L'Agenda des Médiévistes

We increasingly encounter medieval books as digital facsimiles—zooming in on high-resolution images, clicking through virtual pages, or engaging with interactive displays. But what actually happens when a parchment manuscript is translated into a digital object? How does this change affect our understanding of cultural heritage?

This book explores the digital medieval manuscript as a unique cultural artifact, not just a copy of its physical counterpart. Through three case studies, it reveals how digital manuscripts function in libraries, museums, and scholarship today. Blending manuscript studies with digital humanities, it offers a fresh materialist approach to the discourse surrounding the digitisation of cultural heritage and provides a nuanced view of how it shapes the way we perceive, handle, and preserve medieval manuscripts in an increasingly digital world.

Suzette van Haaren is a postdoc in the CRC Virtuelle Lebenswelten at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Her research reflects on the impact of the increasing digitisation (and virtualisation) of historical heritage. She is interested in the Middle Ages in contemporary media contexts.

Table des matières :

Preface and Acknowledgements
List of Figures

1 Introduction
 1 Digital Codicology
 2 A Word on Terminology
 3 The Whole Book
 4 Digital Material
 5 It’s a Matter of Time
 6 Outline and Structure

2 The Bury Bible: Exploring Mediation, Materiality and Digitisation
 1 Introduction
 2 An Institutional and Environmental History of the Bury Bible
 3 A New Presence: Capturing the Bury Bible for Digital Space
 4 Conclusion
 3 Reproduction, Fragmentation and Dissemination of Der naturen bloeme (kb, ka16)
 1 Introduction
 2 The Book of Nature in Copies
 3 The Digital Fragment and Hyper-expansion of ka16
 4 Conclusion

4 The Sustainable Prayer Book of Mary of Guelders
 1 Introduction
 2 The Interrupted Life of the Prayer Book of Mary of Guelders
 3 Preserving the Fragile: Sustainability for Parchment and Pixel
 4 Conclusion

5 Conclusions
 1 Digital Codicology  2 Making
 3 Using
 4 Keeping
 5 Time
Bibliography
 Primary Sources
 Literature
Index

Informations pratiques :

Suzette van Haaren, The Digital Medieval Manuscript. Material Approaches to Digital Codicology, Leyde–Boston, Brill, 2025 ; 1 vol., XIV–250 p. (Studies in Art & Materiality, 10). ISBN : 978-90-04-70573-9. Prix : € 109,00.

Source : Brill

La basilique Saint-Sernin de Toulouse s’enorgueillit depuis le XIVe siècle de posséder le corps entier de Jacques le Majeur, qui lui aurait été donné par Charlemagne. Le copieux dossier qui documente ces reliques toulousaines comportant nombre d’incertitudes, l’autorisation de faire ouvrir la châsse et le chef-reliquaire de saint Jacques a été sollicitée afin de vérifier authentiques, ossements et objets conservés. Cet ouvrage livre ces résultats et les met en perspective, en croisant les analyses historiques, archéologiques et littéraires, afin d’essayer de comprendre dans le temps long l’investissement d’une société dans un corps réputé saint et dans le légendaire qui lui est associé.

Ouvrage réalisé sous la direction de Michelle Fournié Professeur émérite d’histoire du Moyen Âge à l’Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès et Fernand Peloux, chargé de recherche au CNRS. Membres du comité scientifique des Cahiers de Fanjeaux, ils mènent des recherches sur l’histoire religieuse de l’Occitanie médiévale.

Avec les contributions d’A. Brix, C. Chapelain de Séréville-Niel, J. Catalo, Q. Cazes, H. Débax, C. Fernandez, M. Fournié, M. Gaude-Ferragu, N. Guyard, P. Henriet, K. Herbers, G. Kazan, C. Léglu, É. Nadal, F. Peloux, M. Raguin, I. Réal, J. Reyniers et D. Watin-Grandchamps.

Table des matières : ici

Informations pratiques :

Saint Jacques, Toulouse et Charlemagne. Histoire, Légendes et reliques, éd. Michelle Fournié, Fernand Peloux, Arcambal, Édicausse, 2025 ; 1 vol., 330 p. Prix de souscription : € 22,00.

