International Medieval Congress Research Articles

Slow Scholarship: Medieval Research and the Neoliberal University

Slow Scholarship: Medieval Research and the Neoliberal University

‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages, ed. Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood. International Medieval Research, 25. Turnhout: Brepols, 2022, 478 pp., 36 b/w and color ill.

Abstract For a long time now, the notion of ‘the other’ or ‘otherness’ has been fully accepted by research in anthropology, history, art history, literary studies, and similar fields, and this especially in Medieval Studies, as a valuable hermeneutic concept. This category or theme had been the central topic of the International Medieval Congress in Leeds in 2017, and a selection of papers presented there, further developed for publication, has then been compiled and published by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood.

Old Norse Studies and Collective Memory: An Introduction

ABSTRACT: This special issue of Scandinavian-Canadian Studies / Études scandinaves au Canada is the result of a number of sessions organized by guest editors Yoav Tirosh and Simon Nygaard for the 2018 International Medieval Congress (IMC) at Leeds and supported by the Memory and the Pre-Modern North network. This introduction serves to contextualize the study of collective memory within the field of Old Norse as well as introduce some of the key theoretical concepts discussed in the issue. The formation and transmission of collective memory in pre-literate and literate societies are explained, with an eye towards the cognitive elements at play. Finally, the issueʼs articles are discussed, as is the logic of the compilation. This special issue hopes to expand the already thriving field of collective memory studies in Old Norse, building upon the work already done and offering new directions forward.

From the East to the West

Following an intense, emotional, and extremely challenging year, it is with great pleasure that we introduce this thematic dossier of Medievalista on the history of the military religious orders. The inspiration for this volume comes from previous talks between Luis Filipe Oliveira and Helen Nicholson, in the summer of 2019, when a series of papers were delivered at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds, England, on the history of the military orders. The four sessions there organized,...

From the Editor

From the Editor Michelle M. Hamilton This volume of La corónica features six articles that explore the legacy of non-monotheistic religions in medieval Iberian literature, aspects of Alfonsine cultural production, Orientalizing and Antisemitic discourses in fifteenth-century texts and the uses they were put to. In addition, we have a remembrance of our colleague, Charles F. Fraker, Jr., as well as a forum on Heather Bamford's monograph Cultures of the Fragment: Uses of the Iberian Manuscript, 1100-1600), winner of the 2020 La corónica Book Award. As we continue working in the shadow of the pandemic, I again wish to thank my fellow editors, Isidro Rivera, Christina Ivers, Montserrat Piera and David Arbesú, and the reviewers, who have taken the time to offer advice and to make known the work of their colleagues. I would also like to thank the authors whose original research can be found in the pages of this volume. Because publication has been delayed by the pandemic, I have already included updates about the various panels, roundtables and events sponsored and organized by La corónica at conferences such as the 56th International Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo, the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference and MLA in volume 49.1. We had to cancel the social event we scheduled for MLA because of the Omicron outbreak. We do plan on hosting an in person social event next year (MLA 2023) in San Francisco, provided it is safe to do so. The journal has also organized two panels for the 2022 Kentucky Foreign Language Conference (April 21st-23rd) and two panels at this year's 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo. The latter two panels will be on the topic of "Negotiating Religion, Gender, and Travel in the Medieval Mediterranean." In addition, the La corónica 2021 International Book Award roundtable on Sol Miguel Prendes's Narrating Desire: Moral Consolation and Sentimental Fiction in Fifteenth-Century Spain, will feature Emily Francomano, Óscar Martín, Ana Montero, Sanda Munjic, and Rachel Scott. You will find a review of Narrating Desire among this volume's book reviews. This year we will also be announcing the John K. Walsh Award and the Nancy F. Marino award winners at Kalamazoo. [End Page 1] If you are a junior scholar and will be presenting at this year's 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, please submit your paper for consideration for the Nancy F. Marino prize for Best Essay in Hispanomedieval Studies delivered at Kalamazoo: (https://forms.gle/7LxS8R79d8vGFAck9). If you know a junior scholar presenting at this year's 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, please encourage them to apply for the Nancy F. Marino prize. If you missed last year's roundtable on Bamford's monograph Cultures of the Fragment, you will find in this volume reflections by three of the participants on how in this study Bamford explores not only fragmentary works, but also how our critical practices can also be fragmentary or incomplete. This volume opens with a remembrance of Charles F. Fraker, Jr., professor at the University of Michigan and mentor to several of our colleagues. The first article in this volume, Óscar Gómez López's "'Soplará el odrero …': profecía, difamación y lenguaje subversivo en la revuelta toledana de 1449" offers us a detailed and thought-provoking study on the role of popular insults, epithets, and prophecies in the anti-converso uprising of 1449 in Toledo. Gómez López shows how the popular toxic discourses that gave rise to these insults became common in the written attacks on conversos and Jews in Spanish literary, political, historical and legal texts of the fifteenth century. Alex A. J. Thomas, in "Carnival at Court," also examines how insults and epithets were used and repeated in a series of texts. He looks at those aimed at a single individual, Maria Balteria, at the court of Alfonso X, and which were included in the Galician-Portuguese cantigas d'escarnhio. Thomas argues that these poems were part of a courtly performance that most likely included gestures and acting. The Alfonsine court is also the focus of Jaime Hernández Vargas...

