medieval worlds ‒ comparative and interdisciplinary studies, No. 10/2019
Uses of the Past in Times of Transition: Forgetting, Using and Discrediting the Past & Approaches to Global Epigraphy, I
No.:
10
Year of the volume:
2019
MEDIEVAL WORLDS provides a new forum for interdisciplinary and transcultural studies of the Middle Ages. Specifically it encourages and links comparative research between different regions and fields and promotes methodological innovation in transdisciplinary studies. Focusing on the Middle Ages (c. 400-1500 CE, but can be extended whenever thematically fruitful or appropriate), MEDIEVAL WORLDS takes a global approach to studying history in a comparative setting.
MEDIEVAL WORLDS is open to regular submissions on comparative topics, but also offers the possibility to propose or advertise subjects that lend themselves to comparison. With a view to connecting people working on related topics in different academic environments, we publish calls for matching articles and for contributions on particular issues.
Table of Contents
- Maximilian Diesenberger: Introduction. Making the Past in Late and Post-Carolingian Historiography
- Stefan Esders: The Church as a Governance Actor in a Period of Post-Imperial Transition: Delegation of Fiscal Rights and Legal Change in 10th-century Churraetia
- Sarah Hamilton: Understanding the Church’s Past: Usuard’s Martyrology in Tenth-and Eleventh-century England
- Emma Loosley Leeming: Creating an »Orthodox« Past: Georgian Hagiography and the Construction of a Denominational Identity
- Matthias M. Tischler: Using the Carolingian Past in a Society of Transformation: The Case of Early Medieval Septimania/Catalonia in the Long Tenth Century (900-1050)
- Jorge Elices Ocón - Eduardo Manzano Moreno: Uses of the Past in Early Medieval Iberia (Eighth-Tenth Centuries)
- Eric J. Goldberg - Simon MacLean: Royal Marriage, Frankish History and Dynastic Crisis in Regino of Prüm’s Chronicle
- Tim Greenwood: Negotiating the Roman Past in Later Tenth-century Armenia
- Alice Hicklin: Aitire, 人質, тали, όμηρος, رهن , obses: Hostages, Political Instability, and the Writing of History c. 900-c. 1050 CE
- Andreas Rhoby - Veronika Scheibelreiter-Gail - Andreas Zajic: Global Epigraphy: The Scholarship on Inscriptions of Eurasia from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period
- Elisabeth Rathmayr - Veronika Scheibelreiter-Gail: Archaeological Contexts of Inscriptions in the Private Sphere: The Mosaic Inscriptions of a villa rustica in Skala/Cephalonia
- Christian Jahoda: Inscriptions in Areas of Historical Western Tibet (mNga’ ris skor gsum) in their Contexts: A Brief Overview with Selected Examples
- Daniel Reynolds: History and Exegesis in the Itinerarium of Bernard the Monk (c. 867)
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Introduction. Making the Past in Late and Post-Carolingian Historiography
This article focuses on how different pasts were constructed in the late and post-Carolingian world. In order to create a past, authors active around the year 900 chose different strategies: they made use of specific text formats in order to distance themselves from the past; they drew on alternative sources and a new vocabulary. They changed the scale of their observation and took new liberties with their narratives, as they were not as firmly bound to inherited narratives as their predecessors had been. This had an effect on their authorial posture within their texts. Through their specific use of the past, these authors not only attempted to provide an image of a new reality – they went beyond this. By breaking off the present from the past, or emphasising certain aspects of the past while »forgetting« others, they were making an important contribution to the re-formation of their world.
