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This volume offers an in-depth exploration of the cultural connections between and across Britain, Ireland, and Iceland during the high and late Middle Ages. Drawing together new research from international scholars working in Celtic Studies, Norse, and English, the contributions gathered together here establish the coherence of the medieval Insular world as an area for literary analysis and engage with a range of contemporary approaches to examine the ways, and the degrees to which, Insular literatures and cultures connect both with each other, and with the wider European mainstream.

The articles in this collection discuss the Insular histories of some of the most widely read literary works and authors of the Middle Ages, including Geoffrey of Monmouth and William Langland. They trace the legends of Troy and of Charlemagne as they travelled across linguistic and geographical borders, give fresh attention to the multilingual manuscript collections of great households and families, and explore the political implications of language choice in a linguistically plural society. In doing so, they shed light on a complex network of literary and cultural connections and establish the Insular world not as a periphery, but as a centre.

When, back in the 1980s, Roger Ellis first sounded out academic colleagues in British universities and beyond about their possible interest and participation in a conference on medieval translation theory and practice, he perhaps did not envisage that the resulting gathering - intellectually curious, animated, convivial - at Gregynog Hall in Wales (1987) would be the first of a series of international conferences with a strong continental European base, which now provides a regular forum in which one can initiate, and engage with, research questions about this near all-encompassing aspect of medieval culture. Since that first meeting, the Cardiff Conferences on the Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages have charted and drawn anew the parameters of scholarly debate on the topic, while their Proceedings, hosted since 1996 by Brepols’ Medieval Translator series, cumulatively present a body of work valuable to anyone interested in translation in its medieval, broadly European, manifestations.

The contributors of this volume’s essays, assembled in tribute to Roger Ellis on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, have profited from the intellectual opportunities the Medieval Translator conferences foster, and in particular from Roger’s friendship and academic acumen. The essays draw in many cases on Roger’s work to inform a collective project that reflects on his specific interests in translation, including latemedieval piety and Birgittine texts, scholarly editions and studies of genre, considering literary and linguistic relations within and across languages, registers, national boundaries, time and space, refining, even re-defining, our understanding of translation. We offer these essays with warm thanks to and appreciation of Roger Ellis for his work in this field, not least for establishing, with this conference series, a means to demonstrate that translation, and translation studies, is above all a question of different voices speaking productively in dialogue.

‘From Carrickfergus to Carcassonne…’ has its genesis in the IRC funded exhibition of the same name which explores the unlikely links between medieval Ulster and Languedoc.

Hinging upon the personal story of a charismatic individual - Hugh de Lacy, earl of Ulster, ‘From Carrickfergus to Carcassonne’ explores the wider interplay between the Gaelic, Angevin, Capetian and Occitan worlds in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.

This book brings to light new research linking de Lacy to a conspiracy with the French king and details his subsequent exile and participation in the Albigensian Crusade in the south of France. The combined papers in this volume detail this remarkable story through interrogation of the historical and archaeological evidence, benefitting not just from adept scholarly study from Ireland and the UK but also from a Southern French perspective. The ensemble of papers describe the two realms within which de Lacy operated, the wider political machinations which led to his exile, the Cathar heresy, the defensive architecture of France and Languedoc and the architectural influences transmitted throughout this period from one realm to another.

In exploiting the engaging story of Hugh de Lacy, this volume creates a thematic whole which facilitates wide ranging comparison between events such as the Anglo-Norman take-over of Ireland and the Albigensian Crusade, the subtleties of doctrine in Ireland and Languedoc and the transmission of progressive castle design linking the walls of Carcassonne and Carrickfergus.

Claude Andrault-Schmitt a consacré la majeure partie de sa carrière d’enseignant-chercheur à l’étude des arts de l’ancien duché d’Aquitaine, en accordant un intérêt particulier à l’architecture religieuse. Dans sa démarche intellectuelle, elle s’est constamment interrogée sur les questions d’historiographie, de méthodologie et d’épistémologie, ce qui l’a amenée à défendre plusieurs principes qui lui sont chers : appliquer à l’architecture un vocabulaire adapté aux réalités et aux usages médiévaux, se méfier des idées reçues héritées de l’historiographie et des étiquettes - à commencer par le traditionnel clivage entre le roman et le gothique -, aborder les rapports entre les formes et les différentes fonctions d’une église et rassembler le plus grand nombre de disciplines autour d’un même édifice pour en comprendre toutes les facettes : historiens, archéologues, spécialistes des matériaux, de l’épigraphie, de l’iconographie, musicologues.

