Medieval Discourse Research Articles

III. Der Schwabenspiegel als norddeutsches Kaiserrecht

Summary The essay examines late medieval discussions concerning ‘Kaiserrecht’ (Imperial Law, Emperor’s Law) in northern and eastern Germany. A closer look at the municipal law of Lüneburg (1401) with its different layers of customs, book of statutes, ‘Kaiserrecht’ and Canon law shows clearly the problem. Notwithstanding the close similarity to the learned concept of the theory of the statutes, the Lüneburg source did in fact not follow the erudited hierarchy of particular law and civil law. The city possessed some manuscripts of the so called ‘Schwabenspiegel’ (Swabian Mirror) and the ‘Kleines Kaiserrecht’ (Emperor’s Little Law) which were both, contemporarily, denominated as ‘Kaiserrecht’.

Reconstructing Paul Tillich's Ethics of Grace

This paper reconstructs Tillichian grace, analyzing its existential and ethical dimensions beyond traditional supernatural interpretations. It explores the historical lineage of Tillich's work, drawing parallels between ancient and medieval discourses on grace and Tillich's existential theology, with a particular emphasis on the theme of existential estrangement and its implications for moral development. In section one, I analyze Augustine's critique of Greek and Roman ethics, noting how his interpretations of sin and grace sought to address ethical, and not merely narrowly Christian theological, concerns. The paper then examines Martin Luther's shift towards a more personal apprehension of grace, setting the stage for Tillich's complex and nuanced understanding of justification. The strengths and ambiguities of Tillich's approach, along with its practical implications, are then critically evaluated. In conclusion, I advocate for the relevance of Tillich's conception of grace in modern secular ethical discourse, arguing that its emphasis on ethical intersubjectivity and the courage to embrace existential uncertainties provides a compassionate framework for addressing moral questions in our own time.

Being Wholly Here and Partially There: John Buridan vs Nicole Oresme on the Soul’s Presence in the Body

Abstract This paper studies the theories defended by John Buridan and Nicole Oresme on the presence of the soul in the body, with a special focus on the interpretation of the Augustinian principle – or ‘holenmeric’ principle – according to which the soul is in the whole body and is wholly present in every part of it. The first part of the paper introduces the different types of composition involved in the medieval discussions over the soul and its parts and shows how different psychological theories prior to 1350 employed this typology of part/whole relations to clarify the soul’s presence in the body. The next part of the paper presents how the theories designed by John Buridan and Nicole Oresme were motivated by problems raised by these earlier accounts of the soul’s presence and undertook to solve them from the perspective of a reductionist conception of parthood. It is argued that, despite their common commitment to a reductionist stance, the solutions endorsed by Buridan and Oresme represent two opposite ways of applying a nominalist metaphysics of parts to psychological matters.

The Trans Middle Ages: Incorporating Transgender and Intersex Studies into the History of Medieval Sexuality

Abstract This article reviews recent work on trans and intersex history in the European Middle Ages, locating it within the established historiography on medieval gender and sexuality. It begins by surveying the three overarching themes in prior historical research on medieval gender and sexuality: identity, community and repression. Then, it introduces the context of the transgender turn in medieval studies, beginning in the late 2010s, by charting the origin of this sub-field and its rapid growth since 2020. It then outlines three key theoretical concepts underpinning its methodology: 1) gender is socially constructed and historically contingent; 2) likewise, biological sex is socially constructed and historically contingent; 3) all societies include people who transition away from their assigned gender, and, while these identities are no less contingent, they nevertheless constitute a valid subject for long histories of transness. Lastly, it argues that medieval trans and intersex studies contributes new perspectives and methodological approaches to each of the overarching research themes: 1) the lives and experiences of queer historical subjects such as Eleanor Rykener and Joseph of Schönau can be productively read through a trans lens, and trans historians’ focus on questions of agency and subjectivity provides a model for exploring queerness in the medieval archive; 2) trans historians’ arguments around community and mutual aid within trans case-studies revive the otherwise neglected historiographical topic of medieval queer networks; 3) trans historians demonstrate that medieval discourses around sexuality, gender and race are mutually constitutive, and significantly shape subsequent early modern European interactions with Black and indigenous societies.

