bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Becoming the Pearl-Poet: Perceptions, Connections, Receptions, ed. Jane Beal. Lanham, MD, Boulder, New York, and London, Lexington Books, 2022, xi, 292 pp.
Authors: Calabrese Michael
Published: November 2024

Jane Beal’s exciting new edited collection of essays makes a very valuable, and timely, contribution to the study of the Pearl-poet (Erkenwald included). Though the book can be read, in whole or in part, by the isolated scholar working on any of the five poems, it would
also make a great companion volume in a seminar on all the Pearl poems (see pp. 9–10 for Beal’s suggested reading order in such a course). So the book’s first achievement is its very existence in 2023, with great up-to-date bibliographies, some meta, “state of
the field” perspectives, and provocative discussions of issues old and new. As Beal explains in her welcoming, cogent introduction, it’s been 20 years since we had a new collection, and now is the right time to reexamine where we are in the field.
Blandin de Cornoalha: A Comic Occitan Romance. A New Critical Edition and Translation, ed. Wendy Pfeffer, trans. Margaret Burrell and Wendy Pfeffer. Teams Varia Series. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2022, viii, 292 pp., 3 b/w ill.
Authors: Classen Albrecht
Published: November 2024

It might seem odd to identify a courtly romance as ‘comic,’ but in the case of the anony-mous Blandin de Cornoalha, where the protagonists often operate in a rather curious, if not silly fashion, falling asleep at crucial moments, for instance, this epithet might
be appropriate. However, this romance is not comic in an obvious way and continues to tell a rather traditional series of knightly adventures, except that a number of episodes indicates that things are just no longer the normal way as they used to be in standard romances. Blandin is
also not an Arthurian romance since neither King Arthur nor his Round Table appear here, but a romance it is, where all kinds of unusual features appear, such as a talking bird, the taking of one of the protagonists as prisoner and his subsequent liberation, and a double wedding at the end,
taking us to a completely harmonious conclusion.
Michael F. Cusato, O.F.M., and Michael J. P. Robson. Testimony, Narrative and Image: Studies in Medieval History, Hagiography, and Art in Memory of Rosalind B. Brooke. The Medieval Franciscans, 20. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2022. 446 pp., 33 color ill.
Authors: Burke Linda
Published: November 2024

The ever-intriguing “Franciscan question” is really several questions in one. What were the intentions of the historical St. Francis (ca. 1181–1226) for his band of brothers? To approach this truth as nearly as we can, how should we interpret the oldest primary sources
on the life and ideas of the Poverello? How was the Franciscan vocation received and reinterpreted over the two centuries following his death, in the visual arts as well as text?
Anuschka Holste-Massoth, Ludwig II. Pfalzgraf bei Rhein und Herzog von Bayern. Felder fürstlichen Handelns im 13. Jahrhundert. RANK, 6. Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2019, 349 S.
Authors: Schmitz-Esser Romedio
Published: November 2024

Der 1294 verstorbene Pfalzgraf bei Rhein und Herzog von Bayern, Ludwig II., gehörte zu den bedeutendsten Reichsfürsten in der zweiten Hälfte des 13. Jahrhunderts und während des sogenannten ,,Interregnums“, wie auch die Einleitung (14–32) der hier anzuzeigenden
Studie besonders betont. Umso mehr ist es erfreulich, dass sich mit diesem Band eine Monographie zu Ludwig II. vorstellen lässt; sie geht auf eine Dissertation von 2017 an der Universität Heidelberg zurück. Nach methodischen Vorüberlegungen, die neben der Frage nach den
Untiefen biographischen Erzählens die Arbeit selbst in der aktuellen, vor allem deutschsprachigen Mediävistik verortet, folgt ein biographischer Abriss zum Leben Ludwigs (34–40), eine knappe Darstellung seiner Eigenbezeichnungen, die sein Rangverständnis zu verstehen hilft
(41–45), und eine Skizze, die das Bild Ludwigs in der zeitgenössischen Historiographie beleuchtet (45–61). Hier wird deutlich, dass seine Unterstützung für Konradin und Rudolf von Habsburg zwar immer wieder zu seiner Erwähnung führten, er aber als zentrale
Figur vor allem im Kontext der schon für die Zeitgenossen unerhörten Hinrichtung seiner Frau Maria von Brabant erinnert wurde. Dabei ist es bemerkenswert, wie heterogen die Reaktionen auf dieses Ereignis von 1256 ausfielen, woraus Holste-Massoth schließt, dass es schon nach
den Maßstäben der Zeit ernsthafte Zweifel an der Rechtmäßigkeit dieses Vorgehens des Pfalzgrafen gab.
Interregna im mittelalterlichen Europa. Konkurrierende Kräfte in politischen Zwischenräumen, hrsg. von Norbert Kersken und Stefan Tebruck. Tagungen zur Ostmitteleuropaforschung, 38. Marburg: Verlag Herder-Institut, 2020, 292 S.
Authors: Schmitz-Esser Romedio
Published: November 2024

Dieser aus einer Marburger Tagung von 2016 hervorgegangene Sammelband eröffnet eine frische Perspektive auf das Phänomen des Interregnums, das klassischerweise mit der Geschichte des Heiligen Römischen Reiches in der zweiten Hälfte des 13. Jahrhunderts verbunden
wird. Was dabei der Einleitung der beiden Herausgeber zufolge in der bisherigen Forschung fast gänzlich fehlt, ist der Vergleich zu anderen Interregna, denn das Phänomen von Problemen bei der Sukzessionsfolge ist im ausgehenden Mittelalter natürlich nicht nur hier, bei den römisch-deutschen
Königen zwischen Staufern und Habsburgern, zu beobachten. Dazu wird ein europäischer Vergleichsraum aufgemacht und das Phänomen zugleich breiter definiert: Neben den Dynastiebrüchen wie im Interregnum im Reich werden hier auch größere Unterbrechungen der Nachfolgen
bei fürstlichen Häusern und die Sedisvakanzen zwischen verschiedenen bischöflichen Pontifikaten in den Blick genommen.
James Ogier, The Songs of Michel Beheim: A Selection. Studies in Old Germanic Languages and Literatures, 7. Oxford, Bern, Berlin, et al.: Peter Lang, 2022, xi, 326 pp.
Authors: Classen Albrecht
Published: November 2024