Source : Édicausse

Utiliser les données biologiques pour reconstruire le passé est une tentation ancienne. Il y a bientôt un siècle, de tels efforts ont conduit directement aux théories racistes et nazies. Des risques que les avancées de la génétique peuvent amplifier. L’historien Patrick Geary, spécialiste international du haut Moyen Âge, propose ici une introduction inédite aux principes et fondements de la recherche génétique en histoire, en soulignant les apports phénoménaux des sciences biologiques et leurs limites.
Pour en donner la preuve, il présente quelques-uns des principaux résultats d’une étude intégrée de cinq ans sur le bassin des Carpates (Autriche, Slovénie, Hongrie). Cette voie de passage essentielle vers l’Italie, conquise par les Huns, les Lombards, les Avars et les Slaves, apparaît comme un métissage complexe d’individus. L’historien en retrace les transformations pendant cinq siècles, en documentant les arrivées et les remplacements de populations venues d’Europe ou d’Asie. Une illustration magistrale des fruits de la collaboration entre spécialistes des humanités et des sciences naturelles. Et d’une méthode qui, loin de réduire le passé humain à des modèles statistiques, renforce l’importance des choix humains, des traditions culturelles et des stratégies de résilience et de survie.

Patrick J. Geary est professeur émérite d’histoire médiévale à l’Institute for Advanced Study de Princeton et professeur émérite d’histoire à l’université de Californie (Los Angeles). Il est l’auteur entre autres de La Mémoire et l’Oubli à la fin du premier millénaire (Flammarion, 1996) et de Quand les nations refont l’histoire. L’invention des origines médiévales de l’Europe (Flammarion, 2011).

La première séance du séminaire d’Histoire et Anthropologie du haut Moyen Âge de Paris1 aura lieu le jeudi 16 octobre 2025 de 15h à 17h en salle Perroy (Sorbonne, galerie JB Dumas, esc R 2e étage).

Patrick Geary (IAS, Princeton) viendra présenter son nouvel ouvrage Comment la génétique réécrit l’histoire du Moyen Âge à paraître chez CNRS Editions le 9 octobre 2025.

Informations pratiques :

Patrick J. Geary, Comment la génétique réécrit l’histoire du Moyen Âge, Paris, CNRS Éditions, 2025 ; 1 vol., 176 p. ISBN : 978-2-27115-537-5. Prix : € 23,00.

Source : CNRS Éditions

Pinning down Byzantium (or East Rome) is as difficult today as it was for contemporaries during its 1,000-year-long existence. Dimitri Obolensky sought to characterize its impact on Eastern Europe in his classic The Byzantine Commonwealth, focusing on the elements of religious doctrine, rites, and law which ruling elites there took from the emperor acting in tandem with the Constantinopolitan patriarchate. Chapters in this volume, Revisiting the Byzantine Commonwealth, address such basic questions as who the Byzantines thought they were and how they managed to maintain their hegemonial stance for so long. Other chapters reappraise the uses of Byzantium to elites and also to other sectors of societies from the Upper Adriatic to the Volga. Surveys are offered of three spheres which functioned independently of (and in one case, expressly in antithesis to) Byzantium, yet which overlapped and were constantly interacting with it—the Latin west, the Islamic-Christian east, and the world of the steppes. Candidates for ‘Commonwealth membership’ can be found within these spheres, too, along with transregional networks which functioned regardless of political borders. Aspects of Byzantium appealed to the variegated societies and cultures around it in very different ways, with the imperial elite taking keen interest in neighbouring peoples and making the most of Soft Power as material resources dwindled from the thirteenth century on. Some periods of outsiders’ engagement with the empire were short-lived, but others proved long-lasting, underpinned by ecclesiastical institutions and monastic networks. The volume aims to foster a more rounded approach to the phenomenon of Byzantium, and a better understanding of how and why it impinges on so many Eurasian cultures and polities to this day.

Jonathan Shepard is a Research Associate at the Faculty of History, University of Oxford and was for many years University Lecturer in Russian History at the University of Cambridge.