Utopia’s Cauldron: Travelers’ Lore and Korea (“Besila”) in the Persian Epic of Kush the Tusked

ABSTRACT Besila is a paradisical setting in the Kushnameh, an early twelfth-century Persian epic that combines the ancient Iranian messianic legend of Kangdez with more recent geographical knowledge, based on travelers' reports, of China and Korea. Besila’s messianic role in the narrative, its antipodal location, and its quasi-fictional status are quintessentially utopian, and yet little is revealed about the society of Besila. The Kushnameh instead emphasizes the means by which paradises are formed, including the rational origins of Besila’s monotheistic creed, organic growth, translatio imperii, travel, and geographical knowledge. The Kushnameh’s vision of universal monotheism anticipates the story of Hayy ibn Yaqzan, a later utopia with important connections to the development of Islamic political theory. The case of Besila thus suggests that the early modern genre of utopia has deep roots in the medieval discourse of travel and travelers.

Kumlbúa þáttr, an Eschatological Event: The Traumatic Ontology of Being in Time in Medieval Iceland

<i>Kumlbúa þáttr</i>, an Eschatological Event: The Traumatic Ontology of Being in Time in Medieval Iceland

Leah DeVun. The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance.

Leah DeVun’s latest book, The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance, appears at a pivotal moment in contemporary debates about transgender and intersex embodiment. As many trans antagonistic writers have opted to excise intersex and nonbinary bodies from larger conversations about sex, gender, and identity, The Shape of Sex offers a compelling rebuttal to this erasure, arguing that nonbinary bodies—a term DeVun uses to signal a wide range of bodies that fit uneasily into a premodern male-female binary—have been central to such questions for over two millennia. With careful attention to the complex and shifting ways nonbinary bodies were interpreted during the Middle Ages, DeVun eloquently demonstrates that “although intersex individuals were socially and textually marginalized, ideas about nonbinary sex were central to the fundamental categories that ordered the world” (5). Functioning as an epistemological touchstone, such bodies served divergent purposes in the Middle Ages: sometimes called upon as exemplars of “fluidity and metamorphosis,” and at other times interpreted as “hybrids that constrict and police categories” (6). This diverse history is elaborated through careful attention to the densely populated use of nonbinary figures in medieval discussions among theologians, cartographers, natural philosophers, lawyers, moralists, surgeons, and alchemists as well as through insights from actual nonbinary individuals. The result is a book that is exquisitely nuanced, politically shrewd, and utterly teachable.

Contribuições da lógica de Ockham para Filosofia do século XIV

Abstract William of Ockham was an English philosopher of the fourteenth century with contributions to the logic of terms and the nominalist movement, marked by the critical sense of the Early Middle Ages by post-Thomism. In the Middle Ages, the conceptualist discourse of Peter Abelard generated problems of use of beings and universals, with Ockham being the philosopher who advocated the method of not using entities for generalizations or hasty conclusions, known as Ockham's razor. This article presents the contributions of the logic of terms and objectivity in Ockham's philosophy. As specific analyses of the stages presented in the article, we have the contribution to the scientific method by the use of the concept of incomplex knowledge, formed by intuition and abstraction in the singularity. The emphasis of the logic of terms structured in the work Summa of Logic, developed the parsimonious language by propositions, whose philosopher defends the terms in the school of nominalism. In the development of the logic of terms, Ockham presents the theory of assumption, being considered a position by some other object, and can be classified into: personal, determined, confusing or distributive. The use of logic with objectivity ensured the criticism of the universals that were used at the time as innate ideas, synthesizing an objective method to avoid repetitions of terms called by contemporaries by razor. Despite being against the repetition of terms in the medieval discourse of universals, Ockham considers the need for repetition of experienced facts to record events, the future of which can be predicted by the possibility of repetition of events that occurred in the past. In summary, Ockham's contribution to the logic of the late Middle Ages is incontrovertible.

