Brepols Online Books Medieval Miscellanea Original Archive v2016 - bobar16mimeo

The holding of the 2005 annual colloquium of the SIEPM in Kyoto, Japan, presented the opportunity to explore the very foundations of communication: the word in all its aspects. Whether mental concepts, as Aristotle had claimed, were the same for all people, whether from the East or the West; how these mental concepts were transformed into words; how words affected the concepts (e.g. in regard to the colour spectrum); how angels communicated with one another, and whether any words were appropriate for talking about God; whether words for things arise merely from convention, or have an essential relationship to what they describe; what exactly do the words for individuals, species and genera describe; why words can have powerful effects; what is the relationship between the inner word and the spoken word. The essays in this volume explore these questions largely from the texts of medieval Western philosophers and theologians from Boethius to Meister Eckhart, but some Hebrew and Arabic texts are also taken into consideration. The contexts range from the lively debates in the Parisian schools of the early twelfth century, through the subtle arguments of thirteenth and fourteenth century scholars, to mystical writings of the fifteenth century. Running as a thread through the essays are the translations and commentaries of Boethius on the Vetus logica of Aristotle, and the divine word of the Bible. The combination of contributions of Japanese scholars with both younger and more established scholars from the Western tradition ensures a rich and varied approach to this subject.

Les nouveautés culturelles qui se répandent en Europe latine aux xii e et xiii e siècles sont les expressions les plus hautes d’une longue période de croissance. Bien que déjà largement documentée, cette expansion pluriséculaire mérite d’être reprise et précisée.

Un cercle vertueux s’est enclenché aux alentours de l’an mil dans l’Europe latine, sans qu’il y ait simultanéité de dates et de rythmes sur tout le territoire. Pour être multiples, les composantes de cet essor se réduisent à un même thème: ce sont autant de triomphes de l’homme européen sur son environnement et sur lui-même: amélioration de l’outillage et des techniques agricoles, poussée démographique, défrichements, nouveaux sites de peuplement, renouveau urbain, renforcement de l’artisanat, essor de l’économie monétaire, développement et diffusion de l’écrit, promotion des langues vernaculaires.

Véhicule déterminant du nouveau savoir, les traductions surviennent dans un monde latin à l’essor multiforme. Elles l’accompagnent et le transfigurent. Elles en décuplent les possibilités. Elles expriment un engouement dévorant pour l’étude, dont en retour elles accroissent l’intensité et rehaussent le niveau. Les clercs sont aspirés par cette spirale, dont le terme marque la fin du Moyen Âge. Les acquis des siècles précédents servent aux hommes du xv e à renouer directement avec l’hellénisme et avec le classicisme latin, tout en franchissant les océans d’une terre maintenant centrée sur le soleil.

La polysémie du mot «monde» rend compte de la totalité des nouveautés qui, apparues au cours du xii e siècle de Europe latine, transforment en quelques cent ans le continent: le xii e siècle latin s’est transfiguré en véritable Nouveau Monde.

In questo volume sono editi gli atti del I seminario organizzatonel 2006 dal Centro interuniversitario per la storia e l’archeologia dell’alto medioevo (SAAME). Al centro del seminario è stato un tema di grande importanza per storia italiana: la conquista franca del regno longobardo e le sue conseguenze in tutti i campi, dai mutamenti politici - indagati soprattutto dal punto di vista della loro rappresentazione - ai mutamenti nell’insediamento rurale e urbano (dalle campagne toscane a capitali come Roma e Ravenna), a quelli nelle attività artistiche (la costruzione di edifici di prestigio) e culturali (epigrafia, documenti, codici, produzione normativa), nella circolazione monetaria (le zecche, i mancosi) e nei flussi commerciali (con in primo piano l’Adriatico). Inoltre si è tentato di inserire la ‘transizione’ italiana, ossia il passaggio della penisola sotto la dominazione carolingia, nell’ambito di un quadro europeo, prendendo in considerazione, con alcuni affondi tematici, la Turingia, la Baviera, l’Austrasia e infine la Spagna, dove è avvenuta un’altra fondamentale transizione, quella tra Visigoti e Musulmani.

