medieval worlds ‒ comparative and interdisciplinary studies, No. 20/2024

The present thematic section investigates the movement of people in connection with their work during the Early Middle Ages, and the repercussions of such movement in terms of construction of job identities. The development of specific professional identities and groups of professionals, such as guilds, has been amply studied for later periods in Europe. By contrast, although the picture of an immobile early medieval world has now been overcome, why and how people moved for their job in the early medieval centuries remains a largely underexplored topic. This project aims to take forward the discussion on this theme, and it does so through a reflection on the concept of motility – that is, the entirety of those factors that allow an individual to move through space – and on recent developments in the social sciences. Central questions concern the role of job mobility (considered in individual, relational, and collective terms) in the functioning of economic circuits and of social, cultural and military practices; the role of labour and one’s profession in individual identity construction; and how mobility interacts with the latter. The perspective of the thematic section is an interdisciplinary and global one, with contributions reaching from the North Sea to India and the Southern Tarim Basin and including research on military and ecclesiastical elites, artisans, artists, peasants, merchants and scholars. The contributions are collected in the present volume and in volume 23, to be published in 2025.

Keywords: mobility, Motility, job identity, pre-modern societies, Europe, Asia, Mediterranean world

The written records excavated from sites in the southern Tarim Basin in modern Xinjiang, China, bear witness to a wide range of actors moving for an equally varied range of reasons. Envoys and emissaries moved between the kingdoms and empires, bearing gifts and news between the royal courts. Buddhist monks traversed the same routes on journeys of pilgrimage, while merchants of many different backgrounds carried their commodities between the different oases. Yet all these forms of regional and interregional mobility formed but the tip of an iceberg, with local forms of mobility across rather short distances accounting for the majority of movement. Here we see officials moving tax around the kingdoms, local farmers heading to the court with their grievances, and slaves being bought and sold, to name but a few forms of local movement. This contribution seeks to explore this great variety of mobility seen in the unusually rich written sources from the southern Tarim Basin. The study will mainly focus on the Khotanese documents from sites that were once part of the kingdom of Khotan, especially Domoko and Mazar Tagh, as well as from Dunhuang in the eastern Tarim Basin. These will be supplemented by documents in other languages from these same sites. On this basis, the contribution will explore the various forms of mobility in the Southern Tarim Basin in the 7th-10th centuries CE and focus on the question of how and why people travelled. In order to do this, it will investigate four reasons for movement: administrative, commercial, religious, and diplomatic. It will furthermore discuss how these types of mobility should be understood in relation to each other, arguing that regional and transregional movement necessarily depended upon more local forms of mobility.

Keywords: Inner Asian history, the Silk Road, the kingdom of Khotan, southern Tarim Basin, Dunhuang manuscripts

Thebes ascended to prominence as the paramount centre of the Byzantine silk industry during the twelfth century. Renowned for its exquisite weaving craftsmanship, Theban silk products earned an unrivalled reputation within Byzantium and found substantial demand in neighbouring regions. Existing scholarship has reasonably interpreted the industry as supported by an industrial network around Central Greece. However, the question of the supply of artisanal personnel, especially the silk weavers who played a paramount role in the industry, remained largely underexplored in this context. This article endeavours to delve into the formation of such an artisanal network, using the case study of a Theban confraternity founded in 1048. The confraternity’s primary mission was the preservation and dissemination of an icon of the Mother of God. It is known to us through a renewed version of its foundational document, dating to around 1100. The document ends with a subscription list of 47 members, which allowed us to establish the confraternity’s extensive geographical reach across Central Greece. Of particular significance is the prevalence of members with surnames linked to specific occupations, especially the presence of four individuals bearing the surname Blattas, which is strongly indicative of familial involvement in silk weaving. This suggests an inherent connection between the confraternity and the flourishing Theban silk industry. Taking the confraternity as an example, this article argues that religiosity of this nature could have served as a catalyst for the development of an intraregional network, facilitating the movement and exchange of individuals. Silk artisans, particularly silk weavers, around Central Greece probably took advantage of this network to enhance their mobility, thereby ensuring a continuous influx of textile artisans into Thebes, upon whom its emerging silk industry depended.

