L'Agenda des Médiévistes

By the fifteenth century, churchmen were complaining that laypeople preferred to hear stories about Robin Hood rather than to listen to the word of God. But what was the attraction of this outlaw for contemporary audiences?

The essays collected here seek to examine the outlaw’s legend in relation to late medieval society, politics and piety. They set out the different types of evidence which give us access to representations of Robin and his men in the pre-Reformation period, ask whether stories about the outlaw had any basis in reality and explore the many different purposes for which his legend was adapted.

The volume is divided into six parts: the sources for the medieval legend of Robin Hood and its origins; social structure; social conflict; kingship, law and warfare; piety and the church; and the outlaw’s legend in Wales and Scotland. Key issues addressed by its essays include the dating of the surviving tales, attitudes to social hierarchy, representations of gender and masculinity, the extent to which the tales drew upon or shaped contemporary attitudes towards law and justice, the development of Robin Hood plays and games, and whether the legend emerged from or appealed to particular social groups. It not only sheds new light on a character who, whether « real » or not, is one of the most important and memorable figures in the history of medieval England but also explores the extent to which the outlaw became popular in Scotland and Wales.

STEPHEN H. RIGBY is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Social and Economic History at the University of Manchester, UK.

Table des matières :

List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
Preface
Acknowledgments
A Note on References to Robin Hood Ballads and Plays
PART I: SOURCES AND ORIGINS
1. The Medieval Legend of Robin Hood: The English Sources – Stephen H. Rigby
2. Dating the Gest of Robyn Hode – Stephen H. Rigby
3. The Robin Hood Names and the Origins of the Outlaw Legend – David Crook
PART II: SOCIAL HIERARCHY AND SOCIAL ORDERS
4. Robin Hood: Social Hierarchy and Social Mobility – Alex T. Brown
5. Robin Hood: Yeoman Status and Yeoman Service – Louisa Foroughi
6. Robin Hood: Mercantile Hero? – Stephen H. Rigby
7. Robin Hood: Gender, Masculinity and Homosociality – Katherine Lewis
PART III: SOCIAL CONFLICT
8. Robin Hood: Social and Political Protest – Shannon McSheffrey
9. Robin Hood: Social Bandit? – Stephen H. Rigby
PART IV: KINGSHIP, LAW AND WARFARE
10. Robin Hood: Kingship – Andrew Spencer
11. Robin Hood: Law and Justice – Anthony Musson
12. Robin Hood: Warfare and Weapons – Anne Curry
PART V: PIETY AND THE CHURCH
13. Robin Hood: Piety, Anticlericalism and the Church – Martin Heale
14. Robin Hood: Plays and Games – John Marshall
PART VI: WALES AND SCOTLAND
15. Robin Hood and the Welsh Outlaw Tradition – Helen Fulton
16. Robin Hood in Scotland – Helen Phillips
Appendix: Stephen H. Rigby, The Medieval Ballads of Robin Hood
Select Bibliography
Index

Informations pratiques :

Historians on Robin Hood. The Outlaw’s Legend in the Later Middle Ages, éd. Stephen H. Rigby, Woodbridge, D.S. Brewer, 2024 ; 1 vol., 498 p. ISBN : 978-1-84384-669-7. Prix : GBP 125,00.

Source : Boydell and Brewer

Les chansons dites populaires ne sont ni aussi anciennes ni aussi naïves qu’elles le paraissent. On le sait, mais on ne peut s’empêcher de leur chercher des ancêtres, chez qui ces caractères seraient authentiques. On remonte ainsi jusqu’au Moyen Âge et on constate que les chansons médiévales entretiennent la même illusion, aimant à se faire passer pour anciennes ou populaires, même quand elles ne le sont pas.
Pourquoi sommes-nous sensibles à la séduction d’une poésie qui se donne pour enracinée dans les profondeurs du passé et dans l’enfance des individus et des peuples ? Pourquoi la poésie de toutes les époques, même les plus reculées, équilibre-t-elle ses productions nouvelles et savantes par d’autres marquées artificiellement des signes de l’ancienneté et de la simplicité ? En quoi ce trait appartient-il à la nature même de la littérature ?

Ces questions sont étudiées ici à travers l’exemple des chansons, particulièrement parlantes en la matière. Ce corpus enchanteur est l’occasion pour Michel Zink de proposer une promenade dans un paysage sonore qui a su traverser les époques et s’inviter dans la littérature jusqu’à la période contemporaine.