Fifteenth-century literature continues to be fairly little known, although recent years have witnessed a considerable effort to populate the intellectual map with new editions, translations, and studies. Michel Beheim is one of those German poets whose work is hardly known even among
Germanists, so James Ogier’s effort to make available a selection of his poems in English translation can only be welcomed. Colin Imber had already published an English translation of Beheim’s The Crusade of Varna, 1443–45 (2006), and Ogier himself had produced an
English translation of Beheim’s History of Trieste, Von der statt Triest (ca. 1465) (2018). The current selection, however, represents a major step forward in getting to know this poet and his complex repertoire also by an Anglophone audience. Although Beheim was of a very different
character and temperament compared to his near contemporary Oswald von Wolkenstein (1376/77–1445; Beheim was born in 1420 and died a violent death ca. 1474), he also made great efforts to reflect on himself in his autobiographical and travel songs, which allows us to establish a comparatively
detailed dateline of this poet and to trace at what noble courts he served throughout his life. English-language webpages, including the entry in Wikipedia, leave much to be desired and offer hardly any information about Beheim, whereas the entry in the German-language Wikipedia
proves to be quite impressive (last accessed on Dec. 24, 2022: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Beheim). It is still advisable to rely on the traditional literary histories (such as Max Wehrli’s) and the
Lexikon des Mittelalters, if not the Verfasserlexikon.
The Register of the Goldsmiths’ Company: Deeds and Documents, c. 1190 to c. 1666, ed. and trans. by Lisa Jefferson. 3 vols. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2022, 1,717 pp., 3 color/ 26 b/w ill.
Authors: Stanford Charlotte A.
Published: November 2024

In 1417/8, the wardens of the Goldsmiths’ Company of London ordered the creation of a register to copy important documents and deeds into a 400 volume of vellum leaves, to prevent wear and tear on the originals, and to facilitate easier consultation regarding real estate properties
held by the Company and the bequests that accompanied many of the property acquisitions. An anonymous scribe began work on sorting and organizing the originals into groups by physical location, and then copying their contents into folio groupings in mostly chronological order, leaving space
for future additions made by additional scribes (though occasionally the allotted space proved insufficient, and cross-references indicate later folios in which the documentary trail was carried forward.) The whole was organized with a list of contents and bookended with other miscellaneous
documents of interest to the goldsmiths.
The Destruction of Jerusalem, or Titus and Vespasian, ed. Kara L. McShane and Mark J. B. Wright. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 2021, ix, 228 pp.
Authors: Breeze Andrew
Published: November 2024

There are two long medieval English poems on the Fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. The one edited here is not the alliterative Siege of Jerusalem, but (with its two titles) the other, in couplets. It has a long and short version and was popular in the fifteenth century (twelve manuscripts
survive), although not thereafter, because it is a chamber of horrors. Its author sets out the Jewish hatred of Christ, his murder by the Jews, the suffering that it brought them, ‘King’ Vespasian’s leprosy, his cure by St. Veronica’s napkin, Pontius Pilate’s
unquiet grave, the besieging of Jerusalem (with famine and cannibalism for those within), its capture, and enslavement or slaughter for survivors. A repellent work. Small wonder if its editors admit that form and content “contribute to its ongoing marginalization” (p. 1).
Marco Polo, Le Devisement dou Monde: Version catalane (K), éd. critique par Irene Reginato. Textes Littéraires du Moyen Âge, 68. Série Textes catalans du Moyen Âge, 2. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2022, 927 pp.
Authors: Classen Albrecht
Published: November 2024

The importance of investigating the broad range of manuscripts containing Marco Polo’s Le Devisement dou Monde would not need to be discussed in any particular way. The more effort is put into this task, the better will be our understanding of this most influential travelogue
that changed the world in many ways. The Catalan version (K), the object of Irene Reginato’s impressive editorial and translation endeavor, has so far not yet received the full recognition that it deserves. It exists in three manuscripts, K (Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, or Ricc.
2048, here renamed as Kc, in Catalan), K1 (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, or BAV, Ott. Lat. 2207, here renamed Kf, in French), and K2 (Real Biblioteca de El Escorial, or Escorial Z.I.2; here renamed as Ka, in Aragonese), all of which can be identified as independent
from each other. In her second chapter, Reginato establishes a stemma for them so that we can understand their relationship with each other. They all go back to an archetype lost today although they have rendered the text in their own respective language. Reginato offers detailed descriptions
of each manuscript in the introduction and examines their relationship with each other.
The Norton Chaucer, ed. David Lawton, with prose texts ed. by Jennifer Arch and dream poems ed. by Kathryn Lynch. New York and London: W. W. Norton, 2019, xii, 1197 pp., b/w ill.
Authors: Classen Albrecht
Published: November 2024

It seems almost unbelievable that anyone would dare to take on the task of editing Chaucer’s complete works once again in light of the mountain of research available, along with numerous previous editions and translation. Nevertheless, David Lawton, a long-time expert on Chaucer,
following the lead of E. T. Donaldson’s Chaucer’s Poetry: An Anthology for the Modern Reader (1958), accepted the challenge presented by W. W. Norton to make all of Chaucer’s works available in a fashion that would satisfy both the general reader and the scholar, both
the student and the teacher. To state it right away, the result presented here at first blew me away, and I was ready to give both Lawton and the publisher my highest respect for this masterpiece of medieval scholarship and editing. Nevertheless, at closer examination, there are certain critical
issues that will have to be addressed below since they detract from this new edition. It offers, however, both the complete works and a most useful introduction that highlights, for instance, Chaucer’s afterlife.
Franziska van Buren, An Introduction to the Metaphysical Thought of John Peckham: Text and Translations of Selected Quodlibetal Questions and the Summa de Esse et Essentia.. Medieval Philosophical Texts in Translation, 54. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2023, xiv,
123 pp.
Authors: Classen Albrecht
Published: November 2024

