BOB2020MOME

Through careful analysis of the Romanesque cathedral of Molfetta (in Apulia, southern Italy), Williams demonstrates how the commercial boom of the medieval Mediterranean changed the way churches were funded, designed, and built. The young bishopric of Molfetta, emerging in an economy of long-distance trade, competed with much wealthier institutions in its own diocese. Funding for the cathedral was slow and unpredictable. To adapt, the builders designed toward versatility, embracing multi-functionalism, change over time, specialization, and a heterogeneous style.

This book offers a way of reading maps of the Holy Land as visual imagery with religious connotations. Through a corpus of representative examples created between the sixth and the nineteenth centuries, it studies the maps as iconic imagery of an iconic landscape and analyses their strategies to manifest the spiritual quality of the biblical topography, to support religious tenets, and to construct and preserve cultural memory.

Maps of the Holy Land have thus far been studied with methodologies such as cartography and historical geography, while the main question addressed was the reliability of the maps as cartographic documents. Through another perspective and using the methodology of visual studies, this book reveals that maps of the Holy Land constructed religious messages and were significant instruments through which different Christian cultures (Byzantine, Catholic, Protestant, and Greek Orthodox) shaped their religious identities. It does not seek to ascertain how the maps delivered geographical information, but rather how they utilized the geographical information in formulating religious and cultural values.

Through its examination of maps of the Holy Land, this book thus explores both Christian visual culture and Christian spirituality throughout the centuries.

Die musiktheoretische Schrift des Akakios Chalkeopulos stellt ein von allen bis jetzt im Rahmen des Corpus Scriptorum de Re Musica edierten Theorien unabhängiges Werk dar. Es entstand Anfang des 16. Jahrhunderts in Kreta, im venezianischen Einflussbereich. In dem Autographon, Athen, Hs. EBE 917, versuchte Akakios den Sonnen- und Mondzyklus mit der Berechnung des Paschalion aufzuzeigen, und eine Verbindung zur Kirchenmusik herzustellen. Neben diesen theoretischen Berechnungen weist eine große Zahl von Musikbeispielen darauf hin, dass für Akakios die Unterweisung der Sänger in der musikalischen Praxis Kretas ein großes Anliegen war. Besonders die Aufführungspraxis hatte die Aufmerksamkeit des Akakios auf sich gezogen, und seine Abhandlung ist das früheste Dokument, in dem der Begriff "Exegese" im Kontext des byzantinischen Gesangs verwendet wird. Da sowohl die Musiktheorie als auch das angeschlossene Anastasimatarion, das Hymnar des Akakios, ein Unikat darstellen, ist zu vermuten, dass mit den aufgezeichneten Melodien eine orale kretische Tradition zum Ausdruck kommt, die von Akakios weiterentwickelt wurde.

Qu’est-ce que le « Champ de Mars » qui fait de brèves apparitions dans les sources sous les premiers Carolingiens et auquel, nous dit-on, Pépin « le Bref » aurait substitué un « Champ de Mai » tout aussi énigmatique ? Quel rapport entre ce Champ de Mars et celui qui fut l’un des centres névralgiques de la Rome républicaine ? Telles sont les questions qui inspirent le présent ouvrage. Il n’y répond pas tant « de front » - les données exploitables, rares, éparses et fragmentaires n’y suffisent pas - que par petites touches, en apportant des éclairages nouveaux ou renouvelés sur un certain nombre de points choisis : l’historiographie du sujet, qui révèle, entre autres aspects inattendus, la vitalité et la permanence extraordinaires de formules d’une très haute antiquité, relayées et amplifiées par l’érudition du Grand Siècle ; l’exploration des six ou sept cents ans séparant l’original romain de l’avatar alto-médiéval, qui livre la trace ténue de continuités d’un ordre différent, liées, notamment, aux cérémonies d’investiture des princes de ce monde ; puis, au cœur de l’ouvrage, l’examen des témoins textuels de la tradition franque (diplômes mérovingiens, chronique de Nibelung, annales dérivées de celles, perdues, de Murbach, vignettes sur les derniers Mérovingiens apparentées à celle d’Éginhard, célèbre entre toutes) ; enfin, la dimension calendaire de la réforme pippinienne, son rapport supposé à l’affirmation ou à la diffusion de créneaux religieux exclusifs (Quatre-Temps, Carême). L’enquête dont on pose ici quelques jalons prend donc en quelque sorte le contrepied des mégalographies des Lumières, si déterminantes en dépit de leurs défauts évidents - l’histoire n’était guère, alors, qu’une science auxiliaire au service de la philosophie politique.

