Medieval Studies

With the recent publication of The Gospel of Loki (Joanne Harris, 2014), and the forthcoming Vikings exhibition at the British Museum, interest in the life and legends of early Scandinavia is at a high point, but the mythological Old Norse narrative of the birth of Sleipnir has always been treated with caution. Loki, an outcast from the Æsir, is required to assume the role of a female creature and give birth, in order to save the gods from disaster. This paper will look at the medieval poetical treatise, Snorra Edda, alongside a more recent reinvention by Brian Day in his poem: “Loki and Sleipnir” in his publication: Love is not Native to My Blood (2000), and intends to examine these two versions of Loki’s transformation from male to female, and human to animal; analysing the changes in form and perspective given to the text through time and translation. Many scholars have considered the ambiguous figure of Loki, but few have associated this ambiguity with contemporary social changes outside of the introduction of Christianity. This paper will suggest that Snorri Sturluson’s apparent appropriation of Loki’s shape and gender has less to do with Christian morality, and more with everyday medieval Icelandic social values. It will suggest that the shape-shifting of Loki’s story reflects the social and geographical circumstances of its audience; something that Day, in his presentation of Loki as a victim in the hyper-masculine world of the gods, uses to comment on contemporary social attitudes to sex and gender.

This is the original version of an article now edited and translated into English (updated with additional illustrations) and republished in "Food, Social Politics and the Order of Nature in Renaissance Europe" (2019), a volume of my collected articles.

The seven branched lampstand within a church was thus a symbol of Christ and his Church. In theological terms, it had nothing to do with Jews – except to supersede them. This is a very important point in dealing with the Petersberg Lampstand, and all Christian lampstands.
— The biblical lampstand in Christian contexts was not a Jewish »menorah« as some today would call it, but the lampstand of Christ Jesus. It is a mistake, then, to refer to the Christian lampstand as
a menorah, as I myself did in The Menorah: From the Bible to Modern Israel. This use of Jewish terminology, drawn from the Hebrew Scriptures for Christian lampstands, wipes away what is distinctly Christian in these lamps and what is distinctly Jewish about the menorah. While such elision may be comforting in our own world,
it takes away from the history of both communities, asserting
false closeness between the majority and the minority in medieval (and modern) Europe. When adopted by contemporary Christians
– Evangelicals and sometimes Catholics and mainline Protestants –
it is for their own theological and cultural purposes in their own search for a »usable history«.19 In Germany it is all the more complex, a facet of the regrettably not-yet-complete postwar rapprochement between Christians and Jews. My sense is that the next steps require us to reassert and celebrate the distinctive in each community, even as we continue to seek out all that Jews and Christians share(d).

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries witnessed an explosion of Christian interest in the meaning and workings of the natural world—a "discovery of nature" that profoundly reshaped the intellectual currents and spiritual contours of European society—yet to all appearances, the Jews of medieval northern Europe (Ashkenaz) were oblivious to the shifts reshaping their surrounding culture. Scholars have long assumed that rather than exploring or contemplating the natural world, the Jews of medieval Ashkenaz were preoccupied solely with the supernatural and otherworldly: magic and mysticism, demonology and divination, as well as the zombies, werewolves, dragons, flying camels, and other monstrous and wondrous creatures that destabilized any pretense of a consistent and encompassing natural order.

In _A Remembrance of His Wonders_, David I. Shyovitz disputes this long-standing and far-reaching consensus. Analyzing a wide array of neglected Ashkenazic writings on the natural world in general, and the human body in particular, Shyovitz shows how Jews in Ashkenaz integrated regnant scientific, magical, and mystical currents into a sophisticated exploration of the boundaries between nature and the supernatural. Ashkenazic beliefs and practices that have often been seen as signs of credulity and superstition in fact mirrored—and drew upon—contemporaneous Christian debates over the relationship between God and the natural world. In charting these parallels between Jewish and Christian thought, Shyovitz focuses especially upon the mediating role of polemical texts and encounters, which served as mechanisms for the transmission of religious doctrines, scientific facts, and cultural mores. Medieval Jews' preoccupation with the apparently "supernatural" reflected neither ignorance nor intellectual isolation, but rather a determined effort to understand nature's inner workings and outer limits, and to integrate and interrogate the theologies and ideologies of the broader European Christian society.

