Medieval Studies Research Articles

Amanda Luyster, ed. Bringing the Holy Land Home: The Crusades, Chertsey Abbey, and the Reconstruction of a Medieval Masterpiece Studies in Medieval and Early Renaissance Art History. New York: Harvey Miller, 2023. Pp. 376. $125.00 (cloth).

Amanda Luyster, ed. Bringing the Holy Land Home: The Crusades, Chertsey Abbey, and the Reconstruction of a Medieval Masterpiece Studies in Medieval and Early Renaissance Art History. New York: Harvey Miller, 2023. Pp. 376. $125.00 (cloth).

The intersection of medieval studies and Indigenous studies: A Norse-Saami case study

Medieval texts reveal the normalised presence of Saami peoples in medieval Fennoscandia, suggesting close interactions involving trade, relationships, rituals, and magic. Despite growing recognition of these relations, the Saami remain overlooked in general studies of the Middle Ages, often relegated to symbolic roles or footnotes. As a result, Saami characters are typically depicted as the exotic Other within Norse society, often being stripped of agency and humanity in historical narratives. To counter these biases and distorted narratives, an essential step is analysing exclusionary structures in medieval literature and critically reviewing existing research on Saami representation. This process challenges dehumanising portrayals and confronts present-day stereotypes. The present study aims to ‘re-humanize’ (as Paulette F. C. Steeves puts it) the medieval Saami past by using decolonising frameworks and perspectives offered by the so-called ‘Indigenous turn’ of medieval studies, bridging medieval studies and Indigenous studies within a Norse context.

Medieval Literature as an Archive of Human Experiences: The Middle Ages as a Depository of Human Knowledge, Wisdom, Happiness, and Suffering

It ought to be an ongoing effort by all scholars/researchers to question the validity, legitimacy, and purposes of their own discipline because we live in an ever-changing world and must regularly reflect upon our academic self-justification. This also applies to the field of Medieval Studies that faces considerable difficulties and challenges today with declining numbers of students enrolling in respective classes and lacking support by university administrators. This study begins with a general consideration on where we are today in terms of justifying the humanities at large, that is, of the study of literature particularly, and hence of medieval literature. Then this paper focuses on two universal themes, tolerance and then love. While love has always been associated with the courtly world since the twelfth century, toleration and even tolerance do not seem to fit within the medieval context. However, the discussion of both phenomena can be utilized as a particularly effective catalyst for further investigations of medieval culture and literature within the framework of modern and postmodern responses to the Middle Ages. The exploration of this theme as it emerged already at that time offers intriguing opportunities to make the study of medieval literature relevant and important for us today, as does the examination of the love discourse through a historical lens.

The Chronicle of the Conference «Time of Mastery. Age and Continuity in the Middle Ages and Medieval Studies»

The paper offers a brief review of the conference «Time of mastery. Age and continuity in the middle ages and medieval studies» (18-19 September 2023). During the event (in reports and discussions), important issues were raised and discussed, concerned age and continuity in the Middle ages, as well as within medieval studies.

