Academic literature on the topic 'Medieval encyclopedia'

If Alfonso de Toledo's encyclopedia of knowledge is situated within the encyclopedic tradition, the Invencionario, 1474, is studied, highlighting the break it made with respect to the medieval order and its encyclopedias, a break which announced a new ordering of knowledge and which manifests a change of age: the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.

The article actualizes the significance of scholastic encyclopedias for the religious and secular culture of medieval Europe. Their role as a compendium of accumulated knowledge and at the same time ideological synthesis of Christian religious doctrine and scientific achievements, ancient and scholastic traditions, university, and church-monastery intellectual culture is shown.
 The main attention is paid to the multi-volume Vincent of Beauvais’ work «Speculum Maius» («The Great Mirror») as the most significant work among medieval encyclopedias and its conceptual completion. The extraordinary role of the encyclopedia as a documentary evidence of knowledge, ideas, worldview, mentality of the Western European Middle Ages is proved. The author outlines the principles of codification of «The Great Mirror»; highlights the influence of the Christian-theological context on the content, structure and methods of organizing its material; the relationship of encyclopedic work with the processes of development and rationalization of the religious worldview. The focus is on the universalizing potential of the Christianity concepts, the extraordinary expression of which was the work by Vincent of Beauvais. The aspiration for universality was manifested both in the desire to understand the world as a Whole, created by God-completed omnipresence, and in attempts to base all the accumulated human experience, all kinds of knowledge and life on the principles of the Christian worldview. The encyclopedia is valued as a real «mirror» of an entire era, the medieval reception of Christianity, the history of European science and knowledge.

Books Reviewed: Gerhard Bowering, et. al., eds., The Princeton Encyclopediaof Islamic Political Thought (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton UniversityPress, 2013); John L. Esposito and Emad El-Din Shahin, eds., The OxfordHandbook of Islam and Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013);Emad El-Din Shahin, ed., Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics, 2 vols.(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).During last two decades or so, many encyclopedias have been published onIslam and its history – classical to contemporary – with a modern approach,among them Richard Martin’s two-volume Encyclopedia of Islam and theMuslim World 1 and John L. Esposito’s Oxford Encyclopedia of the ModernIslamic World.2 Other encyclopedic works focus on specific eras, like JosefMeri’s Medieval Islamic Civilization.3 One more category is that of Islam andpolitics, political Islam, and/or the various facets, complexities, and intricaciesof Islamic movements. This essay focuses on three works that discuss thethemes and issues that fall in this last category.The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought (EIPT)4 is awide-ranging one-volume publication, as well as the first encyclopedia andreference work on Islamic political thought. It includes articles ranging fromthe classical to the contemporary periods and incorporates the eras from theProphet’s time to the present. Written by prominent scholars and specialistsin the field, The Oxford Handbook of Islam and Politics (OHIP)5 is a singlevolumesourcebook that provides a comprehensive analysis of “whatwe knowand where we are in the study of political Islam,” thereby enabling scholars,students, and policymakers “to appreciate the interaction of Islam and politicsand the multiple and diverse roles of Islamic movements” both regionally andglobally (p. 2; italics mine). By analyzing Islam and politics through a detailedand profound study, the two-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and ...

The proliferation of encyclopedias and dictionaries in every field raises questions concerning the scholarly purpose and economics of these enterprises: Who stands to benefit from them most, and who can afford them? A new encyclopedia of medieval Italy distills for the current moment the latest canonical judgment of editors and authors about which subjects merit scrutiny and how much weight they should receive in a reference work intended to be consulted rather than read from cover to cover. The process of interdisciplinary collaboration results in a collective portrait of medieval Italy containing some surprises, only a few of which are pleasant.

If one is looking for a quick and readable introduction to specific medieval revolts appropriate for secondary education or lower division undergraduates, it would be better to pass by this work and pick up one of the many single or multivolume encyclopedias of the middle ages, such as Matthew Bunson’s Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages (Facts On File 1995). Firnhaber-Baker and Schoenaers’ edited work will be too demanding for such a reader.

