EMISCA

This volume advances our knowledge of continuing trends over the longue durée of European history. It also exposes many differences separating contemporaries from their medieval and early modern ancestors. In putting the concept of social capital to the test, the authors also expose the strengths, weaknesses, and limits of the ‘Putnam thesis’. The essays address fourteenth-century English fears of old-age neglect; childhood, friendship, scandal, and rivalry in Renaissance Florence; rebellion in an Italian village; social capital and signorial power in southern and north-central Italy; guild violence in Calvinist Ghent; civil society in early modern Bologna, Naples, and the Papal State; gender in High Renaissance Rome; and critical analyses of the transition from religious to secular sensibilities that scholars (following Jürgen Habermas) have identified in eighteenth-century Europe. In each case, the topic is considered in relation to recent theories of ‘social capital’: the informal, intangible bonds of trust upon which, social scientist Robert Putnam argues, every human community depends. The result is a series of highly original case-studies which reveal the workings of late medieval and early modern European society from new and often unexpected angles.

À l’origine de l’étude d’un monument qui reste emblématique de Marseille se présenta l’opportunité de programmes de restauration et de fouille. Un premier volume a répondu à la nécessité de rendre publics les résultats. La conjonction récente avec un moment historiographique paradoxalement sensible à l’histoire religieuse, en particulier à celle du monachisme, fut l’occasion de réunir des chercheurs, scrutateurs de sources diverses, afin de réaliser la confrontation si souvent invoquée de l’archéologie et de l’histoire. Ce fut l’objet du colloque réuni en novembre 2004 à Marseille, dans les locaux de l’ancien Alcazar transformé en bibliothèque. On se plaira à rappeler que ce fut la première grande manifestation scientifique qu’abrita le bâtiment qui venait d’être inauguré.

Pour paraphraser une formule restée célèbre dans l’esprit des médiévistes, existerait-t-il un Saint-Victor des archéologues et un Saint-Victor des historiens? C’est au lecteur de se forger sa propre idée. Sans doute l’écart existe-t-il, et, avant même d’aborder la phase interprétative des recherches, permet-il aussi de mesurer les lacunes de chacune des documentations disponibles. Au-delà du constat, les participants ont eu quand même conscience d’œuvrer pour une même histoire.

At the origin of the study of a monument which remains very emblematic of Marseille, there was a programme of restoration and excavations. The outcome of the work was made public in a first volume. The recent conjunction with a trend in historiography surprisingly aware of religious history, in particular the history of monachism, enabled us to bring together scholars dealing with various sources in order to achieve the often called on conjunction between archaeology and history. That was the point of the conference held in November 2004 in Marseille. The venue was the old Alcazar music hall theatre transformed into the municipal library. It is gratifying to think that this was the first scientific seminar to be held in the new library, which had just been opened.

Paraphrasing a famous expression among medievalists: are there two Saint-Victor, one for archaeologists one for historians. It is up to the reader to make up his own mind. There is undoubtedly a discrepancy which even before adressing the interpretative conclusions of the research underlines the shortcomings of the respective documentation avalaible. Given this realization, the scholars present intimately felt they were writing the same history.

This volume focuses on aspects of Carthusian history and culture of the later Middle Ages, a period of growth and vitality within the order. There is a primary but not exclusive focus on the English Province, which to date has received at best unbalanced attention. While the fundamental ambitions and ideals of Carthusianism formulated, articulated, and lived by the disciples of St Bruno between the late eleventh and the thirteenth centuries changed very little, the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries witnessed developments stimulated by and often commensurate with the progress of external culture. In such areas as devotional practice, literature, art and architecture, patronage, and monastic-lay relations generally, the houses of the order grew increasingly sophisticated: in some cultural spheres Carthusians were in the vanguard. The late Middle Ages thus offer rich opportunities for assessment of how a religious organization defined and justified by essentially reactionary conventions responded to constant forinsec evolution.

The volume’s approach is multi-disciplinary, involving both senior and younger Carthusian scholars in investigation of the main facets of Carthusian life for which significant data survives. This permits a thorough analysis of the order’s character, one that reflects concern with synoptic understanding of medieval Carthusianism rather than partial assessment through a specifically devotional, literary, or more narrowly historical approach. Subject areas covered include the historical growth of individual Charterhouses, patronage of Carthusians by secular agents, Carthusian architecture and manuscript decoration, devotional practice, and textual culture.

Le stuc, un art à part entière

L’importance du stuc comme matériau et processus de décor a longtemps été ignorée. Les diverses contributions à ce colloque permettent, pour la première fois, d’en saisir la portée sur une longue durée. Avec ses origines antiques ou moyen-orientales, ses croisements avec la peinture ou la sculpture, sa diversité dans une grande partie de l’Europe, sa présence est désormais perçue comme permanente entre le iv e et le xii e siècle. Une meilleure connaissance de sa fabrication grâce à de nombreuses analyses en laboratoire, une relecture d’ensembles jusque-là peu étudiés comme Disentis, ou découverts par l’archéologie comme Vouneuil-sous-Biard, Bordeaux ou Arles-sur-Tech, illustrent mieux aujourd’hui cette conception particulière de l’art du relief transmise et sans cesse renouvelée depuis l’Antiquité tardive.

