L'Agenda des Médiévistes

29.09.2027 – 01.10.2027
Deadline : 01.10.2026
Herzog August Bibliothek

The question of what criteria determine whether items that appear together actually belong together arises in the case of medieval miscellaneous manuscripts already at the level of their materiality. The coexistence of heterogeneous elements on the same folio, within the same quire, or between the same set of book covers constitutes a material fact that calls for interpretation. Are the pragmatically motivated practices of writing into previously blank space and assembling loose materials into codicological units merely strategies for the efficient use of writing materials and the preservation of texts? Or do they also reflect intentional attempts to generate intertextual and intermedial meaning? More fundamentally, how can we methodologically determine whether the relationship between such elements is purely material or also constitutes semantic coherence? In recent years, the relationship between individual components and their integration into larger wholes has increasingly been studied from the perspective of structural relationality, with particular attention to the conditions that produce cohesion and coherence. Originating in textual linguistics and the study of textual unity, the concept of coherence has, above all in German medieval studies, increasingly been explored from a narratological perspective. Discussions have focused on the relationships between heterogeneous textual elements of different provenance and on the coherence of narratives, thereby addressing processes of narrative meaning making. Particular attention has been paid to gaps, omissions, and contradictions in medieval narrative literature and lyric poetry.

The conference, organised by the Medieval Studies Working Group, proposes a shift in perspective. Rather than concentrating on the so-called « irritation phenomena » (Christian Schneider), it seeks to explore the interdisciplinary potential of the concept of coherence by examining its transferability and applicability to questions of textual transmission and transmission contexts in medieval miscellaneous manuscripts. The conference invites an exploratory discussion of the extent to which the concept of coherence can be fruitfully applied to relationships between texts (both within transmission clusters and within seemingly self-contained sub collections), between text and image, text and paratext, text and musical notation, as well as to codicological units themselves.

The relationship between coherence and contingency in medieval miscellaneous manuscripts presents a methodological challenge in three respects. First, there is a terminological problem inherent in the conceptually ambiguous notion of the « miscellaneous manuscript. » Depending on the context, the term may refer either generally to any manuscript transmitting more than one text (a multiple-text manuscript) or, more specifically, to a deliberately planned collection of texts. Matters are further complicated by the subsequent combination of codicological units that may—or may not—have originally belonged together. Second, the historicity of coherence itself must be taken into account, since phenomena of coherence are inseparable from the historical development of the manuscript as an object. The involvement of multiple agents in the compilation, copying, deliberate rearrangement, and accidental rebinding of different codicological units gives rise to a range of distinct—and at times competing—notions of coherence, all of which must themselves be historicised. By what means are individual texts, text-image ensembles, and intermedial constellations connected within miscellaneous manuscripts, and from whose historical perspective do these relationships appear coherent? At what stage in the manuscript’s history such connections were established, and at what stage they were recognised, interpreted, or reshaped by later users? Third, any historically oriented research into the coherence of miscellaneous manuscripts—whether understood as units of textual transmission or as containing internally coherent sub-collections—must address the persistent problem of confirmation bias. Although this conference deliberately shifts the focus, in the spirit of the principle of charitable interpretation, away from inconsistency and towards coherence, it also calls for methodological reflection on the conditions under which patterns of coherence identified by modern scholarship may legitimately be regarded as historical features of medieval manuscripts, and where contingency provides the more convincing explanation. A conference devoted to the coherence of medieval miscellaneous manuscripts must therefore also engage in fundamental methodological reflection.

We welcome both theoretically informed contributions and case studies from all areas of medieval studies. Possible questions include, but are not limited to:
– How can relationships of coherence and equivalence within groups of texts be described?
– How is coherence established in intermedial constellations within manuscripts, especially in text-image relationships?
– To what extent can external and internal forms of coherence be distinguished?
– What functions do paratextual elements perform in their various verbal, non-verbal, and pictorial forms (e.g. headings, rubrication, chapter and section divisions, initials, or the division of texts into books)?
– Which elements provide structure across textual boundaries and thereby create connections between texts? What role codicological units do play in this process?
– Which strategies for creating coherence can be identified, including those related to processes of understanding and cognitive models?
– To what extent is it meaningful—or even possible—to distinguish between principles of external coherence (e.g. structural and paratextual features, episodicity, organisation principles, etc.) and internal coherence (e.g. repetition, doubling, equivalence, analogy, or correspondences on the textual and visual surface)?