Studiosus ad scribendum: For the 75th Anniversary of Vladimir I. Mazhuga

The article deals with the biography and the academic merits of Vladimir I. Mazhuga (born 15 of April, 1949), a prominent modern Russian specialist in medieval studies and Leading Researcher of the Saint Petersburg Institute of History, Russian Academy of Sciences. A disciple of some great Russian scholars (in different times his masters were Matvey Gukovskiy (1898-1971), Alexandra Lublinskaya (1902-1980), Maria Sergeenko (1891-1987) and Elena Skrzhinskaya (1894-1981)), Vladimir Mazhuga was a tutor of some modern medievalists like Pavel Krylov, Andrey Kasatov, Alexandra Chirkova, Andrey Karnachev, Ekaterina Denisova, Piotr Shamaro, Gleb Schmidt and some others. The main spheres of Vladimir Mazhugas academic interests are Latin paleography, Diplomatics of medieval acts and Codicology of Latin manuscripts. He studied and connected with the cultural context of the Latin Medieval West some important medieval manuscript materials from the Saint Petersburg collections. Between them were the manuscript versions of the works written by Gregory of Tours, Paul Orosius, Hrabanus Maurus and some other medieval writers. His studies in these spheres were logically connected with some problems of linguistics studied by him (history of Ancient grammar and textbooks, biographies of Roman grammatists, historical phonetics etc.). In the same time, he dealt with some other spheres like history of medieval culture and history of Roman law (mainly of the medieval period). His main studies in medieval culture are about the symbology of Medieval City and the role of the Christian Church as a main custodian of Ancient Culture inheritance in the Middle Ages. As a historian of Roman law Vladimir Mazhuga worked over some important Saint Petersburg medieval Latin manuscripts of Roman law texts (like Justinian Institutions and Digesta) and he studied the theoretical works of famous medieval Italian jurists like John Bassianus (died before 1194) and Bartolus de Saxoferrato (1313-1357). In the same time V Mazhuga researched some problems of Latin legal terminology, which was made using the methodology of linguistics. Vladimir Mazhuga's studies in history of Saint Petersburg School of medieval studies must be specially emphasized because he continues some best traditions of this School like scholar and tutor in the same time. He continues to work hard and fruitfully, so the citied conclusions about Mazhuga's academic merits and inheritance have a previous character.

Bynum across the Generations

Abstract In this afterword to the Common Knowledge symposium “Caroline Walker Bynum across the Disciplines,” Bynum's early work is seen to have revolutionized the fields of medieval studies and religious studies by disclosing the need to account for the embodied and gendered aspects of Christian spirituality. It reflects on the enduring influence of her book Holy Feast and Holy Fast on the study of premodern mysticism, sanctity, and witchcraft, then discusses the impact of Bynum's later works on the reception of Holy Feast and Holy Fast in the third decade of the twenty-first century.

РОЛЯТА НА БЪЛГАРИТЕ В ХУНСКАТА СТЕПНА ИМПЕРИЯ. ОПИТ ЗА ПРЕОЦЕНКА

The article provides a brief overview of the most important aspects of the development of the Hunnic theory of the origin of the Bulgars in modern Bulgarian medieval studies, and examines the situation on the Balkan Peninsula immediately after Attila's death.The popular theories about the leading role of climatic factors in causing nomadic migrations, about the key importance of the Huns for the destruction of the Western Roman Empire, and about the large-scale influence of the Bulgars in the Hunnic Steppe Empire in the 5thcentury, have been disputed.

Western Historiography of the 60s-70s of 20th Century on the Problems of Humanism and the Reformation in Italy

Key words: ideology, religion, doctrine, Catholic Church, doctrine, humanist, reformist, Protestantism During the 1960s and 1970s of the 20th century, the focal point for many Western historians, particularly those specializing in medieval studies, revolved around the destiny of the Italian Humanism within the context of the burgeoning Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. They also delved into the exploration of the complex correlation between the Renaissance and the Reformation and the convergence between the humanistic worldview and the ideology of the Reformation. Western scholars have prominently emphasized the continuity of the cultural and historical achievements of the Italian Humanism and the ideology of the Reformation. The prevailing consensus among those Western scholars is that the optimistic worldview of the Renaissance was markedly more progressive when compared to the ideology of the Protestant Reformation. These scholarly works underscored the cohesion between the advancements in humanistic thought and the cultural and historical imperatives of the Protestant Reformation. Notably, they highlighted areas of convergence, such as the prioritization of inner spirituality over external ritualism and the shared aspiration for the moral rejuvenation of the church. Within this scholarly discourse, humanism emerges as a precursor to the Reformation, laying the groundwork for its emergence.

Foreword to a Special Issue on “Interreligious Founding”

Abstract This short introduction prefaces an ends special issue devoted to the topic of “interreligious founding”, whose contributions stem from an online workshop held April 8th–9th, 2021. This workshop was planned as a continuation of the dialogue on charitable foundations held between experts of various academic disciplines in Tokyo (2019) and Singapore (2020). As a result of discussions begun at these venues, it has become apparent that the scholarship on endowments, which has unfolded to the greatest extent within Medieval Studies and therefore with the context of the medieval Latin West foremost in mind, has not adequately addressed the phenomenon of interreligious patronage, that is the participation in foundation activities by persons of different religious traditions.

