L'Agenda des Médiévistes

In 2013, during the excavation of the archaeological site of Pétermonostora (Hungary), two exceptionally large enamel plaques were discovered. The reliquary they belonged to was made by a Mosan artist, possibly in the Meuse Valley, a major intellectual and artistic centre of the period. The artwork’s remains constitute one of the greatest discoveries in medieval Hungarian archaeology. Even though the site was completely destroyed by the Mongols in 1241, its remains, and especially artefacts like the reliquary, create a unique image of a large, thriving settlement, home to a Latin Christian masterpiece. Given the destruction of sources and artworks in the region, Pétermonostora offers a rare opportunity to examine artistic, cultural, and historical aspects of high medieval East-Central Europe.

Table des matières :

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

1. The History of Pétermonostora

The Site 

The Settlement 

The Basilica and the Monastery 

The Artistic and Material Culture of the Basilica 

Signs of the Mongol Destruction 

Introduction to the Reliquary 

2. The Reliquary’s Stylistic Links

Description of the Enamels 

Technical and Stylistic Description of the Fragments 

The Origin of the Style: Rhine or Meuse? 

Tracing the Design: Decorative Indicators 

The Mosan Manuscripts and Enamels 

The Origins of the Technique 

The Issue of Limoges 

The Style of the Side Cover and the Angel Plaque 

3. The Reliquary’s Shape

The Two Enamel Plaques 

Narrative and Communicative Function 

The Largest Existing Phylactery Plaques 

The Angel Plaque 

The Side Cover

Eucharistic Aspects of Phylactery-Shaped Compositions 

Other Fragments 

4. The Patronage and the Relic

The Becse-Gergely Kindred and the Monastery 

Pétermonostora as a Private Monastery 

The Relic 

The Reliquary’s Connection to the Court of Béla III 

Conclusion

List of Images

Bibliography

Informations pratiques :

Bernát Rácz, The Twelfth-Century Mosan Reliquary of Pétermonostora, Bicester, Archaeopress, 2025 ; 1 vol., 120 p. (Archaeolingua Central European Archaeological Heritage Series, 12). ISBN : 978-1-80327-981-7. Prix : GBP 35,00.

Source : Archaeopress

European cities and towns are considered places with a particular order established by their inhabitants. This volume centres on the authorities, groups, and individuals who formed the rules for common life in urban communities. It considers the protagonists of urban order between the Middle Ages and modernity: those who were responsible for the common welfare, those who produced change, and those who caused disorder. The authors focus on the practices that shaped the order of urban communities and in particular on situations in which this order was transformed socially and spatially. By looking at urban order through this lens, the volume sheds light on the complex interplay of interests that can bring about change.

Irena Benyovsky Latin is a scholarly advisor at the Croatian Institute of History and general secretary of the International Commission for the History of Towns. She researches the history of cities in medieval Dalmatia. Books she published are Srednjovjekovni Trogir. Prostor i drustvo (2009), and Socijalna topografija srednjovjekovnoga Dubrovnika (2024).

Martina Stercken is a professor of Medieval History and Regional Studies at the University of Zurich (Switzerland). Her research interests include urban history, the history of power, and medieval cartography. Books she published are Urbanität (2016), Kommunale Selbstinszenierung (2018), and Stadtentwicklung im vormodernen Europa (2021).

Tonija Andric is an associate professor at Split University, Departement of History (Croatia). Her research interests include the social and economic history of the Middle Ages. Books she published are Zivot u srednjovjekovnom Splitu: svakodnevica obrtnika u 14. i 15. stoljecu (2018), and Povijest Splita u srednjem vijeku (2020).

Table des matières :

Dedication page
About the volume

1. Introduction
2. 1. Irena Benyovsky Latin, Protagonists of Urban Order in Pre-Modern Times
3. Representing Urban Order
   2.1. Zdenka Janekovi. Römer, Traditional and New Ways of Dubrovnik’s Noble Elite to Maintain Urban Order in the Fourteenth Century
   2.2. Martina Stercken, Guardians of Urban Order? Autocratic Mayors in the Late Middle Ages: The Case of Hans Waldmann
   2.3. Donatella Calabi, Magistrates of the Venetian Republic as Decision Makers and Executors Welcoming Foreigners to the City (Fifteenth – Sixteenth Centuries)
4. Transforming Spatial Order
   3.1. Keith D. Lilley, Mythologising Cities and Kings: The Wessex burhs of King Alfred the Great
   3.2. Rosa Smurra, Spatial Order and City Authorities in Thirteenth-Century Bologna
   3.3. Francesco Panarelli, The Role of Female Monasteries in the Organization of Urban Spaces in Southern Italian Cities: The Case of Matera
   3.4. Marco Cadinu, Urban Community and the Common Good Control over the Building Activities and Water Management in Southern Italy (Thirteenth – Fourteenth Centuries)
5. Changing Social Order
   4.1. John Henderson, Plague and the Social Order in Early Modern Italy: Tuscany, 1630-1633
   4.2. Peter Clark, Civil Society and Urban Order: Suggestions and Questions
   4.3. Steinar Aas, Urban Order in the Early Years of Narvik (1902-1910)
6. Protagonists of Urban Order in a Diachronic Perspective
   5.1. Michel Pauly, Protagonists of Urban Spatial Order in a Longue Durée Perspective: Example of the City of Luxembourg
   5.2. Lauren.iu R.dvan, From Medieval Principality to Modern State: The Impact of Change on Towns in the Romanian Area
   5.3. Thomas Riis, Perceptions of Urban Poverty and Good Polity in Denmark from the Black Death to 2021

Informations pratiques :

Protagonists of Urban Order from the Middle Ages to the Present. Actions, Ideas, Concepts, éd. Irena Benyovsky Latin, Martina Stercken, Tonija Andric, Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 2025 ; 1 vol., 266 p. (Central European Medieval Studies). ISBN : 978-9-04855-952-7. Prix : € 123,99.

