que soutient l'auteur - que la préoccupation essentielle des exégètes était de placer l'Église au coeur de la société, au centre des échanges, matériels comme symboliques, si bien que les riches firent l'objet de toutes les attentions, au risque d'en oublier les pauvres.

This volume presents a complete reconstruction of the ritual response to terminal illness and death at the monastic community of Cluny at the height of its development in the later eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Based on the best manuscript of the customary of Bernard, the only account of the abbey's customs written at and for Cluny itself, the reconstruction contains not just Bernard's Latin description of the ritual process, but also the full texts of the prayers and chants that accompanied it, gathered, in the absence of surviving ritual books from Cluny itself, from contemporary sources with clear ties to the Cluniac customs. Facing-page English and French translations make the results available to readers with little or no facility in Latin. The author places the Cluniac death ritual in the context of religious responses to death, dying and the care of the dead in medieval Latin Christianity as a whole. He also explicates the origins, development and meaning of the Cluniac death ritual's myriad elements as they were spoken, sung and performed within the sacred spaces of the monastic complex-cloister, chapter house, infirmary, church and cemetery.

Frederick S. Paxton is Brigida Pacchiani Ardenghi Professor of History at Connecticut College, in New London, CT, USA. He is the author of Christianizing Death: The Making of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe (1990), Anchoress and Abbess in Ninth-Century Saxony: the Lives of Liutbirga of Wendhausen and Hathumoda of Gandersheim (2009) and numerous articles and essays on sickness, death, dying and the dead in medieval Europe.