Das Mittelalter. Perspektiven mediävistischer Forschung. Beihefte

This volume brings together the papers presented at the 17^th symposium of the German Medievalist Society. The symposium was devoted to the topic of “the secret” as a constitutive social and cultural concept in the Middle Ages. The appearance, functions, and impact of secrets and their demarcation from the public domain are examined in essays from the fields of history, philosophy, theology, and literary and cultural studies.

In the medieval world, geographical knowledge was influenced by religious ideas and beliefs. Whereas this point is well analysed for the Latin-Christian world, the religious character of the Arabic-Islamic geographic tradition has not yet been scrutinised in detail.

This volume addresses this desideratum and combines case studies from both traditions of geographic thinking. The contributions comprise in-depth analyses of individual geographical works as for example those of al-Idrisi or Lambert of Saint-Omer, different forms of presenting geographical knowledge such as TO-diagrams or globes as well as performative aspects of studying and meditating geographical knowledge.

Focussing on texts as well as on maps, the contributions open up a comparative perspective on how religious knowledge influenced the way the world and its geography were perceived and described int the medieval world.

Pre-modern critical interactions of nature and society can best be studied during the so-called "Crisis of the 14th Century". While historiography has long ignored the environmental framing of historcial processes and scientists have over-emphasized nature's impact on the course of human history, this volume tries to describe the at times complex modes of the late-medieval relationship of man and nature. The idea of 'teleconnection', borrowed from the geosciences, describes the influence of atmospheric circulation patterns often over long distances. It seems that there were 'teleconnections' in society, too. So this volumes aims to examine man-environment interactions mainly in the 14th century from all over Europe and beyond. It integrates contributions from different disciplines on impact, perception and reaction of environmental change and natural extreme events on late Medieval societies. For humanists from all historical disciplines it offers an approach how to integrate written and even scientific evidence on environmental change in established and new fields of historical research. For scientists it demonstrates the contributions scholars from the humanities can provide for discussion on past environmental changes.

The European Middle Ages are generally considered to be the “age of the charter,” but there are also charters of various types handed down from other pre-modern cultures. These documents are now no longer seen as mere “textual recordings,” but as objects of symbolic communication. The aim of this volume is to show the possibilities offered by the analysis of charters for answering general questions in cultural and social history.

The Horatian formula prodesse et delectare was extremely influential in the production of texts across various languages and genres. While indeed didactic elements can be attested to in almost any medieval text, and while medieval literature displays a range of possibilities to teach and instruct, the scope of the present volume is more closely focused on explicitly didactic literature.
This volume combines contributions that analyse didactic literature in high medieval Europe from different vantage points. They open new perspectives on education as a working principle or legitimizing strategy in the heterogeneous forms of writing intended to convey knowledge. This broad thematic, linguistic and geographical scope enables us to view didactic literature as the universal phenomenon it was and prompts us to understand its influence on many aspects of society in high medieval Europe and beyond. While the contributions explore case studies predominantly from this period of transition and the expansion of the categories of knowledge, they also trace some of these developments into the later Middle Ages to spotlight the lasting influence of high medieval teaching and learning in literature.
The way medieval writers combine ‘the pleasant’ with ‘the useful’ is this book’s main question.

During the Middle Ages, binary differences – such as orthodox/unbeliever, male/female, poor/rich – were essential elements in the perception of social worlds, and in turn structured them. Yet what would happen if actors, practices, and phenomena did not align clearly with a given duality? The essays in this volume explore constellations of ambiguity and elucidate the conditions and boundaries of tolerance for ambiguity in the premodern era.

The volume discusses the world as it was known in the Medieval and Early Modern periods, focusing on projects concerned with mapping as a conceptual and artistic practice, with visual representations of space, and with destinations of real and fictive travel. Maps were often taken as straightforward, objective configurations. However, they expose deeply subjective frameworks with social, political, and economic significance. Travel narratives, whether illustrated or not, can address similar frameworks. Whereas travelled space is often adventurous, and speaking of hardship, strange encounters and danger, city portraits tell a tale of civilized life and civic pride. The book seeks to address the multiple ways in which maps and travel literature conceive of the world, communicate a 'Weltbild', depict space, and/or define knowledge.

The volume challenges academic boundaries in the study of cartography by exploring the links between mapmaking and artistic practices. The contributions discuss individual mapmakers, authors of travelogues, mapmaking as an artistic practice, the relationship between travel literature and mapmaking, illustration in travel literature, and imagination in depictions of newly explored worlds.