Il titolo del libro, che fa riferimento ad una data precisa fornita dalla storia politica, l’anno 774, può apparire paradossale per presentare i risultati di un seminario nel corso del quale sono state interrogate allo stesso modo fonti scritte e fonti archeologiche, e va inteso in senso soprattutto simbolico, come un’ovvia allusione ad un altro anno cardine, il 751, anch’esso oggetto di indagini recenti. Ma al tempo stesso tale riferimento è utile per ribadire l’assoluta necessità di coordinare insieme, ai fini della ricostruzione del passato, i tempi e i risultati della storia politica (in questo caso il passaggio dai Longobardi ai Carolingi), dell’archeologia, della numismatica, della storia della documentazione scritta, della storia dell’arte e di tutte le altre storie.

The essays in this important and fascinating collection explore the genealogical literature of late-medieval Britain and France in relation to issues of identity, the transmission of power, and cultural, socio-political, and economic developments. By analyzing the mechanics of cultural and political inheritance and the processes of shaping a sense of identity and descent, the essays in this volume direct the reader towards a complex understanding of genealogical literature and its relationships with other genres, one which will further debate and research in these areas. The present collection presents an interdisciplinary approach to the genealogical literature of the late-medieval period, and brings together specialists in the fields of history, cultural history and literature to raise questions of gender, genre, and theoretical approaches. Broken Lines is also the first book-length study of genealogical literature to date, an exciting intervention into this emerging field of interest.

In considering the construction of medieval sermons, the term ‘construction’ has many meanings. Those studied here range from questions about sermon composition with the help of artes praedicandi or model collections to a more abstract investigation of the mental construction of the concepts of sermon and preacher. Sermons from a range of European countries, written both in Latin and vernaculars, are subjected to a broad variety of analyses. The approach demonstrates the vitality of this sub-discipline. Most of the essays are more occupied with literary and philological problems than with the religious content of the sermons. While many focus on vernacular sermons, the Latin cultural and literary background is always considered and shows how vernacular preaching was in part based on a more learned Latin culture. The collection testifies both to the increasing esteem of the study of vernacular sermons, and to a revival in the study of all those things contained in a preacher’s ‘workshop’, ranging from rhetorical invention, medieval library holdings and study-aids, through to factors that are crucial for the successful delivery of the sermon, such as the choice of language, mnemonic devices and addressing the audience. The interdisciplinary approach remains ever-present, not only in the diversity of the academic disciplines represented, but also within individual essays. The volume is based on a conference held in Stockholm, 7-9 October 2004.

Elucidating the steps that led to a finished work of art has been one of Molly Faries’ principal concerns in nearly forty years of research and teaching. A pioneer in infrared reflectography, she has demonstrated like no other scholar the importance of technical studies to art history, in the way that they provide insight into an artist’s technique and development, into collaboration within a workshop, and into master-pupil relationships. Molly Faries has taught generations of students and colleagues to view paintings not as static objects but as the results of successive choices.

The volume’s title, Invention: Northern Renaissance Studies in Honor of Molly Faries, evokes Molly’s passion for understanding an artist’s creative process. The term “invention” is here understood in the widest possible sense: How did a work of art come into being? How did an artist react to new stimuli or adapt to a new culture? Was innovation valued above adherence to a local tradition? To what degree could artists shape their patrons’ taste? How did artists transform their own inventions over time and adopt those of others? Was there a concept of invention specific to the Northern Renaissance and how did it differ from ours?

The authors who tackle these and other questions include university professors, curators, conservators, and conservation scientists, all recognized specialists in northern European art of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The artists they discuss are among the greatest painters, manuscript illuminators, printmakers, and sculptors: Johan Maelwael, the Limbourg brothers, Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling, Lieven van Lathem, Juan de Flandes, Jean Hey, Albrecht Dürer, Hieronymus Bosch, Master H.L., Jacques Du Broeucq, and Jan Brueghel the Elder.

This book, one of the few devoted specifically to the concept of invention in Northern Renaissance art, is richly illustrated with 32 color plates and 179 black-and-white reproductions; it includes an index.

