L'Agenda des Médiévistes

In the year 802, an elephant arrived at the court of the Emperor Charlemagne in Aachen, sent as a gift by the ʿAbbasid Caliph, Harun al-Rashid. This extraordinary moment was part of a much wider set of diplomatic relations between the Carolingian dynasty and the Islamic world, including not only the Caliphate in the east but also Umayyad al-Andalus, North Africa, the Muslim lords of Italy and a varied cast of warlords, pirates and renegades. The Emperor and the Elephant offers a new account of these relations. By drawing on Arabic sources that help explain how and why Muslim rulers engaged with Charlemagne and his family, Sam Ottewill-Soulsby provides a fresh perspective on a subject that has until now been dominated by and seen through western sources.

The Emperor and the Elephant demonstrates the fundamental importance of these diplomatic relations to everyone involved. Charlemagne and Harun al-Rashid’s imperial ambitions at home were shaped by their dealings abroad. Populated by canny border lords who lived in multiple worlds, the long and shifting frontier between al-Andalus and the Franks presented both powers with opportunities and dangers, which their diplomats sought to manage.

Tracking the movement of envoys and messengers across the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean and beyond, and the complex ideas that lay behind them, this book examines the ways in which Christians and Muslims could make common cause in an age of faith.

Sam Ottewill-Soulsby is a senior researcher at the University of Oslo.

Informations pratiques :

Sam Ottewill-Soulsby, The Emperor and the Elephant: Christians and Muslims in the Age of Charlemagne, Princeton, Princeotn University Press, 2023 ; 1 vol., 392 p. ISBN : 978-0-69122-796-2. Prix : USD 39,95.

Source : Princeton University Press

The landscape around us is largely the result of man-made transformations. It consists of villages, farmsteads, cities, fields, ditches, and roads. This book examines how the landscape of the Mediterranean country of Catalonia was created and transformed. Although Catalonia’s history goes back before the Middle Ages, it was during the medieval period that it saw significant development, which has continued ever since. Understanding the landscape helps us understand political, social, economic, and cultural changes. In this book we discover how the settlements built around a castle or a church were created, and what the open villages and new towns were like, both in Catalonia and in neighbouring territories. The book also explores the formation of cities and towns as well as the significance of hamlets and farmsteads, based on data provided by written documents and archaeological excavations. It also explores the formation of fields, ditches, and irrigated areas, and shows the importance of understanding the boundaries and demarcations that enclose valleys, villages, castles, and parishes. Finally, special attention is devoted to place names and cartography, as these shed light on numerous historical realities.

Table des matières :

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Houses Become a Village: The Villages of the Pyrenees

Chapter 3: Churches, Monasteries, and Villages: In Each Village a Church

Chapter 4: Castles and Castral Villages: The incastellamento of the Landscape

Chapter 5: New Towns and Complex Settlements

Chapter 6: Hamlets and Farmsteads: The Dispersal of the Population

Chapter 7: The Medieval Towns and Cities: The Other Side of the Medieval Landscape

Chapter 8: Cultivated Land: The Relevance of Pre-Medieval Past

Chapter 9: Coombs, Terraces, Concentric Forms, and Land Strips

Chapter 10: Irrigated Land, Rivers, and Lakes

Chapter 11: The Importance of Mills, Iron, and Salt

Chapter 12: Woodland and Pastureland: Changes in Vegetation and Environment

Chapter 13: Roads and Pathways, the Network that Organizes the Landscape

Chapter 14: Boundaries and Territories: A Country Full of Old Borders

Chapter 15: The Importance of Toponymy

Chapter 16: Mapping the Historical Landscape

Conclusion: Studying Historic Landscapes Bridges Gaps Between the Past and the Present

Glossary

Works Cited

Index of Personal Names

Index of Place Names

Index of Subjects

Informations pratiques :

Jordi Bolòs, The Historic Landscape of Catalonia. Landscape History of a Mediterranean Country in the Middle Ages, Turnhout, Brepols, 2023 ; 1 vol., 469 p. (The Medieval Countryside, 23). ISBN : 978-2-503-60305-6. Prix : € 110,00.

Source : Brepols

This volume offers a substantial and versatile contribution to the history and culture of the late-medieval Carthusians in England. The nine essays presented here focus primarily on the double charterhouses built on the outskirts of London, at Smithfield and Sheen. Syon Abbey, the Bridgettine house which stood a short distance from Sheen, and was founded at the same time, is also drawn into the conversation because of its sympathetic and practical links to the Carthusians. Particular attention is paid to the London Charterhouse. This institution is revaluated here as an engineered and ornamented structure, a sanctuary nourished by books and texts, a beacon of religion, a theatre of devotion and political manoeuvres and, in the wake of its dissolution, both a dwelling-place for affluent citizenry and a lieu de mémoire for the English Carthusians in exile.