‘But rather I wolde sey: here in thys worlde he chaunged hys lyff’: Malorian and Scholarly Retraction

‘But rather I wolde sey: here in thys worlde he chaunged hys lyff’: Malorian and Scholarly Retraction Karen Cherewatuk (bio) and Meg Roland (bio) Late in life or late in their work, medieval writers could resort to retraction to soften the more brazen or less certain aspects of their work. Within the capacious ‘grete boke’ of Le Morte Darthur, Thomas Malory suggests but then retracts certain ideas, such as the nature of love or loyalty. He also contests his sources, contradicts earlier plot lines, and presents characters who take unexpected actions or change sides. This special volume explores and even celebrates the retraction: within Malory’s text, in Arthurian scholarship over the last century, and in our own work as scholars. The best-known examples of authorial retraction come, of course, from Boccaccio and Chaucer, both of whom retracted the ‘worldly vanities’ of their respective works purportedly upon their death beds. Many of the scholars contributing to this volume have had long careers in Arthurian literature; the idea of retraction as reconsideration opened up the possibility of approaching our work with a bit of humility, fortunately not of the death-bed variety, but to harvest, as Chaucer wrote, ‘newe corne’ from ‘olde feldes’ and to create ‘out of olde bokes . . . newe science.’1 ‘“But rather I wolde sey”’ began as a roundtable of Malory scholars at the International Arthurian Congress, held in Wurzburg in 2017, and continued at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds in 2018 (see photos, below). As conveners, we invited Arthurian scholars to take a second look at work they published, at critical modes that had framed scholarly debate, or at aspects of Le Morte Darthur itself that suggest retrospection or reconsideration, perhaps even an outright retraction. While a few scholars declined our invitation, quite a number of our colleagues were intrigued by the opportunity to rethink their thinking. Their open-mindedness and desire to keep learning is an impressive attribute of their approach to scholarship. Frankly honest and spirited discussions followed both panels and have led to this current collection of essays. [End Page 3] In Under Another Sky, classicist and journalist Charlotte Higgins elegantly writes about the substrata and interweaving of imperial Roman culture with Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and subsequent British culture. She quotes the early twentieth-century Romano-British scholar R.G. Collingsworth, who suggested that his writing on art was ‘the best example I can give to posterity of how to solve a much-debated problem in history, not by discovering fresh evidence, but by reconsidering questions of principle.’2 In this collection, scholars who have devoted much of their career to Malory studies adopt Collingsworth’s example by reconsidering questions of principle and engaging in a lively reconsideration of Arthurian work with fresh perspectives and seasoned scholarly practice. Michael Twomey notes in his essay in this volume that, ‘in a broader sense, one could say that all scholarship and criticism begin in retraction, in that every new contribution implicitly retracts what came before it, without ever removing it from the scholarly or critical record’ (11). Not surprisingly, many of the scholars in this collection turn to the concluding passages of Malory as the characters that have held our hopes ‘pass oute of thys worlde’ (827.16). In a way, Twomey’s contribution undergirds this entire collection. He explains the Augustinian notion of retraction as reconsidering or reexamining a work in contrast to the post-Chaucerian notion of withdrawing it. He further identifies retraction as the process by which Arthurian authors expanded the corpus: through ‘palinode,’ which involves a single author countering his/her own earlier view, as Chrétien does in Yvain; through ‘recreation,’ which is when an author creates a new narrative about existing characters, as did the Gawain-poet; through ‘adaptation’ which is an alteration of an existing narrative, as demonstrated by any of the post-Chrétien Grail continuations; or through ‘supplementation’ which is an addition to an existing narrative, as when Malory brings pillars and robbers onto the field after Arthur’s final battle. According to Twomey, the logic of those innovative forms of retractions lead to a ‘both/and’ view of literary composition which allows renewal...

