Download or read book Uses of the Written Word in Medieval Towns written by Marco Mostert and published by Brepols Publishers. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In medieval towns, examples of personal writing appear more prevalent than in non-urban spaces. Certain urban milieus participating in written culture, however, have been the focus of more scholarship than others. Considering the variety among town dwellers, we may assume that literacy skills differed from one social group to another. This raises several questions: Did attitudes towards the written word result from an experience of the urban educational system? On which levels, and in which registers, did different groups of people have access to writing? The need and the usefulness of written texts may not have been the same for communities and for individuals. In this volume we will concentrate on the town dwellers' personal documents. These documents include practical uses of writing by individuals for their own professional and religious ends, including testaments and correspondence. Besides written records belonging to the domain of 'pragmatic literacy', other kinds of texts were also produced in town. Was there any connection between practical literacy, literary (and historical) creativity and book production?
Download or read book Trust Authority and the Written Word in the Royal Towns of Medieval Hungary written by Katalin Szende and published by Brepols Publishers. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first comprehensive overview of how written administration was established in the royal towns of medieval Hungary. Using the conceptual framework of trust and authority, the volume sheds light on the growing complexity of urban society and the impact that the various uses of writing had on managing this society, both by the king and by the local magistrates. The present survey and analysis of a broad range of surviving sources reveals that trust in administrative literacy was built up gradually, through a series of decisive and chronologically distinct steps. These included the acquisition of an authentic seal; the appointment of a clerk or notary; setting up a writing office; drawing up town books; and, finally, establishing an archive from the assemblage of collected documents.0Although the development of literacy in Hungarian towns has its own history, the questions posed by the study are not unlike those raised for other towns of medieval Europe. For instance, both the gradually increasing use of various vernaculars and the controversial role of writing in Jewish-Christian contacts can be meaningfully compared with similar processes elsewhere. The study of Central European towns can therefore be used both to broaden seemingly disparate research frameworks and to contribute to studies that take a more general approach to Europe and beyond
Download or read book The Use and Abuse of Sacred Places in Late Medieval Towns written by Paul Trio and published by Leuven University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses how secular authorities made use of churches and monasteries in the Low Countries, the German regions and the British Isles during the late medieval period.
Download or read book Books of Knowledge in Late Medieval Europe written by Pavlina Cermanova and published by . This book was released on 2021-06-30 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a series of studies concerning unique medieval texts that can be defined as 'books of knowledge', such as medieval chronicles, bestiaries, or catechetic handbooks. Thus far, scholarship of intellectual history has focused on concepts of knowledge to describe a specific community, or to delimit intellectuals in society. However, the specific textual tool for the transmission of knowledge has been missing. Besides oral tradition, books and other written texts were the only sources of knowledge, and they were thus invaluable in efforts to receive or transfer knowledge. That is one reason why texts that proclaim to introduce a specific field of expertise or promise to present a summary of wisdom were so popular. These texts discussed cosmology, theology, philosophy, the natural sciences, history, and other fields. They often did so in an accessible way to maintain the potential to also attract a non-specialised public. The basic form was usually a narrative, chronologically or thematically structured, and clearly ordered to appeal to readers. Books of this kind could be disseminated in dozens or even hundreds of copies, and were often available (by translation or adaptation) in various languages, including the vernacular. In exploring these widely-disseminated and highly popular texts that offered a precise segment of knowledge that could be accessed by readers outside the intellectual and social elite, this volume intends to introduce books of knowledge as a new category within the study of medieval literacy.
Download or read book Urban Panegyric and the Transformation of the Medieval City 1100 1300 written by Paul Oldfield and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-27 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study offers the first extensive analysis of the function and significance of urban panegyric in the Central Middle Ages, a flexible literary genre which enjoyed a marked and renewed popularity in the period 1100 to 1300. In doing so, it connects the production of urban panegyric to major underlying transformations in the medieval city and explores praise of cities primarily in England, Flanders, France, Germany, Iberia, and Italy (including the South and Sicily). The volume demonstrates how laudatory ideas on the city appeared in extremely diverse textual formats which had the potential to interact with a wide audience via multiple textual and material sources. When contextualized within the developments of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries these ideas could reflect more than formulaic, rhetorical outputs for an educated elite, they were instead integral to the process of urbanisation. In Urban Panegyric and the Transformation of the Medieval City, 1100-1300, Paul Oldfield assesses the generation of ideas on the Holy City, on counter-narratives associated with the Evil City, on the inter-relationship between the City and abundance (primarily through discourses on commercial productivity, hinterlands and population size), on landscapes and sites of power, and on knowledge generation and the construction of urban histories. Urban panegyric can enable us to comprehend more deeply material, functional, and ideological change associated with the city during a period of notable urbanization, and, importantly, how this change might have been experienced by contemporaries. This study therefore highlights the importance of urban panegyric as a product of, and witness to, a period of substantial urban change. In examining the laudatory depiction of medieval cities in a thematic analysis it can contribute to a deeper understanding of civic identity and its important connection to urban transformation.