Julian Luxford is a professor of Art History at the University of St Andrews. His main research interests are medieval art and architecture, the history of medieval books, and the history of the principal monastic orders. He has published a number of essays on Carthusian art, architecture, and books, and edited Studies in Carthusian Monasticism in the Late Middle Ages (2008). He is most recently also editor of The Medieval Book as Object, Idea and Symbol (2021), Tributes to Paul Binski: Medieval Gothic – Art, Architecture and Idea (2021), and of The Founders’ Book: A Medieval History of Tewkesbury Abbey, a facsimile of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Top. Glouc. d. 2 (2021).

Table des matières :

llustrations
Abbreviations

James P. Carley • Preface
Julian Luxford • Introduction

Part 1: The Material Record
Julian Luxford • The London Charterhouse: Iconography, Buildings, and Art
Glyn Coppack • Water and the Carthusians: The Contribution of the London Charterhouse to Knowledge of the Order’s Plumbing

Part 2: Spiritual Writings and Textual Transmission
Marlene Villalobos Hennessy • British Library, MS Egerton 1821: Devotional Practice and Book Production at the London Charterhouse
Michael G. Sargent • The Transmission by the English Carthusians of Some Late-Medieval Spiritual Writings: A Reconsideration of Walter Hilton and Nicholas Love
Vincent Gillespie • Preaching to the Choir: Another Look at English Carthusian Transmission of Vernacular Spiritual Writings

Part 3: Religious Conscience, Politics, and Afterlife
Ann M. Hutchison • United in Devotion and Martyrdom: The English Carthusians and Bridgettines and Their Fate
Diarmaid MacCulloch • The End of the Carthusians at the London Charterhouse
James P. Carley • After the Dissolution: John Leland and His Neighbours in Charterhouse Square
Peter Cunich • Maurice Chauncy and the Burdens of the English Reformation

Epilogue
Martyn Percy • A Eucharist for Martyrs: “A Fragrant Offering and Sacrifice” – A Sermon Preached at the London Charterhouse on 3 September 2016

Contributors 
Index 

Informations pratiques :

The Capital’s Charterhouses and the Record of English Carthusianism, éd. Julian Luxford, Turnhout, Brepols, 2023 ; 1 vol., XVI–300 p. (Papers in Mediaeval Studies, 36). ISBN: 978-0-88844-836-1. Prix : € 97,00.

Source : Brepols

Une enquête sur la gabelle du sel dans la vallée du Rhône au temps de Louis IX (Arch. nat., JJ 267)
Au mois de septembre 1263, une enquête est lancée dans la sénéchaussée de Beaucaire sur les rives et les usages du Rhône à la demande du roi de France Louis IX. La procédure est motivée par la mise en place et l’augmentation d’un nouvel impôt, prélevé sur le sel par le comte de Provence Charles Ier d’Anjou. Cette taxe, appelée gabelle, était levée à Albaron, un port situé au sud de la ville d’Arles, sur la rive gauche du Petit-Rhône. Le prélèvement a des répercussions importantes sur les routes commerciales et sur l’économie des deux rives. Dans cette région, en effet, le sel était depuis des siècles l’un des produits les plus transportés et les plus échangés et sa remontée par le fleuve depuis la Méditerranée représentait un intérêt économique majeur pour les seigneurs locaux.

Cependant, au fil des pages, il apparaît que l’enjeu de cette procédure dépasse largement les polémiques sur le montant des redevances, le contrôle des postes de péage ou les injustices et violences perpétrées par les officiers du comte de Provence. Le statut juridique des rives, des îles, de tout ce qui se trouve dans le fleuve ainsi que le contrôle des eaux courantes deviennent en réalité des questions centrales et visent à construire une superioritas royale sur le fleuve et les territoires qui lui sont adjacents. L’édition et l’analyse critique de ce texte peuvent ainsi contribuer à jeter un regard neuf sur l’histoire politique de la basse vallée du Rhône tout au long du XIII^e siècle.

Simone Balossino est maître de conférences en histoire médiévale à l’université d’Avignon et membre du CIHAM, Histoire, Archéologie, Littératures des mondes chrétiens et musulmans médiévaux (UMR 5648).

