Gerda Brunnlechner / Nadine Holzmeier / Daniel Syrbe / Petra Waffner / Petra Widmer (Hg.) Positionsbestimmungen Mediävistik im kulturgeschichtlichen Kontinuum Festschrift für Felicitas Schmieder zum 60. Geburtstag, Göttingen, V&R Unipress, Brill, 2025.

Présentation:

Der Band ist eine Würdigung der Mediävistin Felicitas Schmieder. Ihre Arbeitsschwerpunkte sind Kulturkontakte und Wahrnehmungsgeschichte, Prophetie als politische Sprache, Kartographie, Stadtgeschichte, Geschichte ‘Europas’ und europäische Erinnerungskultur. Der Band spiegelt wesentliche Entwicklungslinien hin zu einer kulturgeschichtlichen Mediävistik, die eng mit ihrer wissenschaftlichen Biographie verknüpft sind. Die Beiträger*innen zeigen die thematischen Weiterentwicklungen ihrer Arbeit in den Themenfeldern vormoderne Kartographie, soziale Gemeinschaften und Stadtgeschichte, kulturelle Begegnungen sowie Prophetie als politische Sprache und Erinnerungskulturen auf. Das Spektrum der Beiträge reicht chronologisch von der Spätantike bis in die Moderne, räumlich vom Indischen Ozean über Ostmitteleuropa bis zur Iberischen Halbinsel, methodisch von quellenerschließenden bis theoriegeleiteten Studien. Damit bietet der Band eine Standortbestimmung einer modernen, epochen-, raum- und disziplinenübergreifenden mediävistischen Geschichtswissenschaft. As a tribute to Felicitas Schmieder, the volume reflects essential lines of development towards a culturally orientated approach in medieval studies closely linked to her academic biography. The authors contributing to the volume further advance her work in the thematic fields of pre-modern cartography, social communities and urban history, cultural encounters, prophecy as a political language and the perception of pre-modern history. The contributions presented here delineate a modern, interdisciplinary approach to medival studies by covering a broad spectrum, ranging chronologically from late antiquity to modernity, spatially from the Indian Ocean to Eastern Central Europe to the Iberian Peninsula, and methodologically from source- to theory-based studies.

Table des matières:

Daniel Syrbe / Gerda Brunnlechner Einleitende Positionsbestimmungen

Kartographie

Martina Stercken, Die Stadt als Zeitenraum. Schriftbildliche Konzeptionen Zürichs im Spätmittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit

Ingrid Baumgärtner / Franziska Haarhaus, Andrea Biancos Atlante Nautico. Zur Organisation praktischen Wissens im 15. Jahrhundert

Gerda Brunnlechner, Der mandelförmige Rahmen der ‚Genuesischen Weltkarte‘ von 1457 – zwischen ptolemäischer Projektion und Transzendenz Gottes

Elisabeth Kisker, Sorpe, Lippe, Wevelsbecke – Wasserläufe auf zwei handgezeichneten Karten aus Westfalen (1566 / um 1600)

Reinhard Wendt, Übersee: fern und doch nah. Der kartographische Verlag von Johann Baptist Homann und Nürnbergs Verflechtung mit der außereuropäischen Welt

Nicolas Pethes, Literarische Landvermesser. Landnahme, Kartographie und Geopolitik in der Literatur der Moderne

Gemeinschaften

Gabriel Zeilinger, Mehrfache Schnittstellen. Höfe auswärtiger Klöster und Stifte in vormodernen Städten

Katalin Szende, By Choice or by Force? Natural and man-made factors in the siting of bishops’ seats in East Central Europe in the Christianization period

Ellen Diehm, Handwerker im Frankfurter Rat im Spätmittelalter

Petra Widmer, Nützliche Freundschaft – Johanna Sophie zu Schaumburg-Lippe und ihr Verhältnis zu Kurfürstin Sophie von Hannover

Marc von der Höh, Die Totenschilde der Dogen von Venedig. Ein Beitrag zur europäischen Funeralheraldik des Mittelalters

Thomas Sokoll, Wo liegt die ‚bürgerliche Mitte‘? Historisch-semantische und sozialhistorische Beobachtungen zur politischen Klassentheorie aus deutsch-englischer Diplopie

Begegnungen

Wolfram Brandes, 718 n. Chr. – Weltgeschichte in Asturien. Byzanz und der arabische Islam

Ana Echevarría, Military Conversion: Mechanisms of Religious Change in Frontier History

Emir O. Filipovic´, An Early Example of Conversion to Islam among Ragusan Merchants in the Late Middle Ages. Legal Complications and Issues of Judicial Jurisdiction in the Ottoman Balkans

Jürgen G. Nagel, Grenzenloses Wissen zur See. Die Kenntnis des Indischen Ozeans zwischen Kontinenten und Epochen

Prophetie

Zaroui Pogossian, The Armenian Vision of St. Nerse¯s and its Latin Version: Text, Transmission History, Translation

Frances Kneupper, Female Prophets Transcending Gender Expectations During the Great Schism – The Revelations of Constance of Rabastens and Marie Robine

Barbara Schlieben, Was ‚falsche‘ Propheten falsch machen: Kritische Stimmen zu Beginn des 10. Jahrhunderts

Wolfgang Kruse, Weltuntergang und Neubeginn 1914. Visionen einer säkularen Apokalypse

Erinnern

Nadine Holzmeier / Daniel Syrbe, Paolino und seine Goten. Der Übergang vom westgotischen regnum zum asturischen Königreich in der Chronologia Magna des Paolino Veneto (14. Jh.)