Source : Amsterdam University Press

Durante il X secolo, nella documentazione del neonato regno anglosassone e in quella del regno asturiano-leonese, assistiamo allo svilupparsi di un particolare fenomeno documentale: la comparsa del titolo imperator in riferimento ai sovrani di questi territori, geograficamente lontani dalla sede imperiale del momento e politicamente inabilitati ad aspirare a un titolo prettamente romano e universale. La ricerca dell’origine di questo peculiare uso documentale ha condotto in entrambi i casi al secolo anteriore, quando, in quegli stessi contesti geografici, ebbe luogo una fase di rinnovamento politico e culturale (renacimiento asturiano e alfredian renaissance). I re anglosassoni e asturiano-leonesi fomentarono la scrittura di nuove storie, formulando così un’identità per i propri popoli e una proiezione territoriale per la propria autorità. Se vista in relazione a questa fase precedente, la comparsa del titolo imperiale acquisisce un valore diverso. Essa non si costituisce più come fenomeno, ma come epifenomeno, in quanto manifestazione in superficie di cambi molto più profondi. L’imperator non è il terremoto, ma il pennino del sismografo.

Table des matières : ici

Informations pratiques :

Giovanni Collamati, Imperatori di pergamena. L’uso del titolo imperator in Spagna e Inghilterra (secc. IX-X), Rome, Viella, 2025 ; 1 vol., 304 p. (Studi del Dipartimento di Storia Antropologia Religioni Arte Spettacolo – Sapienza Università di Roma, 21). ISBN : 979-1-25469-699-6. Prix : € 29,00.

Source : Viella

It is generally accepted that the contingencies of manuscript survival have disproportionately destroyed some sorts of manuscripts and not others. But there is no consensus as to which sorts. Loosely-bound books, deluxe books, secular books, and purely liturgical books are all thought to have been disproportionately destroyed. Nor is there any consensus about how or when the bulk of this destruction happened. Although it is usually believed that the Dissolution of the Monasteries was the single most significant event in England’s history of medieval manuscript loss, it is not clear what mark it left on the record. How did Reformation-era losses compare to those that preceded the Reformation and to those that followed it? How did the kinds of losses caused by sectarian conflicts compare to more everyday kinds of loss, such as improper storage or deliberate deacquisition? Which manuscripts were targeted, when, and how can we expect the record to be skewed? These questions, which lie at the heart of this study, are important for researchers working in multiple fields, including literary studies, book history, and archival sciences. Blending more traditional book history approaches with methods drawn from quantitative codicology, this study explores the most significant moments of manuscript loss in the history of England. As this study shows, a focus on book lists from institutional libraries has led to a tendency to misrepresent and underestimate the destruction of medieval manuscripts. The evidence suggests that this destruction was much more limited in its targets, but far more extensive in scope, than is usually acknowledged.

Table des matières : ici

Informations pratiques :

Krista A Milne, The Destruction of Medieval Manuscripts in England: Institutional Collections, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2025 ; 1 vol., 336 p. ISBN : 978-0-19892-022-9. En ligne.

Source : Oxford University Press

C’est l’histoire d’un héros qui part à la chasse au sanglier et y rencontre son destin. L’histoire d’une amitié impossible que les rivalités de clans changent en haine inexpiable et vengeances sans fin dans un royaume encore à la recherche de son ordre et de ses valeurs. C’est une de nos plus anciennes épopées, celle dont le succès fut le plus large entre le XII^e et le XV^e siècles si l’on en croit le nombre des versions et des manuscrits qui nous en sont parvenus. C’est aussi un tableau remarquablement détaillé, vers les XI^e-XII^e siècles, des relations entre le roi et les grands féodaux comme entre ceux-ci et le haut clergé, et des effets de ces guerres sans fin sur le petit peuple des villes et des campagnes. Les chevauchées s’y déploient de la Lorraine à la Gascogne, de la Flandre à la Bourgogne en témoignant d’une connaissance des lieux étonnamment précise. Si les combats sont souvent d’une extrême violence, la peinture des personnages n’en est pas moins fine et sensible, notamment dans la représentation des liens d’affection mutuelle entre les principaux protagonistes de chaque clan. La traduction qui est ici donnée cherche à en restituer en français moderne toute l’âpreté et la grandeur.

Jean-Pierre Martin, professeur honoraire de l’Université d’Artois, est un spécialiste de l’épopée, et plus particulièrement des chansons de geste auxquelles il a consacré deux essais aux éditions Honoré Champion sous le sous-titre commun de Discours de l’épopée médiévale. Il a par ailleurs publié et traduit chez le même éditeur deux autres chansons de geste, Orson de Beauvais et Beuve de Hamptone.

Informations pratiques :

Garin le Lorrain, trad. Jean-PIerre Martin, Paris, Honoré Champion, 2025 ; 1 vol., 770 p. (Classiques français du Moyen Âge. Traductions, 112). ISBN : 978-2-74536-287-2. Prix : € 40,00.

Source : UCLouvain