À l’occasion de son départ à la retraite, ses collègues et ses élèves ont souhaité lui rendre hommage en lui dédiant trente et une contributions reflétant ces différentes préoccupations, regroupées dans quatre sections intitulées Contextualisations, De l’archéologie monumentale à l’archéologie du bâti, Les ordres réformés et Le décor monumental . Ces contributions forment ensemble un panorama très représentatif de l’état de la recherche actuelle dans ces différents domaines et des orientations encouragées par Claude Andrault-Schmitt, que ce soit dans ses publications ou dans son enseignement.

These essays are concerned primarily with the different ways in which European writers, translators, and readers engaged with texts and concepts, and with the movement and exchange of those texts and ideas across boundaries and geographical spaces. It brings together new research on Anglophone and Latinate writings, as well as on other vernaculars, among them Old Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Medieval Irish, Welsh, Arabic, Middle Dutch, Middle German, French, and Italian, including texts and ideas that are experienced in aural and oral contexts, such as in music and song. Texts are examined not in isolation but in direct relation and as responses to wider European culture; several of the contributions theorize the translation of works, for example, those relating to spiritual instruction and prayer, into other languages and new contexts.

The essayists share a common concern, then, with the transmission and translation of texts, examining what happens to material when it moves into contexts other than the one in which it was produced; the influence that scribes, translators, and readers have on textual materiality and also on reception; and the intermingling different textual traditions and genres. Thus they foreground the variety and mobility of textual cultures of the Middle Ages in Europe, both locally and nationally, and speak to the profound connections and synergies between peoples and nations traceable in the movement and interpretation of texts, versions, and ideas. Together the essays reconstruct an outward-looking, networked, and engaged Europe in which people used texts in order to communicate, discover, and explore, as well as to record and preserve.

This collection explores the theoretical and methodological foundations through which we understand Old Norse myths and the mythological world, and the medieval sources in which we find expressions of these. Some contributions take a broad, comparative perspective; some address specific details of Old Norse myths and mythology; and some devote their attention to questions concerning either individual gods and deities, or more topographical and spatial matters (such as conceptions of pagan cult sites). The elements discussed provide an introductory and general overview of scholarly enquiry into myth and ritual, as well as an attempt to define myth and theory for Old Norse scholarship. The articles also offer a rehabilitation of the comparative method alongside a discussion of the concept of ‘cultural memory’ and of the cognitive functions that myths may have performed in early Scandinavian society. Particular subjects of interest include analyses of the enigmatic god Heimdallr, as well as the more well-known Óðinn, the deities, the female ásynjur, and the ‘elves’ or álfar. Text-based discussions are set alongside recent archaeological discoveries of cult buildings and cult sites in Scandinavia, together with a discussion of the most enigmatic site of all: Uppsala in Sweden. The key themes discussed throughout this volume are brought together in the concluding chapter, in a comprehensive summary that sheds new light on current scholarly perspectives.

Throughout his distinguished career at Vanderbilt and Yale, Paul H. Freedman has established a reputation for pushing against and crossing perceived boundaries within history and within the historical discipline. His numerous works have consistently ventured into uncharted waters: from studies uncovering the hidden workings of papal bureaucracy and elite understandings of subaltern peasants, to changing perceptions of exotic products and the world beyond Europe, to the role modern American restaurants have played in taking cuisine in exciting new directions.

The fifteen essays collected in this volume have been written by Paul Freedman’s former students and closest colleagues to both honour his extraordinary achievements and to explore some of their implications for medieval and post-medieval European society and historical study. Together, these studies assess and explore a range of different boundaries, both tangible and theoretical: boundaries relating to law, religion, peasants, historiography, and food, medicine, and the exotic. While drawing important conclusions about their subjects, the collected essays identify historical quandaries and possibilities to guide future research and study.

