medieval worlds ‒ comparative and interdisciplinary studies, No. 5/2017

The article presents a new model for understanding the sudden success of prose in four literatures: Greek, Latin, French and Old Norse. Through comparison and quantitative observations, and by focusing on the success of prose rather than its invention, it is shown that in all four cases two or three decades were crucial for creating prose literature. This turn can be described by the term »librarization«: the fact that private book collections and reading habits emerged helps us understand the space into which a host of prose writers were suddenly writing. This reading habit factor (inlcuding reading aloud) has been underplayed in previous scholarship mostly focused on authorial choices and invention. For two of the literatures (Greek, French) the fast dynamics of the rise of prose has already been identified and discussed, but for the two others (Latin, Old Norse), the observation is new. It is also suggested that the exactly contemporary rise of French and Old Norse prose (c. 1200-1230) most probably is connected. The four literatures are each shown in chronological charts so as to visualize the timeline and the relation between poetic and prosaic works. The article furthermore reflects on a number of characteristics and implications of prose literature by drawing on comparisons and contrasts between the ancient and the medieval, important among which is the profound effect of prose librarization on the canonization of existing poetic literature.

Schlagworte: history of reading, library history, Greek, Old Norse, Latin, French, book history, poetry, prose, medieval literature

Late medieval English chronicles contain several puzzling references to the idea of people ›becoming English‹ by changing allegiance, usually in the context of war. How does this fit in with the predominantly ›racial‹ understanding of nationhood that permeated late-medieval English literary texts and official rhetoric, based on well-established ideas about birth, blood and heredity? These assumptions provided a powerfully persistent backdrop to late- medieval English writers’ constructions of national identity and culture, which had an impact not only in literary spheres but also on government rhetoric and policy. Was it possible for a person to change nationality by changing sides? It is argued that these scattered re ferences by certain chroniclers to ›becoming‹ English, French or Scottish refer not to an actual change in nationality as a legal and political status but act as a shorthand way of describing an anomalous change of political allegiance. Such instances of changing sides went against the grain of the political behaviour expected from a person born into a certain nationality but they did not change that nationality, which was associated with blood and birth. The essay goes on to examine the language of denization, by which foreigners were granted the legal rights and privileges of a native-born English person. From a close examination of the range of Latin vocabulary used in official documents, it is argued that even denization did not effect a change in the perceived nationality of the recipient, but only allowed for them to be treated as if they were English, in certain circumstances. Moreover, this new legal status did not automatically remove the alien social and cultural identity of recipients in the eyes of local political society, particularly at times of political tension such as the Glyn Dŵr revolt in Wales or outbreaks of war with France. By teasing out the implications of these puzzling uses of language and terminology, it is possible to refine and complicate our understanding of the intersection of ideas about race, subject-hood, allegiance, and nationality in both the texts and the politics of late medieval England.

Schlagworte: immigration, aliens, allegiance, Welsh, denization, war, national identity, ethnicity, race, English, medieval England, nationality

This paper seeks to position the Byzantine paradigm within the broader discussion of identity, ethnicity and nationhood before Modernity. In about the last decade, there has been a revived interest in research into collective identity in Byzantine society, with a number of new publications providing various arguments about the ethno-cultural or national character of Byzantine Romanness as well as its relationship to Hellenic identity. Contrary to an evident tendency in research thus far to relate Byzantine, i.e. medieval Roman, identity to a dominant essence – be it ethnic Hellenism, Chalcedonian orthodoxy or Roman republicanism – the approach adopted here aims to divert attention to the various contents and the changing forms of Byzantine Romanness as well as to its function as a dominant mode of collective identification in the medieval Empire of Constantinople. The main thesis of the paper is that the development of Roman identity in the East after the turning point of the seventh century and up to the final sack of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453 needs to be examined as one of the most fascinating cases of transformation of a pre-modern social order’s collective identity discourse, one which culminated in an extensive reconstruction of the narrative of the community’s historical origins by the educated élite. Last but not least, the problematization of the function of Romanness as an ethnicity in the Byzantine case offers an interesting example for comparison in regards to the debated role of ethnicity as a factor of political loyalty in the pre-modern era.