Le déroulement de la consécration ou dédicace d’une église est codifié dans l’Église latine aux vii e et viii e siècles pour devenir, au Moyen Âge central, un rituel fastueux. La consécration apparaît alors comme l’acte fondateur d’un nouvel espace-temps polarisé par le bâtiment ecclésial. Les paroles prononcées et les gestes effectués lors du rituel contribuent à manifester cette nouvelle naissance et les transformations qu’elle implique. Les mesures prises pour en conserver le souvenir inscrivent l’événement dans la mémoire de la communauté liée au lieu consacré.

Œuvre commune d’un groupe d’historiens, d’historiens de l’art et d’archéologues médiévistes, le présent ouvrage propose une réflexion sur les implications sociales de la consécration de l’église au Moyen Âge central. Il s’agit tout d’abord de comprendre la dynamique du rituel et ses effets sociaux, en étudiant les déplacements des protagonistes, les gestes des célébrants, tant furtifs (bénédictions, signes de croix, onctions) que durables (marquages au sol ou sur les murs), les paroles prononcées, la musique, les chants et les odeurs qui plongent le rituel dans une atmosphère multi-sensorielle. Il s’agit ensuite d’examiner les conditions de production d’un commentaire normatif et exégétique sur la consécration, tant en amont qu’en aval de la célébration, et de comprendre les liens qui unissent ces différents modes de discours sur le rituel. Il s’agit enfin de comprendre les formes et les effets sociaux des narrations de l’événement-consécration, tant par le verbe (de la notice à la chronique) que par l’inscription monumentale et l’image peinte ou sculptée. Ces trois axes de la réflexion sont envisagés de manière croisée et complémentaire.

Les auteurs ayant contribué à cet ouvrage sont implantés dans des structures universitaires ou de recherche en France, Suisse, Belgique, Canada et États-Unis.

A key impulse of cultural transmission is engaging with the past for the benefit of the present. In seventeen essays on subjects that range from Paschasius Radbertus to Orhan Pamuk, the Regularis Concordia to Kurt Weill, and from Augustine to Adorno, Negotiating Heritage examines specific historical case-studies that reveal the appropriation, modification, or repudiation of a legacy. The overall focus of this interdisciplinary volume is memory: medieval conceptions of memory, resonances of the Middle Ages in later periods, and memory as a heuristic methodological device. Through tokens or other vestiges of the past - the physical memorial of a tomb, the ritualized retention of past acts or structures, the reverberations of a doctrinal, literary, musical, or iconographic topos, or the symbolic reminiscences of a past ideal - memory acts as the manifestation of something absent. This anthology studies such tokens in a way that provides a fruitful new perspective for the field of research into memory, and explores the methodological dimension of issues of heritage, genealogy, and tradition. Furthermore, Negotiating Heritage also probes the reception and construction of the Middle Ages in later periods; exploring the shifting territory of the meaning of the medieval itself. In its movement between medievalism and the medieval period, Negotiating Heritage is an important contribution to both established and emerging trends in critical thought.

This collection argues that gender must be considered as both an approach to history, and as a reflection of the deep workings of the lived, historical past. The sixteen original essays explore social and cultural expressions of gender in Europe from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. They examine theories and practices of gender in domestic, religious, and political contexts, including the Reformation, the convent, the workplace, witchcraft, the household, literacy, the arts, intellectual spheres, and cultures of violence and memory. The volume exposes the myriad ways in which gender was actually experienced, together with the strategies used by individual men and women to negotiate resilient patriarchal structures. Overall, the collection opens up new synergies for thinking about gender as a category of historical analysis and as a set of experiences central to late medieval and early modern Europe.

En hommage à Claude Thiry et dans le but de faire progresser les connaissances dans un domaine dont il est un éminent spécialiste, ce volume réunit une quarantaine d’études toutes centrées sur le moyen français.

En écho à la richesse des travaux du dédicataire, ces contributions se déploient selon six axes: les richesses de la langue, les formes de la prose, la diversité de la production poétique, l’historiographie princière, les œuvres de théâtre, les questions liées à l’édition de textes.

Tant par la variété des sujets traités que par la diversité des approches, ce livre constitue une contribution importante à ce vaste champ de recherche qu’est devenu le français des XIVe-XVIe siècles.

Trust is the basis of all social relations. It presupposes the concordance of word and deed. Trust is not created spontaneously, but requires a process of observation and socialization, and thus is culturally determined and subject to change. Writing may engender trust, and trust may be placed in written texts.