Keywords: kingdoms, empire, social memory, annals, historiography, Carolingians
Page 2 - 16 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no10_2019s2
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The Church as a Governance Actor in a Period of Post-Imperial Transition: Delegation of Fiscal Rights and Legal Change in 10th-century Churraetia
Taking the Alpine region of Churraetia as a case study, this paper investigates processes of fiscal delegation, their preconditions, their legal construction, and their consequences. As Churraetia maintained many features of Roman provincial administration and statehood well into the Carolingian period, the article’s first part traces how fiscal revenues and rights came to be delegated to the episcopal church of Chur via royal privilege from the mid-9th century until 960. The delegation of fiscal rights usually happened in special situations when kings and grantees agreed on a closer cooperation in the future. In the course of this process, which in the case of Churraetia eventually turned a former Roman province into an ecclesiastical principality, the episcopal church became a governance actor that would play a crucial rule in exercising public functions such as tax collection, jurisdiction and military recruitment. Ecclesiastical property (often deriving from royal munificence) and fiscal income became indispensable means for performing these functions. The article’s second part focuses on the situation of 912 when the newly elected East Frankish king Conrad I, the first ruler of non-Carolingian stock, conferred two special privileges on the episcopal church of Chur: Conrad’s grant of the right to conduct inquisition procedure by compulsory witness in order to protect ecclesiastical property effectively meant that procedural law typical for the »public sphere« now came into the hands of the bishop of Chur. Conrad’s second stipulation, that the thirty-year period of proscription should not to be applied against the interest of the bishop of Chur, has to be seen against the background of legal pluralism in this region, in which several legal traditions were in conflict: while Roman law allowed a slave to rid himself of his master after thirty years, Aleman law forbade this, just as the idea that ecclesiastical property was regarded as inalienable spoke against the application of the thirty-years rule to the detriment of the church. Responding to ecclesiastical networks supporting his rule, Conrad thus had the Roman legal rule of prescription branded as a »bad custom« (mala consuetudo). As is finally argued in a more general perspective, in historical situations of political transition legal pluralism and legal change could lead to a new qualification of what had formerly been seen in more positive terms as »custom«.
Keywords: royal charters, polyptychs, Churraetia, delegation, slavery and serfdom, prescription, inquisition procedure, fiscal rights, custom, law
Stefan Esders
Page 17 - 45 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no10_2019s17
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Understanding the Church’s Past: Usuard’s Martyrology in Tenth-and Eleventh-century England
The ninth century witnessed the compilation of martyrologies in both the Latin Frankish world of the Carolingians and the vernacular world of Anglo-Saxon Wessex. Yet this phenomenon has been treated very differently by modern scholars of these two cultures. For Carolingianists these martyrologies represent a public, shared text, one which was read aloud in chapter as part of the daily life of religious communities across the Frankish kingdoms, and which, as Rosamond McKitterick has suggested, should be viewed as contributing to those communities’ understanding of their Christian past. For recent Anglo-Saxon scholars, the vernacular text known as the Old English Martyrology is rather a work compiled to support private, devotional reading, and better understood as an encyclopaedia of arcane information. This article investigates the reception of one Frankish compilation in tenth- and eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon England, that of Usuard, and compares it to that of the Old English Martyrology. It asks how far both texts should in fact be viewed as historical texts. It concludes with a case study of how they were both read in one late eleventh-century community, Exeter, and suggests that this community, at least, was able to maintain two overlapping but different views of its past and its place in wider Church history.
Keywords: Bishop Leofric, Exeter, cult of the saints, reception, Old English Martyrology, Usuard, History, Hagiography, Martyrology
Page 46 - 60 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no10_2019s46
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Creating an »Orthodox« Past: Georgian Hagiography and the Construction of a Denominational Identity
In the early Middle Ages, Georgia consisted of two kingdoms. The western part was called Egrisi by the local inhabitants, and Lazica by the Byzantines and to the east of the Likhi range of mountains was Kartli, known as Iberia to outsiders. Egrisi was ruled from Constantinople for much of this period with vassal overlords, but Kartli was harder to control and its leaders often played the Byzantine and Persian Empires off against each other in order to maintain some autonomy over their territories. Until the early seventh century Kartli was under the religious jurisdiction of the Armenian Catholicos and officially non-Chalcedonian (miaphysite), but at the Council of Dvin in 610 the Kartvelians rejected Armenian ecclesiastical authority and declared an autocephalous Georgian Church. This new Church joined the Chalcedonian fold and accepted the authority of the patriarch of Constantinople.One of the defining events of Georgian ecclesiastical history is the arrival of the Thirteen (As)Syrian Fathers in Kartli in the sixth century. The vitae of these shadowy figures and their origins and doctrinal beliefs are still rigorously disputed today. The information given (or deliberately obscured) in eighth and ninth century accounts of the (As)Syrian Fathers is crucial for our understanding of how Kartvelian confessional identity evolved and was conflated with ideas of Kartvelian nationhood. This paper will explore the construction of Kartvelian national identity through the lens of ecclesiastical history and examine how past events, in particular the narrative of the (As)Syrian Fathers, were deliberately obfuscated in the quest to create an »Orthodox‹ past.
