Brepols Online Books Medieval Miscellanea Collection 2023 - bob2023mime

The purpose of this volume is to explore, re-interpret and re-contextualise the various natures of practices performed by the Orthodox and Catholic pilgrims in Balkan countries in their devotional ʽpath to touch the sacred and holyʼ through the prism of pilgrimage contents, and their articulating, using, and handling strategies. Inter- and transdisciplinary perspectives constitute a strong point for exploring the essence of this collective practice of worship, which is theoretically and critically interpreted, and chronologically and diachronically analysed. Therefore, the various visions of the authors, formed on the basis of qualitative and critical analysis of primary (ethnographic and folkloric data from field interviews, archive documents, samples, etc.) and secondary sources, come to fill a gap in research on pilgrimage in southeast Europe, and especially on pilgrimage practices in Eastern Orthodoxy. Particularly, the ritual practices, sacred places in contemporary Balkan societies, religious folklore, divine intervention stories, miracle-working icons, relics and reliquaries as part of the structure of pilgrimage are discussed.

The authors explore the context in which the Christian shrines in the Balkans are spaces where the ethnic and denominational patterns in pilgrimage are revealed openly on multiple levels; they delve into how the correlative effects between politics and religion are manifested. In this volume, which is the result of a project initiated by the Balkan History Association, the authors focus on theoretical analysis, stressing the historical and contemporary behaviour performed by the Christian pilgrims, and highlighting the fact that the motivations for going to the sacred places can vary, from seeking and obtaining Divine help to leisure, religious/faith tourism, etc.

Il regno di Pipino, figlio di Carlo Magno, è stato a lungo trascurato dalla ricerca storica, nonstante la sua importanza per l’Italia, le regioni transalpine e il mondo carolingio nel suo insieme. I contributi qui raccolti, esito di due convegni tenutisi a Trento e a Vienna, mettono in luce con approcci diversi e innovativi i molteplici aspetti della cultura del suo regno, la sua azione politica e militare e la rappresentazione che ne diedero i contemporanei. Questo volume, pertanto, offre un sguardo inedito su Pipino; nuove prospettive di ricerca su un sovrano dimenticato.

This book explores the viewing and sensorial contexts in which the bodies of kings and queens were involved in the premodern societies of Europe, Asia, and Africa, relying on a methodology that aims to overcoming the traditional boundaries between material studies, art history, political theory, and Repräsentationsgeschichte. More specifically, it investigates the multiple ways in which the ruler’s physical appearance was apprehended and invested with visual, metaphorical, and emotional associations, as well as the dynamics whereby such mise-en-scène devices either were inspired by or worked as sources of inspiration for textual and pictorial representations of royalty. The outcome is a multifaced analysis of the multiple, imaginative, and terribly ambiguous ways in which, in past societies, the notion of a God-driven, eternal, and transpersonal royal power came to be associated with the material bodies of kings and queens, and of the impressive efforts made, in different cultures, to elude the conundrum of the latter’s weakness, transitoriness, and individual distinctiveness.

Written transmission relies on the fact of ‘publication,’ the step between the authorial process and reception. But what does ‘publishing’ mean in the context of a manuscript culture, in which books were copied slowly and singly by hand? This is a fundamental question. If one fails to appreciate the act of publication, one’s understanding of any authorial work and its reception from any period will remain defective. The case studies in this volume ask what it meant for medieval and renaissance authors and their associates to publish. The contexts under scrutiny range from England to Italy, from hagiography to literary criticism, and from Carolingian monasteries to renaissance libraries. Medieval publishing remains undiscovered territory in the main. This volume constitutes a first effort towards a long-term narrative, from the ninth to the sixteenth century.

This volume proposes a framework for reflection on practices of writing personal names in medieval sacred spaces, uniting historians, art historians, and specialists in written culture (both epigraphers and palaeographers). It traces the forms and functions of names that can be found within the space of early medieval churches and cemeteries, focusing mainly, but not solely, on inscriptions. By examining names written in various kinds of media, from liturgical books to graffiti and more formal inscriptions, the contributors investigate the intentions and effects of the act of writing one’s own name or having one’s name written down. Their interest resides less in the name itself than the interactions it had with its spatial, iconographic, linguistic, ritual, and cultural context, and what this indicates about medieval graphical practices. What is a name from a graphic point of view? What are the specificities of the epigraphic manifestations of names? By whom were names written, and for whom were they intended (if they were even meant to be accessed)? Addressing these and other questions, this volume shows the importance of inscriptions as historical sources and the contribution they give to the study of medieval societies at the intersection of history, anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, and semiology.

