In the announced article, the author continues to examine the history of education and enlightenment in Europe from the times of ancient Greece and Rome to the present day. With this publication, the author tries to draw attention to such a topic as the Intellectual Renaissance and the emergence of Universities in Europe during the "High" Middle Ages (12th–13th centuries). The article attempts to address the following questions: 1) to highlight the features of the Intellectual Renaissance of the 12th century; 2) to reveal the importance of Paris in inheriting the ancient heritage for Europe; 3) to show the place and role of Chartres and the Chartres spirit of scholarship in European intellectual life; 4) to present the role of the monastery in Sito and the Cistercians in the intellectual "fermentation" of the time; 5) to highlight the teaching activities and scientific views of Pierre Abelard, the first European intellectual-professor without a university degree; 6) to reveal the scholastic method of knowing God, the world, and man; 7) tell about the emergence of the artisan-intellectual and his workshop (workshop); 8) describe the founding of the first university corporations in Europe in the 12th – 13th centuries – Bologna, Paris, Oxford and other cities; 9) tell about the higher school of philosophy and law in Constantinople (Pandidakterion); 10) describe the state of education and enlightenment in Russia in the 12th–13th centuries. The university, which emerged in the 12th – 13th centuries as a guild corporation of masters and their students – “universitas magistrorum et scholarum” with its own law and academic freedom, had the right to unhindered movement of professors and students across European countries without borders (“peregrinatio academica”), enjoyed the unhindered right to strike for violation of its corporate rights and freedoms, including the right to freely move to another place of teaching and learning (secesio), had the right “ubique docendi”, according to which a university graduate, awarded the academic title of doctor, could lecture not only at his own, but also at any other university he wished to move to, while the professor lived off the students’ tuition fees and fees for diplomas of academic degrees. Starting from the 12th century, educated people, especially in cities, became a visible sign of medieval Western Europe. The decisive credit for this belonged to the Intellectual Revival and the Universities.

Historiography on the Jewish community in Florence has traditionally focused on the period following its official admission to the city in 1437. This essay, by contrast, seeks to investigate the reasons why the Florentine government had previously refrained from allowing Jews to settle permanently within the city. While medieval Western Europe was pervaded by a pervasive cultural substratum of anti—Judaism—an essential premise for any discussion of the subject—this study argues that, in the Florentine case, economic considerations played a more decisive role. The absence of a Jewish community, and particularly of Jewish moneylenders, prior to the consolidation of Medicean rule, will be examined in relation to the fiscal model developed by Florence in the early fifteenth century. Within this framework, the years of the War of Lucca (1429–1433) will emerge as especially significant, as they marked a moment of unprecedented fiscal pressure that shaped the Republic’s economic policies and social dynamics.

Due to the limited literature, previous studies on Byzantine economic thought did not pay enough attention towards it as in the field of economic thought of medieval Western Europe, while in recent decades, Byzantine scholars have discovered sufficient materials. However, on the one hand, there are few detailed interpretations from the view of economist of original archives, legal comments and recent published materials. On the other hand, a chronological retrospection remain undiscussed in the view of economic thought. This paper will mainly attempt to make clearer and more integrated the Byzantine economic thought, focusing on 8-12th century the very mid-byzantine time, during which Byzantium were believed to have the character of a wide-ranging empire and relatively active economic activities. In the first part, I will discuss economic thought in rural and urban Byzantium in the 8th-10th centuries in the context of law and agrarian books. In the second part, the late 11th-century Strategikon of Kekaumenos will be revisited in terms of the history of economic thought, which will be an attempt to clarify the economic thought of the 12th century layman. Finally, with reference to the latest research, I will explore economic thought in the law commentaries of ecclesiastical law scholars almost contemporary with Kekaumenos.

While Jewish-Christian relations, and specifically polemic between Jews and Christians, have long been a focus of study for scholars of Byzantium and medieval Western Europe, Jewish-Christian relations under Islamic rule during the medieval and early modern periods, in lands surrounding the Indian Ocean or in Christian kingdoms outside of Byzantium and Europe, have received little scholarly attention. This article addresses this lacuna and analyzes the structure and nature of polemic in Egypt and the Levant, in lands ruled by or with a strong Armenian presence, as well as in Ethiopia, and, finally, India. In this article I posit that Jewish- Christian polemic in these regions comes about both as a result of local religious and political agendas, and through dynamic exchanges with Byzantium and Western Europe. In Egypt and the Levant hagiography and anti-hagiography were particularly important vehicles for polemic, as well as were formal polemical treatises, dialogues, (many of which still need to be edited), and depictions in historical chronicles. In Armenia and Ethiopia, hermeneutical Judaism was a frequently used polemi- cal tactic, although in Ethiopia polemical treatises and hagiographies also figure prominently.2 Early modern accounts of actual Armenian Christian-Jewish relations under Safavid and Ottoman rule points to a degree of sympathy and cooperation in addition to polemic. Finally, in India, formal polemic by Christians against Jews is shown to be an early modern European importation.

