EMISCS13
Collection Contents
43 results
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New Approaches to Early Law in Scandinavia
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:New Approaches to Early Law in Scandinavia show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: New Approaches to Early Law in ScandinaviaDuring recent years, there has been a revival of interest in the early laws of Scandinavia. In this volume several aspects of this field are presented and discussed. The collection begins by exploring the introduction and development of the næfnd in medieval Denmark, a kind of ‘jury’ which replaced the ordeal. The focus then moves to Sweden and Norway, with an analysis of the Hälsingelagen, and a comparison of the kristindómsbálkr (‘Ecclesiastical Law Section’) of the town law of Trondheim (Niðaróss Bjarkeyjarréttr) with the provincial law of medieval Trøndelag, Frostuþingslög. A further article explores how violence and homicide involving laymen and clerics was handled in late medieval Norway, drawing on the recent discovery of register protocols of the Penitentiary at the Papal Curia. The documentary aspects of law are examined through an analysis of the Äldre and Yngre Västgötalagen from existing manuscripts, in an attempt to discover the source of the initiative to write the laws down. A further study explores several words for ‘outlawry’ in Old Scandinavian languages.
This volume also provides a general theory of legal culture to show how the introduction of three new elements into Norwegian legal culture (norm-producing, large-scale lawmaking; conflict-resolving juries; equity as idea of justice) led to a major change in legal culture in medieval Norway. Finally, the book looks at the development of penal law in Denmark in the Middle Ages, attempting to explain that development in the light of both domestic conditions and foreign influence, especially from Sweden and Germany.
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A Catalogue of Byzantine Manuscripts in their Liturgical Context: Challenges and Perspectives
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:A Catalogue of Byzantine Manuscripts in their Liturgical Context: Challenges and Perspectives show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: A Catalogue of Byzantine Manuscripts in their Liturgical Context: Challenges and PerspectivesThe world of Byzantine manuscripts is fascinating but also confusing. Although they play an important part in modern studies on the history of Christian liturgy and on the textual history of the Bible, a clear overview of the vast amount of these manuscripts in their many different forms is lacking. A new approach in their cataloguing is called for. The present volume brings together a number of specialists in the field of Byzantine, liturgical and Biblical studies with the aim to develop a new methodology for codicological research of the Byzantine manuscripts, taking seriously the original environment of the integral codices in the monasteries and the churches in which they were manufactured and functioned.
Prof. dr. Klaas Spronk is Head of the Research Department Sources of the Protestant Theological University (PThU), location Amsterdam, and chairman of the CBM Academic Board.
Prof. dr. Gerard Rouwhorst is Professor of Liturgical History at the Tilburg School of Catholic Theology and member of the Department of Biblical Sciences and Church History of that institution. He is member of the CBM Academic Board.
Dr. Stefan Royé is member of the Research Department Sources of the Protestant Theological University (PThU), location Amsterdam, and CBM programme coordinator and secretary of the Academic Board.
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Ad notitiam ignoti
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Ad notitiam ignoti show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Ad notitiam ignotiSituée au milieu du XIIIe siècle, la paraphrase d’Albert le Grand à l’Isagogè de Porphyre constitue un point de départ pour le présent volume. Son premier livre, un traité indépendant intitulé « Préalable à la logique », fournit un cadre de lecture qui s’étend bien au-delà des sources grécolatines habituelles à l’époque, et contribue à la fixation d’un questionnaire nouveau, engageant une véritable philosophie de la logique. Il porte sur l’essence de la logique, ses fonctions comme logique de la découverte (inventio) et logique de la justification (iudicium), son statut - art, science, instrument -, sa valeur de méthode enseignant comment « passer de l’inconnu au connu » (ad notitiam ignoti) à toute partie de la philosophie, de manière immanente, comme logica utens, ou réflexive, comme logica docens. L’étude des diverses traditions de l’Organon en domaines grec, syriaque, arabe, et latin montre que la mise en ordre des matériaux aristotéliciens fixée par l’édition d’Andronicos de Rhodes (Ier s. av. J-C.) a sans cesse été renégociée, tandis que le corpus logique a connu divers formats. Ce livre collectif explore les interactions qui s’opèrent entre les différentes définitions de la logique et les métamorphoses successives du corpus aristotélicien, dans un cadre ancien et médiéval où l’histoire de la logique est indissociable d’une histoire de l’Organon.
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Between Personal and Institutional Religion
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Between Personal and Institutional Religion show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Between Personal and Institutional ReligionThis book addresses change and continuity in late antique Eastern Christianity, as perceived through the lens of the categories of institutional religion and personal religion. The interaction between personal devotion and public identity reveals the creative aspects of a vibrant religious culture that altered the experience of Christians on both a spiritual and an institutional level. A close look at the interrelations between the personal and the institutional expressions of religion in this period attests to an ongoing revision of both the patristic literature and the monastic tradition. By approaching the period in terms of ‘revision’, the contributors discuss the mechanism of transformation in Eastern Christianity from a new perspective, discerning social and religious changes while navigating between the dynamics of personal and institutional religion.
Recognizing the creative aspects inherent to the process of ‘revision’, this volume re-examines several aspects of personal and institutional religion, revealing dogmatic, ascetic, liturgical, and historiographical transformations. Attention is paid to the expression of the self, the role of history and memory in the construction of identity, and the modification of the theological discourse in late antique culture. The book also explores several avenues of Jewish-Christian interaction in the institutional and public sphere.
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Catherine of Siena
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Catherine of Siena show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Catherine of SienaHow does one construct a saint and promote a cult beyond the immediate community in which he or she lived? Italian mendicants had accumulated a good deal of experience in dealing with this politically explosive question. The posthumous description of the life of Francis of Assisi (d. 1226) written by the Master General of the order, Bonaventure (d. 1274), could be regarded as paradigmatic in this regard. A similarly massive intervention in the production and diffusion of a cult can be observed in the case of the Dominican tertiary, Catherine of Siena (d. 1380), who in many respects (e.g. the imitation of Christ and her stigmatization) ‘competed’ with Francis of Assisi. Raymund of Capua (d. 1399), the Master General of the order, established the foundation for the dissemination of the cult by writing the authoritative life, but it was only the following generation that succeeded in establishing and disseminating the cult on a broad basis by means of copies, adaptations, and translations. The question of how to make a cult, which stands at the centre of this volume, thus presents itself in terms of the challenge of rewriting a legend for different audiences. The various contributions consider the role, not only of texts in many dfferent vernaculars (Czech, English, French, German, and Italian), but also of images, whether separately or in connection with one another.
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Encyclopédire
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Encyclopédire show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: EncyclopédireAu regard du modèle que représente l’Encyclopédie des Lumières, envisagée comme un aboutissement et non comme un commencement, plusieurs œuvres antiques et médiévales ont été perçues, au cours des dernières décennies, comme des préfigurations ou des prodromes de ce comble du savoir. Les contributions réunies dans ce volume n’entendent pas imposer le label d’encyclopédie à de nouveaux objets littéraires, ou confirmer celui qu’ont déjà reçu ailleurs des œuvres anciennes, mais réfléchir à la vocation profonde qui sous-tend, travaille et motive certains savants de l’Antiquité au Moyen Âge, construisant un horizon de savoir total et organisé.
