L'Agenda des Médiévistes

Throughout the Middle Ages and all over Europe and the Mediterranean, Venetian merchants travelled throughout the known world in search of lucrative business opportunities and trading in anything that could be bought and sold. Envied by its neighbours, Venice came up against powerful enemies, both Christian and Muslim, and ultimately found itself between the interests of Spanish, Austrian and Turkish ambitions.

This book combines 13 chapters previously written by the author throughout his career, discussing the history of Venice throughout this period. It covers topics such as maritime trade, trade routes from Egypt to England and how the Venetians exploited their overseas colonies. It also analyses the salt trade, public monopolies, the use of credit and investment.

Venice Between Magnificence and Misery will appeal to students and scholars alike interested in the history of Venice throughout the Middle Ages, as well as the history of maritime trade and business.

Jean-Claude Hocquet (1936) is a university professor who has taught at universities in Paris, Venice and Lille, and has given lectures at foreign universities and international conferences. Professor and director of research at the National Centre for Scientific Research and School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (Paris), he is the author of a thesis, 40 books, many of which have been translated, and numerous articles on Venice, whose archives and libraries he has frequented since 1958. A specialist in the history of salt, maritime trade and taxation, and the history of weights and measures, he is a scientific advisor to several international journals. He is now retired from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and lives in Lille.

Informations pratiques :

Jean-Claude Hocquet, Venice Between Magnificence and Misery, Londres, Routledge, 2026 ; 1 vol., 270 p. ISBN : 978-1-03298-936-5. Prix : € 190,00.

Source : Routledge

This book sheds new light on the question of authorship in Neo-Latin literature. It shows that authorship was not something to be automatically assumed, but was chiefly imparted by the paratextual features of a work, such as letters of dedication, prefaces, and author portraits. This study examines the strategies and tools used by authors to assert their authorial aspirations, which in turn enabled them to incorporate themselves into secular, ecclesiastical, and intellectual power structures.

Karl Enenkel is emeritus professor of medieval and Neo-Latin literature at the University of Münster. He has published five monographs and some one hundred and forty articles and edited more than forty collective volumes. Recently, he concluded a critical commented edition of Erasmus’ Apophthegmata, books V–VIII, which is published in the ASD series published by Brill.

Table des matières : ici

Informations pratiques :

Karl A.E. Enenkel, Authorship in Neo-Latin Literature (c. 1350–c. 1650). On Authorisation and Transmission of Knowledge via Dedications, Prefaces, Author Portraits and Depictions of Dedication Scenes, Boston–Leyde, Brill, 2026 ; 1 vol., LVI–676 p. (Intersections, 102). ISBN : 978-90-04-73147-9. Prix : € 215,00.

Source : Brill

Philippe de Mézières (1327-1405) fit de ses écrits un lieu d’élaboration et de diffusion de projets réformateurs. En retraçant les horizons intellectuels et sociaux qui les nourrissent, l’étude montre comment ils reflètent le monde curial de son temps tout en cherchant à en infléchir l’évolution.

Table des matières : ici

Informations pratiques :

Karl Peeter Valk, Le Projet intellectuel d’un réformateur. Philippe de Mézières (1327-1405), Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2026 ; 1 vol., 576 p. (Bibliothèque d’histoire médiévale, 46). ISBN : 978-2-406-19952-6. Prix : € 49,00.

Source : Classiques Garnier

Clergy formed a distinct and privileged group in later medieval society as regarded violent crime. Church law was intended to protect them from it, induce them to avoid it, and exempt them from secular justice following it. But in practice, were the clergy so separate from the violent culture around them and different from the laymen who dominated it? In the first full-length study of this subject in the later medieval period, Peter Clarke shows that clergy accused of violent and other crimes increasingly submitted to secular justice like laymen, seeking clerical immunity only as a last resort. It reveals that church authorities, in providing legal redress for clerical victims of lay violence, sought to heal divisions between laity and clergy, not to deepen them. Additionally, it explores the motives and contexts behind clerical involvement in violent crime, both as perpetrators and victims, revealing that clergy often acted similarly to laymen.

Peter D. Clarke is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Southampton and President of the International Society of Medieval Canon Law. His publications include The Interdict in the Thirteenth Century: A Question of Collective Guilt (2007) and Supplications from England and Wales in the Registers of the Apostolic Penitentiary, 1410-1503 in three volumes (co-edited with Patrick N R Zutshi, 2013-15).

