Brepols Online Books Medieval Miscellanea Collection 2022 - bob2022mime

The 2000th anniversary of Ovid’s death, in 2017-2018, led to an upsurge in conferences and publications dedicated to the author’s work and afterlife. One of these is the present volume, resulting from the conference Dopo Ovidio. Aspetti della ricezione ovidiana fra letteratura e iconografia, which was held on 7-8 May 2019 at the Department of Human Sciences (DSU) of the University of L’Aquila, and which looked at various aspects of Ovid’s fortune, from a diachronic and interdisciplinary perspective. The contributions cover a period of about fourteen centuries, from late antiquity until the end of the eighteenth century, and range from late Latin to medieval literature, from humanistic production to modern English and Italian literature, and from linguistics to the figurative arts. All these studies contribute to a collective appraisal of the multifarious impact of Ovid’s works, and especially of the Metamorphoses, the latter’s treatment of myth having been a starting point for integrations, developments, (re)interpretations and representations, in isolation or included in an iconographic program.

This volume presents essays exploring how the Carolingians (ca. 700-ca. 900 CE) - a regime known especially for concerns over imperial power, order, and moral correction - fostered a remarkable era of experimentation in medieval Europe. The scholars featured here ask new questions and conduct their own methodological experiments to uncover some of the many ways that people innovated within the Carolingian world. To that end, numerous themes are covered in this volume: culture and society, family and politics, religion and spirituality, literature and historiography, law and hierarchy, epistemology and science. This array of scholarly experiments reveals some of the range and depth of Carolingian invention. Furthermore, the essays consider how Carolingian innovation can be found in places both more and less known today, employing novel approaches to unearth some unexpected, even uncanny phenomena. This volume consequently offers a defamiliarizing view of the Franks, unveiling them as a people whose seemingly straightforward imperialism and reform were effective precisely because they stimulated and nurtured potent, creative impulses. In fact, one might argue that the Carolingian world’s conservative, moralizing authorities - despite, or perhaps at times because of, their determination to instil correct thought and behaviour in their subjects - fostered many varieties of experimentation. Collectively, the authors of this volume seek to inspire new thinking about the Carolingians, while modelling alternative approaches and potential avenues for future research. Carolingian Experiments overall encourages readers to see that much remains unexplored, unknown and even unexpected about the Carolingians and their world.

Who had a say in making decisions about the natural world, when, how and to what end? How were rights to natural resources established? How did communities handle environmental crises? And how did dealing with the environment have an impact on the power relations in communities? This volume explores communities’ relationship with the natural environment in customs and laws, ideas, practices and memories. Taking a transregional perspective, it considers how the availability of natural resources in diverse societies within and outside Europe impacted mobility and gender structures, the consolidation of territorial power and property rights. Communities, Environment and Regulation in the Premodern World marks Peter Hoppenbrouwers’s career, spanning over three decades, as a professor of medieval history at Leiden University.

What happens when scholars cross outside the perceived ‘boundaries’ of their discipline? What problems arise when a scholar trained in one field employs materials or methodologies from an adjacent subject area, engaging with new sources, research methodologies, and traditions, and how can such issues be resolved? Taking as its starting point the increasing shift towards interdisciplinarity seen within Viking-age studies, this collection of essays aims to explore the benefits and pitfalls that can arise from crossing disciplinary borders in this area, and to gain new knowledge about how to address issues that have occurred in previous examples of interdisciplinary combinations. The volume draws together contributions from authors in different disciplines, among them philology, history, archaeology, literary studies, folklore studies and history of religion, in order to hold a constructive and multi-perspective discussion on the benefits and issues arising from interdisciplinary research in studies of the Viking Age. Together, these chapters aim to bridge the gap that often exists between scholars from adjacent fields of research, and in doing so, to stimulate the trend in interdisciplinary approaches to research that can improve our understanding of the past.

This innovative collection explores the causes and effects of ‘disciplined dissent’ - forms of protest or political action positioned between the poles of submission and defiance. To identify the political influence of commoners, the emphasis is neither ‘top down’ nor ‘bottom up’ but on mutual influence and the interplay between rulers and ruled. Contributions concerning quite diverse polities show a careful opposition of non-elite people through an effort to respect the legislative system and to find common ground with the authorities. The aim was to emphasize aspects of the norms and institutions in favour of the benefit of the community, or to ensure adjustments of some aspects if found to be beneficial for the few and detrimental for many. The examination of non-violent pressure can help us to have a more exhaustive understanding of the protagonists, causes, and effects of socio-political changes in contexts of governmental development. The analysis includes cases of violent action that managed to secure royal approval. The premise of the book is that inequality, far from being accepted as normal and inevitable, was frequently questioned by less powerful people. When targeted by more or less evident forms of political marginalization, they laid claim to principles of justice and on this basis developed a critical comprehension of government, pursued a selective rejection of injustice, and gained recognition through negotiation.

