Suchergebnisse

When scholars discuss the medieval past, the temptation is to become immersed there, to deepen our appreciation of the nuances of the medieval sources through debate about their meaning. But the past informs the present in a myriad of ways and medievalists can, and should, use their research to address the concerns and interests of contemporary society. This volume presents a number of carefully commissioned essays that demonstrate the fertility and originality of recent work in Medieval Studies. Above all, they have been selected for relevance. Most contributors are in the earlier stages of their careers and their approaches clearly reflect how interdisciplinary methodologies applied to Medieval Studies have potential repercussions and value far beyond the boundaries of the Middles Ages. These chapters are powerful demonstrations of the value of medieval research to our own times, both in terms of providing answers to some of the specific questions facing humanity today and in terms of much broader considerations. Taken together, the research presented here also provides readers with confidence in the fact that Medieval Studies cannot be neglected without a great loss to the understanding of what it means to be human.

This volume aims to investigate the complex theme of social mobility in medieval Italy both by comparing Italian research to contemporary international studies in various European contexts, and by analysing a broad range themes and specific case studies. Medieval social mobility as a European phenomenon, in fact, still awaits a systemic analysis, and has seldom been investigated iuxta propria principia in social , political and economic history. The essays in the book deal with a number of crucial problems: how is social mobility investigated in European and Mediterranean contexts? How did classic mobility channels such as the Church, officialdom, trade, the law, the lordship or diplomacy contribute to shaping the many variables at play in late medieval societies, and to changing--and challenging--inequality? How did movements and changes in social spaces become visible, and what were their markets? What were the dynamics at the heart of the processes of social mobility in the many territorial contexts of the Italian peninsula?--back cover

Paul Bushkovitch, Urban ideology in medieval Novgorod: an iconographic approach.
This article is an attempt to define the ideology of the merchant class of medieval Novgorod by using the evidence of a fourteenth-century icon. It concentrates on the cult of St. Paraskeva Piatnitsa and other saints depicted on the same icon. The vitae of these saints show that urban ideology developed in two stages. In the twelfth century the merchant class began to have its own peculiar cults and thus express its separateness, but at the same time it found its ideals in the rulers of Novgorod society — boyars and clerics. In the fourteenth century social unrest and the appearance of heresy provoked a response of conservatism.