Table des matières :

• List of tables
• Preface
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Jurisdiction over violent clergy
• 2. Protecting clergy from violence
• 3. Clergy and contexts of criminal violence
• 4. Clergy as killers
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1. The Richard Atte Halle case
• Appendix 2. Penances imposed by English church courts in Si quis suadente cases
• Bibliography
• Index.

Informations pratiques :

Peter D. Clarke, Clergy and Criminal Violence in Later Medieval England and Wales, Cambridge University Press, 2026 ; 1 vol., 400 p. (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series). ISBN : 978-1-10884-380-5. Prix : € 110,00.

Source : Cambridge University Press

La Grande Jacquerie de mai-juin 1358 est traditionnellement réduite à une insurrection paysanne spontanée, éphémère et brutale. Elle est pourtant devenue un référent historique dès la fin du XIVe siècle. Ses réappropriations ont été si nombreuses jusqu’au début du XXIe siècle qu’une rupture s’opère entre la factualité de 1358 et les devenirs de l’événement « jacquerie ».

La violence rébellionnaire a-t-elle été si marquante que le souvenir de ces « effrois » ressurgisse lors de conflits sociaux ultérieurs ? Pourquoi cette distorsion entre trois petites semaines d’embrasement et la permanence des discours ? Pour répondre, Gaëtan Bonnot interroge les sédimentations historiennes et mémorielles de l’événement sur la longue durée, depuis ses origines, en Picardie, dans l’Oise et au-delà,jusqu’aux mouvements contestataires contemporains de grande ampleur, tels les Bonnets rouges ou les Gilets jaunes.

La disponibilité du souvenir tient en grande partie à la disponibilité documentaire : sont interrogés les registres de la chancellerie royale et du Parlement, des sources narratives et dictionnaires de l’époque moderne, les territoires numériques des sites web en passant par la presse des xixe et xxe siècles. Ainsi se dégage un interdiscours de la Jacquerie, aussi important que la multitude des faits commis durant ce soulèvement. Cette mémoire de l’insurrection n’est-elle pas finalement révélatrice de la peur des sociétés qui la mettent en récit ?

Gaëtan Bonnot est professeur agrégé à l’Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, docteur en histoire, membre du Pôle informatique de recherche et d’enseignement en histoire (PIREH) et du Laboratoire de médiévistique occidentale de Paris (LaMOP).

Informations pratiques :

Gaëtan Bonnot, La Jacquerie. Devenirs des effrois de 1358 à nos jours, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 2026 ; 1 vol., 328 p. (Le Nœud gordien). ISBN : 9782130873624. Prix : € 27,00.

Source : Presses universitaires de France

In the mid-thirteenth century, Europe was shaken by the Mongol invasions. Realizing the immense potential for accessing remote markets in the East, Venetian merchants, diplomats, and seafarers established far-flung commercial networks with the Mongol Empire. Venice and the Mongols tells the story of this dynamic new era in world history, one that saw one of the most advanced maritime powers of the age bridge East and West in a new global marketplace created by the Mongol conquests.

In a panoramic narrative spanning nearly two centuries, Nicola Di Cosmo and Lorenzo Pubblici describe how Mongolian support of European merchants allowed for the exchange of goods and ideas across their vast empire, and how cooperation with the khans enabled the Venetian city-state to trade safely, grow its influence, and expand its territory eastward while opening Europe to new markets. Di Cosmo and Pubblici shed light on trade practices, legal structures, and cultural relations, and share new perspectives on Marco Polo’s travels in Mongol-controlled territories. They examine Venetian strategies in the face of Mongol and Genoese rivalry and show how the city-state adapted to the challenges posed by the decline of Mongol authority and the ascendance of the Ottomans in the latter half of the fourteenth century.

Blending vivid storytelling with rich archival research, Venice and the Mongols challenges conventional perspectives on the Mongols as mere agents of destruction and shows how Venice ushered in a new era of commerce and diplomacy in an interconnected medieval world.

Nicola Di Cosmo is the Luce Foundation Professor in East Asian Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His books include Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History. Lorenzo Pubblici is professor of premodern central Asian history and cultures at the University of Naples L’Orientale. His books include Mongol Caucasia: Invasions, Conquest, and Government of a Frontier Region in Thirteenth-Century Eurasia (1204–1295).

Informations pratiques :

Nicola Di Cosmo, Lorenzo Pubblici, Venice and the Mongols. The Eurasian Exchange That Transformed the Medieval World, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2026 ; 1 vol., 368 p. ISBN : 978-0-69125-624-5. Prix : USD 35,00.

Source : Princeton University Press