Brepols Online Books Medieval Miscellanea Collection 2022 - bob2022mime

This volume collects contributions from the international conference Biblia regum. Bibbia dei re, Bibbia per i re (sec. iv-xiii) held at the University of L’Aquila, 16-17 April 2018. The collection sheds a new light on the relation between the Bible and royal authority in the late antique and medieval West. By focussing both on the use of biblical quotations and on distinct features of biblical manuscripts - such as dedications, comments, translations and illustrations - contributors investigate how the Bible functioned as a behavioural model to which rulers and their subjects should conform, as well as a text that supported royal power. Collectively, the contributions address significant aspects of the layered interconnection between royal power and the Holy Writ, and lead to a fruitful dialogue between different fields of research.

Chronicle, Crusade, and the Latin East offers a collection of essays exploring three closely connected thematic areas: the narrative traditions surrounding the early crusading movement, the influence of these textual traditions on wider processes of medieval historical writing and storytelling, and the history of crusading and the Latin East.

In recent years, the field of crusade studies has witnessed a significant groundswell of scholarly work, with particular emphasis on the narrative construction of crusading deeds in text and song, of the important role played by memory and memorialisation in transmitting crusading tales and promoting participation, and the nature of life in the Latin states of the East. This volume not only engages with, and offer fresh insights into, these topics, but also serves as a monument to the career of Susan B. Edgington, who has done so much to increase modern understanding of crusade narratives and the crusading past, and who has made a significant impact on the careers of many scholars. The collection of essays gathered here by established and early career historians, Edgington’s friends and students, thus furthers the study of both crusading as narrative and crusading as a lived experience.

Over the past several decades, scholars of medieval and early modern Iberia have transformed the study of the region into one of the most vibrant areas of research today. This volume brings together twelve essays from a diverse group of international historians who explore the formation of the multiple and overlapping identities, both individual and collective, that made up the Iberian peninsula during the eleventh through seventeenth centuries. Individually, the contributions in this volume engage with the notion of identity in varied ways, including the formation of collective identities at the level of the late medieval city, the use of writing and political discourse to construct or promote common political or socio-cultural identities, the role of encounters with states and cultures beyond the peninsula in identity formation, and the ongoing debates surrounding the peninsula’s characteristic ethno-religious pluralism.Collectively, these essays challenge the traditional dividing line between the medieval and early modern periods, providing a broader framework for approaching Iberia’s fragmented yet interconnected internal dynamics while simultaneously reflecting on the implications of Iberia’s positioning within the broader Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds.

Crusading and western interaction with the Holy Land is often a contentious topic, not least because modern popular perception of medieval east-west contact is that it was defined by violence, conquest, and religious persecution. Building on recent scholarship, this collection of essays takes an interdisciplinary approach to the role of crusading and contact with the Holy Land in medieval Britain in order to investigate the myriad ways in which these contacts influenced artistic, literary, visual, and social culture in medieval Britain. By looking at new material and focusing on the domestic response to crusading and the Holy Land, the contributions gathered here offer new insights into the influence of these contacts on the medieval British world view, as well as their impact on topics such as ideals about masculinity and kingship, geographical perception, and aspirational codes of conduct for the medieval British elite.

Based on the evidence of artistic production and material culture this collective volume aims at exploring cross-cultural relations and interaction between Greeks and Latins in late medieval Greece in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade. Fourteen essays discuss mostly new and unpublished archaeological and artistic material, including architecture, sculpture, wall-paintings and icons, pottery and other small finds, but also the evidence of music and poetry. Through the surviving material of these artistic activities this volume explores the way Byzantines and Latins lived side by side on the Greek mainland and the Aegean islands from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries and traces the mechanisms that led to the emergence of the new, composite world of the Latin East. Issues of identity, patronage, papal policy, the missionary activities of the Latin religious orders and the reactions and responses of the Byzantines are also re-considered, offering fresh insights into and a better understanding of the various manifestations of the interrelationship between the two ethnicities, confessions and cultures.

