L'Agenda des Médiévistes

Funerals were among the most extravagant princely ceremonies in Europe. At the end of the Middle Ages, they were grandiose affairs, carefully recorded, bringing together the emotions of both Court and People. The Renaissance heightened their effect, adding surprising elements borrowed from an Antiquity which was largely re-invented. The seventeenth century introduced ephemeral displays, elaborately constructed castrum doloris, dressed up with lavish facades and interior designs which transformed these sanctuaries into theatrical funeral pyres.

Historians, anthropologists, and political scientists have long been interested in this subject, as can be seen from Ralph Giesey’s celebrated work Le Roi est mort. Art historians have been attracted to the surviving decorations of tombs and funerary chapels. Yet historians of spectacle and of its ephemera have, hitherto, somewhat neglected a topic which is — nonetheless — at the heart of their concerns: with their elaborate settings, their costumes and decors, princely funerals challenge theatre and opera.

It is within this context that experts from many disciplines attempt to trace the evolution of funeral ceremonies, which were much less static than is generally believed; to expose the gifts of the masters of these solemn occasions (and, indeed, of their predecessors, the heralds) who constantly devised subtle ways of capturing the attention of spectators and moving their emotions. These essays have tried to cover not only a wide time spectrum but also to reveal the variety and range of such ceremonies devised in diverse European Courts as well as unravelling the innovations which underlay fashions which had multiple international repercussions.

Monique Chatenet (Docteur HDR in History of Art, conservateur en chef honoraire du Patrimoine)is the author of numerous books and articles on the topics of French architecture of the Renaissance and the life of the court in the Sixteenth Century, including Chambord (2001) and La cour de France au XVIe siècle. Vie sociale et architecture (2002). She has edited many studies on these subjects and published numerous articles on sixteenth-century royal and princely funerals.

Murielle Gaude Ferragu (Agrégée en histoire et docteur ès lettres, is maître de conférences à l’université Paris – XIIIe, Sorbonne-Paris-Cité, and junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France). She is a specialist on princely funerals in Europe, having published her thesis on the topic in 2005, D’or et de cendres. La mort et les funérailles des princes dans le royaume de France au bas Moyen Age. She also works on women in power, (La Reine au Moyen Age, XIV-XVe siècle, 201

Gérard Sabatier (Docteur d’Etat, professeur émérite des Universités – ancien professeur d’histoire moderne à l’Université Pierre Mendès France Grenoble II – président du comité scientifique du Centre de Recherche du Château de Versailles) has participated in the Research programme Genèse de l’Etat moderne (Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1985-1986, which became the Fondation Européenne de la Science, 1989-1992). His principal publications are Versailles ou la figure du roi (1999); Le Prince et les arts. Stratégies figuratives de la monarchie française de la Renaissance aux Lumières (2010); as editor, Claude-François Ménestrier. Les jésuites et le monde des images (2009); and with M. Torrione, Louis XIV espagnol? Madrid et Versailles: Images et modèles (2009); with J. Chroscicki and M. Hengerer, Les Funérailles princières en Europe XVIe-XVIIIe siècle: vol. 1, Le Grand Théâtre de la mort (2012); vol. 2, Apothéoses monumentales (2013); vol. 3, La mémoire, le deuil et la politique (2015). With Beatrix Saule, he was the organiser of the exhibition at Versailles of Le roi est mort, 26 oct. 2015 – 21 feb. 2016.

Table des matières :

Acknowledgements, List of Illustrations, Editors and Contributors

Introduction. The Changing Face of Funerals (1400–1700) — Monique Chatenet, Murielle Gaude-Ferragu, and Gérard Sabatier

Part I. Fifteenth Century, edited by Murielle Gaude-Ferragu

Chapter 1. The Funerary Rite of the Papacy at the End of the Middle Ages—Agostino Paravicini Bagliani
Chapter 2. ‘The Body of the Prince’: Royal and Princely Funerals in Fifteenth-Century France—Murielle Gaude-Ferragu
Chapter 3. The Funerals of the Dukes of Burgundy in the Fifteenth Century — Alain Marchandisse
Chapter 4. English Royal Funerals in the Fifteenth Century —Joel Burden
Chapter 5. Death and Funerals of German Emperors, Kings, and Princes in the Fifteenth Century — Mikhail Boytsov
Chapter 6. Between Visconti and Sforza: Notes on the Funeral Ceremonies of the Dukes of Milan in the Fifteenth Century — Maria Nadia Covini
Chapter 7. The Funerals of the Dukes of Savoy in the Fifteenth Century: Between Austerity and Splendour —Eva Pibiri

Part II. Sixteenth Century, edited by Monique Chatenet

Chapter 8. Funerary Rites and Mysteries held in connection with Treatises on Ancient Funerals in Sixteenth-Century France —Marie Madeleine Fontaine
Chapter 9. Royal and Princely French Funerals in the Sixteenth Century —Monique Chatenet
Chapter 10. Double Funerals and Funeral Effigies in Italian States—Giovanni Ricci
Chapter 11. The Funeral of Charles V — Alain Marchandisse

