Medieval & Renaissance History (c.500-1500)

While the role of the city in Late Antiquity has often been discussed by archaeologists and historians alike it is only in recent years that scholarship has begun to offer a more nuanced approach in our understanding to how such cities functioned stepping away from the traditional paradigm of their decline and fall with the collapse of the Roman Empire. In line with this approach this deliberately interdisciplinary volume seeks to provide a more multifaceted understanding of urban history by drawing together scholars of literary and material culture to discuss the concepts of imagery and aesthetics of late antique cities.

Gathering together contributions by historians philologists archaeologists literature specialists and art historians the volume aims to explore the imagery and aesthetics of cities in Late Antiquity within a strong theoretical framework. The different chapters explore the aesthetics of cityscape representations in literature and art asking in particular whether literary representations of late antique urban landscapes mirror the urban reality of eclectic ensembles of pre-existing architecture and new buildings as well as questioning both how the ideal of the city evolved in the imagination of the period and if imperial ideology was reflected in literary depictions of cities.

The interconnected histories of Judaism and Christianity are explored in this compelling volume honouring the influential work of Jeremy Cohen. Cohen’s pioneering studies have reshaped our understanding of these religious traditions emphasizing the crucial role of cross-religious engagements in forming their self-perceptions and identities.

Comprising fifteen chapters the book is organized into four thematic sections. The first section Literary Mirrors and Inter-Religious Representations explores patterns of internalizations (mis)representations and appropriations between competing religious traditions. The second section Physical and Figurative Encounters addresses the roles played by visible and physical markers in setting interreligious boundaries and exchanges. The third section Agents of Anti-Jewish Discourse focuses on Christian thinkers of the late Middle Ages who propagated anti-Jewish measures or prejudices across different genres and causes. The final section The Transformability of the Jews and the Hermeneutics of Inter-Religious Conversion examines the cultural and intellectual impact of different efforts to convert Jews and Jewishness.

This collection of new studies by leading medievalists serves as a fitting tribute to Jeremy Cohen’s groundbreaking contributions and offers readers an insightful look into the complex world of medieval and early modern religious identity.

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.

How can contemporary theorisations of consent help us to nuance our understanding of consent and coercion in the Middle Ages? And what can reconsidering medieval attitudes towards consent offer to our own ‘consent culture’? Contemporary feminist approaches have identified consent both as a potent political framework for liberation and as an inherently limited concept that opens out onto other important ethical questions. Proceeding from this moment this book looks in two directions to understand the varied ways in which structural inequalities impact meaningful consent and facilitate coercion in the Middle Ages and today.

Building upon the momentum of ‘medieval consent studies’ as a newly defined field this volume expands the focus beyond rape and raptus assessing more varied representations of consent and coercion through an intersectional consideration of power inequality and sexual violence. The contributions bring together different methodologies cultural contexts and literary traditions to highlight literature’s capacity to reflect otherwise undocumented forms of sexual vulnerability. Offering a compelling case for integrating critical approaches like trans history codicology animal studies ecocriticism and disability studies into this field Reconsidering Consent and Coercion demonstrates the vital necessity of a nuanced and inclusive understanding of the past for our present discourses of consent.

The Nordic welfare state of the 20th century has been hailed around the world as a model of how to build democratic and egalitarian societies. It has often been described as a project of social democracy often following a narrative of secularization and rationalization of society. However some of the most important actors and ideas of the "Scandinavian Sonderweg" had their roots in Protestant often Pietist and revivalist milieus that dreamed of creating an egalitarian community. The present volume explores these often forgotten roots in several case studies of phenomena from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century focusing primarily on questioning the function of aesthetics in the creation of the welfare state model. We argue that aesthetics and what Friedrich Schiller called aesthetic education played an important unifying role for Nordic societies. These aesthetics were shaped by Protestant ideas and practices. Through references to the then widespread circulation of educational texts based on Luther's catechism the later pietistic catechism of Erik Pontoppidan Nordic hymnbooks and practices such as communal singing and preaching in church church coffee reading circles and conventicle meetings a common aesthetic language emerged that unified different social groups and their competing goals and claims. Civic actors and movements learned specific ways to engage in society to develop practices of internalizing responsibility (self)critique and accountability and to communicate and develop a more democratic modern civic sphere. We therefore propose to look at this history from the perspective of a historically changing aesthetic as an integrating principle for understanding the political social cultural economic and many other aspects of the Nordic welfare state.

The preoccupation of Christian theologians and scholars with the Hebrew language and sources at the dawn of the sixteenth century resulted in the transfer of a vast corpus of medieval Hebrew texts into Christian intellectual discourse and networks. These Hebrew sources were meticulously collected copied translated and subjected to rigorous study. These collections include texts that originate from medieval Ashkenaz the majority of which can be attributed to Eleazar ben Yehuda of Worms (c. 1165–c. 1238). Rabbi Eleazar was a prominent Jewish scholar of his time and a member of one of the most prestigious families in Jewish communities of the German Rhineland and Palatinate.

