Communities, social groups and social relations
More general subjects:
Legitimation of the Elites in High Medieval Poland and Norway
Comparative Studies
Between the years 1000 and 1300 the two developing polities of Norway and Poland often followed similar trends. Both realms were located on what was considered the periphery of Europe both joined Latin Christendom — and with it the wider sphere of European cultural influence — at the turn of the first millennium and both by the end of the thirteenth century had largely coalesced as stable kingdoms. Yet while the histories of these two countries have long been studied along national lines it remains rarer for them to be considered outside of their traditional geographical context and studied via comparison with events elsewhere.
This innovative volume seeks to explore the means and uses of symbolic power that were employed by religiopolitical elites in order to assert their legitimacy and dominance by taking an explicitly comparative approach and dual perspective on these two polities. What stories did elites tell themselves and others about their deservedness to rule what spaces and objects did they utilize in order to project their elevated status and how did struggle and rivalry form part of their societal dominance? Formed from chapters co-written by experts in Polish and Norwegian history this unique volume not only reflects on the similarities and differences between events in these two polities but also more broadly offers conceptual tools and comparative frameworks that can enhance our wider understanding of the conditions and factors that shaped religiopolitical behaviour on the peripheries.
Rituals, Memory, and Societal Dynamics: Contributions to Social Archaeology
A Collection of Essays in Memory of Sharon Zuckerman
Thanks largely to the introduction of new methods of recovery and analysis archaeology is increasingly treated as a science. Yet it should continue to ask questions that are founded in the humanities. This is especially true of social archaeology which forms the core of this volume. Being based on the notion that ‘the social’ permeates all areas of life the chapters gathered here give priority to archaeological data and contexts which in turn form the prerequisite for analyzing how at particular times and places people negotiated or reaffirmed the society around them. Case studies from the Levant and the Eastern Mediterranean sit alongside selected comparative cases from other parts of the world and assess issues such as the development of cultural characteristics of societies societal continuity and collapse religious beliefs and rituals and the role of social memory as well as interactions within and between societies. The volume is dedicated to the memory of our colleague and friend Dr. Sharon Zuckerman who embraced the quest for ‘the social’ throughout her career.
Noble Magnificence
Culture of the Performing Arts in Rome 1644-1740
The thirty chapters in this book are based on the work of an international multidisciplinary team of researchers and archivists brought together for the PerformArt project funded by the European Research Council from 2016 to 2022. This project investigated the artistic patronage of the great Roman aristocratic families of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through research in the extant archives.After the accession to the papal throne of Innocent X in 1644 and more so after the Peace of the Pyrenees in 1659 – which led to a greater loss of power for the pope in his relations with other European states – the Roman families stepped up their efforts to assert their social preeminence not only through architecture and the fine arts but also through the ephemeral performing arts: music theatre and dance which were omnipresent throughout the year and especially during the intense period of artistic production that was the Roman Carnival. The search for traces of these spectacles in the archives of these families reveals that their desire to display their magnificence – an ideal well documented in the literature of the period – gave rise to lavish expenditure on a scale that could only be justified by the benefits (if not tangible then at least symbolic) they hoped to gain.The essays in this book which draw on social economic history the history of ideas and the evolving artistic practices of the time make a major contribution to our knowledge of courtly societies in Ancien Régime Europe by integrating the performing arts into their analyses in innovative ways.
The Many Faces of the Lady of Elche
Essays on the Reception of an Iberian Sculpture
On 4 August 1897 farm workers in Elche — the site of ancient Ilici — discovered an Iberian sculpture of a woman that dated from the fifth– fourth centuries BCE. French archaeologist Pierre Paris dubbed this figure ‘the Lady of Elche’ and promptly purchased the sculpture on behalf of the Louvre Museum. There she drew the attention of European scholars who were intrigued by her stylistic features finally concluding that she bore witness to the existence of a specifically Iberian art. Since her discovery the Lady of Elche has been a source of fascination not only for scholars but also for artists and she has become an icon of regional and national identity across Spain. This volume co-written by an archaeologist and an anthropologist and translated here into English for the first time seeks to explore the importance of the Lady of Elche both for students of the past and for the peoples of Iberia. The authors here explore not only what we know — and still do not know — about her creation but also engage with key questions about what she represents for the men and women of our time who have questioned manipulated admired loved and often reinvented the singular beauty of this iconic figure.