L’ambition encyclopédique est dès lors la dynamique commune d’un programme de constitution d’un système du monde, où les sciences sont appelées à se coaliser pour former une culture rationnelle complète. Encyclopédire le monde, c’est engager son discours dans une perspective totalisante, même s’il ne porte que sur des aires partielles. Le défi majeur que porte une telle ambition est donc la synthèse des savoirs ; il lie étroitement trois questions : les enjeux scientifiques d’une visée encyclopédique, les choix de transmission et d’intégration des savoirs, et les principes et mode d’organisation interne des œuvres.
Les auteurs de cet ouvrage se sont interrogés sur des œuvres ou des genres révélateurs de cette ambition, sur les formes et les expressions de ce syndrome ou complexe encyclopédiste, et sur les modalités de cette volonté d’encyclopédire que l’on suppose tenace, archaïque et profonde.
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Friendship and Social Networks in Scandinavia, c. 1000-1800
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Friendship and Social Networks in Scandinavia, c. 1000-1800 show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Friendship and Social Networks in Scandinavia, c. 1000-1800Friendship, patron-client relationships, and social networks played a fundamental role in Scandinavian society from the Viking Age through to the Industrial Era. Personal ties were essential to Viking chieftains for building their power base, and such ties were equally crucial for early modern merchants, who used their personal bonds to create trade networks. Furthermore, social networks connected medieval men and women to the saints and to God.
The articles in this book emphasize the strong correlation between political developments such as the emergence of the state and the evolution of friendships and social networks. They also highlight radical changes in the importance and contexts of friendship that occurred between the Viking Age and the late eighteenth century. During this period, friendships became far more than community-based social relationships, but rather tools for the elite in social positioning and wealth acquisition.
This volume highlights the major significance of friendships and patron-client relationships to political and cultural life in medieval, early modern, and modern society. It covers social networks in Iceland, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, each of which are characterized by different societal features, ranging from the free-state republic of early medieval Iceland to the early modern kingdom of Denmark.
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Hierarchies in rural settlements
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Hierarchies in rural settlements show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Hierarchies in rural settlementsThe Ruralia, Volume 9, includes thirty papers dealing with the various aspects of social and economic hierarchy in the rural settlement in medieval Europe mainly from archaeological point of view. The authors from 15 countries provide a broad overview of the current issues, complemented for the most part by extensive bibliographies. Very important are also the high quality figures.
The main topics include the differentiation of rural social and economic structure, refl ected, for example, in the building culture and various aspects of everyday life. The topic of discussion is the hierarchy of power and the many ways it is presented in archaeology. The focus is on the manor houses and manorial farms, as well as the grain mills in rural areas and the impact of mining activity.
The Ruralia, Volume 9, represents one of the current fields of European archaeological research and offers a solid foundation for further comparative studies.
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Instruments, Ensembles, and Repertory, 1300-1600
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Instruments, Ensembles, and Repertory, 1300-1600 show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Instruments, Ensembles, and Repertory, 1300-1600Over the past 45 years, Keith Polk has been one of the major scholars in the history of musical instruments and their repertories during the period 1300 - 1600. His publications have been extremely helpful in elucidating the development of the instruments, the repertory they performed, and the role played by instruments and instrumentalists in late medieval and Renaissance society. This collection of twelve essays on medieval and Renaissance music performance topics adds to the areas in which Keith Polk has made significant contributions, namely instruments, ensembles, and repertory. The scope of the individual essays varies in terms of geographical and temporal focus, with some involving an issue that was common to all areas of Europe, while others are specifically aimed at a single instrument, ensemble, composition, country, city, or occasion. Most of the essays are historical in nature, centring on how music was performed in particular circumstances, although some are quite practical and explain performance techniques involving voices and instruments. What unites the twelve essays is that they all shed new light on musical performance in Europe during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. The writers chosen for this volume are all highly respected scholars whose writings are always of the highest calibre. Taken as a whole, the essays in this volume make an excellent contribution to the field of music history.
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La correspondance entre souverains, princes et cités-États
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:La correspondance entre souverains, princes et cités-États show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: La correspondance entre souverains, princes et cités-ÉtatsLa création au xiiie siècle de l’Empire mongol suscite de fréquents échanges diplomatiques entre puissances orientales, mais aussi entre l’Orient, Byzance et l’Occident. À cette même période, les liens et les tensions qui unissent ou divisent empereurs, rois et princes chrétiens, se manifestent souvent au cours de rencontres personnelles ou par l’envoi de messagers et d’ambassades. Les correspondances des souverains jouent dans ces relations multiformes un rôle essentiel. Elles sont conservées en nombre croissant pour plusieurs territoires occidentaux sous domination chrétienne, alors que les lettres originales des souverains musulmans orientaux demeurent fort rares avant la consolidation de la chancellerie ottomane. Tout en précisant les raisons de ce profond déséquilibre archivistique, les études réunies dans La correspondance entre souverains permettent une première approche comparative des manières de rédiger, de transmettre, de conserver et, le cas échéant, de réutiliser ces lettres. Du Bosphore à Florence, du Yémen à Rome, de l’Égypte mamelouke à la cour des Mongols d’Iran, les lettres des souverains véhiculent des idéologies et, parfois, des prétentions dominatrices contradictoires, elles portent un discours représentatif du pouvoir dont elles émanent. Pièces centrales des échanges diplomatiques, les lettres sont imprégnées de modèles de chancellerie, puis soumises à des processus de transmission qui peuvent s’avérer extrêmement complexes. Certains originaux sont traduits, quelquefois à plusieurs reprises, par des intermédiaires aux compétences linguistiques inégales. Grâce à des analyses croisées menées jusqu’au début du xvie siècle, l’on voit ainsi apparaître les effets de l’intensification des échanges diplomatiques sur l’art et les pratiques épistolaires souveraines.
Denise Aigle (École Pratique des Hautes Études, CNRS UMR « Orient et Méditerranée » Spécialiste de l’Orient musulman médiéval, elle s’intéresse particulièrement aux contacts entre Orient et Occident à l’époque mongole. Elle est l’auteur de nombreux articles et ouvrages. Elle a notamment publié, Le Fārs sous la domination mongole (xiii e-xiv e siècles). Politique et fiscalité, Leuven, 2005 ; Le Bilād al-Šām face aux mondes extérieurs. La perception de l'Autre et la représentation du souverain, D. Aigle (dir.), Beyrouth, 2012.
Stéphane Péquignot (École Pratique de Haute Études) est spécialiste de la diplomatie médiévale et de la Couronne d’Aragon, il a notamment publié Au nom du roi. Pratique diplomatique et pouvoir durant le règne de Jacques II d’Aragon (1291-1327), Madrid, 2009 ; avec S. Andretta, M.-K. Schaub, J.-C Waquet, C. Windler (dir.) Paroles de négociateurs. L'entretien dans la pratique diplomatique da la fin du Moyen Âge à la fin du xix e siècle, Rome, 2010.