Compiled between 1262 and 1272 in Toledo under the patronage of Alfonso X, the Castilian Alfonsine Tables were recast in Paris in the 1320s, resulting in what we now call the Parisian Alfonsine Tables. These materials circulated widely and fostered astronomical activities throughout Europe. This resulted in a significant number of new works, of which there are a few hundred, extant in more than 600 manuscript codices and dozens of printed editions. These manuscripts and imprints, broadly contemporary to the works they witness, comprise the written record of Alfonsine astronomy and provide the focus of this volume.

A first series of essays examines individual manuscripts containing Alfonsine works. The authors seek to reconstruct, from the manuscript evidence, the cultural, astronomical and mathematical worlds in which the manuscripts were initially copied, compiled, used and collected. A second series of essays turns from the particular codex to the individual work or author. These contributions ask how particular works have been transmitted in surviving manuscript witnesses and how broader manuscript cultures shaped the diffusion, over two centuries, of Alfonsine astronomy across Europe. A final essay reflects on the challenges and opportunities offered by digital humanities approaches in such collective studies of a large manuscript corpus.

This volume concentrates on how the sermon, a pivotal element in mass communication, aimed to shape the people of Europe. Rather than setting up the usual binary divides, it highlights the linguistic complications, the textual inter-relationships, the confessional cross-currents, and the variations between public and private sermon dissemination operating at different rates and with variable results throughout Europe. Effectively the emphasis here is on how Catholic preachers and Catholic preaching carried on in the period between the handwritten and the printed sermon, a time when not only the mode of production was changing but when the very purpose and meaning of preaching itself would soon alter in a western Christian world that was becoming no longer completely Catholic. By examining case-studies chosen from countries with contrasting manuscript and printing traditions (Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Low Countries, Romania, Spain, and Sweden), we aim to examine some of the main historical, literary, and theological factors in the development of the sermon in Latin and the vernaculars, which is itself in the process of changing formats, and sometimes languages, at a time of religious ferment from the advent of print to the death of Martin Luther. These essays, which are effectively in dialogue with each other, are divided into geographical/linguistic sections organized along broadly chronological lines. They circulate from the peripheries of Europe to the centre, moving from areas where evidence is now scarce to situations of thriving production.

Ever since the Christianization of the planetary week in Late Antiquity, the notion of Sunday as a day of rest, as well as the rhythm of a seven-day week, has been a constant. Yet the cultural history of Sunday in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages is complex. Detailed research reveals a greater diversity than appears at first glance. For example, Sunday did not simply replace the Sabbath, nor was the Jewish Sabbath commandment directly adopted. Furthermore, the Sunday laws of Emperor Constantine officially gave the inhabitants of the Roman Empire a day of rest free of work, but the effect and reception of the laws is hard to grasp, even among Christian authors. Moreover, Sunday was by no means a central theme in the history of late antique Christianity, so that the scattered references must be interpreted.

This edited collection, based on a conference in Vienna in 2019, investigates the relevance of Sunday and the weekly rhythm in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages in the everyday life of people, in monasticism, in synods, in further imperial and ecclesiastical laws, and in disciplinary and liturgical developments. It also covers controversies with the Jewish Sabbath as well as reflections on the aspect of rest, freedom, and of charity. While exploring different views and regional differences, the contributions show the growing importance of the Lord’s Day, especially since the sixth century, as part of the Christianization of society and the sacralization of the calendar.

Across three thematically-linked sections, this volume charts the development of competing geographical, national, and imperial identities and communities in early medieval England. Literary works in Old English and Latin are considered alongside theological and historical texts from a range of disciplinary perspectives. Accounts of travel, foreign contacts, conversion, migration, landscape, nation, empire, and conquest are set within the continual flow of people and ideas from East to West, from continent to island and back, across the period. The fifteen contributors investigate how the early medieval English positioned themselves spatially and temporally in relation to their insular neighbours and other peoples and cultures. Several chapters explore the impact of Greek and Latin learning on Old English literature, while others extend the discussion beyond the parameters of Europe to consider connections with Asia and the Far East. Together these essays reflect ideas of inclusivity and exclusivity, connectivity and apartness, multiculturalism and insularity that shaped pre-Conquest England.

The three-volume project Cohesion in Multi-Ethnic Societies in Europe from c.1000 to the Present explores and seeks to find solutions to a crucial problem facing contemporary Europe: in what circumstances can different ethnic groups co-operate for the common good? They apparently did so in the past, combining to form political societies, medieval and early modern duchies, kingdoms, and empires. But did they maintain their ethnic traditions in this process? Did they pass on elements of their cultural memory when they were not in a dominant position in a given polity?

The first volume of the project explored written sources about the past to show how communities shaped their collective memories in order to ensure the smooth functioning of multi-ethnic political communities. This second volume looks beyond texts and focuses on activities and events that were designed to build a sense of community within a political community made up of different ethnic groups. The coexistence of different ethnic groups is considered not through the prism of theoretical analyses by intellectual elites, but by following community members’ responses to current events as recorded in the sources.