Keywords: dyophysite, miaphysite, monophysite, Thirteen (As)Syrian Fathers, Kartli/Iberia, Egrisi/Lazica, Georgia
Page 61 - 71 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no10_2019s61
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Using the Carolingian Past in a Society of Transformation: The Case of Early Medieval Septimania/Catalonia in the Long Tenth Century (900-1050)
The north-eastern region of the Iberian Peninsula, which later became medieval Catalonia, and the adjacent French region, then called Septimania, formed an intermediary zone of ethnic, cultural, linguistic, social, political, and religious transition and brokerage between the Mediterranean and central European worlds, interfacing with the Christian north and Muslim south. Consequently, the double region Septimania/Catalonia is an ideal subject for a comparative view of transformation processes in the Carolingian Empire. My paper – giving an interim report on ongoing research – analyses how this still-underestimated periphery of the Carolingian Empire transformed into a central region of Latin Christian Europe between the late ninth and the middle of the eleventh century, through exploring its imported and autochthonous manuscript production and its position as a border society. In doing so, I show that the societal and religious circumstances of this intermediary zone favoured the concerted selection, introduction and implementation of the core results of the Carolingian Church reform, as well as its well-balanced adaptation to a post-Roman, post-Visigothic and post-Carolingian society under reconstruction. My reflections allow us to assess the quality of »Carolingian« culture as an imperial, i.e. overarching, eclectic and flexible concept of amalgamation of cultural and political semantics, from a peripheral rather than a central European perspective.
Keywords: border societies, Catalonia, Septimania, Carolingian empire, centres and peripheries, manuscript studies, texts and transmission, Carolingian Church reform
Page 72 - 86 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no10_2019s72
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Uses of the Past in Early Medieval Iberia (Eighth-Tenth Centuries)
During the Early Middle Ages, most of the Iberian Peninsula became part of the so-called dār al-Islam, the huge realm that extended from the shores of the Atlantic to the borders of the Indian subcontinent, and which comprised North Africa, the Near East and significant parts of Central Asia. In the long run, this meant a dramatic shift from the notions, ideologies and frames of reference that emerged in other western regions of the former Roman Empire. Notwithstanding this obvious divergence, Iberia had shared with these regions a common classical legacy that was assimilated, readapted and, finally, integrated after the Arab conquest under a new perspective in a number of distinctive ways. The aim of this paper is to analyse receptions, perceptions and ideas on classical Antiquity from the eighth to the tenth century in both al-Andalus and the Christian north, drawing data from the material evidence and the written record. It is our contention that the appreciation of this legacy underwent significant changes in both cultural milieus as a result of changing political and social circumstances.
Keywords: al-Andalus, Asturias, Umayyad, antiquity, legitimation, translation, Reuse
Page 87 - 106 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no10_2019s87
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Royal Marriage, Frankish History and Dynastic Crisis in Regino of Prüm’s Chronicle
Regino of Prüm’s Chronicle (907/908) is one of the most important works of contemporary history written in the era of the Carolingian Empire. In this article we consider Regino’s numerous stories about good and bad royal marriages drawn from the deep past of the Franks, and we show how the historian adapted his source material to late Carolingian sensibilities. We then argue that Regino’s interest in royal marriage can best be interpreted as a reflection of his anxiety about the marital status of the reigning East Frankish king Louis IV »the Child« (900-911). Regino dedicated his work to the king’s godfather and counsellor Adalbero of Augsburg, and he apparently hoped to influence the king and his inner circle in the urgent task of selecting an appropriate royal bride. Regino’s accounts of past rulers and their marital histories therefore give us an insight into how he perceived the political order of his own day and his fears about the future of the Carolingian dynasty.