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Landscapes of Defence in Early Medieval Europe
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Landscapes of Defence in Early Medieval Europe show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Landscapes of Defence in Early Medieval EuropeThis volume is the result of a conference at University College London in 2007 which addressed the scale and form of civil defences in early medieval Europe, c. 800-1000. Previous work has largely focused on individual sites or specific categories of evidence. These papers offer new interdisciplinary perspectives driven by a landscape approach. Several contributions focus on civil defence in England around the time of King Alfred the Great, and together provide a new agenda for the study of Anglo-Saxon military landscapes. European case-studies facilitate a comparative approach to local and regional defensive structures and interpretive paradigms. Topics and themes covered include civil defence landscapes, the organization and form of defensive structures, and the relationships and dynamics between social complexity, militarization, and external threats. With papers ranging from England to Spain and Germany to Scandinavia the volume is of relevance to a range of disciplines including archaeology, history, onomastics, geography, and anthropology.
John Baker is Research Associate at the University of Nottingham, Stuart Brookes is Research Associate, and Andrew Reynolds is Professor in Medieval Archaeology, both at the UCL Institute of Archaeology.
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Landscapes or seascapes?
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Landscapes or seascapes? show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Landscapes or seascapes?This volume deals with the geographical evolution of the coastal areas adjacent to the North Sea, with a focus upon the last two thousand years. Although many articles are reworked in a fundamental way, most of them are the result of a conference which took place in 2010 at Ghent University (Belgium) and which was actually the third in a series of symposiums on the same broad theme. The first took place in 1958, and the second in 1978. Recognized specialists were invited to present their research in a variety of fields relating to the subject. The various disciplines in which the coastal plains are studied too often remain within their own borders, and so we have set out to thoroughly interweave them in the hope that this will spur greater interdisciplinary cooperation. This collection of texts is intended to appeal not just to experts in historical geography, but to historians and scientists working in any field who wish to gain insights into the present ‘state of play’.
Detailed geological research about many areas provided new data and researchers gradually gained a better understanding of the close relationship between the processes of deposition, sea-level change, and land formation taking place across multiple regions. In the same time, historical and archaeological research also evolved. Most significantly, ideas regarding the chronology of human occupation have changed a lot. This scope of the research collected in this volume is important because it has increasingly become evident that land loss and gain were the results of regional factors, including and especially human activities. Moreover, it is now clear that humans devised survival strategies, and thus organized their activities in relation to the environment, on a regional basis, which means that the causes of local changes must have been both natural and socio-historical. It has now become clearer than ever that there is no single chronological scheme capable of explaining the coastal evolution across the entirety of the North Sea area.
Erik Thoen is professor in rural history and environmental history at Ghent University (B) and co-ordinator of the CORN network.
Guus J. Borger is emeritus professor in historical geography at the University of Amsterdam and the VU University Amsterdam (NL).
Adriaan M.J. de Kraker is senior researcher in historical geography at the VU University Amsterdam (NL).
Tim Soens is professor in rural history and environmental history at the University of Antwerp (B).
Dries Tys is professor at the Brussels Free University (VUB) (B).
Lies Vervaet is assistant specialised in rural history at Ghent University (B).
Henk J.T. Weerts is senior researcher paleogeography at the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands.
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Late Medieval and Early Modern Ritual
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Late Medieval and Early Modern Ritual show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Late Medieval and Early Modern RitualThis collection of fifteen studies brings together scholars of late medieval, Renaissance, and early modern Italy to reflect on the multifaceted world of ritual. The scope is expansive, covering four centuries, and the length and breadth of the Italian peninsula.
Because of older presumptions about the modernity of the Renaissance and hence its supposed aversion to the irrational, scholarship on ritual life in Italian city-states of the Renaissance has lagged behind the historiography on symbols and rituals in monarchies north of the Alps. Only by the 1990s had a wide range of scholars across disciplines become interested in these subjects and approaches for the late medieval and early modern Italian city-state; yet no synthesis or comparative work on rituals and symbols has peered across the regional enclaves of Italy. Through original research in libraries and archives across the Italian peninsula, these essays analyze the richness and importance of ritual at the heart of the Renaissance and Counter-Reformation states, the importance of oaths, ritual space, the power of images, processions, curses, guild ceremonies, saints, and more. The wide geographic and disciplinary range of these essays provides a new platform for viewing the significance of ritual and symbolic power in Renaissance and early modern Italy.
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Les Stratégies matrimoniales (IXe-XIIIe siècle)
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Les Stratégies matrimoniales (IXe-XIIIe siècle) show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Les Stratégies matrimoniales (IXe-XIIIe siècle)Depuis une soixantaine d’années, le structuralisme a mis l’alliance au cœur de l’étude de la parenté. S’inspirant de l’anthropologie, les historiens tentent ainsi de dégager les règles qui président à l’échange de femmes entre les familles médiévales. Ils sont cependant conscients de la spécificité du Moyen Âge, où le mariage est fortement influencé par le christianisme, par le droit romain, et plus généralement par des normes écrites et abstraites dépassant le pragmatisme quotidien des chefs lignagers. Il est vrai qu’au sein de l’aristocratie, les pratiques matrimoniales ont longtemps obéi à des logiques patrimoniales. Le douaire, apporté par le mari, ou la dot, cédée par les parents de la mariée, « font » traditionnellement le mariage. Du reste, l’alliance est trop souvent conclue pour entériner une trêve entre deux troupes ennemies, pour faciliter l’ascension d’un guerrier fidèle que son seigneur récompense par la main de sa fille ou pour obtenir un parti prestigieux. Elle participe donc de l’effort d’une parentèle pour prendre et pour conserver le pouvoir. Elle réduit la future épouse, et peut-être aussi son jeune fiancé, au rôle de l’actrice passive des décisions prises par les aînés de la maison. Aussi solide et enraciné qu’il puisse paraître, ce modèle cède, du moins en partie, aux valeurs évangéliques véhiculées par le clergé savant : unicité, indissolubilité, consensualisme, exogamie extrême… Une telle acculturation (ou plutôt « inculturation », adaptation du christianisme à une société donnée) ne se fait pas sans heurts. Il en va de même avec le remplacement des coutumes germaniques par le droit romain renaissant, qui impose la dot au détriment du douaire. Ces mutations n’interviennent pas seulement dans les pratiques des nobles, mais aussi dans leur imaginaire et dans leurs mentalités. Elles sont particulièrement à l’œuvre entre les IX e et XIII e siècles où l’alliance prend à jamais un nouveau visage.
