Suchergebnisse

In medieval legal transactions the use of the written word was only one of many ways of conducting business. Important roles were played by the spoken word and by the 'action' of ritual. The relationship between 'rituals' and literacy has been the focus of much recent research. Medieval societies which made extensive use of written instruments in legal transactions have been shown to employ rituals as well. This has ledto investigation of the respective functions of written instruments and legal rituals. What is the nature of legal rituals? If they included oral verbalization, how did the spoken words relate to those of the written instruments that played a role in the same legal transactions? Usually, we only have the written documents to answer these questions, and they are often silent about the rituals and oral elements of the transactions they document

This volume is the result of a conference at University College London in 2007 which addressed the scale and form of civil defences in early medieval Europe, c. 800-1000. Previous work has largely focussed on individual sites or specific categories of evidence. These papers offer new interdisciplinary perspectives driven by a landscape approach. Several contributions focus on civil defence in England around the time of King Alfred the Great, and together provide a new agenda for the study of Anglo-Saxon military landscapes. European case-studies facilitate a comparative approach to local and regional defensive structures and interpretive paradigms. Topics and themes covered include civil defence landscapes, the organization and form of defensive structures, and the relationships and dynamics between social complexity, militarization, and external threats. With papers ranging from England to Spain and Germany to Scandinavia the volume is of relevance to a range of disciplines including archaeology, history, onomastics, geography, and anthropology

The Spade in de Dijk is the first synthesis on the organisation of water management in Coastal Flanders during the later Middle Ages. Based on the unique archival evidence produced by local water boards (wateringen), large landowners and local and regional authorities, Tim Soens argues for the occurrence of profound changes in coastal water management in the later Middle Ages. Water management gradually became less inclusive, investments lowered, and flood risk increased. This evolution was triggered by the social transition from a peasant society of land-owning smallholders to a society of absentee landlords and large tenant farmers.

In 1018 versloeg graaf Dirk III bij Vlaardingen het veel grotere leger van de Duitse keizer Hendrik II en legde daarmee de grondslag van het latere Holland. De elfde eeuw was een turbulente periode voor Vlaardingen en het graafschap Holland. Er vonden verschillende strafexpedities en moordaanslagen plaats. Onder de slachtoffers bevonden zich onder andere de Hollandse graven Dirk IV en Floris I, en hertog Godfried met de Bult. De gebeurtenissen in en rond Vlaardingen zijn in tal van annalen, kronieken en oorkonden vastgelegd: soms in lange verslagen, vaak in enkele korte zinnen. De bronnenpublicatie "Ad Flaridingun" presenteert alle middeleeuwse teksten die betrekking hebben op Vlaardingen in de elfde eeuw, in de oorspronkelijke Latijnse versie en met daarnaast een vertaling in modern Nederlands. Het boek is geïllustreerd met afbeeldingen van manuscripten, landkaarten, genealogische overzichten en archeologische vondsten

