Rules and Rituals in Medieval Power Games
Rules and Rituals in Medieval Power Games

Author: Gerd Althoff

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-10-07

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 9004415319

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Gerd Althoff ́s new book collects fifteen of his more recent contributions, most of them previously published in German, which elucidate the functioning of prestate societies. Examples from the Frankish and later German realm (800-1200) are used to clarify how rules and political rituals governed behavior in the power games between kings, churchmen and nobles. Such rules (Spielregeln) and rituals guided public and private behavior despite the fact that they existed only as unwritten customs. The long-overlooked significance of this way of establishing order has sparked a vivid and controversial international discussion in the last decades which continues today.

Courtly Pastimes
Courtly Pastimes

Author: Gloria Allaire

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-11-25

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1000798887

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The modern concept of passing leisure hours pleasantly would, in the Middle Ages, have fallen under the rubric of Sloth, a deadly sin. Yet aristocrats of past centuries were not always absorbed in affairs of state or warfare. What did they do in moments of peace, "downtime" as we might call it today? In this collection of essays, scholars from various disciplines investigate courtly modes of entertainment ranging from the vigorous to the intellectual: hunting, jousting, horse racing; physical and verbal games; reading, writing, and book ownership. Favorite pastimes spanned differences of gender and age, and crossed geographical and cultural boundaries. Literary and historical examples come from England, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. Courtly Pastimes analyzes the underlying rationales for such activities: to display power and prestige, to acquire cultural capital, to instill a sense of community, or to build diplomatic alliances. Performativity − so crucial in social rituals − could become transgressive if taken to extremes. Certain chapters explore the spaces of courtliness: literal or imaginary; man-made, natural, or a hybrid of both. Other chapters concern materiality and visual elements associated with courtly pastimes: from humble children’s toys and playthings to elite tournament attire, castle murals, and manuscript illuminations.

Religious Rites of War beyond the Medieval West
Religious Rites of War beyond the Medieval West

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-11-10

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 9004686371

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This is Volume Two of a two-volume collection that brings together contributions from cultural and military history to offer an examination of religious rites employed in connection with warfare as well as their transformative and power- and identity-building potential across political communities of medieval Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe. Covering the period ca. 900 and 1500, the work takes theoretical, textual and practical approaches to the research on religious warfare, and investigates the connections between, and significance and function of crucial war rituals such as pre-, intra- and postbellum rites, as well as various activities surrounding the military life of individuals, polities, and corporates. Contributors are Robert Antonín, Robert Bubczyk, Dariusz Dąbrowski, Jesse Harrington, Carsten Selch Jensen, Sini Kangas, Radosław Kotecki, Gregory Leighton, Kyle C. Lincoln, Jacek Maciejewski, Yulia Mikhailova, Max Naderer, László Veszprémy, and Dušan Zupka.

Peacemaking and the Restraint of Violence in High Medieval Europe
Peacemaking and the Restraint of Violence in High Medieval Europe

Author: Simon Lebouteiller

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-10-02

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 0429632363

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The High Middle Ages have been seen as an important point within the development of governmental and administrative bureaucracy, as well as a time in which there was frequent conflict. This volume addresses the methods by which violence was regulated and mitigated, and peaceful relations were re-established in High Medieval Europe. By studying the restraint of violence and the imposition of peace, the chapters in this volume contribute to interdisciplinary discussions about the effects that violence had on medieval societies. The wide-ranging geographical scope of this volume invites comparisons to be made in relation to how violence was restrained, and peace established, in different settings. The chapters in the first section of this volume address the issue of how violence was moderated and curbed during and following periods of conflict. The second section explores attempts to maintain peace, and the processes which developed to deal with those viewed as having broken the peace. The final section of this volume explores the ways in which conflict was avoided through the maintenance of positive relationships between individuals and groups. This book will be of interest to both academics and students interested in conflict, the restraint of violence, and peacemaking in medieval societies as well as those working on ritual and conflict resolution in any historical period.

The Routledge Handbook of East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500-1300
The Routledge Handbook of East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500-1300

Author: Florin Curta

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-11-29

Total Pages: 886

ISBN-13: 1000476243

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The Routledge Handbook of East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500–1300 is the first of its kind to provide a point of reference for the history of the whole of Eastern Europe during the Middle Ages. While historians have recognized the importance of integrating the eastern part of the European continent into surveys of the Middle Ages, few have actually paid attention to the region, its specific features, problems of chronology and historiography. This vast region represents more than two-thirds of the European continent, but its history in general—and its medieval history in particular—is poorly known. This book covers the history of the whole region, from the Balkans to the Carpathian Basin, and the Bohemian Forest to the Finnish Bay. It provides an overview of the current state of research and a route map for navigating an abundant historiography available in more than ten different languages. Chapters cover topics as diverse as religion, architecture, art, state formation, migration, law, trade and the experiences of women and children. This book is an essential reference for scholars and students of medieval history, as well as those interested in the history of Central and Eastern Europe.

