L'Agenda des Médiévistes

Eleanor of Aquitaine (1124–1204), the legendary queen of France and later England, has captivated historians for centuries. Heiress to the duchy of Aquitaine, wife to King Henry II and mother to Richard the Lionheart and King John, her life was marked by power, influence and myth. This concise, accessible history sheds new light on Eleanor, cutting through the hearsay and slander with a close reading of primary sources. It highlights the family bonds that shaped her power and identity, tracing her roots to the Loire rather than the Occitan south. Lindy Grant demonstrates that Eleanor’s story is one of resilience: like Churchill, she saved England during a national crisis, though her political judgement could be equally erratic.

Informations pratiques :

Lindy Grant, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Woman, Queen and Legend, Londres, Reaktion Books, 2025 ; 1 vol., 224 p. ISBN : 978-1-83639-086-2. Prix : GBP 16,95.

Source : Reaktion Books

Terres, meubles, reliques, livres, archives, bijoux et robes, plantes, etc. Comment, sur autant d’objets, penser l’inventaire comme cette technologie de la maîtrise du monde par l’écrit? Comment saisir les contextes institutionnels et les circonstances (temps ordinaire du fonctionnement d’une administration ou contexte de crise politique) de la réalisation des inventaires ?

Dans une longue période allant du XIIIe siècle au XIXe siècle, et au sein de l’espace européen, l’ouvrage éclaire ainsi les objectifs de la production d’un inventaire, les opérations matérielles et intellectuelles sous-jacentes à sa mise en œuvre. Il explore par là même les logiques qui organisent l’accès aux données.

Table des matières : ici

Avec le soutien du Fonds national suisse pour la recherche scientifique.

Françoise Briegel est spécialiste d’histoire de la justice et de l’histoire matérielle.

Maria Pia Donato est directrice de recherche CNRS à l’Institut d’histoire moderne et contemporaine (CNRS/ENS-PSL/Paris 1). Elle est spécialiste de l’histoire culturelle et de l’histoire des sciences et de la médecine. 

Valérie Theis est professeure d’histoire du Moyen Âge à l’École normale supérieure (ENS-PSL, IHMC/UMR 8066). Elle mène ses recherches sur les pratiques de l’écrit et leurs liens avec les transformations des techniques de gouvernement.

Informations pratiques :

Logiques de l’inventaire. Moyen Âge-XIXe siècle, éd. Françoise Briegel, Maria Pia Donato, Valérie Theis, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2025 ; 1 vol., 366 p. (Art et Société). ISBN : 978-2-75359-543-9. Prix : € 28,00.

Source : Presses universitaires de Rennes

Pourquoi les paroles font-elles mal ? Quel mal spécifique les paroles méchantes infligent-elles ?

« Male bouche », le personnage du Roman de la Rose, est la figure tutélaire de cet ouvrage qui tente d’apporter des éléments de réponse à ces questions en analysant les raisons culturelles pour lesquelles, dans tel ou tel contexte historique, les meurtrissures infligées par la langue revêtent une signification particulière et en convoquant plusieurs objets d’étude, parmi lesquels le droit, la littérature, le théâtre, les pamphlets, les traités de civilité. Au-delà d’un noyau anthropologique constant, les passions tristes s’exprimant dans les paroles blessantes déterminent à chaque fois la façon dont l’oreille accueille ce qui est dit, tant ce que l’on doit dire dépend de ce que l’on peut entendre.

Le volume aborde la question en se concentrant sur trois moments saillants, en essayant d’en saisir les préoccupations les plus marquantes : la peur du mensonge au Moyen Âge ; le risque de la loquacité creuse à la Renaissance ; le détournement de la raison par les paroles malintentionnées à l’époque des Lumières.

Table des matières : ici

Fosca Mariani Zini est Professeure d’université HDR à l’Université de Tours, rattachée au laboratoire de recherche du Centre d’études supérieures de la Renaissance. Ses domaines de recherche portent sur la philosophie latine à Rome, la philosophie médiévale et humaniste, le platonisme et le néoplatonisme.

Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin est Professeure en études shakespeariennes à l’université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 et membre de l’IRCL, Institut de recherche sur la Renaissance, l’âge Classique et les Lumières (UMR5186 CNRS). Nombre de ses travaux portent sur l’injure et la mauvaise langue dans le monde de Shakespeare.

Ont contribué à ce volume : Joël Biard, Maïté Billore, Emily Butterworth, Giovanni Catapano, Jean-Pierre Cavaillé, Marie-Luce Demonet, Linda Gil, Agnès Lafont, Alice Lamy, Justine Le Floc’h, Corinne Leveleux-Teixeira, Fosca Mariani Zini, Fabrizio Meroi, Bernard Seve, Denis Thouard, Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, Gary Watt.