Cet ouvrage comprend la leçon inaugurale de Michel Zink au Collège de France et le cours qui l’a prolongée.

Michel Zink a suivi une carrière universitaire qui l’a conduit de l’École normale supérieure au Collège de France, où il a occupé de 1994 à 2016 la chaire de Littératures de la France médiévale, et à l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, dont il est le Secrétaire perpétuel. Mais il est aussi l’auteur de romans et de contes. Il a été élu en 2017 à l’Académie française.`

Table des matières :

Leçon inaugurale
Les chansons du du moyen âge sont-elles de vieilles chansons ?
Préliminaires

« La fée des légendes éternellement jeune » chansons populaires, vieilles chansons
Gascons et cannibales
De Marot à Nerval
Chansons populaires et chansons médiévales
Où est le peuple ?
La Villemarqué et le Moyen Âge
La tentation d’une préhistoire
Des médiévistes, des chansons et des femmes
Belle Aiglentine
La source fraîche des chansons
Chanson ancienne, chanson nouvelle
Les chansons du XVe siècle et leur écho dissonant
Bibliographie
Index des noms de personnes

Informations pratiques :

Michel Zink, Le Moyen Âge et ses chansons. Un Passé en trompe-l’œil, Paris, Les Belles-Lettres, 2024 ; 1 vol., 192 p. (Docet omnia, 9). ISBN : 978-2-25145-630-0. Prix : € 21,90.

Source : Les Belles-Lettres

Famous today for the shops lining its sloped street, the Ponte Vecchio is the last premodern bridge spanning the Arno River at Florence and one of the few remaining examples of the once more prevalent urbanized bridge type. Drawing from early Florentine chronicles and previously unpublished archival documents, this book traces the history of the Ponte Vecchio, focusing on the current bridge’s construction after the flood of 1333. Much of the Ponte Vecchio’s original fourteenth-century appearance is now obscured beneath later accretions, often mistakenly interpreted as original to its medieval character. To the contrary, as argued in this book and illustrated by new reconstruction drawings, the mid-trecento Ponte Vecchio’s vaulted substructure was technically advanced, its urban superstructure was designed in accordance with contemporary Florentine urban planning strategies, and its « beautiful and honorable » appearance was maintained by government regulations. The documents also reveal new information about the commission and rental of its famous shops. Relying on these sources, this study offers a more complete history of the Ponte Vecchio, adding significantly to what is currently known about the bridge’s patronage and construction, as well as the aims of civic architecture and urban planning in late medieval Florence.

Table des matières :

Introduction

Chapter One
From Origins to Contested Site: The Ponte Vecchio and Villani’s ‘Myth of Florence’

Chapter Two
The Politics of Bridge Building: Civic Patronage and Post-Flood Repair, 1333–1339

Chapter Three
The Commission and Building History of the Ponte Vecchio, 1339–1346

Chapter Four
Modo et Forma: The ‘Manner and Form’ of the Ponte Vecchio’s Construction

Chapter Five
‘A Beautiful and Honorable Bridge’: The Ponte Vecchio, Medieval Aesthetics, and the Politics of Urban Design

Chapter Six
‘For the Honor and Value of the People and Commune of Florence’: The Shops on the Ponte Vecchio and Their Well-Regulated Order, 1346–1495

Epilogue
The Ponte Vecchio after 1495

Appendices
I Chronicle Accounts of the Flood of 4 November 1333
II Ponte Vecchio Documents, 972 to Flood of 1333
III Ponte Vecchio Documents, 1333 Flood to 1495
IV Accounts of the Completion of the Ponte Vecchio

Bibliography

Index

Informations pratiques :

Theresa Flanigan, The Ponte Vecchio. Architecture, Politics, and Civic Identity in Late Medieval Florence, Turnhout, Brepols, 2024 ; 1 vol., 260 p. (Architecture and the Arts in Early Modern Italy, 5). ISBN : 978-1-912554-68-3. Prix : € 150,00

Source : Brepols

Un épisode fondateur de la nation France et du roman national : la victoire des chevaliers de Philippe Auguste lors de la bataille de Bouvines.

