Brepols Online Books Medieval Miscellanea Collection 2021 - bob2021mime

This book provides a series of studies concerning unique medieval texts that can be defined as ‘books of knowledge’, such as medieval chronicles, bestiaries, or catechetic handbooks. Thus far, scholarship of intellectual history has focused on concepts of knowledge to describe a specific community, or to delimit intellectuals in society. However, the specific textual tool for the transmission of knowledge has been missing. Besides oral tradition, books and other written texts were the only sources of knowledge, and they were thus invaluable in efforts to receive or transfer knowledge. That is one reason why texts that proclaim to introduce a specific field of expertise or promise to present a summary of wisdom were so popular. These texts discussed cosmology, theology, philosophy, the natural sciences, history, and other fields. They often did so in an accessible way to maintain the potential to also attract a non-specialised public. The basic form was usually a narrative, chronologically or thematically structured, and clearly ordered to appeal to readers. Books of this kind could be disseminated in dozens or even hundreds of copies, and were often available (by translation or adaptation) in various languages, including the vernacular.

In exploring these widely-disseminated and highly popular texts that offered a precise segment of knowledge that could be accessed by readers outside the intellectual and social elite, this volume intends to introduce books of knowledge as a new category within the study of medieval literacy.

The oeuvre of Marc Boone (Ghent, 1955) has become standard reading for specialists of medieval European towns and cities, as well as for those interested in the history of state building - most notably that of the Burgundian polity. Honoring Ghent University’s venerable tradition of medieval studies begun by Henri Pirenne and building upon the work of his Doktorvater Walter Prevenier, Marc Boone also investigated taxation and the history of government spending, popular protest, and the persecution of “deviant” sexuality. Over the course of his rich career, he served as president of the European Association of Urban History and as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy of Ghent University. For more than twenty years, he taught the introductory course on historical criticism to every first-year student of the faculty, and thus had a major impact on the pensée critique of generations of young minds. Upon the occasion of his retirement in 2021, his former students have compiled this collection of some of his best historical essays, half of which have been translated from French and Dutch into English.

Humanity has always shown a keen interest in the pathological, ranging from a morbid fascination with ‘monsters’ and deformities to a genuine compassion for the ill and suffering. Medieval and early modern people were no exception, expressing their emotional response to disease in both literary works and, to a somewhat lesser extent, in the plastic arts. Consequently, it becomes necessary to ask what motivated writers and artists to choose an illness or a disability and its physical and social consequences as subjects of aesthetic or intellectual expression. Were these works the result of an intrusion in their intent to faithfully reproduce nature, or do they reflect an intentional contrast against the pre-modern portrayal of spiritual ideals and, later, through the influence of the classics, the rediscovered importance and beauty of the human body?

The essays contained in this volume address these questions, albeit not always directly but, rather, through an analysis of the societal reactions to the threats and challenges that essentially unopposed disease and physical impairment presented. They cover a wide range of responses, variable, of course, according to the period under scrutiny, its technological moment, and the usually fruitless attempts at treatment.

Si la notion de mystique semble aller de soi pour le Moyen Âge, ce semble être par suite d’un malentendu. Car si l’historiographie du xixe siècle flétrissait volontiers de ce mot ce qui, dans la littérature médiévale, lui semblait mièvre, irrationnel ou extravagant, les auteurs médiévaux se servent quant à eux de l’adjectif “mystique” pour désigner bien autre chose : une certaine manière d’interpréter les Écritures (sens mystique), une façon de discourir sur Dieu (théologie mystique), une appartenance à la même Église (corps mystique). Il convient donc de revenir aux textes, en leur posant ces questions. Quand le mot “mystique” est-il employé dans des œuvres médiévales, et que veut-il dire ? À l’inverse, dans les œuvres dites aujourd’hui “mystiques”, comment ce qui relève de cette catégorie est-il nommé, défini, compris par les auteurs eux-mêmes ? Est-il pertinent d’enclore dans un même genre des textes aussi divers que les visions, la littérature de dévotion, les analyses de la contemplation, les itinéraires de l’âme vers Dieu, la Théologie mystique du pseudo-Denys ? De la fin de l’époque patristique aux début de la Renaissance, le sens du mot “mystique” est-il resté stable, ou bien a-t-il évolué ? Au fond, peut-on dire que la notion moderne de mystique a son origine dans les temps médiévaux ?