Материальная среда производства научного знания: к истории письменного стола в России

The article is devoted to the peculiarities of folding in the Old Russian tradition of writing practices associated with a certain material environment. The author resorts to reconstructing ancient Russian intellectual everyday life based on visual sources – images of a "scribe" in the pose of working on a manuscript (in fact, this is a composition reproducing images of Evangelists inherited by Russia from Byzantium). The preservation of the "scribe" pose in the Russian iconographic tradition has led not only to its stability, but – in following the pattern - also to the assertion of the pose and the real forms of the material environment of the writing process. The iconographic proximity of these images to the "cabinet" portrait of Modern times still did not allow us to see in them the manifestations of specific attitudes and consider these images from the point of view of the "otherness" of medieval discourses, on the one hand, and the specifics of the material environment, on the other. Attention is drawn to one of the engravings of the so-called Bri͡usov calendar of the early 18th century (prepared for publication by V. Kipriĭanov), which became the first image of a “cabinet” in the Russian tradition (according to the author). The basis for this image was the engraving “Cabinet” from the work of the Czech humanist teacher and educator J. A. Komenskiĭ “Orbis Pictus” (“Orbis Sensualium Pictus”). The image of the “school” (“classroom”) in V. Kipriĭanov’s Calendar differs sharply from the images of the organization of “lessons” (“schools”) that previously existed in Russia. Thus, the interpretation of the meanings invested in the images of “scribes” and the “study” of extensive visual material in its evolution allow the author to talk about the transition to a new, “office” type of images of the Evangelist as a “scribe” (at a desk) - not earlier than the middle - 2 th half of the 17th century. The use of engravings from the edition of J. A. Komenskiĭ by the publisher of the “Bri͡usov Calendar” of the early 18th century indicates the further advancement of the Europeanized cultural tradition in Russia.

A Critical Companion to Old Norse Literary Genre

A Critical Companion to Old Norse Literary Genre

Argumentative Uses of ‘Otherness‘ and ‘Foreignness‘ in Pre-Modern Political Debates in Central Europe

The article investigates political debates about royal succession and noble participation in fifteenth-century Hungary. The political language of that time was often marked by strong references to ‘own’ (seemingly ‘national’) identities and aspects of ‘foreignness’ that were regarded as (or at least argumentatively marked as) unwelcome. While references like this have been interpreted as supposed proof of a pre-modern form of xenophobia, this article suggests analysing the complexity of political structures, the various layers of communication with different legitimation strategies, and forms of conflict escalation. Drawing from recent sociological studies, medieval discourses and semantics of ‘foreignness’ can then be understood as means of shaping identities and legitimizing claims for societal participation.

The “destroyer of the realm:” Castilian chronicles and the de-legitimation of Juan Pacheco (d. 1474)

ABSTRACT During the fifteenth century, Castilian nobles were subject to criticism in chronicles and other literary texts. Titled nobles, especially those who were closest to the royal court, were particularly hard-hit by these discourses. Some of these aristocrats stand out for the intensity of the diatribes suffered, especially Juan Pacheco, Marquis of Villena, whose political influence would, to a large extent, shape political relations in Castile in the second half of the fifteenth century. The time is ripe for a reassessment of the public image of this figure from a new perspective on medieval political discourses and criticism. The aim of this study, therefore, is to analyse the de-legitimising strategies deployed around his figure, in relation to both his political role in the kingdom at large and his local influence in various cities and regions.

Modernity from Elsewhere: Psychoanalysis, Ethnography, and Speculative Horizons of Self-Assertion

Modernity from Elsewhere: Psychoanalysis, Ethnography, and Speculative Horizons of Self-Assertion

Old French Si, Syntax and Function in Diachrony

This article offers a diachronic analysis of the Old French particle si. Using data from both verse and prose texts, I analyse the function and syntax of si from the 12th to 14th centuries. I find that si fulfills a variety of functions throughout the period, beginning as a subject continuity marker before acquiring functions as a resumptive and an expletive among others. Si’s syntax is defined by its proximity to the verb, occupying the specifier of the left-peripheral head which hosts the verb. This head changes through the Old French period from the lower left peripheral head Fin to the higher head Force. These findings are shown to have ramifications for the study of Medieval Romance syntax and discourse particles.

