Newsletter 21

The Medieval Chronicle/ Die mittelalterliche Chronik/ La chronique médievale

Newsletter / Bulletin / Rundschreiben 21

Autumn / Automne / Herbst 2019

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9th International Conference 

The Medieval Chronicle/ Die mittelalterliche Chronik / La Chronique au Moyen Age

13 – 17, July 2020, Poznań, Poland

 Information on the 2020 Conference at Poznań

 Organizing Institutions:
–  Department of History, Adam Mickiewicz University

– Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences

Keynote speakers: Professor Tomasz Jasiński (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań), Professor Marie Bláhová (Charles University in Prague), Professor Márta Font (University of Pécs), Professor Dániel Bagi (University of Pécs) and Dr Darius von Guttner-Sporzynski (University of Melbourne).

The organising committee is available at:
http://historia.amu.edu.pl/index.php/organising-comittee

CfP and planned paper strands are available at: http://historia.amu.edu.pl/index.php/call-for-papers

Proposals for 20 minutes presentations are invited in English, French or German. Papers will be allocated to thematic sessions, therefore submissions should identify the theme to which the paper relates. The paper proposals (including the title and a 200-word abstract) are to be submitted by Saturday, 1 February 2020 using the online submission form.

Registration fee:

full conference:     €300

3-4 days:               €200

1-2 days:               €100

The registration fee covers meals and hotel accommodation at the Ibis Hotel Poznań (from Sunday, 12 July 2020 until Saturday, 18 July).

The Post-Conference Tour on Saturday, 18 July is free of charge. Please register your participation using the conference registration form. There are two options:

1) The Piast Route1: Gniezno – Strzelno

2) The Piast Route 2: Strongholds Lednica – Grzybowo – Giecz

Conference venue: Department of History, Morasko Campus, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Address: Uniwersytetu Poznanskiego 7, 61-614 Poznań.

Public transport: by tram from the city-centre (10-15 minutes).

For further information, please contact the organisers at icmcs2020@gmail.com

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The Medieval Chronicle Series

IMPORTANT NOTICE – Permanent 50 per cent Discount for MCS members

Members of the MCS are offered a permanent discount of 50 per cent on any volumes of MedChron if these are ordered directly from the publisher at:

http://www.brill.com/products/series/medieval-chronicle

To obtain the discount price use the discount code: 70257

The Medieval Chronicle 13 is almost ready to be printed, and will be available from the publisher in the spring of 2020

The Medieval Chronicle 14 – In progress

Members are reminded that they may submit articles at any time, in particular editions of short chronicle texts (full texts or important sections) which cannot easily be published elsewhere

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New Projects

SESDiva – Bulgarian-Russian-Belgian project

The ongoing (2018–2020) Bulgarian-Russian-Belgian project ‘South and East Slavs: Diversity and Interaction of Written Cultures (11th‐20th C)’ (‘SESDiva’; https://sesdiva.eu/en) offers the visitor ten virtual museum rooms about several aspects and/or results of the cultural encounters in the past millennium between South Slavs (Bulgarians and Serbs a.o.) and East Slavs (Russians and Ukrainians a.o.). The main coordinator of this ERA.Net RUS Plus project is Prof. Dr. Anissava Miltenova (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences). The research team consists of scholars from (1) the Institute for Literature at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (Sofia), (2) the Institute of Slavic Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow), and (3) the Department of Languages and Cultures, section Slavic and East‐European Studies, at Ghent University. A part of the virtual museum room contributions directly or indirectly deals with chronicle-related or other historiographical topics, e.g., https://sesdiva.eu/en/virtual-rooms/cultural-exchange/item/80-detour-russian-tale-en.

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Announcements

CFP for the International Congress on Medieval and Renaissance Scottish Language and Literature (which traditionally includes sessions on Scottish chronicles)

See Link.

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New Publications

General

A Students’ Guide to Late Antique and Medieval Historical Narratives. Ed. by János M. Bak, Justin Lake and Ivan Jurkovic With the cooperation of twenty-eight medievalists a digital guide to chronicles and (selected) hagiography for the period AD 300-1500 is in preparation to be published by the ITER Community, if all goes well, by the end of 2019. The guide offers a first orientation in the narratives and points to more detailed reference works (above all to the Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle).  Its specialty is that, in contrast to most other reference works, it is not organized alphabetically by author and/or title, but by the chronology of the texts’ relevance. In short: if one wants to know which chronicles (in he widest sense) and saints’ lives contain narratives for a given century (and within a more or less exact time span) this guide would list the most important ones all across Europe, including Byzantium, the Christian East and (in selection) the Muslim world, indicating the coverage, regional emphasis, editions, translations and (if available) internet links of the texts. The completed Guide will be available on the site: https://narratives.itercommunity.org/   (Start with ‘Big Table’)