Informations pratiques :

Simone Balossino, La force et le droit. Enquête sur la gabelle du sel dans la vallée du Rhône au temps de Louis IX, Paris, CNRS, Éditions, 2023 ; 1 vol., 300 p. (Documents, études et répertoires). ISBN : 978-2-27114-614-4. Prix : € 75,00.

Source : CNRS Éditions

In many countries in Northern and Eastern Europe, the period after 1000 saw the emergence of new Christian kingdoms. This process was soon reflected in works of historiography that traced the foundation and development of the new polities. Many of these texts had a lasting impact on the formation of political, ethnic, and religious identities of these states and peoples.

This volume deals with some of these earliest histories narrating the past of the new polities that had emerged after 1000 in Northern, East Central, and Eastern Europe, as well as in the Adriatic regions. They have often been understood as ‘national histories’, but a closer look brings out the differences in their aims and construction. One question addressed here is to what extent these historians built on models of identification developed in earlier historiography. The volume provides an overview of several fundamental texts in which identities in the new Christian kingdoms were negotiated, and of recent research on these texts.

Walter Pohl is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the University of Vienna and former Director of the Institute for Medieval Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Veronika Wieser works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Medieval Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Francesco Borri, Department of Humanities, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

Table des matières :

Introduction: The Historiography of New Peoples and Polities in Northern and Eastern Europe— WALTER POHL and VERONIKA WIESER

Scandinavian and Baltic Origins
Adam of Bremen’s Use of Earlier History
IAN WOOD
National Identity in Scandinavian Chronicles (Saxo and Snorri)
SVERRE BAGGE
Orkney, Óláfr Tryggvason, and the Conversion to Christianity
ROSALIND BONTÉ
Biblical Motifs and the Shaping of Ethnic Categories in the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia
STEFAN DONECKER and PETER FRAUNDORFER

Cosmas of Prague, the Gesta principum Polonorum, and their Western Contexts
The Legenda Christiani, the Chronica Bohemorum, and the Bohemian Slavs
PAVLÍNA RYCHTEROVÁ
Space and Identity in the Chronica Bohemorum of Cosmas of Prague
JAN HASIL
Helmold of Bosau and our Reading of his Chronica Slavorum
JAN KLÁPŠTĚ
Creating Dynastic Identity: Gallus Anonymus’s Chronicle
ZBIGNIEW DALEWSKI
‘By the Crown of My Empire! The Things I Behold Are Greater than I Had Been Led to Believe!’: The Narrative Pattern Sheba Visits Salomon in Medieval Narratives (Gallus’s Chronicle, Chronicon Salernitanum, and Pèlerinage de Charlemagne)
JACEK BANASZKIEWICZ

Hungarian Origins and their Political Uses
Hungarian Origins and Carolingian Politics in Regino of Prüm’s Chronicle
MAXIMILIAN DIESENBERGER
Us and Them: The Description of Foreigners and Indigenous Peoples in Master P.’s and Simon of Kéza’s Gesta (Thirteenth Century)
DÁNIEL BAGI
Christian Identity versus Heathendom: Hungarian Chroniclers Facing the Pagan/Nomadic Past and the Present
LÁSZLÓ VESZPRÉMY

Histories of Origins from the Adriatic and the Balkans
Circles of Identity: The Narratives of Thomas of Split and Domnius de Cranchis of Brač
NEVEN BUDAK
Grado as Aquileia Nova and Split as Salona Nova? Local Historiography and Local Identity
PETER ŠTIH
Patria Venecia: John the Deacon’s Search for Venetian Origins
FRANCESCO BORRI
The ‘Dioclean Tradition’ in Serbian Literature of the Early Thirteenth Century
ALEKSANDAR UZELAC

The Rus’ Primary Chronicle, the Old Testament, and the Byzantine Background
The Debate over Authorship of the Rus’ Primary Chronicle: Compilations, Redactions, and Urtexts
DONALD OSTROWSKI
Creating Time, Forging Identity, Building a State:
The Primary Chronicle of Rus’
OLEKSIY TOLOCHKO
Historiography of the New Europe: Comparative Perspectives
WALTER POHL

Index

Informations pratiques :

Historiography and Identity V: The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000-1300, éd. Walter Pohl, Veronika Wieser, Francesco Borri, Turnhout, Brepols, 2023 ; 1 vol., XIV–501 p. (Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, 31). ISBN : 978-2-503-58849-0. Prix : € 125,00.