The construction (and application) of models that order complex phenomena such as ‘the world’ is not a ‘neutral’ activity: theoretical models and ideas help us to perceive and categorize the information conveyed by experience and tradition alike; in turn, they also influence the behaviour and actions of individuals and groups.

Collecting a global series of case studies on premodern societies, this volume proposes new research into premodern models of world-order and their effects. With its focus on the period between c. 1300 and 1600, it seeks to open up fresh perspectives for premodern Global History and the analysis of phenomena of transcultural contact and exchange.

Focussing on religious, political, and geographical ideas and models, the contributions explore whether and how large-scale concepts influenced or even determined concrete actions. The examples include socio-religious concepts (Christianity, terra paganorum, dār al-harb), political concepts (empire) and geographical notions. A special section is dedicated to comparative insights into societies in Sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, and pre-Columbian America. Taken together, the contributions underline the importance and effects of historically shaped cultural traits in the long term.

Bien que la dérision s’inscrive aux marges du corpus littéraire et artistique sur Alexandre, il existe une veine comique qui rabaisse le souverain le plus prestigieux de l’Antiquité, avec une tonalité joyeuse ou bien plus grave et accusatrice. Si elle ne cesse d’évoluer au fil des siècles tant le rire, l’irrévérence et la satire sont ancrés dans l’historicité, elle s’affirme, dans ses différentes incarnations esthétiques, comme un discours parallèle, un discours d’à côté, qui devient parfois un véritable contre-discours. L’objet de ce volume est ainsi d’entamer une analyse diachronique - qui n’a encore jamais été menée - des modes de dérision à l’encontre d’Alexandre et de ce qu’il incarne, de leurs significations et de leurs motivations. Comique divertissant, célébration paradoxale d’une icône de la royauté, satire politique de la mégalomanie et de l’autoritarisme, ou parodie révélatrice d’un rejet de conventions esthétiques et de leurs instrumentalisations politiques et culturelles : les écritures visuelles et textuelles de la dérision à l’encontre du grand Alexandre le Grand engagent tous ces aspects depuis l’Antiquité.

The contributions of this special issue - proceedings of the conference on royal nunneries that took place in Prague in July 2020 - focus on the monasteries connected to the ruling houses, which were endowed with special privileges and enriched by royal and aristocratic donations, often serving as instrumenta regni. They are introduced as active cultural hubs, stages for royal and courtly promotion, and places of personal and dynastic self-representation. This includes female monasteries, the agency of female élites in medieval society and their role as patrons and addressees of works of art.

While medieval Iceland has long been celebrated and studied for its rich tradition of vernacular literature, in recent years attention has increasingly been paid to other areas of Old Norse-Icelandic scholarship, in particular the production of hagiographical and religious literature. At the same time, a similar renaissance has arisen in other fields, in particular Old Norse-Icelandic paleography, philology, and manuscript studies, thanks to the development of the so-called ‘new philology’, and its impact on our understanding of manuscripts. Central to these developments has been the scholarship of Kristen Wolf, one of the foremost authorities in the fields of Old Norse-Icelandic hagiography, biblical literature, paleography, codicology, textual criticism, and lexicography, who is the honorand of this volume.

Taking Prof. Wolf’s own research interests as its inspiration, this volume takes an unprecedented interdisciplinary approach to the theme of Sainthood, Scriptoria, and Secular Erudition in Medieval and Early Modern Scandinavia in order both to celebrate Wolf’s profound career, and to illustrate the many ways in which these seemingly different fields overlap and converse with each other in important and productive ways. From sculpture to sagas, and from skaldic verse to textual editions and the translation of hitherto unpublished works, the contributions gathered here offer new and important insights into our knowledge of medieval and early modern Scandinavian literature, history, and culture.