Growing presence of the IEM at the International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo, Michigan)

The International Congress on Medieval Studies, which takes place every year at the Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo, MI, USA), is hosted by the Medieval Institute and brings together around 3,000 researchers and experts in Medieval Studies. This is by far the oldest annual scientific meeting devoted to the study of the Middle Ages and, along with the International Medieval Congress of the University of Leeds (UK) and the International Medieval Meeting of the University of Lleida (Spain...

Pleasure in the Middle Ages, ed. Naama Cohen-Hanegbi and Piroska Nagy. International Medieval Research, 24. Turnhout: Brepols, 2018, xxiii, 383 pp., 10 b/w ill.

The term ‘pleasure’ has many different meanings, and can be understood both in physical, emotional terms and in religious, or philosophical contexts. Pleasure pertains both to the body and to the spirit, so it turns out to be a very malleable concept which cannot be easily examined in a cultural-historical framework. The contributors to the present volume, however, who originally presented their studies orally at the 2013 International Medieval Congress at Leeds, pursue, as the two editors formulate it themselves, very diverse approaches, depending on their individual research discipline. However, pleasure is regularly associated with emotions, whether from a historical, theological, philosophical, art-historical (only one study), or literary (practically left out) perspective. Of course, this opens another Pandora’s box since ‘emotions’ represent a vast range of aspects in human life that are commonly not easy to identify or to determine in a critical fashion. Cohen-Hanegbi (Tel Aviv University) and Nagy (Université du Quebec à Montréal) offer the approximate definition of pleasure as being “an affect sustained by the interaction between physical and sensory knowledge, between cultural and social mores, and between religious thought and ethics” (xix). It might be difficult to grasp what they really mean by this, especially because they consider such features as “pleasured bodies, didactic pleasures, and pleasure in God” (ibid.), which again leaves us groping for straws. However, we are assured at the end of the introduction that all contributors, despite vast differences in their methodologies and materials, “attempt to define and analyze pleasures, joys, enjoyments, and delights through the language and mindset of the source material” (xxii).

Giving and Receiving Counsel: Forging Political Culture in Western French and Anglo‐Norman Assemblies

HistoryVolume 102, Issue 353 p. 787-807 Article Giving and Receiving Counsel: Forging Political Culture in Western French and Anglo-Norman Assemblies RICHARD E. BARTON, RICHARD E. BARTON University of North Carolina at GreensboroSearch for more papers by this author RICHARD E. BARTON, RICHARD E. BARTON University of North Carolina at GreensboroSearch for more papers by this author First published: 20 December 2017 https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-229X.12515Citations: 2 An early version of this essay was presented at the International Medieval Congress, Kalamazoo, MI, in May 2010. My thoughts benefited then from the comments of Paul Hyams, Stephen White and William Miller. I also owe much to the vibrant discussion of political culture held during the Manchester Symposium in July 2016, and especially to the editorial expertise of Kathryn Dutton. Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume102, Issue353Special Issue: Political Culture c.800-c.1200December 2017Pages 787-807 RelatedInformation

The Prose ‘Brut’ and Other Late Medieval Chronicles. Books Have Their Histories: Essays in Honour of Lister M. Matheson ed. by Jaclyn Rajsic, Erik Kooper and Dominique Hoche