Keywords: Byzantium, Silk, Thebes, weavers, artisans, confraternity, Central Greece, mobility, Blattas

In his 1982 article »The ›imperial church system‹ of the Ottonian and Salian rulers: a reconsideration «, Timothy Reuter challenged a conception of the »imperial church« as a coherent, consciously wielded instrument of royal control. Noting instances of local resistance or collaboration or royal apathy, he argued for a more ad hoc and decentered conception of the relationship between secular power and the church. While this reorientation was valuable in many ways and has been pursued in subsequent scholarship, such an approach neglected the elements of social and cultural connection that connected the diverse regions of the empire. Using the career of the late Ottonian bishop Wolfgang of Regensburg (972-994), this article will examine the role of clerical movement across the German Empire and within discrete regions as an essential mechanism to create and maintain connectivity and coherence. Much attention has been paid to the royal Hofkapelle as the dominant context for the creation of a shared ethos, ideology and loyalties to king and colleagues. A close analysis of Wolfgang’s vita, however, suggests that each episcopal court and cathedral school offered similar opportunities to cultivate shared identities and knowledge and to create strands of social networks that helped to bind the disparate regions of the empire together. Wolfgang’s life also bears witness to the role of mobility in creating shared identity at the local level as well, signaling that mobility could contribute not only to the cultural cohesion of the empire across regions but also help to equip localities with at least the essentials of an »imagined community«, whether of empire or diocese. In this way, the essay suggests that, though Reuter’s reservations about the Reichskirche as a system of royal control remain valid, it retains value when understood as a Kulturgebiet or rather, as a set of discrete Kulturgebiete that could begin to form, at various moments through the movement of individual prelates as they advanced their careers, pursued their duties and brought their knowledge and connections, a more comprehensive community.

Keywords: Ottonian Empire, Salian Empire, bishops, mobility, Networks, communication

This article is concerned with peasants’ ideas and outlooks, the conflicts in which they participated, the decisions that they made, and the individual and collective actions that they took, including decisions about emigrating or staying put in view of certain political or climatic/ environmental constraints. Its target region is Italy between the sixth and the tenth centuries. The investigation is based on written and archaeological evidence. The first part of the paper attempts to illustrate the living conditions, the social stratifications and the technological knowledge of peasantries and discusses the nature of village societies by looking at peasant initiatives in terms of both collective action against the lord of the moment and individual careerism as a way to climb the social ladder. The second part of the paper accounts for larger repopulation/depopulation processes, on the one hand, and individual regional and micro-mobility, on the other. It shows how the peasantry was an actual political player in that they negotiated their displacements and mobilizations with the neighbouring lordly powers. Contextually, the possibility that environmental and climatic hazards might have acted as undercurrent forces of far-reaching rural migrations is taken into account. Finally, it sheds some light on peasants »on the road« and the reasons behind their mobility, ranging from everyday affairs – sometimes even not related to farming – to their desire to leave in search of their fortune. There emerges a picture of a rural Italy that was anything but static and immutable, where farmers formed a not-negligible factor of change in settlement patterns and power dynamics.

Keywords: early medieval Italy, peasantry, landholding, solidarity, migration, mobility, farming, additional income

The four essays introduced in this cluster represent one of the results of transdisciplinary discussions within the thematic platform »Global Eurasia – Comparison and Connectivity« at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. They resulted from comparative discussions on the concept of cultural brokerage, designed to name, describe and understand the phenomena of intercultural and transcultural exchange. In this introduction, interdisciplinary foundations of the concept of cultural broker are related to relevant contributions within medieval studies. Within it, the role model function of Christian missionaries with regard to the cultural and social-historical concept of the cultural broker is discussed, and the attributes associated with the concept of the cultural broker in the research discourse are defined, using the examples of early medieval Christian missionaries. The Vita of St Adalbert (d. 997), written at the beginning of the 11th century by Bruno von Querfurt, serves as an example. With its help, different contemporaneous attitudes towards cultural mediation in the given time and space are defined. The summary of the individual contributions in the thematic section concludes this introductory chapter.

Keywords: Middle Ages, cultural mediation, missionary narratives, language learning

This contribution discusses the two analytical concepts of »Indo-Tibetan« Buddhism and »cultural broker«, and shows how both can (still) be usefully applied. The term »Indo- Tibetan« Buddhism, though today outdated, can help us to describe specific configurations in the history of Buddhism. The use of the concept of »cultural broker«, which developed in the field of social anthropology and was adopted in the field of historical studies, is shown as problematic when its scope becomes very wide. The more detailed operative definition that is offered as a result of this in-depth analysis is then tested on the case of the iconic early Tibetan Buddhist monk, translator, and traveler Vairocana. When delimited by precise criteria, the broker concept can structure and guide our investigations and helpfully illuminate pivotal moments in history, as it does in the case of the history of »Indo-Tibetan« Buddhism.