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Les débuts de l’enseignement universitaire à Paris (1200 – 1245 environ)
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Les débuts de l’enseignement universitaire à Paris (1200 – 1245 environ) show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Les débuts de l’enseignement universitaire à Paris (1200 – 1245 environ)L’un des éléments les plus marquants de l’histoire intellectuelle du monde occidental est la naissance de l’institution que nous appelons encore aujourd’hui « université ». Sur l’émergence et l’histoire institutionnelle des premières universités, Bologne et Paris, beaucoup a été écrit. Cependant, la première période de l’Université de Paris, à partir de sa naissance vers 1200 jusqu’à 1245 environ, est encore mal connue ; surtout du point de vue de l’enseignement, des textes et des maîtres, la réalité universitaire reste encore assez insaisissable. Dans ce volume, qui réunit les actes d’un colloque organisé en septembre 2012, nous avons voulu faire le point sur cette première période de l’Université de Paris, celle de la naissance et de l’enfance de l’université. Rassemblant quasiment toutes les facettes de l’enseignement à l’Université de Paris, après une mise en contexte historique et institutionnelle, le volume vise à présenter un exemple de ce que l’on pourrait appeler l’histoire de la pensée, pour une période restreinte, bien sûr, mais aussi une période cruciale pour l’histoire intellectuelle du moyen âge.
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Medieval Autograph Manuscripts
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Medieval Autograph Manuscripts show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Medieval Autograph ManuscriptsWhat is an autograph? How is it possible to define it? And how can we distinguish the hand of the writer, scientist, or translator - that is, of the learned person setting down his thoughts - from the hand of a pupil or copyist trained in the same style? Autographs have long been an especially challenging area of research into medieval manuscripts, for the finished product is intimately linked to both the author’s thought and his hand. Many well-known medieval authors had already been accorded scientific representations and became known as a result of these. They were joined by new names, a fact which widens the scope of research in the field of autographs and invites new questions. The XVIIth Colloquium of the Comité International de Paléographie Latine, which was held in Ljubljana between 7th and 10th September, 2010, was dedicated to autographs. In addition to scientific contributions by established paleographers, historians, literary and art historians, there were also inspiring papers by younger researchers. The colloquium was receptive to the presentation of new methods and processes of research into medieval manuscripts in general. These Proceedings of the XVIIth Colloquium contain 37 scientific papers documented with 239 illustrations as well as with further graphic elements.
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Medieval Christianity in the North
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Medieval Christianity in the North show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Medieval Christianity in the NorthAll those barbarious peoples who in far-distant islands frequent the ice-bound Ocean, living as they do like beasts - who could call them Christians?
Pope Urban II, 1095
Such condescending impressions about the peoples living at the ‘end of the world’ have been adapted by Scandinavian historians who, until recently, have stressed the isolation and the otherness of the North, and ignored the many similarities to the ‘culturally more developed’ Europe. This collection of articles by Nordic scholars is truly interdisciplinary, covering philology, history, archaeology, theology, and other approaches. It is divided into two parts, the first of which addresses conversion from a broad perspective, while the second is devoted to the consolidation of Christianity and ecclesiastical structures. The book investigates from a fresh viewpoint important aspects of Nordic Christianity in the Middle Ages and discusses to what extent ideas and institutions were adapted to local circumstances. It includes a variety of topics, such as the remnants of paganism, medieval saints’ cults, law, and church, to religious warfare, and the use of beer in cult and memory.
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Middle English Religious Writing in Practice
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Middle English Religious Writing in Practice show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Middle English Religious Writing in PracticeAlthough the Middle English texts broadly categorized as ‘devotional literature’ have received considerable scholarly attention in recent years, much work remains to be done on the cultural meanings and textual transformations of vernacular religious writing during the later medieval period and into the sixteenth century. During these years, popular (but still little-studied) late medieval works such as the Pore Caitif circulated in varied forms amid changing circumstances: the expansion of audiences for Middle English texts, the emergence and persecution of Lollardy, attempts at ecclesiastical censorship, the advent of printing, and the Henrician Reformation. How did Middle English religious texts answer changing cultural and practical needs and the requirements of orthodoxy? How did older texts find new readers; how did these readers alter and deploy them? This collection capitalizes on widespread current interest in these questions, gathering original essays that analyse the many forms, meanings, and legacies of Middle English religious writing.
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Monasteries on the Borders of Medieval Europe
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Monasteries on the Borders of Medieval Europe show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Monasteries on the Borders of Medieval EuropeAs a historical and cultural phenomenon, monasticism always had a close connection with frontiers. The earliest monasteries were believed to be founded in wildernesses and deserts, thus existing beyond society and the inhabited world in general. As intercessors praying for their patrons and benefactors, monastic communities also existed on the border between the earthly and the spiritual worlds.
In medieval Europe, however, the frontier nature of monasticism had specific manifestations in addition to the founding myths of monastic wilderness. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the expansion of Latin Europe in East-Central Europe, the Iberian Peninsula, Scandinavia, and into the Holy Land and Greece opened possibilities for extending monastic networks and establishing new houses. One of the most important parts of this process was the interaction between these new religious communities and the social world around them - an interaction that was characterised by various shades of hostility, cooperation, and adaptation to the local social and cultural framework.
This is the first collection to consider the phenomenon of monastic frontiers in a cross-disciplinary manner. The book’s ten chapters explore the role of monasteries in maintaining political and cultural borders, in breaking and sustaining linguistic boundaries in late medieval Europe, as well as in building and stabilizing Latin Christian cultural identities on the northern and southern frontiers of Europe. Using a wide range of textual, archaeological, and material evidence, an international group of authors examines the expansion of monastic and mendicant networks in Scandinavia, Iberia, East-Central Europe, the British Isles, northern France, the Balkans, and Frankish Greece.
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Notre-Dame de Paris 1163-2013
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Notre-Dame de Paris 1163-2013 show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Notre-Dame de Paris 1163-2013En 1163, débute le chantier de l’actuelle cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris. Construit en un siècle environ, le nouvel édifice devient vite un des monuments les plus fameux de France, symbolisant jusqu’à aujourd’hui l’évêque, l’Église et la ville de Paris. Huit siècles et demi après le début de la construction, un congrès scientifique a réuni du 12 au 15 décembre 2012 des spécialistes d’histoire religieuse, sociale, liturgique, artistique, intellectuelle et institutionnelle. Le livre issu de ce colloque présente un ensemble d'études faisant le point sur l’église cathédrale jusqu’à aujourd’hui et sa fonction médiatrice revendiquée entre Dieu et les hommes : du contrôle sur l’Université aux conférences de Carême, en passant par l’action méconnue du chapitre cathédral, les relations avec la Couronne, le renouvellement du chant sacré, la célébration des grands événements de la nation, l’impact sur l’esthétique néo-gothique.
L’objectif est de mieux comprendre les façons diverses dont Notre-Dame de Paris et les hommes qui prient, travaillent et vivent sous son ombre - évêques, chantres, maîtres, chanoines, chapelains, prédicateurs, hospitaliers, etc. - ont durablement marqué le territoire d’une Cité, la vie d’une capitale et la mémoire d’une nation.
