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…
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…
Last week I made my first visit to the current British Library exhibition, Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War. My first, but I hope not my last: it brings together such a wealth of written material, alongside other artefacts, that it’s hard to maintain proper scholarly decorum when faced with so many manuscripts, familiar from scholarship,…
The Carolingian period generated two new different orientations of lay spirituality: (1) radical conversion that imitated the monastic spirituality while remaining in the world; and (2) the valorisation of some aspects of the laity (marriage, juridic and military functions, use of the power to serve the Church and the poor etc.). These phenomena were developed…
Our Barcelona PI, Matthias M. Tischler, has recently published an article on new research into Carolingian manuscripts and public history in 21st-century Catalonia: ‘Pergamins plens de pols i pobles particulars. Nova recerca en matèria de manuscrits carolingis i d’història pública a la Catalunya del segle XXI’, Zeitschrift für Katalanistik 31 (2018), 345–349. You can download…
Carolingian Culture on the Peripheries and Bernhard Bischoff One of my unanswered questions about Carolingian Studies in the 20th century is the role that the peripheries of Charlemagne’s Empire played in terms of culture and religion and what position these so-called marcae could establish in the Europe-wide network of knowledge transfer. This point of view…
In the sunny and stimulating environment of the cities of Barcelona and Vic, the members of the ‘After Empire’ project, as well as Sumi Shimahara (Paris), Philippe Depreux (Hamburg) and Charles West (Sheffield) visited various archives and libraries studying early medieval Catalan manuscripts. This was done as part of the preparation of a bilingual (English…
Participants: Stefan Esders (Berlin), Sarah Greer (St Andrews), Sarah Hamilton (Exeter), Alice Hicklin (Berlin), Simon MacLean (St Andrews), Ekaterina Novokhatko (Barcelona), Lenneke van Raaij (Exeter), Matthias M. Tischler (Barcelona), Jelle Wassenaar (Vienna) Philippe Depreux (Hamburg), Sumi Shimahara (Paris), Charles West (Sheffield) This synergy event allowed scholars to investigate several important manuscripts located in Catalan archives…