Source : Brepols

Il volume raccoglie gli atti di un convegno interdisciplinare, svoltosi a Roma nel 2021, che ha riunito alcuni tra i più noti studiosi di Roma medievale. I contributi, a seguito di un ampio confronto, permettono di delineare le caratteristiche delle strade dell’Urbe medievale: una complessa e peculiare trama viaria che connetteva tra loro palazzi, case, un numero eccezionale di chiese, orti e vigne, mescolati alle antiche rovine o sorti direttamente su di esse, in un’intricata compresenza di testimonianze di una gloria passata ma anche di un vivace presente. Di tale trama, grazie all’analisi dei resti materiali e delle fonti, si analizzano e ricostruiscono da un lato la consistenza fisica e di immagine, dai manti stradali ai fronti delle case, fino agli elementi di ‘arredo urbano’ più o meno progettato, tra cui gli spolia che attiravano curiosità o anche ammirata celebrazione; dall’altro la vita sociale che per le strade si svolgeva, da alcune tra le più significative cerimonie religiose della cristianità fino agli atti della vita quotidiana.

Table des matières :

• Lia Barelli, Manuela Gianandrea, Susanna Passigli, L’occasione di un convegno, la genesi di un volume
• Domenico Palombi, Sacra via vs via Sacra. Persistenza e trasformazione di un percorso cerimoniale tra età antica e medioevo
• Federico Guidobaldi, Cuncta prospera, cuncta salubria in Urbe. Il rialzamento dei livelli stradali al tempo di papa Pasquale II e altre osservazioni sulla viabilità urbana
• Hendrik Dey, Strade e rovine a Roma nel medioevo: le forme di una compresenza
• Giulia Facchin, Riccardo Santangeli Valenzani, Dal vicus ad Carinas a via del Tempio della Pace. Trasformazione di una strada nel medioevo
• Robert Coates-Stephens, Statue antiche nelle strade di Roma altomedievale
• Annarena Ambrogi, Le fontane romane nel medioevo. Continuità d’uso delle vasche e dei labra di età imperiale
• Ottavio Bucarelli, Scritture esposte nello spazio pubblico della Roma medievale
• Orietta Lanzarini, Le strade raccontano. I frammenti antichi nel tessuto viario di Roma medievale attraverso i disegni di età umanistica
• Andreas Rehberg, Stemmi ed epigrafi come segni di demarcazione nelle strade della Roma tardomedievale
• Daniela Esposito, Strade e cripte nell’area del campus Agonis
• Maria Grazia Ercolino, Nuove percorrenze nell’area del Foro di Traiano tra X e XI secolo
• Michele Asciutti, La strada a Roma nella sua realtà materiale, dalle tecniche di realizzazione ai problemi della carrabilità e delle acque
• Lia Barelli, Le facciate come luogo dell’interazione tra spazi interni ed esterni: case e strade di Roma medievale
• Andrea A. Verardi, Tra topografia e memoria dello spazio urbano: le strade di Roma nel Liber Pontificalis
• Cristina Carbonetti Vendittelli, Il Comune di Roma e la salvaguardia delle strade tra XIII e XIV secolo
• Susanna Passigli, La strada negli atti notarili romani
• Giulia Barone, Le vie della Roma bassomedievale come luogo della socialità
• Anna Modigliani, Le vie e le piazze del commercio nella Roma tardomedievale
• Andrea Fara, Il Tevere quale via di trasporto, luogo di produzione e spazio commerciale a Roma nel medioevo 251
• Francesca Alhaique, Luca Brancazi, Bufali e altri strani incontri animali per le strade di Roma e non solo
• Manuela Gianandrea, Strada e chiesa a Roma nel medioevo: riflessioni su un rapporto articolato
• Simone Piazza, Un’arte ostentata: decorazioni musive sulle facciate delle chiese di Roma (IV-XIV secolo)
• Claudia Bolgia, La via Lata e la via Maior tra processioni e trasformazioni dello spazio urbano nei secoli XII-XIV: nuovi dati e nuove proposte
• Sante Guido, La strada a Roma come luogo di culto: immagini e suppellettili sacre in processione
• Giorgia Maria Annoscia, Monica Ceci, Leggere le iscrizioni per rileggere le strutture: S. Nicola de’ Calcarario lungo la via Papalis
• Maurizio Caperna, Donatella Fiorani, La distruzione del tessuto medievale a Roma tra XIX e XX secolo. Una proposta di metodo per restituire la consistenza della forma medievale della città 339
• Bibliografia
• Summaries
• Autrici e autori

Informations pratiques :

Viae Urbis. Le strade a Roma nel medioevo, éd. Lia Barelli, Manuela Gianandrea, Susanna Passigli, Rome, Viella, 2023 ; 1 vol., 404 p. (I libri di Viella. Arte). ISBN : 978-8-83313-871-8. Prix : € 55,00.

Source : Viella