JACLYN RAJSIC, ERIK KOOPER, and DOMINIQUE HOCHE, eds., The Prose 'Brut'and Other Late Medieval Chronicles. Books Have Their Histories: Essays in Honour of Lister M. Matheson. Manuscript Culture in the British Isles. Woodbridge and Rochester: York Medieval Press, 2016. Pp. xxv, 246. ISBN: 978-1-903153-66-6. $99.The Prose 'Brut' and Other Late Medieval Chronicles is a lovely book. It quietly argues, through its collection of high-quality essays, for the importance of traditions to the understanding of medieval literary history and the development of Medieval Studies as a discipline, from Early Modern antiquarian interests to the present day. The volume honors the great scholar of, among much else, English Brut chronicles, Lister M. Matheson (1948-2012), and its contents evolve from papers delivered in his memory in 2013, at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo and the International Medieval Congress in Leeds. As its editors underscore in their introduction, 'exploration of ... Matheson's influence as a scholar and a teacher lies at the heart of this collection' (p. 1), and, far from just a subtitle or nominal gesture, this is true from start to finish. Julia Marvin's opening 'memoir' paints a lively and vivid portrait of Matheson as a scholar and colleague who approached everything from Middle English Dictionary entries to high-school outreach with generosity; Edward Donald Kennedy's essay on the early eighteenth-century antiquarian Thomas Hearne's uses of English chronicles includes an afterward that affectionately compares Hearne, who never completed an announced edition of the Brut, to Matheson: 'Whether speaking of a remarkable fragment of an old English chronicle or a newly found curious version of the English Prose Brut, both displayed similar delight in and enthusiasm for discovery, delight and enthusiasm evident too in the plans for projects that both left incomplete at their deaths' (p. 198); A.S.G. Edwards's useful essay at the end of the volume-on twentieth-century sales and acquisitions of Brut manuscripts, including an appendix of all such sold or donated and their current locations-is indebted to Matheson's 'detailed record of surviving copies ... supplemented in a posthumously published article' (p. 219). Beyond this, so much of the volume explicitly responds to (in footnotes) or otherwise depends on Matheson's scholarship, that it is hardly hyperbole to say that his heart beats through it. It is, frankly, quite moving to read the book in this spirit.The memorial aspect, however, is far from the only reason to read this volume. Divided into three sections-'The Uses of History,' 'The Prose Brut,' and 'Receptions and Afterlives of Late Medieval Chronicles'-the collection is comprised of very readable selections by important voices in the field of English and manuscript studies. In addition to those already mentioned, essays appear by Krista A. Murchison, Christine M. Rose, Alexander L. Kaufman, Dan Embree, Erik Kooper, William Marx, Jaclyn Rajsic, Neil Weijer, Heather Pagan, Elizabeth J. Bryan, and Caroline D. …

A Look Behind the Scenes

From the 4th – 7th of July 2016, the annual International Medieval Congress was held in Leeds, England. Among the many different sessions two specifically addressed historical European martial arts. The first session discussed and commented upon modern practices and interpretations of historical European martial arts, each paper being based on good practice and the proper criteria for academic research. The second session, in which this paper was presented, went more “behind the scenes”, discussing the importance of thorough analysis of the historical context which remains essential to forming a foundation for solid hypotheses and interpretations. This article discusses and sheds light upon Danish historical martial art during the reign of the Danish King Christian IV (r.1588 to 1648). At this point in time Europe consisted of many small principalities in addition to a few larger states and kingdoms. Thoughts and ideas could spread as quickly as ripples in water but also be bound by political and religious alliances or enmities, plague, famine and not to mention the role also played by topographical and cultural differences. Thus, at times, vast cultural differences could be seen from region to region. To this should be added a wide range of social factors, such as the role of relationships and mentalities, and the obeying of unspoken norms and codes which can also affect modern researchers’ interpretations of what is shown or described. Therefore, the aim of this article is to provide a series of “behind the scenes” examples which all have the potential to affect hypotheses, interpretations, and overall understandings of the context of historical European martial arts.

A Look Behind the Scenes: Danish Renaissance Martial Arts during the Reign of Christian IV

Abstract From the 4th – 7th of July 2016, the annual International Medieval Congress was held in Leeds, England. Among the many different sessions two specifically addressed historical European martial arts. The first session discussed and commented upon modern practices and interpretations of historical European martial arts, each paper being based on good practice and the proper criteria for academic research. The second session, in which this paper was presented, went more “behind the scenes”, discussing the importance of thorough analysis of the historical context which remains essential to forming a foundation for solid hypotheses and interpretations. This article discusses and sheds light upon Danish historical martial art during the reign of the Danish King Christian IV (r.1588 to 1648). At this point in time Europe consisted of many small principalities in addition to a few larger states and kingdoms. Thoughts and ideas could spread as quickly as ripples in water but also be bound by political and religious alliances or enmities, plague, famine and not to mention the role also played by topographical and cultural differences. Thus, at times, vast cultural differences could be seen from region to region. To this should be added a wide range of social factors, such as the role of relationships and mentalities, and the obeying of unspoken norms and codes which can also affect modern researchers’ interpretations of what is shown or described. Therefore, the aim of this article is to provide a series of “behind the scenes” examples which all have the potential to affect hypotheses, interpretations, and overall understandings of the context of historical European martial arts.