This volume offers a comparative approach to the crusade movement on the frontiers of Latin Christendom in the high Middle Ages, bringing a regional focus to research on these peripheral phenomena. It features several key questions: Which military campaigns were propagated as crusades on the peripheries of the Christian West? What efforts were made to gain recognition for them as crusades and what effects did these have? What value did the crusade movement have for societies at the fines christianitatis? What role did the cruciatae have in strengthening pan-Western sense of togetherness and solidarity, and what role did they have for creation of a crusader and frontier identity? The eighteen papers, ranging in scope from the southern and eastern Baltic regions to Iberia, Egypt and the Balkans, provide new insights into the ways in which crusade rhetoric was reflected in the culture and literature of countries involved in crusading beyond the Holy Land.

Henry of Rheinfelden, a Dominican from Basel, spent the last decade of the fourteenth century at the University of Vienna studying theology. During this time he took notes on the academic activities of the first rectors of the university and deans of the Faculties of Arts and Theology. This volume explores Rheinfelden’s contribution to our understanding of the doctrinal, curricular, administrative, and prosopographical history of the early University of Vienna. Deciphering Rheinfelden’s surviving notebooks in the Universitätsbibliothek Basel sheds new light on the rise of an academic elite in Vienna. His manuscripts reveal a network of scholars sharing a passion for knowledge and supply a gallery of intellectual profiles, starting with the mentors of the group, Henry of Langenstein and Henry Totting of Oyta, and continuing with the lesser-known figures Stephen of Enzersdorf, Gerhard Vischpekch of Osnabrück, Paul (Fabri) of Geldern, Andreas of Langenstein, Rutger Dole of Roermond, Nicholas of Hönhartzkirchen, Nicholas of Dinkelsbühl, John Berwart of Villingen, John Stadel of Russbach, Peter de Treysa, Michael Suchenschatz of Hausleiten, Peter Schad of Walse, Thomas of Cleves, and Leonhard of Dorffen. The papers gathered in this volume highlight the intricate relationship between a commitment to administrative duty and an appetite for the creation of a doctrinal tradition via debating, forging arguments, defending and attacking positions, commenting on authorities, and adopting and adapting academic practices imported from Paris, since the majority of the authors in our gallery were educated in Paris and built their careers in Vienna. Through Rheinfelden’s notebooks, this volume provides access to unique and previously unknown texts that together offer a new image of the medieval University of Vienna.

Transforming Space deals with visible and invisible changes in premodern cities, their causes and the way in which they were perceived and received. The chapters in this book analyse the development and management of urban space, combining case studies and insights from a range of cities from all over Europe. Several contributions deal with the impact of major events on the urban tissue: geopolitics; disasters such as fires or wars; expropriation or redevelopment projects directed by urban governments; religious change such as the Dissolution in England, and the Reformation and Counter-Reformation on the continent. On closer scrutiny, however, some of these major events were only an accelerator of already ongoing processes of change. By shifting the perspective from the city as a whole, to neighbourhoods, urban blocks or even plots of land, other chapters reveal how functional change or real estate dynamics changed the urban landscape almost imperceptibly. This book is written from a comparative perspective that takes into account path-dependency. Pre-existing power relations, ideology and mentality, the resilience of property structures, the impact of building regulations, subsidies, or the effects of real estate markets are shown to have had different outcomes for different social groups and the evolution of neighbourhoods.

This volume presents recent archaeological research on the agriculture and society of al-Andalus during the Middle Ages, especially from the perspective of ‘hydraulic archaeology’ - an avenue of research developed by Spanish researchers which focuses on the analysis of irrigation systems created by Islamic colonists from the eighth century onwards. More recently, this research perspective has incorporated the analysis of other agricultural systems, such as dryland agriculture and pasturelands. All of these agricultural regimes are complementary in peasant-led subsistence agricultural systems. From a methodological perspective, this archaeological approach is highly innovative, and uses a wide range of techniques (aerial photography, cartographical analysis, field survey, archival research, and archaeological excavation) in order to outline the size and boundaries of cultivation and grazing areas, to define specific plots of land and the related road networks, and to identify other associated facilities, such as watermills.