This book contains a unique new selection of his most important essays from the extensive oeuvre of the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga. These essays and studies have been chosen on the basis of the different subject matter that Huizinga was involved in; ranging from the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Modern History and Cultural History in general. These selections are introduced and illuminated by Prof. dr. Willem Otterspeer who is also Huizinga's biographer. Johan Huizinga was born in Groningen, in 1872. He studied Dutch and Oriental language and literature at the University of Groningen (1891 - 1895) and comparative linguistic at the University of Leipzig (1895-1896). In 1915, he was appointed professor of general history at the Leiden University. His most famous works include The Autumn of the Middle Ages (1919), which dealt with life, ideas, art, and behaviors of the upper classes of Burgundy in the 14th and 15th centuries, Erasmus (1924), a biography of the famous Dutch Renaissance scholar, and Homo Ludens (1938), focusing on the element of play in human culture. - De hand van Huizinga bevat een nieuwe selectie van de belangrijkste essays uit het omvangrijke oeuvre van de wereldberoemde Nederlandse historicus Johan Huizinga. Deze essays en studies zijn geselecteerd op basis van de diverse disciplines waarmee Huizinga zich bezighield - van de Middeleeuwen tot de Renaissance en van de moderne tot de algemene culturele geschiedenis. Deze selectie wordt geïntroduceerd en toegelicht door Huizinga-biograaf Willem Otterspeer. Johan Huizinga werd in 1872 in Groningen geboren. Tot zijn bekendste werken behoren Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen (1919), Erasmus (1924) en Homo Ludens (1938). De hand van Huizinga wordt gepubliceerd als onderdeel van "http://www.oapen.org/">OAPEN. "http://www.oapen.org/">OAPEN is een Open Access project voor het publiceren van monografieën in de geesteswetenschappen en sociale wetenschappen. De Open Access-beweging heeft zich snel ontwikkeld bij de publicaties van tijdschriften op het gebied van de natuurwetenschappen. Het consortium "http://www.oapen.org/">OAPEN bestaat op dit moment uit zes universitaire academische uitgevers, zij geloven dat de tijd rijp is dat de mogelijkheden van Open Access ook voor de geesteswetenschappen en de sociale wetenschappen volledig benut kunnen worden.

This colloquium focuses on urban and princely space in the Duchy of Brabant in the late Middle Ages and early modern period. The focus is on how territorial developments were perceived in different social milieus. After all, urban elites, the monarch and his entourage had different - but sometimes similar - opinions about what Brabant actually was and used various media to communicate their ideas about it. Administrative, narrative and cartographic sources, architecture, literature and art bear witness to this. The Belgian-Dutch "Stichting Colloquium De Brabantse Stad" organizes an international meeting every three years at which various aspects of the history of the cities and of urban life in the old Duchy of Brabant are examined. The colloquium is organized alternately in the provinces of Antwerp, Flemish Brabant, Walloon Brabant, North Brabant and in the Brussels Capital Region. The XIXth colloquium, taking place in Brussels at the Université Saint-Louis, is being organized in cooperation with the NWO research project Imagining a territory.

Since the Middle Ages artists from the Low Countries were known to be fond of travelling, as Guicciardini in his "Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi" (Antwerp, 1567) and Karel van Mander in his 1604 "Schilderboeck", already noticed. Much more mobile than their colleagues from other European countries, many Netherlandish artists spread all over Europe; a remarkable number among them achieved great fame as court artists, as the careers of Claus Sluter in Burgundy, Anthonis Mor in Spain, Bartholomeus Spranger or Adriaen de Vries in Prague, Giambologna and Jacob Bijlevelt in Florence demonstrate. Moreover, they exerted considerable influence on the artistic production of their time. Nevertheless most of them sank into oblivion soon after they died. Dutch art history neglected them for a long time as they did not fit into the traditional canon of the Low Countries, nor were they adopted by the art histories of their new homelands. This new NKJ volume is an attempt to change this

The Low Countries in the early Middle Ages. Christianity is on the rise, partly due to the efforts of missionaries such as Willibrord and Boniface. Yet the process of Christianisation is laborious. This is well illustrated in Vita Radbodi, a tenth-century Latin biography of bishop Radboud of Utrecht (c. 850-917).
In it, Radboud is depicted as a pious, serious and studious young man, who is called to the episcopate after many years of study. As bishop, he encounters problems with unbelieving Frisians and ferocious Normans. Thus, he is forced to move his seat from Utrecht to the safer Deventer.
The text offers a positive portrait of Radboud as a holy role model figure. He acts energetically, performs miracles and, of course, also possesses prophetic gifts. For instance, he predicts his own end well in time. The text ends with a vision of the Mother of God and Radboud's death and burial.
Some twenty years after the first edition by Peter Nissen and Vincent Hunink, the text is now being reissued on the occasion of Radboud University's centenary.