The late medieval period is widely acknowledged as one of the most salient moments of the history of logic and semantics. It not only considered logic as a sine qua non condition for scientific knowledge, it also begot highly sophisticated theories about both argumentation and language. The last fifty years of increasingly intense research have brought about an ever more detailed knowledge of these theories. And yet, the questions as to what kind of logic is medieval logic, whether and to what extent it corresponds to our conception of logic, and, even, what the nature of its object was, remain challenging. That it has a formal character is widely accepted; and its semantic components display remarkable affinities with contemporary ones. But is it formal in the way modern logic is - or believes it is? Medieval logic does not really make recourse to symbolisms, after all, and the fact that the idea of formal validity might have been born in the twelfth century does not mean that developing formal approaches was an aim of medieval logicians. And what is its semantics a semantics of? Medieval logicians use Latin to deal with Latin constructions, but do these constructions belong to natural language or are they regimented to the point of forming some sort of ideal language?

The twenty-five papers gathered in this volume deal with these issues, thus allowing to reassess the broader questions of the formal character and formalising ambitions of medieval logic, as well as that of the natural character of the language in (and on) which it operated: in other words, they address the question of the nature, object and purpose of medieval logic.

The essays in this collection explore the languages — artistic, symbolic, and ritual, as well as written and spoken — in which power was articulated, challenged, contested, and defended in Italian cities and courts, villages, and countryside, between 1300 and 1600. Topics addressed include court ceremonial, gossip and insult, the performance of sanctity and public devotions, the appropriation and reuse of imagery, and the calculated invocation (and sometimes undermining) of authoritative models and figures. The collection balances a broad geographic and chronological range with a tight thematic focus, allowing the individual contributions to engage in vigorous and fruitful debate with one another even as they speak to some of the central issues in current scholarship. The authors recognize that every institutional action is, in its context, a political act, and that no institution operates disinterestedly. At the same time, they insist on the inadequacy of traditional models, whether Marxian or Weberian, as the complex realities of the early modern state pose tough problems for any narrative of modernization, rationalization, and centralization.

Lieu de défense, de résidence, d’exercice et de représentation du pouvoir, d’exploitation et d’administration, le château du moyen âge et du premier âge moderne est aussi lieu de culture, de fête et de divertissement. Il peut être aussi objet de regards culturels. Ce lieu se prête à la danse, aux concerts, aux réjouissances en tout genre. Trouvères et ménestrels, bateleurs et jongleurs y proposent leurs récits, leurs chants, leurs spectacles. Tout y concourt à la « théâtralisation constante du mode de vie noble ». Mais la demeure seigneuriale est aussi lieu de création, quand le maître et seigneur y accueille pour qu’ils y résident et s’y adonnent à la production écrivains, musiciens ou artistes. Une poésie de cour y a d’ailleurs pris naissance, en France, en Italie, en Allemagne. Plus tard, des troupes de comédiens y seront entretenues. Poètes et artistes venus au château l’ont ensuite célébré de leur plume ou de leur pinceau. Entre ses murs, un espace privilégié peut être celui d’une bibliothèque, éventuelle héritière d’un « cabinet de manuscrits ». Certains seigneurs sont eux-mêmes écrivains. Et si des livres reposent dans le château, le château trouvera en retour sa place dans les livres, par le texte, l’image, la description et la figuration, réalistes ou idéalisées.

Après le château lui-même, ses abords, sa gestion, voici venu le temps de « Lire, danser et chanter au château. La culture châtelaine, XIII e-XVII e siècles », thème du quatrième colloque de la Fondation van der Burch au château-fort d’Écaussinnes-Lalaing en mai 2013.