Teaching medieval philosophy can no longer rely on students’ solid knowledge of Latin. Concomitantly, we just have to accept the fact that the body of relevant texts is enormous, so any help in making a useful selection can only be welcomed. Franziska van Buren turns her attention
to the significant, but probably not so well-known thirteenth-century Franciscan cleric, John Peckham (ca. 1240–1290) who was a student under Bonaventure (ca. 1221–1270) and assumed such major position as provincial minister of the Franciscans (1274–1279) and Archbishop of
Canterbury (1279–1292). Famous Thomas Becket (1162–1170) was one of his predecessors, and he followed him to some extent in the Church’s struggle against the English king, Edward I.
Dorothee Rippmann, Frömmigkeit in der Kleinstadt. Jenseitsfürsorge, Kirche und städtische Gesellschaft in der Diözese Konstanz, 1400–1530. Zürich: Chronos Verlag, 2022, 316 S.
Authors: Rupp Horst F.
Published: November 2024

Die Studie von Rippmann muss im größeren Kontext der mittelalterlichen Theologie- und Kirchengeschichte gesehen werden. Die Kirche als Verwalterin des sog. ,,Thesaurus meritorum“, über den sie frei verfügen konnte, etwa durch eine Weitergabe an die Gläubigen,
z.B. in Gestalt der Sakramente oder auch im Ablass, brachte sich in die Position eines Machtfaktors in der Gesellschaft, der über das jenseitige Heil oder Unheil der Menschen bestimmen konnte. Dieser immaterielle ,,Thesaurus“ galt ursprünglich als nicht verkäuflich, eine
Vorstellung, die im Laufe der Zeit erodierte und in Vergessenheit geriet. Und die Angst der Gläubigen vor dem endzeitlichen Gericht brachte diese dazu, sich mittels materieller Verfügungen, etwa in Form käuflicher Jahrzeitgedächtnisse, vielleicht doch noch vor den Höllenstrafen
im Fegefeuer bewahren zu können.
Steven Rozenski, Wisdom’s Journey: Continental Mysticism and Popular Devotion in England, 1350–1650. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2022, 330 pp., 7 b/w ill.
Authors: Burke Linda
Published: November 2024

What type of literary text was most popular with English-language readers in the late Middle Ages and well into the early modern era? To judge from the number of surviving manuscripts and early print editions, the answer is, didactic works, including guidebooks to devotion, the focus
of this important new study. Up to now, as explained by the Steven Rozenski, this enormous class of works has been relatively neglected in the scholarship and teaching of medieval English literature in favor of genres more congenial to contemporary taste, such as the secular romance (1).
Balthazar: A Black African King in Medieval and Renaissance Art, ed. Kriten Collins and Bryan C. Keene, with an intro. by Henry Louis Gates Jr. Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2023, ix, 138 pp., 103 color fig., 1 frontispiece, 1 back piece.
Authors: Classen Albrecht
Published: November 2024

The Bible does not inform us in any details about the background of the Three Holy Magi, and definitely does not specify that Balthazar was a (black) king. However, he is regularly depicted as such (crowned, but white), and this at the latest since tenth or eleventh centuries, and from
then on this has become a trope most people do not even realize or understand. In order to shed more light on this phenomenon and to educate us on the presentation of this king later later shown to be black in medieval and Renaissance art, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles organized
an exhibition from Nov. 19, 2019, to February 16, 2020 (https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/balthazar/), from which resulted a catalog which should have been available during the exhibition, and not only
now. Nevertheless, we can only welcome this wonderfully illustrated volume that will serve exceedingly well to cover the topic of Balthazar from an art-historical and other perspectives.
Jordi Bolòs, The Historical Landscape of Catalonia. Landscape History of a Mediterranean Country in the Middle Ages. The Medieval Countryside, 23. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols 2023.
Authors: Vargas Michael
Published: November 2024

Catalonia is the ancestral turf of Jordi Bolòs; and he knows his turf well. In this book of synthesis, he offers readers the fruits of his more than forty years of study of the Catalan landscape. Physical and cultural geographies are, from his vantage, indistinguishable. Such
an approach to the relationship of people to land and places to power opens for study a great many problems and questions that are, as he says repeatedly throughout the text, complex. The complexities will likely lead readers upon either of two paths. One follows the author on an exhaustive
examination of the partial and scattered evidence left over centuries of the varied and changing modes of medieval communal engagement with the environment. There is another path along which readers can use it as an encyclopedic reference, searching through it as a source of succinct accounts
on one or another aspect of the history and morphology of hamlets and villages, castle towns and merchant cities, roads, forests and lakes, canals, and more. The plausibility of such divergent approaches to reading the book serves as both a symptom of its weaknesses and a signal of its real
strengths.
Peter Brathwaite, Rediscovering Black Portraiture. Los Angeles, CA: Getty Publications, 2023, 168 pp., numerous color ill.
Authors: Classen Albrecht
Published: November 2024