Peter Frankopan is Professor of Global History at the University of Oxford, where he is Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research and Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford. He is also UNESCO Professor of Silk Roads Studies and a Bye-Fellow at King’s College, Cambridge.

Table des matières :

1:The Byzantine Phenomenon
Part I. WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE?
2:Byzantine Globalism: The Power of Attraction
3:Commonwealth, Empire, or Nation-State?
4:What Did It Mean to Be ‘Roman’ in Byzantium?
5:Commonwealth of Elect Nations: A Contradiction in Terms?
6:Identity through Language in the Byzantine Commonwealth
7:Keeping Up Appearances: Byzantine Perspectives of ‘Legality’ and the Italians
Part II. HOW DO THEY DO IT?
8:Laying Down the Law in Byzantium: Law-Making and Adjudication
9:Identity, Law, and Beards: Judicial Shaving in Byzantium, c.600-900
10:A Taktikal Retreat?: Middle Byzantine Provincial Administration Revisited
11:Byzantium’s Empires of Gold
12:The Patriarchate of Constantinople and Its Register: Documents, Agents, and Interconnectivity
13:The Byzantine Visual Commonwealth
BORDERLINE CASES
14:Attracting Elites from the Empire’s Periphery
15:Byzantine ‘Zomia’?: Spaces of Refusal between Centre and Periphery, 500-1200
16:’As Though from India Itself’: Stories of Byzantium
17:Byzantino-Turkish Diplomacy and the Loss of Western Asia Minor, 1260-1335
18:Agents of Commercial and Diplomatic Exchange: Amalfitans in Byzantium in the Tenth to Twelfth Centuries
19:Imagining Byzantium in Norse Romance
The Latin West
20:Frankish Commonwealth or Imperium Romanum?: The Empire in the West, 750-1500
21:Parallel Spheres: Monasticism East and West c.1000-1500
22:Alignment, Entanglement, and Antagonism: Byzantium and the West
23:The Byzantinization of the Roman Church under Innocent II (1130-1143)
24:Byzantium and the Crusades
PART V. THE ISLAMIC-CHRISTIAN EAST AND BEYOND
25:Byzantium, Rum, and the bilad al-Islam
26:Looking East: Early Christian Art beyond Christian Hegemony
27:Melkite Translations of Byzantine Law-Books into Arabic
28:Art and Eschatological Empire between the Islamic East, Byzantium, and Latin Christendom: Sultan Baybars I’s Mausoleum in Damascus
29:Romans, Egyptians, and the Second Arab Siege of Constantinople (717/18)
30:The Byzantine Commonwealth: A View from the East
Part VIA. Obolensky’s Commonwealth
31:Reclaiming the Balkans: A Study in Byzantine Soft Power
32:Bulgaria-Prime Candidate for Byzantine Commonwealth Membership?
33:A Virtual Empire?: Byzantium and the Eastern Adriatic Coast
34:Before Byzance après Byzance: The Making of Wallachia and the Byzantine Political Toolkit
35:Languages of Art
36:Finding the Frontiers of the Commonwealth
Part VIb. Obolensky’s Commonwealth
37:On Rus and the Commonwealth: Old Questions in the Light of Some New Studies
38:Early Rus Political Culture versus Byzantine Law: Reconciling Two Contradictory Ideologies
39:The Reluctant Empire
40:Byzantine Literature in the Slav World: Serendipity or Intention?
41:Non-elite Church Contacts between Byzantium and Rus in the Palaiologan Period
Part VII. Steppe Changes
42:The Typology of the Nomad State in Western Eurasia
43:From War to Peace in Medieval Steppe Empires
44:Boundaries and Bonds: Khazaria and the Commonwealth
45:Bargaining with Byzantium: The North Caucasian Kingdom of Alania and the Empire
46:Triangles into Spheres: Trade, Faith, and the Palaiologan Balancing Act after 1261
47:Epilogue

Informations pratiques :

Revisiting the Byzantine Commonwealth: Nodes, Networks, and Spheres, éd. Jonathan Shepard and Peter Frankopan, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2025 ; 1 vol., 768 p. (Oxford Studies in Byzantium). ISBN : 978-0-19886-409-7. Prix : GBP 143,00.

Source : Oxford University Press