Venerdì 12 novembre 2021, ore. 20:30
Caspoggio - Sala dell'Immacolata

Conferenza di presentazione dei risultati della prima e seconda campagna di scavi archeologici in località Castello a Caspoggio, sito dell'antico Castrum de Malenco. Il castello è oggetto di scavi di ricerca da parte dell'Università degli studi di Bergamo in regime di concessione ministeriale MIC.

Kniha byla vydána roku 1989 v Praze  / The book was published in 1989 in Prague.

Drazí kolegové, tato kniha je umístěna kvůli jejímu  mimořádnému významu při porozumění archeologii Čech a její špatné dostupnosti zahraničním vědcům a studentům. Naléhavě Vás prosíme, abyste respektovali autorská práva autora a vydavatele. Děkujeme --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear colleagues, this book is placed because of its importance in understanding the archaeology of Bohemia and its poor availability to foreign scientists and students. We urge you to respect the copyrights of author and publishers. Thank you

John Skelton is a central literary figure and the leading poet during the first thirty years of Tudor rule. Nevertheless, he remains challenging and even contradictory for modern audiences.

This book aims to provide an authoritative guide to this complex poet and his works, setting him in his historical, religious, and social contexts. Beginning with an exploration of his life and career, it goes on to cover all the major aspects of his poetry, from the literary traditions in which he wrote and the form of his compositions to the manuscript contexts and later reception. Contributors: Tom Betteridge, Julia Boffey, John Burrow, David Carlson, Helen Cooper, Elisabeth Dutton, A.S.G. Edwards, Jane Griffiths, Nadine Kuipers, Carol Meale, John Scattergood, Sebastian Sobecki, Greg Waite

L’affermazione dei regimi popolari alla metà del duecento rappresentò un’importante cesura nell’evoluzione politico-istituzionale dei comuni dell’Italia centro-settentrionale e nel processo di formazione e consolidamento dei gruppi dirigenti cittadini. Ciò nonostante, la storiografia comunalistica della seconda metà del novecento ha avuto la tendenza a sminuire l’originalità e la carica innovativa delle esperienze popolari sottolineando piuttosto la permanente centralità politica, economica ma soprattutto culturale dell’antica aristocrazia cittadina. Questo articolo prende in considerazione alcuni importanti comuni di Popolo – Firenze, Siena, Pisa, Bologna, Perugia – cercando di dimostrare come taluni elementi tradizionalmente portati a sostegno dell’interpretazione «continuista» delle vicende tardoduecentesche si prestino anche ad una lettura alternativa che metta piuttosto in luce la novità dell’esperimento politico e culturale portato avanti dai gruppi dirigenti popolari.

Although scholars tend to draw a line of confrontation between the conquerors Normans and the conquered Muslims and Greeks in the kingdom of Sicily, the actual relationship among these people was not so simple. In the kingdom there was a relatively developed bureaucracy staffed by officials with varied cultural backgrounds.  The kings and these bureaucrats took a stand against the aristocrats, who had solely Latin Christian backgrounds.  In fact, the keynote of the political history of the kingdom was a process in which the kings together with bureaucrats held down the aristocrats and cities of the peninsula.  The kings and bureaucrats, who had different cultural backgrounds but were highly educated and cultured, took a stand against aristocrats who were not well cultured but trained as warriors.  However, this line of confrontation was visible only during the peacetime.  During the wartime, a line of confrontation was drawn within aristocrats and cities that had military power.  Aristocrats and cities were divided into a pro-king group and an anti-king one, and fought amongst each other, while bureaucrats were usually on the side of the kings.  This suggests that even the mighty Norman kings supported by the bureaucrats were by no means absolute.  The strong Norman kingship of Sicily was in fact only made possible by a delicate balance of power among aristocrats, cities, and bureaucrats.