Woman and Power: Thoughts Arising out of the Roundtable "Debating Women and Power in the Middle Ages," International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 2014

Woman and Power: Thoughts Arising out of the Roundtable "Debating Women and Power in the Middle Ages," International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 2014

Travels and Mobilities in the Middle Ages: From the Atlantic to the Black Sea by ed. Marianne O’Doherty and Felicitas Schmieder

Reviewed by: Travels and Mobilities in the Middle Ages: From the Atlantic to the Black Sea by ed. Marianne O’Doherty and Felicitas Schmieder Jason stoessel O’Doherty, Marianne, and FelicitasSchmieder, eds, Travels and Mobilities in the Middle Ages: From the Atlantic to the Black Sea (International Medieval Research, 21), Turnhout, Brepols, 2015; hardback; pp. xliii, 344; 20 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. €90.00; ISBN 9782503554495. This collection of fourteen essays has its roots in the 2010 International Medieval Congress in Leeds. Marianne O’Doherty and Felicitas Schmieder have done an admirable job of framing the book in their Introduction, successfully linking chapters by an international field of established and emergent scholars on a range of topics on medieval and early modern travel and mobilities. The following essays are arranged into four parts that extend chronologically from the seventh to sixteenth centuries and geographically from China to the Americas. From the outset, the editors challenge the reader to put aside the modern myth of medieval immobility. Indeed, this collection’s essays reveal that relatively ordinary people regularly travelled long distances in the course of their studies, work, adventures, and pilgrimages. Contributions to this volume focus less on ‘exceptional travels’, like those of Marco Polo or Ibn Battuta, and more on cases of the everyday travel of mendicant friars, soldiers, students, and diplomats. In keeping with recent scholarly trends, a strong thread of cross-disciplinarity runs through this collection, particularly with regard to constructions of gender, identity, disability studies, and material culture. Part I explores ‘Centres and Peripheries: Travellers to and on the Margins’. Essays by Johnny Grandjean Gøgsig Jacobsen and Sæbjørg Walaker Nordiede consider, respectively, the travels of mendicant friars and papal envoys in Scandinavia. Iona McCleery examines the journeys of Portuguese medical practitioners, Tomé Pires, Garcia de Orto, Diego Ávarez Chanca, [End Page 158] and Master Alfonso, to India, China, and the Americas, and concludes with several cautions about succumbing to binary oppositions (like ‘home and abroad’) and later nationalisms (like ‘Italian’) for identifying individuals in the early modern period. Irina Metzler’s essay on the mobility of the disabled in the Middle Ages surveys examples wherein the physically impaired went, or had themselves transported, on pilgrimages in search of cures or spiritual solace. John D. Hosler’s essay, the first of Part II, ‘Nobility of the Road: Travel and Status’, sits less comfortably in this collection, asking why King Stephen of England did not join in the Second Crusade. Despite Stephen’s clear intention to take the cross, domestic affairs intervened in his plans for long-distance travel. The following contributions by Hrovoje Kekez and Mary Fischer are more at home. They respectively explore the mobility of fifteenth-century Slavonian noble, Ivan Bubonić, and literary tropes on chivalric rites of passage for Prussian crusaders. Fischer’s discussion of gendered identity within the fourteenth-century German knightly class pre-empts the theme of Part III, ‘Men and Women on the Move: Gendered Mobilities’. Stefanie Rüther’s analysis of gendered discourse in the songs of highly mobile German mercenaries (Landsknechtslieder) of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries offers insight into alternative models of masculinity, often in direct conflict with the Church’s teachings. Rüther deftly negotiates her subject material to the benefit of historical analysis: Landsknechtslieder were revived in Germany during the first half of the twentieth century for very different purposes of national identity. Zita Rohr’s essay shifts the reader’s attention to the exceptional case of Yolande of Aragon and her semi-nomadic life as co-regent and ruler of Angevin lands in the early fifteenth century. Drawing together recent French literature and new archival research on Yolande, Rohr’s essay is valuable for its insights into the life of this influential late medieval woman. Zohr’s claims about the peripatetic nature of her rule being influenced by the Spanish model seem, however, misplaced, given that many other rulers, such as John of Burgundy, in this period kept itinerant courts. The final essay by Maximilian Schuh rounds out Part III’s focus on mobilities and gender by reassessing the nature of fifteenth-century wandering scholars, questioning twentieth-century goliardic stereotypes and...