Fondée à la fin du x e siècle, Montpellier connut une expansion fulgurante à partir du xii e, à la faveur du développement d’échanges culturels et économiques, vers la Méditerranée ou le nord de l’Europe. Cette expansion était le fruit de politiques menées par les Guilhem et confirmée lors du passage de la seigneurie sous l’autorité des rois d’Aragon et de Majorque après 1204, quand la ville obtint un gouvernement consulaire. Devenue une communauté urbaine d’importance au xiii e siècle, Montpellier était habitée par une population cosmopolite. Dans et hors les murs se croisaient grands marchands, changeurs et simples revendeurs, universitaires et intellectuels de renom, artisans et agriculteurs. L’attractivité et le rayonnement de Montpellier en faisaient l’une des principales villes du Bas-Languedoc. Pourtant, son histoire médiévale n’a bénéficié que d’une attention inégale de la part des chercheurs. Cet ouvrage procède d’un colloque international réuni à Montpellier en 2013 et rassemble des articles réalisés par les principaux contributeurs et principales contributrices à l’histoire et à l’archéologie de la ville. Basées sur des archives originales ou sur la réinterprétation de données connues, les recherches proposées ici, tout en présentant un bilan des travaux passés, empruntent des voies nouvelles démontrant les promesses des études historiques et archéologiques sur Montpellier.

Entourés des attentions des médiévistes, les cartulaires sont devenus un objet d’histoire. Ces recueils, résultant de la compilation d’actes par une institution ou une personne juridique, entretiennent des relations complexes avec les originaux, sources directes ou indirectes mises en œuvre par les cartularistes. Qu’il s’agisse de la sélection des matériaux ou du transfert d’informations du modèle à la cible, le travail accompli est affaire de choix, divers et multiples, dont il faut retrouver les logiques pour espérer comprendre les objectifs des hommes qui ont commandités et réalisés ces manuscrits. Même soumis à des contingences matérielles, les copistes conservent une certaine marge de manœuvre dans le traitement de leur documentation. Ils trient, classent ou reclassent les documents qu’ils accueillent et enfin transcrivent les actes en adoptant certains principes. Ce recueil d’études a pour but de renouveler la confrontation originaux-cartulaires, à travers l’analyse d’un recueil et de son chartrier ou grâce à l’exploration d’une question liée à la transcription, à travers plusieurs cartulaires.

La question est ici approchée dans un cadre régional, en l’occurrence la Lorraine médiévale, principalement constituée des diocèses de Metz, Toul et Verdun - et occasionnellement étendue à l’ancienne Lotharingie. La chronologie est délibérément large (XIIe - XVIe siècle), donnant toute leur place aux expériences, parfois négligées, de la fin du Moyen Âge. À défaut d’aborder systématiquement le phénomène de la « mise en cartulaire », les dossiers ici réunis voudraient en enrichir les données et questionnements.

Membre de la Classe des Lettres et des Sciences morales et politiques de l’Académie royale de Belgique et de la Commission royale d’Histoire de Belgique, Docteur honoris causa des Universités Jean Moulin Lyon 3 et de Haute-Alsace à Mulhouse, Professeur des Universités Saint-Louis de Bruxelles et catholique de Louvain, Secrétaire général du Centre européen d’Études bourguignonnes, Jean-Marie Cauchies a connu un parcours académique et une carrière universitaire prestigieux et exemplaires. À l’heure où il quitte sa charge d’enseignement pour une retraite sereine, mais sans doute aussi très studieuse, ses collègues et amis ont souhaité lui offrir un ensemble d’études relevant d’une matière à laquelle le jubilaire a consacré une part majeure de sa production scientifique - avec les trois volumes d’Ordonnances de Jean sans Peur et de Philippe le Bon, générales et destinées au Hainaut, parus à ce jour (Commission royale pour la publication des Anciennes Lois et Ordonnances de Belgique) et sa biographie de Philippe le Beau (Brepols, Coll. Burgundica) - en l’occurrence l’histoire des pays bourguignons des ducs de la Maison de Valois, puis de leurs successeurs Habsbourg. Si elles ne peuvent rendre compte de l’extrême diversité des thèmes auxquels Jean-Marie Cauchies aura consacré ses travaux bourguignons, lesquels relèvent aussi souvent, de façon fatalement imbriquée, des histoires du Hainaut et du droit, auxquels d’autres recueils d’hommage sont consacrés ailleurs, elles se veulent l’expression, à son égard, d’une admiration fondée et d’un riche esprit de convivialité scientifique et humaine.

