L'Agenda des Médiévistes

Il Duecento è stato forse il secolo di maggiore sperimentazione nella storia dell’architettura medievale italiana. Il suo racconto è avventuroso, perché include edifici straordinari come la basilica di Assisi, il battistero di Parma, i castelli di Federico II nel Mezzogiorno, i palazzi pubblici delle città, le grandi cattedrali di Siena, di Firenze e di Orvieto. Politicamente instabile e frammentata, dal punto di vista artistico l’Italia è un mosaico che racchiude tessere multiformi: sperimentazioni, ibridazioni, flussi di committenze. Nel Duecento, fanno la loro comparsa fenomeni che trovano proprio in Italia la loro origine, come l’architettura degli ordini mendicanti e la promozione pubblica dei palazzi comunali. Con Federico II e la committenza dei papi l’arte diventa manifestazione di autorità contrapposte che utilizzano gli edifici come un veicolo di propaganda e di affermazione. L’architettura si fa strumento potente nelle mani di chi detiene il potere.

Carlo Tosco insegna Storia dell’architettura al Politecnico di Torino. Con il Mulino ha pubblicato anche «Il paesaggio come storia» (2017²), «I beni culturali» (2014), «L’architettura medievale in Italia. 600-1200» (2016), «Andare per abbazie cistercensi» (2017) e «Storia dei giardini» (2018).

Informations pratiques :

Carlo Tosco, L’architettura italiana nel Duecento, Bologne, Il Mulino, 2021 (Le vie della civiltà). pp. 376, Brossura, 978-88-15-29421-0. Prix : 25 euros.

Source : Il Mulino

The book revolves around some of the most important relics of Christendom — chief among them the Crown of Thorns — and the ways in which they became, effectively, personal objects of devotion, notwithstanding their ostensibly universal appeal. It was France that laid claim to the Passion and other relics in the middle of the thirteenth century in a campaign that involved the construction of a new magnificent chapel — the Sainte-Chapelle — designed specifically to display the relics, and the composition of new liturgies to celebrate and focus attention on them. As inert objects, relics could not accomplish much without being ‘activated’ one way or the other, whether in prose, poetry, paintings, statues, or in music. It is these modes of activation that endowed the substance of relics with identity and meaning that made them so powerful and effective. The liturgies studied in this book were some of the most critical mechanisms of activation; they enabled the power of the Sainte-Chapelle relics, articulated the nature of that power, and proclaimed it far and wide. Nowhere is this more evident than in the sequences memorializing these relics, which were chiefly cultivated and championed at the Sainte-Chapelle. This book examines these sequences, and the ways in which they give prominence to the underlying agenda of the French monarchy by promoting and naturalizing the notion of sacral kingship, rooted in biblical kingship.

Table des matières :

List of Illustrations, Acknowledgements, List of Manuscript Sigla, Abbreviations, A Note on the Transcriptions and Translations

IntroductionPart I. The Crown of Thorns Historia susceptionis coronae spinaeThe Liturgy for the Crown of Thorns Sequences for 11 August and its OctaveEpilogue: Dyadema salutare – A Dominican Addition and its ImportConclusionsPart II. The Reception of Relics

• Relics in Motion
• The Liturgy for the Reception of the Relics
• Sequences for 30 September and its Octave
• Conclusions

Appendices

1. The Main Sources for the Sainte-Chapelle Liturgy
2. Manuscript Sources of the Crown Mass Propers
3. Manuscript Sources of the Crown Sequences
4. Manuscript Sources of the Relics Sequences
5. Synopsis of the Crown Sequences
6. Synopsis of the Relics Sequences
7. The Historia Susceptionis Coronae Spineae:Text and Translation
8. Lessons for the Reception of Relics

Bibliography

Index

Informations pratiques :

Yossi Maurey, Liturgy and Sequences of the Sainte-Chapelle. Music, Relics, and Sacral Kingship in Thirteenth-Century France, Turnhout, Brepols, 2021 (Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, 35). 252 p., 4 colour ill. + 21 Musical Examples, 27 b/w tables, 156 x 234 mm. ISBN: 978-2-503-59105-6. Prix : 80 euros.