The volume discusses Central European and Eastern Central European historiographies of the High and Late Middle Ages. It deals with histories written in a time which brought about a profound differentiation of medieval societies in these regions. As new social classes achieved economic and political power, the demand for reassuring identifications grew more pressing. Narratives of the past were tailored specifically for distinct social groups, often using vernacular languages instead of the universal language of elite education, Latin.

The volume pays attention to the interplay between languages and focuses on the strategies that individual works developed in order to balance the many alternative modes of identification. Filling a significant scholarly gap, the volume offers important insights into narratives of identification written in Latin and in the various vernaculars emerging as the new political languages of the period.

Les modes de pensée et de représentation médiévaux sont profondément marqués par l'usage de reprises et de régularités attendus et reconnaissables, qui sont sources de tensions productives entre expression individuelle et normes collectives, changement et continuité, création et convention. De façon très générale, toute formule se caractérise par un figement ou une régularité plus ou moins marquée laissant la place, en creux, à l'innovation. La définition de la formule se décline différemment en fonction de la discipline considérée, et cet ouvrage propose une réflexion interdisciplinaire sur ses différentes acceptions et sur les recoupements que l’on peut observer entre elles. En outre, un échange entre plusieurs intervenants, poursuivant une discussion sous forme de table ronde à l’occasion du colloque international organisé à Perpignan en 2014, vient clore le volume et propose un premier aperçu synthétique de l’emploi de la notion pour les différentes disciplines concernées : codicologie, diplomatique, épigraphie, histoire, histoire de l’art, littérature, linguistique, musicologie.

Ce travail sera prolongé par de futures publications dans la même collection, dans l’espoir que l’effort de clarification voulu permettra à d’autres d’explorer encore plus avant la notion de formule et de continuer à attester de sa fécondité pour les études médiévales.

When war ended, the hard work began. Crusader warfare was only the beginning, for after peace came huge and often fundamental changes for individuals and societies. First it was necessary to establish firm and secure agreements between enemies, and take care of prisoners of war and refugees. Soon followed new legal systems, and new social groups emerged as old and new families intermarried, or entire segments of the population became subordinates under new rulers. And in a longer time perspective, the entire physical landscape was changed to conform to and express the beliefs and values of the conquerors.

The military expeditions of the medieval crusades are well studied, at different times and in many diverse areas, but the consequences for individuals and societies much less. This book opens up a new research area, and contributes with 11 studies covering the Middle Eastern crusader states, the Mediterranean, and the Baltic Sea.

Drawing inspiration from the scholarship of Professor Michael Herren, founding editor of The Journal of Medieval Latin, this florilegium of studies advances our understanding of the dynamics of Latin and vernacular literature and learning in the early medieval world. Taken together, the papers gathered in this volume cast light on authors, poets, glossators, and compilers at work as they grappled with linguistic and literary ambitions and challenges, while negotiating their use of ancient authorities to address contemporary concerns.

Mary of Burgundy (r. 1477-1482) occupies an important place in the history of late medieval and Early Modern Europe, yet her life and principate have received relatively little scholarly attention. They are, however, key to the history both of the Low Countries and of Europe, since her marriage to Maximilian of Austria united the Habsburgs with the Valois-Burgundy dynasty, giving them vast territories on the borders of France. In this book, some of the best specialists in the field contribute to a better understanding of Mary’s principate, its features, and its long-term perception. In the first part, the authors address the issue of Mary’s contested legitimacy as a late-medieval female ruler: law, literature, visual art and theatrical representations are examined as means of communication, strengthening or weakening her authority. In the second part, the authors examine some of Mary’s governmental tools and the agents behind them. Finally, the last part questions the ways in which Mary’s power and her principate have been represented and reinterpreted in subsequent eras, often with political or social intent, beginning with Maximilian’s long regency and reign immediately after her death, right up to modern-day Belgium.