:<i>Strangers at the Gate! Multidisciplinary Explorations of Communities, Borders, and Othering in Medieval Western Europe</i>

Origin legends in early medieval Western Europe. Edited by Lindy Brady and Patrick Wadden. (Reading Medieval Sources, 6.) Pp. xii + 474 incl. 19 colour and black- and-white ills. Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2023. €198. 978 90 04 40036 8; 2589 2509 - Volume 76 Issue 2

This article explores the architectural features of the High Castle in Lviv in comparison with European fortifications from different historical periods, spanning from the “motte and bailey” castles of the X–XII centuries to the Gothic strongholds of the XIII–XIV centuries and the Renaissance bastion systems of the XVI century. The study aims to identify both similarities and distinctions between the High Castle and its European counterparts by examining aspects such as the use of natural topography for defense, functional zoning, and material evolution in fortification architecture. A key aspect of this comparison lies in the “motte and bailey” castles, a prevalent fortification type in early medieval Western Europe. These castles typically featured an artificial or natural mound (motte) crowned with a wooden or stone keep, along with an enclosed courtyard (bailey) serving economic and residential functions. The High Castle shares structural similarities with these fortifications due to its elevated location and strategic division into upper and lower courtyards. However, unlike many “motte and bailey” castles, which were predominantly wooden, the High Castle incorporated a combination of wooden and stone structures from the outset, a characteristic more typical of later fortifications such as Carcassonne in France and Windsor Castle in England. The study further examines the impact of Gothic fortifications on the architectural evolution of the High Castle. Gothic castles such as Carcassonne and Hohenzollern prioritized tall stone walls, rounded towers, and complex defensive systems, which allowed for improved visibility and protection. While the High Castle in Lviv incorporated some of these elements, it lacked the double curtain walls and advanced moats typical of fully developed Gothic strongholds. This difference suggests a more localized approach to defensive architecture, integrating Western influences with regional construction traditions.

Why is the history of intellectual change in the Middle Ages a history of selectively studied influences about which so few historians have dared venture generalizations? Why is it so rich with contradictions? And why do we have so little comprehensive knowledge about the translators behind these intellectual changes? To answer these questions, this article proposes a novel approach to the history of Greek-Latin translations between 1050 and 1350, which substantially reshaped the Medieval Latin intellectual landscape and the cultural history of Europe. After reviewing the conclusions in the most recent secondary literature, the essay offers a sketch of a historical analysis of translation-centered decision-making processes. In doing so, it singles out four hypotheses and describes four research areas corresponding to these assumptions. The proposed research examines the translators’ personalities and activities, their training, mobility, cultural patronage, networks and their audiences (including universities) that influenced their decisions when they chose to translate texts from Greek into Latin. Such an analysis will help us better understand the expanding cultural networks between the medieval Western and Eastern Mediterranean and the development of translations in Latin-using Western Europe.

This study explores the functional impact of Christian cathedrals in Western Europe on medieval public consciousness. Utilizing a systemic analysis method and a values-based approach, cathedrals are examined as structural elements within the framework of religious communication, serving as key instruments for shaping public consciousness during the Middle Ages. Through these edifices, the core tenets of Christianity were disseminated to the masses. Special attention is given to the art of stone calendars, which are considered a significant factor in the formation of a Christian worldview during this period. The study identifies the value-laden, symbolic, and functional characteristics of medieval cathedrals as tools of religious communication. It outlines the overarching principles of architectural organization in Catholic churches in relation to their roles in influencing public consciousness. The influence of Romanesque cathedrals on the trajectory of public consciousness in medieval Western Europe is also examined. The author concludes that Christian cathedrals, as instruments of influence on medieval public conscious-ness, possessed a pronounced managerial and motivational effect, fulfilling a wide range of sociocultural functions that contributed to the stabilization and spiritual-moral development of medieval Western European society.