Reforming Reform: Steven Vanderputten’s Monastic Histories

Ecclesia Medio Nationis: Reflections on Study of Monasticism Central Middle Ages / Reflexions sur l'etude du monachisme au moyen âge central. Edited by Steven Vanderputten and Brigite Meijns. [Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, ser. 1, studia 42.] (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2011. Pp. 215. euro45,00. ISBN 978-90-5867-887-4.)Reform, Conflict, and Shaping of Corporate Identities: Collected Studies on Benedictine Monasticism, 1050-1150. By Steven Vanderputten. [Vita Regularis: ordnungen und Deutungen religiosen Lebens im Mittelalter, Abhandlungen 54.] (Zurich: LIT Verlag, 2013. euro34,90. ISBN 978-3-643-90429-4.)Monastic as Process: Realities and Representations Medieval Flanders, 900-1100. By Steven Vanderputten. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013. Pp. xiv, 247. $55.00. ISBN 978-0-8014-5171-3.)Imagining Religious Leadership Middle Ages: Richard of Saint-Vanne and Politics of Reform. By Steven Vanderputten. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015. Pp. xvi, 244. $49.95. ISBN 978-0-80145377-9.)Reform is rarely defined. Nevertheless, it was an important concept to Latin Church Fathers, particularly to St. Augustine, whose fascination with early chapters of Genesis led him to meditate on how, after fall, human beings necessarily needed to be reformed-an act that, thanks to Incarnation, would be a reformatio ad melius. That patristic tradition was famously analyzed at time of Second Vatican Council Gerhart Ladner's The Idea of Reform, which presented as a leitmotif of ecclesiastical history, or the free, intentional and ever perfectible, multiple, prolonged and ever repeated efforts by man to reassert and augment values pre-existent spiritual-material compound of world.1 For Ladner, was always progressive and always in progress. He himself never completed his general history of idea of reform, but his work spawned a small school of studies, more successful with later Middle Ages that were saturated with discussions than with central Middle Ages where post-Carolingian monks and Roman reformers often preferred different terminology.2 modern world has evolved into a vague model for gradual, positive change, usually employed without same level of scrutiny given to parallel paradigms of change such as renaissance or revolution?Medieval narratives are getting new attention, thanks to work of Steven Vanderputten. Starting with a doctoral dissertation on medieval monastic historiography (University of Ghent. 2000),4 he has been urging a reexamination of whole paradigm of monastic reform. His publications, aided by major fellowships and research professorships, are extraordinarily numerous. He even coordinated 220 conference sessions and roundtable discussions on Reform and Renewal at 2015 Leeds International Medieval Congress. In contrast to earlier historiography, however, reform often now appears within scare quotes or accompanied by hints that it has acquired so much dysfunctional baggage that perhaps it ought to be abandoned as a research paradigm.Does now obscure more than illuminate? To clarify issues, it may be helpful to introduce four of Vanderputten's recent books. The earliest is Ecclesia Medio Nationis: Reflections on Study of Monasticism, an edited volume stemming from a 2009 conference at University of Leuven that sought to showcase current scholarship on Western religious communities of 900-1050, focusing especially on their relationships to outside world. Here, five papers French and two English demonstrate that the historiography of first monastic reforms has been profoundly renewed over course of last twenty years (34). Particularly distinguished are Isabelle Rose on monastic community life from ninth through twelfth centuries (pp. 11-45) and Florian Mazel on relationship between monasticism and aristocracy tenth and eleventh centuries (pp. …

Rady, Martyn and Simon, Alexandru (eds) Government and Law in Medieval Moldavia, Transylvania and Wallachia (review)

