Koziol uncovers the dense meanings of early medieval rituals of supplication in France, illuminating the complex changes in social relations and political power in the tenth and eleventh centuries.
For decades, medieval scholarship has been dominated by the paradigm that women who wielded power after c. 1100 were exceptions to the “rule” of female exclusion from governance and the public sphere. This collection makes a powerful case for a new paradigm. Building on the premise that elite women in positions of authority were expected, accepted, and routine, these essays traverse the cities and kingdoms of France, England, Germany, Portugal, and the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem in order to illuminate women’s roles in medieval power structures. Without losing sight of the predominance of patriarchy and misogyny, contributors lay the groundwork for the acceptance of female public authority as normal in medieval society, fostering a new framework for understanding medieval elite women and power.
Central to current understandings of medieval history is the concept of political ritual, encompassing events from coronations to funerals, entries into cities, civic games, banquets, hunting, acts of submission or commendation, and more. ''Ritual?'' asks Philippe Buc. In The Dangers of Ritual he boldly argues that the concept shouldn't be so central after all. Modern-day scholars, gently seduced by twentieth-century theories of ritual, often misinterpret medieval documents that ostensibly describe such events, in part because they fail to appreciate the intentions behind them. The book begins with four case studies whose arrangement--backward from texts on tenth-century kingship to fourth-century representations of Christian martyrdom--allows for the line of development to be peeled back layer by layer. It then turns to an analysis of the formation of the intellectual traditions that contemporary historians have employed to interpret medieval documents. Tracing the emergence of the concept of ritual from the Reformation to the mid-twentieth century, Buc highlights the continuities yet also the profound transformations between the early medieval understandings and our own, social-scientific models. Medieval historians will find this book an indispensable resource for its insights into methodological issues crucial to their discipline. As Buc demonstrates, only rigorous attention to the contexts within which authors worked can allow us to reconstruct from medieval documents how ''rituals'' might have functioned. Ultimately, he argues, too swift an application of contemporary models to highly complex textual artifacts blinds us to the specificities of early medieval European political culture.
Focuses on one of the most attractive features of late medieval manuscript illumination: the portrait of the book owner at prayer within the pages of her prayer-book.
Drawing on the dynastic conflict in medieval Poland this book shows how important it is for comprehension of medieval political culture to consider the complex functions of rituala "as a tool shaping political relations both in the realm of practical politics, and on the level of narrative material by which those relations were described.
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.
More than sixty friends and colleagues pay tribute to the distinguished professor János Bak's 70th birthday. Notable contributors from many countries dedicate previously unpublished essays and articles in this celebratory Festschrift. Reflecting the intellectual calibre of János Bak, scholars not only of medieval history, but also from the fields of modern history, philosophy, linguistics, art history and political science provide a broad range of perspectives on a wide range of disciplinary areas thus allowing a wide readership audience.
The Great Schism divided Western Christianity between 1378 and 1417. Two popes and their courts occupied the see of St. Peter, one in Rome, and one in Avignon. Traditionally, this event has received attention from scholars of institutional history. In this book, by contrast, Joëlle Rollo-Koster investigates the event through the prism of social drama. Marshalling liturgical, cultural, artistic, literary and archival evidence, she explores the four phases of the Schism: the breach after the 1378 election, the subsequent division of the Church, redressive actions, and reintegration of the papacy in a single pope. Investigating how popes legitimized their respective positions and the reception of these efforts, Rollo-Koster shows how the Schism influenced political thought, how unity was achieved, and how the two capitals, Rome and Avignon, responded to events. Rollo-Koster's approach humanizes the Schism, enabling us to understand the event as it was experienced by contemporaries.