Ce travail propose d’étudier l’un des nombreux textes médiévaux portant sur le mythe de la guerre de Troie. Transmis à l’Occident médiéval non pas par le biais d’Homère mais par celui des classiques latins et de certains auteurs de l’Antiquité tardive, ce mythe connut un immense succès en Europe durant tout le Moyen Âge, malgré l’ignorance du grec et de l’Iliade. Nous avons choisi d’éditer partiellement et de commenter l’un des plus importants monuments de la matière troyenne médiévale, texte presque inédit aujourd’hui, car totalement délaissé depuis la Renaissance et le retour aux textes anciens. Dans une introduction, nous avons exposé les principes de notre travail d’édition, c'est-à-dire listé les différents manuscrits utilisés par l’éditeur précédent (Nathaniel Griffin), puis surtout présenté notre manuscrit de base, le Cod. Bodmer 78, absent de la liste des manuscrits collationnés par Griffin. Puis nous avons consacré un chapitre à la langue du texte, un latin médiéval très lisible quoiqu’empreint de « modernismes », notamment au niveau du lexique. Puis, après avoir présenté le texte, sa langue et notre méthode d’édition, nous avons exposé le peu d’éléments que nous avions sur notre auteur, sa vie, son œuvre et le contexte intellectuel au milieu duquel il évolua dans la Sicile du XIIIe siècle, ainsi que l’engouement européen pour la matière troyenne qui explique son choix de reprendre ce grand mythe dans son Historia. Enfin il nous a fallu évoquer les nombreuses sources utilisées par Guido delle Colonne, ses sources directes, indirectes ou inavouées. En dernier lieu, nous avons offert un résumé de chaque livre édité et traduit. Suit une bibliographie détaillée sur les manuscrits et éditions anciens de ce texte, des manuels, le contexte culturel et historique en Europe et en Sicile au Moyen Âge, les textes grecs, latins et vernaculaires se rapportant à la guerre de Troie et ayant influencé notre auteur de près ou de loin, les ouvrages critiques sur le traitement de cette matière troyenne dans l’Antiquité et au Moyen Âge, et enfin les quelques éléments bibliographiques portant sur Guido et sur son œuvre. Vient ensuite notre édition-traduction. La traduction est accompagnée d’un double apparat : un apparat des sources et réminiscences ainsi qu’un apparat critique qui prend en compte et compare les leçons contenues dans notre manuscrit de base avec les variantes citées par l’éditeur précédent dans les quelques manuscrits qu’il a utilisés. Au bas de la traduction, figurent des notes d’érudition destinées aux noms ou des faits cités dans le texte et qui méritent une explication. Après cette partie introduction philologique et édition, la deuxième grande partie de cette thèse consiste en un commentaire et des annexes. Dans notre commentaire, nous avons souhaité interroger notre texte dans ses aspects narratologiques, thématiques, génériques, linguistiques et idéologiques. C’est pourquoi nous avons consacré un premier chapitre à l’étude narratologique du texte, son contenu, son agencement, ses techniques narratives, son utilisation des sources et ses principales thématiques. Dans une seconde partie, nous avons abordé le genre et le ton de cette Historia, qui se veut un texte historique quoique traitant une matière fictionnelle puisque mythologique à une époque où les genres littéraires ne sont pas encore définis et encore moins cloisonnés ; nous avons en outre longuement commenté et illustré le choix de l’écriture en prose et en latin à une époque où la mode est au vers et au vernaculaire. Enfin, notre troisième chapitre porte sur le contenu scientifique, politique et idéologique de ce texte truffé de parenthèses érudites et morales. En dernier lieu, nous avons proposé une édition diplomatique de la partie non éditée ni traduite du manuscrit, ainsi que des annexes sur les manuscrits et le vocabulaire, et bien sûr des index des noms propres et un glossaire des mots rares ou surprenants<br>This work proposes to explore one of the many medieval texts on the myth of the Trojan War. Transmitted to medieval Europe not through Homer but by the Latin classics and some authors of late Antiquity, this myth was a huge success in Europe during the middle Ages, despite the ignorance of the Greek and the Iliad. We chose to partially edit and comment on one of the most important monuments of the medieval Trojan material, almost unpublished text today because totally abandoned since the Renaissance and the return to the ancient texts. In an introduction, we exposed the principles of our editing work, that is to say, listed the various manuscripts used by the original publisher (Nathaniel Griffin) and especially presented our basic manuscript, Cod. Bodmer 78, absent from the list of manuscripts collated by Griffin. Then we have a chapter on the language of the text, a medieval Latin highly readable although full of "modernism", particularly in terms of vocabulary. Then, after introducing the text, the language and our editing method, we exposed the little things we had on our author, his life, his work and the intellectual context in which he evolved in thirteenth century Sicily, and the European craze for the Trojan material explains his choice to take this great myth in his Historia. Then, we had to mention the many sources used by Guido delle Colonne, its indirect or direct or unacknowledged sources. Lastly, we provided a summary of each book published and translated. Then follows a detailed bibliography on manuscripts and old editions of this text, textbooks, historical and cultural context in Europe and Sicily in the Middle Ages, the Greek texts, Latin and vernacular related to the Trojan War and that influenced our author near or far, the critical works on the treatment of this Trojan material in antiquity and the Middle Ages, and finally some bibliographic elements on Guido and his work. Then comes our edition-translation. The translation is accompanied by a double pageantry: one for the sources and reminiscences, and a critical apparatus that considers and compares the lessons contained in our manuscript with basic variants cited by the previous editor in some manuscripts that he used. At the bottom of the translation include scholarly notes for names or facts mentioned in the text and deserve an explanation. After this introduction and part philological edition, the second major part of this thesis consists of a comment and annexes. In our review, we wanted to examine our text in its narratological, thematically, linguistic, generic and ideological aspects. That is why we have devoted the first chapter to the narratological study of the text, its content, its layout, its narrative techniques, use of sources and its main themes. In a second part, we discussed the type and tone of the Historia, which intends to be a historical text while attending a fictional material since mythological, at a time when genres are not yet defined and less compartmentalized; we have also commented extensively and illustrated the choice of writing in prose and Latin at a time when fashion is to poetry and vernacular. In the end, our third chapter focuses on the scientific, political and ideological content of this text peppered with parentheses and moral scholars. Finally, we proposed a diplomatic edition of the unedited or translated part of the manuscript, as well as appendices on manuscripts and vocabulary, and of course the name index and a glossary of rare or surprising words