This might well be the most unusual book ever reviewed in our journal. Much of its material does not directly pertain to the Middle Ages, but there is enough documentation here to make it worthwhile for our consideration after all. The author, Peter Brathwaite, along with several collaborators,
here presents his personal search for black individuals portrayed by many different artists from the Middle Ages to the present. He is certainly not the first to focus on this topic, but he adds a unique twist to it by presenting himself in a photo next to the original image re-enacting the
pose by the person in the painting, surrounding himself with objects that copy those in the original. Brathwaite is a highly respected British opera singer, but he has also gained notoriety for his photos depicting Blacks. Spending time at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles during the Covid-19
period in 2020, he succeeded in accomplishing the project that fills the pages of this book.
Poetry in Sagas of Icelanders, ed. Margaret Clunies Ross, †Kari Ellen Gade, and Tarrin Wills. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, 5. 2 Parts, Turnhout: Brepols, 2022, cxxxvi, 1613 pp.
Authors: Sayers William
Published: November 2024

This is the monumental volume that many scholars and admirers of the verse of the skalds will have been waiting for. It is likely to form the capstone in the series publishing the skaldic poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages and now joins prior volumes devoted to poetry from the kings’
sagas, from treatises on poetics, and from the legendary sagas. Future volumes will address runic poetry, poetry in Icelandic history, poetry on Christian subjects, and end with a comprehensive bibliography and indices. The present volume is organized by saga titles and the poetry proclaimed
in the course of events, including longer works such as formal praise poems, includes verse extemporaneously composed by both saga principals and lesser characters. Fifteen different editors have been responsible for the editing of these some thirty longer works and briefer tales.
Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000–1700, ed. Thomas W. Barton, Marie A. Kelleher, and Antonio M. Zaldívar. Cursor Mundi, 42. Turnhout: Brepols, 2022, 244 pp., 4 color ill.
Authors: Classen Albrecht
Published: November 2024

As unusual as it might be, this is a second review of the same volume, and there are different perceptions and comments that might make this review valuable after all.
Ethics in the Arthurian Legend, ed. Melissa Ridley Elmes and Evelyn Meyer. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2023, xx, 400 pp.
Authors: Breeze Andrew
Published: November 2024

Sixteen contributors here guide us round Arthurian literature from the eleventh century to the twenty-first. We start with Melissa Ridley Elmes on the Mabinogion tale of Culhwch and Olwen, dating from the 1090s and a phantasmagoria of glamour and brutality. Not much ethics there.
Evelyn Meyer moves us to the years about 1200 and the Germany of Hartmann von Aue and Wolfram von Eschenbach, who both describe an Arthurian court now more refined (if not much more ethical). Although Arthur and his knights seem to keep their good reputation, scrutiny unmasks it as “tarnished”
and “questioned” (p. 64). Jonathan Seelye Martin then analyzes marriage in Hartmann’s Iwein; Joseph Derosier’s concern is ethical reading in Perlesvaus. The first ends ambiguously. While Iwein and Laudine marry happily, the author quotes Hartmann’s
enigmatic observation, “I don’t know what happened to them afterwards” (p. 84). The second is more forthright, this thirteenth-century Grail romance emerging as a “politically engaged” one of fantasies about “colonial conquest” and fetishes of “crusader
violence” (p. 108).
Elina Gertsman, The Absent Image: Lacunae in Medieval Books. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021, 232 S. mit 120 farbigen Abb.
Authors: Schmitz-Esser Romedio
Published: November 2024

Was ist es, das der Mensch mehr liebt als sein Leben, was der Arme hat und der Reiche braucht, das alle Menschen in ihr Grab mitnehmen? Die bestechende Antwort ist: Nichts! Diese Einsicht ist einem Gedicht am Ende dieses inspirierenden Bandes entnommen, der sich gerade damit beschäftigt,
was doch nur auf den ersten Blick als gar kein Thema der mittelalterlichen Kunstgeschichte verstanden werden könnte. Tatsächlich zeigt Elina Gertsman in diesem gedankenreichen Band, wie anregend das Nachdenken über die Absenz und das Nichts sein kann. Das konkrete Feld ihrer
Studie sind dabei die mittelalterlichen Handschriften. Ausgehend von einer I-Initiale in der Kaishaimer Bibel (BSB Cod. lat. 28169) überlegt Gertsman, wie man in der Buchillumination, die doch oft eher den Eindruck von ,,horror vacui“ vermittelt, die absichtliche Ausklammerung von
bemalter, aber umrahmter Fläche verstehen kann. Unzweifelhaft wird hier mit der Abwesenheit einer eigentlich angedachten Darstellung gespielt, der Betrachter vor den Kopf gestoßen. In diesem Fall ist der Grund dafür benennbar, denn es geht um eine Initiale, die die Genesis
und die Schöpfung illuminiert. Damit hat das Buch schon eine erste ikonographische Situation vorgestellt, in der das Nichts abgebildet wurde – als Darstellung des Zustands vor der Schöpfung. Es gibt also eine theologische, eine künstlerische Tradition des Nachdenkens und
des Abbildens des Nichts im Mittelalter.
The Herald in Late Medieval Europe, ed. Katie Stevenson. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2023 (original 2009), xv, 206 pp., 16 b/w ill.
Authors: Classen Albrecht
Published: November 2024

Normally, Mediaevistik would not publish a review of a book that was originally printed so many years earlier. Katie Stevenson edited her volume The Herald in Late Medieval Europe in 2009, but now a paperback version appeared in print. Our journal has never published a
review of this book, and it should not become a norm to do so considering the gap of fourteen years between the original and the new printing. However, the topic is rarely covered, so this volume deserves at least some brief comments.
Tony McAleavy, Malmesbury Abbey, 670–1539. Patronage, Scholarship and Scandal. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2023, 265 S.
Authors: Lützelschwab Ralf
Published: November 2024