What makes a happy city? How can a city respond adequately and resiliently to a crisis disrupting civic society? Answers to these timeless questions differ through time. A Miracle of St Martin – Utrecht a Happy City tells the story of Utrecht and St Martin. At the occasion of Utrecht's 900th anniversary as a free city, the book elucidates how the bond between Utrecht and its patron saint since the early Middle Ages inspired people to contribute to a happy city.
The book is designed as a diptych, focusing first on St Martin's Utrecht patronage around the year 900, when the settlement built within the walls of the former Roman castellum endured difficult times due to political and climatological troubles. Bishop Radbod (899/900-917) calls upon his fellow citizens to cultivate the commemoration of St Martin and to appeal to the saintly figure in times of hardship. The book includes a translation of Radbod's Miracle Story of St Martin and unravels the secrets of his Gregorian office for the summer feast of St Martin's Translation on July 4th.
The second part of the book focuses on St Martin's role in the multicultural twenty-first-century city of Utrecht. The popular St Martin's Parade establishes a new celebration of the saint with music, street art and a parade of lights. Reflecting on this newly (re-)invented tradition we discover St Martin anew as a symbolic figure representing values of the inclusive city in past and present.
The book is lavishly illustrated with images of St Martin and his cult in medieval and modern-day Utrecht.

Majority rule has various applications. In parliamentary theory, it intervenes at the level of relations between assembly & gov, & again, in elections. We find it in democratic theory where the majority of the people must approve decisions of the constitutional organs. Finally, it is employed in the decisionmaking process of the assemblies, & it is this aspect which forms the object of the present study. Since antiquity the majority principle has been generally observed in the decisions of deliberating bodies; but it was not until the 16th cent that it triumphed in England & France. In Switzerland up to the 16th cent majority rule was in effect, disappeared for a while, & then reappeared after the transition from confederation to federation. In Holland, majority rule was applied with certain restrictions from the 16th cent on. Poland had the 'liberum veto' up to the beginning of the 19th cent. From a theoretical viewpoint, the jurists of the Middle Ages based their justification of majority rule on an old Roman adage, & Canon Law has also made an important contribution to this doctrine. The authors of the 18th cent elaborated a legal theory based on rational fictions & on the doctrine of the Social Contract in particular. Among the moderns, 3 principal schools can be distinguished: those who, with Duguit, give a utilitarian basis to the principle, those who see in it a sublimated power, particularly sociol'ts, & finally the theoreticians who accept the principle for ethical reasons. The problem has increased in importance with the existence of international org's where at present, the majority principle is applied only exceptionally. (Translated by Z. Dana from IPSA).

The standard picture of public governance in the Dutch Republic (1579-1795) is one of consultation with multiple stakeholders, peaceful negotiations with representatives from a range of governmental institutions, and agreements and compromise. This picture has been the subject of much debate among historians and other scholars. One question concerns the extent to which this kind of governance evolved from the traditional practices of water authorities, as these institutions emerged very early, at the end of the thirteenth century. A further question is whether it is correct to assume that these peaceful negotiations did in fact involve participation by a wide range of societal stakeholders. This book contributes to this debate by presenting the results of new research into the development of governance by water authorities prior to 1800. In the late Middle Ages and Early Modern period, these institutions changed as a result of ecological, socio-economic and political developments. The central question is how these developments affected the evolution of and governance within the water authorities. The research focuses on two inter-local water authorities: first, the water authority of the Bunschoten Veen and Velden dikes in the Province of Utrecht; and second, the water authority of Mastenbroek polder in the Province of Overijssel. How were landholders represented in such authorities, and what was the relationship between developments in representation and participation in decision-making? The positions and backgrounds of the board members of these two water authorities were investigated, as well as the process of decision-making. The theoretical framework was provided by theories of consociationalism (Lijphart 1968 and Putnam 1993), in which peaceful governance is defined in terms of consensus politics or politics of accommodation. A set of criteria was formulated to assess the occurrence of participative decision-making by stakeholders. These criteria were tested against the discussions and decisions found in ...