Part III. Seventeenth Century, edited by Gérard Sabatier

Chapter 12. The Funerals of Louis XIII and Louis XIV —Gérard Sabatier
Chapter 13. Great Funerals in a Little State: Francesco I and Alfonso IV d’Este at Modena (1659 and 1663) —Giovanni Ricci
Chapter 14. Philip IV of Spain: Projecting Royal Majesty through Funeral Ceremonial — Maria Adelaida Allo Manero
Chapter 15. The Funeral of Maurice of Hesse-Kassel (1632): Dynastic or Denominational Theatre?—Naïma Ghermani
Chapter 16. Staging the Queen’s Funeral in Seventeenth-Century Denmark: The Case of Sophie Amalie of Brunswick-Lüneburg — Birgitte B. Johannsen
Index

Informations pratiques :

Princely Funerals in Europe, 1400-1700. Commemoration, Diplomacy, and Political Propaganda, éd. Monique Chatenet, Murielle Gaude-Ferragu, Gérard Sabatier, Turnhout, Brepols, 2020 (European Festival Studies: 1450-1700). 365 p., 60 b/w ill. + 21 colour ill., 178 x 254 mm. ISBN : 978-2-503-58743-1. Prix : 90 euros.

Source : Brepols

Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium takes a fresh look at documentary forgery and historical memory in the Middle Ages. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, religious houses across Europe began falsifying texts to improve local documentary records on an unprecedented scale. As Levi Roach illustrates, the resulting wave of forgery signaled major shifts in society and political culture, shifts which would lay the foundations for the European ancien régime.

Spanning documentary traditions across France, England, Germany and northern Italy, Roach examines five sets of falsified texts to demonstrate how forged records produced in this period gave voice to new collective identities within and beyond the Church. Above all, he indicates how this fad for falsification points to new attitudes toward past and present—a developing fascination with the signs of antiquity. These conclusions revise traditional master narratives about the development of antiquarianism in the modern era, showing that medieval forgers were every bit as sophisticated as their Renaissance successors. Medieval forgers were simply interested in different subjects—the history of the Church and their local realms, rather than the literary world of classical antiquity.

A comparative history of falsified records at a crucial turning point in the Middle Ages, Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium offers valuable insights into how institutions and individuals rewrote and reimagined the past.

Levi Roach is associate professor of medieval history at the University of Exeter. He is the author of Kingship and Consent in Anglo-Saxon England and Æthelred the Unready. Twitter @DrLRoach

Informations pratiques :

Levi Roach, Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2021. 360 p. ISBN : 9780691181660. Prix : $45.00 / £38.00.

Source : Princeton University Press

Au sortir de la guerre civile catalane de 1462-1472, Barcelone, principale cité de Catalogne et grand port méditerranéen, entre dans une phase de reconstruction. Le roi Ferdinand le Catholique transforme les modalités d’entrée au gouvernement municipal, formalise l’accès à la noblesse et implante dans la ville une nouvelle Inquisition sous contrôle royal. Affecté également, le haut clergé cherche sa place, et les chanoines de la cathédrale en particulier tâchent d’assurer leur implantation au sein des pouvoirs urbains en recomposition. Au croisement de l’histoire canoniale et de l’histoire urbaine, cette étude montre comment, au-delà de leurs attributions religieuses, évêques et chanoines, pleinement intégrés à l’élite dirigeante de la ville, sont amenés à jouer un véritable rôle dans la vie publique d’une cité en pleine mutation.

Table des matières :

Préface d’Élisabeth Crouzet-Pavan et Denis Menjot

Introduction

PREMIÈRE PARTIE. LE CHAPITRE DANS LA VILLE

Chapitre premier. — La cathédrale un centre de pouvoir au sortir de la guerre
Chapitre II. — La cathédrale et les institutions municipales

DEUXIÈME PARTIE. LES CHANOINES DANS LA VILLE

Chapitre III. — Être chanoine à Barcelone
Chapitre IV. — Contrôler le canonicat

TROISIÈME PARTIE. LES CHANOINES ET LES RÉSEAUX DE POUVOIR

Chapitre V. — Les chanoines à la croisée des réseaux
Chapitre VI. — Un pouvoir informel dans la ville

Conclusion. — Les chanoines entre l’Église et la ville

Annexe
Sources et bibliographie

Informations pratiques :

Julia Conesa Soriano, Entre l’Église et la ville. Pouvoirs et réseaux des chanoines de Barcelone (1472-1516), Madrid, Casa de Velazquez, 2021 (Bibliothèque de la Casa de Velázquez, n° 80). XVIII-347 p., 17 x 24 cms. ISBN 9788490963074. Prix : 25 euros.

