After three years, it’s finally time for the After Empire project to come to a close. Over the course of our project, our ten members have been hard at work collaborating with each other and with people both inside and outside of academia on tenth- and eleventh-century history in a variety of forms. In addition…
The Long Rediscovery of a New Old Text The so-called Homiliary of Luculentius is an early medieval text with an unfortunate fate. Already known in fragments since the seventeenth century, it became part of the history of Latin medieval literature only at a very late stage of research due to incorrectly attributed dates and…
From the 30th of May to the 1st of June, 2019, the Austrian Academy of Sciences hosted the final conference of the After Empire project in Vienna. The conference brought together scholars working on post-Carolingian Europe with those working on other regions experiencing their own ‘times of transition’. Like many of the speakers, several of the moderators…
For anyone dealing with medieval royal diplomatics, confirmation charters are a very common thing. Whenever a new ruler was appointed, one of his first acts was to renew charters that had once been given by his predecessors and which were now presented to him for confirmation. While through its renewal a document achieved new legal…
At the beginning of the tenth century Regino, in exile from the monastery of Prüm, composed a collection of canon law in two books at the request of his patron, Archbishop Ratbod of Trier. According to the preface, he intended this to be a portable guide for the bishop to take with him when touring…
The legend of the Passion of the Crucifix arrived in Western Europe with the Second Council of Nicaea (787). This text recounts a Jewish blasphemy concerning the image of Christ on the Cross, which had occurred in Beirut. The story goes that at a dinner at someone’s house in Beirut, a group of Jews noticed…
Through the hard work of our Barcelona project members Matthias Tischler and Ekaterina Novokhatko, we now have an updated interactive map illustrating the origin and provenance of the 9th- to 11th-century manuscripts that they have examined over the 3 years of their strand of the ‘After Empire’ project, “From Carolingian Periphery to European Central Region:…
Recently, scholars have agreed that early-medieval liturgy was by no means static and fixed, but rather flexible and full of variations. This was also true for the least flexible of liturgical celebrations, that of the Holy Mass. The readings from the Bible, the sermon and the proper prayers were the most variable elements in the…
After Empire is pleased to announce that one of our PIs, Matthias M. Tischler, will be presenting on his research as part of our project at an upcoming international conference on Iberian medieval history, hosted at the University of Heidelberg on May 2-4. You can find more information on the conference here and you can…
Odorannus of Sens was a prolific author of mid-eleventh-century France, writing works on musical theory, political and monastic history, canon law, ordines for bishops and archbishops, and other assorted texts. He compiled a selection of his various writing in a single autograph manuscript, which he himself describes as an opusculus, a little collection of works.…