In connection with these topics, several issues are discussed: the earmarking of rural or urban farming areas for irrigation, draining, or dryland agriculture; the process of construction and the subsequent evolution of these farming areas; the transformations undergone by these areas after the feudal conquest; and, finally, the identification of pasturelands and the analysis of the evidence concerning their management.

During the Ancient Greek and Roman eras, participation in political communities at the local level, and assertion of belonging to these communities, were among the fundamental principles and values on which societies would rely. For that reason, citizenship and democracy are generally considered as concepts typical of the political experience of Classical Antiquity. These concepts of citizenship and democracy are often seen as inconsistent with the political, social, and ideological context of the late and post-Roman world. As a result, scholarship has largely overlooked participation in local political communities when it comes to the period between the disintegration of the Classical model of local citizenship in the later Roman Empire and the emergence of ‘pre-communal’ entities in Northern Italy from the ninth century onwards.

By reassessing the period c. 300-1000 ce through the concepts of civic identity and civic participation, this volume will address both the impact of Classical heritage with regard to civic identities in the political experiences of the late and post-Roman world, and the rephrasing of new forms of social and political partnership according to ethnic or religious criteria in the early Middle Ages. Starting from the earlier imperial background, the fourteen chapters examine the ways in which people shared identity and gave shape to their communal life, as well as the role played by the people in local government in the later Roman Empire, the Germanic kingdoms, Byzantium, the early Islamic world, and the early medieval West. By focusing on the post-Classical, late antique, and early medieval periods, this volume intends to be an innovative contribution to the general history of citizenship and democracy.

This innovative volume of cultural history offers a unique exploration of how gender and status competition have intersected across different periods and places. The contributions collected here focus on the role of women and the practice of masculinity in settings as varied as ancient Rome, China, Iran, and Arabia, medieval and early modern England, and early modern Italy, France, and Scandinavia, as well as exploring issues that affected people of all social rank, from raillery and pranks to shaming, male boasting about sexual conquests, court rituals, violence, and the use and display of wealth. Particular attention is paid to the performance of such issues, with chapters examining status and gender through cultural practices, especially specific (re)presentations of women. These include Roman priestesses, early Christian virgin martyrs, flirtation in seventh-century Arabia, and the attempt by an early modern French woman to take her place among the immortals. Together this wide-ranging and fascinating array of studies from renowned scholars offers new insights into how and why different cultures responded to the drive for status, and the complications of gender within that drive.

Le phénomène formulaire est foisonnant, protéiforme et omniprésent dans tous les aspects des pratiques culturelles médiévales. Poésie, actes épiscopaux, encyclopédies, récits de miracles, charmes, formulaires notariaux, chroniques : tous ces genres textuels emploient des formules à des degrés divers et sous des formes variées. Au-delà de cette diversité apparente se dessinent cependant des problématiques communes: désir de permanence, argumentation fondée sur un savoir partagé unissant une communauté d’utilisateurs (et excluant aisi ceux qui n’appartiendraient pas à ladite communauté), souplesse et adaptabilité bien réelles derrière la fixité apparente de la forme.

Ce quatrième ouvrage consacré à la formule médiévale rassemble des contributions en français, en anglais et en espagnol. À travers l’étude fine d’une multitude de documents de natures et d’origines géographiques très variées, ces articles analysent les formules à la fois dans leur fonctionnement textuel (et parfois graphique) et dans leur rôle social. La confrontation de disciplines différentes permet d’aborder le phénomène formulaire dans sa globalité, et ainsi de mieux distinguer ce qui n’est propre qu’à un type de formules ou de texte particulier et ce qui est au contraire essentiel au concept de formule.

