Imperial Geography and the Medieval Peutinger Map

The Peutinger map is an extraordinary world map drawn c.1200 and long considered a copy of a Roman road map made for late antique travellers. This paper presents arguments against these assumptions and concludes that the lost original was more likely to be a Carolingian display map. Ninth‐century scribes had the expertise and resources necessary for creating an antiquarian work based on Roman itinerary lists, while Carolingian rulers had ample motivation for commissioning a map to display their Roman imperial ambitions.     

New Light on the Medieval Gough Map of Britain

Remarkably little is known about the earliest surviving separate-sheet medieval map of Britain that takes its name from its former owner, Richard Gough (1735–1809), and that has been variously dated to between 1300 and 1400, and later. It presents a sophisticated cartographical image at a time when detailed maps of individual regions were almost unknown in Europe, yet nothing is agreed about its possible origins, context (ecclesiastical or secular), or why and how it was compiled. In the belief that historical interpretation has to stem from an intimate knowledge of the map as artefact—the state of the parchment, nature of the inks, palaeography—as well as image, an informal study group of historians and scientists (the Gough Map Panel) was convened in 2012 to examine the map through high resolution digital reproduction, hyperspectral analysis, three-dimensional analysis and Raman pigment analysis. Although the study is still ongoing, much that is new has been discovered, notably about the way features were marked on the map, Gough’s application to the map of a damaging reagent to render place-names readable, and the extent to which the original map (now dated to c.1400), although never completed, was nonetheless reworked on two different occasions in the fifteenth century, effectively creating two further maps. These and other findings are summarized here to encourage the further study of the map’s features that is needed before it can be fully understood.     

超越的悖论——试析西欧中世纪修道院改革运动

修道是一种脱离世俗,献身宗教的生活方式,一种超越现实的精神追求。在基督教统治下的中世纪西欧,修道本应是深受尊崇的正统化现象,但奇怪的是,它却不断受到批评和谴责,改革修道院的运动此起彼伏。究其原因,是由于西欧中世纪的社会条件以及基督教的主流化地位使以出世自命的修道成为人世的捷径,修道院里弊端丛生,成为腐败渊薮。以超越现实为宗旨和初衷,却一次比一次更深地陷入现实的泥淖。修道何以出现这种悖论而无力自拔?本对此试作分析。不当之处,尚祈指正。     

The Ancient Origins of Medieval Fields: A Reassessment

This article questions the suggestions that have been made by a number of archaeologists and landscape historians concerning the Roman and prehistoric origins of large tracts of the medieval rural landscape in lowland England. It suggests that arguments for large-scale continuity of field systems, mainly based on the evidence of excavations and topographic analysis, are flawed because they fail to take fully into account the topographic contexts, and the practical functions, of field boundaries. When these matters are given due weight, much of the evidence cited in support of ‘continuity’ instead appears to suggest a significant degree of discontinuity, at least in terms of systems of land division, between Roman Britain and medieval England.     

The New Annalistic: A Sketch of a Theory of History

This article argues for the establishment of a new, "annalistic" model of history and historical investigation. This implies a new concept of historical event: instead of being seen as an element within a historical narrative, the historical event is defined as the common reference point of many narratives that can be told about it. The annalistic model also implies a new concept of historical change: instead of being defined as the change of an "object" within a set of given historical parameters, historical change has to be perceived as the change of parameters related to a given historical object. A new concept of history follows from the annalistic model: instead of history being a metaphysical unity of space and time (the destiny of mankind, the positivist's world of facts), in which everything is linked to everything, it is instead the product of historical judgment carried out by those who design stories about their own past, present, and future. To the "annalist" a world is imaginable in which no history has existed, exists, or will exist.
The article analyzes three aspects of the concept of historical time: it demonstrates the huge variety of temporal structures in history; it argues for the foundation of the representation of historical time in linguistic concepts; and it discusses the relationship of fictionality and reality in historical discourse. Finally, the annalistic model is compared to the traditional concept of history established by historicism in the nineteenth century.     

Medieval Sermon Studies since The Sermon: A Deepening and Broadening Field

Abstract

Since the publication of The Sermon in 2000, the field of medieval sermon studies has matured into a well-established and growing interdisciplinary area of medieval studies. This article seeks to illustrate how we are doing our work and where our interests are taking us. Growing numbers of print and electronic resources facilitate locating, accessing, and interpreting texts and other historical sources pertinent to preaching. Via the preparation of carefully edited texts, the exploration of specific themes, and the illumination of particular preaching traditions, increased depth of understanding is being achieved. Sermonists use an expanding range of scholarly methodologies and pursue a broadening range of topics, here exemplified by memory and visual arts. Overarching much of our work is the desire to recover medieval experiences of what was fundamentally an oral and performative genre through its largely textual remains.     

Medieval Landscape Archaeology in Italy: A Review

MEDIEVAL LANDSCAPE ARCHAEOLOGY in Italy is reviewed here by analysing the methodological approaches and the theoretical frameworks adopted by researchers working from the 1970s to the present day. Notwithstanding a kind of ‘resistance’ of Italian archaeology to theorisation, the intensive fieldwork and fruitful exchanges of the many teams working on the Peninsula have not only brought important achievements for the reconstruction of settlement patterns and landscape dynamics during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, but have also animated and enriched the debates about approaches and methodologies. The ‘Italian context’ is therefore framed within the European mainstream and the international panorama.