Viator (English and Multilingual Edition)

This article challenges the assertion that the anonymous dedicatory poem-addressed to Aio (884-891), the prince of Benevento-represents the proem of the Cassinese monk Erchempert’s Historia Langobardorum Beneventanorum (ca. late 9th c.). First, the linguistic and stylistic differences between the two works far outnumber the supposed similarities. This indicates that the author of the carmen possessed a deeper understanding of Latin than the chronicler. The principle discrepancy, however, lies in that in the dedication Aio’s talents are extolled-describing him as the initiator of a new shining era-whereas, in the chronicle, although not condemning Aio, Erchempert’s tone is not overly laudatory. If the Cassinese monk truly is the author of the poetic composition, then he wrote it with such a style and intent that it would be a direct departure from the tone of the Historia Langobardorum Beneventanorum.

Extensive research on Otto of Freising’s Historia de duabus civitatibus has left us with a thorough understanding of concepts of time and of history in this well-known twelfth-century universal chronicle. The insight that techniques of the social production of space differ depending on the discursive context however makes a new reading of the text worthwhile in order to analyze spatiality in Otto’s narrative of universal history. On the one hand, hypotheses of medieval space as a space of emplacement can be shown to apply to the actions and events of earthly politics, even though networks of emplaced events become more complex over time and elements of terrain and spatial extension come up in the later passages. On the other hand, events that are part of salvation history are shown to have specific spatial characteristics different from those of the mutatio rerum.

The scriptorium of Saint-Martin of Tours was a center of artistic production (architecture, sculpture, epigraphy, wall painting, manuscripts), marked by the splendors of Alcuin’s years: the codex B.M. Tours, MS 193 is part of this tradition. A composite manuscript (sacramentary of 1180, antiphonary of the thirteenth century, historical documents of the 13th-14th c.), it is a witness to experimentations in the constitution of missals. Examination of it reveals a Carolingian inheritance, while preserving the characteristics of its time. It gathers a calligraphic, textual, liturgical, and iconographic memory appropriate for this community, and contemporary elements, revealing a collective cultural identity. B.M. Tours, MS 193 embodies Saint-Martin’s Memoria, glorifying its place of origin, its community, and restoring, for the twelfth century, untold post-Alcuin prestige.

As evidenced by medieval French narratives, barbarity is a key element in the Western representation of the Turks. The notion of “barbarian” is fundamentally linked and diametrically opposed to that of “civilized”: the barbarian is a stranger to the civilisation, a foreigner, an outsider. Thus, confrontations between “us” and the members of the opposing camp, “them,” arise, the latter being perceived as a threat to the well-being of “our” culture and identity. This article examines how medieval French authors proceed to inscribe the Turks in a long line of barbarian peoples hostile to the West. The main interest of this study is to illustrate that the usage of the label “barbarian,” applied to the Turks, fulfills political criteria and aims to conceal the expansionist plans of the Westerners themselves while making the Turkish conquests unacceptable and illegal.

The completion of the search for the Grail occurs in Le Haut Livre du Graal within a harrowing atmosphere ruled by violence and revenge. The closely intertwined adventures of Gauvain, Lancelot, and Perlesvaus are doomed from the start of the novel by the silence of Perlesvaus in the castle of the Fisher King. To this original sin other wrongdoings are added in the pre-history of the text, or during the novel. The hostile topography, which invades the narrative space, reveals itself as a consequence of the breaches and transgressions occurring in the past.

The fact that James I of Aragón’s (1213-1276) father does not come off particularly well in his autobiographical Llibre dels fets is known. But how was it possible at all, considered from a contemporary perspective, to criticize the father who did, nonetheless, legitimize the royal power of the son? One explanation lies, as is argued, in the invention of the royal office which allows differentiating between position and person: as successor to the office, the son remained untouched by the personal moral defects of his father. Seen in this way, the idea of royal office made it possible for James to interpret rulership and “self”in contrast to the father, and to record this interpretation in the Llibre dels fets. Finally, this Aragonese concept of royal office and its connections to the “self” is contrasted with other European models of thirteenth-century rulership.

This study examines the social dimensions of language in the Libro de buen amor (Book of Good Love.)Informed by the theories of Richard Bauman and Charles Briggs on language as a mediator in social praxis, I analyze how discourse functions as a mechanism to generate agency and confer power. This social dimension of language is exemplified, above all, through the figure of the go-between. Therefore, this study centers on the implementation of language by Trotaconventos as an effective means to invert her marginal position and gain social power. However, her discursive adroitness is challenged by other characters, especially in the episode of the Moorish woman, which offers a paradigm to resist the advances of the go-between. Thus, within the analysis of Trotaconventos’s discursive strategies, particular attention is given to this episode since it illustrates how the diverse uses of language in the text function to create social agency.

This article analyses and points out some of the inconsistencies between the true history and the one depicted in the text of the Waltharius concerning some of the facts and characters of the poem. In each case, it attempts to explain that such inconsistencies are related to the interweaving of oral traditions and also to the determination imposed by the political and cultural power at the time of the creation of the work.

