EMISCS11

Comment sont nées les écoles parisiennes au début du XIIe siècle? Quels ont été les maîtres et les institutions qui ont compté dans ce processus? Quelles sont les caractéristiques particulières de la production savante à cette époque charnière? Quels ont été les enjeux des débats de l’époque et étaient-ils en rupture ou en continuité avec celles qui les précèdent? Un tel questionnement ne pouvait être tenté que dans une perspective pluridisciplinaire, en associant historiens, spécialistes de théologie, de philosophie, des théories du langage (grammaire, logique et rhétorique), des textes manuscrits. Le travail mené en commun a permis de formuler de nouvelles hypothèses sur cette période qui est celle de l’émergence de Paris comme centre de savoir et sur les doctrines produites à l’époque, qui allaient marquer durablement tout le Moyen Âge. Le premier ensemble de contributions brosse un bilan, synthétique et critique, sur l’état de la recherche dans les différents domaines concernés: la vie et les écrits de Guillaume de Champeaux; les disciplines (grammaire, logique, rhétorique, théologie); les questions méthodologiques que pose l’étude de textes inédits, le plus souvent anonymes et non datés. Le second propose des contributions originales sur des thèmes, des auteurs, des doctrines. Le troisième présente deux dossiers de discussions: l’une autour du commentaire sur Priscien attribué à Jean Scot Erigène, l’autre sur cette question controversée qu’est l’apparition et la nature du «vocalisme». Sortent éclairés sous un jour nouveau des personnages connus, comme Anselme de Laon, Abélard, Hugues de Saint-Victor, d’autres connus mais dont la production était difficile à identifier, tels Manegold, Roscelin, Guillaume de Champeaux ou Josselin de Soissons, et également des textes obstinément anonymes, telles les influentes Glosulae super Priscianum. C’est ainsi le milieu intellectuel parisien du tournant des XIe / XIIe siècles qui se voit mieux compris, dans toute sa complexité, à partir d’études qui croisent de manière complémentaire les approches historiques, littéraires et doctrinales.

It is well known that the Carolingian royal family inspired and promoted a cultural revival of great consequence. The courts of Charlemagne and his successors welcomed lively gatherings of scholars who avidly pursued knowledge and learning, while education became a booming business in the great monastic centres, which were under the protection of the royal family. Scholarly emphasis was placed upon Latin language, religion, and liturgy, but the works of classical and late antique authors were collected, studied, and commented upon with similar zeal. A text that was read by ninth-century scholars with an almost unrivalled enthusiasm is Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, a late antique encyclopedia of the seven liberal arts embedded within a mythological framework of the marriage between Philology (learning) and Mercury (eloquence). Several ninth-century commentary traditions testify to the work’s popularity in the ninth century. Martianus’s text treats a wide range of secular subjects, including mythology, the movement of the heavens, numerical speculation, and the ancient tradition on each of the seven liberal arts. De nuptiis and its exceptionally rich commentary traditions provide the focus of this volume, which addresses both the textual material found in the margins of De nuptiis manuscripts, and the broader intellectual context of commentary traditions on ancient secular texts in the early medieval world.

Throughout the period 800–1250, English culture was marked by linguistic contestation and pluralism: the consequence of migrations and conquests and of the establishment and flourishing of the Christian religion centred on Rome. In 855 the Danes ‘over-wintered’ for the first time, re-initiating centuries of linguistic pluralism; by 1250 English had, overwhelmingly, become the first language of England. Norse and French, the Celtic languages of the borderlands, and Latin competed with dialects of English for cultural precedence. Moreover, the diverse relations of each of these languages to the written word complicated textual practices of government, poetics, the recording of history, and liturgy. Geographical or societal micro-languages interacted daily with the ‘official’ languages of the Church, the State, and the Court. English and English speakers also played key roles in the linguistic history of medieval Europe. At the start of the period of inquiry, Alcuin led the reform of Latin in the Carolingian Empire, while in the period after the Conquest, the long-established use of English as a written language encouraged the flourishing of French as a written language. This interdisciplinary volume brings the complex and dynamic multilingualism of medieval England into focus and opens up new areas for collaborative research.

Responding to renewed interest in the powerful early medieval kingdom of Northumbria, this volume uses evidence drawn from archaeology, documentary history, place-names, and artistic works to produce an unashamedly cross-disciplinary body of scholarship that addresses all aspects of Northumbria’s past. Northumbria at its peak stretched from the River Humber to the Scottish highlands and westwards to the Irish Sea, producing saints, kings, and scholars with contacts across Europe, from Scandinavia, Ireland, and Francia to Rome itself. This volume unites papers on all aspects of this major European power of its day, from its origins in the fifth and sixth centuries from British and Anglo-Saxon chiefdoms, through its ‘Golden Age’ as eighth-century Europe’s intellectual powerhouse, to its role as a key element of an international Viking kingdom. Where traditional scholarship has centred on the ecclesiastical high culture of the age of Bede, this work examines the kingdom’s social and economic life and its origins and decline as well. There is a stress on approaching established bodies of material from new perspectives and engaging with wider debates in the field, including monumentality, the development of kingships, and the evolution of the early Church. Areas investigated include the kingdom’s political history, its economy and society, and its wider place within Europe. Its unique artistic legacy, in the form of illuminated manuscripts and a rich sculptural tradition, is also explored.