Latin biblical Exegesis

Elisabeth Mégier, Scripture and History in the Middle Ages / Schriftsinn und Geschichte im Mittelalter. Studies in Latin biblical Exegesis/Untersuchungen zur Bibelauslegung in der lateinischen Kirche (ca. 350-ca. 1150). Beihefte zur Mediaevistik 23. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2018. 444 pp. ISBN: 9783631757086. £ 60, € 89. This collection of essays (in various languages) by Elisabeth Mégier focuses on the question ‘What is “history” in late antique and medieval biblical commentaries?’ The question concerns the term historia: to what uses is it put by the exegetes, and what do they mean by ‘historical sense’? It also concerns the representations of history in a modern sense, observable in the interpretation of the Bible. Answers are searched for in the vocabulary used by the authors, and by comparing different expositions. It follows that history as a text tends to give way, progressively, to history as the succession of real events.

Armenia

Tara L. Andrews, Mattʿēos Uṙhayecʿi and His Chronicle. The Medieval Mediterranean 108. Leiden: Brill, 2016. ISBN: 978-90-04-33035-1. € 109; $ 131. In Mattʿēos Uṙhayecʿi and His Chronicle Tara L. Andrews presents the first ever in-depth study of the history written by this Armenian priest, who lived in Edessa (modern-day Urfa in Turkey) around the turn of the twelfth century and was an eyewitness to the First Crusade and the establishment of the Latin East.
Although the Chronicle is known as an extremely valuable source of information for the eleventh- and early twelfth-century Near East, neither its guiding structure nor Uṙhayecʿi’s motivation in writing it have ever been clear to modern historians. This study elucidates the prophetic framework within which the text was written, and demonstrates how that framework has influenced Uṙhayecʿi’s understanding of the time in which he lived.

Belgium

Bram Caers and Mark Visscher, ‘The Illuminated Brabantsche yeesten Manuscripts IV 684 and IV 685 in the Royal Library of Belgium: An Unfinished Project of Brabantine Historiography. Description, List of Illustrations and Index of Persons Depicted.’ In Monte Artium 11 (2018): 7-35. The Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels is the custodian of two intriguing fifteenth-century manuscripts that contain part of the fourteenth-century Brabantine chronicle Brabantsche yeesten, by the Antwerp council clerk Jan van Boendale (IV 684 and IV 685). One of them contains no less than 69 illuminations, while the other was obviously intended to be illustrated in the same way, but never was. They are the only medieval manuscript version of the chronicle to ever have been illustrated, making them popular among medievalistst studying the Duchy of Brabant. Surprisingly, very little scholarly work has been done on the illuminations as such, and the manuscript context in which they are found. We also see that a handful of illustrations return time and again in scholarly publications, while others are less known. Now that the Library has digitised the manuscripts and made them available online, we provide an updated description and an annotated list of illustrations, with an index of persons and places depicted. We hope to provide scholars easier access to this rich collection of illustrations, which is of interest not only to medievalistst studying Brabant, but to medievalists studying western Europe generally.

See also: https://uurl.kbr.be/1065581 (MS IV684)

England

Continuatio Eulogii. The Continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum, 1364-1413. Ed. and trans. by Chris Given-Wilson. OUP, 2019. 240 pages. ISBN: 9780198823377. £ 85. Oxford Medieval Texts The Continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum is one of the major contemporary narratives of the reigns of Richard II and Henry IV. It covers the dramatic half century from 1364-1413, including the later years of the ailing Edward III (who died in 1377), the turbulent reign and ultimate fall of Richard II (deposed in 1399), and the struggles of his supplanter, Henry IV (who died in 1413) to establish the Lancastrian regime. It is written in a picturesque and anecdotal style, with a great deal of material not found in other contemporary chronicles. Although known and referred to for nearly two hundred years, it has never been translated into English before. This edition also includes a new transcription of the sole surviving British Library manuscript and a thorough investigation of the authorship, sources, and composition of what has always been regarded as an enigmatic source

Henry Bainton, History and the Written Word: Documents, Literacy, and Language in the Age of the Angevins. The Middle Ages Series. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. 272 pages. 2 illus. ISBN 9780812251906. $ 69.95 (£58.00). Drawing on the perspectives of modern and medieval narratology, medieval multilingualism, and cultural memory, History and the Written Word argues that members of an administrative elite demonstrated their mastery of the rules of literate political behavior by producing and consuming history-writing and its documents.

Mary Bateman, ‘A Newly-Discovered Latin Prose Brut Manuscript at Downside Abbey.’ The Downside Review 137.3 (2019, forthcoming) This article provides a detailed study of a manuscript held in the archives of Downside Abbey in Stratton-on-the-Fosse, Somerset, UK. The manuscript, Downside 78291, contains a Latin prose chronicle which has not previously been described or identified.