Keywords: cultural broker(age), knowledge exchange, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, Vairocana

This paper presents an analysis of the pandit as a scholarly persona of the Sanskritic culture in colonial South Asia. It looks at how the interaction between pandits and Orientalists brought about and characterized the new persona of the »orientalist pandit« in late 18thcentury to 19th-century Calcutta. Furthermore, it shows how the idea of cultural broker as described in the field of social anthropology can be usefully applied to the »orientalist pandit «, as it encourages us to investigate social aspects and authority-related issues in processes of mediation of knowledge between pandits and British scholars. The community of specialists of the Sanskritic culture reacted in various ways to the knowledge brokerage of some pandits. The philological and intellectual activity of Gangadhar Ray Kaviraj, a specialist of the Ayurvedic tradition, showcases an antagonistic reaction to such brokers in the first half of the 19th century, when pandits had already been marginalized but contributed in different functions to the production of knowledge about »the Orient« in colonial South Asia.

Keywords: scholarly persona, cultural broker, pandit, Orientalists, Sanskritic culture, colonial South Asia, Ayurveda, Madhusudan Gupta, Gangadhar Kaviraj

This contribution engages with the emergence of commented editions of the Bible in the early medieval Latin West and illustrates their spread in the Carolingian Empire on the basis of the extant manuscript evidence. It describes their codicological and exegetical features starting from a comparison with the contemporary genre of the Byzantine frame catenae. Since the completion of a remarkably high number of commented editions can be ascribed to Otfrid of Wissembourg (d. after 871), the chapter discusses whether Otfrid might be regarded as a »cultural broker« of this new tool for biblical studies. To this end, it focuses on Otfrid’s networks, interests and intended audiences, using three short poems by Walahfrid Strabo and Otfrid’s own output, in particular his commented edition on Acts, as evidence.

Keywords: manuscript studies, biblical studies, Carolingian empire, East Francia, commented editions, Otfrid of Wissembourg, Walahfrid Strabo, Hilduin of St-Denis

This contribution is dedicated to the well-documented and peculiar case of Anastasius, librarian of the Roman Church. It will show how Anastasius, despite great erudition and thorough plans, did not succeed with his plans as a (ecclesiastical) politician and diplomat on several occasions – but still remained a powerful figure in Rome and beyond due to his unique language skills and cultural knowledge. It will address if and in what way Anastasius can be seen as a cultural broker.

Keywords: cultural broker, diplomacy, knowledge exchange, Rome, Constantinople, ninth century, Anastasius Bibliothecarius (the Librarian, c. 810-879)

Family life among medieval Eurasian nomads is still largely unknown due to the scarcity of written sources and the need to rely on ethnographic information originating from disparate chronological and geographical contexts. Thanks to developments in aDNA research, these uncharted territories are being progressively explored. This allows us to re-evaluate past paradigms on ethnicity, family dynamics, and human mobility. This article attempts to reassess the social limits and cultural connotations of the levirate marriage by drawing on recent genetic findings in burial sites of the Carpathian Basin (in today’s Austria and Hungary). The term »levirate« refers to a marriage between a widow and her late husband’s sibling or other relative. The custom was widespread throughout space and time, although it was particularly common in patriarchal cultures that permitted polygyny and enforced bride price. The paper aims to investigate the practice and rhetoric of levirate marriage in intercultural interactions between sedentary and nomadic communities, as well as within the writers’ ethnographic and literary traditions. The article will provide an analysis of ancient and medieval sources discussing levirate and marriage customs among Eurasian nomads coming from both western Eurasia (Greece, Rome, the Caucasus, the Near East, and Europe) and China. Following an examination of the biblical origin of the term levirate and an analysis of the socio-economic impact of this practice, the paper will demonstrate how the authors’ varying degrees of familiarity with the custom influenced the cultural significance that they assigned to the practice and will make it possible to place the newly discovered genetic data within a more comprehensive historical perspective.

Keywords: Levirate, marriage, customs, kinship, Eurasian nomads, Scythians, Huns, Oghuz Turks, Mongols, Xiongnu, Sima Qian