Source : Brepols

Trafficking with Demons explores how magic was perceived, practiced, and prohibited in western Europe during the first millennium CE. Through the overlapping frameworks of religion, ritual, and gender, Martha Rampton connects early Christian reckonings with pagan magic to later doctrines and dogmas. Challenging established views on the role of women in ritual magic during this period, Rampton provides a new narrative of the ways in which magic was embedded within the foundational assumptions of western European society, informing how people understood the cosmos, divinity, and their own Christian faith.

As Rampton shows, throughout the first Christian millennium, magic was thought to play a natural role within the functioning of the universe and existed within a rational cosmos hierarchically arranged according to a « great chain of being. » Trafficking with the « demons of the lower air » was the essense of magic. Interactions with those demons occurred both in highly formalistic, ritual settings and on a routine and casual basis. Rampton tracks the competition between pagan magic and Christian belief from the first century CE, when it was fiercest, through the early Middle Ages, as atavistic forms of magic mutated and found sanctuary in the daily habits of the converted peoples and new paganisms entered Europe with their own forms of magic. By the year 1000, she concludes, many forms of magic had been tamed and were, by the reckoning of the elite, essentially ineffective, as were the women who practiced it and the rituals that attended it.

Informations pratiques :

Martha Rampton, Trafficking with Demons. Magic, Ritual, and Gender from Late Antiquity to 1000, Ithaca, Cornell UP, 2022 (Culture & Cultural Studies, Medieval & Renaissance Studies). 480 p. ISBN : 9781501702686. Prix : USD 65,00.

Source : Cornell University Press

The work focuses on the Mongol conquest and domination of Caucasia in the 13th century, from the Sea of Azov in the north to present-day Georgia and Armenia.

While sedentary civilizations and nomadic cultures had a long history of interaction in this region, the Mongol conquest made it into a frontier in which Medieval Europe and Asia became more intensely integrated and interconnected. The Mongols made Caucasia into a coherent power based on both European and Asian experiences and traditions. The genesis of this deeply transformational process constitutes the central theme of this book.

Lorenzo Pubblici, Ph.D. (2005, University of Florence), is Full Professor of History and Anthropology and Chair of the Department of Humanities and Liberal Arts (DHLA) of the Santa Reparata International School of Arts (SRISA) in Florence where he has been a faculty member since 2006. He is the scientific director of CeSecom (Center for Studies on Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages) and the editor in chief of the book series Europe in between. Histories, cultures and languages from Central Europe to the Eurasian Steppes published by the Florence University Press. Prof. Pubblici has published monographs and is author of numerous articles on the Mongol history, especially on the history of the Golden Horde in the 13th and 14th centuries.

Table des matières : ici

Informations pratiques :

Lorenzo Pubblici, Mongol Caucasia. Invasions, Conquest, and Government of a Frontier Region in Thirteenth-Century Eurasia (1204-1295), Leiden–Boston, 2022 (Brill’s Inner Asian Library, 41). 225 p., 24 x 16 cm. ISBN : 978-90-04-50352-6. Prix : € 100.

Source : Brill

Regino of Prüm (ca. 840–915), after being deposed as abbot of Prüm, became a notable musical theorist, historical chronicler, and student of the canons. His Two Books on Synodal Causes and Ecclesiastical Disciplines have generally been seen as practical handbooks to be used in the decision of synodal cases. Although they may have been used in the course of episcopal visitations, they are not to be read as limited to such use. They are to be regarded primarily as a pedagogical tool, intended to remedy an ignorance of the canonical tradition by the clerics in his part of the world. They are intended to be of use to all who have some position of responsibility within the Church and, ultimately, to every member of the Church. They are meant to help form every Christian, but particularly those clerics who have the responsibility to issue judgments and hear confessions in the Church, and to develop in them a disciplined discernment and a habit of addressing issues as they arise in personal and community life in the light of Scripture and of the long experience of the Church. They are brilliantly arranged around the device of questionnaires which fosters a case-based and tentative approach to the resolution of problems while avoiding abstraction and striving to mitigate legalism. The work was influential in its own region, but obtained much greater resonance through its eventual absorption into the Decretum of Burchard of Worms, thus affecting the whole Western canonical tradition.