Social Media as an Effective Tool for Advertising Tourist and Hotel Services

The purpose of the article is to analyse the main advantages of social media in the advertising of tourist and hotel services with the emphasis on the results of network communication. Research methodology. Since the research topic is interdisciplinary, its coverage involves an inclusive combination of a number of methods and approaches integrated from various fields of scientific knowledge – social communications, management, information activities, medieval studies, and others. The establishment of close scientific and integration ties between them made it possible to formulate a systematic understanding of social media as an effective communication tool for the promotion of services in the tourism and hotel spheres. General scientific methods are also used: analysis, synthesis, analogy, comparison, generalisation of results, and more. The scientific novelty of the research consists in drawing attention to the communication possibilities of social media in advertising and attracting new customers. Conclusions. Social media is becoming an important marketing tool in the travel industry, most crucial in advertising, attracting customers and selling services for the hotel and tourism business due to the experiential nature of hospitality products. The significant reduction of the technological barrier to the possibility of searching for information on the Internet for ordinary travellers plays a significant role in this. Mobile devices play the most important role in this today. Therefore, most companies include social media in their strategic plan for advertising and positioning in the market, in particular to monitor customer feedback, respond to comments and communicate more actively with potential and regular customers. Because any information posted on social media instantly becomes publicly available and significantly affects the trust and reputation of the company. Those companies that pay attention to the need for specialised social media management with the introduction of a corresponding position will not only retain customers and attract new ones, but will also improve their business practices and revenue levels. Keywords: social media, tourist services, hotel services, communication, media marketing, advertising, customer reviews.

Life and death of Knyaz Mykhailo of Chernihiv in ancient ukrainian literature

The article examines ancient Ukrainian literary works about the life and tragic death in the Horde of Prince (Kniaz) Mykhailo of Chernihiv. The article aims to trace the process of literary transformation of the ancient story and to introduce this material into the circle of research in Ukrainian medieval studies. The content of the story reflects events from the life of Mykhailo of Chernihiv, focusing on his journey with boyar Fedir to the Horde in 1245 to obtain permission from Batu Khan to own lands in Rus. There, they refused to bow to the khan according to Mongolian custom, and were killed for it. Ancient authors saw this as a Christian feat, and Mykhailo was proclaimed a saint. This is how he appears in the «life» created by Dmytro Tuptalo. This life (early 18th century) does not fit into the Byzantine hagiographic canon because it does not tell the whole life of Mykhailo, but focuses only on his stay in the Horde, where tragic events occur that are intended to move the reader and evoke sympathy for the martyr, a faithful Christian. In addition, the hagiography was written in the Baroque period, so it is characterized by pomp and circumlocution, emblematic and symbolic images, rhetorical figures, authorial reflections, and quotations from other texts, which ultimately play a role in reinforcing the highly moral image of Mykhailo. The prince is portrayed differently in the Galician-Volhynian Chronicle: it does not emphasize Mykhailo’s feat, but praises Danylo Halytskyi, who obtained permission from the khan by obeying non-Christian customs. The deaths of Mykhailo of Chernihiv and his boyar Fedir in the Horde are striking, and historical events fade into the background, becoming the background for the depiction of strong personalities. It cannot be said that Mykhailo of Chernihiv is a strong personality. Rather, he is a victim of the circumstances. He was credited with heroism, and Danylo Halytskyi with diplomatic wisdom. This is despite the fact that the Mongol-Tatar invasion pushed back the development of the ancient Ukrainian lands for several centuries, bringing decline and languishing on the edge of Europe that survived that horror.

