L'Agenda des Médiévistes

Brigide Schwarz (1940–2019), a leading German historian of the Renaissance papacy, is presented here for the first time in a dossier of ten previously untranslated scholarly studies.

The volume brings the mechanisms of late medieval career building back to life. Success among churchmen was measured in access to ever more lucrative ecclesiastical endowments (or benefices). As the fifteenth century progressed, their treatment assumed highly monetized and abstract dimensions. Guided by Dr Schwarz, economic historians can discern many transactions that foreshadow the asset management of present-day Wall Street.

From the 1400s, administrative positions at the papal court (or Curia) were increasingly auctioned off. This created a marketplace for bidders expecting returns by way of ‘creative’ fee regulations or through the cornering of services in monopolies.

Only recently, scholarship has begun to question older depictions of the late medieval Church as one of decay and moral corruption. Dr Schwarz points to the ‘modernity’ of the fiscal arrangements which nation states like France soon copied as an efficient model of public financing.

Born in 1940, Brigide Schwarz was Ordinary Professor of Medieval History at the Technical University of Hanover (Germany) from 1979 to 1998. Until her death in 2019, she was the leading expert in a field that has no real equivalent in Anglophone scholarship, perhaps best defined as the Socio-Economic History of the Late Medieval Papal Court (or Curia).

Table des matières :

Editor’s Introduction

Part I – Ecclesiastical Benefices

Chapter 1. The Roman Curia and the Late Medieval Benefice Market

Chapter 2. Patronage and Clientele in the Late Medieval Church. The Example of Nicholas of Cusa

Chapter 3. A ‘Rope Team’ of Clerics from Hanover in the Late Middle Ages

Chapter 4. On Nanker, Bishop of Kraków (1320-1326) and Wrocław (1326-1341)

Chapter 5. The Vatican Archives and Their Uses for Regional Historians. The Example of Late Medieval Saxony

Part II – Curial Offices

Chapter 6. The Venality of Offices. An Institution from the Period of Absolutism and its Medieval Roots

Chapter 7. The Roman Curia from the Great Schism to the Reform Councils (1378-1447)

Chapter 8. On Behalf of the Pope. The Papal cursores from 1200 to about 1470

Chapter 9. Leon Battista Alberti’s Career in the Apostolic Chancery

Chapter 10. Position and Rank of the Vice-Chancellor at the Curia

Bibliography

Index

Informations pratiques :

Brigide Schwarz, Careers and Opportunities at the Roman Curia, 1300–1500. A Socio-Economic History of Papal Administration, éd. Wolfgang Mueller, Turnhout, Brepols, 2024 ; 1 vol., 337 p. (Europa Sacra, 29). ISBN : 978-2-503-59538-2. Prix : € 95,00.

Source : Brepols

The period between the Fall of Rome and the rise of the Carolingians saw a major shift in knowledge production. Learning became monopolised by a Christian intellectual elite in a rapidly developing monastic landscape. This transition and transformation was only fully achieved by the time of Charlemagne, whose reign saw a ‘Carolingian Renaissance’ that re-created links to Late Antiquity and its curriculum, the seven liberal arts. The centuries in between, from the fifth to the eighth, are generally considered a time of stagnation in terms of intellectual achievements, particularly in the quadruvial arts. From Boethius to Alcuin, not a single noteworthy text was produced in the Latin West in astronomy, geometry, arithmetic and music.

This traditional view has been challenged in recent years by highlighting that the artes liberales may not provide the appropriate lens for this time-period, and that it neglects the plentiful anonymous literature. By the seventh century, a decidedly Christian curriculum had developed principally comprising exegesis, grammar, and computus as its three key pillars. Computus (with the calculation of Easter and therewith the mathematical modelling of the course of the sun and the moon at its core) developed out of the Easter controversy into a discipline of monastic learning in its own right. This volume seeks to highlight the vibrancy and regional characteristics of the study of computus and its underlying controversy about the correct calculation of Easter in this transition period from the mid-fifth to the mid-eighth centuries.

Table des matières :

Daniel Mc Carthy – The Zeitz paschal table of AD 447

Colin Ireland – How King Oswiu made Northumbria orthodox: the social and political background of the ‘Synod’ of Whitby (AD 664)

Leofranc Holford-Strevens – ‘If you find it, give thanks’: a problematic chapter of De temporum ratione

Immo Warntjes – A Visigothic Computus of AD 722 

David Howlett – Irish computistical texts of the seventh century: three dating passages

James T. Palmer – Irish computistics in 8th-century Lombardy

C. Philipp E. Nothaft – Victorian survival in high medieval chronography: the strange case of the Angevin paschal chronicle

Informations pratiques :

Pre-Carolingian Latin Computus and its Regional Contexts. Texts, Tables, and Debates, éd. Immo Warntjes, Tobit Loevenich, Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, Turnhout, Brepols, 2024 ; 1 vol., 254 p. (Studia Traditionis Theologiae, 54). ISBN : 978-2-503-60556-2. Prix : € 70,00.