En accord avec mes intérêts scientifiques, j’ai décidé, dans le cadre de ce travail doctoral, d’étudier un corpus correspondant règne de Sanche IV, roi de Castille et du León de 1284 à 1295, et constitué des quatre œuvres suivantes qui, à l'instar du Sendebar ou du Calila e Dimna antérieurs, exploitent toutes les ressources de l'exemplum afin d'enseigner certes mais aussi de captiver le lecteur : El Libro del Tesoro, El Lucidario, El libro del consejo e de los consejeros et Los Castigos de Sancho IV. Bien que chacun de ces livres ait été l’objet d’études ponctuelles intéressantes, ce groupement de textes n’avait, jusqu’à présent, bénéficié d’aucune grande étude monographique et appelait donc une analyse approfondie. Ces quatre ouvrages, d’origine spatiale et temporelle différente, se sont construits selon les mentalités et les pratiques de l’époque, c’est-à-dire en réutilisant, en retravaillant la matière des sources par des ajouts, des corrections, des suppressions en fonction des visées de l’auteur ou du promoteur de l’œuvre. Cette réappropriation des sources et des modèles correspond à une finalité plus ou moins évidente ou avouée, notamment si l’on en juge à l’aune du « molinisme », pensée politique du début du XIVe siècle. Les œuvres de cette période sont, en effet, soit écrites soit commanditées par le roi ou la régente, Marie de Molina. En outre, on connaît suffisamment le rôle joué par l’Archevêque de Tolède et l’importance de la pensée religieuse dans la constitution et la consolidation du « molinisme », pour parier sur l’existence d’un discours renvoyant à l’éthique chrétienne, à la morale ou à la philosophie. J’ai donc analysé la nature du projet moral, religieux et politique qui sous-tend cette littérature sapientielle. L’analyse des textes du corpus prend en compte, dans un premier temps, la structure des ouvrages et du cadre narratif, afin de définir la voix auctoriale, c’est-à-dire celle qui choisit sources et modèles et se les réapproprie : il s’agit de mettre en lumière un mode de pensée spécifique et des intentions particulières. Dans un deuxième temps, j’ai confronté ces textes aux contextes, notamment historique, si prégnant pendant le règne de Sanche IV et la régence, pour en extraire le sens politique et idéologique, moral, religieux ou philosophique. Enfin, une des finalités de ce travail de thèse est de comprendre comment, à partir de la réécriture des sources, traités, écrits religieux, auteurs classiques, exempla… s’est réalisé ce que l’on doit considérer comme un renouvellement de la production sapientielle. La thèse permet, grâce à une confrontation croisée entre histoire et littérature, de dégager l’évolution de la littérature sapientielle médiévale en castillan, et, parallèlement, de mettre en lumière la vision culturelle et morale, politique et sociétale promue par le roi Sanche IV et soutenue ensuite par Marie de Molina<br>In line with my centres of scientific interest, I have decided to examine a corpus corresponding to the reign of Sancho IV, namely El Libro del Tesoro, El Lucidario, El libro del consejo e de los consejeros and Los Castigos of Sancho IV. Although interesting individual studies have been produced on each of these books, the collation of the four texts has not hitherto benefited from any in-depth monographic study. These four works, all of different origin in time and space, were put together according to the mind-sets and practices of the time, by revisiting the source material by means of additions, corrections and deletions according to the author’s intentions. Such reworking of the sources and models corresponds to a more or less self-evident or openly admitted purpose, given that these works were either written or commissioned by the king. It is therefore essential to question the nature of the political project underlying this sapential literature. The initial analysis of the texts takes account of their structure and narrative framework in order to define the voice of the author, that is to say who chooses and takes on the relevant sources and models. Secondly, these texts need to be set against their context, especially their historical context, in order to highlight their political, ideological, moral, religious or philosophical meaning. Finally, one of the aims of this thesis is to understand how, as from the-re-writing of the sources, treatises, scriptures, classic authors and other exempla, what can be considered as a renewal of sapiential or wisdom literature actually came about. Thanks to such a cross-matching of history and literature, the thesis should evidence the evolution of sapential literature and throw light upon the cultural, moral, political and social vision promulgated by king Sancho IV and upheld by Maria de Molina