A Companion to Saxo Grammaticus
A Companion to Saxo Grammaticus

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2024-06-13

Total Pages: 725

ISBN-13: 9004696911

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Ever since the publication of Saxo Grammaticus’ Gesta Danorum at the beginning of the thirteenth century, scholars and laymen have grappled with the complex and marvellous chronicle. As much specialized scholarship has been published in Danish, this companion breaks new ground by giving a comprehensive and up-to-date tour of the work for a global audience. Attention is given to the unity of Saxo’s massive chronicle, whether he is dealing with a legendary pagan past or events from his own time. Saxo’s world and views are explored in ways that shed new light on all of northern Europe. Contributors are Bjørn Bandlien, Karsten Friis-Jensen, Michael H. Gelting, Thomas K. Heebøll-Holm, Lars Hermanson, Lars Kjær, Torben Kjersgaard Nielsen, Annette Lassen, Anders Leegaard Knudsen, Lars Boje Mortensen, Mia Münster-Swendsen, Erik Niblaeus, Roland Scheel, Karen Skovgaard-Petersen, Kurt Villads Jensen, and Helle Vogt.

Tracing the Trails in the Medieval World
Tracing the Trails in the Medieval World

Author: Albrecht Classen

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-10-11

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1000205029

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Every human being knows that we are walking through life following trails, whether we are aware of them or not. Medieval poets, from the anonymous composer of Beowulf to Marie de France, Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von Strassburg, and Guillaume de Lorris to Petrarch and Heinrich Kaufringer, predicated their works on the notion of the trail and elaborated on its epistemological function. We can grasp here an essential concept that determines much of medieval and early modern European literature and philosophy, addressing the direction which all protagonists pursue, as powerfully illustrated also by the anonymous poets of Herzog Ernst and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Dante’s Divina Commedia, in fact, proves to be one of the most explicit poetic manifestations of the fundamental idea of the trail, but we find strong parallels also in powerful contemporary works such as Guillaume de Deguileville’s Pèlerinage de la vie humaine and in many mystical tracts.

Text and Textuality in Early Medieval Iberia
Text and Textuality in Early Medieval Iberia

Author: Graham Barrett

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 549

ISBN-13: 0192895370

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Text and Textuality in Early Medieval Iberia is a study of the functions and conceptions of writing and reading, documentation and archives, and the role of literate authorities in the Christian kingdoms of the northern Iberian Peninsula between the Muslim conquest of 711 and the fall of the Islamic caliphate at Córdoba in 1031. Based on the first complete survey of the over 4,000 surviving Latin charters from the period, it is an essay in the archaeology and biography of text: part one concerns materiality, tracing the lifecycle of charters from initiation and composition to preservation and reuse, while part two addresses connectivity, delineating a network of texts through painstaking identification of more than 2,000 citations of other charters, secular and canon law, the Bible, liturgy, and monastic rules. Few may have been able to read or write, yet the extent of textuality was broad and deep, in the authority conferred upon text and the arrangements made to use it. Via charter and scribe, society and social arrangements came increasingly to be influenced by norms originating from a network of texts. By profiling the intersection and interaction of text with society and culture, Graham Barrett reconstructs textuality, how the authority of the written and the structures to access it framed and constrained actions and cultural norms, and proposes a new model of early medieval reading. As they cited other texts, charters circulated fragments of those texts; we must rethink the relationship of sources and audiences to reflect fragmentary transmission, in a textuality of imperfect knowledge.

War and Violence in the Western Sources for the First Crusade
War and Violence in the Western Sources for the First Crusade

Author: Sini Kangas

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2024-05-30

Total Pages: 437

ISBN-13: 9004693599

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Medieval Westerners accepted killing for religion and praised the outcome of the First Crusade (1096-1099). At the same time, their attitude to violence was ambivalent. Theologians shunned the practical use of force, while the warrior aristocracy valued the capacity for physical destruction. In the absence of theological doctrine on the practicalities of holy warfare, the first crusaders draw their ideas about killing from diverse and sometimes conflicting traditions. This book answers questions about how religious violence was described, justified and remembered in the sources of the First Crusade. What was the relation between faith, convention, and action?

Literature and the Senses
Literature and the Senses

Author: Annette Kern-Stähler

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-07-20

Total Pages: 540

ISBN-13: 019284377X

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This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Literature and the Senses critically probes the role of literature in capturing and scrutinizing sensory perception. Organized around the five traditional senses, followed by a section on multisensoriality, the collection facilitates a dialogue between scholars working on literature written from the Middle Ages to the present day. The contributors engage with a variety of theorists from Maurice Merleau-Ponty to Michel Serres to Jean-Luc Nancy to foreground the distinctive means by which literary texts engage with, open up, or make uncertain dominant views of the nature of perception. Considering the ways in which literary texts intersect with and diverge from scientific, epistemological, and philosophical perspectives, these essays explore a wide variety of literary moments of sensation including: the interspecies exchange of a look between a swan and a young Indigenous Australian girl; the sound of bees as captured in an early modern poem; the noxious smell of the 'Great Stink' that recurs in the Victorian novel; the taste of an eggplant registered in a poetic performance; tactile gestures in medieval romance; and the representation of a world in which the interdependence of human beings with the purple hibiscus plant is experienced through all five senses. The collection builds upon and breaks new ground in the field of sensory studies, focusing on what makes literature especially suitable to engaging with, contributing to, and challenging our perennial understandings of, the senses.