In October 2019, a fragment of a verse novel was auctioned in Berlin. The text still contains 262 verses and is about a nameless crusader who is mostly called der gast (= the stranger). It is ...noteworthy that the sheets are remnants of the original script from the early 16 th
century – with numerous corrections and text additions. 'Der gast' impressively shows how the genre of the courtly verse novel remained productive up to the threshold of modern times.
A general introduction to the origin and development of Christianity, from its Jewish background in the land of Israel up to its contribution to the thought and art of medieval Europe.
Languages are central to the creation and expression of identities and cultures, as well as to life itself, yet the linguistic variegation of the later-Roman and post-imperial period in the Roman ...West is remarkably understudied. A deeper understanding of this important issue is crucial to any reconstruction of the broader story of linguistic continuity and change in Europe and the Mediterranean, as well as to the history of the communities who wrote, read, and spoke Latin and other languages. In spite of intensive study of culture and ethnic identity in late antiquity, language has often been neglected, a neglect encouraged by the disciplinary boundaries between linguists and historians, Romanists, and medievalists. There is no single volume that sets out the main developments, key features, and debates of the later-Roman and post-imperial linguistic environment. The linguistic landscapes of the late-Roman and post-imperial West are difficult to uncover and describe, while attempts to speak across disciplinary divides are challenging. The contributors have tackled this subject by offering detailed coverage of the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa, Gaul, the Germanies, Britain, and Ireland. This volume, the third in the LatinNow series, helps readers to understand better the embeddedness, or not, of Latin, at different social levels and across provinces, to consider (socio)linguistic variegation, bilingualism and multilingualism, and attitudes towards languages, and to confront the complex role of language in the communities, identities, and cultures of the later and post-imperial Roman West.
Graves of infants and children belong to a specific category of medieval and modern-age burial culture. The relationships between survivors and deceased children have been complex throughout the ...Christian period presenting, in many respects, an unresolved issue, in which the fundamental Christian rules and the simple emotional relationship of parents to children were in conflict. An expression of this relationship can be seen in a number of written, iconographic, and archaeological sources in past societies and it represents an interesting topic for a widely-focused interdisciplinary study. The graves of new-born infants are one of the few groups that had a privileged position in the cemetery; the only other such category being perhaps people outcast from Christian society. It is on the example of the graves of children that we can observe the transformations of funeral customs and the grave as a means of different systems of communication — between the world of the living and the dead, between the dead, and between the survivors.
Recent archival research conducted by the research team of the project Corpus Draculianum in Italy and Austria has surfaced unknown documents on the life and reign of Vlad the Impaler (1431-1476). ...The State Archive of Florence contains a document which indicates an ”international” diplomatic campaign undertaken by Matthias Corvinus in favour of his once discredited vassal Vlad. The king of Hungary had sent to the Catholic powers like Venice and to the Holy See in the summer of 1476 a somewhat heroic depiction of the former voivode who was about to attack and conquer Wallachia later in autumn. A potentially new perspective on the last year of the famous voivode’s life is also provided by an undated German-language letter from the archive of the Melk Monastery, recently discovered by the German medievalist Christof Paulus. A citizen from the city of Krems reported in Vienna about the Hungarian-Ottoman clashes in the region around the fortress of Smederevo in Serbia with Vlad participating as a commander in the service of Matthias Corvinus and barely escaping with his life. This document allows us to finally understand the puzzling report given by the chronicler Jakob Unrest who may have used the very same contemporary sources. However using other reports like the one written by the well informed Milanese diplomat Leonardo Botta it seems likely that both authors suffered a confusion: the fightings in Serbia and Wallachia may have taken place at almost the same time in December 1476/ January 1477 and were consequently mixed up in the reports. Vlad therefore was maybe never involved in the Smederevo campaign, but was overwhelmed by the Ottoman forces who kept the Hungarians busy on the Western Danube front.
The diplomatic activity of Bosnian territorial lord was omnipresent and diverse. Some of the territorial lord were engaged in multiple diplomatic activities. That is the reason for the classification ...of the activities, which was done by a criterion based on their complexity. Apart from the above-mentioned, this paper aims to address the number of responsibilities assumed by diplomats,the membership and composition of the diplomatic missions and activities conducted to prepare the ground for future negotiations.These questions are interrelated and should be treated as a whole.Details of the missions together with the drawing of adequate conclusions, comprise the scrutiny of the paper. The author used published historical sources and adequate literature for the purpose of the research presented in the paper.
The Bulgarian fortresses on the middle course of the Lower Danube, from upstream to downstream, were during the Middle Ages important centres for the surveillance of the river and for the control and ...protection of border roads. In case of emergencies, they received military help from the inland regions of the Tsardom. There existed connections between the Bulgarian fortresses and those on the left bank of the Danube, especially during the First Bulgarian Empire, but also during the second one, although archaeological discoveries do not always confirm written sources. The silence of the sources is a problem of the classical Middle Ages, particularly in the case of the Lower Danube area. The few historical evidences, interpreted objectively, lead to conclusions which not seldom contradict national historiographic interests. Both Bulgarians and Romanians witnessed a cohabitation dictated by common interests, generated by a specific historical context, and the empire of the Asen Dynasty, which intended to substitute the Byzantine one, had a certain influence over the territory north of the Danube, that is noticeable in what concerns the liturgical language and that used in the chancelleries of the two Romanian principalities, the use of the particle “Io”, which preceded the titles of Romanian rulers and which comes directly from tsar Ioan Asen II, and, not lastly, the use of some fortresses on the left bank of the Danube as outposts for the strong fortresses on the other bank.
The paper deals with some inherited traits in the relationship between the bureaucratic elite of theKingdom of Bohemia and Silesia. One of the tendencies was an emphasis on preserving the integrity ...of the Crown of the Kingdom of Bohemia, especially at the time of almost permanent absenceof kings from the country (this mainly concerns the governments of both Jagiellonian kings). However, the nobles of Bohemia also looked after their own interests, and Silesia was for them a spacewhere they engaged in property speculation. They also approached the Silesian princes expediently.On the one hand, they tried to limit their power positions; on the other, they endeavoured to enlisttheir support in order to attain their particular objectives. But they did not succeed in dominating political life in Silesia to the extent they had succeeded in the case of Moravia and the two Lusatias.
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