BOB2022MOME

« On ne naît pas homme, on le devient ». La formule de Simone de Beauvoir détournée par les historiennes et les historiens des masculinités peut également s’appliquer à la période médiévale à travers l’éducation. Au sein du discours clérical du xiii e siècle, la masculinité laïque, loin d’être innée, est en effet envisagée comme un apprentissage autant pour les garçons et les adolescents que pour les adultes - pères de famille et maris. Cette identité de genre constitue un statut qui s’acquiert au prix de nombreux efforts sur soi-même, par un long processus de transformation intérieure. Élaboré dans les commentaires bibliques, un idéal de masculinité incarné par Adam se dessine également et exerce une grande influence sur le comportement masculin prescrit dans les textes pédagogiques. Le discours normatif ainsi produit participe de la différenciation des sexes. Il constitue un moyen privilégié de forger l’identité sexuée et un terreau fertile d’exploration historique.

Dans une perspective d’histoire culturelle et sociale, cet ouvrage s’intéresse à la manière dont la masculinité est construite au sein d’un corpus de sources du xiii e siècle principalement composé par des frères mendiants. Il interroge un domaine de recherche au développement récent, en plein essor depuis les années 1990-2000, qui reste toutefois encore peu exploité pour la période médiévale, en particulier dans le milieu francophone. Ayant rendu les hommes visibles en tant qu’êtres sexués, l’étude des masculinités s’avère pourtant complémentaire de l’histoire des femmes et indispensable pour appréhender les sociétés médiévales dans le dialogue entre les genres qui y prend place.

La insólita victoria de la Santa Liga sobre la flota turca en la batalla de Lepanto (1571) inspiró la puesta en marcha de la maquinaria propagandística imperial, destinada a ensalzar el reinado de Felipe II y las virtudes de Juan de Austria como general de la armada cristiana. Esto ofrecía un marco idóneo para el desarrollo de toda clase de poesía encomiástica, donde el género épico había ocupado un lugar destacado desde antiguo. El vigoroso aliento poético de Lepanto llegó a Santiago de Guatemala, donde el poeta y gramático madrileño Francisco de Pedrosa compuso una epopeya titulada Austriaca siue Naumachia, que ha permanecido inédita hasta nuestros días.

Este volumen consta de dos partes. La parte I contiene el estudio introductorio de la obra, donde se ofrecen, en primer lugar, los datos biográficos de Pedrosa. Seguidamente se examinan las características y los diversos procedimientos compositivos de la Austriaca, donde lo clásico y lo moderno, la épica y la historia, lo pagano y lo cristiano confluyen en un juego incesante. También se abordan algunas cuestiones problemáticas como la datación de algunos de los paratextos del manuscrito y los indicios que apuntan al estado in fieri de la versión que se ha conservado de esta epopeya. La parte II consta de la edición crítica del poema y de estos escritos que lo acompañan: dos versiones -una en latín y otra en castellano- de una carta prologal, los poemas laudatorios y una carta de fray Martín de la Cueva dirigida a Pedrosa.

Anyone familiar with the Modern Icelandic language will know that the country’s policy is to avoid borrowing lexemes from other languages, and instead to draw on their own vocabulary. This often results in the formation of a word pair, consisting of a loanword and its respective native equivalent, as the process of borrowing systematically eludes the tight tangles of language policy. But how did this phenomenon develop in the Middle Ages, before a purist ideology was formed?

This volume offers a unique analysis of a previously unexplored area of Old Norse linguistics by investigating the way in which loanwords and native synonyms interacted in the Middle Ages. Through a linguistic-philological investigation of texts from all medieval Icelandic prose genres, the book maps out the strategies by which the variation and interplay between loanwords and native words were manifested in medieval Iceland and suggests that it is possible to identify the same dynamics in other languages with a comparable literary tradition. In doing so, new light is shed on language development and usage in the Middle Ages, and the gap between case-study and general linguistic theory is bridged over.

Fille du roi Philippe V et de Jeanne de Bourgogne, Marguerite de France (1312-1382) est une figure majeure et pourtant méconnue du XIVe siècle. Après une éducation soignée marquée par l’influence de Mahaut ainsi que par les raffinements et les crises qui caractérisent la cour des derniers Capétiens, elle est mariée au futur comte de Flandre Louis de Nevers en 1320. Investie de la délicate mission de réconcilier les lions et les lys, elle affronte des débuts calamiteux sur le plan personnel et politique avant que son installation en Flandre et la naissance de l’héritier Louis de Male ne lui confèrent une certaine influence. Si les révoltes flamandes puis le veuvage la conduisent à un retrait apparent, elle maintient la Flandre dans l’alliance française en imposant à son fils une série de mariages. Héritant en 1361 des comtés d’Artois et de Bourgogne, elle devient une figure essentielle du jeu politique, redressant une situation d’abord périlleuse et rassemblant autour d’elle un nouveau parti bourguignon. Cette vie de princesse est marquée par une intense circulation s’appuyant sur un vaste réseau de résidences, et s’accompagne des raffinements d’un mode de vie princier qui éclaire sur une culture matérielle mêlant usages français, septentrionaux et bourguignons. Du mécénat aux pratiques dévotionnelles s’élabore l’identité complexe d’une fille de roi de France marquée par Mahaut d’Artois, jouant des images traditionnelles d’un pouvoir féminin pacificateur tout en recourant à la force. À ce titre, elle peut être considérée comme une marraine de l’État bourguignon.