La bataille de Bouvines, remportée le 27 juillet 1214 par Philippe Auguste, près de Lille, sur un empereur allemand, un comte de Flandre et d’autres coalisés que finançait tous le roi d’Angleterre, a été l’un des événements les plus célébrés de l’histoire de France. Du XIII^e au XX^e siècle, elle a été considérée comme un succès décisif, obtenu au terme de combats difficiles qui avaient mis à l’épreuve le roi, sa chevalerie et ses communes. Elle couronnait ainsi l’un des règnes les plus constructifs de notre histoire, et son « souvenir », mêlant l’histoire aux légendes, pouvait à la fois galvaniser la France dans ses guerres nationales et alimenter le débat politique sur la royauté, la noblesse, l’armée populaire.
Dominique Barthélemy approfondit et réoriente la critique historique au terme d’enquêtes serrées sur les chevaliers présents au front et sur l’élaboration et la réécriture des récits de Bouvines. Il commence par raconter la bataille en l’inscrivant dans son contexte féodal et en suggérant qu’elle a été dramatisée à dessein par la propagande capétienne. Il entraîne ensuite son lecteur, avec vivacité, dans un tourbillon de récits sélectifs et d’affabulations médiévales et modernes dont il tente à chaque fois de lui expliquer les enjeux. L’ouvrage de référence.

Agrégé et docteur en histoire, membre de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, Dominique Barthélemy est professeur émérite d’histoire médiévale à l’université Paris-Sorbonne et directeur d’études émérite à l’École pratique des hautes études. Il est notamment l’auteur de L’An mil et la Paix de Dieu. La France chrétienne et féodale, 980-1060 et, chez Perrin, de La Chevalerie.

Informations pratiques :

Dominique Barthélemy, La bataille de Bouvines, Paris, Perrin, 2024 ; 1 vol., 720 p. (Tempus). ISBN : 978-2-26210-906-6. Prix : € 13,00.

Source : Perrin

The four-volume sub-series ‘Petrifying Wealth’ explores the sudden ubiquity of masonry construction between 1050 and 1300 in Southern Europe and its profound effect on the European landscape. New questions about wealth, society, and medieval building are explored, which highlight the link between construction in durable materials and the shaping of individual, collective, and territorial identities: the birth of a new, long-lasting panorama, epitomising the way we see the space and territory of Europe nowadays.

Volume 2 of the ‘Petrifying Wealth’ series focuses on economic growth in Southern Europe between 1050 and 1300, discussing investments on buildings connected with production and trade. It examines buildings that served a primarily economic purpose, in various aspects: agricultural activity and the conservation and processing of its products, crafts, and exchanges and their material infrastructures. The growth in this period resulted in a multiplication of material structures closely linked with economic activity, such as mills, barns, canals, workshops, and arsenals. Focusing on the dynamics connected with these buildings thus offers a vantage point to better understand the contexts and characteristics of the ‘economic take-off’ in Southern Europe in this period.

Sandro Carocci is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Roma – Tor Vergata (Italy) and is one of the Principal Investigators of the ERC-Advanced Grant Project Petrifying Wealth. He has written and edited numerous books on medieval Italy, including Lordships of Southern Italy (2018) and Social Mobility in Medieval Italy (2018).

Alessio Fiore is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Turin. He has written or edited several books on medieval societies; among them Signori e sudditi (Spoleto, 2010), and The Seigneurial Transformation (Oxford, 2020).

Table des matières :

Introduction: Building Economic Growth in Southern Europe
ALESSIO FIORE

Part I. Farming

Storing for the Economy? Landed Estates and their Buildings in Northern and Central Italy, Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
LORENZO TABARRINI

El mansus de la Cataluña Vieja medieval. La implantación de un señorío constructivo
VICTOR FARÍAS ZURITA

Reflections on the Archaeology of Cereal Storage in Medieval Italy
GIOVANNA BIANCHI

Extrahere cequiam: Irrigation Canal Building and Agricultural Hydraulics in the Crown of Aragon (1170–1300)
JOSEP TORRÓ

Canal-Digging in the Age of Economic Expansion (Northern Italy, Eleventh–ThirteenthCenturies)
FABRIZIO PAGNONI

Part II. Manufacturing

La expansión de la molinería hidráulica en Cataluña (siglos XI-XIII): acerca de la construcción de molinos y sus promotores
JORDI MORELLÓ BAGET

Productive Buildings and Economic Growth: Iron-Working in Central and Northern Italy (Eleventh–Thirteenth Centuries)
ELENA MARIA CORTESE

Building for the Market: Residential Real Estate in Medieval Italy (c. 1070–1250)
ALESSIO FIORE

Part III. Connecting

Petrified Nodes: Bridges and Economic Growth (Tuscany, 1050–1200)
PAOLO TOMEI

Porti, cantieri e arsenali
PINUCCIA F. SIMBULA

Conclusions
SANDRO CAROCCI

Index

Informations pratiques :

Building and Economic Growth in Southern Europe (1050–1300), éd. Sandro Carocci, Alessio Fiore, Turnhout, Brepols, 2024 ; 1 vol., 268 p. (The Medieval Countryside, 6). ISBN : 978-2-503-60541-8. Prix : € 80,00.