In der neueren Imperiengeschichte wurden Imperien häufig unter dem Gesichtspunkt des Verhältnisses zwischen Zentrum und Peripherien in den Blick genommen. Aus dieser Perspektive beruhen imperiale Ordnungen in der Praxis unter anderem auf dem asymmetrischen Austausch zwischen dem Herrschaftszentrum und davon abhängigen, in unterschiedlichem Intensitätsgrad beherrschten Gebieten. Für die Vermittlung zwischen Zentrum und Peripherie entscheidend sind Eliten, deren Angehörige Inhaber bestimmter, mitunter zeitlich befristeter, Ämter sein können, die aber auch durch Herkunft und Tradition Anspruch auf elitäre Positionen erheben. Der Zugriff der imperialen Zentrale auf Angehörige verschiedener Elitegruppen gestaltet sich dabei durchaus unterschiedlich; die Erfolgschancen solcher Zugriffsmöglichkeiten können entscheidend für den Fortbestand imperialer Ordnungen sein. Der Band untersucht aus dieser Perspektive imperiale Ordnungen in Europa, im Nahen Osten, in Indien und in China in der Zeit zwischen der römischen und sasanidischen Spätantike und dem ausgehenden Mittelalter. Die Beiträge verdeutlichen Mechanismen der Herrschaftsstabilisierung vor dem Hintergrund unterschiedlicher sozialer, kultureller und religiöser Voraussetzungen.

Following a methodological approach, the volume studies the alterity of medieval narration in the sense of a “historical narratology”. The concepts of “author”, “narrator”, “perspective”, as well as “time” and “space” are analysed in interdisciplinary case studies.

When scholars discuss the medieval past, the temptation is to become immersed there, to deepen our appreciation of the nuances of the medieval sources through debate about their meaning. But the past informs the present in a myriad of ways and medievalists can, and should, use their research to address the concerns and interests of contemporary society.

This volume presents a number of carefully commissioned essays that demonstrate the fertility and originality of recent work in Medieval Studies. Above all, they have been selected for relevance.

Most contributors are in the earlier stages of their careers and their approaches clearly reflect how interdisciplinary methodologies applied to Medieval Studies have potential repercussions and value far beyond the boundaries of the Middles Ages. These chapters are powerful demonstrations of the value of medieval research to our own times, both in terms of providing answers to some of the specific questions facing humanity today and in terms of much broader considerations.

Taken together, the research presented here also provides readers with confidence in the fact that Medieval Studies cannot be neglected without a great loss to the understanding of what it means to be human.

Isabelle Dolezalek is the recipient of the 2018 ICMA Annual Book Prize.

Roger II’s famous mantle and other royal garments from twelfth- and thirteenth-century Sicily prominently display Arabic inscriptions. While the phenomenon is highly unusual in the context of Latin Christian kingship, the use of inscriptions as a textile ornament was common and imbued with political functions in the Islamic courts of the medieval Mediterranean. This case study of the inscribed garments from Norman Sicily draws attention to the diverse functions of Arabic textile inscriptions using various contextual frames. Such a contextual approach not only highlights the specificities of the Norman textile inscriptions and emphasises the practical and political choices underlying their use at the Sicilian court, it also pinpoints the flaws of universalising approaches to transcultural ornamental in circulation in the medieval Mediterranean. This new perspective on the royal garments from Norman Sicily draws from a variety of disciplines, including Islamic and European art history, the history of textiles, epigraphy, legal history and historiography, and aims to challenge established notions of cultural and disciplinary boundaries.

Water is life. The human organism, our social relations and cultural achievements all depend on water. Water can preserve or destroy life, unite or separate us, and act as a force for liberation or dissipation. Water calls forth various cultural reactions as an economic, social, and symbolic factor. In the 47 essays collected in this book, medieval scholars from various disciplines consider water in its diverse functions.

Pre-Modern Europe’s diverse ethnic and religious groups were in continuous contact with each other and also with “cultures” beyond Europe. This collected volume analyzes these reciprocal exchange processes, taking into consideration connections between Christians, Jews, and Moslems as well as relationships between Western Europe, the Byzantine Empire, the Near East, and India.

The cultures of medieval Europe arose in continuous interconnection and conflict between the Abrahamic religions. This volume brings together these communities and examines the different directions of their development. The essays engage in an interdisciplinary dialogue to investigate the facets of transcultural development that form the roots of the heterogeneous cultures of modern Europe.

The volume launches the new series of the Medievalists' Society. It focuses on the relationship between Man and God. Issues include the interrelationship of God's image and the image of man, the Creator and His creature, and the differences between divine and human creation. Contributors include scholars from literary, musical, and art studies.