Cultural & intellectual history (c. 500-1500)
More general subjects:
The Hermeneutical Jew
Essays on Inter-Religious Encounters in Honour of Jeremy Cohen
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.
Reconsidering Consent and Coercion
Power, Vulnerability, and Sexual Violence in Medieval Literature
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.
Explorations in Islamic Archaeology
Material Culture, Settlements, and Landscapes from the Mediterranean to Western Asia
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
Nouvelles traductions et réceptions indirectes de la Grèce ancienne. Tome 2 : Traductions de traductions de textes grecs et translatio studii
L’essor des traductions directes du grec au français commence dans les années 1550. Du début du XIVe siècle jusqu’au milieu du XVIe siècle les auteurs-traducteurs en langue française qui représentent la Grèce ancienne n’ont sauf exception aucune connaissance directe des œuvres grecques. Les savoirs sur la Grèce qu’ils transmettent et réinventent sont médiatisés par des filtres divers. Leur réception est indirecte elle prend appui sur des œuvres antérieures textuelles et iconographiques dont les représentations de la Grèce ancienne sont déjà le fruit d’une ou de plusieurs réceptions.Les œuvres latines qu’ils traduisent et adaptentsont pour une part des œuvres antiques et médiévales qui ne sont pas des traductions et pour une part des traductions ou adaptations d’œuvres grecques avec parfois plusieurs transferts linguistiques à partir du grec. Elles sont très diverses : des textes antiques jusqu’aux traductions humanistes latines d’œuvres grecques réalisées en Italie et aux Pays-Bas en passant par des œuvres latines médiévales originales des traductions latines du français et des traductions arabo-latines et arabo-hispano-latines.
Les auteurs-traducteurs en langue française héritent ainsi de réceptions antérieures diverses qu’ils s’approprient et transforment poursuivant le processus d’invention de représentations de la Grèce ancienne. Comme les manuscrits et les imprimés de leurs nouvelles traductions sont souvent très illustrés les artistes offrent dans le même temps des traductions visuelles qui elles aussi s’appuient sur des sources diverses et des réceptions antérieures et donnent à voir de nouvelles images de la Grèce ancienne. La question de la réception de l’Antiquité grecque sera donc explorée par une entrée différente de celle qui a été adoptée jusqu’à présent et qui a consisté en l’étude de la transmission et de la traduction directes des œuvres grecques. Le présent volume se focalise sur les traductions au second degré de textes grecs.
Radical Thinking in the Middle Ages: Acts of the XVth International Congress of the SIEPM, Paris, 22-26 August 2022
These volumes present a selection of papers delivered in Paris at the XV International Congress of the Société Internationale pour l’Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale August 22-26 2022. The appearance of the term radix positionis in medieval debates inspired the contributors to investigate whether there was something that could be considered radical thought in the Middle Ages and if so what the roots of this radical thought were in the different philosophical traditions in various geographical cultural religious and linguistic contexts (Arabic Greek Hebrew Latin).
Medieval philosophy often engaged in a quest for origins but it could also be radical in its methodology or in its attitude when it refused any compromise on its principles or basic concepts be they innovative or rediscovered. Radicalism could be conceived as extremism in pushing a hypothesis procedure or line of inquiry to its limits leading to extreme positions. Radical thought could mean being intellectually inflexible on principles obstinate in embracing theses that broke from tradition progressive but also extremist. The contributions in these volumes thus analyse case-studies of doctrinal conflict dogmatic struggle and condemnation by religious or academic institutions presenting examples of both intellectual courage and philosophical intransigence.
Mémoires des passés antiques
Une élaboration continue (xiv e -xix e siècle)
Alors que depuis plusieurs décennies les recherches sur la mémoire – memory studies – prennent un essor exceptionnel ce volume a pour objet les modalités de l’élaboration de mémoires particulières celles de passés antiques et prend en compte une longue durée allant du xive siècle jusque dans les années 1830. Les deux termes de « mémoire » et d’« élaboration » évoquent un acte de réception et de construction. Les mémoires de l’Antiquité ne sont pas un ensemble de connaissances reçues passivement et non transformées elles sont des représentations consciemment élaborées par des auteurs et des artistes. Étudier le phénomène sur une longue temporalité permet de mieux analyser les constantes qui relèvent sans nul doute d’une anthropologie de la mémoire et aussi les évolutions. Ce volume porte sur des œuvres qui illustrées ou non sont écrites et/ou contiennent un texte. La réflexion qu’il propose s’inscrit en parallèle aux recherches dédiées à la réception de la Grèce ancienne dans la littérature française prémoderne (1320-1550) et le projet ERC Advanced Grant AGRELITA « The Reception of Ancient Greece in Premodern French Literature and Illustrations of Manuscripts and Printed Books (1320-1550) ». Elle ouvre le champ d’analyse à une plus large diachronie et à un plus large corpus.