The contributions to this volume address the complex relationships between ‘trust’ and ‘writing’ in the Middle Ages. They deal with charters, historiography, letters, political communication, and the possibilities of trust in writing. Some of the questions addressed are: Does writing as a medium engender trust irrespective of the contents of the written text? Was trust in writing dependent on trust in an authority? Was the written form of the text meant to confer trust on its contents? Did rituals take place that were meant to enhance the text’s trustworthiness? Can changes be observed in the strategies of engendering trust? Was trust considered food for reflection in written texts? What was considered to constitute a breach of trust? The volume is dedicated to Michael Clanchy, whose work inspired much of its contents.

L’encyclopédisme médiéval a fait l’objet de divers colloques ces dernières années, apportant des éclairages complémentaires. Un biais peu exploré encore est celui des relations entre œuvres encyclopédiques orientales et occidentales.

Le colloque de Louvain-la-Neuve «Une lumière venue d’ailleurs» s’est donné pour objectif général de mettre en parallèle les deux traditions, sur base d’études philologiques et historiques. Les onze articles publiés abordent les traditions arabe (C. Baffioni, G. de Callataÿ), persane (Ž. Vesel), juive (M. Zonta), la réception d’auteurs arabes par le Moyen Age latin (A. Galonnier, M.-C. Duchenne et M. Paulmier), la diffusion des textes latins (J. Loncke, B. Van den Abeele) et les avatars tardifs de l’encyclopédisme en Occident (C. Boucher, B. Roling, I. Ventura). Par le croisement de ces éclairages, le volume souhaite faire mieux comprendre les influences que l’Occident chrétien, l’Islam et le monde hébraïque exercèrent réciproquement à cette époque-charnière de leur histoire.

This interdisciplinary study takes as its subject the multi-faceted genre of didactic literature (the literature of instruction) which constituted the cornerstone of literary enterprise and social control in medieval and early-modern Europe. Following an introduction that raises questions of didactic meaning, intent, audience, and social effect, nineteen chapters deal with the construction of the individual didactic voice and persona in the premodern period, didactic literature for children, women as the creators, objects, and consumers of didactic literature, the influence of advice literature on adult literacy, piety, and heresy, and the revision of classical didactic forms and motifs in the early-modern period. Attention is paid throughout to the continuities of didactic literature across the medieval and early-modern periods — its intertextuality, reliance on tradition, and self-renewal — and to questions of gender, authority, control, and the socially constructed nature of advice. Contributors particularly explore the intersection of advice literature with real lives, considering the social impact of both individual texts and the didactic genre as a whole. The volume deals with a wide variety of texts from the early Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, written in languages from Latin through the European vernaculars to Byzantine Greek and Russian, offering a comprehensive overview of this pervasive and influential genre.

This volume surveys recent studies of the metaphorical and material facets of food in medieval and early modern Europe. Ranging from literary, historical, and political analyses to archaeological and botanical ones, this collection explores food as a nexus of pre-modern European culture. Food and feasting are understood not simply as the consumption of material goods but also as the figurative and symbolic representations of culture. To understand the myriad ways in which discourses about food and feasting are mobilized during this period is to better understand the fundamental role food and feasting played in the development of Europeans’ habitual patterns of behavior and of thought.

The meanings of the noun ‘creation’, and the verb ‘to create’, range from the traditional theological idea of God creating ex nihilo to a more recent sense of the process of artistic conception. This collection of thirteen essays, written by scholars of music, literature, the visual arts, and theology, explores the complicated relationship between medieval rituals and theology, and the development of an idea of human artistic creation, which came to the fore in the sixteenth century.

The volume concentrates on the period from the Carolingians to the Counter-Reformation but also includes some twentieth-century musicians. Each essay is dedicated to a particular topic concerned with ritual or artistic beginnings, inventions, harmony and disharmony, as well as representations or celebrations of creation. Central themes include the interplay of the ideas of God as creator, of God acting and recreating in medieval liturgy, of God as artist—the deus artifex of the Pythagorean cosmology, which was occasionally referred to as recently as the early nineteenth century—and, finally, of the homo creator, a concept in which man reflected (and eventually replaced) God in his artistic creativity.