In 1239 the Christian convert Nicholas Donin submitted thirty-five articles to Pope Gregory IX that decried the indecency, blasphemy, and heresy in the Talmud. As a result, the pope triggered a campaign across Europe that gave rise to a trial of the Talmud in Paris in 1240. The Latin translation of the Talmud - namely, the 1245 Extractiones de Talmud and later versions such as the Excerptum de Talmud - emerged from these events.

This volume offers the first critical edition, along with an English translation, of the Excerptum de Talmud. Drawing on the substantial translation of the Babylonian Talmud known as the Extractiones de Talmud (Paris, 1245), the Excerptum provided a selection of passages from the Talmud which its compiler organized according to controversial topics.

This book consists of two principal parts. The first contains a study of the Excerptum, its textual source (the Extractiones de Talmud), and an overview of the historical background which prompted this translation. The second part consists of an edition and translation of the text, as well as an edition of the passages from the Extractiones which served as the basis for the Excerptum.

These texts mark a significant chapter in Christian anti-Jewish disputations and Latin polemical works in the Middle Ages. This volume will thus prove useful to scholars interested in Latin philology, religious disputation, medieval translation and transmission of knowledge, and the history of Christian-Jewish relations.

La doctrine anthropologique qui se dégage dans les Questions à Thalassios de Maxime le Confesseur donne une place de choix à la perception sensible, qui est considérée comme la première étape indispensable à toute connaissance humaine. Le juste exercice de la sensation est un des enjeux fondamentaux de la vie pratique, c’est-à-dire de la morale, puisque le développement des passions mauvaises dans la vie humaine découle d’une ignorance et d’une erreur de jugement, précisément en ce qui concerne l’appréhension du monde sensible. Le juste exercice de la sensation est aussi la condition de possibilité de la contemplation naturelle, car il permet à l’homme de voir à travers les figures du monde visible l’intention et le plan du Créateur. C’est grâce à cette contemplation du créé que l’être humain accomplit sa mission d’unification du monde sensible et du monde intelligible, et accède à la connaissance de Dieu et à l’union avec Dieu en vue de laquelle il a été créé.

Élève des écoles parisiennes vers 1145-1150, en particulier de celle d’Adam du Petit-Pont, devenu lui-même enseignant - vers 1150-1155 environ - Godefroid entre à Saint-Victor où il «se soumit à l’autorité d’un maître» qui fut Richard, avant d’y déployer une activité intellectuelle et enseignante «en prose, en vers rythmiques et métriques, et en mélismes» et de remplir la charge de bibliothécaire et liturge (armarius). Philosophe et poète (auteur d’un Fons philosophiae dédié à Étienne de Tournai), prédicateur fécond (on conserve un volume de ses sermons), orateur quasi-officiel (dans des chapitres généraux de l’Ordre victorin ou des synodes parisiens), musicien et poète dans une abbaye qui illustre le genre de la séquence liturgique, un peu artiste (il aura laissé des autoportraits), auteur d’une compilation canonique: ces talents multiples n’ont pas empêché Godefroid d’être considéré comme un auteur du second rang, dont l’œuvre n’est accessible, en des éditions dispersées, que pour une faible part. Son Microcosmus pourtant va bien au-delà, et pas seulement par sa masse, de l’opuscule de circonstance. Plus encore, Godefroid est, avec Guillaume de Saint-Thierry et Absalon de Saint-Victor, un des rares auteurs du xii e siècle dont on possède des autographes. La découverte, après l’édition princeps de Philippe Delhaye en 1951, des autographes entiers ou partiels du Microcosmus, demandait qu’en soit reprise à nouveaux frais l’édition, en tenant compte de la transcription de Godefroid, de ses propres interventions sur son manuscrit, de sa transcription par un copiste, des repentirs de celui-ci et des nouvelles interventions de l’auteur. Un apparat critique génétique permet de rejoindre le texte de Godefroid et de baliser les étapes de son émergence.