Keywords: Lotharingia, Louis the Child, historiography, Regino of Prüm, marriage, Carolingians
Page 107 - 129 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no10_2019s107
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Negotiating the Roman Past in Later Tenth-century Armenia
The Byzantine expansion eastwards into historic regions of Armenia in the second half of the tenth century and the Armenian responses to that expansion both receive modest coverage in Armenian historical narratives. Yet several works of Armenian historical literature were composed during this period which do not comment directly upon present circumstances but which, nevertheless, can be examined for what they reveal about the attitudes of their compilers. This study examines how historic Roman-Armenian encounters were represented in three such works. Despite their proximate dating, they attest a range of perspectives. The anonymous author of the History of Tarōn reimagined the conversion of Armenia at the start of the fourth century by Saint Gregory the Illuminator, highlighting the contribution of the metropolitan of Caesarea in the establishment of sees, monasteries and martyria across the region. A similar process was underway at the time following the Byzantine annexation of Tarōn and the attendant reconfiguration of the ecclesiological landscape. The History of Uxtanēs bishop of Sebasteia was completed between 980 and 989 CE by an Armenian orthodox bishop and projects historic antagonism between Romans and Armenians. Uxtanēs sharpened the negative presentation of several Roman emperors from Antiquity by applying derogatory epithets usually reserved in Armenian literature for oppressive Persian Šahanšahs. At the same time, Armenian leaders were projected as compromising their autonomy. Uxtanēs also incorporated much-altered traditions about Saint Theodore Tiron and the Forty Martyrs of Sebasteia, implying that they were Armenian Christians persecuted for their faith. Finally, while the Universal History of Step‘anos Tarōnec‘i offers an ambiguous portrait of the current Byzantine emperor, Basil II, the writer’s antipathy is revealed through his hostile depiction of Constans II whose engagement with Armenia in the middle of the seventh century prefigured that of Basil II in several respects. In all three compositions, the Roman past was used as a mirror to comment upon the Byzantine present.
Keywords: Tarōn, Saint Theodore, Sebasteia, historiography, Saint Gregory, conversion, Constans II, Byzantium, Basil II, Armenia
Page 130 - 150 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no10_2019s130
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Aitire, 人質, тали, όμηρος, رهن , obses: Hostages, Political Instability, and the Writing of History c. 900-c. 1050 CE
The medieval hostage stood as a surety given by one party into the custody of another, with the understanding that hostages bound their donors to a particular obligation or set of terms outlined by the hostages’ recipient. The practice is attested on a global scale, and much can be said about the narrative function of hostages as a foil for writers to construct stories of victory, defeat, piety, mercy and cruelty. This article adopts a broad geographical focus, from Ireland to eastern China. By looking at periods both of political turbulence and stability in the tenth and eleventh centuries CE, it examines how writers depicted hostage-giving in times of political fragmentation and change, and in what way was this reflected in narrative and documentary texts. By including authors writing about recent and more distant pasts, it explores how this practice operated both within and without the boundaries of legal custom, and considers how attitudes towards those who granted and received hostages might be shaped by politico-social transitions.