Readers and Hearers is a broad, multi-disciplinary treatment of the chanting of the Scriptures (epistle and gospel) at Mass in the Middle Ages. This form of chanting followed a procedure that continued to be used in the western Latin liturgy until the mid-twentieth century and in the traditional Latin Mass today. The readings were not simply spoken, but chanted to formulae that stood halfway between heightened speech and song (cantillation). Specific clerics (lectors, subdeacons, deacons), distinctively vested, were commissioned to chant the Scriptures, employing a ritual that came to be surrounded by an elaborate ceremonial. For the gospel this involved acolytes, processional movement, and the employment of ecclesiastical ‘furniture’ (pulpit, ambo, and choir screen).

While the laity attending Mass could generally see all of the ritual actions, what did they understand of the Latin text they were hearing? In areas where Latin was spoken in Antiquity the ability to comprehend Latin passively as it morphed into the Romance vernaculars survived longer than generally assumed. Naturally, in Germanic lands, christianized in the early Middle Ages, that capability never existed. Several manuals were created to guide layfolk to engage in devotions suitable to the various parts of the Mass. How all of these elements - ceremony and devotional aids - united ‘readers’ with ‘hearers’ at Mass is the theme of the present volume, which also covers Martin Luther’s guidelines for the chanting of the Scriptures in German.

Biblical interpretation, writings on the contemplative/mystical life and a continuing deep reflection on the nature and meaning of symbols come together in powerful ways in Victorine writers, particularly Hugh and Richard, as well as the lesser-known writer Thomas Gallus (Thomas of Vercelli), a Victorine canon who became the abbot of a house of regular canons in Vercelli, Italy. This volume contains: (1) Hugh’s On the Ark of Noah and A Short Treatise on the Form of the Ark, treatises that unfold Hugh’s teaching on stages and fruition of the mystical quest in relation to a complex drawing that incorporates a figure of Christ seated in majesty, embracing a map of the world on which is superimposed a diagram of Noah’s Ark, representing the 12 stages of the contemplative quest; (2) Richard’s On the Ark of Moses, a work that uses the symbolic (allegorical and tropological) interpretation of the Ark of the Covenant and the figures of the Cherubim that accompany the Ark in the Jerusalem Temple to convey Richard’s vivid and compelling teaching on the varieties of contemplative experience as he understood them in twelfth-century Paris; and (3) Thomas Gallus’ Commentary on the Song of Songs, which offers a window into a formative period of transition in the western Christian spiritual tradition, with Gallus’s commentary on the Song of Songs giving voice to a more “affective” (versus “speculative”) understanding of the mystical quest and experience, drawing upon and extending earlier Victorine explorations of the interrelationship of love and knowing in the experience of contemplation. For those interested in the dynamics of the spiritual quest and symbolic understanding in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, as well as insights that can inform the modern quest for knowledge and love of God, these are essential works for any library.

Textile industries were one of the driving forces of the urbanisation process in medieval Northwest Europe, and nowhere was their impact so profound as in Flanders, where almost all larger and smaller cities were involved in manufacturing woollens from the 12th to the 16th century. Ypres, the third city in the county, was perhaps the most important concentration of industrial labour and capital in this period. In their heyday in the 13th and 14th centuries Ypres woollens were exported all over Europe and Ypres entrepreneurs and textile workers were able to adapt in very flexible ways to changes in demand. This book investigates not only what the impact of cloth manufacture was on urban society, it also tries to unravel the social mechanisms of industrial development in late medieval cities. It focuses on social inequalities and on the often difficult relationship between the various stakeholders in the urban cloth industry: merchants, entrepreneurs, guild masters and skilled and unskilled workers. Through the analysis work practices, wage levels, investment strategies, gender issues and political aspirations, it unravels how urban industries in the pre-industrial era shaped social relations in the city, how they moulded the urban fabric.

The notion that, upon the advent of the English in 1167, all Gaelic peoples in Ireland were immediately and ipso facto denied access to the English royal courts has become so widely accepted in popular culture that it is often treated as fact. In this ground-breaking monograph, however, the narrative of absolute ethnic discrimination in thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century English Ireland is for the first time tackled head-on through a thorough re-examination of the Irish plea rolls. Through a forensic study of these records, the author demonstrates not only that there was a great deal of variation in how members of various ethnic groups and women who came before the English royal courts in Ireland were treated, but also that there was a large - and hitherto scarcely noticed - population of Gaels with regular and unimpeded access to English law, and that the intersections between gender/sex and ethnicity have too often been deeply misunderstood or disregarded. A close comparison between the treatment of Gaelic women and men and that of the English of Ireland, together with an in-depth examination of other ethnicities from around the Irish Sea, provide a new understanding of English Ireland in which it is clear that there was not a simple dichotomy between the English and the unfree, but rather that people lived an altogether more complex and nuanced existence.

This study provides a systematic and comprehensive overview of Hus’s ideas on the last things as they are presented in both his work and life. It examines the content and language of his works, particularly his Latin sermons and correspondence, from a literary-historical perspective. It explores general eschatology (Antichrist, purgatory, heaven and hell), as well as its intertwining with the Last Things that Jan Hus experienced personally in his struggle against Antichrist. Thus, the reader will learn not only about Hus’s official ideas, but also about his intimate thoughts contained in correspondence written during his exile and even as he was in prison awaiting death.

The book also presents Hus’s eschatology in the broader context of Church reform. It clarifies how Hus’s eschatology developed from its beginnings up to his death, and takes into account the writings of other thinkers whose ideas are connected to Hus’s eschatology, such as John Wycliffe, Milíč of Kroměříž, Matěj of Janov, and Nicholas of Dresden. The book also features an introductory prolegomena on Hus’s life and work and early reform eschatology, which describes not only relevant Czech influences on Hus’s eschatology (e.g. university theology, social-political factors, the Czech preaching tradition), but also European influences (e.g. Peter Lombard, heterodox doctrines).