This up-to-date discussion takes as its starting point the challenge to the traditional notion of feudalism in the twenty-five years since the publication of Jean-Pierre Poly and Eric Bournazel’s work on the ‘mutation féodale’ and Susan Reynolds’s attack on the very idea of a feudal society in the Middle Ages. While these challenges have presented a new picture of Western Europe in the so-called feudal age, one more focused than the traditional model of feudalism was, no new scholarly consensus has yet emerged.

The volume has two objectives. Firstly, it discusses the present state of research, bringing together leading representatives of the various interpretations of feudalism. It examines the character of medieval society, including questions of landholding, government, and the relationship between king and aristocracy. Secondly, it provides a new geographic perspective on the subject by considering countries little discussed from a feudal perspective. In addition to discussing countries that have been prominent in previous studies of feudalism such as England and France, the book also includes contributions on Germany, Spain, Scandinavia, Hungary, and Romania, thus supplying a truly European perspective and a comparative view of social structure in different regions of Europe.

This volume presents the first comprehensive overview of the major early historical narratives created in Northern, East-Central, and Eastern Europe between c. 1070 and c. 1200, with each chapter providing a short introduction to the narrative in question. Most chapters are written by established experts in their fields, who have published critical editions of the discussed narratives, their English translations, or analytical works dealing with early history writing in corresponding regions. However, the volume is more than just a summary of various narratives. Despite being written in such different languages as Latin, Old Norse, and Old Church Slavonic, these narratives played similar roles for their reading audiences, in that they were crucial in the construction of Christian identity in the lands recently converted to Christianity. The thirteen authors contemplate the extent to which this identity formation affected the nature of narrativity in these early historical works. The authors ask how the pagan past and Christian present were incorporated in the texture of the narratives, and address the relative importance of classical and biblical models for their composition and structure. By addressing such questions, the volume offers medievalists a coherent comparative study of early history writing in the peripheral regions of medieval Europe in the first centuries after conversion.

Sovereignty, law, and the relationship between them are now among the most compelling topics in history, philosophy, literature and art. Some argue that the state’s power over the individual has never been more complete, while for others, such factors as globalization and the internet are subverting traditional political forms. This book exposes the roots of these arguments in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The thirteen contributions investigate theories, fictions, contestations, and applications of sovereignty and law from the Anglo-Saxon period to the seventeenth century, and from England across western Europe to Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. Particular topics include: Habsburg sovereignty, Romance traditions in Arthurian literature, the duomo in Milan, the political theories of Juan de Mariana and of Richard Hooker, Geoffrey Chaucer’s legal problems, the accession of James I, medieval Jewish women, Elizabethan diplomacy, Anglo-Saxon political subjectivity, and medieval French farce. Together these contributions constitute a valuable overview of the history of medieval and Renaissance law and sovereignty in several disciplines. They will appeal not only to political historians, but also to all those interested in the histories of art, literature, religion, and culture.

Cet ouvrage rassemble les travaux de chercheurs réunis autour du groupe IMAGO sur L’image médiévale: fonctions dans l’espace sacré et structuration de l’espace cultuel (CÉSCM). L’approche de l’image médiévale s’est considérablement enrichie ces dernières décennies suscitant de nouveaux enjeux méthodologiques. Les travaux qui lui ont été consacrés ont, en effet, montré que l’image médiévale était un objet complexe, polysémique, nouant des liens étroits avec son lieu d’inscription. S’interroger sur la définition et le fonctionnement du lieu cultuel revient à poser les bases et les cadres de l’analyse des images. La réflexion sur l’espace ecclésial permet de cerner la dialectique entre le monument – construit – et le lieu – institué symboliquement – pour mieux en comprendre l’organisation. En appréhendant l’image dans son contexte, il est alors possible de saisir les usages et les pratiques qui lui sont associés. Au-delà de l’approche iconographique, l’attention portée à la construction de l’image, à sa composition et à sa structure permet d’ouvrir de multiples champs d’investigations. Les contributions réunies dans ce recueil sont autant de regards croisés qui illustrent la diversité des approches et la richesse des problématiques liées à l’image. Ces réflexions s’inscrivent dans le cadre des activités du groupe IMAGO (CÉSCM, Poitiers) qui, depuis 1999, rassemblent dans une dynamique commune étudiants, jeunes chercheurs et chercheurs dont les recherches sont consacrées aux images médiévales.

In medieval legal transactions the use of the written word was only one of many ways of conducting business. Important roles were played by the spoken word and by the ‘action’ of ritual. The relationship between ‘rituals’ and literacy has been the focus of much recent research. Medieval societies which made extensive use of written instruments in legal transactions have been shown to employ rituals as well. This has led to investigation of the respective functions of written instruments and legal rituals. What is the nature of legal rituals? If they included oral verbalization, how did the spoken words relate to those of the written instruments that played a role in the same legal transactions? Usually, we only have the written documents to answer these questions, and they are often silent about the rituals and oral elements of the transactions they document. Furthermore, the importance attached to written instruments and rituals may not have been the same at all levels of a society, differing, for example, between princely and local courts. The contributors to this volume discuss fifteen cases, ranging from the early Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, and from England to Galician Rus’.