This book therefore features new, significant, individual contributions from a range of scholarly disciplines, but, taken as a whole, it also constitutes a complex interdisciplinary study, with large-scale historical constructions.

Palimpsests are texts from which the primary text has been effaced to make room for fresh writing. The practice was particularly important in the early Middle Ages, when numerous, often precious, books were subjected to this treatment. As a result, many ancient texts lay hidden in European libraries for centuries.

Ever since the first palimpsests were discovered in the seventeenth century, scholars have been fascinated by the possibility of discovering hitherto unknown texts. For a long time, the lower script of palimpsests could only be brought back to the light of day through the use of chemical reagents that proved very detrimental to the manuscripts. The great advance away from these destructive techniques came at the beginning of the twentieth century with the application of ultra-violet photography. Today, striking advances in this field are again being made with the development of digital imaging.

The contributions in this volume focus mainly on the cultural evidence offered by palimpsests from the early Middle Ages. Some contributors have examined particular manuscripts in great detail (the London palimpsest of Jerome’s Chronicle or the Munich palimpsest codex from Benediktbeuern); others have looked at specific types of texts that have suffered deletion in this way (liturgical palimpsests, Carolingian letters). The volume also contains a handlist of all known palimpsested manuscripts in Beneventan script.

The medieval English West Midlands has long been associated with the production of vernacular texts, in Old and Middle English, and with the making of several famous manuscripts. The aim of this volume is to re-think assumptions about medieval literature and the region in the light of new research in medieval book history. A series of specially commissioned essays in ‘manuscript geography’ examines the making and use of texts and books in relation to cultural networks in the region and beyond. Included are case studies of manuscripts of Worcester and the Worcester diocese from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries; investigations of manuscript production in fourteenth-century Shropshire and its wider regional links; and essays on textual cultures in Warwickshire from the activities of the aristocrats and gentry of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to the projects of later antiquarians. Essays in the final section of the volume reflect on the possibilities of large-scale, corpus-based research on medieval manuscript books. Collectively the essays identify and explore some of the investments of traditional regionalist accounts of vernacular literary culture and model new theoretical and methodological approaches.

The essays collected in this volume focus on a prominent aspect of Anglo-Saxon culture: educational texts and the Insular manuscripts which have preserved them.

The English imported manuscripts and texts from the Continent, whilst a series of foreign masters, from Theodore of Tarsus to Abbo of Fleury, brought with them knowledge of works which were being studied in Continental schools. Although monastic education played a leading role for the entire Anglo-Saxon period, it was in the second half of the tenth and early eleventh centuries that it reached its zenith, with its renewed importance and the presence of energetic masters such as Æthelwold and Ælfric. The indebtedness to Continental programs of study is evident at each step, beginning with the Disticha Catonis. Nevertheless, a number of texts initially designed for a Latin-speaking milieu appear to have been abandoned (for instance in the field of grammar) in favour of new teaching tools.

Beside texts which were part of the standard curriculum, Anglo-Saxon manuscripts provide abundant evidence of other learning and teaching instruments, in particular those for a specialized class of laymen, the Old English læce, the healer or physician. Medicine occupies a relevant place in the book production of late Anglo-Saxon England and, in this field too, knowledge from very far afield was preserved and reshaped.

All these essays, many by leading scholars in the various fields, explore these issues by analysing the actual manuscripts, their layout and contents. They show how miscellaneous collections of treatises in medieval codices had an internal logic, and highlight how crucial manuscripts are to the study of medieval culture.

La Sainte-Chapelle est un chef-d’œuvre hors du commun, l’un des monuments du XIIIe siècle les plus appréciés du grand public. Emblème du gothique à son apogée, elle est aussi une œuvre majeure dont on connaît exceptionnellement bien le contexte historique et politique de sa création et la personnalité de ses commanditaires, le roi Louis IX et sa mère, Blanche de Castille. Négligée par les historiens de l’art dès les années 60 du siècle dernier, elle connaît heureusement un regain d’intérêt depuis quelques années.