The fruit of a sustained and close collaboration between historians, linguists and jurists working on the Christian, Muslim and Jewish societies of the Middle Ages, this book explores the theme of religious coexistence (and the problems it poses) from a resolutely comparative perspective. The authors concentrate on a key aspect of this coexistence: the legal status attributed to Jews and Muslims in Christendom and to dhimmīs in Islamic lands. What are the similarities and differences, from the point of view of the law, between the indigenous religious minority and the foreigner? What specific treatments and procedures in the courtroom were reserved for plaintiffs, defendants or witnesses belonging to religious minorities? What role did the law play in the segregation of religious groups? In limiting, combating, or on the contrary justifying violence against them? Through these questions, and through the innovative comparative method applied to them, this book offers a fresh new synthesis to these questions and a spur to new research.

Over the span of his career, Gernot R. Wieland has been actively engaged in the contribution and promotion of the study of medieval literature, particularly in Anglo-Latin and Old English. From his early work on glosses in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, to his later editorial work for The Journal of Medieval Latin, Wieland has provided the field with diverse, diligent, and creative scholarship. The contributors of this volume pay tribute to the significance of Wieland’s teaching and learning in the literature of medieval Europe by presenting him with twelve essays on varied aspects of the subject.

The first section of the volume aims to honour Wieland’s contributions to the study of medieval glossing. It deals with the history of glossing from early medieval Latin literature to late Middle English grammatical texts, as well as the early interpretative history of Walter of Châtillon’s Alexandreis and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britannie. The following section corresponds with Wieland’s interest in Anglo-Saxon literature, with essays on the bilingual letters of Ælfric of Eynsham, the poetry of Alcuin of York, and the Old English Hexateuch. The second half of the volume, which examines elements of Latin literature from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, is divided into two sections containing essays that well represent Wieland’s diverse philological and literary interests in medieval Latin. The third section of the volume on the texts and contexts of Latin literature presents essays on the books of Abbot Maiolus of Cluny, on scholastic virtues of good teaching, and on Walter Map’s Dissuasio Valerii. The final section on the texts and manuscripts of Latin literature provides editions of and commentaries on a Latin-Greek phrase-book, a treatise on the firmament of Genesis 1:6.

With these contributions, this volume honours the research interests of a great teacher and learner of the Middle Ages: Gernot Weiland.

Conversion to Christianity is arguably the most revolutionary social and cultural change that Europe experienced throughout Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Christianization affected all strata of society and transformed not only religious beliefs and practices, but also the nature of government, the priorities of the economy, the character of kinship, and gender relations. It is against this backdrop that an international array of leading medievalists gathered under the auspices of the Converting the Isles Research Network (funded by the Leverhulme Trust) to investigate social, economic, and cultural aspects of conversion in the early medieval Insular world, covering different parts of Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia, and Iceland.

This volume analyses the effects of religious conversion on landscapes of cult and on religious practice in Europe, focusing in particular on Britain and Ireland. Adopting an interdisciplinary and comparative approach, the volume investigates the interaction between different forms of belief, their coexistence and competition. It discusses the coming of writing, the power of the word, landscapes of ritual, and converting communities. The contributors include leading historians, archaeologists, linguists, and literary scholars. This is the second volume to emerge from research undertaken by contributors to the Converting the Isles Research Network and forms a companion volume to The Introduction of Christianity into the Early Medieval Insular World.

See the companion volume at: http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503554624-1

This book provides a fresh insight into European medieval culture by focusing on the concept of the marvellous as it was depicted in medieval writings. Drawing together papers that were presented at the Aspects of the Marvellous in Medieval Literature conference, held at the University of L’Aquila in November 2012, the volume takes a broad multicultural and multilingual approach that offers new perspectives onto the various kinds of mirabile and their common themes in texts from across Europe. Contributions to this volume pay equal attention to both Latin and vernacular writings, and cover aspects of the marvellous in fields as diverse as medieval Latin literature, Romance, Germanic, and Celtic philology, miracles and mirabilia, monsters and fairies, strange creatures and fantastic worlds. Above all, by expanding analysis through different literatures, languages, and literary genres, the volume not only provides an opportunity to compare and contrast key themes and features of these texts, but also casts new light onto the making of our own cultural identity.