Dan Embree and Teresa Tavormina, ed. The Contemporary English Chronicles of the Wars of the Roses. Medieval Chronicles Series. Boydell Press, 2019. 406 pages, 8 B/W illustrations. ISBN: 9781783273645. £ 60. The first modern edition of eight contemporary chronicles covering the Wars of the Roses up to the return of Edward IV in 1471. The eight chronicles edited here are the principal surviving historical narratives of the Wars of the Roses written in English by men who lived through those wars. These are the best accounts by commoners (and one lord) written for their fellow Englishmen, produced within a few years of the events they describe, and thus have a particular immediacy.  These accounts, although contemporary, have to be treated with caution. All of them are narratives of public events intended for public consumption. They remain, however, vibrant and immediate accounts of the events they describe in a systematic, modern edition.

Paul McLoughlin, Breaking Ground: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Poems in Old English and in Translation. London: Paekakariki Press, 2018. 33 pages. ISBN: 978-190133-34-2. £ 12.50.

Jaakko Tahkokallio, The Anglo-Norman Historical Canon. Publishing and Manuscript Culture. Elements in Publishing and Book Culture. Cambridge UP, 2019. This Element is a contribution to the ongoing debate on what it meant to publish a book in manuscript. It offers case-studies of three twelfth-century Anglo-Norman historians: William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon and Geoffrey of Monmouth. It argues that the contemporary success and rapid attainment of canonical authority for their histories was in significant measure the result of successfully conducted publishing activities. These activities are analysed using the concept of a ‘publishing circle’. This concept, it is suggested, may have wider utility in the study of authorial publishing in a manuscript culture. Aavailable as Open Access on Cambridge Core at doi.org/10.1017/9781108624886

Germany

Thomas J. H. McCarthy, The continuations of Frutolf of Michelsberg’s Chronicle. Schriften der MGH 74. Wiesbaden, 2018. xxviii + 258 pp. ISBN 978-3-447-11061-7. € 55. This is the MGH’s first publication in English. Frutolf of Michelsberg’s Chronicle, completed c. 1099, is one of the most important historical works of the Middle Ages. Often seen as the epitome of the universal chronicle, it presents a detailed account of world history from the Creation until the end of the eleventh century. Such was its significance that it had already been continued and adapted numerous times by 1125. The author of these continuations has traditionally been seen as Abbot Ekkehard of Aura († c. 1130). This book is the first full-length study of the early twelfth-century continuations of Frutolf’s Chronicle. Through detailed textual, palaeographical and historiographical study, McCarthy shows that the attribution of the continuations to Ekkehard is largely false, concluding that only one of the surviving continuations can reasonably be ascribed to him. These conclusions drastically alter the accepted view of Ekkehard, which was based on the assumption that the eye-witness reports of the continuations were his. Rather, is much less known about him than previously believed. McCarthy uncovers fascinating evidence of repeated interaction with Frutolf’s Chronicle in early twelfth-century Bamberg. His book thus paints a vivid picture of the practice of historical writing and offers a salutary reminder of how central the work of medieval scribes is to our historical epistemology.

Hungary

Cosmas of Prague, The Chronicle of the Czechs – Cosmae Pragensis Chronica Bohemorum. Editors: János M. Bak, Pavlína Rychterová. 550 pages. ISBN: 978-963-386-300-8. $80.00 / €70.00/ £62.00. Latin-English bilingual. Central European Medieval Texts (forthcoming). The Latin-English bilingual volume presents the text of The Chronicle of the Czechs by Cosmas of Prague. Cosmas was born around 1045, educated in Liège, upon his return to Bohemia, he got married as well as became a priest. In 1086 he was appointed prebendary, a senior member of the clergy in Prague. He completed the first book of the Chronicle in 1119, starting with the creation of the world and the earliest deeds of the Czechs up to Saint Adalbert. In the second and third books Cosmas presents the preceding century in the history of Bohemia, and succeeds in reporting about events up to 1125, the year when he died. The English translation was done by Petra Mutlova and Martyn Rady with the cooperation of Libor Švanda. The introduction and the explanatory notes were written by Jan Hasil with the cooperation of Irene van Rensvoude.

Central European Medieval Texts (CEMT) These two volumes of CEMT have appeared or are about to:
Chronica de gestis Hungarorum e Codice Picto s. xiv &c.. Ed. János M. Bak and L. Veszprémy, with a CD of the facsimile of the codex. CEMT 9. ISBN: 978-963-386-264-3.