The Pore Caitif is an anonymous late fourteenth-century manual of devotion and religious instruction destined for a lay readership. The text, in its various forms, circulated widely and was evidently very popular, as the fifty of so extant manuscripts and fragments readily attest. Of them, no fewer that twenty-eight transmit a full text showing remarkable fidelity to the now presumably lost archetype. As such, the Pore Caitif invites comparison with the considerable production and diffusion of religious texts in English which figure prominently in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In this respect, it is to note that some critics have argued for the presence of Lollard interpolators or commentators in a number of the extant manuscripts, including the influence of the Wycliffite Bible translation.

This edition will be published in two volumes. This, the first, provides a full Introduction to the manuscripts and their transmission, classifying them in groups, while examining some of the trends observable in some of the more notable variants they inevitably preserve. A commentary on the text is followed by a full glossary. The second volume will discuss manuscript relationships and the problems arising therefrom.

Surgida en la remota Antigüedad, la leyenda de los signa iudicii ha permeado tradiciones y pueblos, culturas y religiones diversas, durante siglos. En todo ese tiempo, esta relación de signos que precederán al fin del mundo ha sufrido variada suerte, desde la gran productividad que presentó durante los albores de la apocalíptica, con un primitivo catálogo de siete señales ampliado paulatinamente, pasando por un uso pragmático y proselitista durante el período medieval, hasta su eclipse con la llegada del racionalismo epistemológico. Se trata de un repertorio de señales escatológicas de amplia naturaleza (atmosférica, legendaria, geológica, espiritual) que buscaba impactar en el imaginario social y colectivo a través de lo que hemos denominado factor miedo. La materia tuvo inmensa repercusión en las tradiciones gaélica, anglosajona o latina, y la recogen desde autores como Lactancio, Orígenes o Comodiano, hasta el mismo Agustín de Hipona. Posteriormente, su difusión fue dilatada, primero a través de varios teóricos y exégetas del cristianismo durante los siglos X, XI y XII, y más tarde de mano de los autores en lenguas vernáculas occidentales. A partir del siglo XIII se introduce en la Península Ibérica, inaugurándose con un texto que Gonzalo de Berceo dedicó a los muy grandes signos ante [...] del Judicio cabdal. Paralelamente a las versiones cristianas, destaca la incidencia que la materia tuvo entre varios autores musulmanes peninsulares a lo largo de los siglos.

The Anglo-Norman Bible’s Joshua includes tales of spies, giants, the prostitute Rahab, the punishment of Achan, oracles, and Joshua’s brilliant military victories. Joshua stops the sun. The first half of the book relates Joshua’s stunning conquests in Canaan. The second half, the apportionment of the land among the tribes, detailed geographical surveys of territorial boundaries, and the death of Joshua.

Skilful, well-paced story telling is a feature of the ANB’s Joshua. To the accounts of Rahab and Achan we may add the chronicle of Joshua’s successful, crushing campaign in the wake of the destruction of Makkedah. In rapid succession, and in an annalistic style involving staccato repetition of key phrases, the narrator relates the destruction of Libnah, Lachish, Eglon, Hebron, and Debir.

The text of the ANB’s Joshua is extant in British Library Royal 1 C III (base manuscript, L) and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS français 1 (P), both c. 1350 and both the Bibles of kings. L belonged at some point in the fifteenth century to Reading’s Benedictine abbey, entering the royal library in 1530. Characteristic of L is its occasional insertion of short glosses in English or Latin to clarify or correct the Anglo-Norman text. An illustrated text, P was prepared by an English workshop for the fourth baron de Welles, John, and his wife, Maud, daughter of William, Lord Ros. This is clearly the Bible of a wealthy and well-connected English family. After the Welles family, the manuscript belonged to Louis de Bruges († 1492), then to King Louis XII of France.

The Crown and the Cross examines the heretofore-unstudied role of the French province of Burgundy in the ‘traditional’ era of the crusades, from 1095-c.1220. Covering the First, Second, Third, Fourth, and Albigensian Crusades in detail, it focuses primarily on the Capetian dukes, a cadet branch of the French royal family, but uncovers substantial lay participation and some crusading traditions among Burgundian noble families as well. The book additionally uses the crusading institution to explore the development of the medieval French monarchy, and makes accessible a corpus of scholarship and documents that until now have mostly existed in French or Latin. It concludes that while piety and religion did play a central role in the experience of many everyday Burgundian crusaders, the greater political ramifications of the crusading project functioned in subtle and long-lasting ways, and had consequences for the entire institution, not just Burgundy or France. Of interest to scholars of the crusades, French history, and the formation of medieval Europe, The Crown and the Cross nuances, challenges, and expands our understanding of the intellectual genealogy of the crusades and their real-world consequences, fills a critical gap in the historiography, and poses a set of important conclusions and questions for continued study.