In 15, von Prolog und Epilog umschlossenen, sich chronologisch an der Abfolge der einzelnen Äbte orientierenden Kapiteln, taucht Tony McAleavy tief in die Geschichte einer der bedeutendsten Abteien des englischen Königreichs ein: Malmesbury. Die Binnenperspektive verbindet
sich dabei sehr geschickt mit dem großen Ganzen der englischen Politik. Die um 670 gegründete Benediktinerabtei von Malmesbury gehörte im hohen und späten Mittelalter zu den wichtigen monastischen Spielern. Die 1539 erfolgte Auflösung hinterließ lediglich Ruinen,
bekannt ist Malmesbury aber noch heute aufgrund zweier ,,großer“ Namen – Aldhelm und William of Malmesbury. Ersterer (†um 709), gilt als einer der frühesten ,,man of letters“, letzterer (†ca. 1143) gehört zu den hochgebildeten Mönchschronisten
des hohen Mittelalters.
Solomon and Marcolf: Vernacular Traditions, ed. Jan M. Ziolkowski, with the assistance of Edward Sanger and Michael B. Sullivan. Cambridge, MA, and London: Department of the Classics, Harvard University Press, 2022, xxvi, 515 pp., 28 b/w and color ill.
Authors: Classen Albrecht
Published: November 2024

The trickster figure can be found in literature from around the world, operating always as a clever, mocking, and provocative character. He is a rogue who tends to tell the truth although the authorities do not want to hear it. In the western world, especially in Germany, there were,
above all, Pfaffe Amîs (Priest Amîs) by The Stricker (ca. 1220–1240) and Till Eulenspiegel, probably by Herman Bote (first printed in 1510). Another noteworthy trickster was Marcolf whose seemingly foolish but in reality smart sayings regularly counter comments or opinions
by King Solomon. Although the latter is famous for his wisdom as already described in the Old Testament, Marcolf, Marcoul, Morolf, Melkólfr, Marolfus, or Bertoldo, among other adaptations, opposes him and can demonstrate that conditions are different, that people operate poorly or evilly,
or stupidly. The original narrative might have emerged somewhere in northwestern Europe around 1200, but since the tree of the many different versions is so complex, many of the questions pertaining to authorship and dating are hard to answer. Ziolkowski and Margaret Ziolkowski first give
full credit to two early scholars who shed much light on this matter, John Mitchell Kembole (1807–1857) and Aleksandr Veselovskii (1838–1906).
Sprachgeschichte vor Ort: Stadtsprachenforschung im Spannungsfeld zwischen Ortspunkt und Sprachraum. Hrsg. von Matthias Schulz und Lukas Kütt. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2022, 191 S.
Authors: Prado-Wohlwend Christian
Published: November 2024

Der vorliegende Band bietet eine breitgefächerte Sammlung von Aufsätzen zur historischen Stadtsprachenforschung, die im Rahmen der Tagung ,,Sprachgeschichte vor Ort. Stadtsprachenforschung im Spannungsfeld zwischen Ortspunkt und Sprachraum“ (11.–13. Mai 2017,
Alfried Krupp Kolleg Greifswald) entstanden sind.
Totius mundi philohistor: Studia Georgio Strzelczyk octuagenario oblata, ed. Małgorzata Delimata-Proch, Adam Krawiec, Jakub Kujawiński. Poznań: Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza, 2021, 824 pp.
Authors: Breeze Andrew
Published: November 2024

This volume is hefty; almost all of it is in Polish; so we merely itemize contents. Then others can go to the volume directly and use what they need. After a tribute to the honoree and a list of his publications (the latter occupies 98 pages, there being 1736 of them), we thus encounter
fifty-two studies (all but seven in Polish) presented to Jerzy Strzelczyk of the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań.
Thalassokratien im Mittelalter, hrsg. Nikolas Jaspert und Jan Rüdiger. Mittelmeerstudien, 25. Paderborn: Brill Schöningh, 2024, VII, 349 S.
Authors: Classen Albrecht
Published: November 2024

Manche Bücher haben eine sehr lange Genese, so wie der vorliegende neue Sammelband, der auf eine Sektion des Historikertages in Berlin 2010 zurückgeht und aus verschiedenen externen Gründen erst jetzt im Druck erschienen ist. Wenngleich die hier aufgenommenen Arbeiten
fast schon etwas veraltet wirken könnten, erweist sich die Thematik eigentlich bis heute als brandaktuell, vor allem wenn man die behandelte Problematik berücksichtigt, ob es nämlich im Mittelalter so etwas wie eine seegestützte Herrschaft gegeben habe. Diese implizierte
viele verschiedene Faktoren, etwa das Vorhandenseins einer effektiven Flotte, die Orientierung des Handelsgeschehens auf das Meer und das Bestehen von guten Hafenanlagen. Allerdings wäre von vornherein davon abzusehen, nach einer politischen Macht zu suchen, die wirklich nur ganz vom
Meer aus operierte, denn das feste Land ist schon immer die wesentliche Ausgangsbasis gewesen, wie es selbst heute mit den USA, Russland oder China der Fall ist. Wenn aber eine Macht insbesondere mit Hilfe ihrer Marine einen größeren Einfluß auf ein Meer oder einen Ozean ausübt,
erweist es sich ganz sinnvoll, wie bereits bei Herodot von einer Thalassokratie zu sprechen.
In This Modern Age: Medieval Studies in Honor of Paul Edward Dutton, ed. Courtney M. Booker and Anne A. Latowsky. Budapest: Trivent Publishing, 2023, 532 pp.
Authors: Bruce Scott G.
Published: November 2024