In the years 816-819, a series of councils was held at the imperial palace in Aachen. The goal of the meetings was to settle a number of questions about ecclesiastical organization. These issues were hotly debated throughout the Christian Roman Empire of the fourth and fifth centuries, and then reinvigorated by the renewal of empire under Charlemagne and his son Louis the Pious. At the centre of the ensuing debate stood the distinction between monks and monastic communities on the one hand, and the so-called clerici canonici and their communities on the other. Many other reforms were proposed in its wake: the position of the episcopacy needed to be renegotiated, the role of the imperial court needed to be consolidated, and the place of every Christian within the renewed Carolingian Church needed to be redefined. What started out as a seemingly straightforward reorganisation of the religious communities that dotted the Frankish ecclesiastical landscape thus quickly turned into a broad movement that necessitated an almost complete categorization of the orders of the Church. The contributions to this volume each zoom in on various aspects of these negotiations: their prehistory, their implementation, and their influence. In doing so, previously held assumptions about the scope, the goals, and the impact of the ‘Carolingian Church Reforms’ will also be re-assessed.

Étudiant terrible et maître illustre, amant légendaire et logicien virtuose, moine instable et abbé réformateur, poète de génie et philosophe précurseur, théologien prestigieux et deux fois condamné pour hérésie, auteur entre autres de commentaires sur Porphyre et sur la Bible, de traités sur la dialectique et sur la Trinité, de poèmes amoureux et liturgiques, et encore - dans le même dossier - d’une autobiographie controversée, d’une correspondance passionnée et d’une règle religieuse, Pierre Abélard n’est pas seulement une des figures les plus célèbres de tout le Moyen Âge, il en est aussi, comme homme, comme écrivain et comme penseur, une des plus riches, des plus complexes et des plus insaisissables. Aussi a-t-il semblé utile de rassembler autour de sa personne - il en aurait sûrement été ravi - quelques spécialistes parmi les meilleurs de l’histoire, de la logique, de l’éthique, de la théologie, du droit, de la littérature et de l’historiographie du Moyen Âge.

In the Middle Ages, rewriting history was a distinct activity within the larger sphere of historical writing. Rewriting started with existing historical accounts, recasting them into new forms as new stories about the past. Changes in circumstances drove rewriting, encouraging historically literate writers and their patrons to examine their histories anew, to jettison what no longer made sense or was useful, and to supply new material to fill gaps or expand ideas. Writers rewrote not only for the present and future, but also for the past. They curated the past and reorganized its intellectual artifacts, thereby revealing new facets of old history to future eyes.

Rewriting was a defining characteristic of the central Middle Ages (900-1300), distinct both from earlier traditions of universal history and from later traditions of making continuations which left the narrative core intact. Reimagining the past by rewriting happened across genres, in the vernaculars as well as the universal languages of Latin and Greek, and across Europe, west and east. The chapters in this book explore the reasons and methods for rewriting, ranging across the Anglo-Norman realm, France and Flanders, Christian Iberia, Norman Italy and the Mediterranean, Byzantium, and Georgia and Armenia. Together, they show a set of rewriters who made themselves the authorities for their own age.

L’Ovide moralisé a joué un rôle significatif pour la connaissance des mythes antiques et la création de nouvelles œuvres littéraires qui se les approprient au moins jusque dans la première moitié du xvi e siècle, avant qu’il ne soit moqué et condamné. Dès son écriture au xiv e siècle, cette traduction en langue française des Métamorphoses d’Ovide accompagnée d’interprétations chrétiennes a rapidement connu le succès et une diffusion large auprès de publics divers qui la lisaient souvent, elle et ses gloses, plutôt que l’œuvre latine d’Ovide. De nombreux auteurs en français, en latin ou en anglais se sont inspirés de son texte pour créer leurs propres représentations littéraires de héros et héroïnes antiques, dans des œuvres poétiques, didactiques et historiographiques, ou pour élaborer leurs écritures de la moralisation. Les deux mises en prose de l’Ovide moralisé à la cour d’Anjou et à la cour de Bourgogne, les réécritures et remaniements qui sont ensuite imprimés, la traduction anglaise imprimée par William Caxton ont aussi contribué à prolonger l’influence qu’il a exercée. Cette dernière se lit aussi sans nul doute dans certaines des nouvelles traductions des Métamorphoses qui sont composées au xvi e siècle. Si cette influence a souvent été notée, si des emprunts de poètes du xiv e et du xv e siècles - Guillaume de Machaut, Jean Froissart, Eustache Deschamps, Christine de Pizan, Chaucer, Gower - ont été étudiés, la postérité de l’Ovide moralisé reste encore pour une large part à explorer. C’est l’objet de ce volume collectif, le premier qui soit consacré à la réception du texte du xive au xviie siècle.

Scandinavia has often been considered as a peripheral part of the Christian world, with its archbishopric in Nidaros an isolated outpost of the Catholic Church. This volume, however, offers a reassessment of such preconceptions by exploring the way in which the Nidaros see celebrated the cult of saints and followed traditions that were both part of, and distinct from, elsewhere in Christian Europe. The contributions gathered here come from specialists across different disciplines, among them historians, philologists, art historians, and epigraphists, to offer a multifaceted insight into how texts and objects, sculpture, runes, and relics all drove the cult of saints in this northern corner of Europe. In doing so, the volume offers a nuanced understanding of the development of cults, the saints themselves, and their miracles, not only in the Norse world, but also more widely.