Keywords: medieval literature, prose, Chinese, Georgian, Greek, Latin, Old English, Narrative , hostages, diplomacy
Page 151 - 176 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no10_2019s151
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Global Epigraphy: The Scholarship on Inscriptions of Eurasia from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period
Page 177 - 183 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no10_2019s177
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Archaeological Contexts of Inscriptions in the Private Sphere: The Mosaic Inscriptions of a villa rustica in Skala/Cephalonia
The article deals with inscriptions on the floor mosaics of a residence in Skala on the island of Cephalonia. The archaeological context of the inscriptions, their representation and legibility as well as their contents will be addressed. In at least two rooms, inscriptions have been combined with depictions that give insights into the beliefs of the residents. One shows the personification of Envy, depicted as a damnatus ad bestias, which was common in amphitheatrical scenes on mosaics in imperial times, another a sacrifice of three animals (trittoia), which is only seldom depicted and also rarely documented in epigraphy and literature; to date, the picture in the villa of Skala together with a mention in a play by Aristophanes are the only sources for this sacrifice in the private realm of a house. Moreover, the depiction probably refers to a real sacrifice made on the outskirts of the villa. The commissioner of the inscribed mosaics was certainly the homeowner, who is recorded by his name Krateros in two mosaic inscriptions in the house. He was probably identical with Lucius Pompeius Krateros Cassianus, a member of a third-century-AD elite family from Elis known from inscriptions found in Olympia. Although both the figurative representations on the mosaic floors and the length of the inscriptions are unusual, they have received too little attention so far. The nearest parallels are to be found in the mosaic art of Patras, only a short distance away across the sea, where a whole series of comparable mosaics came to light, especially during emergency excavations. The mixture of »Greek« and »Roman« in the depictions of the mosaics in the villa in Skala could be explained by a mosaicists’ workshop from Patras, a Roman colony founded by Augustus, where such depictions might have developed.
Keywords: self-presentation, apotropaic, phtonos, sacrifice of three animals, domestic religion, Roman Imperial times, mosaic inscriptions, villa rustica, Skala, Cephalonia
Page 184 - 198 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no10_2019s184
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Inscriptions in Areas of Historical Western Tibet (mNga’ ris skor gsum) in their Contexts: A Brief Overview with Selected Examples
The area of the 10th-11th-century West Tibetan kingdom and its successor kingdoms Purang, Guge and Ladakh is today mainly divided between China and India, with a small part belonging to Nepal. Tibetan inscriptions constitute an important part of the extensive Buddhist heritage and vital cultural traditions in areas all over historical Western Tibet. This paper seeks to present an overview on these inscriptions in key areas of historical Western Tibet, such as Purang and Guge (including Spiti and Upper Kinnaur), based on selected examples, all of which were documented in situ during the past two decades by taking into account their various contexts. In the first part, after a brief introduction on the research history, the geographical-historical setting and spatial and functional contexts of inscriptions are discussed, which are mainly characterized by Tibetan Buddhism. Then, the dominating emic concept of religious purpose (merit) and Tibetan terminology related to inscriptions, technical and material realities are briefly given attention before highlighting relevant administrative and ritual practices as well as visual aspects. Finally, structured mainly on the material support on which inscriptions are found (correlating to some degree with the chronological distribution), a number of inscriptions on stone, mineral building materials, metal, clay and cloth are analysed and also presented through illustrations, partly also in transliteration and in translation, in order to demonstrate the various different types of inscriptions, their content, materiality, functions and contexts.
Keywords: inscriptions on clay, inscriptions on cloth, inscriptions on mineral building materials, inscriptions on stone, material support, merit, inscriptions: Tibetan terminology, Tibetan Buddhism, historical Western Tibet
Page 199 - 251 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no10_2019s199
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History and Exegesis in the Itinerarium of Bernard the Monk (c. 867)
This article presents a re-evaluation of the ninth-century Itinerarium Bernardi monachi franci, which describes the journey of the monk Bernard to Jerusalem and the Holy Places. Challenging traditional perceptions of the work, as a straightforward narrative of travel, this article argues that a more contextual reading of the source and its topography, with respect to ninth-century exegetical and liturgical culture, identifies the Itinerarium as a text closely linked to exegetical explorations of the themes of penitence and just rule. It concludes that an examination of the motifs of the Old Testament world kingdoms and themes of Christian triumph within the work identifies Bernard as a writer engaged in an attempt to incorporate the world of Islam within a Christian salvific worldview and the eventual promise of redemption.
Keywords: Bernard the Monk, Carolingian, Exegesis, Abbasid, Islam, pilgrimage, Jerusalem
Page 252 - 296 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no10_2019s252
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Edition:
978-3-7001-8663-2, eJournal, PDF, limited accessibility , 29.11.2019
Pages:
296 Pages
Language:
English
DOI (Link to Online Edition):