I am reminded of Paul Dutton whenever I don my green raincoat. Reaching into the pocket, I rediscover the handful of dried fava beans that he distributed to the audience of a keynote lecture that he gave at a conference on the material world of the early Middle Ages hosted by Pacific
University in October 2016. The beans illustrated a point that he was making about the so-called “Green Children of Woolpit,” a legend about the sudden appearance of two strange children, a sister and a brother, who caused a stir in a twelfth-century Suffolk village because their
skin was green and they only ate fava beans. Their outward appearance, Dutton argued, may have been symptomatic of hemolytic anemia (favism), a reaction to eating fava beans that can cause skin discoloration of this kind. The beans served a higher purpose, however. Over the years, they have
demonstrated to me how tactile encounters with material objects evoke powerful memories. Those who know Paul Dutton will recognize many aspects of his intellectual character in this anecdote, not least his penchant for drawing significance out of odd bits of medieval cultural history that
other historians have dismissed as meaning-deficient.
Marco Cristini, Baduila: Politics and Warfare at the End of Ostrogothic Italy. Spoleto: Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2022, XII, 280 pp.
Authors: Sassoli Alessandro
Published: November 2024

Questa monografia, la cui costruzione appare talmente difficile per via della scarsità e della tendenziosità delle fonti utilizzabili da non essere mai stata tentata prima d’ora con una tale sistematicità e ampiezza, porta luce sull’ultimo grande rappresentante
del dominio ostrogoto in Italia, il cui nome doveva essere Baduila, e non Totila, giacché il primo figura nella monetazione, mentre il secondo è utilizzato da autori che riflettono, più o meno scopertamente, il punto di vista di Giustiniano, sicché sembra piuttosto
un soprannome (si vedano le giuste considerazioni svolte alle pp. 26–29).
Thomas E. A. Dale, Pygmalion’s Power: Romanesque Sculpture, the Senses, and Religious Experience., University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019, x, 276 pages, 21 color plates, 113 b/w ill.
Authors: Vargas Michael
Published: November 2024

When sculpture came to prominence in Western Church architecture in the eleventh century it had largely been absent for some seven centuries. Scholars have explained the paucity as a recognition among Christian leaders of the dangers of life-like, in-the-round objects that might move
observers into idolatry. Scholarly consensus has also explained sculpture’s reappearance in the period of Romanesque as a part of the revivalist efforts aimed at reclaiming the grandeur and authority of ancient Rome. Thomas E. A. Dale is perhaps too subtle in situating his book within
and against this historical context, but he quite explicitly and emphatically piles on evidence for an alternative.
Chartularium Sangallense. Band II (841–999), bearbeitet von Peter Erhart unter Mitwirkung von Karl Heidecker, Rafael Wagner und Bernhard Zeller. Chartularium Sangallense, 2. St. Gallen: Stiftsarchiv St. Gallen, 2021, 597 pp., large-format map.
Authors: Wozniak Thomas
Published: November 2024

St. Gall was one of the central monasteries of European Christendom during the Middle Ages. Its holdings also form a fundamental research basis for peripheral regions such as Ireland. In particular, the charters that have been recorded offer a wide range of access possibilities, which,
as with the numerous rulers’ charters, extend far beyond the direct environment of the monastery. How large this direct sphere of influence of the monastery was becomes clear from a large-format map, which is enclosed with the book of charters to be discussed here, and which topographically
locates all the places mentioned in the charters. In total, more than 1000 places (!) are identified and located, which will be invaluable for all future research, not only on St. Gall, because only this long-needed tool shows the monastic relationship to space.
Shirin Fozi, Romanesque Tomb Effigies. Death and Redemption in Medieval Europe, 1000–1200, University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021, 228 S., 80 s/w und 16 farbige Abb.
Authors: Schmitz-Esser Romedio
Published: November 2024

Mit diesem Band legt die Kunsthistorikerin Shirin Fozi, die schon mehrfach mit einschlägigen Publikationen zu den Grabmälern des langen 12. Jahrhunderts hervorgetreten ist, eine Gesamtschau der Entwicklung der Grabskulptur in der Romanik vor. Gleich vorweg sei gesagt: Das
ausgezeichnet bebilderte, sehr konzise geschriebene Werk kann als neues Handbuch für die frühe Phase der figürlichen Skulptur auf Grabdenkmälern des Mittelalters fungieren. Mit größter Sachkenntnis, die auch insbesondere die deutschsprachige Forschung mitberücksichtigt,
geht Shirin Fozi den einzelnen Entwicklungsschritten systematisch nach. Der Aufbau des Werks folgt den Typen der bekanntesten Vertreter dieser Kunstgattung: Sie beginnt mit dem Kapitel ,,Epitaphs“, das sich den frühen, epigraphisch gekennzeichneten Figuren widmet, die noch außerhalb
des unmittelbaren Grabkontexts stehen oder eine Grabfigur erst andeuten. Prominent werden dabei die Gräber von Bernward von Hildesheim und Isarn von Marseille sowie die Reliefs für Durandus von Moissac herausgehoben. Von diesen frühen Monumenten geht sie im zweiten Kapitel,
,,Rulers“, zur Bronzegrabplatte Rudolfs von Rheinfelden in Merseburg über, die als erste figürliche Grabplatte überhaupt gilt und deren Besonderheit sie gegenüber den salischen Gräbern in Speyer nochmals herausarbeitet. Gerade in diesem Kapitel ist die Forschung
sehr aktiv, und die Ausführungen Fozis lassen sich weiter diskutieren, etwa vor dem Hintergrund der vom Rezensenten vorgeschlagenen deutlich späteren Datierung des Grabdenkmals aus Merseburg oder im Lichte der jüngsten Forschungen zum Cappenberger Kopf, die Fozi bereits anspricht.
Colin A. Ireland, The Gaelic Background of Old English Poetry Before Bede. Publications of the Richard Rawlinson Centre. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2022, xiii, 450 pp.
Authors: Sayers William
Published: November 2024

This fine volume bridges the scholarly gap between one of medieval Europe’s least studied but most prolific literatures, that in Middle Irish, and certainly the most studied but strikingly limited vernacular poetic corpus, in Old English. Bede is an appropriate point of reference,
since the book does for its vast subject what that author did for the history of the English church. The temporal span is 635−735.
Reinhold Kaiser, Le Monde méditerranéen et l’Europe au Bas-Empire et au haut Moyen Âge (IVe-XIe siècle), traduction de Marie-Thérèse Kaiser-Guyot. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2023 (orig. 2014), 586 pp.
Authors: Piazza Emanuele
Published: November 2024