The Haunted Island: Medieval History and the Old English Elegies in Brenda Chamberlain’s Tide-race (1962)

Abstract This article explores the relationship between Tide-race, a 1962 memoir by the Welsh poet and artist Brenda Chamberlain, and medieval culture and literature on Ynys Enlli. Written in the decades after the Second World War when Chamberlain had left mainland Wales, Tide-race is a memoir of the artist’s time on Enlli living with its small community of fishermen and farmers. In contrast to other works of twentieth-century island literature, I argue, Chamberlain rejected dominant, medieval patriarchal histories of Enlli, refusing to read the island as a male monastic site, or as a Welsh nationalist or cultural space. Tide-race is a medieval modern text that is deeply ambivalent about what medieval culture means for modern conceptions of identity, specifically Welshness and womanhood. Chamberlain’s late modernist work has been neglected because of her status as a Welsh woman writer working outside of the centres of modernism, and she has never been considered in the context of Medievalism Studies. By bringing archival material from the Brenda Chamberlain papers at the National Library of Wales together with the published memoir, this article brings to light an unremarked upon interest in Old English literature and traces the development of Chamberlain’s medievalism in the post-war period. Although her use of the Old English elegies—The Wanderer, The Seafarer and The Wife’s Lament—has remained unnoticed by Chamberlain’s critics, these early medieval poems are translated and adapted in her prose in ways that allow her to exorcize old grudges and challenge masculine ideals.

Audiovisual Culture of Participation: The Role of Social Media

The purpose of the research is to determine the main features of participatory culture and the role of social media as a determinant of its generation in audiovisual culture. The research methodology involves the use of general scientific methods (analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, generalisation of results, and others), as well as approaches integrated from cultural studies, social communications, and medieval studies. The basis of the methodology is also the theory of information society by M. Castells, the culture of participation by H. Jenkins, which made it possible to formulate an understanding of the main changes in modern culture. The scientific novelty lies in the conceptualisation of the findings regarding the influence of social media on the changes taking place in modern audiovisual culture, in particular in the context of the transition from the culture of consumption to the culture of participation. Conclusions. Audiovisual culture is changing significantly under the influence of social media, in particular, it is axquiring the characteristics of a participatory culture. The latter emphasises the importance of interaction, involvement and activity of social media users in the creation, distribution and interpretation of audiovisual content, and its characteristic features are: co-creation, interactivity, openness, active distribution and popularity of memes, virtual and augmented reality, crowdsourcing. Another feature of modern audiovisual culture is the ability to view, create, and distribute one's own cultural and artistic works by publishing them online: films, videos, podcasts, and the like. YouTube, Facebook or Twitter platforms not only encourage active interaction, commenting, likes and reposts, but also turn the user, who becomes more professional and expert through participation, into a producer. This has destroyed the expert hierarchy and even reformatted the usual "producer-consumer" relationship: the passive consumer has turned into the active creator. The passive user of social media actually no longer exists as such: he or she becomes not just a producer of content, but also a relayer of new socio-cultural meanings.
 Keywords: audiovisual culture, social media, new technologies, participatory culture, audiovisual content.

Wirtschaftssanktionen im 13. Jahrhundert

Abstract The history of medieval economic sanctions is currently both known and unknown. Many instances of their deployment have been acknowledged or analysed in the context of the conflicts they were part of, like the 1205/1206 blockade of the Rhine as an element in the struggle between Philipp of Swabia and Otto of Brunswick. On the other hand, research in Medieval Studies that puts economic sanctions centre stage is still an emerging field. This paper argues that a broader investigation of episodes of economic sanctioning in the narrative sources is a sensible next step to develop this field, since it would bring the triple advantages of expanding its current geographical and prosopographical scope beyond the ecclesiastic Mediterranean ( 1 ), of putting its currently prevailing focus on normative texts into context ( 2 ), and of obviating the more unnecessary pessimisms currently characterising evaluations of medieval economic sanctions ( 3 ). To show the potential of narrated medieval sanctions episodes to inform our understanding of economic thinking around medieval economic sanctions, three examples from 13th-century historiography are analysed: the above-mentioned blockade of the Rhine, a smugglers’ tale in Matthew Paris’s ‘Cronica Majora’ against the backdrop of papal embargo legislation, and Salimbene of Parma’s report on third-party participation in a Venetian blockade of the river Po.