The admittance of individuals into a chivalric order was an important tool of late medieval diplomacy which contributed significantly to the reinforcement of political and cultural ties between the order’s leader and admitted member and between their respective social circles. Therefore, this paper analyses the presence of such chivalric orders in medieval Bosnia, with special emphasis placed on the Aragonese Order of the Stole and Jar through the prism of an alliance concluded between King Alfonso V of Aragon (r. 1416-1458) and Stjepan Vukčić (r. 1435- 1466), the Grand Duke of Bosnia who later became the Duke of St. Sava. The most of the individuals admitted to this Order were diplomats who visited Alfonso’s court in Naples. However, the privileges granted to Duke Stjepan Vukčić in 1444 constitute an exceptional case. According to a preserved document, he was granted the right to accept fifty new members and provide them with the insignia of the Order. The paper further contains an analysis and transcription of the text as well as a photographic reproduction of an authorized copy of this charter.

Il Concilio di Trento (1545-1563) determinò nuove esigenze liturgiche, che portarono a una rapida trasformazione e a un drastico rinnovamento delle chiese sia dal punto di vista strutturale che dell’arredo. Questo articolo desidera indagare i caratteri fondamentali di un fenomeno poco conosciuto e sicuramente sottovalutato della storia dell’arte moderna legata a questi cambiamenti: la ri-funzionalizzazione delle immagini medievali e bizantine, prendendo come esempio il caso toscano. In particolare verrà evidenziato come la percezione da parte dei fedeli di queste immagini si evolva nel corso dei secoli.


http://journalabyme.wix.com/mise-en-abyme

The period 550 to 750 was one in which monastic culture became more firmly entrenched in Western Europe. The role of monasteries and their relationship to the social world around them was transformed during this period as monastic institutions became more integrated in social and political power networks. This collected volume of essays focuses on one of the central figures in this process, the Irish ascetic exile and monastic founder, Columbanus (c. 550-615), his travels on the Continent, and the monastic network he and his Frankish disciples established in Merovingian Gaul and Lombard Italy.

The post-Roman kingdoms through which Columbanus travelled and established his monastic foundations were made up of many different communities of peoples. As an outsider and immigrant, how did Columbanus and his communities interact with these peoples? How did they negotiate differences and what emerged from these encounters? How societies interact with outsiders can reveal the inner workings and social norms of that culture. This volume aims to explore further the strands of this vibrant contact and to consider all of the geographical spheres in which Columbanus and his monastic communities operated (Ireland, Merovingian Gaul, Alamannia, Lombard Italy) and the varieties of communities he and his successors came in contact with — whether they were royal, ecclesiastic, aristocratic, or grass-roots.

Table of Contents

Preface
List of Abbreviations
Maps
Contributors
Foreword Walter Pohl
Part I: Columbanus in Context
Chapter 1: Introduction: Columbanus and Europe Alexander O'Hara
Chapter 2: Columbanus and the Language of Concord Damian Bracken
Part II: The Insular Background
Chapter 3: The Political Background to Columbanus's Irish Career Dáibhí Ó Cróinín
Chapter 4: Movers and Shakers? How Women Shaped the Career of Columbanus Elva Johnston
Chapter 5: Columbanus's Ulster Education Alex Woolf
Part III: The Frankish World
Chapter 6: Columbanus in Brittany Ian Wood
Chapter 7: Columbanus and Shunning: The Irish peregrinus between Gildas, Gaul, and Gregory Clare Stancliffe
Chapter 8: Orthodoxy and Authority: Jonas, Eustasius, and the Agrestius Affair Andreas Fischer
Chapter 9: Columbanus and the Mission to the Bavarians and the Slavs in the Seventh Century Herwig Wolfram
Part IV: On the Fringe: Columbanus and Gallus in Alamannia
Chapter 10: Between the Devil and the deep Lake Constance: Jonas of Bobbio, interpretatio Christiana, and the Pagan Religion of the Alamanni Bernhard Maier
Chapter 11: Drinking with Woden: A Re-Examination of Jonas's Vita Columbani I. 27 Francesco Borri
Chapter 12: Between Metz and Überlingen: Columbanus and Gallus in Alamannia Yaniv Fox
Chapter 13: Quicumque sunt rebelles, foras exeant! Columbanus's Rebellious Disciple Gallus Philipp Dörler
Part V: Lombard Italy and Columbanus's Legacy
Chapter 14: Columbanus, Bobbio, and the Lombards Stefano Gasparri
Chapter 15: Disputing Columbanus's Heritage: The Regula cuiusdam patris (with a translation of the Rule) Albrecht Diem