An Anatomy of the Blood Eagle: The Practicalities of Viking Torture

The infamous blood eagle ritual has long been controversial: did Viking Age Nordic people really torture one another to death by severing their ribs from their spine and removing their lungs, or is it all a misunderstanding of some complicated poetry? Previous scholarship on the topic has tended to focus on the details and reliability of extant medieval descriptions of the blood eagle, arguing for or against the ritual’s historicity. What has not yet been considered are the anatomical and sociocultural limitations within which any Viking Age blood eagle would have had to have been performed. In this article, we analyze medieval descriptions of the ritual with modern anatomical knowledge, and contextualize these accounts with up-to-date archaeological and historical scholarship concerning elite culture and the ritualized peri- and post-mortem mutilation of the human body in the Viking Age. We argue that even the fullest form of the blood eagle outlined in our textual sources would have been possible, though difficult, to perform, but would have resulted in the victim’s death early in proceedings. Given the context of the ritual depicted in medieval discourse, we also argue that any historical blood eagle would have existed as part of a wider continuum of cultural praxis, and been employed to secure the social status of the ritual’s commissioner following the earlier “bad death” of a male relative at the hands of the ritual’s victim.

Alle origini della riflessione medievale sul tempo. Il caso delle Explanationes in Ciceronis Rhetoricam di Mario Vittorino

Thirteenth-century debates on time are frequently reduced to the opposition between an Ancient tradition, embodied by Augustine, and the Aristotelian philosophy as “physicalist” reading of the problem. However, before the diffusion of the Latin translation of Aristotle’s Physics, notions such as ‘time’, ‘eternity’, ‘aevum’, and ‘present’ have a rich range of meanings and nuances which cannot be considered a mere repetition of an ‘Augustinian model’. A systematic analysis of selected passages of Marius Victorinus’ Explanationes in Ciceronis Rhetoricam provides a representative example of this complexity, making available new conceptual material to reconstruct the sources of the medieval discussions about time and durations.

Why Medieval Allegory?

Why Medieval Allegory?

Diachronic Analysis and Deictic Means of French Benevolences and Curses

Benevolences and curses, integral and authentic part of the discourse, most clearly reflect the culture of people. The use of these expressions in the communication space of different languages indicates the need for their study from the standpoint of linguistics, folklore, stylistics, rhetoric, psychology, cultural studies and other sciences. This article provides diachronic analysis and examines the deictic means of French benevolences and curses in the French language. The material for the study was the texts of the Bible, French epic poems, medieval legends, ballads, tales, and fiction. When considering this topic, the author used both general and special scientific methods and techniques: a historical-etymological method, a descriptive method that includes methods for observing, comparing, interpreting and classifying the material being studied; semantic identification method; distribution method. Comparing the medieval French discourse with the modern French language, the author examined the grammatical and semantic evolution, which underwent benevolences and curses.

John Wyclif and the Eucharistic Words of Institution: Context and Aftermath

In matters of eucharistic theology, John Wyclif (d. 1384) is best known for his rejection of the scholastic doctrine of transubstantiation. There were many reasons why Wyclif came to regard this doctrine as fundamentally untenable, such as the impossibility of substantial annihilation and the illogicality of accidents existing apart from subjects, but chief among them was his deep dissatisfaction with the prevailing interpretation of Christ's words, “Hoc est corpus meum,” the words of institution required to confect the sacrament in the Mass. Wyclif insisted that getting this proposition right was essential for a correct understanding of Christ's presence in the Eucharist. This article presents Wyclif's position on this matter within the context of later medieval scholastic discussions in an effort to lend clarity to his larger understanding of eucharistic presence. The article will then trace the reception of Wyclif's ideas to Bohemia at the turn of the fifteenth century, with special attention given to the Prague master Jakoubek of Stříbro. One finds that Wyclif, and then later Jakoubek, developed new and effective means of conceptualizing the conversion of the eucharistic elements, thereby expanding the ways in which one can affirm Christ's presence in the consecrated host and the salvific effects of that presence for faithful communicants.

Stupor in John of Gaddesden’s Rosa Medicinae

Early medieval religious writers describe powerful and complex somatic and cognitive experiences as astonishment or stupor, drawing on medical discourse. The effects of stupor on the body’s faculties of sensation and movement are described in medical texts, such as English medical writer John of Gaddesden’s (fl. 1305–1348) Rosa medicinae or Rosa anglica (ca. 1313–20), where he reconciles Galen’s and Avicenna’s conflicting definitions of stupor. This note presents a case study of stupor in medieval medical discourse, especially according to Gaddesden, that informs our understanding of narratives about or by medieval anchorites, revealing more complex accounts of physical and spiritual experience.