Origin Legends in Early Medieval Western Europe by Lindy Brady and Patrick Wadden (review)

This essay examines the significant impact of Byzantine and Islamic cultures on the intellectual and creative advancements in Medieval Western Europe, which played a major role in shaping the emergence of the Renaissance. Byzantium and the Islamic world, located at the intersection of cultural, intellectual, and artistic interactions, had a crucial role in imparting information and aesthetic sensitivities that enhanced the cultural panorama of Europe. This research examines the transmission of philosophical, scientific, and artistic knowledge into Europe by analysing historical events such as the Christian Reconquista and the translation movements in various Medieval Universities. It explores how these encounters played a crucial role in facilitating the transfer of information. This essay entails doing a thorough examination of academic sources and historical documents that examine the incorporation of Eastern intellectual traditions into Western academia and arts. The research focuses on translation projects and the resulting educational changes, demonstrating how centers of learning in Western Europe, assimilated and spread this information, playing a crucial role in triggering the Renaissance. The findings indicate that the Renaissance was not only a resurrection of ancient antiquity but rather a multifaceted result of intercultural encounters that greatly propelled European intellectual and creative manifestations. The conclusion emphasises the long-term influence of these interactions, demonstrating that the Renaissance was a culmination of an extended process of cultural amalgamation, with lasting insights into the importance of cross-cultural interaction in advancing collective human development.

Abstract Sizeable Jewish and Muslim communities lived across large swathes of medieval Western Europe. But all the Muslim communities and almost all the Jewish communities in polities that correspond to present-day England, France, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, and Spain were eradicated between 1064 and 1526. Most studies of ethnoreligious violence in Europe focus on communal, regional, and national political dynamics to explain its outbreak and variation. Recent scholarship shows how the Catholic Church in medieval Europe contributed to the long-term political development and the “rise of the West.” But the Church was also responsible for eradicating non-Christian minorities. Three factors explain ethnoreligious cleansing of non-Christians in medieval Western Europe: (1) the papacy as a supranational religious authority with increasing powers; (2) the dehumanization of non-Christians and their classification as monarchical property; and (3) fierce geopolitical competition among Catholic Western European monarchs that made them particularly vulnerable to papal-clerical demands to eradicate non-Christians. The extant scholarship maintains that ethnoreligious cleansing is a modern phenomenon that is often committed by nationalist actors for secular purposes. In contrast, a novel explanation highlights the central role that the supranational hierocratic actors played in ethnoreligious cleansing. These findings also contribute to understanding recent and current ethnic cleansing in places like Cambodia, Iraq, Myanmar, the Soviet Union, and Syria.

The French monarchy was the model of a strong centralized state in medieval Western Europe. At the same time it was formed as a national state and relied on the active promotion of national identity. In this context the treaty of Troyes in 1420 on the union of France and England under the rule of the English monarchs looks like a ridiculous and inept attempt to end the long-standing conflict, referred to in historiography as the Hundred Years’ War. However, the “union of two crowns” was not perceived by contemporaries as absurd. A vivid confirmation of this is the alternative union plan proposed by Jean Juvénal des Ursins, which is analyzed in detail in the article for the first time. Jouvénal was the closest counsellor to Charles VII of Valois, a high-ranking official, lawyer and hierarch of the Church. He made the greatest contribution to discrediting the treaty of Troyes by finding a copy of the text of the Salic law. Two treatises in which he developed this plan were written in 1435—1445. By that time France had already won its main military and political victories. This fact speaks in favor of the author’s conviction in the benefits of such a union. According to Jouvénal, the union of two crowns should have come under the rule of the French King Charles VII, since the English monarchs, Edward III and Henry IV of Lancaster, came to power illegally by killing legitimate kings, Edward II and Richard II. The main goal of Jouvénal’s alternative project was to ensure a reliable peace and an end to the war.

Polycentric Sovereignty in Medieval Western Europe: Incentives for Liberty and Information to Follow Through

Abstract The history of the Orléans School began more than seventy years before it became a University. The Orléans studium in the thirteenth century operated with almost no institutional structuring. However, this lack of structures should not be seen as a weakness in the teachings. On the contrary, the last four decades of the century constituted a true Golden age for the School, during which its writings spread throughout medieval Western Europe and doctrinally superseded those of its great rival, the University of Bologna, in terms of doctrine. The Doctors of Orléans were at the forefront of a remarkable movement to renew legal science, significantly revitalizing doctrinal commentary, both in substance and form. The second half of the thirteenth century is also characterised in Orléans by the tremendous enthusiasm of several generations of students for careers in senior public administration, both royal and ecclesiastical.