Agir en commun durant le haut Moyen Âge
Au-delà des communautés stables et durables qu'on peut saisir autour des lieux ou dans un cadre institutionne les petites communautés locales du haut Moyen Âge n’avaient habituellement pas de statut formalisé : en l’absence de cadres institutionnels nous ne pouvons souvent saisir leurs caractères qu’à travers les récits de leurs actions ou à travers d’autres traces laissées par leurs actes dans la documentation écrite ou archéologique. Mais encore faut-il se poser la question de savoir comment agissaient les communautés au haut Moyen Âge dans quels contextes et dans quels buts ? L'action commune surtout si elle est récurrente fortifie-t-telle ou forme-t-elle la communauté ? Le présent ouvrage vise à décrypter les différentes manières "d'agir en commun" dans les sociétés du haut Moyen Âge en posant les questions de l'initiative de l'action des différents modes d'action et de leur influence sur la structure de la communauté des types et des formes d'action communautaire.
Canon Law and Christian Societies between Christianity and Islam
An Arabic Canon Collection from al-Andalus and its Transcultural Contexts
The unique Arabic version of the Iberian canon law code 'Collectio Hispana' preserved in a mid-eleventh-century manuscript of the Royal Library of El Escorial has been deemed “the most distinguished and characteristic” work of medieval Andalusi Christian writing. It represents an exceptional source witness to the internal legal organisation of Christian communities in Muslim-dominated al-Andalus as well as to their acculturation to Islamicate environments. Yet the Arabic collection has received only little scholarly attention so far. This volume presents the results of a recent interdisciplinary research project on the Arabic canon law manuscript flanked by contributions from neigbouring fields of research that allow for a comparative assessment of the substantial new findings. The individual chapters in this volume address issues such as the origins of the Arabic law code and its sole transmitting manuscript its language and translation strategies its source value for both the persistence and transformation of ecclesiastical institutions after the Muslim conquest or the law code's position in the judicial practice of al-Andalus. The volume brings together the scholarly expertise of distinguished specialists in a broad range of disciplines e.g. history Arabic and Latin philology medieval palaeography and codicology archaeology coptology theology and history of law.
Conflict, Language, and Social Practice in Medieval Societies
Selected Essays of Isabel Alfonso, with Commentaries
Isabel Alfonso is one of the finest scholars on the rural and political history of the European Middle Ages. She is widely known for her contributions to the study of the peasantry social conflict and political discourses. Her research has transcended the boundaries of medieval studies incorporating insights from disciplines beyond including legal anthropology philology and discourse analysis among others. Over her academic career Isabel Alfonso has made a continued effort to make the work of international scholars known in Spain and to communicate advancements in Spanish historiography to international audiences; and yet most of her own research has only been published in Spanish. As a means to acknowledge her long-standing commitment to bridge different historiographies and overcome national boundaries this unusual Festschrift offers a selection of her most relevant publications many of which appear in English for the very first time. Each paper is preceded by commentaries by leading scholars that discuss the enduring relevance of Isabel Alfonso’s work its richness and complexity and its potential to inspire further research along a vast array of lines.
Commentaries by Jean Birrell François Bougard Warren Brown Peter Coss Wendy Davies Chris Dyer Ros Faith François Foronda Paul Freedman Piotr Gorécki John Hudson André Evangelista Marques Jesús Rodríguez-Velasco Phillipp Schofield Stephen D. White Chris Wickham.
The Ideological Foundations of Early Irish Law and Their Reception in Anglo-Saxon England, c. 600–c. 900
Old Testament Levites who considered the Law of Moses to be the living law: this has long been the established view among many scholars for how early Irish jurists perceived themselves as well as how they saw the broader theoretical and religious bases of their jurisprudence. In this volume however Kristen Carella offers a timely reassessment of scholarly opinion exploring Irish legal texts within the broader context of both vernacular Irish and Hiberno-Latin literature to argue that early Irish Christian intellectuals in fact saw themselves as gentile converts subscribing to an orthodox Christian faith that was deeply infused with Pelagian theology.