Studies to the Illuminated Chronicle. CEMT Subsidia 1. ISBN: 978-963-386-261-2 (a volume of essays on this illuminated chronicle) 

Online Decreta Regni Mediaevalis Hungariae Even if it is not a narrative source, some of you may be interested in laws. The five volumes of medieval Hungarian laws, the Latin-English  DRMH, published between 1989 and 20013, are now available in pdf format online. The title is: Online Decreta Regni Mediaevalis Hungariae: The Laws of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary  (https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/lib_mono/4/). In addition to the texts, a few studies are attached to the online publication. For inquiries and possible complaints I am still available as the last survivor of the original editorial team, wishing good reading to everyone interested in the legal development of the kingdom of Hungary-Croatia. János M. Bak (bakjm@ceu.edu) ed.-in-chief

Italy

Luigi Andea Berto, Making History in Ninth-Century Northern and Southern Italy. Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2019. 180 pp. ISBN 978-88-3339-1205. € 18. The ninth century represents a pivotal period for early medieval narrative sources. Despite the absence of great authors comparable to Gregory of Tours, Bede and Paul the Deacon, who had been capable of developing far-reaching works, historical writing in this period flourished remarkably.      This volume presents a detailed introduction to all the historical texts composed in Northern and Southern Italy during this century, thus shedding some light on little-known texts and offering an important contribution for a better understanding of ninth-century Italian history.

The Netherlands

Nicolaas Clopper, Florarium temporum (Bloemhof der tijden). Een laatmiddeleeuwse  wereldkroniek door Nicolaas Clopper, geschreven in het Klooster Mariënhage bij Eindhoven. Willem Erven, Nico Arts , Nico Pijls and Lauran Toorians. Hilversum: Verloren, 2018. ISBN 9789087047443. €29. The Florarium temporum is a late medieval Latin universal chronicle, written in the Mariënhage monastery near Eindhoven, by Nicolaas Clopper. The present book contains a number of studies and a selection of important passages with translations into Dutch. A usb-stick with the complete text and a facsimile edition of the autograph manuscript comes with it.

Spain

Kirstin Kennedy, Alfonso X of Castile-León: Royal Patronage, Self-Promotion and Manuscripts in Thirteenth-Century Spain. Amsterdam UP, 2019. € 99. Where this book deals with chronicle manuscripts from the reign of Alfonso X in the course of its examination of the king’s self-projection, they are considered principally from the codicological perspective or in terms of the relation of text to miniature in specific chapters.

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Brief Notices

Boydell & Brewer’s Medieval Chronicles Series Prospective editors of medieval chronicles are invited to contact Dan Embree, Editor of Boydell and Brewer’s Medieval Chronicles Series, at sothsegger@comcast.net or croiniceoir@gmail.com, to discuss projects. We encourage discussions at any stage from vague stirrings to substantial drafts. We are interested in editions of medieval texts in various languages, of collections of short, related texts, and of  previously (but inadequately) edited texts.

Boydell & Brewer’s Writing History in the Middle Ages Series History-writing was a vital form of expression throughout the European Middle Ages, and is fundamental to our understanding of medieval societies, politics, modes of expression, cultural memory, and social identity. This series publishes innovative work on history-writing from across the medieval world; monographs, collections of essays. Editions of texts will also be considered.

For more information, write to the Series Editors:
Dr Henry Bainton                                                                      Professor Lars Boje Mortensen
Department of English and Related Literature                   Head of Centre
University of York                                                                     University of Southern Denmark
henry.bainton@york.ac.uk                                                      labo@sdu.dk

And see also: Writing History in the Middle Ages series

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Research Stipends

Notre Dame’s programs for visiting medievalists (from Julia Marvin) The Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame has several year-long and short-term programs for visiting scholars, including an A. W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Medieval Studies (for faculty at US institutions), Stipends for Short-term Postdoctoral Research, Stipends for Ambrosiana Microfilms Collection Research,  and the SIEPM Fellowship in Medieval Philosophy. For more information, see  http://www.nd.edu/~medinst/funding/funding.html
Notre Dame has substantial collections of microfilms and facsimiles, which may be searched here:
http://medieval.library.nd.edu/mss_microfilms/
http://medieval.library.nd.edu/mss_facs/
http://homepages-nw.uni-regensburg.de/~dug22463/FAZ_22May2011_p60-63.PDF

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MCS Twitter Account

The Medieval Chronicle Society has a Twitter account to accompany its website. The account is being run by Professor Sarah Peverley (University of Liverpool) and will be used to provide short updates about chronicle conferences and symposia (which have reached the ‘call for papers’ stage), large funded research projects involving medieval chronicles, and newly published editions and/or monographs on chronicles. If members would like Professpr Peverley to ‘tweet’ about any of the above on their behalf please contact her at S.Peverley[at]liv[dot]ac[dot]uk. Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters and to avoid being overwhelmed with requests Professor Peverley will only ‘tweet’ about publications and events that are chronicle related. The Twitter account is: @medievalchron so please follow us and spread the word.

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The Medieval Chronicle Society – https://medievalchronicle.org/

For information contact: Dr Erik Kooper, Dept of English – Utrecht University – The Netherlands – E-mail: e.s.kooper{at}uu.nl