From bread and wine to holy water, and from oils and incense to the relics of saints, the material objects of religion stood at the heart of medieval Christian practice, bridging the gap between the profane and the divine. While theoretical debates around the importance of physicality and materiality have animated scholarship in recent years, however, little attention has been paid to finding solid, empirical evidence upon which to base such discussions.

Taking medieval Denmark as its case study, this volume draws on a wide range of different fields to explore and investigate material objects, spaces, and bodies that were employed to make the sacred tangible in the religious experience and practice of medieval people. The contributions gathered here explore subjects as diverse as saints’ relics, sculptures, liturgical vessels and implements, items used for personal devotion, gospel books, and the materiality of Christian burials to explore the significance of objects that moved the souls, bodies, hearts, and minds of the faithful. In doing so, they also open new insights into religion and belief in medieval Denmark.

Medieval science has become an increasingly popular area of academic interest over the past couple of decades, but much of this work has up to now concentrated on France and the Mediterranean, while relatively little attention has been paid to the north of Europe. This has led to the assumption that Northern Europe stood aside from the mainstream of scientific knowledge in the Middle Ages, when in fact the region was a vital part of the medieval network of scientific scholarship. This important volume aims to redress the balance in scholarship by bringing together for the first time a collection of studies on medieval scientific knowledge that focuses on both Scandinavia and England.

The essays gathered here examine topics as wide-ranging as the intellectual network between Denmark and Paris; the role of Dominican friars in spreading scientific knowledge in Scandinavia; the practical application of technology by English armourers; fragments of scientific manuscripts found in early modern Swedish documents; the use of scientific volumes and descriptions of university life in medieval Icelandic literature; and fresh insights into the careers of the English scientists Roger of Hereford, Roger Bacon, and Robert Grosseteste. Together, these papers show the dynamism and depth of science in the medieval North, and offer new insights into how scientific wisdom travelled through, across, and between the peoples of this region.

Throughout the centuries Byzantium's ambitious authors were conscious of the significance of literary registers for the reception of their texts. They deliberately made use of stylistic elements or refrained from using certain features in order to reach their target audience. There are certain groups of texts dating from various periods where these stylistic elements can be tracked precisely by comparison of two or even more versions with their model text. Such examples of rewriting can be found particularly within genres with a broader audience appeal, namely hagiography and historiography. It is in both genres that we encounter metaphrastic processes, in terms of stylistic elaboration and in terms of stylistic simplification.

As well as stylistic reshaping, metaphrasis may also encompass the addition or removal of literary and/or thematic aspects. All these processes signify intent as well as authorial interpretation. Frequently, the ideological orientation of a text is refurbished through rewriting. Teasing out these strands for exploration helps to supply a potential wealth of information on the author (if known), cultural (social, religious, historical) context, and creative ability, as well as levels of education and literacy.

This collection of essays explores the multifaceted representation of power and authority in a variety of late antique and medieval hagiographical narratives (Lives, Martyr Acts, oneiric and miraculous accounts). The narratives under analysis, written in some of the major languages of the Islamicate world and the Christian East and Christian West - Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, Greek, Latin, Middle Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and Persian - prominently feature a diverse range of historical and fictional figures from a wide cross-section of society - from female lay saints in Italy and Zoroastrians in Sasanian and Islamic Iran to apostles and bishops and emperors and caliphs. Each chapter investigates how power and authority were narrated from above (courts/ saints) and below (saints/laity) and, by extension, navigated in various communities. As each chapter delves into the specific literary and social scene of a particular time, place, or hagiographer, the volume as a whole offers a broad view; it brings to the fore important shared literary and social historical aspects such as the possible itineraries of popular narratives and motifs across Eurasia and commonly held notions in the religio-political thought worlds of hagiographers and their communities. Through close readings and varied analyses, this collection contributes to the burgeoning interest in reading hagiography as literature while it offers new perspectives on the social and religious history of late antique and medieval communities.