"This publication presents the first study of the defining features of Psellos' Chronographia, written in the 11th century.
Character is the single most important feature of the Chronographia written by Michael Psellos (1018-1081?). It is an historical account of the events at court from the time of Basil II (986-1025) to Michael VII Doukas (1071-1078) with the insight of someone whose career developed within the imperial court and his unsurpassed eye for details of personality was enlightened by his intellectual interests. During his lifetime, Psellos was considered the forefront of philosophical studies in the capital and therefore was named consul of philosophers (ὕπατος τῶν φιλοσόφων) in 1047 and he credited himself with reintroducing Plato on the cultural scene of Constantinople. It was his attractive manner of speech which led him to remain in the emperor’s presence and his rhetorical ability also plays an important role in the Chronographia, especially when he emphasizes or fabricates events to justify his understanding of a person’s mind. Many have employed Psellos’ Chronographia for its value in shedding light on historic events, itself important, though it often neglects the fact that Psellos’ historiography is not based on factual details to explain multiple causes for events, but seeks to attribute blame or merit to the personality of the ruling emperor."

The Rupertsberg antependium, an embroidery created in the German convent of Rupersberg c. 1215, has received significant art historical attention both for the wide array of figures portrayed on it and its relation to the legacy of St. Hildegard of Bingen.  Scholarship on the textile has focused on the object as a form of “memoria”, representing secular donors, local clerics, and the nuns of the convent in order to incite prayers for them after their deaths. I examine the materiality of the textile in relation to the representations of the nun-needleworkers on the antependium to suggest that the antependium also functioned as a temporal and political aid in establishing the nun-needleworkers as agents in the canonization of St. Hildegard of Bingen, and as significant actors in the religious life of their community.

The early Middle Ages provided twentieth-century poets with the material to reimagine and rework local, religious, and national identities in their writing. Poet of the Medieval Modern focuses on a key figure within this tradition, the Anglo-Welsh poet and artist David Jones (1895–1974), and represents the first extended study of the influence of early medieval culture and history from England on Jones and his novel-length late modernist poem The Anathemata (1952). Drawing on unpublished archival material including manuscripts, sketches, correspondence, and, most significantly, the marginalia from David Jones’s Library, Poet of the Medieval Modern reads with Jones in order to trouble the distinction we make between poetry and scholarship. Placing this underappreciated figure firmly at the centre of new developments in modernist and medieval studies, Poet of the Medieval Modern argues that Jones uses the textual and material culture of the early Middle Ages—including Old English prose and poetry, Anglo-Latin hagiography, early medieval stone sculpture, manuscripts, and historiography—to re-envision British Catholic identity in the twentieth-century long poem. At a time when the Middle Ages are increasingly weaponized in far-right and nationalist political discourse, the book offers a timely discussion of how the early medieval past has been resourced to both shore up and challenge English hegemonies across modern British culture.

This study investigates the place of San Salvatore in the holy topography of Venetian Candia. By focusing on the largest convent in the Augustinian Province of the Holy Land, it contributes to a better understanding of a neglected subject in mendicant scholarship, namely the Augustinian friars’ expansion in the eastern Mediterranean. This article offers a detailed reconstruction of the demolished building and its sacred space, and sheds new light on interaction among the mixed Latin-Greek population in Venetian Crete by examining icons, altars, liturgy and, in particular, the introduction of the cult of Nicholas of Tolentino.