In interpreting the feudal contract between kings and nobles in medieval Western Europe, Western historians have tended to elaborate on its interaction, equivalence, and even equality, with an emphasis on the resulting restrictions on the king’s authority. However, this was not the case in England during this period. After the Norman Conquest, “imported feudalism” became a strong support for the English monarchy. On this basis, the feudal contract between kings and nobles evolved from an oral to a textual contract and from “personal commitment” to “collective negotiation,” in a process strongly marked by the coercion and inequality bestowed on such contracts by hierarchical feudal roles. In the course of this process, the English kings ceaselessly consolidated their power by breaking down the feudal customs reflected in agreements between the two sides. Although the Magna Carta, as a text-based feudal contract, made explicit provision for feudal customs, it failed to effectively constrain royal power. History shows that if we seek to elaborate on the reciprocity and even equality of the feudal contract from the perspective of modern social contract theory and thus exaggerate the nobles’ right to resist the king, we will inevitably construct a mythical “feudal contract determinism.”

Reviewed by: The origin legends of early medieval Britain and Ireland by Lindy Brady Donato Sitaro (bio) Lindy Brady, The origin legends of early medieval Britain and Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. ISBN 9781009225618 (hardback), 9781009225670 (ebook). x + 272 pages. $99.00. Origin myths and legends are prominent features of early medieval writings and mentalities. They became a popular genre, an ever-growing corpus of traditions and pseudo-histories, and eventually a late-antique/early medieval 'scholarly preoccupation', as underlined by Brady & Wadden in the foreword to their edited volume Origin legends in early medieval Western Europe (2022: 4). Despite not being the first recorded origines gentium, the Insular origin myths stand out as precious hermeneutic objects for scholars of early medieval culture, as part of a genre 'that has shaped national identity and collective history from the early medieval period to the present day', as we read in the synopsis. The variety of their approach and their richness in contents and traditions make the British, Irish, Pictish, and Anglo-Saxon origin narratives a perfect subject for a dedicated volume. Discussing these apparently divergent narratives in comparative terms was not an easy task, but Brady bravely attempts it in a relatively compact and easily readable book. Divided into five main chapters, the book is prefaced by a 27-page introductory section, eloquently titled 'The anachronism of nationalism', where modern scholarly debate around the contested concepts of ethnicity, post-Roman identities, and early medieval writers' agendas is summarized and discussed. Brady's approach consciously differs from the two major historiographical standpoints on ethnic identities, as it neither gives excessive weight to the influence of Classical ethnography (as Goffart did), [End Page 156] nor does it look too far forward by extending the effects of enduring ethnic identities from the Migration Period deep into the Middle Ages (as in certain readings by Wolfram and Pohl). Brady decides to look 'sideways' (21) to explore the textual and conceptual interrelations between the origin legends of the British Isles without attempting to construct from the texts a straightforward idea of the development of ethnic identities. She looks at the development of origin stories within and among the texts surveyed, more than outside and beyond them. For this reason, the interpretative keywords for Brady's analysis of the sources are 'discourse' and 'development' (3). Her assessment that the concepts enshrined in early medieval origin narratives were communicating and were part of a shared intellectual milieu is repeated throughout the introduction and beyond (1, 4, 16, 21, 63, 227, 229). This assumption finds support in the first chapter through a survey of the textual history of the Insular works containing origin stories: Gildas's De excidio, Bede's Historia ecclesiastica, the ninth-century Historia Brittonum, and the later Irish Lebor Bretnach and Lebor gabála Érenn. While the first two works are referred to in cursory fashion as embryonic nuclei of traditions that would develop later, the latter three pseudo-histories are discussed in depth throughout the book. The Historia Brittonum is given a justified pre-eminence as 'a valuable microcosm of the intellectual connections which form the focus of the study' (16). After the presentation of the sources, the proper narratological analysis begins: chapters 2, 3, and 4 focus on exile, kin-slaying, and intermarriage and incest, respectively. Having established the interrelated nature of the Insular writings in chapter 1, Brady is able to conduct a comparative survey of shared concepts and their development within three concentric levels of investigation corresponding to the three-part structure of these chapters: (i) first she explores the wider conceptual resonance of the motif in literature, usually through comparison with biblical and classical archetypes; (ii) then she outlines the recurrence of historical episodes involving the motif (cases of exiles or kin-slayers in the early medieval Insular context); and finally (iii) she considers the meaning of the motif within the Insular origin narratives. The second part of these themed chapters, the attempt to show 'resonances of these topics in [historical] early insular society' (138), could have been the trickiest. However, Brady addresses the eventual collision between literary motifs and the 'hard facts' drawn from legal and historical records through...