In this volume, thirteen of the world’s leading scholars of medieval France explore some of the most important ideas, events, personalities, and artistic creations of the Capetian world (987-1328). From some of the earliest medieval attempts to make narrative treatments of French history, through the invention of the schools, the creation of Gothic architecture, the practices of chivalry, the practice of statecraft, and the promulgation of law codes, the volume offers a panoramic view of the kingdom and the era that has come to define the medieval world in both the scholarly and popular imaginations.

The scholars brought together in this volume share as well a common sense of gratitude and an intellectual debt to Elizabeth A. R. Brown, whose own rigour and brilliance has inspired their work and shaped their sense of the past. Political Ritual and Practice in Capetian France is both a tribute to a scholar of real accomplishment and a collection of original scholarship raised upon on the foundations that Elizabeth A. R. Brown herself set down.

This volume discusses cosmological issues in Greek Patristic and Byzantine question-and-answer literature. By adopting this focus, it yields novel insights into both the (theological / philosophical) content and the (literary) form of the texts under scrutiny. How did Greek Patristic and Byzantine authors understand the cosmos of which they were a part and the world in which they lived? And what literary forms did they use to express their questions and answers on these issues? This collection of studies shows that, in order to bring out the important intellectual contribution of the authors under discussion, both ‘cosmology’ and ‘question-and-answer literature’ should be defined more broadly than expected. Several papers deal with the crucial corpora by Pseudo-Justin and Maximus the Confessor. Other authors under discussion include Philoponus, Pseudo-Caesarius, Michael Psellus, Severian of Gabala, and Nilus Doxopatres. Attention also goes to the critical edition of question-and-answer literature, as well as to the Greek Patristic and Byzantine reception of cosmological questions and answers from Antiquity (i.c. Aristotle, Philo of Alexandria, Plutarch, and Iamblichus).

The boundaries between sacred and secular in the late Middle Ages, traditionally perceived as separate domains, are nowadays perceived as porous or non-existent. This collection on religious connectivity explores a new approach to religious culture in the late Middle Ages. In assessing the porosity of the domains of sacred and secular, and of religious and lay, the contributors to this collection investigate processes of transfer of religious knowledge, literature, and artefacts, and the people involved.

Religious connectivity describes people in networks. This concept emphasises dynamics and processes rather than stability, and focuses on all persons involved in transfer and appropriation, not just the producers. It is therefore a fruitful concept by which to explore medieval society and the continuum of sacred and secular. By using the lens of religious connectivity, the authors of this collection shed new light on religious activities and religious culture in late medieval urban communities.

The articles gathered in this special issue of Convivium offer a variety of perspectives - history of medieval art, architecture, literary studies - that explore the relations between spoliation and translation, with a particular focus on the interconnections and similarities between material/artistic and textual/literary cultures. Building on current research in spolia and translation studies, these contributions respond to the increasing interest in and popularity of these two topics in recent scholarship. A conceptual point of departure is that reuse and translation represent two crucial processes facilitating cultural dialogues and exchanges across time and space. Material and textual spolia fascinate us, because they provide various means and levels of engagement with the past with a tangible form, sometimes of an ambivalent nature. Objects, artefacts, buildings, and texts have been subject to constant reworkings, through which they have been interpreted and translated: old stories gain new significance in new contexts, just as old objects gain new meanings in new settings. The aim of this collection is to foster a better understanding of such processes and, at the same time, of the history of the medieval worlds of the Eastern Mediterranean, which is marked by constant cross-cultural encounters and interactions.