This volume is the French translation from the German of the third volume of the Neue Fischer Weltgeschichte (Die Mittelmeerwelt und Europa in Spätantike und Frühmittelalter). In the preface to this edition (7), Kaiser outlines the vast chronological and geographical
scope of his work, which extends from the time of Constantine the Great to the Investiture Controversy. A field that spans seven centuries, a period too long, in the author’s opinion, to be considered merely as a transitional phase (9). These seven centuries can be divided into three
phases (12–14): the first, from 300 to 700, is marked by the decline of the Roman Empire, which led to a profound transformation of political and social structures (in the eighth century in the West, at the beginning of the thirteenth century in the East); the second, from 700 to 900,
saw the revival of the unity of the Latin West through the work of the Carolingian government; the third, finally, from 900 to 1050, saw the development of new political formations in the wider scenario of conflict between secular and religious power.
Charles West, The Fall of a Carolingian Kingdom: Lotharingia, 855–869. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023, x, 236 pp.
Authors: Bruce Scott G.
Published: November 2024

This book offers a refreshing approach to the history of Lotharingia during the brief reign of Lothar II (855–869). Rather than providing a narrative account of Lothar II’s turbulent tenure, Charles West presents annotated translations of twenty-two primary sources related
in one way or another to the political culture of his age. These range from royal charters, papal and episcopal letters, and aristocratic wills to material culture, like coins and luxury manuscripts. Accompanying each translation is a learned and lucid introduction that situates the source
in its political and cultural context, and discusses the limits of what it can and cannot tell us about Lothar II’s reign. The result is an intimate and enlightening foray into the history of the short-lived kingdom of Charlemagne’s ill-fated great-grandson.
Constance Brittain Bouchard, Negotiation and Resistance: Peasant Agency in High Medieval France. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2022, pp. vii, 169.
Authors: Butler Sara M.
Published: November 2024

What one thinks of Bouchard’s passionately titled Negotiation and Resistance will depend on one’s field of research. Historians of medieval France, like those quoted on the book’s back cover, may well find themselves nodding their heads while reading the introduction,
wondering why? Why has the history of the peasantry been so overlooked? Why do we see them as an undifferentiated mass? Surely peasants also had agency? It is hard to resist Bouchard’s righteous indignation on behalf of this “relatively unstudied group” (7). Economic or social
historians of the Middle Ages will likely have a different reaction. While reading the introduction, they may feel the need to check then recheck the publication date – 2022? Not 1982? They may also find themselves flipping to the bibliography and wondering where are those essential
works about the medieval peasantry by Mark Bailey, Jean Birrell, Anne DeWindt, Christopher Dyer, Peter Larson, Miriam Müller, Zvi Ravi, Philip Slavin, and Phillip Schofield? All this by way of saying that Bouchard’s book is narrowly focused on the peasantry of high medieval northern
France – even more precisely, what we can learn about that group from charter evidence – and she has made little effort to avail herself of the plentiful and inspiring work of historians who study the peasantry outside of those geographic, chronological, and documentary constraints.
Accordingly, she does not realize that much of what she is discovering mirrors what we see going on elsewhere in Europe. Nonetheless, her ability to extract every last drop of information about the peasantry from a charter is awe-inspiring. In doing so, she clarifies that the category of the
peasantry in high medieval northern France is every bit as muddled and blurry as it is elsewhere.
Victorine Restoration: Essays on Hugh of St. Victor, Richard of St. Victor, and Thomas Gallus, ed. Robert J. Porwoll and David Allison Orsbon. Cursus Mundi, 39. Turnhout: Brepols, 2021, 376 pp.
Authors: Kuehn Evan F.
Published: November 2024

The theologians and churchmen of the Abbey of Saint-Victor in Paris, established in 1108 by the celebrated former archdeacon of Notre Dame, William of Champeaux, are receiving increased attention from scholars. A firm foundation of critical editions and new translations has encouraged
new research, especially the work of Rainer Berndt and others on the Corpus Victorinum (Aschendorff Verlag), new volumes in the Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis series, and the Victorine Texts in Translation series published by Brepols beginning in 2010.
John of Garland, Integumentum Ovidii. Text, Translation, and Commentary by Kyle Gervais. TEAMS: Secular Commentary Series. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2022, xv, 201 pp.
Authors: Classen Albrecht
Published: November 2024

Some of the most exciting features of medieval philosophy and epistemology consist of the willingness to read the natural world allegorically, or as an integument, which altogether allows us today to recognize the essential epistemology pursued in the high Middle Ages. John of Garland
was one of the more influential teachers of his time (b. ca. 1195, d. after 1258), and in his Integumentum Ovidii, superbly translated by Kyle Gervais, he offers an extensive discussion of how to approach Ovid’s Metamorphoses through an allegorical lens. We will profit
from this translation in a critical fashion because it makes accessible in English a major study of high medieval interpretive analysis. As Gervais points out, John wrote at least a dozen philosophical treatises, which were well received by his contemporaries and successors.
Markus Krumm, Eugenio Riversi und Alessia Trivellone, Die Erfindung der Katharer: Konstruktion einer Häresie in Mittelalter und Moderne. Übersetzungen aus dem Italienischen, Französischen und Englischen von Markus Krumm, Michael Kister und Christina Schröer.
Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2023, 208 S., zahl-reiche farbl. Abb.
Authors: Classen Albrecht
Published: November 2024