Informations pratiques :

La « malebouche ». Les paroles blessantes, du Moyen Âge à l’Âge des Lumières, éd. Fosca Mariani Zini, Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, Paris, Honoré Champion, 2025 ; 1 vol., 394 p. (Le savoir de Mantice, 35). ISBN : 978-2-74536-407-4. Prix : € 72,00.

Source : Honoré Champion

The series of rebellions against royal authority and the violent clashes between aristocratic families that occurred in England between 1455 and 1487 have long been characterized as the ‘Wars of the Roses’. Yet, far from being a continuous period of civil war, the Wars of the Roses were in fact an intermittent series of minor clashes, pitched battles, and sieges. These occurred against the backdrop of a demilitarization of the English aristocracy in the final years of the Hundred Years War.

Drawing on extensive archival research and a wide-ranging synthesis of the secondary literature, David Grummitt here reconsiders the nature of war and the martial culture of the English in the second half of the fifteenth century. He places these experiences within the peculiar legal, constitutional, and political culture of late Lancastrian and Yorkist England, to reexamine in depth the motivation for fighting, the raising and equipping of armies, the experience of battle and its aftermath, and the ways in which civil conflict was rationalized and memorialized. These experiences are compared and contrasted to that in its continental neighbours in an age of expanding royal authority, gunpowder weapons, and emergence of standing, professional armies. The book’s conclusions offer a new interpretation of the evidence for the size of armies and scale of conflict during these years, the weaponry and tactics employed, and the wider importance of war, chivalry, and martial culture in late medieval England.

In so doing, and by drawing on a range of new conceptual approaches in the fields of the history of emotions, material culture, and conflict archaeology, alongside other more traditional disciplinary approaches to military history, the book offers a thorough and fulsome history of the Wars of the Roses, one that properly integrates war and marital culture into our understanding of the political and cultural history of fifteenth-century England, and late medieval European military history more generally.

Table des matières :

1:Fifteenth-Century England: A Society Structured for War
2:The Wars of the Roses: Treason, Rebellion and Civil War
3:The Logistics of War: Armies and Weapons
4:The Practicalities of War: Training, Strategy and Preparation for Battle
5:The Experience of War: Tactics and Battle
6:The Aftermath of War: Death, Profit and Loss
7:The Legacy of War: Memorialization and History
Conclusion. An English Way of War?

Informations pratiques :

David Grummitt, The Wars of the Roses. War and Martial Culture in England, 1455–1487, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2025 ; 1 vol., 288 p. ISBN : 978-0-19895-891-8. Prix : GBP 84,00.

Source : Oxford University Press

This book examines African Latin Christianity from the fifth to the thirteenth century, exploring the complex interactions between local Christian communities and Vandals, Byzantines, and Arabs.

Focusing on the resilience of successive generations of African Christians and their capacity to adapt to challenging political circumstances, Marco Cristini delves into their relationships with local rulers, popes, and European sovereigns such as Charlemagne. He argues that the history of Augustine’s heirs represents a crucial phase in the transformation of the Mediterranean’s religious landscape during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. This book offers readers fresh insights into much-debated topics, including the role of religious otherness under the Vandals, Justinian’s religious policies, Christian-Muslim relations, and the impact of Western medieval missionaries on indigenous Christian communities. It also sheds light on the remarkable longevity of African Latin Christianity, demonstrating its ability to not only survive but also thrive under ‘heretical’ or ‘infidel’ rulers for nearly eight centuries.

With its accessible, in-depth, and comprehensive analysis, this book is an essential resource for scholars, postgraduates, and undergraduates interested in Late Antiquity, the Early Middle Ages, the history of North Africa, pre-modern Christianity, early Islam, and the Crusades.

Marco Cristini obtained his PhD at Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa, Italy). He subsequently held a fellowship at the University of Tübingen and at the Istituto Italiano di Storia Antica (Rome). He is currently Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Florence. He published a monograph on the second-last Ostrogothic king (Baduila: Politics and Warfare at the End of Ostrogothic Italy), as well as several papers on sixth-century Italy, Cassiodorus, Procopius of Caesarea, and early medieval diplomacy.

Table des matières :

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Vandal Kingdom: Confrontation and Coexistence

Chapter 2: Conquering Africa: Justinian’s Wars and the Three Chapters Controversy

Chapter 3: Gregory the Great and the African Church

Chapter 4: Monotheletism and the African Church

Chapter 5: The Islamic Conquest and its Impact upon African Latin Christianity

Chapter 6: Three Centuries of Silence? African Christians under Islamic Rule during the Early Middle Ages

Chapter 7: Leo IX, Gregory VII, and the Church of Africa

Chapter 8: The Almohads and the End of African Latin Christianity

Conclusion

Bibliography

Informations pratiques :

Marco Cristini, The Years of the Infidels. African Latin Christianity from the Vandals to the Almohads, Londres, Routledge, 2025 ; 1 vol., 270 p. ISBN : 978-1-03254-063-4. Prix GBP 108,00.

Source : Routledge