However the history of medieval Ashkenazic writings has been neglected in scholarship which has favoured other Jewish (primarily Sephardic) sources in tracing the infl uence of medieval Jewish mysticism on Christian theology and Kabbalah. This book takes the hitherto disregarded Ashkenazi Hebrew sources as its point of departure. It focuses on the work of Eleazar as a main representative of the Ḥaside Ashkenaz and on his mag num opus Sode Razayya which discusses all matter of the divine and the mundane sphere. The book explores how Eleazar’s work was a potentially interesting source for a Renaissance Christian Kabbalist like Egidio (Giles) da Viterbo. Kabbalah from Ashkenaz is distinguished by its emphasis on the Hebrew letters and language along with the divine word and divine speech (dibur). This central motif of the Ashkenazi sources found resonance with certain Christian theologians and Kabbalists in the context of Christian logos theology which is similarly anchored in the divine word (verbum).

This volume presents contributions by leading scholars on various topics and aspects of Islamic Archaeology a discipline which has recently seen the development of exciting new approaches to the study of the material culture of the Muslim world. This material culture was produced by and/or for Muslims as well as by and/or for non-Muslims living under Islamic rule from the 7th century onward in an expanding and ultimately vast area reaching from southern Europe to West Asia.

The contributions in this book focus on Jordan Oman Spain Turkey Lebanon as well as Israel and cover a timespan from the 7th century through the Mamluk period to the early 20th century. They highlight the archaeology of large Islamic centers in the past but also of the material culture in smaller sites and peripheral regions. Special emphasis is paid to pottery as one of the main artifacts that carry information on past societies but other finds and materials are discussed as well. The aspect of Islamic material culture which receives particular attention is ‘production’ specifically the production of clay vessels glaze mercury and crops.

What unites the new approaches presented here is that Islam is understood as both a ‘religion’ and a framework for economic cultural and social networks and influence. In this perspective the volume aims to offer students of Islamic archaeology historians of Islam and archaeologists of different disciplines a glimpse of the state-of-the-art in current Islamic Archaeology

This volume investigates the vivid and emotionally intense commemoration of the Passion of Christ as a key element in late medieval religious culture. Its goal is to shed light on how the Passion was communicated and on its socio-religious function in late medieval Europe. By adopting a multidisciplinary approach the volume analyses the different media involved in this cultural process (sermons devotional texts lively performances statues images) the multiple forms and languages in which the Passion was presented to the faithful and how they were expected to respond to it. Key questions concern the strategies used to present the Passion; the interaction between texts images and sounds in different media; the dissemination of theological ideas in the public space; the fashioning of an affective response in the audience; and the presence or absence of anti-Jewish commonplaces.

By exploring the interplay among a wide range of sources this volume highlights the pervasive role of the Passion in late medieval society and in the life of the people of the time.

In recent years archaeologists working at Norse sites across the North Atlantic have excavated a number of very small churches with cemeteries often associated with individual farms. Such sites seem to be a characteristic feature of early ecclesiastical establishments in Norse settlements around the North Atlantic and they stand in marked contrast to church sites elsewhere in Europe. But what was the reason behind this phenomenon?

From Greenland to Denmark and from Ireland to the Hebrides Iceland and Norway this volume presents a much-needed overview of small church studies from around the North Atlantic. The chapters gathered here discuss the different types of evidence for small churches and early ecclesiastical landscapes review existing debates and develop a synthesis that places the small churches in a broader context. Ultimately despite the varied types of data at play the contributions to this volume combine to offer a more coherent picture of the small church phenomenon pointing to a church that was able to answer the needs of a newly converted population despite the lack of an established infrastructure and throwing new light on how people lived and worshipped in an environment of dispersed settlements.

How did food impact social relationships in early medieval England? What cultivation practices were followed to produce the best possible food supplies? What was the cultural significance of bread? How was the human body nourished? When sickness inevitably occurred where did one go and who was consulted for healing? And how was spiritual health also protected? The essays gathered together in this exciting volume draw on a range of different disciplines from early medieval economic and social history to experimental archaeology and medieval medicine to offer a unique overview into day-to-day life in England nearly two millennia ago.Taking as their starting point the broad research interests of the volume’s honorand Dr Debby Banham contributors here offer new insights into the reproduction and ritual use of vernacular charms examine the collation and translation of medieval medicine elucidate monastic economies and production and uncover the circumstances behind the production and transmission of medical manuscripts in early medieval England. Presenting new insights into agricultural practices and animal husbandry monastic sign language and materia medica plant knowledge and medical practices the chapters within this volume not only offer a fitting tribute to Banham’s own groundbreaking work but also shed new light on what it meant to nurture both body and soul in early medieval England.