Nouvelles traductions et réceptions indirectes de la Grèce ancienne
Tome 1 : Histoires des héros grecs et troyens (textes et images, 1300-1560)
L’essor des traductions directes du grec au français commence dans les années 1550. Du début du xive siècle jusqu’au milieu du xvie siècle les auteurs-traducteurs en langue française qui représentent la Grèce ancienne n’ont sauf exception aucune connaissance directe des œuvres grecques. Les savoirs sur la Grèce qu’ils transmettent et réinventent sont médiatisés par des filtres divers. Leur réception est indirecte elle prend appui sur des œuvres antérieures textuelles et iconographiques dont les représentations de la Grèce ancienne sont déjà le fruit d’une ou de plusieurs réceptions.Les œuvres latines qu’ils traduisent et adaptentsont très diverses : des textes antiques jusqu’aux traductions humanistes d’œuvres grecques réalisées en Italie et aux Pays-Bas en passant par des œuvres latines médiévales originales des traductions latines du français et des traductions arabo-latines et arabo-hispano-latines. Les illustrations de nombreux manuscrits et imprimés redoublent cette traduction textuelle d’une traduction visuelle qui enrichit la mémoire de la Grèce ancienne ainsi recréée. La question de la réception de l’Antiquité grecque est ainsi explorée par une entrée différente de celle qui a été adoptée jusqu’à présent et qui a consisté en l’étude de la transmission et de la traduction directe des œuvres grecques. Le présent volume porte sur des traductions consacrées à des héros et héroïnes des temps mythiques jusqu’à la guerre de Troie.
Medicine in the Medieval North Atlantic World
Vernacular Texts and Traditions
Studies of medical learning in medieval England Wales Ireland and Scandinavia have traditionally focused on each geographical region individually with the North Atlantic perceived as a region largely peripheral to European culture. Such an approach however means that knowledge within this part of the world is never considered in the context of more global interactions where scholars were in fact deeply engaged in wider intellectual currents concerning medicine and healing that stemmed from both continental Europe and the Middle East.
The chapters in this interdisciplinary collection draw together new research from historians literary scholars and linguists working on Norse English and Celtic material in order to bring fresh insights into the multilingual and cross-cultural nature of medical learning in northern Europe during the Middle Ages c. 700–1600. They interrogate medical texts and ideas in both Latin and vernacular languages addressing questions of translation cultural and scientific inheritance and exchange and historical conceptions of health and the human being within nature. In doing so this volume offers an in-depth study of the reception and transmission of medical knowledge that furthers our understanding both of scholarship in the medieval North Atlantic and across medieval Europe as a whole.
Filosofia e medicina in Italia fra medioevo e prima età moderna
Il volume raccoglie alcune delle relazioni presentate durante il 4° Colloquio Internazionale della Societas Artistarum. Svoltosi presso l’Università degli studi di Milano il 7-9 novembre 2019 esso si proponeva di approfondire da prospettive diverse come si sia configurato nell’Italia medievale e rinascimentale il rapporto fra medicina e filosofia. Alcuni contributi si soffermano sul contesto storico-istituzionale dell’insegnamento e della pratica della medicina sull’uso di dottrine etiche e di strumenti logici e retorici da parte dei medici. Altri contributi avvalendosi anche di documenti e testi inediti analizzano invece temi interdisciplinari come le teorie della generazione e la natura delle acque fluviali oppure mettono a fuoco il pensiero e l’opera di medici-filosofi come Bartolomeo da Salerno Taddeo Alderotti Antonio da Parma e Ludovico Boccadiferro.
The Byzantine Historiographical Prefaces (4th–15th Centuries)
A Study on the Praxis and Culture of Writing History in Byzantium
In recent years a lively debate has developed on the features of Byzantine historiography. The increasingly dominant tendency today is to treat historical texts more as pleasant literary narratives than as systematic historical accounts of the political and military history of Byzantium. The present study aims to contribute to this debate by revisiting the voices of the Byzantine authors themselves focusing on the extant historical prefaces from the Early Middle and Late Byzantine eras. This seemed timely more than a century after the publication of Ηeinrich Lieberich’s fundamental work on Byzantine historiographical proems.
Obviously not all prefaces are of equal interest: some serve a purely conventional function while others are composed more thoughtfully and merit more careful attention. The book’s goal is twofold: firstly to outline the details of the prefatory function of the Byzantine historiographical proems as microtexts; secondly to detect and evaluate the theoretical views expressed by the authors of each period regarding the genre of Byzantine historiography. This will expand our knowledge of how the Byzantines wrote (praxis) and thought (culture) about historiography.