Medieval European history (c. 500-1500): local & regional history
More general subjects:
More specific subjects:
- Balkans & Western Asia (Near East) (c. 500-1500) | British Isles (c. 500-1500) | East-Central & Eastern Europe (c. 500-1500) | France (c. 500-1500) | Germany, Switzerland & Austria (c. 500-1500) | Iberian Peninsula (c. 500-1500) | Italian Peninsula (c. 500-1500) | Low Countries (c. 500-1500) | Scandinavian & Baltic lands (c. 500-1500)
Stones of Zadar
The Capital of Venetian Dalmatia
The book investigates the transformation of the architectural and visual language in Zadar eastern Adriatic town at the dawn of the early modern era when the mighty mediaeval commune was being transformed by the emerging governmental structures of the Republic of Venice. These events coincided with the Ottoman Empire's takeover of the hinterland of Dalmatian cities transforming Zadar into a city on the brink of two worlds.
A highly autonomous mediaeval commune was a lively trans-Adriatic artistic centre a network of builders painters and sculptors from Dalmatia Venice Marche and Lombardy so with the early adoption of humanist concepts by the local elite this practice continued. However the transformations the governmental structure and economic policies steadily limited its community autonomy and commercial sources. The crisis worsened in the 16th century when the local elites lost a large portion of their revenue from the fertile hinterland captured by the Ottoman Empire.
This launched an ongoing militarisation of social structures and fortifying the town. These events were reflected in the fields of architecture and art. The process of adopting a new architectural and artistic language began in the second half of the 15th century as demonstrated by motifs in architectural decoration and sculpture with impulses from important Dalmatian sculptural and stonemasons’ circles as well as Venetian models from the circles of Pietro Lombardo and Mauro Codussi. When the new classical language of architecture began spreading in the middle of the 16th century it expressed mostly in the renovation of administrative structures with occasional departures from the stylistic canons of artistic centres.
La voix de son maître
Les hérauts d’armes au service des ducs de Bourgogne (1363-1519)
Le héraut d’armes est un personnage incontournable du Moyen Âge occidental. Spécialiste des tournois présent au côté du prince lors des grandes cérémonies constamment sur les routes pour porter des lettres aux différents souverains il est aussi l’un des meilleurs connaisseurs de la noblesse occidentale.
L’émergence de ces officiers dans la société de cour est fulgurante. Apparus à la fin du XIIe siècle au sein du groupe des jongleurs et des ménestrels ils se mettent dès la fin du XIVe siècle au service des grands seigneurs des villes et des princes pour devenir au dernier siècle du Moyen Âge une véritable institution en France en Angleterre ou en Bourgogne.
Les Pays-Bas bourguignons offrent sans aucun doute un des meilleurs exemples de l’épanouissement de l’office d’armes au sein d’une cour médiévale. Véritables porte-voix du duc chargés de prononcer les déclarations de guerre et de publier la paix les hérauts sont omniprésents dans la conduite de la guerre ou dans la diplomatie de Philippe le Bon et de Charles le Téméraire. Baptisés du nom de provinces bourguignonnes vêtus de leur cotte d’armes ils représentent l’État bourguignon autant que le duc lui même jusqu’à en devenir son avatar.
Architectures du monachisme
Une histoire monumentale de l’Île Saint-Honorat de Lérins, Ve-XIIIe siècle
L’île Saint-Honorat de Lérins accueille des religieux depuis le début du Ve siècle. Il s’agit d’un haut lieu du monachisme témoin des expériences ascétiques insulaires qui se développent en Occident durant l’Antiquité tardive. Le caractère exceptionnel de Lérins tient aussi à la longue durée d’occupation du site par des religieux. Ce n’est qu’à partir de 2005 qu’ont été entreprises des recherches archéologiques d’envergure sur l’île : fouilles et archéologie du bâti qui font de Lérins la seule île monastique pour laquelle il existe des vestiges archéologiques remontant de façon assurée aux premières expériences ascétiques occidentales. En présentant ce dossier l’ouvrage de Yann Codou apporte un éclairage inédit sur la genèse du monachisme en Occident où des expériences érémitiques cohabitent au sein de l’espace insulaire avec des formes de vie plus collectives. Les données restituent également les dynamiques du monachisme au cours du haut Moyen Âge et dans les siècles suivants en particulier le processus de communautarisation du monachisme. L’architecture est ici un document historique à part entière qui dialogue avec les sources écrites. Les multiples monuments qui composent le paysage insulaire offrent un terrain de choix pour comprendre des mécanismes de construction identitaire fondés sur la création et la réinterprétation des espaces sacrés. Les enjeux de la recherche dépassent largement l’histoire de la seule communauté lérinienne pour s’inscrire dans une réflexion sur l’organisation des espaces monastiques et leurs mutations tout au long du Moyen Âge.
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.
