L'Agenda des Médiévistes

Mi-intéressé, mi-narquois, le chapelain de la comtesse Marie de Champagne observe les manèges de la cour comtale et le savoir-vivre amoureux qui s’y installe à la fin du XIIe siècle. Il fait mine d’entrer dans le jeu et de le réguler de tout son savoir-faire de clerc, qui prétend tantôt maîtriser la courtoisie à la mode et tantôt prendre ses distances. Il en résulte un savoureux mélange de pastiches, inspirés d’Ovide ou de la littérature vernaculaire allégorique et arthurienne, et de dialogues supposés enseigner l’art rhétorique de la séduction par la parole. L’ouvrage ouvre des aperçus sur le raffinement civilisateur que les grandes dames tentent alors d’instaurer dans les rapports sociaux et amoureux. Une édition légèrement remaniée d’après les témoins manuscrits est accompagnée ici d’une traduction qui cherche à rendre l’aspect à la fois compassé et neuf de cet art d’aimer, moins lié à la littérature courtoise qu’on ne l’a cru parfois.

Table des matières :

Références courantes utilisées

Introduction

L’auteur et l’œuvre

Tradition et diffusion du texte

Annexe I : Possibles erreurs de l’archétype

Annexe II : Différences par rapport à Trojel ou Walsh

Annexe III : Langue et style

Bibliographie

DE AMORE – DE L’AMOUR

Index

Informations pratiques :

André le Chapelain, De amore – De l’amour, éd et trad. Pascale Bourgain, Genève, Droz, 2026 ; 1 vol., 616 p. (Texte Courant, 21). ISBN : 978-2-600-06678-5. Prix : CHF 39,00.

Source : Droz

Christ’s war examines Carolingian holy war from the forging of their empire in the eighth century to its dissolution in the late ninth century during the Northmen’s attacks. It argues that the Franks understood their wars to be holy when their soldiers were without sin and, therefore, were holy themselves. God heard their prayers as they begged for divine aid, and he helped them overcome and slaughter their foes. Therefore, the Carolingian vision of holy war differed from the pious, apocalyptic military pilgrimages of the subsequent Crusades. Latin poetry serves as an important source in this study for understanding holy war, including how poets dramatized glorious victories or horrifying defeats for their audiences. The book offers important insights into the religious nature of Frankish warfare, while also contributing a fresh and innovative perspective on medieval holy war overall.

Matthew Bryan Gillis is Associate Professor of History at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Table des matières :

Introduction: Holy war, poetry and horror in the Carolingian World
1 Heroism and divine favor during the eighth-century wars of conquest
2 From the tyranny of the pagans to the terror of the Franks in Carolingian warfare
3 Horror, the crisis of heroism and the question of election at the division of the empire
4 Heroism reimagined in response to the Northmen’s attacks
Conclusion: The poetics of Carolingian holy war
Bibliography

Informations pratiques :

Matthew Bryan Gillis, Christ’s war. Holiness, heroism and horror in Carolingian poetry, c.730-c.900 CE, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2026 ; 1 vol., 280 p. ISBN : 978-1-52619-378-0. Prix : GBP 85,00.

Source : Manchester University Press

The Occupatio is one of the longest yet least-known Latin poems surviving from the earlier Middle Ages. Composed by the famous abbot Odo of Cluny (d. 942), the work retells the story of humanity’s fall and redemption as a series of episodes intended to help monastic readers focus their wandering thoughts. In pursuing those aims, the poem represents a uniquely ambitious attempt to reconcile the intellectual heritage of the late Carolingian Church with the spirituality of ascetic reform movements emergent in the tenth century. This book offers an improved edition of Odo’s Latin text together with its manuscript glosses, as well as a Modern English translation and detailed commentary. Introductory chapters offer helpful orientation to the character of the poem, its major themes, sources, language, style, and transmission.

Christopher A. Jones is Professor of English and Medieval Studies at Ohio State University.

Table des matières :

Volume 1

Abbreviations

Introduction

Edition and translation

Volume 2

Commentary

Bibliography

Indices
1. Sources cited in the commentary
2. Proper nouns and adjectives in the text and glosses
3. Notable or rare words in the text and glosses
4. General index

Informations pratiques :

The Occupatio by Odo of Cluny, éd. et trad. Christopher A. Jones, Turnhout, Brpeols, 2026 ; 2 vol., 1032 p. (Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin, 18). ISBN: 978-2-503-61509-7. Prix € 135,00.

Source : Brepols

This volume completes the collected works of Geert Grote, containing a treatise on the undesirability of marriage for a secular cleric and a treatise on four subjects suitable for meditation.

In his theoretical and philosophical essay Tractatusde quatuor generibus meditacionum sive contemplacionum (a treatise on four classes of subjects suitable for meditation), Geert Grote examines the nature of the subjects that can be used as a support for the meditative process, focusing on the effects produced by the act of meditation on the human mind and its faculties. While he formally addresses four subjects, he effectively discusses two of them only in greater detail, the life and Passion of Christ as recounted in Holy Scripture and the products of the imagination when reflecting on the Passion.