Certain aspects of Irish legal ideology particularly Irish views of divine history and pseudo-historical ideas about their own ethnogenesis moreover extended out of Ireland and into Anglo-Saxon England; their impact can be seen on lawmakers such as Alcuin when he helped draft the Anglo-Latin Legatine Capitulary of 786 and King Alfred of Wessex when he composed the Old English prologue to his law code in the late-ninth century. Through this approach this volume not only challenges long-held scholarly views on Irish legal ideology and its influences beyond Ireland but also provides a new paradigm for intellectual relations between early medieval Ireland and England.
Frères et sœurs dans l’Europe du haut Moyen Âge (vers 650 ‑ vers 1000)
Les relations entre frères et sœurs constituent encore un champ mal exploré de l’étude de la famille pour la période allant de 650 à 1000. Pourtant ce lien est un élément essentiel des sociétés du haut Moyen Âge tant dans les mondes franc et germanique qu’en Angleterre. Dans les discours de l’Église il est même un idéal. En outre dans le contexte démographique médiéval la relation adelphique - c'est-à-dire entre frères et sœurs - est souvent la plus pérenne : face à la mort précoce des parents et à un veuvage fréquent elle accompagne les individus tout au long de leur existence. Étudier les relations adelphiques est également une manière d’envisager les relations entre hommes et femmes grâce aux dernières avancées de recherche sur le genre. Pour étudier ces liens spécifiques il convient de s'intéresser à une large documentation et d'emprunter aux outils de la sociologie et de l'anthropologie. La relation adelphique apparaît alors une donnée importante des sociétés du haut Moyen Âge et que son étude permet de complexifier l'histoire de la famille sur cette période.
Networks in the Medieval North
Studies in Honour of Jón Viðar Sigurðsson
By the late thirteenth century Norgesveldet - the Norwegian realm - stretched far beyond its core in western Scandinavia. At its height in 1264 Norgesveldet connected Norse speakers in tributary territories ranging from the Irish Sea to Orkney and across the Atlantic to the Faroes Iceland and Greenland. But what held this disparate realm together? What were the dynamics of power between the men and women of the governing and elite classes of Norgesveldet? And what roles did different bodies play at different levels of society in creating and maintaining these networks - from kings and bishops to scribes and scholars traders and law-makers?
This volume aims to expand on and further recent important research into connections between Norway and the wider Norse North Atlantic from the eleventh century during which the Norwegian kingdom began to emerge through to the fourteenth-century decline of Norgesveldet with the creation of the Kalmar Union. Each chapter addresses a different facet of the Norgesveldet networks building a complex picture of both their function and their evolving nature. Taking as its inspiration the research and career of its honorand Jón Viðar Sigurðsson the volume explores medieval Norway and its wider connections using three key frameworks - sociopolitical networks legal and material networks and literary networks - with the aim of shedding new light on the people and processes of this North Atlantic polity.
Legal Norms and Political Action in Multi-Ethnic Societies
Cohesion in Multi-Ethnic Societies in Europe from c. 1000 to the Present, III
The three-volume project Cohesion in Multi-Ethnic Societies in Europe from c.1000 to the Present explores and seeks to find solutions to a crucial problem facing contemporary Europe: in what circumstances can different ethnic groups co-operate for the common good? They apparently did so in the past combining to form political societies medieval and early modern duchies kingdoms and empires. But did they maintain their ethnic traditions in this process? Did they pass on elements of their cultural memory when they were not in a dominant position in a given polity?
The first volume in the project explored ethnic cohesion as evidenced by narratives about the past while volume two analysed communal events and activities. This third volume focuses on how relations between ethnic groups were influenced by political activities and related legal norms. Both cooperation and conflict between ethnic communities find their expression in political activities although they usually have a significant cultural and economic background as well. This book examines the causes of political cooperation between ethnic groups despite the risk of conflict and the methods of stabilizing this cooperation through the enactment of law.