Schlagworte: ethnicity, Hellenism, Romanness, Byzantine identity

Examining synchronic and diachronic discourses of the body in relation to groups sheds light on concepts of ›ethnicity‹ from an emic perspective. From the tenth century, monks, first in Spain and later in North-Western Europe, began to compile lists of ethnic characteristics, summing up the virtues and vices of peoples. By the twelfth century, such enumerations of ethnic diversity featured in textbooks of rhetoric, collections of proverbs, and in poetry and prose. The ontology of ethnic characteristics likewise transformed from the religious-ethical to the medical. Early medieval monks catalogued the virtues and vices of groups loosely arranged according to an Evagrian or Gregorian ethical system of seven or eight cardinal sins and virtues, expounding the function of groups‹ moral dispositions, which were, in the eschatological history of salvation in both the past and the present, subject to free will. However, from the twelfth century, under the impact of Galenic humoral theory, students of the liberal arts began to attribute ethnic characteristics on biological grounds, referring in particular to the heredity influence of climate. In the same period, ethnic groups were now considered as entities dwelling in bounded territories that bore the stamp of their name, sometimes envisaged as a body politic. As such, the ethnotype, and its ruler, could stand as a pars pro toto for the ›nation‹.

Schlagworte: body politic, Galenic humours, rhetoric, Eschatology, virtues and vices, ethnic character, Central Middle Ages

This article considers a recent critical problematisation of the discussion of ›Otherness‹ in Merovingian archaeology, and extends this problematisation to the early mortuary archaeology of post-Roman/early Anglo-Saxon England. The article first examines the literary goals of Gildas’ De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, and especially its representation of military activity, to reject popular arguments that Gildas’ conceptual framework described the emergence of an authentic, ›post-colonial‹ British ethnic consciousness that was grounded in a conscious rejection of Romanness and separation from a ›Germanic‹, barbarian other. The article then examines the early Anglo-Saxon cemetery of Wasperton, Warwickshire, and rejects previous interpretations of the site, which argue that its inhabitants expressed in burial the ideological demarcation of Romanness from a Germanic ›Other‹. Drawing upon the distinctions made by Gildas between legitimate and illegitimate military authority and the clear use of symbols of military ideology present at the site, the article suggests that such sites instead offer evidence for the material expression of a new military ideology which, though deviant from the normative expectations of civic Romanness, was primarily drawn upon by the inhabitants of early Anglo-Saxon England to make appeals for the inclusion of the deceased as key members of their communities.

Schlagworte: historiography, Gildas, ethnicity, identity, Otherness, late Roman, Archaeology, Anglo-Saxon

There is abundant evidence for the existence of the Irish nation as a concept in the early medi eval period. A variety of texts, in both Latin and the vernacular, depict the people of Ireland as a community of birth, language, law, religion and, sometimes, politics. The creation and re-creation of ethnic and national identities elsewhere in late-antique and early medieval Europe, sometimes called ethnogenesis, has become a key concern of historians of this period in recent decades. This study of ethnogenesis prioritises interaction with the Roman Empire and political unity as precursors to the development of common identity among barbarian peoples. This model does not appear appropriate to explain developments in Ireland, where political fragmentation and divisions among the learned classes mitigated against the evolution of a common identity inclusive of all Irishmen. That such an identity emerged by the close of the sixth century, and gained popularity during the seventh, is discussed here in light of developments within the Irish Church, including the controversy around the Easter debate and attempts on behalf of Armagh to claim ecclesiastical primacy within Ireland. The process is elucidated through comparison with identity-formation in Anglo-Saxon England, as it can be observed primarily through the work of Bede. The result is to highlight the signifi cance among early medieval ecclesiastical scholars of the perceived role of national apostles in establishing national churches. Ultimately rooted in their understanding of the Bible, these ideas could be deployed in both Ireland and England in support of the claims of specific churches to ecclesiastical authority.