Les objets des transferts culturels sont innombrables et leur étude est particulièrement importante pour comprendre les mondes normands médiévaux et leurs multiples interfaces avec le monde scandinave, les îles Britanniques, l’Europe orientale et la Méditerranée. Cet ouvrage s’intéresse aux processus de transmission et de réception, d’adaptation, d’adoption ou de rejet, en montrant comment ces dynamiques font évoluer les cultures entre le VIIIe et le XIIe siècle. Différents types d’objets sont ainsi abordés, qu’ils soient matériels (broderie ; accessoires du costume ; artefacts en fer ; monnaies ; manuscrits ; monuments funéraires ; sculptures…) ou immatériels (savoir-faire, modèles littéraires, langue, pratiques religieuses et funéraires, idéologie du pouvoir, serment…), dont quelques-uns sont des ‘monuments’ emblématiques des mondes normands (la Tapisserie de Bayeux ; les mosaïques du sol de la cathédrale d’Otrante). Une attention particulière a été attachée à la mise en contexte de ces objets permettant d’en saisir la réinterprétation dans des environnements socio-culturels différents. L’ouvrage permet également de questionner le rôle et l’implication des acteurs des transferts culturels (élites aristocratiques, hommes d’Église, marchands, artisans, lettrés, copistes …) du fait de leur statut ou leur fonction, mais aussi selon leur aptitude à promouvoir un transfert. Il met en lumière des liens et des réseaux jusque-là mal connus, la circulation des modèles qui intéresse une multitude d’objets et de productions, et il contribue ainsi à explorer des situations de contact entre des populations différentes et la construction de leurs interactions.

Over the last two decades the historiography of medieval art has been defined by two seemingly contradictory trends: a focus on questions of visuality, and more recently an emphasis on materiality. The latter, which has encouraged multi-sensorial approaches to medieval art, has come to be perceived as a counterpoint to the study of visuality as defined in ocularcentric terms.

Bringing together specialists from different areas of art history, this book grapples with this dialectic and poses new avenues for reconciling these two opposing tendencies. The essays in this volume demonstrate the necessity of returning to questions of visuality, taking into account the insights gained from the ‘material turn’. They highlight conceptions of vision that attribute a haptic quality to the act of seeing and draw on bodily perception to shed new light on visuality in the Middle Ages.

Founded at the beginning of the twelfth century on the outskirts of Paris, the Parisian school of Saint-Victor soon became an intellectual centre on a European scale: through the international recruitment of its masters; through the wide handwritten dissemination of their works, in particular those of Hugh and Richard; and finally through the extent of its doctrinal contribution to a common European culture, on a large number of points: the importance of acquiring a "general culture"; the need for a rigorous historical approach to biblical texts, open to rabbinic exegesis; a contagious interest in the writings and thought of the pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita; a major contribution to the constitution of a theological discipline; an effort to reconcile fervour in spiritual life and psychological finesse in the analysis of contemplation and its stages. In short, a curiosity for all fields of knowledge and, at the same time, an effort to unify them into a universal and unified wisdom.

The Book gathers new studies on original sources concerning Hugh of St. Victor, as the intellectual founder or the Victorine school; several of his Victorine brothers and disciples: Richard, Achard, Andrew, Godfrey, Absalon, up to late and little known Victorine masters as Pierre Leduc and Henri le Boulangier, at the time of the Great Schism (with critical edition of inedited texts); their influences on twelfth century texts as Ysagoge in theologiam or Speculum Ecclesiae, on Franciscan authors including Antony of Padua, Bonaventure, Rudolf of Biberach, and Duns Scotus, on romance literature of troubadours, on Carmelite authors of the sixteenth centruy and - a still uncharted territory - on　Polish culture from Middle Ages to contemporary times.

The essays in this book bring to light and analyse the continuities and shifts in daily religious practices across Europe - from Portugal to Hungary and from Italy to the British Isles - in the transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. While some of these changes, such as the increasing use of rosaries and the resort to Ars Moriendi, were the consequence of the rise of a more personal and interiorized faith, other changes had different causes. These included the spreading of the Reformation over Europe, the expulsion or compulsory conversion of the Jews in the Iberian Peninsula, and the conquest of large portions of eastern Christianity by the Turks - all of which forced people, who suddenly found that they had become religious minorities, to adopt new ways of living and new strategies for expressing their religiosity.