Download or read book Common Culture and the Ideology of Difference in Medieval and Contemporary Poland written by Teresa Pac and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-02-10 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Teresa Pac provides a much-needed contribution to the discussion on shared culture as foundational to societal survival. Through the examination of common culture as a process in medieval Kraków, Poznań, and Lublin, Pac challenges the ideology of difference—institutional, religious, ethnic, and nationalistic. Similarly, Pac maintains, twenty-first century Polish leaders utilize anachronistic approaches in the invention of Polish Catholic identity to counteract the country’s increasing ethnic and religious diversity. As in the medieval period, contemporary Polish political and social elites subscribe to the European Union’s ideology of difference, legitimized by a European Christian heritage, and its intended basis for discrimination against non-Christians and non-white individuals under the auspices of democratic values and minority rights, among which Muslims are a significant target.
Download or read book Writing and the Administration of Medieval Towns written by Marco Mostert and published by Brepols Publishers. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In medieval towns, written statements of law and administration appear more prevalent than in non-urban spaces. Certain urban milieus participating in written culture, however, have been the focus of more scholarship than others. Considering the variety among town dwellers, we may assume that literacy skills differed from one social group to another. This raises several questions: Did attitudes towards the written word result from an experience of the urban educational system? On which levels, and in which registers, did different groups of people have access to writing? The need and the usefulness of written texts may not have been the same for communities and for individuals. In this volume we concentrate on the institutional written records that were most indispensable to communal order, including collections of written law, charters of liberties, and municipal registers.
Download or read book The Development of Literate Mentalities in East Central Europe written by Anna Adamska and published by Brepols Publishers. This book was released on 2004 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compared with most of Continental Europe North of the Alps, the introduction of writing in East Central Europe (Bohemia, Poland and Hungary) took place with a considerable delay. Much is known about East Central European uses of writing, although only a fragment of this knowledge is known outside the region. Gathered by historians, palaeographers and codicologists, diplomatists, art historians, literary historians and others, this knowledge has hardly ever been studied in the light of recent discussions on medieval literacy and communication. Work done in the Czech, Polish and Hungarian traditions of scholarship has never been subjected to a comparative analysis. Furthermore, the question of the relation between writing and other forms of communication in the region remains largely unexplored. The volume serves a double purpose. For the first time, a collection of contributions on medieval literacy in East Central Europe is put before the forum of international scholarship. It is also hoped to further discussions of modes of communication, literate behaviour and mentalities among scholars working in the region.
Download or read book Rulers Peasants and the Use of the Written Word in Medieval Japan written by Judith Fröhlich and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2007 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides new insights into the creation and use of written texts in medieval Japan. Drawing upon lawsuits from Ategawa no shō in central Japan between the early eleventh and early fourteenth centuries, the author analyses the use of writing by various social groups - temple priests, warriors and peasants. Though these social groups had different levels of literacy and accordingly followed different communicative traditions, their use of writing had common features. In the semi-literate society of medieval Japan the dissemination and reception of written texts took place primarily through speaking and hearing. Documents of the medieval period therefore had a distinctly oral characteristic. Priests, warriors and peasants all alluded to motifs in their legal pleas that were in essence given by the oral world of tales, legends and gossip. By showing that literacy was not in conflict but interacted with orality, the author uncovers an important aspect of the use of the written word in medieval Japan.
Download or read book City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe written by Barbara Hanawalt and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Urban ceremonial in the Middle Ages took various forms and served a number of different ends--private, collegial, political, and religious. Broadly construed, urban ceremonial included public functions of multiple sorts. From private, but public, celebrations of births, marriages, and deaths to the grand entries of rulers into cities, the spectacles were designed to impress events on collective memory. - from the Introduction.
Download or read book Medieval East Central Europe in a Comparative Perspective written by Gerhard Jaritz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-12 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medieval East Central Europe in a Comparative Perspective draws together the new perspectives concerning the relevance of East Central Europe for current historiography by placing the region in various comparative contexts. The chapters compare conditions within East Central Europe, as well as between East Central Europe, the rest of the continent, and beyond. Including 15 original chapters from an interdisciplinary team of contributors, this collection begins by posing the question: "What is East Central Europe?" with three specialists offering different interpretations and presenting new conclusions. The book is then grouped into five parts which examine political practice, religion, urban experience, and art and literature. The contributors question and explain the reasons for similarities and differences in governance and strategies for handling allies, enemies or subjects in particular ways. They point out themes and structures from town planning to religious orders that did not function according to political boundaries, and for which the inclusion of East Central European territories was systemic. The volume offers a new interpretation of medieval East Central Europe, beyond its traditional limits in space and time and beyond the established conceptual schemes. It will be essential reading for students and scholars of medieval East Central Europe.