Source : Brepols

Worlds of Byzantium offers a new understanding of what it means to study the history and visual culture of the Byzantine empire during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Arguing that linguistic and cultural frontiers do not always coincide with political ones, it suggests that Byzantine studies should look not only within but also beyond the borders of the Byzantine empire and include the history of Christian populations in the Muslim-ruled Middle East and neighbouring states like Ethiopia and Armenia and integrate more closely with Judaic and Islamic studies. With essays by leading scholars in a wide range of fields, it offers a vision of a richly interconnected eastern Mediterranean and Near East that will be of interest to anyone who studies the premodern world.

Elizabeth S. Bolman, Case Western Reserve University, Ohio
ELIZABETH S. BOLMAN is Elsie B. Smith Professor in the Liberal Arts and Professor of Art History at Case Western Reserve University. She engages with the visual culture of the eastern Mediterranean in the late antique and Byzantine periods and is best known for her work in Egypt.

Scott Fitzgerald Johnson, University of Oklahoma
SCOTT FITZGERALD JOHNSON is Associate Professor of Classics and Letters at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of numerous studies on late antique and Byzantine history and literature and has held fellowships at Harvard University, Dumbarton Oaks, and the Library of Congress and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2018.

Jack Tannous, Princeton University, New Jersey
JACK TANNOUS is Associate Professor of History and Hellenic Studies at Princeton University, where he is also Director of the Program in Hellenic Studies. His research focuses on the Greek, Syriac, and Arabic-speaking Christian communities of the Middle East in the late antique and medieval periods.

Table des matières :

• Table of Contents
• Preface Elizabeth S. Bolman, Scott Johnson and Jack Tannous
  1. Worlds of Byzantium: problems, frameworks, and opportunity in the Byzantine near east Scott Fitzgerald Johnson
  Part I. Patterns, Paradigms, Scholarship:
  2. East of Byzantium revisited: the study of the Byzantine near east, past and present Columba Stewart
  3. Byzantium and the turn to the east Averil Cameron
  4. The classical near east Kevin T. van Bladel
  5. Alternatives to commonwealth: modes of connectivity between Byzantium and Medieval Eastern Europe Christian Raffensperger
  Part II. Images, Objects, Archaeology:
  6. Movement and creation: a reassessment of early Byzantine visual culture Elizabeth S. Bolman
  7. Letters from the edge: mapping Pseudo-Arabic between Byzantium and the near east Alicia Walker
  8. Antioch after dark: archaeology and the ‘Dark Ages’ in North Syria Michael J. Decker
  9. Ars Sacra in the east and after Byzantium Cecily J. Hilsdale
  10. The church of the virgin in Dayr al-Suryān (Wadi al-Natrun): architecture, art, and history between Coptic and Syriac Christianity Karel C. Innemée, Lucas Van Rompay and Dobrochna Zielińska
  11. Three questions concerning Armenian and Byzantine art Christina Maranci
  12. Makurian visual culture: between Byzantium and Africa Włodzimierz Godlewski
  Part III. Languages, Confessions, Empire:
  13. Byzantine Syriac: language and religious community in the middle east Jack Tannous
  14. Greek identity in the Sinai Hieromonk Justin of Sinai
  15. Patriarchs, caliphs, monks, scribes, and the Byzantinization of Jerusalem’s liturgy Daniel Galadza
  16. Byzantine Judaism in early Islamic Palestine: rethinking the Gaonic model Eve Krakowski
  17. Ethiopia: Christianity, language, and identity George Hatke
  18. Armenia and Byzantium: simultaneously at the center and on the periphery Robin Darling Young
  19. Byzantine Georgia/Georgian Byzantium Stephen Rapp Jr.
  20. Conclusion: ends and means Jack Tannous
  Index.

Informations pratiques :

Worlds of Byzantium. Religion, Culture, and Empire in the Medieval Near East, éd. Elizabeth S. Bolman, Scott Fitzgerald Johnson, Jack Tannous, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2024 ; 1 vol., 726 p. ISBN : 978-1-10849-209-6. Prix : GBP 150,00.

Source : Cambridge University Press