SEER, 93, 4, OCTOBER 2015 754 published via the online journal, KinoKultura (as is the case with Meghan Vicks’s piece on Andrei Zviagintsev’s The Return) is also questionable, given that this is easily accessible to students all over the world via the Internet. These observations notwithstanding, undergraduate students of Russian cinema will no doubt find the Readers useful, and the books also have much to offer the general reader, not least the fact that they situate the films they discuss firmly within the specific socio-ideological and cultural contexts from which they emerged. UCL SSEES Rachel Morley Rady, Martyn and Simon, Alexandru (eds). Government and Law in Medieval Moldavia, Transylvania and Wallachia. SSEES Studies in Russia and Eastern Europe, 11. UCL SSEES, London, 2013. ix + 125 pp. Tables. Notes. Further reading. Index. £20.00 (paperback). Government and Law in Medieval Moldavia, Transylvania and Wallachia, the volume edited by Martyn Rady and Simon Alexandru, fills a gap in the existing English-language bibliography on the legal history of medieval Transylvania, Wallachia and Moldavia. It is an important and welcome contribution to Central-East European medieval historiography on law and custom, featuring a number of strong, insightful essays (in particular those by Mariana Goina, Adrian Magina and Tudor Sălăgean). The volume also makes available in English the latest research in the field and promotes the work of young academics, thus building academic bridges between local historians and Western academics and research students. Although there are fewer contributions on Moldavia and Wallachia than on Transylvania, this however reflects the book’s origins as a conference proceedings volume (the International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 2012) and can only serve as an incentive for further research and publication. The excellent editorship of the volume makes it a pleasure to read. The volume kicks off with Romulus-Gelu Fodor’s contribution on ‘Constitutional Thought and Institutions in Medieval Transylvania’, which stresses the influence of Werbőczy’s Tripartitum on Transylvanian law and institutions as well as its distinct status among the lands belonging to the Hungarian Crown. Fodor presents the tug-of-war between king and estates, which resulted in the sixteenth-century creation of an independent principality of Transylvania, thus transposing Werbőczy’s notion of a noble republic onto Transylvania. The second contribution, authored by Tudor Sălăgean, explores this theme further by focusing on the Transylvanian congregatio nobilium REVIEWS 755 and its role as a legal community at the end of the thirteenth century. The author cogently explains the ambiguity implicit in the notion of regnum Transilvanum, which has been divergently interpreted by Romanian and Hungarian historians. Thus, the emergence of a congregatio of nobles in Transylvania ‘gave the title of regnum a new meaning, in the sense of a “legal country”, a juridical community with its own privileges and the right of collective self-government’. The next three contributions on Transylvania shift the focus of analysis from sources of law and authority to interactions between these and ordinary people. Florin Nicolae Ardelean provides an in-depth survey of military recruitment in Transylvania within a legal framework in which royal decrees were often overturned by customary law. Liviu Cîmpeanu explains the process of colonization, the fiscal and military obligations of the Transylvanian Saxons and the nature of their privileges. Oana Toda describes in detail the road infrastructure of northern Transylvania and places it in the context of property and legal relations, contrasting the royal interest in commercial routes and the salt trade with the reality on the ground of illegal tolls and other abuses. Adrian and Livia Magina cover the territory of what in later centuries would become the Banat of Temesvár. Adrian Magina thus looks at the intricacies of the ius valachicum in the Hungarian Kingdom and its relationship with written law, concluding that, ‘having its roots in both the Romano-Byzantine legal tradition and influenced by the Hungarian customary law, the ius valachicum demonstrates a self-generating and pragmatic form of law, as well as one that borrowed from larger legal traditions’. Livia Magina maps the changes undergone by the environment in the medieval and early modern Banat under the impact of water technology (mills...

The Tree: Symbol, Allegory, and Mnemonic Device in Medieval Art and Thought ed. by Pippa Salonius and Andrea Worm (review)

