medieval worlds ‒ comparative and interdisciplinary studies, No. 1/2015
Approaches to Comparison im Medieval Studies
Nummer:
1
Jahrgang:
2015
1. Auflage, 2015
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
- Walter Pohl - Andre Gingrich: Medieval Worlds: Introduction to the First Issue
- Patrick Geary: The Discourse of Herrschaft as the Practice of Herrschaft in the Fifth Century
- Robert Moore: The First Great Divergence?
- Lars Boje Mortensen: Comparing and Connecting: the Rise of Fast Historiography in Latin and Vernacular (Twelfth to Thirteenth Century)
- Helen Siu: Historical Anthropology: A View from 'South China'
- Ian Wood: Universal Chronicles in the Early Medieval West
- Ann Christys: Universal Chronicles in Arabic before c. 900
- Gwen Bennet : 'I Spy with my Little Eye': GIS and Archaeological Perspectives on Eleventh Century Song Envoy Routes in the Liao Empire (Kitan-Liao Archaeological Survey and History KLASH)
- Michael Borgolte: Foundations 'For the Salvation of the Soul' – an Exception in World History? (Foundations of Medieval Societies FOUNDMED)
- Catherine Holmes - Naomi Standen: Defining the Global Middle Ages (AHRC Research Network)
- Eduardo Manzano: Why Did Islamic Medieval Institutions Become So Different from Western Medieval Institutions? (Power and Institutions in Medieval Islam and Christendom PIMIC)
- Walter Pohl - Andre Gingrich: Visions of Community (VISCOM): Comparative Approaches to Ethnicity, Region and Empire in Christianity, Islam and Buddhism (400-1600 CE)
- John Tolan: The Legal Status of Religious Minorities in the Euro-Mediterranean World (RELMIN)
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The Discourse of Herrschaft as the Practice of Herrschaft in the Fifth Century
This essay examines the spectrum of political action and dominance from Constantinople to the frontiers of Noricum and Gaul at the end of the fifth century by comparing the lives of Zeno the Isurian, Theoderic the Great, Severinus of Noricum and Genovefa of Paris.
Schlagworte: Herrschaft, ethnicity, Zeno, Theoderic, Severinus, Genovefa
Patrick J. Geary
Seite 5 - 15
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The First Great Divergence?
The ›Papal Revolution‹ in late eleventh and early twelfth century western Europe and the unsuccessful campaign by Wang An Shi and his followers to reform the imperial administration of Song China at just the same time are regarded as critical turning points in their respective histories. They are strikingly similar in some crucial respects. Both represented the responses of dominant elites to fundamental challenges to their traditional positions. Similar crises seem to have occurred at the same period in other citied regions of Eurasia. Each resulted, to varying degrees, in the emergence of a new or newly defined learned elite which drew its authority from its role as custodian and interpreter of a body of texts and associated ritual practices held to have been inherited from antiquity or late antiquity. The cultural hegemonies thus established in their respective regions endured until c. 1800 or later, constituting the ›civilizations‹ which are seen as the building blocks of modern world history. I have argued that in Latin Europe the crisis gave birth to an enduring clerical elite whose members accorded over-riding loyalty to nascent governing institutions in church and state rather than to their kin. Elsewhere the cultural power of the learned was essentially directed to sustaining the interests of their kingroups. In 2009, borrowing the phraseology of Kenneth Pomeranz, I suggested that these contrasting outcomes constituted a ›First Great Divergence‹ between western Europe and the other Eurasian ›civilizations‹. In this paper the appropriateness of that description is reconsidered and dismissed, as embodying a simplistic teleological polarisation of the kind that Pomeranz had rightly rejected. Rather, it is suggested that the outcome of the general – though not universal – crisis of elites in early second-millennium Eurasia would be better described as a Great Diversification.
Schlagworte: gentry, clerical elites, bureaucracy, Middle Ages, Europe and China, East-West Divergence, Rise of the West
Seite 16 - 24
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Comparing and Connecting: the Rise of Fast Historiography in Latin and Vernacular (Twelfth to Thirteenth Century)
This contribution proposes to compare, but also to connect, the rise of a new type of unlearned historical report, ›fast historiography‹, in Latin and vernacular in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Connections are suggested by combining the characteristics of such writing with book and library history as well with social history. New roles of book writing coincided with a larger social spread among authors as well as with a new library horizon – books now began to circulate at higher speed, in greater numbers and in less solemn circumstances. These possibilities were exploited and pushed forward both in Latin and vernacular historiography. This connection has been overlooked for several reasons, primarily because Latin and vernacular literatures are often considered each on their own terms, compartmentalized into two ›traditions‹ in which Latin seems to bear an automatic tag as learned and ecclesiastical. But this is not the case with Gesta Francorum, Galbert of Bruges, Raol (on the conquest of Lisbon), Caffaro, Henry of Livonia etc. – they all resemble the simple account in French of Robert de Clari and others. Related to this argument, the article opens with reflections on canons and paradigms of European medieval historiography (in papal Europe) and suggests that comparisons and connections always spring from certain strong national canons and that the questions they are devised to answer are to a large degree determined by such canonical series. Indirectly the article is therefore also an experiment with comparisons outside the dominant national canons and between non-canonical pieces.