Papers may be presented in either German or English. Please submit proposals of approximately 300 words (c. one page) by 1 October 2026 to: Tobias Daniels (Tobias.Daniels@mg.fak09.uni-muenchen.de)

Source : H-Soz-Kult

Leeds IMC 2027
July 5th-8th

It is by now widely accepted among scholars that hagiography is valuable for more than what it can reveal about saints and sainthood. Recent scholarship has shown that vitae, miracula, inventiones, and translationes were produced for a variety of purposes, often for specific local audiences, and that these audiences (including later readers, compilers and scribes) played an active role in shaping the texts themselves. Authors and audiences had a shared understanding of what hagiography was meant to do.

This session explores the implications of an approach that goes beyond seeing hagiographical texts as vehicles through which authors promoted particular agendas, to read them as products of communities of production and reception. It particularly invites papers which:

• recognise that each element of a hagiographical text reflects a deliberate choice on the part of its author(s), even when that choice is to follow established conventions;
• read hagiography as the product of a broader community, encompassing the milieu from which the text emerged, its intended audience, and even the saint or saints whose cult it sought to promote;
• treat individual manuscripts and textual witnesses as distinct texts, rather than copies of an original; and/or examine the different networks (textual, social, institutional, etc.) which shaped hagiography and were shaped by it.

This session ultimately seeks to explore how viewing hagiography as the product of shared communities of authorship and interpretation can reformulate the questions historians ask of these texts, and expand what hagiography can reveal as a historical source.

Studies on hagiography (broadly defined) from any period of the Middle Ages are welcome.

To participate, please send a short abstract to Theo Long (tgpl500@york.ac.uk) and Catherine Rosbrook (catherine.rosbrook@ugent.be) by September 15, 2026.

SPONSORED BY : The Route des Normands
DEADLINE : 14 September 2026

IMC Leeds 2027

The mobility of Norman communities was one of the historical phenomena that most profoundly shaped medieval Europe. The sessions aim to reconstruct its material consequences by examining monuments and objects within a transregional and transnational framework and by identifying networks of patronage, religious devotion, production, and exchange. Through an interdisciplinary approach, they seek to reconsider the interconnected sites, forms of artistic and artisanal production, landscapes, and cultural practices that are essential to a fuller understanding of the establishment and development of Norman communities across Europe, from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean.

The sessions will focus on historically identifiable itineraries and networks, including court itineraries, monastic and episcopal connections, pilgrimage circuits, maritime routes, commercial exchanges, and diplomatic contacts.

They will explore how these connections shaped architectural patronage, artistic production, manuscript culture, liturgical and funerary practices, and the diffusion of transregional cults.

The sessions do not seek to define a homogeneous “Norman style” or to reconstruct a linear diffusion of forms from Normandy. Rather, they will examine how buildings, monumental complexes, manuscripts, liturgical furnishings, tombs, and portable objects were produced within specific local contexts while also responding to the circulation of patrons, ecclesiastical personnel, craftsmen, materials, texts, relics, rites, and technical knowledge.

This approach builds on recent research into the agents and mechanisms of cultural transfer, as well as the political, ritual, and social functions of material culture in the Norman worlds.

In keeping with the IMC theme of “Communities,” the sessions will examine networks of patronage associated with Norman communities and their role in the production, use, and circulation of material culture.

SESSION I – Architecture, Patronage, and Networks of Construction

This session will examine how political authority, ecclesiastical organisation, pilgrimage, and economic exchange shaped the foundation, transformation, and use of buildings and monumental complexes.

Possible topics include
• royal, aristocratic, episcopal, and monastic patronage;
• court itineraries and the geography of architectural commissions;
• the movement of builders, craftsmen, materials, and technical knowledge;
• construction sites and the organisation of labour;
• the relationship between land routes, maritime routes, shrines, settlements, and monumental foundations;
• the adaptation or reuse of Roman, Byzantine, Islamic, Anglo-Saxon, Lombard, and other local structures;
• the impact of political and economic networks on architectural production.

SESSION II – Images, Manuscripts, and Material Exchange

This session will investigate the circulation, adaptation, and local reworking of artistic and technical knowledge in sculpture, painting, manuscript production, monumental decoration, and the decorative arts.

Possible topics include
• architectural sculpture, mural painting, mosaics, pavements, and stained glass;
• illuminated manuscripts, liturgical books, cartularies, chronicles, and Exultet rolls;
• relationships between monumental decoration, manuscript illumination, and portable objects;
• the movement of scribes, illuminators, sculptors, painters, mosaicists, and specialised craftsmen;
• workshops, communities of practice, and the transmission of techniques;
• textiles, ivory carving, metalwork, reliquaries, seals, coins, and liturgical furnishings;
• artistic commissions prompted by diplomacy, dynastic marriage, trade, gift exchange, warfare, or the translation of relics;

• the movement and availability of stone, marble, timber, metals, pigments, parchment, and luxury materials.

SESSION III

Sacred Routes, Liturgy, Cult, and Monumental Memory

This session will consider how the movement of clergy, books, relics, rites, and devotional practices shaped religious buildings and the material organisation of worship, burial, and commemoration.

Possible topics include

• relationships between liturgical practice and the architectural arrangement of churches;
• altars, choirs, crypts, chapels, screens, ambulatories, and processional spaces;
• the circulation of liturgical books, chants, calendars, ceremonial practices, and monastic customs;
• episcopal and monastic networks as channels for the transmission of ritual and architectural practices;
• pilgrimage routes, relic translations, shrines, and transregional saints’ cults;
• the material consequences of devotion to saints such as Michael, Nicholas, Thomas Becket, and Catherine of Alexandria;
• royal, aristocratic, episcopal, and monastic burial practices;
• monumental tombs, mausolea, burial chapels, inscriptions, and funerary imagery;
• dynastic memoria, anniversaries, necrologies, commemorative foundations, and the liturgy of the dead.

The Route des Normands ssociation, founded at the initiative of the Normandy Region, is a French non-profit association governed by the Law of 1 July 1901, formally declared to the French prefectural authorities in mars 2026 and headquartered at the Abbaye-aux-Dames in Caen. Its founding members are the Normandy Region, the British Council, Ireland’s National Monuments Service, Jersey Heritage Trust, and Guernsey Museums. Building on Millennium 2027 – European Year of the Normans, the Association is establishing the historical, scientific, and institutional foundations of the Route des Normands, with a view to its certification as a Cultural Route of the Council of Europe. The initiative also benefits from the support and prospective involvement of regions in southern Italy, whose historical and cultural heritage forms an essential component of the wider Norman world. Its Scientific Committee brings together university professors with recognised expertise in Norman studies and related fields, drawn from participating institutions across France, England, Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Italy.

The sessions will contribute to the historical and scholarly foundations of the Route des Normands as a network of interconnected sites, collections, sacred landscapes, and cultural practices.

Submission of Proposals

Proposals are invited from scholars working on the history, material culture, and religious life of the Norman worlds. Papers may focus on a building, work of art, manuscript, patron, institution, burial site, or cult, provided that the case study is situated within a clearly defined itinerary or network, or linked to a historically plausible mechanism of transmission.

Submissions should include a title, an abstract of no more than 350 words, a short biography of no more than 100 words, institutional affiliation, contact details, and four or five keywords.

Papers will be either 15 or 20 minutes long. Selected proposals will be organised into linked 90-minute sessions and submitted to the IMC Programming Committee.

Please send proposals by 14 September 2026 to:
Giacomo D’Andrea

Session Organiser :
Route des Normands Association, Normandy Region
giacomo.dandrea@normandie.fr