This thesis deals with the reception of a German-language elucidarium in the Czech and subsequently Ukrainian literary environments. It acquaints the reader with the history of the work, which originates from the Latin theological tract Elucidarium by Honorius Augustodunensis from the end of the 11th century. It deals with the conception of the German Lucidarius, which was created as one of the first medieval works in the national language at the end of the 12th century and is considered to be the first German-language encyclopedia. This thesis presents the Lucidarius as an originally produced compilation created via the translation and adaptation of several Latin treatises from the fields of theology, philosophy, cosmology, geography, and history. In the Czech environment, Lucidář, translated from German, appears at the latest in the mid-15th century and is a work that enjoyed the interest of lower classes of readers until as late as the early 19th century. The Czech Lucidář carries significance in terms of inter-Slavic literary ties - via translation, a Croatian elucidarium (15th century) and Ukranian elucidarium (16th -17th century) were created. This thesis presents the Ukrainian Lucidarij as one of several works that was translated from Czech into the Ukrainian-Belarusian (or more precisely...

Le présent mémoire vise à étudier les pratiques, les enjeux et les modalités du don diplomatique animalier au XIIIe siècle, notamment sous le règne de Frédéric II, Henri III et Louis IX. Pour cela, on présente les concepts et les théories, sociologiques et anthropologiques, du don, particulièrement celles de Marcel Mauss. Ainsi outillé, on appréhende les particularités des cadeaux animaliers diplomatiques au XIIIe siècle. Ensuite, à l’aide d’une recherche sur les descriptions animalières des bestiaires et des encyclopédies médiévales, on montre la puissance symbolique et les particularités physiques et comportementales de la faune offerte. Enfin, à partir de la combinaison des deux premières parties, plusieurs modalités du don sont développées, parmi lesquelles les critères de choix et les préférences fauniques des rois, le contexte et les règles de la réalisation d’un présent et la circulation des animaux offerts. En outre, on souligne combien les bêtes et les oiseaux offerts ont eu une utilité. En effet, on voit que les rois ont mis en scène leurs animaux afin de s’approprier leur symbolique et d’exacerber leur prestige et leur grandeur, lors d’évènements spécifiques ou dans leurs ménageries.<br>The main purpose of this text is to study the practices, the issues and the modalities of the animal diplomatic gift in the 13th century, especially during the reign of Frederick II, Henry III and Louis IX. The analysis is based on the presentation of the sociological and anthropological conceptualizations of the gift, particularly those of Marcel Mauss. They are used to understand the peculiarities of the animal diplomatic gift in the 13th century. Then, a research on animal descriptions of medieval bestiaries and encyclopedias is conducted to show the symbolic power and the physical and behavioral characteristics of the offered wildlife. Finally, several modalities of the donation are developed, such as the selection criteria and the wildlife preferences of the kings, the context and rules of the elaboration of a present and the movement of given animals. In addition, it is shown how the beasts and birds had a real use for the kings. Indeed, they staged their animals in order to appropriate their symbolism and show off their prestige and their greatness, at events or in the menageries.