Informations pratiques :

Regino of Prüm, Two Books on Synodal Causes and Ecclesiastical Disciplines, trad. Giulio Silano, Turnhout, Brepols, 2021 (Mediaeval Sources in Translation, 60). VIII+366 p., 152 x 229 mm. ISBN : ISBN: 978-0-88844-310-6. Prix : 32,50 euros.

Source : Brepols

Bulletin de souscription : ici

(Note : il est finalement possible de souscrire par virement bancaire, pour les collègues qui n’ont pas de chéquier. Pour ce faire, il faut procéder au virement sur le compte dont les coordonnées sont indiquées dans le RIB ci-joint et il faut envoyer par courrier le bon détachable en y joignant la référence ou la preuve du virement bancaire ; contact par courriel au besoin : fernand.peloux@univ-tlse2.fr).

Cet ouvrage rassemble sous forme d’hommage onze articles écrits par Monique Goullet, choisis dans une bibliographie foisonnante. Latiniste renommée, Monique Goullet a consacré sa carrière scientifique à la littérature hagiographique du Moyen Âge qu’elle a contribué à rendre plus intelligible aux historiens. Après sa thèse sur le théâtre hagiographique de Hrosvita de Gandersheim, elle a édité et traduit de nombreux textes et a beaucoup œuvré, aux côtés de Michel Parisse, pour la défense et l’enseignement du latin médiéval à l’université. En 2005, elle a publié un ouvrage devenu classique, intitulé Écriture et réécriture hagiographiques : essai sur les réécritures de Vies de saints dans l’Occident latin médiéval (VIIIe-XIIIe s.), et elle a animé plusieurs recherches collectives et internationales. Parmi elles, la première étude et édition d’un des rares manuscrits hagiographiques du haut Moyen Âge conservés, le Légendier de Turin (2014).

Les textes rassemblés ici sont représentatifs des grands chantiers scientifiques qu’elle a ouverts, à l’intersection de la philologie et de l’histoire : ils interrogent d’abord les liens entre l’hagiographie, le théâtre et la poésie latines; ils permettent d’explorer l’hagiographie de l’espace lorrain au Moyen Âge central ; ils rappellent l’inscription de cette littérature dans un réseau intertextuel particulièrement dense. Enfin, ils invitent à une reprise ab ovo de la culture hagiographique mérovingienne, en étudiant les premiers manuscrits hagiographiques conservés en Occident. Tous témoignent de la richesse, de la rigueur et de la générosité avec lesquelles ces recherches ont été conduites ces trente dernières années.

Table des matières :

Introduction

Fernand Peloux

Bibliographie de Monique Goullet

Table des matières

Partie 1. Théâtre, poésie et hagiographie

Les Drames de Hrosvita de Gandersheim : une réécriture dramatique de récits hagiographiques. Poésie hagiographique et didactique de la poésie

Partie 2. Hagiographie lotharingienne

Adson hagiographe
La Vie de Léon IX par le Pseudo-Wibert : un clair-obscur hagiographique
La Vie d’Adelphe de Metz par Werinharius : une réécriture polémique ?

Partie 3. Topique hagiographique

Les catalogues de vertus dans les textes hagiographiques : entre topique et histoire Réécritures médiévales des miracles évangéliques
Quelle autorité pour une réécriture hagiographique ?

Partie 4. Hagiographie mérovingienne et premiers légendiers latins

Qu’est-ce qu’un texte hagiographique mérovingien ?
Conversion et passion d’Afra d’Augsbourg : réouverture du dossier et édition synoptique des versions longues et brèves
Les premiers légendiers latins et l’héritage grec

Indices
Tabula gratulatoria