Source : Brepols

Cet ouvrage rassemble les communications, complétées par plusieurs autres contributions, de la 6^e journée d’études du Projet collectif de recherche « Les places fortes des Hauts-de-France » (DRAC-SRA Hauts-de-France, IRHiS-Université de Lille, Inrap) qui s’est tenue le 22 juin 2023 à l’université de Lille, réunissant archéologues et historiens, spécialistes de la fortification et du démantèlement dans la région Hauts-de-France.

Le choix de ce thème a permis de réfléchir à la démolition de différentes portions de l’architecture défensive septentrionale, mais également aux apports scientifiques, techniques et iconographiques de ces chantiers. Des approches locales comme des comparaisons thématiques ou chronologiques ont mis en lumière l’intérêt de cette transition entre l’avant et l’après du fait fortifié, ouvrant ainsi des perspectives sur l’évolution des places fortes des Hauts-de-France.

Table des matières :

Philippe Diest, Préface

Chapitre 1. Le démantèlement sur le temps long

Mathieu Béghin et Victoria Bray, La réunion de la Ville et de la Cité d’Arras : une opération de démantèlement complexe (1531-1777)

Thomas Guérin, Les fortifications tardives de Château-Thierry (XVI^e siècle) : une phase majeure disparue

Thomas Byhet, Le château d’Étaples a-t-il été démantelé au XVII^e siècle ?

Chapitre 2. Enjeux urbains versus enjeux patrimoniaux

Alain Salamagne, Le démantèlement des fortifications de Valenciennes (1891-1893)

Yves Roumegoux, Morceaux choisis. Le démantèlement sélectif des remparts de Cambrai à la fin du XIX^e siècle

Léo Machinet et Christopher Manceau, Béthune, aspects d’un démantèlement précoce au service d’une renaissance urbaine (1866-1878)

Jérôme Fourmanoir, Le démantèlement des fortifications à travers la photographie. Regard sur les cas d’Arras et Douai à la fin du XIX^e siècle

Chapitre 3. Nouvelles fortifications, nouvelles formes de démantèlement

Florian Valeri et Thomas Byhet, Un bastion casematé construit sous la Restauration : le bastion Saint-Louis d’Avesnes-sur-Helpe

Bertrand Lecomte, Le démantèlement des ouvrages fortifiés en béton armé de la Première Guerre mondiale. Un chantier interminable en Flandre française

Marc Deschamp, Les Sonderbauten du Pas-de-Calais. Un progressif démantèlement de leur éphémère fonction militaire

Informations pratiques :

Les Places fortes des Hauts-de-France, t. 6, Le démantèlement des fortifications dans les Hauts-de-France (XVIe-XXe siècle). Entre pertes patrimoniales et (re)découvertes archéologiques, éd. Thomas Byhet, Philippe Diest, Christine Aubry, Villeneuve d’Ascq, Institut de Recherches Historiques du Septentrion, 2024 ; 1 vol., 264 p. (Publications de l’Institut de recherches historiques du Septentrion, 70). ISBN : 978-2-490296-43-9.

Source : Nordoc’Archéo

This book takes the reader on an immersive journey through medieval manuscript production in the Latin Christian world. Each chapter opens with a lively vignette by a medieval narrator – including a parchment-maker, scribe and illuminator – introducing various aspects of manuscript production. Sara J. Charles poses the question ‘What actually is a scriptorium?’, and explores the development of the medieval scriptorium from its early Christian beginnings through to its eventual decline and the growth of the printing press. With the written word at the very heart of the Christian monastic movement, we see the immense amount of labour, planning and networks needed to produce each individual manuscript. By tapping into these processes and procedures, we can experience medieval life through the lens of a manuscript maker.

Sara J. Charles works and studies at Senate House, University of London. She has previously published on various aspects of the history of the book.

Informations pratiques :

Sara J. Charles, The Medieval Scriptorium. Making Books in the Middle Ages, Londres, Reaktion Books, 2024 ; 1 vol., 352 p. ISBN : 9781789149166. Prix : GBP 16,99.

Source : Reaktion Books