Download or read book At Europe s Borders Medieval Towns in the Romanian Principalities written by Laurentiu Radvan and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010-01-28 with total page 648 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ambitious work focuses on the emergence and the development of medieval towns in the two Romanian principalities of South-Eastern Europe, Wallachia and Moldavia, from their earliest days, in the 13th century, up to the 16th. It is the only work of its kind in English, but at the same time the first in the field seeking to identify and substantiate common elements between towns in this area of Europe. It also covers Poland, Hungary and the lands south of the Danube. By relying both on various written sources, and on archeological finds, the author addresses several controversial issues, starting from the particulars of urbanization, through an analysis of local institutions, of urban society and economy, and concluding with thorough case studies. The result is a book which shows that medieval towns in the Romanian Principalities, despite being on the outskirts of Europe, were nevertheless part of it.
Download or read book Life in a Medieval City written by Frances Gies and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-08-03 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From acclaimed historians Frances and Joseph Gies comes the reissue of their classic book on day-to-day life in medieval cities, which was a source for George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series. Evoking every aspect of city life in the Middle Ages, Life in a Medieval City depicts in detail what it was like to live in a prosperous city of Northwest Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The year is 1250 CE and the city is Troyes, capital of the county of Champagne and site of two of the cycle Champagne Fairs—the “Hot Fair” in August and the “Cold Fair” in December. European civilization has emerged from the Dark Ages and is in the midst of a commercial revolution. Merchants and money men from all over Europe gather at Troyes to buy, sell, borrow, and lend, creating a bustling market center typical of the feudal era. As the Gieses take us through the day-to-day life of burghers, we learn the customs and habits of lords and serfs, how financial transactions were conducted, how medieval cities were governed, and what life was really like for a wide range of people. For serious students of the medieval era and anyone wishing to learn more about this fascinating period, Life in a Medieval City remains a timeless work of popular medieval scholarship.
Download or read book Ritual and Symbolic Communication in Medieval Hungary under the rp d Dynasty 1000 1301 written by Dušan Zupka and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-08-29 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Rituals and Symbolic Communication in Medieval Hungary under the Árpád Dynasty (1000 - 1301) Dušan Zupka examines rituals as means of political and symbolic communication in medieval Central Europe, with a special emphasis on the rulers of the Árpád dynasty in the Kingdom of Hungary. Particular attention is paid to symbolic acts such as festive coronations, liturgical praises, welcoming of rulers (adventus regis), ritualised settlement of disputes, and symbolic rites during encounters between rulers. The power and meaning of rituals were understandable to contemporary protagonists and to their chroniclers. These rituals therefore played an essential role in medieval political culture. The book concludes with an outline of ritual communication as a coherent system.
Download or read book Discovering the Riches of the Word written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-02-24 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributions to Discovering the Riches of the Word. Religious Reading in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe offer an innovative approach to the study of religious reading from a long term and geographically broad perspective, covering the period from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century and with a specific focus on the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. Challenging traditional research paradigms, the contributions argue that religious reading in this “long fifteenth century” should be described in terms of continuity. They make clear that in spite of confessional divides, numerous reading practices continued to exist among medieval and early modern readers, as well as among Catholics and Protestants, and that the two groups in certain cases even shared the same religious texts. Contributors include: Elise Boillet, Sabrina Corbellini, Suzan Folkerts, Éléonore Fournié, Wim François, Margriet Hoogvliet, Ian Johnson, Hubert Meeus, Matti Peikola, Bart Ramakers, Elisabeth Salter, Lucy Wooding, and Federico Zuliani.
Download or read book A Cultural History of Education in the Renaissance written by Jeroen J. H. Dekker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-04-20 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Cultural History of Education in the Renaissance presents essays that examine the following key themes of the period: church, religion and morality; knowledge, media and communications; children and childhood; family, community and sociability; learners and learning; teachers and teaching; literacies; and life histories. Education was the fuel for the communication and knowledge society of the Renaissance. This period saw increasing investments in educational institutions to meet the growing demand for literacy in the context of a religiously divided Europe with growing cities and emerging central governments. An essential resource for researchers, scholars, and students in history, literature, culture, and education.
Download or read book The Information Revolution in Early Modern Europe written by Paul M. Dover and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-14 with total page 663 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This provocative new history of early modern Europe argues that changes in the generation, preservation and circulation of information, chiefly on newly available and affordable paper, constituted an 'information revolution'. In commerce, finance, statecraft, scholarly life, science, and communication, early modern Europeans were compelled to place a new premium on information management. These developments had a profound and transformative impact on European life. The huge expansion in paper records and the accompanying efforts to store, share, organize and taxonomize them are intertwined with many of the essential developments in the early modern period, including the rise of the state, the Print Revolution, the Scientific Revolution, and the Republic of Letters. Engaging with historical questions across many fields of human activity, Paul M. Dover interprets the historical significance of this 'information revolution' for the present day, and suggests thought-provoking parallels with the informational challenges of the digital age.