Over the past eighteen years, gender has become a major analytical tool in medieval studies. The purpose of this volume is to evaluate its use and to search for ways in which to improve and enhance its value. The authors address the question of how gender relates to other tools of medieval research. Several articles criticize the way in which an exclusive focus on gender tends to obscure the impact of other factors, for instance class, politics, economy, or the genre in which a source is written. Other articles address ‘wrong’ ways of using gender, for instance monolithic or anachronistic views of what constitutes differences between men and women. The intention is that this selection of case studies further establishes and enhances the indispensability of gender as an analytical tool within medieval studies.

The volume has been produced in recognition of the work of the Groningen medievalist, Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, on the occasion of her sixty-fifth birthday. She is the person primarily responsible for introducing to the Netherlands gender as a legitimate and useful tool in medieval studies. The contributors are medievalists from a range of countries and different backgrounds. They were selected in order to test Dr Mulder-Bakker’s ideas on methodology and interdisciplinarity through a series of case-studies.

This volume examines the various forms of contact between Scandinavia and the rest of Europe from 800 to 1350. It consists of twenty-five papers from international scholars specialising in archaeology, onomastics, literature, art history, epigraphy, religious history and linguistics. The volume is innovative in three respects: (i) in transcending conventional historical boundaries, by bringing together work on both the viking and medieval periods; (ii) by examining the ways in which mainland Europe influenced Scandinavia (e.g. kingship, law and social organization; and classical and continental literary traditions); and (iii) by synthesising all the material for an English-language readership for the first time. The broader timespan of investigation illustrates the changing nature of contact and the gradual integration of Scandinavia into European society: by 1350 Scandinavia was no longer a heathen outpost on the periphery of the known world, but an integral part of Western Christendom. The cultural impact of mainland Europe on Scandinavia, frequently mediated through religious channels, although less dramatic, is shown to have had a more significant long-term impact than the earlier viking raids. The volume is structured around the following sections: Historical and Archaeological Evidence for [Scandinavian] Contact with the British Isles; Evidence for the Linguistic Impact of Scandinavian Settlement; Evidence for the Impact of Christianity on Scandinavia; and Textual Evidence for Contact, Conflict, and Coexistence.

The medieval sermon provides the focus for the first volume of Disputatio because it often expresses the concerns of various intellectual milieux, such as the university, Church or court, and attempts to convey those concerns to other parts of medieval society.

Speculum Sermonis is an anthology of essays about medieval sermons in the Christian East and West. It aims to reveal precisely how sermons inform different disciplines (for instance, social and Church history, literature, musicology) and how the methodologies of different disciplines inform sermons. Sermons can, for instance, provide evidence for a reconstruction of medieval liturgy; reciprocally, the field of liturgiology investigates sermons as one aspect of Church performance. The volume’s title image of the mirror and the reference to medieval specula convey the idea of multiple reflections: the sermons’ on culture and the disciplines’ on sermons. Because the contributors to Speculum Sermonis come from a variety of fields, the essays here collectively provide a rich historical and contemporary academic context for reading the medieval sermon.

In addition to essays from across the fields, a number of which establish conclusions transcending disciplinary boundaries, Speculum Sermonis includes an introduction defending interdisciplinary study of sermons and an authoritative bibliography covering both primary and secondary resources for medieval sermons. A unique feature of the volume is the inclusion of response papers to the essays in each of the sections, in the spirit of the book series title Disputatio.

From the last quarter of the eighth until the beginning of the tenth century, Carolingian monasteries, cathedrals, and courts were the sites of a vigorous scholarship grounded in the study of sacred Scripture. The significance of Bible studies in this epoch is evident from the many extant Carolingian commentaries on virtually every book of the Old and New Testaments. More works of this kind survive from the period, often in multiple copies, than is true for any other genre of literature. Although scholars used to dismiss the Carolingian Bible commentaries as uncreative compilations of material borrowed from the Church Fathers, in recent years appreciation of these tracts’ essential creativity has grown significantly. In addition, there is now increased recognition of the degree to which the ‘exegetical’ culture nurtured within the Carolingian schools fertilized other aspects of contemporary intellectual and cultural endeavour.

The essays in this collection offer a fresh look at the range of biblical studies and their impact on diverse domains of Carolingian culture and learning. The bibliography provides a record of critical editions of Carolingian-era Bible commentaries and secondary scholarship in the field published within the last twelve years.

How did people in the late medieval period perceive and express social status? This volume brings together multi-disciplinary perspectives on representations of social difference in the Low Countries during a time of dynamic social change. The premise of the volume is that medieval social change may only be fully understood if hierarchies of wealth and power are examined alongside literary and artistic sources. Medieval texts and material culture expressed social standing and gave meaning to the experience of social change. The aim of the study is to recognise and translate the language of symbols used to encode and display status in the late Middle Ages.