Schlagworte: medieval historiography, literature, library, book production, Latin, vernacular, thirteenth century, Europe, canon
Seite 25 - 39
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Historical Anthropology: A View from »South China«
This note summarizes key analytical themes that a group of us who works on Chinese culture and history have given much thought. They are 1) text and life worlds, 2) local and translocality, 3) the past in the present, 4) unity and diversity in Chinese culture, 5) structuring and human agency.
Schlagworte:
Seite 40 - 46
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Universal Chronicles in the Early Medieval West
This paper considers the modern concept of a ›universal chronicle‹, examining its validity for Latin texts written before the mid-ninth century. It notes that while modern historians of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages concentrate on the most recent material in chronicles and other historical writings, the original authors were usually concerned to set events of their own day within a framework that began with the Creation, the Birth of Adam, or of Abraham, and that as a result most historical texts should be seen primarily as tracing the history of Salvation. As such they need to be understood as one manifestation of a more general concern with the nature of Time.
Schlagworte: chronicle, Bede, Isidore, Fredegar
Ian N. Wood
Seite 47 - 60
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Universal Chronicles in Arabic before c. 900
This paper uses two Arabic chronicles of the mid ninth to early tenth centuries – the History of Ibn Ḥabīb and the History of the Prophets and Kings of al-Ṭabarī – to illustrate the development of the message of the Qur’ān into chronological narratives that may be read as salvation history. The paper also briefly considers their place within the Islamic historiographical tradition and whether comparisons may be made with contemporary Christian historiography.
Schlagworte: salvation history
Seite 61 - 70
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»I Spy with my Little Eye«: GIS and Archaeological Perspectives on Eleventh Century Song Envoy Routes in the Liao Empire (Kitan-Liao Archaeological Survey and History KLASH)
Archaeological data, combined with GIS analysis has given us new perspectives on eleventh century medieval period envoy missions from the Song Dynasty (960-1279 CE) to the Liao Empire (907-1125 CE). Lu Zhen and Wang Zhen were Song envoys sent in 1008 and 1012 by the Song to the Liao’s Middle Capital or Zhongjing, in present day Chifeng Inner Mongolia, the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). Lu Zhen recorded information about the route he traveled that allows us to locate it on administrative maps of the Song-Liao period and present day maps of the PRC. Viewshed analysis of the route combined with information Wang Zhen recorded about it lets us calculate population densities for an area that he passed through that can be used to extrapolate population density estimates from archaeological data for other areas in Chifeng. Viewshed analysis provides insights about the areal extent of the landscape and what man-made structures the envoys might have been able to see along the route during their travels. Combined, these analyses give us better insights into some of the concerns that the Liao had about these foreign missions crossing their territory and the steps they took to address them.
Schlagworte: Liao Empire, Song Dynasty, Archaeology, GIS, China, landscape analysis, viewsheds, optimal routes
Seite 71 - 85
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Foundations »For the Salvation of the Soul« – an Exception in World History? (Foundations of Medieval Societies FOUNDMED)
Foundations for the salvation of the soul, as they are known from Christianity, are to be found for the first time in world history in Zoroastrianism. Though influenced by the spirit of ›Zoroaster‹, they can be proven to have existed for the first time in the age of the Sassanids. Doubtless they are a result of the revolutionary ›Axial Age‹, yet other religions of the Axial Age found other solutions for dealing with the discovery of the individual and the ethical responsibility for others (or: for empathy). This can be demonstrated via the teachings of Confucius in China.
Schlagworte: individualization, empathy, ethics, Confucianism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Axial Age, salvation of the soul, funerary cult, soul cult, foundations
Seite 86 - 105
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Defining the Global Middle Ages (AHRC Research Network)
This report sketches the goals and findings of a research network involving some thirty UK-based academics, charting the development of our collective thinking from efforts to establish parameters to our ›breakthrough‹ into new findings and approaches, over the course of three workshops.
Schlagworte:
Seite 106 - 117
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Why Did Islamic Medieval Institutions Become So Different from Western Medieval Institutions? (Power and Institutions in Medieval Islam and Christendom PIMIC)
This paper attempts to answer the question of why Islamic medieval institutions became so different from their Western counterparts. It is divided into three sections. The first discusses the significance of comparing institutions from this perspective and the patterns that can be found in doing so. The second section describes the methodology that has been followed in this research and sets aside other possible approaches, particularly those espoused by the New Institutional Economics. The third section seeks to answer the main question: it is argued that differences in institutional shaping emerge from the divergent paths taken by power and authority in Islamic social formation, which was confronted with an irresolvable dilemma between temporal rule and religious legitimacy. This separation emerged, in the final analysis, from a distinctive polity that was based on the control of tax and increasingly detached itself from forms of religious authority that sprang from the Muslim community.
Schlagworte: Middle Ages, Islam, Christendom, Institutions, comparative history
Seite 118 - 137
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Visions of Community (VISCOM): Comparative Approaches to Ethnicity, Region and Empire in Christianity, Islam and Buddhism (400-1600 CE)
Seite 138 - 147
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The Legal Status of Religious Minorities in the Euro-Mediterranean World (RELMIN)
Seite 148 - 166
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Ausgabe:
978-3-7001-7849-1, E-Journal, PDF, nicht barrierefrei, 01.07.2015
Auflage:
1. Auflage
Seitenzahl:
166 Seiten
Sprache:
Englisch
DOI (Link zur Online Edition):