This book portrays a little-known phenomenon in Bohemian cultural and political history - the visual culture that grew up in the environment of Reformation churches in Bohemia from the time of the Hussites until the defeat of the Estates by the Habsburg coalition at White Mountain in 1620. It provides the first comprehensive overview of a forgotten era of artistic production over a period of approximately two hundred years, when most of the population of Bohemia professed non-Catholic faiths.

During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a unique situation arose in Bohemia, with five main Christian denominations (Utraquists, Lutherans, the Unity of Brethren, Calvinists, and Catholics) gradually coming to function alongside each other, with a number of other religious groups also active. The main churches, which had a fundamental influence on political stability in the state, were the majority Utraquists and the minority Catholics. Yet the essays of this book establish that despite the particularities of the Bohemian situation, the religious trends of Bohemia were an integral part of the process of Reformation across Europe.

Featuring over fifty illustrations including manuscript illumination, panel painting, and architecture, the book also presents the surviving cultural products of the four non-Catholic Christian denominations, ranging from the more moderate to radical Reformation cultures. The book also analyses the attitudes of these denominations to religious representations, and illuminates their uses of visual media in religious and confessional communication. The book thus opens up both the Reformation culture of Bohemia and its artistic heritage to an international audience.

Recent scholarship has suggested that the religious divide between Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages, although ever-present (and at times even violently so), did not stop individuals and groups from forming ties and expanding them in more intricate ways than previously thought. Moreover, these networks appear to have functioned with an apparent disregard towards any confessional and religious differences. Nevertheless, this was by no means a straightforward or simple situation; both the theological background to how each faith viewed ‘other’ beliefs, as well as the strong social, religious, and authoritative circles that at the least critiqued, even if they did not entirely discourage such contacts, created a formidable opposition to these networks. The articles in this book were presented as papers during an international workshop at the Central European University in Budapest in February 2010. In these presentations and discussions, the premise of interfaith relations and networks was thoroughly explored across Europe from the Iberian Peninsula to the eastern Hungarian frontier, and from England to Italy throughout the high and later medieval period. In this volume, the contributors explore a number of phenomena through different disciplinary approaches. Ties of an economic and cultural nature are examined, and attention is paid to social contacts and networks in the fields of art and the sciences, and matters of daily life. The picture that emerges is altogether more nuanced and diverse than the bipolar paradigm that has dominated previous scholarship.

Together with the notion of secrecy, the core of Shi'i esotericism gravitates around the ẓāhir/bāṭin dualism. This dialectical relationship between the visible and the hidden, which has been inherited from Late Antiquity, buttresses the main doctrines of esoteric Shi'ism which include a dualistic worldview, doctrines of emanation, the contrast between the people of knowledge and of ignorance, the soterial nature of knowledge and of the Guide who possesses it, the two levels of the Scriptures, the need for hermeneutics, and initiatory knowledge and practices. It is true that the birthplace of Shi'ism was Iraq, which had been the central province of the Sassanid Persian Empire until the advent of Islam. This region and its main cities were home to the many intellectual and spiritual traditions of Late Antiquity, including various Jewish, Christian, Judeo-Christian, Mazdean, Manichean, Neoplatonic and Gnostic movements, with these traditions living on for several centuries after the advent of the religion of the Arabs. The articles in this collection, written by recognised scholars in the field, are divided into three sections covering a very wide period of time: the "prehistory" of these doctrines before Islam, early esoteric Shi'ism and its developments in both Shi'i and non-Shi'i Sufism, occult sciences and philosophy.