Cédric Giraud, ancien élève de l’École nationale des chartes et agrégé d’histoire, est maître de conférences à l’université de Lorraine et membre junior de l’Institut universitaire de France. Ses recherches portent sur l’histoire culturelle du Moyen Âge central et la philologie médiolatine.
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Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Hull Dialogue
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Hull Dialogue show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Hull DialogueThis collection of essays, focused on the literacies of nuns in medieval Europe, brings together specialists working on diverse geographical areas to create a dialogue about the Latin and vernacular texts nuns read, wrote, and exchanged, primarily in northern Europe from the eighth to the mid-sixteenth centuries. To date, there has been some significant research in this field but little in the way of cross-cultural study. Drawing especially on the rich body of scholarship that currently exists about nuns and books in England, Germany, the Low Countries, and Sweden, these essays investigate the meaning of nuns’ literacies in terms of reading and writing, Latin and the vernaculars.
Contributors to this volume investigate the topic of literacy primarily from palaeographical and textual evidence and by discussing information about book ownership and book production in convents. In this first concentrated study that examines the literacy of nuns in a comparative fashion the essays pay close attention to the individual textual and cultural complexities of nuns’ literacies in the European Middle Ages.
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Post-Roman Transitions
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Post-Roman Transitions show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Post-Roman TransitionsThis volume looks at changing identities during the transition from the Roman empire to a political world defined by a different kingdoms and peoples in western Europe. It addresses 'ethnicity' in the context of alternative modes of identification, mainly Christianity and Romanness. To widen the horizon of current debates, it shows that the ancient dichotomy between barbarians and Romans is hardly helpful in understanding the complex transitions to a post-imperial age in the West. In a broad sweep of regional examples, from Spain and North Africa to Dalmatia and the British Isles, the book follows the unfolding of Christian and barbarian identities: How were both the Roman and the barbarian past used for the formation and legitimation of new identities?
The ‘scripts of Romanness’ changed in the early Middle Ages, and so did the significance of othering pagans, heretics, or barbarians. The contributions trace the tenacity and the ambiguity of traditional narratives and signs of distinction: manuscripts and material remains, costume and epigraphy, historiography and hagiography were used in creative ways to shape civic, local, or religious communities. Many of the contributions show the fundamental importance of Christian 'strategies of identification' for creating a stronger political role for ethnicity in the post-Roman kingdoms. As such, they follow a line of argument that has also been explored in the book’s companion volume in this series, Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe (CELAMA 13).
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Preaching and Political Society
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Preaching and Political Society show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Preaching and Political Society[The connections between preaching, politics, and society have been manifold yet varied in the period from Late Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages. In this multi-lingual volume, these associations are studied within their historical context over twelve new contributions, addressing a wide range of geographical areas and opening up a series of sources which have previously been neglected. Special attention is paid to the cultural and geographical circumstances in which the complex relationship between political thought and preaching should be explored. These contributions reveal the circumstances and the procedures that inspire various preachers to reflect upon political topics, which are often of a sensitive nature. In this way, the powerful and the general public of believers have access to an array of political ideas, allowing opinion-making and political discussion. Furthermore, the collection also shows news ways in which political thought and preaching can be explored, revealing new methods and lines of inquiry allowing insights into the complexities of medieval societies. The international cast of contributors provides a broad perspective on the subject, through six articles in French, and six in English.
,Depuis au moins l’Antiquité tardive, les relations entre prédication et société politique ont été nombreuses et variées. Dans le présent volume ont été réunies douze contributions qui, en mettant en œuvre une documentation le plus souvent encore inédite, étudient comment, dans des contextes historiques, culturels et géographiques différents, ces relations complexes se sont déployées. Les contributions permettent ainsi de mieux apprécier dans quelles circonstances et selon quelles modalités plusieurs prédicateurs ont été amenés à proposer dans leurs sermons une réflexion de nature politique censée contribuer à la formation de l’opinion des puissants et des fidèles en général. Elles montrent aussi quelques-unes des voies qui permettent d’explorer un domaine de recherche qui n’a suscité jusqu’ici qu’un nombre limités de travaux, mais dont la connaissance est sans aucun doute indispensable pour mieux comprendre la complexité des sociétés médiévales.
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Preaching the Word in Manuscript and Print in Late Medieval England
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Preaching the Word in Manuscript and Print in Late Medieval England show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Preaching the Word in Manuscript and Print in Late Medieval EnglandThe focus of this volume, on Middle English and Latin material in prose and verse, concerns the preaching of the word of God in an expansive sense in late medieval England. This collection of essays explores the multiple ways in which the sermon in England in the later Middle Ages both influenced and was influenced by other devotional and didactic material, both implicitly and explicitly. The essays pay special attention to examples of textual complexity in the sermon as manifested in the manuscript and early printed traditions. By examining sermon technique and methodology contributors present related material that either travels alongside sermons or shares the same preaching or teaching milieu. While analysing sermons and other homiletic material, the essays also explore areas, such as the dating and illustration of incunabula, which have an important bearing on the sermons and devotional literature of the period, but are normally studied in an isolated fashion. These fit in well with the particular emphasis in the collection on the sermon in the early printed period. In addition, attention is paid to some of the ways in which sermon-study was first brought to the fore by late nineteenth-century editors and early twentieth-century commentators. In this way various threads are brought together, new texts and ideas presented, and potential future avenues for research suggested that will continue to be important for an understanding of sermons and related religious literature in late medieval England.
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Probable Truth
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Probable Truth show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Probable TruthEditing as an academic mode of work has had a variable ‘press’ - it is often seen as just plumbing. But without editions no historian of whatever critical persuasion could operate. Texts that are not edited are effectively invisible.
The advent of electronic means of text production has also raised new possibilities and new problems that need to be openly considered rather than ignored. The papers in this volume reflect those concerns, and explore the ways forward. How do the best editorial procedures of the past get transmitted to the future? A distinguished line-up of experienced editors and younger scholars actively grappling with these issues reflect on their engagement with the challenges of textual theory and editorial practice.
No single solution emerges as applicable to all texts and for all editions; the individual characteristics of each text and its transmission, together with the intended audience of each edition, emerge as primary areas for consideration.
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Problems and Possibilities of Early Medieval Charters
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Problems and Possibilities of Early Medieval Charters show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Problems and Possibilities of Early Medieval ChartersAlthough historical work on the early Middle Ages relies to an enormous extent on the evidence provided by charters and other such documents, the paradigms within which such documents are interpreted have changed relatively slowly and unevenly. The critical turn, the increasing availability of digital tools and corpora for study, and the acceptance among charter specialists that their discipline can inform a wider field all encourage rethinking. From 2006 to 2011 a series of sessions at the Leeds International Medieval Congress addressed this by applying new critiques and technologies to early medieval diplomatic material from all over Europe. This volume collects some of the best of these papers by new and young scholars and adds related work from another session. The subjects range from reinterpretations of Carolingian or Anglo-Saxon political history, through the production and use of charters by all ranks of society and their subsequent preservation from Spain to Germany and England to Italy, to explorations of new media leading to new kinds of results from such evidence. The result is an array of new perspectives which makes an important contribution to recent reconsiderations of charter studies. It will inform a wide audience from all walks of medieval historical studies.
