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Engaging with the imaginative, nonreligious response to Gothic sculpture in German-speaking lands and tracing high and late medieval notions of the ?living statue? and the simulacrum in religious, lay, and travel literature, this study explores the subjective and intuitive potential inherent in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century sculpture. It addresses a range of works, from the oeuvre of the so-called Naumburg Master through Freiburg-im-Breisgau to the imperial art of Vienna and Prague. As living simulacra, the sculptures offer themselves to the imaginative horizons of their viewers as factual presences that substitute for the real. In perceiving Gothic sculpture as a conscious alternative ...
The eighth-century English missionary and church reformer Boniface was a highly influential figure in early medieval Europe. His career in what is now Germany, France, and the Netherlands is attested in an exceptional number of textual sources: a correspondence of 150 letters, Latin poetry, church council records, and other documents. Numerous saints’ lives and modern devotional materials further reveal how he was and is remembered by the religious communities that claim him as a foundational figure. This volume comprises the latest scholarship on Boniface and his fellow missionaries, examining the written materials associated with Boniface, his impacts on the regions of Europe where he worked (Hessia, Thuringia, Bavaria, Frisia, and Francia), and the development of his cult in the Middle Ages and today. Contributors: Michel Aaij, John-Henry Clay, Michael Glatthaar, Shannon Godlove, Leanne Good, Petra Kehl, Felice Lifshitz, Rob Meens, Michael Edward Moore, Marco Mostert, James Palmer, Janneke Raaijmakers, Rudolf Schieffer, Emily Thornbury, Siegfried Weichlein, and Barbara Yorke.
Although the distant origins of medieval Central Europe have enjoyed constant interest among historians, only marginal attention has been paid to the power and political prerequisites for the first Westernization, i.e. the gradual adoption of the values, norms and patterns of behavior of the Latin West by the communities (gentes) around the eastern edge of the Carolingian and subsequently Holy Roman Empires. Such a gap in knowledge, long overlooked, is now being filled by The Making of Medieval Central Europe: Power and Political Prerequisites for the First Westernization, 791-1122. While respecting the state of research and based on an original analysis of the sources, this book offers an informed reflection of a complex dialogue that was initiated after the collapse of the Avar Khaganate at the end of the 8th century and that, by the beginning of the 12th century, gave rise to a Central Europe that was Westernized (i.e. turned toward the West) yet in many ways distinctive. Another and no less important added value of this book is the author's conscious effort to overcome the narrow interpretive matrices defined by the national interests of the time.
Concepts of visual communication form an explanatory framework for discussing the visual expressions of urban symbolic communication in urban life in towns in the center of Europe in the late medieval and early modern period, including the dramatic times of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. This book examines the role of images and visual representation by concentrating on the varieties of symbolic communication in towns that made a range of relationships visual: the status and role of urban civic, professional, and religious communities and the relations between the town and its lord or powerful families and individuals. The geographical framework of this book is the region in the fo...
This is the first major study of the interplay between Latin and Germanic vernaculars in early medieval records. Building on previous work on the uses of the written word in the early Middle Ages, which has dispelled the myth that this was an age of ‘orality’, the contributions in this volume bring to the fore the crucial question of language choice in the documentary cultures of early medieval societies. Specifically, they examine the interactions between Latin and Germanic vernaculars in the Anglo-Saxon and eastern Frankish worlds and in neighbouring areas. The chapters are underpinned by an important comparative dimension on account of the two regions’ shared linguistic heritage and numerous cross-Channel links. Contributors are: Stefan Esders, Albert Fenton, Robert Gallagher, Wolfgang Haubrichs, Charles Insley, Kathryn A. Lowe, Rosamond McKitterick, Rory Naismith, Janet L. Nelson, Edward Roberts, Annina Seiler, Marco Stoffella, Francesca Tinti, Kate Wiles, Bernhard Zeller. See inside the book.
Mediaevalia Lovaniensia 37In the context of late medieval state centralization, the political autonomy of the towns of the Low Countries, Northern France, and the Swiss confederation was threatened by central governments. Within this conflict both rulers and towns employed symbolic means of communication to legitimate their power. The authors of Symbolic Communication in Late Medieval Towns explore how new layers of meaning were attached to well-known traditions and how these new rituals were perceived. They study the public encounters between rulers and towns, as well as among various social groups within the towns.
English In Eine wahrhaft königliche Stadt, Daniela Kah describes how contemporary residents and visitors were able to experience and perceive the presence of the Holy Roman Empire (or its representatives, e.g., the king) in three late medieval cities -- Augsburg, Nürnberg and Lübeck. After receiving privileges from the king, these cities initiated large construction projects designed to assert their imperial status. These projects had a major impact on everyday life and made the Empire visible and graspable within the city. However, in the 13th century the cities increasingly deployed symbols and signs to represent their self-understanding as 'imperial'. ‘Being immediate to the Empireâ€...
Comparative essays by an international panel of historians offer fresh insights into the unfolding of the Reformation across Europe. From Saxony to the Baltic to Transylvania, each chapter draws out the variables that shaped the spread of the Reformation across comparable geographic spaces, offering new perspectives on this epochal subject.
Der Band enthält 17 Beiträge von Archäologen, Historikern und Sprachwissenschaftlern, die im Oktober 2006 an der Universität Jena zu einem interdisziplinären Kolloquium zusammenkamen, um den Forschungsstand ihrer jeweiligen Disziplin zur frühen thüringischen Geschichte zu vergleichen. Dabei wurde deutlich, dass die Erkenntnisse der Historiker und Archäologen in vielerlei Hinsicht nicht miteinander vereinbar sind: Die materiellen Hinterlassenschaften, die in Thüringen gefunden wurden, lassen sich nicht ohne Weiteres den frühen Thüringern der Schriftquellen zuordnen.
Law and Empire provides a comparative view of legal practices in Asia and Europe, from Antiquity to the eighteenth century. It relates the main principles of legal thinking in Chinese, Islamic, and European contexts to practices of lawmaking and adjudication. In particular, it shows how legal procedure and legal thinking could be used in strikingly different ways. Rulers could use law effectively as an instrument of domination; legal specialists built their identity, livelihood and social status on their knowledge of law; and non-elites exploited the range of legal fora available to them. This volume shows the relevance of legal pluralism and the social relevance of litigation for premodern power structures.