Michele Campopiano, Weltgeschichte in der Mitte der Welt: Guglingens Traktat über das Heilige Land als Universalchronik

Stavroula Constantinou, History in Hagiography. Writing and Rewriting Byzantine Rulership and Imperial Ideology in Miracle Stories

Dan Terkla, Forgetting the Hereford Mappa Mundi

Olga Kozubska-Andrusiv, Magdeburg Law: Medieval Phenomenon in the Public Memory of present-day Ukraine

Kristin Skottki, Das Mittelalter deprovinzialisieren? Ein Praxisbericht aus Lehre und Forschung zum ‚globalen Mittelalter‘

Abbildungsverzeichnis
Quellen- und Literaturverzeichnis

Vient de paraître:

 Natalia I. Petrovskaia, Transforming Europe in the Images of the World, 1100-1500. Fuzzy Geographies, Amsterdam University Press, 2025, 208 p.

Présentation:

This is the first book to examine the wide and important geographical tradition that arose from the description of the world in the Imago mundi – a medieval encyclopedic bestseller, almost unrivalled in popularity from its composition in the 1110s well into the age of print. The Imago mundi was translated into most European vernaculars, and extracts from it were adapted into works ranging from encyclopedias to literary fiction, verse and prose. This is the first study to examine this tradition as a unified whole. It focuses in particular on the permutations undergone by the depiction of the region designated as ‘Europe’ in the original text and its later adaptations. The book demonstrates the incredible flexibility of the original text and how this enabled the transformation of this spatial description to suit the linguistic, political and cultural needs of its adaptations.

Table des matières:

List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Starting Out. ‘Europes’, Hippogriffs, and Mathematics
Europe: What’s in a Name?
Of Space-Time, Borders, and Mathematics
A Roadmap for this Book

Part I An Introduction to the Imago Mundi tradition
1. Understanding the World. An Overview of the Imago mundi
Medieval ‘Encyclopedias’
About the Author and Concerning Context
The Contents of the Imago Mundi

2. Translating Knowledge. An Introduction to the Imago Mundi Family
Vernacular Translations of Imago mundi
Adaptations of Imago mundi i and Insertion of Translated Extracts in Encyclopedic Contexts
Adaptations and Translated Extracts Drawn into Other Genres
Adaptation into Latin

Part II Modes of Reading Geography
3. Time. Authority and Archaism
Authority in Fragments
The Timelessness of Archaism
Overlapping Maps: The Cases of paludes Meotides, Spain, and Rome

4. Space. Geographical Regions as Fuzzy Sets
Divide or Describe? Dirimere, deviser
Regions as Fuzzy Sets
Overlap between Fuzzy Sets in the Image du monde
The Mediterranean as Fuzzy Set

5. Movement. The Hodoeporical Descriptive Technique
Reader, Listener, or Viewer?
Going through the Text
Significant Itinerary Variations in the Latin Text
Local Interest

Conclusion: Looking Back and Looking Ahead
Looking Back
Looking Ahead

Appendices
Appendix 1: List of Imago Mundi chapters
Appendix 2: Texts of the Imago Mundi Tradition
Bibliography
Manuscripts
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Electronic Resources
Index

Vient de paraître:

Camille Serchuk, Lies of the Land. Painted Maps in Late Medieval and Early Modern France, Penn State University Press, 2025, 234 p.

Présentation:

Vient de paraître:

Présentation:

What lies behind an island? Is an island just a piece of land surrounded by water? Or is it from a cultural, symbolic, and even geographical perspective much more than that? Considering the symbolic nature of islands as a longue durée and through the analysis of maps, texts, and historical accounts, this book explores how the depiction of insularity encodes specific meanings and analytical levels which shed light on medieval and modern worldviews.

Table des matières:

Acknowledgments vii
List of Figures viii
Introduction 2
1 What Is an Island? Concepts, Definitions, and Phenomenology 6
1.1 Islands Surrounded by Water 8
1.2 Island vs Mainland 13
1.3 Floating Islands 17
2 Island and Ocean 20
2.1 Depicting the World in Medieval Europe 21
2.2 Maps, Ocean, and Islands in the Middle Ages 28
2.3 Islands, Ocean(s), and Mythical Traditions 40
3 Islands as Centers, Islands as Limits 48
3.1 Insular Center and Insular Peripheries in Medieval Maps 52
3.2 Towards a Redefinition of the Insular Margins: Periphery and Center in
Early Modern World Maps 62
3.3 Periphery, Insularity, and Identity: The British Isles in the
Medieval Worldview 68
4 Maps of Islands, Islands on Maps 76
4.1 Establishing Islands as a Genre: De insulis and Liber insularum 78
4.2 Mapping Islandness in Venice 83
4.3 The isolario Goes Global 86
5 Conclusions 99
Bibliography 101

Un ouvrage collectif vient de paraître sur Riccoldi da Monte di Croce:

Riccoldo da Monte di Croce (†1320): Missionary to the Near East and Expert on Islam

éd. Kurt Villads Jensen et Davide Scotto, Stockholm, Kungliga Vitterhetsakademien, 2024.