Source : Casa de Velazquez

This book tells a story of serendipity. Two Christian monks left China about 1274, headed to Jerusalem. Travelling on an itinerary similar to that of Marco Polo, they reached Iran, ruled by a Mongol dynasty, the Ilkhans. There, what they never had expected happened: one of them, Mark by name, was elected Patriarch of the Church of the East (with the name Yahballaha), while the other, Rabban Sauma, was sent as ambassador to the pope and to the courts of France and England by the Ilkhan Arghun.
From Rabban Sauma’s report of his embassy, and the two monk’s memories of their journey from China to Mesopotamia, an anonymous author compiled a biography of Sauma and Mark. He interspersed their report and memories with a narrative about “the occurrences of their time – what happened to them, through them or because of them, relating everything just as it happened”.

The result was a chronicle titled “History of Mar Yahballaha and Rabban Sauma”, of which a single manuscript was discovered in the late nineteenth century in the remote mountains of Hakkari (Eastern Turkey). The “History” is one of the more recent examples of classical Syriac literature, a major Christian literary tradition of the Near East.

While the encounter with two Asian “Marco Polos” of sorts constitutes the “History”’s most immediate element of appeal for present-day readers, the work deserves to be read in its entirety, as a rich and lively testimony of a time of unprecedented interconnectedness in the history of Eurasia in the time of the Mongol Empire.

Informations pratiques :

History of Mar Yahballaha and Rabban Sauma, éd. et trad. Pier Giorgio Borbone, terdition, 2020. 17 x 24 cm, 424 p. ISBN : 978-3-7497-1296-0. Prix : 26 euros.

Source : Tredition

Accès : ici

Numérique et études médiévales: enjeux pédagogiques et formation par la recherche, dans Memini. Travaux et documents, 26, 2020.

Table des matières :

Kouky Fianu et Hélène Noizet Avant-propos [Texte intégral]

Élodie Attia, Maria Gurrado et Anne Mailloux — Les caractères discrets de l’écriture : paléographie quantitative à l’âge du numérique

Pierre Chastang et Davide Gherdevich — PolimaWiki : un Wiki sémantique pour l’analyse de listes au Moyen Âge, limites et apports [Texte intégral]

Julie Claustre et Élisabeth Lusset — Concevoir un web-documentaire historique. Retour sur l’expérience du web-documentaire Le cloître et la prison [Texte intégral]

Kouky Fianu, Hélène Noizet et Laurent Costa — Numérique, médiéval et international : SIG et métiers du livre à Paris (1292‑1300) [Texte intégral]

Severin Konin — Apports et limites du numérique dans l’enseignement de l’histoire médiévale à l’Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny d’Abidjan [Texte intégral]

Source : Memini

Medieval Considerations of Incest, Marriage, and Penance focuses on the incest motif as used in numerous medieval narratives. Explaining the weakness of great rulers, such as Charlemagne, or the fall of legendary heroes, such as Arthur, incest stories also reflect on changes to the sacramental regulations and practices related to marriage and penance. Such changes demonstrate the Church’s increasing authority over the daily lives and relationships of the laity. Treated here are a wide variety of medieval texts, using as a central reference point Philippe de Rémi’s thirteenth-century La Manekine, which presents one lay author’s reflections on the role of consent in marriage, the nature of contrition and forgiveness, and even the meaning of relics. Studying a variety of genres including medieval romance, epic, miracles, and drama along with modern memoirs, films, and novels, Linda Rouillard emphasizes connections between medieval and modern social concerns. Rouillard concludes with a consideration of the legacy of the incest motif for the twenty-first century, including survivor narratives, and new incest anxieties associated with assisted reproductive technology.

Linda Marie Rouillard is Professor of French, Chair of World Languages and Cultures, University of Toledo, USA.

Informations pratiques :

Linda Marie Rouillard, Medieval Considerations of Incest, Marriage, and Penance, Palgrave MacMillan, 2020. VIII + 303 p., ISBN : 978-3-030-35602-6. Prix : 79,49 euros.

Source : Palgrave MacMillan

Comment se « fabriquent » les formes urbaines ? Loin de se focaliser sur les grands projets, l’ouvrage est centré sur les processus de production de la ville ordinaire, à l’origine de la grande majorité des tissus anciens et contemporains.

De quoi est fait ce que l’on appelle communément « la ville » ? Comment se construit dans la longue durée l’espace urbain ? Quels sont les rapports entre morphologie urbaine et fonctionnement social ? Cet ouvrage propose de répondre à ces questions en explorant les mécanismes de la fabrique urbaine. Les formes urbaines sont ici analysées dans une double perspective : celle de leur fabrication par des pratiques sociales qui varient sans cesse et, en retour, celle de leur influence sur le fonctionnement social.

Ouvrage publié avec le soutien du Laboratoire de Médiévistique Occidentale de Paris (LaMOP, UMR 8589, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) et du Laboratoire Environnement-Ville-Société (UMR 5600, Université de Lyon).

Informations pratiques :

Faire ville. Entre planifié et impensé, la fabrique ordinaire des formes urbaines, par Anne-Sophie Clémençon et Hélène Noizet, Paris, Presses universitaires de Vincennes, 2021. 464 p. ISBN : 9782379241345. Prix : 29 euros.

Source : Presses universitaires de Vincennes