Brepols Online Books Medieval Miscellanea Collection 2023 - bob2023mime

This volume explores how knowledge was made in the early medieval book in the Latin West through two interrelated practices: collecting and concealing. The contributions present case studies across cultures and subject areas, including exegesis, glossography, history, lexicography, literature, poetry, vernacular and Latin learning. Collectio underpinned scholarly productions from miscellanies to vademecums. It was at the heart of major enterprises such as the creation of commentaries, encyclopaedic compendia, glosses, glossaries, glossae collectae, and word lists. As a scholarly practice, collectio accords with the construction of inventories of inherited materials, the ruminative imperative of early medieval exegesis, and a kind of reading that required concentration. Concealment likewise played a key role in early medieval book culture. Obscuration was in line with well-known interpretative practices aimed at rendering knowledge less than immediate. This volume explores the practices of obscuring that predate the twelfth-century predilection, long recognised by historians, for reading that penetrates beneath the “covering” (integumentum, involucrum) to reveal the hidden truth. Cumulatively, the papers spotlight the currency of two crucial practices in early medieval book culture and demonstrate that early medieval authors, artists, compilers, commentators, and scribes were conspicuous collectors and concealers of knowledge.

Celts, Gaels, and Britons offers a miscellany of essays exploring three closely connected areas within the fields of Celtic Studies in order to shed new light on the ancient and medieval Celtic languages and their literatures. Taking as its inspiration the scholarship of Professor Patrick Sims-Williams, to whom this volume is dedicated, the papers gathered together here explore the Continental Celtic languages, texts from the Irish Sea world, and the literature and linguistics of the British languages, among them Welsh and Cornish. With essays from eighteen leading scholars in the field, this in-depth volume serves not only as a monument to the rich and varied career of Sims-Williams, but also offers a wealth of commentary and information to present significant primary research and reconsiderations of existing scholarship.

The King of Cyprus, Peter I of Lusignan (1359-1369), was one of the most fascinating figures in the history of the Latin East and the later crusades. He was involved in European power politics, his crusading activities brought him into conflict with the Turkish beyliks of Anatolia and the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt, and his rule was closely linked with broader developments in the Eastern Mediterranean, such as the decay of Byzantium, the East-West schism, and the beginning of the Ottoman expansion in the Balkans. His adventurous life constitutes a captivating case study of court life, feudal and chivalric ethos, and political culture in the fourteenth century. This volume investigates developments in the Eastern Mediterranean before and during the reign of Peter I from a comparative perspective. It consists of five parts, which treat the political, diplomatic, and ecological context of the crusading movement in the time between the fall of Acre (1291) and the sack of Alexandria (1365), Peter I’s crusading policy and the Alexandrian crusade, Cypriot society and court life in the time of Peter I, the situation in Muslim-Turkish Anatolia, the second target of King Peter’s crusading policy, and, finally, Byzantium, its encounter with the Turks, the schism of the Churches, and theological trends in the time of the Hesychast Controversy.