Riccoldo da Monte di Croce, a Dominican friar, embarked on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1288 and spent years as a missionary in Muslim Baghdad, learning Arabic and studying the Qur’an. After returning to Florence, he wrote extensively about non-Christian peoples. Liber pere-grinationis recounts his travels and includes ethnographic observations and theological discussions. His Libellus ad nationes orientales explores Eastern religions and conversion strategies, with a focus on the Mongols. Contra legem Sarracenorum, a detailed critique of the Qur’an, had a significant influence on Christian European understandings of Islam, impacting figures like Nicholas of Cusa, Guillaume Postel and Martin Luther.
This collection provides a comprehensive look at Riccoldo’s writings and their impact on the history of medieval and modern Christian-Muslim relations. It brings together contributions from 16 authors, each offering different perspectives on Riccoldo as an author and his intellectual legacy.

Table des matières:

Kurt Villads Jensen, Davide Scotto, Preface

Kurt Villads Jensen, Davide Scotto, Riccoldo as an Author and His Intellectual Afterlife

Vient de paraître:

Marco Polo Research. Past, present, future, Hans Ulrich Vogel et Ulrich Theobald (éd.), Tübingen Library Publishing, 2024.

Présentation:

This collective volume on Marco Polo’s (1254-1324) travels attempts to integrate the fragmented research landscape by bringing together individual disciplines which usually work separately, like philology, comparative literature, text and reception history, Romance linguistics, as well as geography, anthropology, the history of religion, science, military, economics, etc. It is thus one of but a few works that go beyond singular aspects of Marco Polo’s journey and his observations and thus shows that Polo’s Description of the World is much more than just a travelogue.
The international contributors to this volume, who are leading scholars in their fields, make use of different, sometimes unique sources and thus help us better understand the Venetian’s report and the times it was created, and also to verify and elucidate statements in the many versions and editions in which it came down to us. In addition, the essays published here are meant to be a contribution to the celebrations commemorating the 700th anniversary of Marco Polo’s death.

Table des matières:

Ulrich Theobald and Hans Ulrich Vogel, Preface

Le Devisement dou monde: History and Digitization of the Text(s)
– Philippe Ménard, Recherches passées, travaux récents et investigations futures sur le Devisement du monde de Marco Polo
– Alvise Andreose, The Textual Transmission of the Devisement dou monde: Old Problems and New Insights
– Samuela Simion, Mario Eusebi and Eugenio Burgio, On the Way to an Integral Edition of the Book of Marco Polo: A First Attempt to Create a Digital Edition
– Giuseppe Mascherpa, The Description of the City of Quinsai in the Early Tradition of the Devisement dou monde
– Michel Quereuil, Le Tibet dans les principales versions du Devisement du monde

Reception and Styles of the Book, and the Literary Field
– Marcello Ciccuto, The Illuminated Manuscripts of the Devisement: Words and Images in Establishing a Late Medieval Pattern of Perception for the Topic of Travelling to the Far East
– Christine Gadrat-Ouerfelli, Who Read Marco Polo’s Book and Why?
– Sharon Kinoshita, Translating Marco Polo’s Le Devisement du monde
– Danièle James-Raoul, La poétique du voyage dans le Devisement du monde: Éléments de style
– Dominique Boutet, L’exotisme dans le Devisement du monde, en particulier dans le « Livre d’Inde »
– Michèle Guéret-Laferté, Persia, a Strategical Place in the Devisement du monde: Order and Disorder in the Progress of the Narrative

Marco Polo’s Reports and the World He Witnessed
– Li TANG, Marco Polo’s Description on “Nestorians” and other Christian Groups in Yuan China
– DANG Baohai, Two Mongolian Toponyms in Marco Polo’s Account: The Green Mound and Cacciar Modun
– LUO Wei, On Some Designations Used in the Description of the World and the Political Attitude of Marco Polo

Vient de paraître:

Table des matières:

Einleitung

Kapitel Eins: Grundlagen

Kapitel Zwei: Kartenmachende – Annäherung an den Handlungsraum

Kapitel Drei: Kartenbild – Strukturen der dargestellten Welt

Kapitel Vier: Kommunikation – Stimmen der Kartenmachenden im Kartenbild

Epilog

Summary in English

Anhang:
I. Erläuterungen, Transkriptionen und Übersetzungen zu den Kartenzeichen der ‚Genuesischen Weltkarte‘
II. Liste der Vergleichskarten
III. Vergleich der ‚Genuesischen Weltkarte‘ mit den Koordinaten des Ptolemaios
IV. Vergleich der Größen verschiedener Karten