The crusades have been remembered and commemorated in many ways, from the late eleventh century until today. Soon after the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, the fate of the First Crusade inspired literary, historiographical and artistic traditions. Participants in the subsequent crusades would look to the first Crusade for inspiration and spiritual guidance, while playing out their own ideas of crusading. Since then the crusades have been put to use in very divers ways and for different purposes. This volume explores how the crusades have been remembered, revered and ridiculed by those who participated in them and by those who in later periods made use of the crusades as an historical phenomenon. The volume thus traces the memory and legacy of the crusades by putting together essays that focus on the specific ways in which the crusades have been memorized, evoked and exploited from the eleventh century until today.

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.

Medieval communication followed rules that were defined, negotiated, and altered in processes of exchange. Conflicts resulting from different communication practices, as well as forms of innovation, revolve around rules that are not self-evident. Political actors such as princes and cities, chanceries, secretaries, ambassadors, and councillors formed rules of political participation, which became visible in written documentation. These rules were both formed and negotiated via processes of communication. Medieval chanceries can thus be understood as a vast field of experimentation where different solutions were tested, passed on, or discarded.

This book explores communication practices in German, French, Italian, Tyrolian, and Gorizian chanceries, as well as at diets from the tenth to the sixteenth century. Its chapters examine royal, monastic, princely, and communal chanceries. For the early and high Middle Ages, a close analysis of documents will reconstruct negotiation and communication from within the documents themselves. For the later Middle Ages, focus will turn to the chancery, with the appearance of chancery orders and chancery annotations that provide explicit insight in communication between the chancellors, secretaries, and political authorities. The growing amount and variety of documents issued in the late Middle Ages allows us to retrace conflicts resulting from differing chancery practices as well as attempts to reorganise the chancery into a political instrument for the prince. The processes of political communication will be followed in three parts. Part I focuses on the rules within documents. Part II looks at administrative processes within specific chanceries, while Part III explores forms of exchange between the chancery and other political actors.

The thematic framework of this special issue is an examination of the impact Russian émigrés had on the humanities and art. From art history to philosophy, artistic creation to ecumenical dialogue, the volume is dedicated to figures who, through their emigration from Russia, transformed their places of arrival and relevant fields. The articles in the volume assess these topics from an interdisciplinary point of view, extending the usual horizons of Convivium to other fields as well. The volume was published as the proceedings of the conference Transformed by Emigration. Welcoming Russian Intellectuals, Scientists, and Artists 1917-1945 held at the Hans Belting Library in February 2019.

This volume is about literacy in the medieval towns of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, and aims to understand to what extent these medieval urban societies constituted a driving force in the development of literacy in Nordic societies generally.

As in other parts of Europe, two languages - Latin and the vernacular - were in use. However, the Nordic area is also characterised by its use of the runic alphabet, and thus two writing systems were also in use. Another characteristic of the North is its comparatively weak urbanization, especially in Finland, Sweden, and Norway.

Literacy and the uses of writing in medieval towns of the North is approached from various angles of research, including history, archaeology, philology, and runology. The contributions cover topics related to urban literacy that include both case studies and general surveys of the dissemination of writing, all from a Northern perspective. The thematic chapters all present new sources and approaches that offer a new dimension both to the study of medieval urban literacy and also to Scandinavian studies.

Issu des rencontres internationales qui se sont tenues à l’Université Littoral - Côte d’Opale (Dunkerque) les 19 et 20 octobre 2017, le présent ouvrage vise à mieux appréhender le rôle prépondérant joué par les États bourguignons dans l’essor de l’écriture du voyage. Il s’attache en particulier au genre du récit de voyage qui, dans les villes des Pays-Bas comme à la cour des ducs, gagna bien vite la faveur des élites bourguignonnes : pèlerins, diplomates, soldats ou marchands, les voyageurs écrivains apportent pour beaucoup une contribution originale à ce mode spécifique de narration. Ce recueil d’études a par ailleurs pour objectif de mettre en lumière les liens subtils que ce genre littéraire entretient tout à la fois avec la littérature romanesque et la production historiographique qui s’épanouissent alors en terre bourguignonne et réservent une place non négligeable à l’écriture du voyage, imaginaire ou réel.