This dissertation critiques and updates the theoretical frameworks for understanding encyclopedic and diagrammatic images as presented in the scholarship of Lucy Freeman Sandler, Barbara Maria Stafford, John Bender, and Michael Marrinan. It offers a new model for examining the cognitive role of images by studying an important medieval encyclopedia, On the Properties of Things, originally written in Latin by Bartholomaeus Anglicus in the thirteenth century. Bartholomaeus’ text was the most popular encyclopedia of the later middle ages and four vernacular translations were produced and circulated between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Significantly, the French translation of the compendium, coming out of the vernacularization movement of King Charles V but radiating out to other production centres, involved the design of an elaborate and novel illustrative program. The present project examines two exceptional fifteenth-century French copies of this encyclopedia (BnF fr. 9141 and BnF fr. 135/6), and interprets them in light of the shifting intellectual culture and evolving reading practices of late-medieval lay audiences. The information-rich and highly aestheticized miniatures found in such encyclopedic manuscripts have traditionally been defined, by Sandler and others, as having an explanatory function and the capacity to elevate the content of the text through displays of material luxury. My model expands the significance of such images by highlighting their capacity to promote thought. I argue that images in didactic compendia can (i) encourage the reader to actively engage with the text through representations of aristocratic readers performing their understanding of the book socially, and (ii) facilitate visual thinking by aesthetically reflecting the structure of the encyclopedic text through the diagrammatic strategies of the collection, compression, and division of fragmented information. Though the images in my two manuscript case studies take distinct approaches to reader engagement and the mediation of knowledge, in both cases the power of these visualizations rests in the cognitive acts and range of mental associations they provoke. This dissertation demonstrates that epistemically-dense images, in addition to merely reflecting a text, could shape knowledge as it was being formed in the minds of active viewers, readers, writers, and artists, in an intellectually rich period in late-medieval France.<br>Graduate

En raison de l’hétérogénéité et de l’extravagance de leur contenu, les lapidaires ont souvent été délaissés et restent, encore à ce jour, très peu considérés dans les études sur la littérature médiévale. Le nombre important de manuscrits répertoriés attestent pourtant de leur grande popularité et de la place qu’occupaient les pierres précieuses dans la société et la littérature médiévales. Le lapidaire anonyme tanscrit par le manuscrit Paris, BnF, fonds français, 2007, un lapidaire en prose daté du XVe siècle, n’est à ce jour abordé que dans une seule étude, celle de Barbara Geromel, qui s’est intéressée surtout à un autre témoin (le Turin, Biblioteca Reale, Varia 110) dont le contenu – même s’il est incomplet – correspond en tout point à celui du manuscrit de Paris. Ce lapidaire en prose s’inscrit dans une histoire longue et riche, celle des pierres précieuses depuis l’Antiquité, mais s’en démarque également par son organisation complexe de la matière, puisqu’il adopte de manière partielle et imparfaite le paradigme alphabétique, jusqu’alors très peu employé dans les encyclopédies dû aux tensions qu’il incarnait vis-à-vis l’ordre théologique. Témoin matériel d’une sphère plus considérable encore – celle de l’encyclopédisme médiéval –, ce lapidaire participe à la compilation du savoir de jadis et invite à une étude plus approfondie, à la fois de la matière qu’il recèle, de ses sources, issues d’une quantité importante de traditions manuscrites, et de son classement alphabétique.<br>Regarding the heterogeneity and extravagant nature of their content, the lapidaries have too often been put aside from studies concerning medieval literature, and, still to this day, only a few of them have been studied by scholars. However, the very high number of known manuscripts of such texts does tell us a lot about the popularity and the role played by precious gems within medieval society and litterature. The prose lapidary copied in ms Paris, BnF, fonds français, 2007, a prosaic lapidary dated from the XVth century, has yet only been mentioned once, in a study by Barbara Geromel, who was mostly interested by another manuscript – albeit incomplete – of the same text : ms Turin, Biblioteca Reale, Varia 110. The content remaining in this manuscript corresponds precisely to the one found within the Paris manuscript. This manuscript written in prose represents one single step in a long and rich history (the tradition of describing precious stones dating back to the Antiquity). Nervertheless, it also differs from this tradition by its complex inner organisation of the subject, since it puts to use to this effect an imperfect and incomplete alphabetical paradigm as a mean of classification, an unpopular paradigm at the time, as it embodied elements difficult to correlate with the theological order. This lapidary, a material witness of an even larger intelectual context – the world of mediaeval encyclopedism –, participates to the compilation of knowledge from older times, and calls for deeper studies of its general content, sources (themselves coming from varied manuscript traditions) and usage of an alphabetical classification.