Kabbalah from Medieval Ashkenaz and Renaissance Christian Theology
Eleazar of Worms (c. 1165–c. 1238) and Egidio da Viterbo (c. 1469–1532)
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).
Massa Marittima (1470-1500)
Essai sur les ressources naturelles en Toscane
Cet ouvrage vise à explorer les modalités d’exploitation des ressources naturelles dans la Maremme siennoise – autour de la ville de Massa Marittima – à la fin du Moyen Âge. La séquence chronologique resserrée permet d’embrasser une ample documentation (urbaine notariée) provenant de différents fonds archivistiques ou des données archéologiques et d’étudier ensemble un large panel d’activités rurales artisanales et industrielles qui jusqu’alors n’avaient pas toutes été analysées ensemble. La période retenue (1470-1500) correspond à un moment de basculement marqué notamment par la reprise de la production métallurgique par l’essor de la production d’alun et par des bouleversements politiques majeurs qui affectent l’État siennois (avec notamment la mise en place à partir de 1487 d’un régime oligarchique). Les ressources sont au coeur des relations nouvelles qui se nouent entre les Massétans et désormais les élites siennoises qui entendent tirer profit de nouvelles richesses. L’ouvrage entend proposer un aperçu des modifications sociales politiques et environnementales qui confèrent un destin singulier à la Maremme.
Saint-Pierre d’Orbais
Social Space and Gothic Architecture at a Benedictine Monastery
The fragmentary remains of the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Pierre d'Orbais in northwest Champagne preserves a particular iteration of Gothic style and technological achievement as well as the built environment of a community deeply embedded in the world around them. Through their architecture successive generations of monks of Orbais whose institutional life stretched from the end of the seventh century to end of the eighteenth century were constantly seeking to clarify their position in the changing physical and social landscapes they inhabited. Although connected by a shared site the architectural evidence from Orbais preserves remnants from several episodes of use and reuse. The site is treated thematically starting with the boundaries that define the site then the resources that shaped monastic life in this particular location followed by the monastic landscapes that shaped the community as an institution. These categories reflect both the nature of our evidence for the contexts of building construction and the types of landscapes that were most active for the monastic community at Orbais over the long life of the site. The final chapter resituates the architectural history of the monastic church in light of these interrelated landscapes contextualizing existing scholarship that treats it as a specifically Gothic monument and providing lines of connection to medieval built environments more broadly.
Small Churches and Religious Landscapes in the North Atlantic c. 900–1300
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.
Cultivating the Earth, Nurturing the Body and Soul: Daily Life in Early Medieval England
Essays in Honour of Debby Banham
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.
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.
Diplomatics in the Netherlands
The Use, Editing, and Study of Charters by Dutch Historians from the Middle Ages to the Present
Charters and other administrative texts have long had the full attention of medievalists as primary sources in their historiographical work. This also applies to scholars from the Netherlands. Ever since the late Middle Ages they recognised the value of these sources included them as testimony in their historiography and gradually began to realise that charters and other documents required a specific form of textual criticism and a special way of editing. In this Dutch historians usually followed developments abroad. Sometimes as in the early seventeenth century they were ahead methodologically but for long periods they depended for new insights on developments elsewhere. This was especially true in the nineteenth century when scientific diplomatic methods and editing techniques emerged which would only be introduced and applied in the Netherlands in the next century. In the twenty-first century Dutch scholars are fully participating in the ‘digital turn’ that is creating new research tools in diplomatics.
Ultimately the history of diplomatics in the Netherlands is part of the broad development of historiography in the country and therefore a valuable aspect of the history of scholarship in general.
Accountability in Late Medieval Europe
Households, Communities, and Institutions
This volume brings together studies of late medieval accountability in both the domestic and the public realms. It traces practices of accountability across the social spectrum from households to small businesses to communal and regnal administrations highlighting the intersections between competing conceptions of personal and institutional responsibility. Focusing on France and Italy from the thirteenth to the early sixteenth centuries the case studies follow territorial officers consular agents and town notables co-opted into local governance from Avignon and Marseille to Tuscany and the Venetian and Genoese overseas territories. The studies explore both personal and institutional accounting registers as well as records of a textual nature such as rulebooks and inquests in an effort to reflect the range of records and procedures relied on to achieve a measure of accountability in late medieval Europe.
Medieval Livonia
History, Society and Economy of a Territory on the Baltic Frontier
The territory known as Livonia on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea emerged as a result of the Baltic Crusades in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It was a region of multiple nations languages and cultures and the scene of their mutual interaction connected to the Holy Roman Empire the papal curia Scandinavia and Lithuania and mediating the Hanseatic trade with Russia. This book is a significant new study of the multiple facets of Baltic history taking in social history urban and rural culture peasant economy and literacy with novel perspectives on crusading political history and the chief agents of power notably the Teutonic Order. This first comprehensive treatment of Livonian history in English will serve as a valuable source of information for undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as a resource for studying the Baltic Crusades and crusader territories in general.