Founded in 1132, Fountains Abbey became the wealthiest English Cistercian monastery - yet relatively little analysis has been made of its surviving records to investigate how its wealth was controlled and sustained. This book deals with this secular aspect of the religious community at Fountains, investigating in particular the way in which prosaic business records were compiled and redacted. It traces the transmission of data from original charters through successive versions of cartularies, and in the process establishes the existence of a previously unknown manuscript. It also reveals how abbots in the fifteenth century interacted with and adapted the records in their care.

In this process, two quite different aspects of monastic life are uncovered. First, it sheds new light on the history of Fountains Abbey through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, amongst other things how it responded to the turmoil of the Black Death, and discloses for the first time the allegiance of one abbot to the Lancastrian cause during the Wars of the Roses. Second, it reveals the worldly skills shown by the community of Fountains that were successfully applied to exploit the monastery’s large landholdings across Yorkshire, mainly through wool and agricultural production, but also through fisheries, tanning, mining, and metalworking. The economic success of these activities enabled the abbey to become a prosperous institution which rivalled the wealth of the aristocracy.

Le tre descrizioni della Terrasanta crociata riunite in questo volume furono prodotte tra l’inizio del XII secolo - qualche anno dopo la presa europea della Palestina - e il 1170 circa - poco prima della riconquista musulmana di Gerusalemme. La prima, quella dell’inglese Saewulf, è un vero e proprio resoconto di pellegrinaggio dalla forte impronta personale, che con un linguaggio letterariamente spoglio ricorda le vicissitudini sperimentate dall’autore nel suo viaggio per mare e per terra, dalla Puglia a Gerusalemme e fin quasi a Constantinopoli. Quelle di Giovanni di Würzburg e di Teodorico sono invece due guide della città santa e di buona parte della Palestina, parzialmente sovrapponibili in quanto in gran parte derivate dal celebre trattatello di topografia sacra composto qualche decennio prima dal chierico nazareno Rorgo Fretello. Entrambi gli autori, e soprattutto il più raffinato Teodorico, si impegnano tuttavia in un processo di rielaborazione e amplificazione del loro modello, che viene ad arricchirsi di informazioni originali accumulate nel corso di una reale esperienza di pellegrinaggio, testimone dei rinnovati fasti architettonici e urbanistici del regno latino di Gerusalemme.

La versione latina originale dei testi qui tradotti è pubblicata nella collana Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis con il titolo Peregrinationes tres. Saewulf, John of Würzburg, Theodericus (CC CM, 139), a cura di R.B.C. Huygens (1994). I rimandi alle pagine corrispondenti dell’edizione sono forniti a margine di questa traduzione.

This is the first monograph devoted to manuscripts illuminated by the mid-fifteenth-century artist known as the Wavrin Master, so-called after his chief patron, Jean de Wavrin, chronicler and councillor at the court of Philip the Good of Burgundy. Specializing in the production of pseudo-historical prose romances featuring the putative ancestors of actual Burgundian families, the artist was an attentive interpreter of these texts which were designed to commemorate the chivalric feats of past heroes and to foster their emulation by noble readers of the day. Integral to these heroes’ deeds is the notion of justice, their worth being measured by their ability to remedy criminal acts such as adultery, murder, rape, and usurpation. In a corpus of 10 paper manuscripts containing the texts of 15 romances and over 650 watercolour miniatures, the stylized, expressive images of the Wavrin Master bring out with particular clarity the lessons in justice which these works offered their contemporary audience, many of whom, from the Burgundian dukes downwards, would have been responsible for upholding the law in their territories. Chapters are devoted to issues such as the nature of just war and how it is linked to good rulership; what forms of legal redress the heroines of these tales are able to obtain with or without the help of a male champion; and what responses are available in law to a spouse betrayed by an adulterous partner. The book will be of interest to scholars of medieval art, literature, legal and cultural history, and gender studies.