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Religious Controversy in Europe, 1378–1536
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Religious Controversy in Europe, 1378–1536 show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Religious Controversy in Europe, 1378–1536This book gathers new work by scholars who share a common interest not only in the controversial texts of the period between 1378 and 1536, but also in how the use, geographical movement, and manipulation of texts contributed materially to the formation of groups and group identities. The period covered spans the traditional medieval/early modern divide and the concomitant transition from manuscript to print. The years between the eruption of the Great Schism and the outbreak of European reformations witnessed unprecedented rifts in communities, institutions, and alliances. Yet while the crises of this period gave rise to division, they also prompted new groups to coalesce, resulting in realignments of communication networks, readership, and textual circulation in Europe. The Councils of Constance and Basel facilitated the production and dissemination of vast quantities of documents. Movements challenging the Roman Church and efforts to reform the Church from within provoked a torrent of persuasive and polemical writings which gained further momentum with the introduction of printing. These new situations also fostered the development and expression of group identities, defined by doctrine, opposition, vernacularity, and a burgeoning sense of national self-consciousness. Religious Controversy in Europe, 1378-1536 examines the textual and material circumstances of these developments.
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Sacred Sites and Holy Places
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Sacred Sites and Holy Places show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Sacred Sites and Holy PlacesIn this volume two important veins of interdisciplinary research into the medieval period in Scandinavia and the Baltic region are merged, namely the Christianization process and landscape studies. The volume authors approach the common theme of sacrality in landscape from such various viewpoints as archaeology, philology, history of religion, theology, history, classical studies, and art history. A common theme in all articles is a theoretical approach, complemented by illustrative case studies from the Scandinavian, Baltic, or Classical worlds. Aspects of pagan religion, as well as Christianity and the establishment of the early Church, are considered within both geographical setting and social landscape, while the study of maps, place names, and settlement patterns introduces new methodologies and perspectives to expose and define the sacral landscape of these regions. The contributions are put into perspective by a comparison with research into the sacral landscapes of Central Europe and the Classical world.
New interdisciplinary research methods and new models have been developed by the contributors to present new vistas of sacrality in the Scandinavian and the Baltic landscape. To open up these case studies, a selection of over sixty images and maps accompanies this cutting-edge research, allowing the reader to explore sacralization and the Christianization process within its medieval setting.
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Sermo doctorum
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Sermo doctorum show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Sermo doctorumDespite their large number and their potential significance for our understanding of the genesis of Christian thought and practice, early medieval sermons have been conspicuously neglected by modern scholarship. Taking their lead from recent studies that transformed our understanding of the post-Roman world, the various contributors to this collection of essays explore a wide range of topics related to the composition, transmission, and dissemination of sermons and homiliaries in the early medieval West. Some papers focus on individual sermons in an attempt to identify their authors and aims; others examine the manuscript evidence for the compilation and transmission of composite homiliaries; and a few question our concept of early medieval sermons as a peculiar genre that merits special attention. By bringing early medieval sermons into the centre of discussion this volume, which is the first book dedicated to early medieval sermons and homiliaries, makes an important contribution to our understanding of the religious culture of the early medieval West. This multi-lingual collection of papers examines a plethora of texts which, in the past, were pushed to the margins of historical research, and offers a fresh look at these works in their own cultural, religious, and social context.
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Society and Culture in Medieval Rouen, 911-1300
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Society and Culture in Medieval Rouen, 911-1300 show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Society and Culture in Medieval Rouen, 911-1300Rouen, one of the leading cities of medieval Western Europe, has long awaited detailed consideration in English by modern scholars. This book presents exciting new research on the society and culture of medieval Rouen by British and Continental historians. Divided into three sections, addressing space and representation, religious culture, and social networks, the volume is both wide-ranging and tightly focused. The key themes include Rouen’s relationship with its environs, image and identity, social and political relationships, and Rouen’s status as the ‘capital’ of Normandy. The essays discuss topics ranging from urban development and charity, the city’s aristocratic and ecclesiastical elites, the Jewish community, and the relationship of the Angevin kings with Rouen. Comparisons and contextualization, as well as detailed maps, make the book valuable not only to readers interested in Rouen and Normandy, but also to those who wish to learn more about medieval cities, culture, and society.
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Strategies of Identification
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Strategies of Identification show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Strategies of IdentificationHow were identities created in the early Middle Ages and when did they matter? This book explores different types of sources to understand the ways in which they contributed to making ethnic and religious communities meaningful: historiography and hagiography, biblical exegesis and works of theology, sermons and letters. Thus, it sets out to widen the horizon of current debates on ethnicity and identity. The Christianization and dissolution of the Roman Empire had provoked a crisis of traditional identities and opened new spaces for identification. What were the textual resources on which new communities could rely, however precariously? Biblical models and Christian discourses could be used for a variety of aims and identifications, and the volume provides some exemplary analyses of these distinct voices. Barbarian polities developed in a rich and varied framework of textual ‘strategies of identification’. The contributions reconstruct some of this discursive matrix and its development from the age of Augustine to the Carolingians. In the course of this process, ethnicity and religion were amalgamated in a new way that became fundamental for European history, and acquired an important political role in the post-Roman kingdoms. The extensive introduction not only draws together the individual studies, but also addresses fundamental issues of the definition of ethnicity, and of the relationship between discourses and practices of identity. It offers a methodological basis that is valid for studies of identity in general.
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Studies on Medieval Empathies
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Studies on Medieval Empathies show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Studies on Medieval EmpathiesEmpathy is a deep feeling or intuition for kinship transcending self-preoccupied individuality. This book is about empathy in the Middle Ages, before it had a name.The authors begin by tracing the origins of empathy in pre-Christian Antiquity and early Christianity, especially in mysteries of divine justice, by which the good often suffered and the wicked prospered and, as with surgical healing, compassion was manifested by inflicting pain. The authors also explore many facets of empathy’s development in the Latin West, criss-crossing the artificial borders of academic departments to reveal interlocking connections that give emotional power to images, whether verbal, pictorial, or performative. In a powerful multi-disciplinary collaboration, they identify conditions and limits of empathy, and areas in which the dynamic between insiders and outsiders forced subversive explorations of what it meant to be human.
The doctrine of Christ as mediator of divine love dominated medieval thought about empathy as a human instinct. Taken together, like magnetic poles, two pictures in this book represent that mediation in action. The cover illustration, a mid-ninth-century ivory plaque from Carolingian Gaul, depicts Christ, the Divine Word, Love incarnate, glorified, enthroned, and adored by angels as creator, judge, and teacher. The second, Plate 1, from the same period and region, represents the act that sealed the mediation of divine love to humanity: Christ the man, tortured and dying for love.