Sul profilo biografico di Cecco d'Ascoli, al secolo Francesco Stabili, gravano secoli di leggenda che si è frammista alla storia. Le scarse notizie sulla sua formazione, la rapida e fortunata carriera universitaria, i processi inquisitoriali e la tragica fine sul rogo a Firenze  hanno alimentato una pluralità di notizie a suo carico che devono fare i conti con le fonti storiche. Il presente lavoro tenta innanzi tutto di chiarire quali siano queste fonti e, quindi, di tracciare un profilo biografico attendibile.
Nel secondo capitolo, invece, viene analizzata quella che per diverse ragioni può essere ritenuta come l'opera più rappresentativa dell'autore: il Commento alla Sfera del Sacrobosco. La lettura del manuale di astronomia più diffuso del medioevo, diviene nel corso stabiliano occasione per intrecciare astrologia, negromanzia e magia.
L'ultima parte dell'elaborato, infine, è più ricca di domande che di risposte. Dopo aver analizzato in chiave diacronica e sincronica il contesto dello studium bolognese, vengono espresse alcune suggestioni in merito alle problematiche poetico-letterarie e alcuni indirizzi di ricerca futuri sulle questioni stabiliane.

Birds featured in many aspects of medieval people's lives, not least in their poetry. But despite their familiar presence in literary culture, it is still often assumed that these representations have little to do with the real natural world. By attending to the ways in which birds were actually observed and experienced, this book aims to offer new perspectives on how and why they were meaningful in five major poems -- The Seafarer, the Exeter Book Riddles, The Owl and the Nightingale, The Parliament of Fowls and Confessio Amantis. In a consideration of sources from Isidore of Seville and Anglo-Saxon place-names to animal-sound word lists and Bartholomew the Englishman, the author shows how ornithological truth and knowledge are integral to our understandings of his chosen poems. Birds, he argues, are relevant to the medieval mind because their unique properties align them with important religious and secular themes: seabirds that inspire the forlorn Anglo-Saxon pilgrim; unnamed species that confound riddling taxonomies; a belligerent owl who speaks out against unflattering literary portraits. In these poems, human actions and perceptions are deeply affected by the remarkable flights and voices of birds.

Borsje, J., A. Dooley, S. Mac Mathuna and G. Toner (eds. with editorial assistance by N. McGuire, N. Mac Cathmhaoil and T. Oudesluijs). 2014. Celtic Cosmology: Perspectives from Ireland and Scotland (Papers in Medieval Studies 26), Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

'Dante’s Masterplot and Alternative Narratives in the "Commedia"’ questions the familiar narrative arc at play in the writings of Dante Alighieri and opens his masterpiece to three alternative models that resist it. Dante’s masterplot is the teleological trajectory by which the poet subordinates the past to the authority of a new experience. The book analyses the masterplot’s workings in Dante’s text and its role in the interpretation of the poem, and it documents its overwhelming success in influencing readings of the 'Commedia' over the centuries. The volume then explores three competing narrative models that resist and counter its monopoly which are enacted by paradoxes, alternative endings and parallel lives, and the future. By focusing on these non-linear modes of storytelling and testing the limits of linear narration, the book questions critical paradigms in the scholarship of the 'Commedia' that favour a single normative master truth, exposes their problematic authoritarian implications, and highlights the manifold poetic, theological, and ethical tensions that are often neglected due to the masterplot’s influence. The new picture of a vulnerable author and open-ended text that emerges from this study thus doubles as a metacritical reflection on the state of the field. The book’s impassioned argument is that, alongside established notions of his trademark plurality of linguistic registers and styles, Dante’s narrative pluralism can, and should, come to play a key role in contemporary and future readings of the 'Commedia'.