This article revisits the question of the compilation date of the Liber Razielis in seven books. Until now, research has dated the compilation using evidence contained within the appendix in which an author, who identifies himself as Johannes Clericus, maintains that the work had been assembled under the patronage of Alphonso X, king of Castile (1221-1284). Through analysis of the manuscripts and secondary sources, it has been possible to demonstrate that the rôle attributed to Alphonso X in the creation of the Liber Razielis is historically untenable and a fabrication. The same analysis has established that, by the mid-fourteenth century, the Liber Razielis in seven books had probably not yet been compiled or, at any rate, was just beginning to circulate. In addition, the article proposes that the appendix composed by Johannes Clericus can, in fact, be dated roughly between 1350 and 1376.

Seminal book of the Middle Ages, the Bible historiale itself has never been the subject of study. Written at the end of the twelfth century for the laity, Bible historiale by Guyard des Moulins is the first to present the integral French translation. From the fourteenth century, it was the subject of a significant manuscript production, which contained many images. Conceived as a history book, the Bible historiale recounts the history from the Creation to the second Parousia. Thanks to the dual concepts of time and history-both linear and circular, past and present-these manuscripts are the locus of the Unveiling of divine plan. We chose, for this study, a manuscript of the Bible historiale painted, around 1320-1330, by a brilliant painter, the Master of Roman de Fauvel. This painter attempts to give form to the history or, in other words, to the Word through the visual journey he proposes.

Denys of Rijkel (1402-1471), Carthusian monk, devotes a large part of his huge literary production to philosophy, which, in his view, is the lowest level of a hierarchy rising through scholastic theology and culminating in mystical theology. Philosophy adumbrates the superior modes of supernatural knowledge at a natural level. Since Averroes is certainly among the philosophers most cited by Denys, this article examines Denys’s attitude towards him and points out that it oscillates between a respect for Averroes as an authoritative representative of philosophic wisdom and a disapproval of the perfidious Averroes who denies the basic Christian truths. The essay first examines Denys’s invectives against Averroes, casting light on the philosophical reasons behind the rhetoric of the damned and impious Averroes; it demonstrates how thirteenth-century Scholastics influenced Denys’s approach to Averroes’s philosophical doctrines; finally, it reconstructs Denys views on two crucial noetic issues related to Averroes’s philosophy: monopsychism and intellectual happiness.

The translation of the Psalms into French verse during the Renaissance is often studied through the prism of Reformation spiritual dynamics. It is indeed in Geneva at the heart of the Reformed Church that the Psalms experienced an enduring success. However, one should not forget that Clément Marot offered his versed translation of the Psalms to Francis I, the Catholic king of France, and that, therefore, a similar work explicitly crafted for the spiritual revival of catholic believers could have also been presented to Henry II. The French monarchy did not seize this opportunity that presented itself between 1540 and 1560 to sponsor the creation of a French verse catholic psalm book. Various reasons can be linked to the failure of a timely use of the Psalms by the French Crown and a much too tardy understanding of the poetic genius of the Psalms.

This article assesses the hypothesis suggested some thirty years ago by English art historian Peter Murray of the possibility that Florentine Renaissance writer Giovan Battista Gelli may have used a now lost copy of Ghiberti’s Commentaries (different from the only surviving manuscript) to compose his short life of this artist in his Vite d’artisti fiorentini. To appraise Murray’s theory, this essay compares Gelli’s concise biography of Ghiberti not only with the latter’s autobiograhy in Book II of the Commentaries but also with early sixteenth-century texts such as Antonio Billi’s Libro, the so-called Anonimo Magliabechiano, and Vasari’s Lives.

This article examines Sacrobosco’s idea of southern hemisphere viewed as the result of his interpretation of the precedent cosmological tradition and studies its influence on Italian Renaissance commentaries of the Sphere. Moreover, it shows that Sacrobosco, following the Aristotelian distinction between the spheres of water and earth, explained the existence of dry land as an exception which allowed animal life, and he suggested-at the same time-that the subequatorial part of the world might be habitabile. The analysis of the annotations made to the work by Fra Mauro Fiorentino, Egnazio Danti, Francesco Giuntini, and Francesco Pifferi displays the relevance of the main features of the orginal text in order to convey a new conception of the earth.

Based on the author’s previous work on the formation of a fiscal state in Castile, this article points out a method of analysis using agency theory to study royal tax farming during the early modern period. Agency theory allows a better understanding of how this matter took part in its own political system. So, tax farming is identified and examined as a key element within more general political considerations and economic relations.

Since the invasions of Spain and Italy in the eighth and ninth centuries respectively Muslims have been present in Europe. They have strongly influenced science and culture and are, as of the Middle Ages, beyond doubt part of European history. However, as they prevailed at the expense of Christian kingdoms, they were hardly welcome and in some cases could not hold their ground in the long run. In Germany, where Muslims appeared very rarely and only ever as prisoners of war, the “Turkish threat” propaganda of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries continues to have an effect even today. This propaganda is, among other things, responsible for the “Islamophobia” prevalent in present-day German society, which scholarship can counter with historical arguments.