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.

Between Written and Visual Communication: CIDOC CRM Ontology for Medieval and Early Modern European Graffiti

The development of graffiti studies during the last couple of decades highlighted the relevance and potential of graffiti as a complementary source for understanding different aspects of past societies. Moreover, the availability of digital documentation techniques crucially increased data production, showing the widespread presence of graffiti in Medieval and Early Modern contexts across Europe. However, the approach to historical graffiti has not been yet structured. Guidelines, specific analytical tools, and descriptors are still missing due to various reasons. First, graffiti are a multiform and multimodal graphic expression, so texts, signs, and images must be considered together despite their different communicative nature. Secondly, due to their variety in forms and contents, graffiti have been studied from many perspectives (e.g., epigraphy, palaeography, history, art history, maritime studies), following the specific interests of each scholar. Consequently, the numerous and extensive contributions concerning graffiti highlight the lack of shared standards and approaches, hindering data analysis and interoperability. The panorama emerging is fragmentary and unstructured. This article thus aims to offer a first step toward the development of a specific methodology for the analysis and study of Medieval and Early Modern European graffiti. Precisely, a specific ontology adopting CIDOC CRM for Medieval and Early Modern graffiti will be presented, as developed in a preliminary form within the DIGIGRAF project 1 with the support of the ARIADNEplus 2 network.

Race, Medieval Studies, and Disciplinary Boundaries

Abstract Debates in medieval studies about race and the global Middle Ages parallel past debates in comparative literature. Both comparative literature and medieval studies struggle with their Eurocentric origins while simultaneously trying to negotiate a non-Eurocentric approach to their respective disciplinary boundaries. While trying to globalize medieval studies, medievalists have remained in disciplinary silos, especially in regard to a transnational and transtemporal understanding of race. This article's author argues that a comparative approach to periodization, rather than holding onto a concept of the “medieval,” is a more productive way to understand premodern race.

Afterword: In and beyond the Boundaries of Medievalism

Abstract In its special issue, “The ‘Medieval’ Undone: Imagining a New Global Past,” boundary 2 reveals connections of medieval studies beyond the field's self-declared boundary of 500 – 1500 AD. Though focusing on medieval studies, these essays underscore the field's long-standing role in promoting an Anglocentric paradigm of time and history. The implications reach beyond the 1500s, into the settler and colonial periods of early America, serving as a reminder that Western-derived divisions of time—that is, periodization—have anchored white-centered epistemologies. Rooted in Western-centric time and chronology, medieval studies reflects a global Anglocentric impact requiring Africana and nonwhite populations to engage the discipline as both intellectual and social advocacy.

Fighting for the Middle: Medieval Studies Programs and Degrees within Higher Education

Abstract This essay explores the politics of disciplinarity in medieval studies by revisiting the author's own graduate medieval studies program at the University of California, Berkeley. Along with another graduate student, the author advocated for a more flexible and inclusive conceptualization of the discipline. These efforts were perceived as threatening—and so were the advocates. This essay offers an account of their “diversity work,” which the author theorizes through Sara Ahmed's critical frameworks, in order to share the greatest lesson they learned: aside from the established governing body of the degree program, the fiercest defenders of a conventional, Eurocentric conception of medieval studies were those newest to the discipline—the graduate students.

Undoing Medieval Race Studies

Abstract This essay argues that “medieval race”—which has been gaining a recent foothold in medieval studies—is counterproductive as a concept because it occludes the mobility of race. Mobility here refers to the way that race takes on multiple forms within the same historical moment, including skin color, language, religion, ethnicity, and systemic power. “Medieval race” erroneously presumes that there is only one form of race in the Middle Ages, which can be compared to a similarly fictitious singular “modern race.” This inattention to mobility creates misapprehensions about how race functions across time; therefore, race scholars must reach beyond their siloed disciplines to work collaboratively, so that they can articulate and disseminate theorizations of race that are grounded in transhistorical study.