Grote’s Tractatus de matrimonio (a treatise on marriage, subdivided into 22 Chapters) is an essay in which he discusses the undesirability of marriage for a secular cleric, which had been written for a personal friend, but has a much wider applicability. In the first 15 Chapters he adduces theological and philosophical arguments dissuading marriage, while he describes various drawbacks of married life in Ch. 16-22, here drawing on both secular authorities and human experience.

Rijcklof Hofman is Research Fellow at the Titus Brandsma Instituut, Radboud University, Nijmegen (The Netherlands) and editor of the Gerardi Magni Opera Omnia, published in Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaeualis, vol. 172 (2000), 172A (2022); 192 (2003), 235 (2011); 318 + 318A (2025).

Table des matières :

Introduction

Tractatus de quatuor generibus meditacionum siue contemplacionum

Tractatus de matrimonio

Index
Index locorum S. Scripturae
Index fontium

Informations pratiques :

Gérard Groote, Opera omnia III. Tractatus de quatuor generibus meditacionum sive contemplacionum – Tractatus de matrimonio, Turnhout, Brepols, 2026 ; 1 vol., L–160 p. (Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 327). ISBN : 978-2-503-62075-6. prix : € 190,00.

Source : Brepols

The art of drawing and its products had a determining relationship to the visual arts of the Middle Ages. They also had other purposes, which if understood, help one to grasp the broader availability and usefulness of the medium. This groundbreaking study deals particularly with the historical relationships between medieval drawings and books. Using a wide range of material and documentary evidence, it explains how book-bound drawings may be defined, classified, and understood in relation to their physical settings and the ends they were made to serve. In orientation, the study is primarily art historical: most of its arguments emerge from curiosity about the psychology and experience of making drawn images. As such, it tackles a surprisingly neglected field. Because it deals with a pervasive aspect of book-design, it also makes a basic contribution to medieval codicology. There are six substantial chapters, the first two dealing with the definition of drawings, existing scholarly approaches to them, and issues of artistic status and agency. These lay the groundwork for the rest of the study, which analyses the placement of drawings at the fronts and backs of books (chapters 3, 4), and drawings embedded in the bodies of manuscripts that were mainly devoted to text (chapters 5, 6). Drawing emerges as an accessible, flexible medium of expression to rank with writing.

JULIAN LUXFORD is Professor in the School of Art History at the University of St Andrews.

Table des matières :

Introduction

1: Definition and Classification of Medieval Drawings
2: The Activity of Drawing in Medieval Britain: Taste, Motives, and Agency
3. Collateral Drawings, Part I: Collateral Leaves and Serial Drawings
4: Collateral Drawings, Part II: Individual Drawings and Their Contexts
5: Embedded Drawings, Part I: The Relationship of Drawings to Page Design and Text
6: Embedded Drawings, Part II: Integral and Added Drawings

Bibliography
Manuscripts Cited
General Index

Informations pratiques :

Julian Luxford, Drawings in Books in Medieval Britain from the Ninth Century to the Reformation, Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 2026 ; 1 vol., 552 p. (Boydell Studies in Medieval Art and Architecture, 30). ISBN : 978-1-83765-343-0. Prix : GBP 240,00

Source : Boydell and Brewer

« On se croirait au moyen Âge! » La fortune de ce cliché est connue et elle en dit long sur la perception d’une période qui s’étend pourtant sur dix siècles ( V^e-XV^e siècle).

Aujourd’hui, il serait plus juste de dire que connaître le Moyen Âge permet de comprendre de nombreux éléments de notre patrimoine monumental, artistique, philosophique et littéraire.

Quant à l’Église catholique, elle s’appuie toujours sur certains legs majeurs de cette époque, tels le baste mouvement de réforme des XII^e et XII^e siècles et la centralisation romaine. Et comment négliger les apports du Moyen Âge latin en matière de spiritualité (Bernard de Clairvaux, François d’Assise, Catherine de Sienne) ou de pastorale ( la confession individuelle, le Purgatoire, les jubilés…) ?

Pour Catherine Vincent, il ne s’agit pas de juger le passé, mais d’en saisir toute le diversité afin de décrypter les mécanisme à l’œuvre, et cela à bonne distance des légendes, noire ou dorée. S’appuyant sur les recherches de ces trente dernières années, cette synthèse inédite propose à un large public les principales clefs de compréhension de l’histoire du christianisme médiéval occidental.

Catherine VINCENT, est professeur émérite d’histoire du Moyen Âge à l’université Paris Nanterre, présidente de la Société d’histoire religieuse de la France, auteur de nombreux ouvrages, dont Introduction à l’histoire de l’Occident médiéval(Poche).

Informations pratiques :

Catherine Vincent, Le christianisme latin au Moyen Âge, Paris, Éditions, CLD, 2026 ; 1 vol., 350 p. ISBN : 978-2854436563. prix : € 25,00.

Source : Éditions CLD