Ce volume rassemble les communications d’un colloque international réuni pour faire la synthèse des acquis les plus récents concernant cet exceptionnel monument. Les contributeurs y traitent de divers aspects de la Sainte-Chapelle: restaurations, architecture, décor sculpté, vitraux, fonction, signification et mise en scène des reliques, liturgie et héraldique, personnalité et préoccupations artistiques, politiques et religieuses du commanditaire royal, à la veille de son départ pour la croisade. Il en résulte une image fascinante et très complète de ce chef-d’œuvre unique qu’est la chapelle palatine de saint Louis.

This volume presents twenty essays by leading scholars of Old Norse which bring into focus the nature of learned traditions — both oral and written — in medieval Scandinavia and the interpretation and re-interpretation of them over time. Theoretical frameworks for understanding Old Norse literature is the initial topic of the collection, which then moves on to present recent work on Old Norse myth and society; current perspectives on oral traditions in performance and text; and reflections on medieval ideas about language, both vernacular and Latin. The collection is rounded off by a section on prolonged traditions — the transformation of local and imported traditions into new literary forms. Individual essays in the volume offer significant primary research as well as reconsiderations of key issues in scholarship, their subjects ranging widely, both conceptually and chronologically, around the twin themes of learning and understanding. Like the research of the volume’s honorand, Margaret Clunies Ross, Learning and Understanding in the Old Norse World exemplifies the diversity and vigour of current research in the field of Old Norse and draws together philological, literary, historical and anthropological perspectives on the subject.

Le pontificat de Léon IX (1049-1054) marque un tournant dans l’histoire de l’Eglise. Energique et déterminé, Léon IX voyage au sud comme au nord des Alpes, tient de nombreux conciles, fait sentir même aux évêques le poids de l’autorité romaine, tente de mener une politique cohérente face aux Normands et aux Byzantins, réforme la vieille chancellerie pontificale… Il lance ainsi, dans le respect de l’autorité impériale, la réforme de l’Eglise qui deviendra ensuite la réforme grégorienne.

Saisissant le prétexte du millénaire de sa naissance, un colloque réuni à Strasbourg en juin 2002 a fait le point sur les origines, la personnalité, l’action et l’entourage de ce pape, ainsi que sur les sources, narratives, diplomatiques, épistolaires, nécrologiques, archéologiques et autres, de l’histoire de son pontificat.

Each of the studies in this volume draws upon a manuscript, or a group of manuscripts, that shed light on the practice of monastic life during this period of reform. Many, but not all, of the papers focus on the monastery of Admont in central Austria. Admont was one of the most important spiritual, cultural, and intellectual centres in the high Middle Ages, and its magnificent library still houses an extensive collection of manuscripts - a rich resource both for the history of the monastery and for the broader history of medieval religious life. The book brings together the work of an international group of scholars whose work touches on various aspects of twelfth-century Admont, and the broader movement for reform and renewal in Germany and Austria.

With the publication of Charles Homer Haskin’s important work, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (1933), came a new way of looking at the civilization of the high Middle Ages. Scholars have since investigated many aspects of this revival: the rise of the universities, the development of canon law, the emergence (or re-emergence) of a heightened sense of human individuality, and the revival of religious fervour that has been labelled a reformation before the Reformation. Much of this scholarly work has focused on northern-central Italy, France, and England. Germany, however, has been little studied in this context, in part because the nature and trajectory of the reform there differed from that seen elsewhere in Europe. The essays in the book both explore connections between Germanic lands and the wider western European context, and consider the unique spiritual and intellectual climate of Germany’s monasteries.

The contributors to this book examine the diverse roles played by moral virtues in the political writing of the Later Middle Ages. Medieval political thought has a long tradition of scholarship, and its ethical dimension has always received sustained attention. This volume specifically concentrates on the meaning and function of virtues in a political context, a theme which has thus far been neglected. The authors deal with Latin texts (occasionally in combination with vernacular ones) from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries that define, legitimize, or criticize secular rule by using catalogues of virtues, originating from ancient philosophy as well as Christian moral theology. The contributions discuss various aspects related to this theme, such as the relation between the virtues of rulers and general moral precepts; the tension between secular or philosophical perspectives on virtue and Christian moral thought; the use of moral virtues for political ends; the balance between praise of the prince’s virtues and criticism of his vices; and so forth. The medieval texts under discussion are of French, German, English, Italian, and Spanish origin, and vary from educational treatises and historiography to moral theology and political philosophy.