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The Book of Nature and Humanity in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:The Book of Nature and Humanity in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: The Book of Nature and Humanity in the Middle Ages and the RenaissanceSome modern commentators welcome the alleged approach of the “post-human” era as a liberation from the constraints of essentialist identity. Others lament it as a harbinger of the death of the soul. But both groups will find it instructive to consider that the nature of humanity has always been a contested topic. The chapters collected here suggest that the emergence of the modern idea of the human was at least as fraught a process as its putative demise.
David Hawkes and Richard G. Newhauser have selected a wide array of contributions for this volume. Renowned scholars from several disciplines have produced a series of fascinating essays, which concentrate on the relation between humanity and nature as it was understood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The issues they examine range from poaching to flatulence, from Aztec animal symbolism to Jesus’s grandmother, from tulips to the Trinity.
Some chapters examine a wide variety of popular texts, from the bloody legend of Robert the Devil to the sinister magic of the Anglo-Saxon “wen charm”, from Lutheran Books of Nature to Emperor Maximillian’s wedding. The result is a book that raises intriguing implications for the modern struggle over the meaning of mankind.
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The Classics in the Medieval and Renaissance Classroom
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:The Classics in the Medieval and Renaissance Classroom show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: The Classics in the Medieval and Renaissance ClassroomMedievalists and Renaissance specialists contribute to this compelling volume examining how and why the classics of Greek and Latin culture were taught in various Western European curricula (including in England, Scotland, France,Germany, and Italy) from the tenth to the sixteenth centuries. By analysing some of the commentaries, glosses, and paraphrases of these classics that were deployed in medieval and Renaissance classrooms, and by offering greater insight into premodern pedagogic practice, the chapters here emphasize the ‘pragmatic’ aspects of humanist study. The volume proposes that the classics continued to be studied in the medieval and Renaissance periods not simply for their cultural or ‘ornamental’ value, but also for utilitarian reasons, for ‘life lessons’. Because the volume goes beyond analysing the educational manuals surviving from the premodern period and attempts to elucidate the teaching methodology of the premodern period, it provides a nuanced insight into the formation of the premodern individual. The volume will therefore be of great interest to scholars and students interested in medieval and Renaissance history in general, as well as those interested in the history of educational theory and practice, or in the premodern reception of classical literature.
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The Medieval Translator. Traduire au Moyen Age
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:The Medieval Translator. Traduire au Moyen Age show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: The Medieval Translator. Traduire au Moyen AgeTranslation studies centering on medieval texts have prompted new ways to look at the texts themselves, but also at the exchange and transmission of culture in the European Middle Ages, inside and outside Europe. The present volume reflects, in the range and scope of its essays, the itinerant nature of the Medieval Translator Conference, at the same time inviting readers to reflect on the geography of medieval translation. By dividing the essays presented here into four groups, the volume highlights lines of communication and shifts in areas of interest, connecting the migrating nature of the translated texts to the cultural, political and linguistic factors underlying the translation process. Translation was, in each case under discussion, the result or the by-product of a transnational movement that prompted the circulation of ideas and texts within religious and/or political discussion and exchange.
Thus the volume opens with a group of contributions discussing the cultural exchange between Western Europe and the Middle East, identifying the pivotal role of Church councils, aristocratic courts, and monasteries in the production of translation. The following section concentrates on the literary exchanges between three close geographical and cultural areas, today identifiable with France, Italy and England, allowing us to re-think traditional hypotheses on sites of literary production, and to reflect on the triangulation of language and manuscript exchange. From this triangulation the book moves into a closer discussion of translations produced in England, showing in the variety and chronological span covered by the contributions the development of a rich cultural tradition in constant dialogue with Latin as well as contemporary vernaculars. The final essays offer a liminal view, considering texts translated into non-literary forms, or the role played by the onset of printing in the dissemination of translation, thus highlighting the continuity and closeness of medieval translation with the Renaissance.
Alessandra Petrina is Associate Professor of English Literature at the Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy. She has published extensively on late-medieval and Renaissance literature and intellectual history, as well as on modern children’s literature, and edited a number of volumes on early modern English culture.
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The Nordic Apocalypse
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:The Nordic Apocalypse show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: The Nordic ApocalypseThis book, with roots in a conference held in Iceland in May 2008, contains a series of articles reflecting modern approaches to the text, context, and performance of the Old Norse poem Vǫluspá, perhaps the best known and most discussed of all the Eddic poems. Rather than attempting to cover Eddic or Skaldic poetry as a genre, the main aim of this book is to present an overview of the ‘state of the art’ with regard to one particular Eddic poem. It focuses especially on the poem’s possible context within the apocalyptic tradition of Northern Europe in the early medieval period. The approaches of the articles range from placing the poem within the pre-Christian oral tradition to placing it within the written and liturgical context of Christianity. Two other chapters offer a possible context for the poem by examining the nature and background of the early medieval image of the Apocalypse known to have been on display in the Cathedral of Hólar in northern Iceland. While the approaches are focused on one specific poem, they are nonetheless applicable to many other Eddic works.
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The Performance of Christian and Pagan Storyworlds
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:The Performance of Christian and Pagan Storyworlds show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: The Performance of Christian and Pagan StoryworldsThe present collection explores a hitherto understudied body of Nordic medieval literature which, although overlooked in traditional, language-based narratives, was in fact crucial in shaping social and religious identities.
By drawing on the ‘performance turn’ in cultural studies, the volume identifies a number of minor and peripheral literary forms and texts that had a vital connection to ritual and ritualized speech. These neglected traditions therefore offer an alternative insight into Nordic literary life and the sets of cultural expression, or storyworlds, underlying Nordic culture.
The collected studies explore different aspects of verbal performances as a primary vehicle for the Nordic storyworlds, with a preference for the Christian over the pagan traditions. Emphasis is placed on Latin, Old Norse, and Finnish traditions that were retold and reproduced over time. These ‘living’ literary forms highlight the importance of non-canonical texts for the interpretation of contact between the peripheries and centres of Nordic culture. Through the focus on the interaction between Latin and the vernacular, between eastern Baltic and western Latin influences, and between ritual and speech in religious practice, this collection demonstrates the importance of ‘minor’ texts for the re-construction of medieval Nordic culture and history.
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The Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:The Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: The Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of ChristThis is a collection of pioneering studies by a distinguished transatlantic team of scholars on a neglected yet canonical tradition of medieval English literature. From the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries and beyond, the remarkable ‘pseudo-Bonaventuran’ tradition, flowing from the Latin Meditationes vitae Christi (and thought, wrongly, to have been composed by St Bonaventure), gave Europe orthodox models for how to represent, know, and follow Jesus Christ. The Meditationes, in a huge variety of Latin and vernacular versions, invite their readers and listeners to imagine themselves present within the Gospel narrative. How to live, what to believe, how to feel, and how to be saved: this eloquent mainstream tradition had an impact on the public and private lives of English people more profound and lasting than any text save the Bible itself. For many, it even did the Bible’s work. The tradition of the Meditationes provides us with a gauge of lived religious sensibility without equal in the English later Middle Ages.