Networking Europe and New Communities of Interpretation (1400–1600)
Long-distance ties connecting Europeans from all geographical corners of the continent during the fifteenth and sixteenth century facilitated the sharing of religious texts books iconography ideas and practices. The contributions to this book aim to reconstruct these European networks of knowledge exchange by exploring how religious ideas and strategies of transformation ‘travelled’ and were shared in European and transatlantic cultural spaces. In order to come to a better understanding of Europe-wide processes of religious culture and religious change the chapters focus on the agency of the laity in ‘new communities of interpretation’ instead of intellectual elites the aristocracy and religious institutions. These new communities of interpretation were often formed by an urban laity active in politics finance and commerce. The agency of religious literatures in the European vernaculars in processes of religious purification reform and innovation during the long fifteenth century is still largely underestimated. ‘Networking Europe’ aims to step away from studying ‘national’ textual production and consumption by approaching these topics instead from a European and interconnected perspective. The contributions to this book explore late medieval and early modern networks connecting people and transporting texts following three main axes of investigation: ‘European Connections’ ‘Exiles Diasporas and Migrants’ and ‘Mobility and Dissemination’.
Memories Lost in the Middle Ages: Collective Forgetting as an Alternative Procedure of Social Cohesion/L’oubli collectif au Moyen Âge: Un autre processus constitutif de la cohésion sociale
The aim of this book is to examine the social political and cultural consequences of ‘collective forgetting’ in the Middle Ages. Since the seminal work of Maurice Halbwachs historical research has focused on ‘collective memory’ as the basis of social cohesion. Jan Assmann has introduced the slightly different concept of ‘cultural memory’ which he sees as a constitutive condition of political organisations and their stabilisation. Drawing on this Assmannian concept this book examines this other process of ‘collective forgetting’.
Cet ouvrage ambitionne d’examiner les conséquences sociales politiques et culturelles de « l’oubli collectif » au Moyen Âge. Depuis les études fondatrices de Maurice Halbwachs la recherche historique s’est intéressée à la « mémoire collective » en tant que fondement de la cohésion sociale. Jan Assmann a introduit le concept légèrement différent de « mémoire culturelle » condition constitutive selon lui des organisations politiques et de leur stabilisation. Tout en s’appuyant sur ce concept assmannien cet ouvrage propose d’étudier cet autre processus que constitue « l’oubli collectif ».
Remembering the Dead
Collective Memory and Commemoration in Late Medieval Livonia
Medieval memoria - the commemoration of the dead - was both a form of collective memory and a social practice present in every sphere of life. It shaped identities and constituted groups and thus the study of commemorative practices can tell us a great deal about medieval communities. This study shows the importance of memoria as a form of collective memory for different groups and institutions: city government and guilds the Teutonic Order bishops and cathedral chapters and monastic communities in late medieval Livonia (present-day Latvia and Estonia).
Inter-Ethnic Relations and the Functioning of Multi-Ethnic Societies
Cohesion in Multi-Ethnic Societies in Europe from c. 1000 to the Present, II
The three-volume project Cohesion in Multi-Ethnic Societies in Europe from c.1000 to the Present explores and seeks to find solutions to a crucial problem facing contemporary Europe: in what circumstances can different ethnic groups co-operate for the common good? They apparently did so in the past combining to form political societies medieval and early modern duchies kingdoms and empires. But did they maintain their ethnic traditions in this process? Did they pass on elements of their cultural memory when they were not in a dominant position in a given polity?
The first volume of the project explored written sources about the past to show how communities shaped their collective memories in order to ensure the smooth functioning of multi-ethnic political communities. This second volume looks beyond texts and focuses on activities and events that were designed to build a sense of community within a political community made up of different ethnic groups. The coexistence of different ethnic groups is considered not through the prism of theoretical analyses by intellectual elites but by following community members’ responses to current events as recorded in the sources.
Communities, Environment and Regulation in the Premodern World
Essays in Honour of Peter Hoppenbrouwers
Who had a say in making decisions about the natural world when how and to what end? How were rights to natural resources established? How did communities handle environmental crises? And how did dealing with the environment have an impact on the power relations in communities? This volume explores communities’ relationship with the natural environment in customs and laws ideas practices and memories. Taking a transregional perspective it considers how the availability of natural resources in diverse societies within and outside Europe impacted mobility and gender structures the consolidation of territorial power and property rights. Communities Environment and Regulation in the Premodern World marks Peter Hoppenbrouwers’s career spanning over three decades as a professor of medieval history at Leiden University.