Reviewed by: The Tree: Symbol, Allegory, and Mnemonic Device in Medieval Art and Thought ed. by Pippa Salonius and Andrea Worm Walter Cahn The Tree: Symbol, Allegory, and Mnemonic Device in Medieval Art and Thought. Edited by Pippa Salonius and Andrea Worm. [International Medieval Research, Vol. 20.] (Turnhout: Brepols. 2014. Pp. xvii, 255. €125,00 paperback. ISBN 978-2-503-54839-5) This volume is a collection of nine well-illustrated essays drawn from papers originally delivered at a session of the annual International Medieval Congress held at the University of Leeds in 2008. Their authors, drawn from a younger generation [End Page 913] of scholars active in England, Germany, and Holland, deal in perspicuous fashion with the figure of the tree, whose presence as a metaphoric and structuring device is ubiquitous in the imagery of the high and later Middle Ages. The introduction by the two editors provides an informative conspectus of previous scholarship on various aspects of this many-sided topic. The first paper, by Marie-Pierre Gelin, treats the arboreal construction of the royal genealogy of Christ from the House of David embodied in the form of the Tree of Jesse. Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis, if he did not actually invent the theme, gave public prominence to it for the first time through its inclusion among the stained-glass décor of the choir of his newly rebuilt church—an example widely followed soon thereafter in France and England (pp. 13–34). In the study that follows, Andrea Worm deals with sacred history from Adam to the Incarnation, graphically set forth as an unfolding of genealogy in examples of manuscript illumination, and widely disseminated in Peter of Poitiers’s Compendium historiae in genealogia Christi (pp. 35–67). Marigold Anne Norbye, in the next contribution, takes up the application of the arboreal schema to the display of French royal genealogies (pp. 69–93). Annemieke R. Verboon’s essay on the diagrammatic visualization of medieval concepts of logic in the so-called Tree of Porphyry, inspired by Boethius’s Commentary on the Isagoge and its thirteenth-century Latin translation by Petrus Hispanus, comes next (pp. 95–113), followed by the study of Simone Wittekind of the arboreal imagery in the illustrations of the fourteenth-century copy of the Speculum humanae salvationis from the Austrian abbey of Kremsmünster (pp. 117–42). The last four papers of the collection are devoted to the appearance of the theme on Italian soil. Ute Dercks concerns herself with the iconography of the two Trees of Paradise in Italian Romanesque sculpture (pp. 143–58); Barbara Baert and Liesbet Kusters focus on the function of trees in scenes of the Noli me tangere (pp. 159–86); Ulrike Ilg analyzes the tree as a symbol of Mendicant identity (pp. 187-212); and Pippa Salonius proposes a wide-ranging interpretation of the Tree of Jesse sculpted on the façade of the cathedral of Orvieto (pp. 213–36). In the process of selection of these essays, the editors have sought to assemble a well-rounded book that would adequately inform and “encourage others in their own exploration” of the subject, “leading to further ramifications and growth in the argument” (p. 9). In this endeavor, they have largely succeeded. Overlapping developments or repetition, seemingly unavoidable in these circumstances, have been so far as possible minimized, recurring themes and the accompanying illustrations cross-referenced, and extensive bibliographies appended to the introduction, each of the essays, and the volume as a whole (pp. 243–48). Although the contents of the resulting publication have in this way been enriched and made more accessible, the demanding reader may also note omissions of some significance or topics that might have deserved fuller treatment. Among the former, there is the absence of a discussion of the genealogical diagrams of the Saxon, Ottonian, and Salian dynasties found in manuscripts of Ekkehard of Aura’s continuation of Frutolf of Michelsberg’s eleventh-century Chronicle or, for that matter, of the royal line of the kings of England and their Anglo-Saxon forebears, initially elaborated in the [End Page 914] time of Edward I by Matthew Paris, and later repeatedly updated and widely circulated in roll...

Carmen: collaboration in the face of contemporary challenges

The CARMEN network was set up after preliminary discussions at the Leeds International Medieval Congress 2006. Participants agreed that there was a need for a European version of the Centers and Regional Associations committee (CARA) of the Medieval Academy of America. It was also agreed that such a project should be open and global, and modelled on an informal network as opposed to some formal academy or learned society. This paper assesses how successful CARMEN has been in achieving its stated or implicit goals from eight years ago, in particular: 1. generating research funding for medievalists, 2. learning from each other and sharing best practice, 3. creating a global platform for medieval centres and national associations, 4. becoming a sustainable network.

The pleasures of the past: history and identity in the early Middle Ages

The theme of ‘pleasure’ chosen for the 2013 Leeds International Medieval Congress celebrated not only concepts and perceptions of pleasure in the past, but also our fundamental intellectual enjoyment of the study of the past. Those whom medievalists study also engaged with the past at many levels and for many reasons, which included the sheer pleasure of it. In particular, the place of Rome in the historical imagination of the people of early medieval Europe is reflected in many sources, both textual and material. The particular use made of the resources of the past, and the cultural affiliations thereby proclaimed, together offer one composite expression of identity. That identity in its turn contributes to the essential sense of harmony and consequential pleasure in knowing one's place in time and space. I offer four examples by way of illustration of these creative uses of the resources of the past. I further propose that the perception of Rome is a significantly striking aspect of the engagement with the past in the early Middle Ages and had a crucial impact on the subsequent place of the Roman past in the cultural memory of Latin Europe as a whole. I consider the degree to which changes in the representation and understanding of the Roman past might have shaped or had an impact on the identity of those in Rome and responsible for writing history.

Charms sessions at the International Medieval Congress

Charms Sessions at the International Medieval Congress (July 7-10, 2014, Leeds, United Kingdom)(Svetlana Tsonkova), pp. 145-148