The local, the regional, and the universal in knowledge compilations: Observations on the Codex Aldenburgensis
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Hanna Vorholt
Abstract
This chapter discusses the Codex Aldenburgensis, created under the direction of Anianus Coussere, abbot of the Benedictine abbey of St Peter in Oudenburg (r. 1451-1462). It traces how the manuscript was developed from a monastic chronicle into a Chronicon universale with encyclopedic dimensions, and explains this development as motivated by Coussere’s desire to see his own deeds commemorated and his monastery situated in ever wider frameworks of reference, following the ceremonious translation of the relics of St Arnulf into a newly created shrine in 1457. The analysis presents not only insights into compilatory traditions in fifteenth-century Flanders, but also sheds new light on the production context of the famous twelfth-century encyclopedia Liber Floridus by Lambert of Saint-Omer, to which the Codex Aldenburgensis is related; it finally considers why Benedictine and Cistercian readers praised and judged the Codex Aldenburgensis in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Abstract
This chapter discusses the Codex Aldenburgensis, created under the direction of Anianus Coussere, abbot of the Benedictine abbey of St Peter in Oudenburg (r. 1451-1462). It traces how the manuscript was developed from a monastic chronicle into a Chronicon universale with encyclopedic dimensions, and explains this development as motivated by Coussere’s desire to see his own deeds commemorated and his monastery situated in ever wider frameworks of reference, following the ceremonious translation of the relics of St Arnulf into a newly created shrine in 1457. The analysis presents not only insights into compilatory traditions in fifteenth-century Flanders, but also sheds new light on the production context of the famous twelfth-century encyclopedia Liber Floridus by Lambert of Saint-Omer, to which the Codex Aldenburgensis is related; it finally considers why Benedictine and Cistercian readers praised and judged the Codex Aldenburgensis in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Preface and acknowledgements V
- Contents VII
- Introduction: Regionally specified knowledge compendia between encyclopedia and chorography 1
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I Universal history, encyclopedia, and chorography: Early modern practices and forms of knowledge compilation
- The local, the regional, and the universal in knowledge compilations: Observations on the Codex Aldenburgensis 41
- Encyclopedia and dictionaries in premodern and early modern Japan: Chinese heritage and the local reordering of knowledge 95
- Imago et descriptio: Narrating Sicily in the modern period 147
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II Creating and organizing New Spanish knowledge: Early colonial compendia and “cultural encyclopedias”
- Dreams and the sacred thresholds of P’urhépecha power in the Relación de Michoacán 175
- Constructing a native heritage in New Spain? Bernardino de Sahagún’s Florentine Codex (1577) as a “cultural encyclopedia” 209
- Order and organization of knowledge on the New World in José de Acosta’s Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1590) 323
- The problem solver: Colonial knowledge, authority, and the compilation of natural marvels in Juan de Cárdenas’s Problemas y secretos (1591) 339
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III Writing history and depicting knowledge: Compendia and “cultural encyclopedias” from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries
- Mastering the chaos of cross-cultural encounter in Andrés Pérez de Ribas’s Historia de los triumphos de nuestra santa fee (1645) 363
- Jesuit historiography and the making of the Kingdom of Quito: Juan de Velasco’s Historia del Reino de Quito (1789) 399
- A mid-nineteenth-century ethnographic atlas of the Tibetan world: The British Library’s Wise Collection 423
- Notes on the contributors 445
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Preface and acknowledgements V
- Contents VII
- Introduction: Regionally specified knowledge compendia between encyclopedia and chorography 1
-
I Universal history, encyclopedia, and chorography: Early modern practices and forms of knowledge compilation
- The local, the regional, and the universal in knowledge compilations: Observations on the Codex Aldenburgensis 41
- Encyclopedia and dictionaries in premodern and early modern Japan: Chinese heritage and the local reordering of knowledge 95
- Imago et descriptio: Narrating Sicily in the modern period 147
-
II Creating and organizing New Spanish knowledge: Early colonial compendia and “cultural encyclopedias”
- Dreams and the sacred thresholds of P’urhépecha power in the Relación de Michoacán 175
- Constructing a native heritage in New Spain? Bernardino de Sahagún’s Florentine Codex (1577) as a “cultural encyclopedia” 209
- Order and organization of knowledge on the New World in José de Acosta’s Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1590) 323
- The problem solver: Colonial knowledge, authority, and the compilation of natural marvels in Juan de Cárdenas’s Problemas y secretos (1591) 339
-
III Writing history and depicting knowledge: Compendia and “cultural encyclopedias” from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries
- Mastering the chaos of cross-cultural encounter in Andrés Pérez de Ribas’s Historia de los triumphos de nuestra santa fee (1645) 363
- Jesuit historiography and the making of the Kingdom of Quito: Juan de Velasco’s Historia del Reino de Quito (1789) 399
- A mid-nineteenth-century ethnographic atlas of the Tibetan world: The British Library’s Wise Collection 423
- Notes on the contributors 445