Aus heutiger Sicht wirkt die hier vorgestellte These leider keineswegs so überraschend, denn fake news, politische Mythenbildung, Propaganda und öffentliche Projektionen von Fantasievorstellungen, die zur Bildung von Konspirationstheorien führen, gab es selbstverständlich
auch schon im Mittelalter oder in der Antike. Die immer wieder aufgewärmten aber grundsätzlich falschen Vorwürfe gegen Juden (Hostienschändung, Wucher, Ritualmordlegende etc.) belegen dies eindeutig. Heutzutage gibt es sogar die neue Tendenz, den Holocaust zu leugnen oder
zu behaupten, dass die US-Präsidentschaftswahlen gefälscht gewesen seien. Beide Tendenzen sind zwar auf ganz anderer Ebene gelagert, aber beide wirken genauso grotesk und absurd. Trotzdem beweisen sie sich als ungeheuer wirkungsvoll in der Öffentlichkeit, die sich, wie man bedauerlicherweise
zugestehen muss, schon immer eher von Imaginationen leiten ließ als von real nachweisbaren Tatsachen. Die drei Autoren des vorliegenden Bandes und einige andere Beiträger argumentieren, dass das Konzept von Häresie, das vor allem die Katharer oder die Albigenser betraf, letztlich
aus der Luft gegriffen gewesen sei, aber genau deswegen so wirkungsvoll war, was dann in einen grausamen Kriegszug mündete.
Knowledge on Complications of Recurrent Tonsillitis and its Surgical Management among Parents/Guardian of Paediatric Patients Receiving Services at the Otorhinolaryngology Department at BMC Mwanza Tanzania
Authors: Kimario Olivia Michael , Kalugila Elimujuni , Mwangonji Meshack , Nzelu Paschalina , Massaga Fabian
Published: November 2024

Background: Tonsillitis refers to inflammation of the palatine tonsil and most often occurs in children. Recurrent tonsillitis is defined as more than seven attacks within one year, more than five attacks a year within a two-year period, or more than three attacks a year within a three-year period. The global incidence and prevalence of tonsillitis are not completely known, the research indicates that 15-30% of sore throats in children and 5-10% of sore throats in adults are bacterial tonsillitis. Method: This is a cross-sectional descriptive study with span from May 2024 to August 2024. Results: 385 participants were enrolled in the study; 60.8%of the participants were aged from 21 years to 30 years which was the majority. About 317(82.3%) parents/guardians responded that recurrent tonsillitis has an effect on the child's health, whereas 68 (17.7%) reported that recurrent tonsillitis has no effect on the child's health. Complications of recurrent tonsilitis reported to be known by parent /guardian were snoring (sleep apnoea) 111 (28.8%), ear problems like otitis media 2(0.5%), hearing loss 1(0.3%) heart problem (0.8%), renal problem 3(0.8%), affect the growth of the child 6 (1.6%), missing school 11 (2.9%). 183(47.5%) of the study participants reported that they don’t know about any complications that their child may get after surgery, while other parents/guardians reported that the child can suffer pain after surgery 99(25.7%), intraoperative or postoperative bleeding 3(0.8%) others reported that the child can get pain during eating 8(2.1%)
Usawiri Wa Maradhi Sugu Yanayodhoofisha Mwili Katika Riwaya Teule Za Kiswahili
Authors: Kalumu Kisangau , Kevogo Alex Umbima
Published: November 2024

Maradhi ni mojawapo ya matatizo ya kimaumbile yaliyotaabisha binadamu duniani kote kwani asilimia kubwa ya maradhi hayo hayakujulikana vyanzo vyake licha ya utafiti wa kisayansi kuimarika duniani. Binadamu msomi na asiyesoma huishi na wasiwasi kila uchao kwani hajui litakaloathiri mwili wake kesho; hali ambayo hutoa taswira ya maisha kama jinamizi lisilotabirika. Utafiti uliofanywa na Shirika la Afya Duniani (2019) unaonyesha kuwa ongezeko la maradhi sugu duniani linatokana na vyakula na vinywaji anavyotumia binadamu vilivyojaa kemikali za kila aina ambazo hutumiwa na mwanadamu katika shughuli za kilimo hususan wakati wa upanzi, ukuzaji, uvunaji na pia uhifadhi wa nafaka. Vilevile, Shirika hili lilibainisha wazi kuwa ongezeko la maradhi husababishwa na mazingira chafu anamoishi mwanadamu na pia mtindo wa maisha katika jamii ya kisasa. Azma kuu ya utafiti ilikuwa kuchunguza usawiri wa maradhi sugu yanayodhoofisha mwili katika riwaya teule. Mtafiti alianuia kuchunguza jinsi mwili wa binadamu uliodhoofishwa na maradhi sugu unavyosawiriwa katika riwaya teule za Kiswahili. Malengo mahususi yalikuwa; kudadavua kiini cha ongezeko la maradhi sugu yadhoofishayo mwili wa binadamu kwa mujibu wa riwaya teule, kutathmini athari za maradhi hayo sugu na kisha kuchanganua juhudi za wanajamii kukabiliana na maradhi sugu zinavyosawiriwa katika riwaya teule. Utafiti huu uliongozwa na Nadharia ya Udhanaishi. Nadharia hii inatilia mkazo kuwa juhudi za mwanadamu kupambana na maisha huishia katika kukata tamaa pamoja na. Mtafiti aliteua sampuli ya kimaksudi iliyojumuisha riwaya mbili ambazo ni: Kala Tufaha ya Omar Babu na Safari ya Lamu ya John Habwe zilizoandikwa katika karne ya ishirini na moja. Mtafiti alitumia mbinu ya utafiti wa maktaba kudurusu maandishi mbalimbali yaliyoandikwa kuhusu mada ya utafiti. Mtafiti alitumia mbinu za kimaelezo ili kuchambua na kuwasilisha data yake akiongozwa na mihimili ya nadharia ya Udhanaishi. Matokeo ya utafiti huu yatachangia pakubwa katika kuhamasisha jamii kuhusu maradhi sugu yanayodhoofisha mwili