By recovering and analysing the cultural dynamics and connections between religious power, knowledge, culture, and practices, this collection reconsiders and enriches our understanding of one of the most critical phases of Europe’s cultural history. At the same time, it challenges existing narratives of the development of (early) modern identities that still, all too often, dominate the self-understanding of contemporary European society.

Scribes played complex, often overlooked roles in the production of hand-written texts across Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. Some scribes simply copied the exemplar; other scribes participated with authors and decorators in establishing the miseen- page and overall appearance of a text. Many decisions needed to be made regarding the selection of text script; the style of rubrication, display scripts, and initials; the placement and execution of potentially elaborate illuminated images. What was the role of the scribe in contributing to the decision-making process or in determining the final format and material appearance of a document, scroll or codex?

This volume explores many of the choices that a single scribe or groups of scribes would need to make when writing and presenting a text, whether in a monastic, cathedral or lay setting. The articles in the volume range from case studies of a single artifact to the analysis of multiple copies and versions of a particular text.

The authors include eminent specialists in the field of manuscript studies as well as midand early career scholars.

This volume is published in honour of Paul Binski, whose scholarship and teaching have done so much to illuminate the material and intellectual worlds of Gothic art and architecture. Remarkable for its material scope and philosophical depth, Paul’s work has had a powerful influence on the current state of the field: this is reflected here in thirty-four essays on buildings, works of art and ideas in a wide range of historical and geographical contexts, from Iberia to Scandinavia and Italy to Ireland. Consistently fresh in their scholarship, these essays combine to make an important contribution to medieval art history. In doing so they reflect the admiration and affection which Paul inspires in his students and colleagues. With contributions by: Gabriel Byng, Meredith Cohen, Emily Guerry, James Hillson, Ethan Matt Kavaler, Tom Nickson, Zoë Opačić, Claudia Bolgia, Jean-Marie Guillouët, Justin E. A. Kroesen, Julian Luxford, Robert Mills, John Munns, Matthew M. Reeve, Laura Slater, Beth Williamson, Jessica Berenbeim, Spike Bucklow, Marcia Kupfer, Jean-Pascal Pouzet, Miri Rubin, Kathryn M. Rudy, Rocío Sánchez Ameijeiras, Lucy Wrapson, Patrick Zutshi, Mary Carruthers, Jill Caskey, Lucy Donkin, Kate Heard, Robert Maniura, Alexander Marr, M. A. Michael, Conrad Rudolph, Betsy Sears.

Although ‘Otherness’ is an extremely common phenomenon in every society, related research is still at its beginnings. ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages is a versatile and complex theme that covers a great number of different aspects, facets, and approaches: from non-human monsters and cultural strangers from remote places up to foreigners from another country or another town; it can refer to ethnic, cultural, political, social, sexual, or religious ‘Otherness’, inside or outside one’s own community. In any case, however, ‘Otherness’ is a subjective phenomenon depending on personal views and ascriptions, an issue of ‘imagination’ and experience rather than ‘reality’. There is neither one single model of alterity nor is ‘Otherness’ a stable phenomenon, but it changes over time and according to the cultural context. All this calls for methodological reflection and needs thorough investigation.

The methodological introduction and the 18 contributions of this volume demonstrate the great diversity of the theme and its different manifestations and perspectives. They tackle the problem from distinct angles and disciplines (history, art history, archaeology, literary history, and philology) in a wide chronological and thematic frame, using different methodological approaches, dealing with different areas (from Northern and Southern Europe to Byzantium and India), perspectives (including law, social order, the past, a sea), and diverse kinds of sources. They examine all kinds of ‘Otherness’ mentioned above, highlight demarcation and rejection, aversion or acceptance, assimilation and integration, thus relativizing a strict dichotomy between ‘the Self’ and ‘the Other’ or between inside and outside. This volume is so far the most comprehensive attempt to tackle the huge problem of ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages.