Brepols Online Books Medieval Monographs Archive v2016 - bobar16mome

Sociophilology combines traditional detailed philological expertise with the broader insights of modern sociolinguistics. Late Latin is the native language, both spoken and written, of the former Roman Empire in the Early Middle Ages, sometimes also regarded as being 'Early Romance'. By the thirteenth century Late Latin had split conceptually, from being a single complex living language, into several different living Romance languages, as well as the 'dead' language we now call 'Medieval Latin'. The complex aspects of these developments have been central to Roger Wright's research for many years; this sociophilological study of Late Latin places many texts, authors, scribes and linguistic developments in a coherent historical, intellectual and educational context. The book is presented in six sections, with four chapters in each: Late Latin, Medieval Latin and Romance; Texts and Language in Late Antiquity; The Ninth Century; Italy and Spain in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries; Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Spain; Sociophilology and Historical Linguistics; followed by a Conclusion, a lengthy bibliography, and an index. The whole presents a vitally important intrinsic component of a thousand years of European cultural history, seen from unusually wide historical and linguistic perspectives.

From the Treasure-House of Scripture presents the first comprehensive assessment of the relation between the Latin Bible and the text of the highly influential late-medieval devotional manual known as De Imitatione Christi (The Imitation of Christ). Consisting of a detailed analysis of scriptural sources in The Imitation, this work contains the complete Latin text of The Imitation juxtaposed against 3815 Vulgate source texts. Included are some 2600 sources collated from citations in seventy editions of The Imitation, and some 1200 sources newly identified in this study.

A collation is presented of explicit statements in The Imitation on ‘Scripture’ and aspects of lectio divina (‘prayed reading’). The textual analysis highlights several aspects of the relation between The Imitation and the Vulgate. First, some fifty ‘forms of usage’ of scriptural passages in The Imitation are described. Secondly, some three hundred scriptural passages important in informing the overall content of The Imitation are identified. Thirdly, the role of scriptural sources in helping to shape the ascetic character of The Imitation is discussed.

Background information is presented on the content, authorship and influence of The Imitation; the Devotio moderna (‘New Devotion’ or ‘Modern Devotion’) movement; the life of Thomas a Kempis; the role of Scripture and lectio divina in the New Devotion movement; and the general role of Scripture in Thomas a Kempis’s oeuvre.

This is the first ever book-length study for the nature and significance of the linguistic contact between speakers of Old Norse and Old English in Viking Age England. It investigates in a wide-ranging and systematic fashion a foundational but under-considered factor in the history and culture of the Vikings in England. The subject is important for late Anglo-Saxon and Viking Age history; for language and literature in the late Anglo-Saxon period; and for the history and development of the English language. The work's primary focus is on Anglo-Norse language contact, with a particular emphasis on the question of possible mutual intelligibility between speakers of the two languages; but since language contact is an emphatically sociolinguistic phenomenon, the work's methodology combines linguistic, literary and historical approaches, and draws for its evidence on texts in Old English, Old Norse and Anglo-Latin, and other forms of linguistic and onomastic material. 'Matthew Townend's interdisciplinary study is a stimulating and in many ways ground breaking research work. It offers a profound analysis of one of the central issues of Viking Age England: the linguistic relations between and mutual intelligibility of speakers of Old Norse and Old English.' [Susanne Kries, Universitaet Potsdam]

The origins of the Cistercian monastic order are currently under intense scrutiny and revision, as scholars identify how the written word was used to ‘invent’ a unified corporate identity. Here Elizabeth Freeman examines the classic genre for inventing a past - the history, chronicle, and annal - and argues that historical narratives of the English Cistercians helped define the characteristics of both the new Cistercian monastic order and also the new orders of twelfth- and thirteenth-century England. She shows how Aelred of Rievaulx’s Relatio de standardo and Genealogia regum Anglorum articulated new senses of Englishness, and demonstrates through attention to library holdings that this focus on national self-definition continued throughout the twelfth century. The Fundacio abbathie de Kyrkestall shifts focus to local history and exploits Cistercian tropes of land-use in order to resolve the communal insecurity that characterised the Cistercians in around 1200. The Narratione de fundatione Fontanis monasterii features another method of reconciling the nostalgic quest for continuity with the intellectual recognition of change - it separates historical ‘fact’ from ‘meaning’ and imbues events with rich allegorical significance. Finally, Ralph of Coggeshall’s Chronicon Anglicanum indicates the multiple strategies Cistercian historians employed in order to turn the disparate and contradictory events of the past into a comprehensible and meaningful narrative.

Thomas Percy was the first serious translator of Old Norse-Icelandic poetry into English. He published his Five Pieces of Runic Poetry in London in 1763 and in 1770 published his translation of Mallet's very influential work on early Scandinavian literature and culture as Northern Antiquities (with extensive annotations and additions by Percy himself). In publishing Five Pieces, Percy was influenced by the success of Macpherson's first volume of Ossian poetry (1760) and his own wide-ranging interest in ancient, especially 'gothic' poetry. Five Pieces had a mixed reception and was never republished as a separate work, but reappeared as an appendix to the second edn. of Northern Antiquities. Nevertheless, it was a seminal work in the history of reception and understanding of Old Norse poetry in Britain and it also has more general significance in our understanding of the development of the discipline of Old Norse-Icelandic studies. This work makes available to the modern scholarly community the work of one of the pioneers of the discipline and produces in easily accessible format a text that is currently only available as a rare book. The study comprises a facsimile of the 1763 edition, with facing-page notes to allow the modern reader to situate Percy's work in its intellectual context, together with an introduction on Percy himself, his work on Old Norse-Icelandic studies, and the contemporary context of the reception of Old Norse poetry in Britain (and to some extent in the rest of Europe). In addition, this study publishes eight other poetic translations (one from Old English and the others from Old Icelandic) that Percy completed about the same time as the translations now in Five Pieces of Runic Poetry, but did not then publish, due to the restrictions of contemporary tolerance for demanding or difficult 'ancient' poetry. This publication reveals his full range as a translator for the first time.

The clash between Pope Paul II ( 1464-1471) and Bologna was one of two opposed concepts of government and 'state'. Paul II held to a high concept of princely sovereignty, and to a vision of the papal temporal dominions as a genuinely co-ordinated territorial state, an enduring public; entity. Inevitably he clashed with the Commune of Bologna, second city of the Papal State, over which he aspired to more jurisdiction. The political vision of the Bolognese regime had a. local focus which precluded the sacrifice of independence in favour of integration into a wider entity, and sprang from a view of government as rightfully the private preserve of a restricted oligarchic group, from the 1440s consolidated in the magistracy of the 'Sixteen Reformers of the Regime of Liberty'. Paul II regarded the regime of the Sixteen as a 'tyranny', and declared that no such ty rannies should flourish 'under the mantle of St Peter'. But his intervention failed and, instead, Paul modified the constitution which gave the long-developing predominance of the Bentivoglio family an institutional basis. This 'signorial' regime aggravated the tension between collegiality and despotism and paved the way for the eventual destruction of the Bentivoglio dominance and later the fuller incorporation in the sixteenth century of Bologna into the Papal State.

La chronique de l'auteur connu sous le nom de Frédégaire est une source essentielle pour la connaissance des règnes mérovingiens. Le chroniqueur a pourtant été longtemps méprisé : sa langue était considérée comme barbare, et ses qualités d'historien étaient jugées de piètre valeur. Les recherches récentes ayant renouvelé l'étude de cette période, on a voulu tirer de l'oubli un auteur trop longtemps mal compris. Le lecteur trouvera donc ici, accompagnée du texte latin (selon l'édition de J.M. Wallace-Hadrill) et d'une abondante annotation, la traduction de la partie originale de la chronique et de ses continuations carolingiennes, qui poursuivent le récit jusqu'en 768. Une introduction substantielle défend l'hypothèse d'un chroniqueur unique écrivant vers 660, situe la chronique dans son contexte historique et l'appréhende à la fois comme une œuvre d'histoire et de littérature. Une étude spéciale est consacrée à la langue de l'auteur, témoin des mutations que connaît le latin au milieu du VIIe siècle. Olivier Devillers est un spécialiste d'historiographie romaine et Jean Meyers de langue et de littérature latines du Haut Moyen Âge. L'un et l'autre enseignent à l'Université Paul Valéry (Montpellier III).

Cet ouvrage donne la table et les index de la base de données de l'ARTEM de Nancy, relatifs à quelque 4.800 chartes originales antérieures à 1121 et conservées en France. Cette table et ces index se constituent comme suit:

- Introduction développée, présentant l'évolution, au moins quantitative, de la diplomatique française (évolution chronologique, diversités régionales et typlogiques).

- Table générale des chartes, par numéro de classement de l'ARTEM.

- Différents index: chronologique, auteurs, destinataires, genre diplomatique, sceaux. Ces index renvoient à la liste des chartes.

Ce répertoire n'est pas une révision du livre de Glorieux sur les maîtres de la Faculté des arts au XIIe siècle. D'une part, c'est un répertoire plus restreint: on ne retient que les auteurs et les textes qui ont un rapport direct avec l'enseignement à la Faculté des arts de Paris; de l'autre, il est plus large: on a fixé les limites chronologiques à 1200-1500 environ. Plus important, le but envisagé est de mettre au point un instrument pour les recherches concernant l'histoire intellectuelle de la Faculté des arts de Paris. Le répertoire n'est donc pas consacré à la prosopographie des maîtres, mais à leur activité intellectuelle, c'est-à-dire leurs écrits et leurs lectures. En conséquence, il comprend également des maîtres qui n'ont jamais enseigné à Paris, mais dont les oeuvres ont sûrement ou probablement été lues et commentées à la Faculté des arts de Paris. Le répertoire veut répondre à deux types de questions: premièrement, quels étaient les maîtres de la Faculté des arts de Paris et quelles sont leurs oeuvres; deuxièmement, quels textes contemporains relevant des mêmes disciplines ont contribué à déterminer le climat de ce milieu intellectuel? Ce sont deux éléments qui sont intimement liés et qui se complètent.

Ce fascicule comprend les noms commençant par H et J (jusqu'à Johannes C.).

Midsummer was not only a season for purification, it was primarily viewed as a time of change. The moment of the sun's power crisis was used as an analogy for mankind's mid-life crisis and for reversals, or wished-for reversals, in social power-structures. A number of factors combined to make truth-telling, even slander on those in authority, licensed at this season. This volume reveals for the first time the significance of the season for popular tradition, for literature, for theatre, and for civic politics in France and the Low Countries. And the new evidence, on which it is based, shows that subversion was inherent at the feast of St John's Nativity three centuries before it became associated with Carnival.

Sandra Billington is a Reader at the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow.