L'Agenda des Médiévistes

Space matters. It situates our history, structures our daily lives, and often determines what we can and cannot do. Borders are central to this reality. Tools and symbols of separation, power, and identity, they bring people together as much as they set them apart. This book explores how borders were understood, made, and encountered at the end of the Middle Ages, and what they can tell us about the spatial fabric of society at the threshold of modernity. It shows that pre-modern borders were nothing like the fuzzy lines they are typically made out to be, that border-making was rarely a top-down process and should instead be studied as an interactive endeavour, and that space was shaped by communities far more than states in this period.

At its core, Borders and the Politics of Space in Late Medieval Italy is the account of a frontier which would mark the Italian peninsula for centuries, that between the territories of the Duchy of Milan and those of the Republic of Venice. But it is also a study of how rulers and subjects alike defined spaces they could call their own. Luca Zenobi combines methods from several disciplines and applies them to a range of evidence from twenty different libraries and archives, including theoretical treatises and pragmatic records, written chronicles and cartographic visualisations, private documents and official correspondence. The cast of characters is equally eclectic, featuring influential thinkers and pragmatic statesmen, zealous factions and clumsy bureaucrats, hopeless beggars and ambitious princes. On the border, their stories intersect and reveal their part in a shared history.

Luca Zenobi is a historian of Italy, Europe, and the Mediterranean world between 1300 and 1600. Having read history and trained as an archivist in Milan, he moved to Oxford for his PhD and then to Cambridge, where he was a research fellow at Trinity College and an affiliated lecturer in the Faculty of History. He is now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Edinburgh, funded by the British Academy. His work has appeared in publications such as Quaderni Storici, the Journal of Early Modern History, and Past & Present.

Table des matières :

List of Figures
List of Abbreviations
Note on Usage
Introduction
1:Iurisdictio in Practice: Cultures of Space, Borders, and Power
2:War and Peace: The Establishment of a New Political Geography
3:Confinium Compositio: Territorial Disputes and the Making of Borders
4:From Macro to Micro and Back Again: Constructing Borders in the Localities
5:Borders as Sites of Mobility: Crossing External Frontiers and Internal Boundaries
6:Committing Borders to Paper: Written Memory and Record-Keeping
7:Drawing the Line? The Visual Representation of Territorial B/orders
Conclusion
Bibliography
General Index
Index of Names

Informations pratiques :

Luca Zenobi, Borders and the Politics of Space in Late Medieval Italy. Milan, Venice, and their Territories, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2023 ; 1 vol., 288 p. ISBN : 978-0-19887-686-1. Prix : GBP 83,00.

Source : Oxford University Press

Et si l’on pouvait retrouver des pièces chantées dans les corpus poétiques ? Réinterpréter la place de la poésie et relire le théâtre en analysant autrement leur articulation à la musique ? Littéraires et musicologues étudient dans ce volume les liens entre poésie et musique autour de 1500.

Table des matières : ici

Informations pratiques :

Poésie et Musique au temps de Louis XII, dir. Adeline Desbois-Ientile, Alice Tacaille, Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2023 ; 1 vol., 334 p. (Rencontres, 580 ; Colloques, congrès et conférences sur la Renaissance européenne, 121). ISBN : 978-2-406-14674-2. Prix : € 34,00.

Source : Classiques Garnier

From the nineteenth century onwards, historians described the Middle Ages as the « cradle » of the nation state—then, after World War II, they increasingly identified the period as the « cradle » of Europe. A close look at the sources demonstrates that both interpretations are misleading: while « Europe » was not a rare word, its use simply does not follow modern expectations. This volume contrasts modern historians’ constructions of « Europe in the Middle Ages » with a fresh analysis of the medieval sources and discourses. The results force us to recognize that medieval ideas of ordering the world differ from modern expectations, thereby inviting us to reflect upon the use and limits of history in contemporary political discourse.

Klaus Oschema is Professor in Late Medieval History at the Ruhr-University Bochum. He researches medieval concepts of social, geographic, and political order. Recent publications include Order into Action (ed., with C. Mauntel, 2022).

Table des matières :

Preface and Acknowledgements

Chapter 1: Why Europe? A Concept Crossing History and Politics

Chapter 2: Foundations in Antiquity

Chapter 3: Moments of Transformation—Europe in the Early Middle Ages

Chapter 4: Europe, Christianity, or Something Completely Different? Impressions from the Central Middle Ages

Chapter 5: Our Last Hope? Entangling Europe and Christianity in the Late Middle Ages

Chapter 6: Perspectives from Outside? Byzantium and the Arabic World

Conclusion: No Roadmap for Europe—History, Politics, and the Way to Global History

Further Reading

Informations pratiques :

Klaus Oschema, “Europe” in the Middle Ages, Leeds, ARC Humanities Press, 2023 ; 1 vol., 136 p. (Past Imperfect). ISBN : 978-1-64189-159-2. Prix : GBP 16,95.

Source : ARC Humanities Press

En réunissant sous ce titre l’histoire de deux seigneuries de notre région, nous avons espéré montrer les ressources que contiennent encore les archives particulières, dont le dépouillement méthodique donnerait certainement des renseignements précieux pour l’histoire de la féodalité, l’histoire des mœurs et de la vie rurale, l’histoire économique.

L’histoire des institutions seigneuriales en France, de la fin du Moyen Âge à la Révolution, reste à faire. Des travaux d’ensemble sur ce sujet ne peuvent s’appuyer que sur un très grand nombre d’études de détail sur les documents que le ravage du temps a épargnés. Nous avons essayé d’y apporter notre modeste contribution.

Jean Ramière de Fortanier 1932.

Ce travail, demeuré jusqu’alors inédit, a été récompensé en 1932 par le prix Ourgaud de la Société Archéologique du Midi de la France.

Informations pratiques :

Jean Ramière de Fortanier, Deux baronnies du Haut-Languedoc. Les derniers neveux de Jean XXII (Histoire des barons de La Pomarède) & Un domaine des Bernuy en Lauragais (Villeneuve-la-Comptal), Castelnaudary, Centre Lauragais d’Études Scientifiques, 2023 ; 1 vol., 60 p. Prix de souscription : € 4,00.

Centre Lauragais d’Études Scientifiques
Maison des Associations
1 av du Mal de Lattre de Tassigny
11400 Castelnaudary
clescastel@gmail.com

Between the end of the Roman Empire in the fifth century and the economic transformations of the twelfth, coined money in western Europe was scarce and high in value, difficult for the majority of the population to make use of. And yet, as Rory Naismith shows in this illuminating study, coined money was made and used throughout early medieval Europe. It was, he argues, a powerful tool for articulating people’s place in economic and social structures and an important gauge for levels of economic complexity. Working from the premise that using coined money carried special significance when there was less of it around, Naismith uses detailed case studies from the Mediterranean and northern Europe to propose a new reading of early medieval money as a point of contact between economic, social, and institutional history.

Naismith examines structural issues, including the mining and circulation of metal and the use of bullion and other commodities as money, and then offers a chronological account of monetary development, discussing the post-Roman period of gold coinage, the rise of the silver penny in the seventh century and the reconfiguration of elite power in relation to coinage in the tenth and eleventh centuries. In the process, he counters the conventional view of early medieval currency as the domain only of elite gift-givers and intrepid long-distance traders. Even when there were few coins in circulation, Naismith argues, the ways they were used—to give gifts, to pay rents, to spend at markets—have much to tell us.

Rory Naismith is professor of early medieval English history at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Corpus Christi College. He is the author of Early Medieval Britain, c. 500–1000, Citadel of the Saxons: The Rise of Early London, and Money and Power in Anglo-Saxon England: The Southern English Kingdoms, 757–865.

Informations pratiques :

Rory Naismith, Making Money in the Early Middle Ages, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2023 ; 1 vol., 540 p. ISBN : 978-0-69117-740-3. Prix : USD 45,00.

Source : Princeton University Press

Throughout the long history of Irish monasticism, the experience of women monastics has, until recently, been relatively sidelined. A desire to redress this inspired the decision in 2021 to dedicate the fifth Glenstal History Conference to exploring the various ways in which women responded to the monastic and ascetic vocation in medieval and early modern Ireland. Whether as practitioners or as patrons, women found creative and dynamic ways to pursue their calling as ‘Brides of Christ’ between the fifth and the seventeenth centuries, often in the face of tremendous difficulties and challenges. Their lives of prayer and service are sometimes hard to glimpse but the combined interdisciplinary perspectives of these essays brings them into sharper focus. The collection also demonstrates the current vitality of research on this topic and includes contributions by both established and emerging scholars.

The volume is dedicated to Dr Dagmar Ó Riain Raedel in recognition of her outstanding contribution to Irish and European medieval history and, in particular, to the study of medieval Irish-German monastic relations.

Contributors: Tracy Collins (National Monuments Service); Bishop Anne Dyer (diocese of Aberdeen and Orkney); Abbess Máire Hickey OSB (Kylemore Abbey); Elva Johnston (UCD); Colm Lennon (MU); Marian Lyons (MU); Bronagh McShane (NUIG); Colmán Ó Clabaigh OSB (Glenstal Abbey); Dagmar Ó Riain Raedel (ind.); Cathy Swift (Mary Immaculate College, UL); Yvonne Seale (SUNY, Geneseo).

Tracy Collins is an archaeologist with the National Monuments Service and a founding director of Aegis Archaeology Limited, a heritage consultancy. Bronagh Ann McShane is a historian of women, religion and confessionalization. Her book, Irish women in religious orders, 1530–1700, was published in 2022. Martin Browne and Colmán Ó Clabaigh are monks of Glenstal Abbey, Co. Limerick.

Table des matières :

Foreword
Abbess Máire Hickey OSB

Introduction
Tracy Collins & Bronagh Ann McShane

‘On the brink of the wave’: Towards an archaeology of female religious in early medieval Ireland
Tracy Collins

Locating female saints and their foundations in the early medieval Irish martyrologies
Elva Johnston

Soul sisters: Two Irish holy women in their late antique context
Catherine Swift

The other peregrinatio: Pilgrim nuns in medieval Regensburg and their Irish connections
Dagmar Ó Riain-Raedel

Putting women in order: A comparison of the medieval women religious of Ballymore-Loughsewdy and Prémontré
Yvonne Seale

Keeping it in the family: Familial connections of abbesses and prioresses of convents in medieval Ireland
Mary Ann Lyons

Marginal figures? Quasi-religious women in medieval Ireland
Colmán Ó Clabaigh OSB

Sisters of the priory confraternity of Christ Church, Dublin, in the late middle ages
Colm Lennon

Who were the nuns in early modern Ireland?
Bronagh Ann McShane

Epilogue
Brides of Christ: Ladies of fame and women worthy of praise
Bishop Anne Dyer

Informations pratiques :

Brides of Christ Women and monasticism in medieval and early modern Ireland, éd. Martin Browne OSB, Tracy Collins, Bronagh Ann McShane & Colmán Ó Clabaigh OSB, Dublin, Four Court Press, 2023 ; 1 vol., 248 p. ISBN : 978-1-80151-022-6. Prix : € 45,00.

Source : Four Court Press

This volume celebrates the storied career of Stephen N. Fliegel, the former Robert Bergman Curator of Medieval Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA). Authors of these essays, all leading curators in their fields, offer insights into curatorial practices by highlighting key objects in some of the most important medieval collections in North America and Europe: Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Louvre, the British Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, the Getty, the Groeningemuseum, The Morgan Library, Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, and, of course, the CMA, offering perspectives on the histories of collecting and display, artistic identity, and patronage, with special foci on Burgundian art, acquisition histories, and objects in the CMA.

Elina Gertsman is Professor of Art History and Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan Professor in Catholic Studies II at Case Western Reserve University. She is the author and editor of numerous books and articles, including a catalogue, produced in collaboration with Stephen N. Fliegel, for an exhibition featuring the CMA’s Gothic table fountain.

Table des matières : ici

Informations pratiques :

Collectors, Commissioners, Curators Studies in Medieval Art for Stephen N. Fliegel, éd. Elina Gertsman, Berlin–Boston, De Gruyter, 2023 ; 1 vol., XVII–267 p. (Early Drama, Art, and Music). ISBN : 978-1-50152-110-2. Prix : € 112,95.

Source : De Gruyter

Découverte sur le territoire de la commune de Pont-à-Celles en province de Hainaut (Belgique), la nécropole mérovingienne de Viesville a bénéficié en 2005 et 2006 d’une fouille intégrale menée par l’Agence wallonne du Patrimoine, avec le concours du CReA-Patrimoine de l’Université libre de Bruxelles et de l’asbl Recherches et Prospections archéologiques. L’opération archéologique préventive conduite sur ce site a révélé cent quarante-cinq sépultures datées entre le dernier quart du ve et les premières années du VII^e siècle. Implantée non loin de la voie Bavay-Cologne et de l’ancienne agglomération romaine de Liberchies, elle succède de toute évidence à une nécropole romaine dont subsistent deux tombes à incinération datées du III^e siècle. 

Les défunts, inhumés dans un cercueil en bois, sont accompagnés d’un mobilier abondant et varié : accessoires vestimentaires, bijoux, armes, ustensiles et outils du quotidien, récipients en verre ou en céramique. Toutes ces découvertes ont bénéficié d’une recherche approfondie menée avec le concours de pas moins de treize chercheurs spécialisés dans la période concernée. Cette approche pluridisciplinaire offre un nouveau regard sur la richesse des échanges, plus particulièrement au vie siècle, entre la communauté installée à Viesville et son environnement proche d’une part, mais également avec des régions plus éloignées comme le pourtour de la mer Baltique, le Proche-Orient, la Mésopotamie et l’Inde. 

Mise en perspective dans son contexte historique et archéologique régional, la nécropole de Viesville constitue un nouveau jalon dans la connaissance de l’occupation alto-médiévale en Wallonie.

Table des matières : ici

Informations pratiques :

Gaëlle Dumont, La Nécropole mérovingienne de Pont-à-Celles/Viesville, Namur, Agence Wallonne du Patrimoine, 2023 ; 2 vol., 243 p. (Études et documents. Archéologie, 46). ISBN : 978-2-39038-182-2. Prix € 40,00.

Source : AWaP