Ce volume qui renferme 57 contributions portant sur la littérature médiolatine rend hommage à Pascale Bourgain, Professeur émérite d’Histoire et tradition manuscrite des textes littéraires à l’École nationale des chartes. Ces Mélanges peuvent se lire comme une histoire littéraire du Moyen Âge latin. Toute la période médiévale est en effet couverte largement, du v e siècle à la Renaissance et, au-delà, jusqu’aux entreprises du xix e siècle pour redonner vie aux anciens textes. Les œuvres relevant de ces divers champs et temps sont analysées en faisant converger sur elles l’éclairage d’une ou, souvent, de plusieurs disciplines parmi celles qui portent sur le manuscrit : codicologie, histoire de l’enluminure, histoire des bibliothèques ; ou sur les textes qu’il transmet : édition critique, histoire littéraire et critique d’attribution ; sur leurs relations d’influence, de la Quellenforschung à l’analyse des inflexions que subit un même passage repris d’une œuvre à l’autre ; sur la langue de ces textes : lexicographie, grammaire, art de la traduction, étude des interactions entre langues latine et romanes ; sur leur forme littéraire, d’une poésie de facture classique à la prose d’art en passant par la poésie rythmique ; sur enfin ce qu’il y a de plus subtil à décrire dans les textes, leur style, et la manière dont style et sens, loin de s’opposer, s’épousent.

Souvent présentée comme une période charnière, la « Renaissance du xii e siècle » voit fleurir les écoles : école de Laon, de Saint-Victor, de Paris, de Chartres, école d’Abélard aussi, auxquelles on peut ajouter le groupe formé par les Porrétains ou bien encore les « écoles du cloître » (chartreux, cisterciens, clunisiens). L’« âge des écoles » marque ainsi le passage d’une forme de vie intellectuelle à une autre, l’évolution de la culture monastique vers la culture urbaine, qui verra la naissance de l’université de Paris au xiii e siècle et l’avènement de la scolastique. Au moment où se produit un tel essor, la littérature en langue romane connaît une seconde naissance. La langue d’oc voit s’épanouir la lyrique tandis qu’au nord de la Loire, dès les dernières années du xi e siècle, les chansons de geste se répandent, avant que les romans et la poésie des trouvères ne fassent leur apparition. Loin d’être étrangers l’un à l’autre, ces deux phénomènes entretiennent des rapports nombreux et complexes qui valent d’autant plus d’être étudiés que le retentissement de ces écoles de pensée sur la littérature romane est perceptible bien au-delà du xii e siècle. Telle est l’ambition de cet ouvrage, qui propose un bilan historiographique, de nombreuses études de cas et une réflexion à caractère épistémologique.

This volume presents cultural studies approaches to different modes of memoria (the original medieval way of commemoration), taking into account specific confessional contexts. It mainly focuses on the consequences of political, religious and social reforms in the period from 1200 to 1800. Scholars from multiple subject areas in the field of cultural studies evaluate if, and to what extent, reform processes and political or social change have influenced different practices of memoria.

Since customs of commemoration of the dead (and the living) serve as a means of self-reassurance for a society, they allow significant insights into what the respective societies were grounded upon. This volume delivers the first discipline-specific and methodologically diverse approach to the consequences of different reforms on memoria.

In this way this overview creates a ‘history of memoria’ throughout the centuries.

The textuality and materiality of documents are an essential part of their communicative role. Medieval writing, as part of the interpersonal communication process, had to follow rules to ensure the legibility and understanding of a text and its connotations. This volume provides new insights into how different kinds of rules were designed, established, and followed in the shaping of medieval documents, as a means of enabling complex and subtle communicational phenomena. Because they provide a perspective for approaching the material they are supposed to organize, these rules (or the postulation of their use) provide powerful analytical tools for structural studies into given corpora of documents.

Originating in talks given at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds between 2010 and 2012, the twenty papers in this collection offer a precise, in-depth analysis of a variety of medieval scripts, including books, charters, accounts, and epigraphic documents. In doing so, they integrate current developments in palaeography, diplomatics, and codicology in their traditional methodological set, as well as aspects of the digital humanities, and they bridge the gap between the so-called ‘auxiliary sciences of history’ and the field of communication studies. They illustrate different possibilities for exploring how the formal aspects of scripts took their place in the construction of effective communication structures.