In the article on the theory of state and law, the development of political Augustinism is studied in the context of the conceptualization of the idea of a Christian state. When summarizing the philosophical and political thought of Augustinism as a development of the ideas of dualism of the idea of “two cities”, the following main points established during the study were noted: 1) in the theocratic concept of the work “On the City of God”, the author justifies the existence of the state as a system of subordination. For Augustine, man is by no means a political, but a social being. The need for submission arose due to the fall of man; by nature, man was created not to obey, but to communicate with other people at the social, and not at the political level of domination and subordination. God did not instill in people the necessity of subordinating some people to others; 2) developing the thought of Blessed Augustine, Pope Gregory the Great and other followers of political Augustinism came to the conclusion, quite obvious to them, that power originally came from God, existed from the moment the world was created, and was established as paternalistic. The concept of political Augustinism determines that people are inherently equal, and there is no need to use coercive mechanisms in relation to others. However, each society required the mechanisms of government necessary for its existence; This argument is supported by the fact that the angelic hierarchy, that is, the hierarchical model of the heavenly world, is based on similar principles. Sin, on the other hand, has influenced the fact that the need for coercion is inevitable and the force of coercion begins to act. Subsequently, the Augustinian idea of the supernatural city of heaven was distorted by the fact that it was associated with the earthly Church for the purpose of subordinating secular authority to the church, which led to the confrontation between the state and the Church in medieval Western Europe.

During the centuries of being part of the Roman Empire, the population of the Iberian Peninsula adopted the Latin language, the Roman state religion, and the achievements of Roman material and spiritual culture. The Roman state system of monetary and weight measures operated in the territory of Roman Spain. The conquest of Spain in the V century by the Visigoths did not lead to changes in the material and spiritual culture of the local Romanized population. On the basis of this culture, the civilizations of the modern countries located on the Iberian Peninsula – Spain and Portugal – were later formed. At the beginning of the VIII century, Spain was conquered by the Arabs. In the territory of the Iberian Peninsula, they created their own state – the Córdoba Caliphate. Arabs and North African Berbers, who later came to be known by the general name Moors, conquered almost all of Spain, except for the northern mountainous regions. In the north of Spain in the IX–XI centuries, Christian kingdoms arose – Castile, Leon, Aragon, Navarre and Portugal. Christian kingdoms in the VIII century began the Reconquest – the reconquest of the Iberian territory from the Arabs. It ended in 1492 when the troops of Castile and Aragon conquered the Emirate of Granada – the last state of the Arabs in Spain. During the Reconquista, four Christian kingdoms united into the modern state of Spain. Portugal remained independent. During the period from the VIII to the XV centuries, in the territory of the Iberian Peninsula there was a mutual influence of the cultures of the West and the East. It touched all spheres of life, in particular the economy and the monetary and weight system. The monetary weight of the Moors was borrowed from Spain and Portugal. In turn, the structure of the systems of weight measures of Spain and Portugal was created on the model of the measures of Ancient Rome and the measures of the countries of medieval Western Europe. However, the norm of the mass of units of these systems was influenced by Arab weight measures. In the XVI–XVII centuries, the era of Great Geographical Discoveries, in which Spain and Portugal played a leading role, began. Numerous Spanish and Portuguese colonies were established in the territory of North and South America, Africa, and Asia, where metropolitan weights were used for centuries. For a long time in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, which later became independent states, weight measures gradually changed and acquired local characteristics. This process conti­nued until the introduction of the international metric system in their territory.

The study deals with the medieval cult of the early medieval hermit and the Benedictine abbot St. Giles in the Bohemian lands from its earliest beginnings to the end of the Middle Ages. Saint Giles, living in the 7th and 8th centuries in the region of Septimania located in the south of modern‑day France, became one of the most popular Christian saints in the medieval Western and Central Europe due to his patronage. The study therefore seeks to create a comprehensive interpretation of the form of the St. Giles’s cult in the Bohemian lands in the Middle Ages. The historical research of the cult of St. Giles is carried out through a detailed analysis of the medieval narrative and material sources, iconography, legends and sources of Church‑administrative origin. The text presents, in detail and with the help of the analysis of relics, calendars and Church dedications, not only the spread of the St. Giles’s cult in the Bohemian lands in the 12th century, but also the close relationship of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV to the mentioned saint. The study also discusses the fine arts monuments and the cult of St. Giles as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers at the end of the Middle Ages