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In Be a Perfect Man, Andrew J. Romig argues that Carolingian representations of caritas served as a discourse of power, a means by which early medieval writers made claims, both explicit and implicit, about the hierarchies of masculine power that they believed ought to exist within their world.
This book examines the development of social support systems in the Modern age in the rural areas of the city-states of Northern Italy. This investigation achieves two main purposes: first, it allows researchers to understand the role occupied concretely by welfare and micro-credit activities in the political and socio-economic panorama of rural Northern Italy; secondly, it verifies to what extent the formation of a more or less structured support system influenced the establishment of local identity and the rooting of individuals. The book brings together perspectives from different fields of research ranging from economic and political history to the study of the history of ecclesiastical ...
13 papers by 16 leading archaeologists and historians of late antiquity and the early middle ages break new ground in their discussion, analysis and criticism of present interpretations of early medieval rituals and their material correlates. Some deal with rituals relating to death, life cycles and the circulation in other contexts of objects otherwise used in the burial ritual. Others are concerned with the symbolism and ideology of royal power, the formation of a political ideology east of the Rhine from the mid-5th century onwards, and penance rituals in relation to Carolingian episcopal discourse on ecclesiastical power and morale. All deal with the creation of new identities, cultures, norms and values, and their expression in new rituals and ideas from the period of the Great Migrations through the Later Roman Empire down to the society of Beowulf and the later Carolingians.
The growth of princely states in early Renaissance Italy brought a thorough renewal to the old seats of power. One of the most conspicuous outcomes of this process was the building or rebuilding of new court palaces, erected as prestigious residences in accord with the new ‘classical’ principles of Renaissance architecture. The novelties, however, went far beyond architectural forms: they involved the reorganisation of courtly interiors and their functions, new uses for the buildings, and the relationship between the palaces and their surroundings. The whole urban setting was affected by these processes, and therefore the social, residential and political customs of its inhabitants. This is the focus of A Renaissance Architecture of Power, which aims to analyse from a comparative perspective the evolution of Italian court palaces in the Renaissance in their entirety. Contributors are Silvia Beltramo, Flavia Cantatore, Bianca de Divitiis, Emanuela Ferretti, Marco Folin, Giulio Girondi, Andrea Longhi, Marco Rosario Nobile, Aurora Scotti, Elena Svalduz, and Stefano Zaggia.
The medieval church was founded on and governed by concepts of faith and trust--but not in the way that is popularly assumed. Offering a radical new interpretation of the institutional church and its social consequences in England, Ian Forrest argues that between 1200 and 1500 the ability of bishops to govern depended on the cooperation of local people known as trustworthy men and shows how the combination of inequality and faith helped make the medieval church. Trustworthy men (in Latin, viri fidedigni) were jurors, informants, and witnesses who represented their parishes when bishops needed local knowledge or reliable collaborators. Their importance in church courts, at inquests, and durin...
The series of beautiful sacramentaries made at Saint-Amand in the later ninth century offer us unique insight into an early medieval scriptorium at work. These manuscripts contain principally the prayer texts for the celebration of the Mass, a ceremony which stood at the centre of monastic life in this period. They display how this largely neglected genre discloses creativity and initiative on the part of the monks of Saint-Amand, who re-organised and re-composed this especially versatile literature. They made their books uniquely comprehensive and full of insight into how the mass liturgy was re-made at a critical period in its development. This innovative study makes these sources accessible for the first time. In-depth study of script, decoration, and content enables a new appreciation of the context in which the deluxe Saint-Amand manuscripts were produced. It foregrounds ecclesiastical patronage, the political and intellectual dynamics at the waning of Carolingian power, and the intensive collaboration of scribes, artists, and liturgical composers, as well as the unique ways liturgical manuscripts can inform our understanding of medieval life and thought.
In the late Middle Ages, Italy was one of the most urbanized areas in Europe. Its coasts, the Apennines, the perialpine area and the plains were all home to a large number of smaller towns, lands, villages, castra, and 'quasi cites'. These settlements were all very diverse in terms of demographic consistency, social articulation and economic dynamism, but together they constituted a characteristic and constitutive element of the Italian historical identity: an 'original personality'. This volume, thanks to some framing essays and a mapping of individual cases involving most of the northern, central and southern regions, aims at investigating the active research on this topic over the last thirty to forty years.
Despite the wealth of scholarship in recent decades on medieval women, we still know much less about the experiences of women in the early Middle Ages than we do about those in later centuries. In Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World, Valerie L. Garver offers a fresh appraisal of the cultural and social history of eighth- and ninth-century women. Examining changes in women's lives and in the ways others perceived women during the early Middle Ages, she shows that lay and religious women, despite their legal and social constrictions, played integral roles in Carolingian society. Garver's innovative book employs an especially wide range of sources, both textual and material,...
The status of lord represented one of the most original solutions to the political and social transitions of the Medieval period. Questions still remain unanswered and require further investigation, thus many scholars have collaborated to produce this collection which offers a synthesis of the most recent scholarship. This book relates the workings of seigneurial systems in different areas of Europe, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, from Castile to Pontus. In this way, the perspective remains the same, institutional and material. This book emphasises both the institutional and informal forms of lordship identified and crystallised by social and political actors (for example, communities, sovereigns, nobles, bishops, and abbots). It offers a general framework for those approaching the subject for the first time and a useful in-depth tool with numerous regional cases for long-term scholars.
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