The Heresy of the Brothers, a Heterodox Community in Sixteenth-Century Italy
Around the mid-sixteenth century one of the largest Italian heterodox communities developed in Modena: the community of ‘Brothers’. At the beginning of the century a flourishing humanistic tradition had inspired protests against the authority of the Church and had led many of the city’s prominent figures to sympathize with Luther and the Reformation. Over the following decades such positions became more extreme: most of the ‘Brothers’ held radical convictions ranging from belief in predestination to contestation of the Antichrist pope. In some cases the ‘Brothers’ even went so far as to deny the value of baptism.
This heterodox community in Modena created a hidden network for the free expression of its reformed faith. Within twenty years however the election of Pope Pius V (1566-1572) and the consolidation of the Holy Office led to a harsh campaign to disperse dissenters in the city. Despite the protection of illustrious members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy the bishops of Modena and the dukes of Ferrara the Holy Office succeeded in repressing the community. The history of the ‘Brothers’ of Modena therefore provides a case study for understanding how the Inquisition influenced the balance of religious Italy changing the face of the Peninsula forever.
Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000–1700
Over the past several decades scholars of medieval and early modern Iberia have transformed the study of the region into one of the most vibrant areas of research today. This volume brings together twelve essays from a diverse group of international historians who explore the formation of the multiple and overlapping identities both individual and collective that made up the Iberian peninsula during the eleventh through seventeenth centuries. Individually the contributions in this volume engage with the notion of identity in varied ways including the formation of collective identities at the level of the late medieval city the use of writing and political discourse to construct or promote common political or socio-cultural identities the role of encounters with states and cultures beyond the peninsula in identity formation and the ongoing debates surrounding the peninsula’s characteristic ethno-religious pluralism.Collectively these essays challenge the traditional dividing line between the medieval and early modern periods providing a broader framework for approaching Iberia’s fragmented yet interconnected internal dynamics while simultaneously reflecting on the implications of Iberia’s positioning within the broader Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds.
Risk, Emotions, and Hospitality in the Christianization of the Baltic Rim, 1000–1300
What anxieties did medieval missionaries and crusaders face and what role did the sense of risk play in their community-building? To what extent did crusaders and Christian colonists empathize with the local populations they set out to conquer? Who were the hosts and who were the guests during the confrontations with the pagan societies on the Baltic Rim? And how were the uncertainties of the conversion process addressed in concrete encounters and in the accounts of Christian authors?
This book explores emotional bonding as well as practices and discourses of hospitality as uncertain means of evangelization interaction and socialization across cultural divides on the Baltic Rim c. 1000-1300. It focuses on interactions between local populations and missionary communities as well as crusader frontier societies. By applying tools of historical anthropology to the study of host-guest relations spaces of hospitality emotional communities and empathy on the fronts of Christianization this book offers fresh insights and approaches to the manner in which missionaries and crusaders reflexively engaged with the groups targeted by Christianization in terms of practice ethics and identity.
Religious Transformations in New Communities of Interpretation in Europe (1350–1570)
Bridging the Historiographical Divides
This volume brings together medievalist and early modernist specialists whose research fields are traditionally divided by the jubilee year of 1500 in order to concentrate on the role of the laity (and those in holy orders) in the religious transformations characterizing the ‘long fifteenth century’ from the flourishing of the Devotio Moderna to the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.
Recent historiography has described the Christian church of the fifteenth century as a world of ‘multiple options’ in which the laity was engaged with the clergy in a process of communication and negotiation leading to the emergence of hybrid forms of religious life. The religious manifestations of such ‘new communities of interpretation’ appear in an array of biblical and religious texts which widely circulated in manuscript before benefiting from the new print media.
This collection casts a spectrum of new yet profoundly historical light on themes of seminal relevance to present-day European society by analysing patterns of inclusion and exclusion and examining shifts in hierarchic and non-hierarchic relations articulated through religious practices texts and other phenomena featuring in the lives of groups and individuals. The academic team assembled for this collection is internationally European as well as interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary in its methodology.