Brepols Online Books Medieval Miscellanea Collection 2022 - bob2022mime

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.