Schlagworte: Bede, national apostles, St. Patrick, Liber Angeli, Tírechán, Muirchú, Armagh, Columbanus, ethnogenesis, national identity, Ireland

The project »Digitising Patterns of Power«(hereafter DPP) is funded within the programme »Digital Humanities: Langzeitprojekte zum kulturellen Erbe«of the Austrian Academy of Sciences for a period of four years (2015-2018). It is hosted at the Institute for Medieval Research (IMAFO) of the same Academy and unites as a cluster project various experts from the fields of medieval history, Byzantine studies, historical geography, archaeology, geography, cartography, geographical information science (GISc) and software engineering. The present article elaborates on the authors’ case study, »The Historical Region of Macedonia (12th-14th centuries): The Transformation of a Medieval Landscape«within DPP. It focuses, on the one hand, on the macro-level of political concepts in the Southern Balkan Peninsula from the 12th to the 14th centuries (especially from the expansion of the Serbian medieval kingdom to the South under King Stefan Uroš II Milutin until the death of Tsar Stefan Uroš IV Dušan, i.e. from 1282 until 1355), and, on the other hand, on the micro-level on the border zones and cross-border societies between the medieval Serbian kingdom and the Byzantine Empire in Byzantine Macedonia in the same period. The initial point of research is formed by the medieval written sources, i.e. Serbian and Byzantine charters as the main corpus, as well as other selected written sources from the medieval Serbian kingdom. The sources are analysed from the viewpoint of the aforesaid research questions and strongly based on methods derived from Historical Geography (especially on those of the long-term project Tabula Imperii Byzantini (TIB) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences). Special attention is given to the analysis of formulations with regard to the Serbian expansion within the area of research; the acquisition of new territories and their administrative incorporation on the macro-level; and to the localisation of conquered settlements with related settlement typologies, as well as to the change of local elites (prosopography) and their interaction with local nomads (i.e. Vlachs) on a micro-level. Finally, digital tools for storing data, mapping and visualisation, which have been developed by DPP, are presented.

Schlagworte: software engineering", WebGIS, GIScience, GIS, cartography, spatial analysis, Archaeology, historical geography, Byzantine studies, Medieval History, History, digital humanities

In stark contrast to the Bible‘s paramount role of being the only book declared to have »World Heritage« status by the UNESCO, research on the »Book of Books« from a transcultural perspective is an almost neglected phenomenon: Neither the Bible’s relationship to other »holy or sacred« scriptures as modes of religious and cultural perceptions and transformations of the Others’ world, nor its decisive role as a »normative order« in the many modes of religious, social and cultural interaction in the Euro-mediterranean world have been comprehensively studied from a historical perspective. Because of their pretension of normativity, the religious laws of this world (Tanach, Talmud, Bible and Qur’ān) were competing against and confronting each other with alternative models of perceiving time, space and history. The diverse concepts of the three monotheisms had consequences for their common but nevertheless specific narratives, genres and books of exegetical, polemical and historiographical practice; yet, we do not have clear-cut ideas of the processes of possible entanglement between these modes of perceiving and transforming the Others’ history; nor do we know their exact place and value in the systems of knowledge or their retroactive effects (on either side) on the interpretations of their own religious laws. Our project intends to give answers to these basic questions based on the evidence of the Christian biblical and historiographical legacy in the transcultural frontier societies of the medieval Iberian Peninsula. We thereby change the perspective on the biblical legacy of these societies: Bible manuscripts are no longer seen as testimonies of texts or text traditions alone, but as bearers of canons: theoretical and practical concepts of history and perceptions of religious alterities. We therefore re-contextualize these perceptions of »the Others’ world« within, on the one hand, the larger context of the typological thinking of preserved biblical manuscripts, their materiality and mediality; and on the other hand, in their narrative framework of the related Iberian historiographical production.

Schlagworte: transcultural studies, Christians, Jews and Muslims, Iberian Peninsula, identities, typology, canon, historiography, Bible