Deriving from the Queen’s Belfast-St Andrews AHRC-funded research project, Geographies of Orthodoxy: Mapping the English Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ, c. 1350-1550, this volume questions and revises previous descriptions of the devotional, cultural, and political contexts in which pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ were produced, circulated, read, and understood. The period spanning the rise and repression of Lollardy, the ostensibly ‘orthodox’ fifeenth century, and the Tudor Reformations will never look quite the same again.
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The legal status of ḏimmī-s in the Islamic West (second/eighth-ninth/fifteenth centuries)
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:The legal status of ḏimmī-s in the Islamic West (second/eighth-ninth/fifteenth centuries) show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: The legal status of ḏimmī-s in the Islamic West (second/eighth-ninth/fifteenth centuries)The studies brought together in this volume provide an important contribution to the history of ḏimmī-s in the medieval dār al-islām, and more generally to the legal history of religious minorities in medieval societies. The central question addressed is the legal status accorded to ḏimmī-s (Jews and Christians) in the Muslim law in the medieval Muslim west (the Maghreb and Muslim Spain). The scholars whose work is brought together in these pages have dealt with a rich and complex variety of legal sources. Many of the texts are from the Mālikī legal tradition; they include fiqh, fatwā-s, ḥisba manuals. These texts function as the building blocks of the legal framework in which jurists and rulers of Maghrebi and Peninsular societies worked. The very richness and complexity of these texts, as well as the variety of responses that they solicited, refute the textbook idea of a monolithic ḏimmī system, supposedly based on the Pact of ‘Umar, applied throughout the Muslim world. In fact when one looks closely at the early legal texts or chronicles from both the Mashreq and the Maghreb, there is little evidence for a standard, uniform ḏimmī system, but rather a wide variety of local adaptations. The articles in this volume provide numerous examples of the richness and complexity of interreligious relations in Medieval Islam and the reactions of jurists to those relations.
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Theologica Minora
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Theologica Minora show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Theologica MinoraThe title of this volume, “Theologica Minora”, may wrongly suggest that the essays contained herein purport an antiquarian interest in some minor theological quibbles within the vast ocean that is Byzantine theological literature. On the contrary, this volume illuminates texts and theological genres which have so far remained unexplored or underinvestigated by the vast majority of scholars. Whilst unlocking the as yet unknown troves of florilegia, religious poetry, and monastic kephalaia, this volume investigates the cultural background of these different endeavors and provides an image of Byzantine theological literature which repudiates the rigid narratives proposed to date.
Antonio Rigo is Professor of Byzantine Philology and Christianity at the University of Venice Ca’ Foscari. His research focuses on religious life in Byzantium, with special emphasis on ascetical and mystical literature, heresiology, and theology during the Paleologan period.
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Warrior Neighbours
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Warrior Neighbours show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Warrior NeighboursThis volume presents the impressive corpus of studies by Robert I. Burns, SJ, on the topic that he has spent a half-century exploring in meticulous detail: the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia. These studies focus on one of Europe’s greatest medieval monarchs, James the Conqueror of Aragon-Catalonia, who made an enduring contribution to Western civilization.
James I ‘the Conqueror’ conquered Mediterranean Spain from Islam during fifty crusading years (1225-1276). Not only did he contend with ‘infidel’ powers around him, he frequently vied with warring Christian neighbours. This book presents a rich depiction of King James’s warrior neighbours, Muslim and Christian, from the king who was his greatest ally and greatest rival, Alfonso X the Learned (1212-1284), to the redoubtable and resourceful al-Azraq, a Muslim adventurer, rebel, and leader of one of the most formidable Islamic countercrusades in Spain. These studies illuminate such themes as cultural conflict and interchange, border tensions and frontier relations, medieval warfare and crusading, piracy, brigandage and reprisals, grievance management, medieval queenship and papal relations, the role of Jews in a pluri-ethnic kingdom, Mudejars and Moriscos, and the warrior heroes of Islam. King James presided over a society more complex than any in Christendom, and these studies unlock the details of this stunning achievement.
Robert I. Burns, SJ, Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins University), Doc. es Sc. Hist. (Fribourg University, Switzerland), was Professor Emeritus of History at UCLA and Director of the Institute of Medieval Mediterranean Spain. He was an elected Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, and of the Hispanic Society of America, and a Guggenheim Fellow. His distinctions include the Haskins gold medal of the Medieval Academy of America, seven national book awards, eight honorary doctorates, and the Order of the Cross of St George.
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The Medieval Paradigm
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:The Medieval Paradigm show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: The Medieval ParadigmMedieval culture is marked by a general acceptance of the mental attitude which both recognized and accepted the truths of the dominant religion. This is, then, the ‘general paradigm’ that programmatically directs the paths and results of intellectual activity in the Middle Ages. In the various fields of scientific research, in the different epochs and in the manifold social and institutional situations, there are also produced - based on the ‘general paradigm’ - many ‘particular paradigms’, which carry out some specified and graduated effects of the general one.
The idea pursued during the Congress is an attempt to determine, describe and evaluate the general and particular results the ‘paradigm’ had on the maturation of medieval philosophical and scientific thought with regard to the relationship - that was a dynamic and reciprocal one, and was not necessarily reduced to a theological understanding -between rational inquiry and religious belief.
List of Contributors: G. Alliney, M. Bartoli, A. Bisogno, A. Cacciotti, S. Carletto, C. Casagrande, A. Conti, G. d’Onofrio, P.F. De Feo, C. Erismann, G. Fioravanti, F. Fiorentino, A. Galonnier, R. Gatti, J. Gavin, M. Geoffroy, A. Guidi, M. Laffranchi, R. Lambertini, M. Lenzi, E. Mainoldi, C. Martello, C. Mews, A. Morelli, P. Müller, F. Paparella, M. Parodi, G. Perillo, I. Peta, A. Petagine, P. Porro, F. Seller, K. Tachau, Ch. Trottmann, S. Vecchio, M. Vittorini, J. Ziegler
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Writing Down the Myths
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Writing Down the Myths show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Writing Down the MythsWhat are myths? Are there ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ versions? And where do they come from? These and many other related questions are addressed in Writing Down the Myths, a collection of critical studies of the contents of some of the most famous mythographic works from ancient, classical, medieval, and modern times, and of the methods, motivations, and ideological implications underlying these literary records of myth.
While there are many works on myth and mythology, and on the study of this genre of traditional narrative, there is little scholarship to date on the venerable activity of actually writing down the myths (mythography), attested throughout history, from the cultures of the ancient Middle East and the Mediterranean to those of the modern world. By assembling studies of the major literary traditions and texts through a variety of critical approaches, this collection poses - and seeks to answer - key questions such as these: how do the composers of mythographic texts choose their material and present them; what are the diverse reasons for preserving stories of mythological import and creating these mythographic vessels; how do the agenda and criteria of pre-modern writers still affect our popular and scholarly understanding of myth; and do mythographic texts (in which myths are, so to speak, captured by being written down) signal the rebirth, or the death, of mythology?
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