In medieval society and culture, memory occupied a unique position. It was central to intellectual life and the medieval understanding of the human mind. Commemoration of the dead was also a fundamental Christian activity. Above all, the past - and the memory of it - occupied a central position in medieval thinking, from ideas concerning the family unit to those shaping political institutions. Focusing on France but incorporating studies from further afield, this collection of essays marks an important new contribution to the study of medieval memory and commemoration. Arranged thematically, each part highlights how memory cannot be studied in isolation, but instead intersects with many other areas of medieval scholarship, including art history, historiography, intellectual history, and the study of religious culture. Key themes in the study of memory are explored, such as collective memory, the links between memory and identity, the fallibility of memory, and the linking of memory to the future, as an anticipation of what is to come.
Author(s): Elma Brenner, Meredith Cohen, Mary Franklin-Brown (eds.)
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2016
Language: English
Pages: XX+354
List of Figures ix
Notes on Contributors xiii
Acknowledgements xix
Introduction / Elma Brenner, Meredith Cohen and Mary Franklin-Brown 1
PART I: Memory and Images
1. Images and the Work of Memory, with Special Reference to the Sixth-Century Mosaics of Ravenna, Italy / Jean-Claude Schmitt. Translated from the French by Marie-Pierre Gelin 13
2. "Images Gross and Sensible": Violence, Memory and Art in the Thirteenth Century / Martha Easton 33
3. Beyond the Two Doors of Memory: Intertextualities and Intervisualities in Thirteenth-Century Illuminated Manuscripts of the "Roman de Troie" and the "Histoire Ancienne" / Rosa María Rodríguez Porto 55
PART II: Commemoration and Oblivion
4. The Making of the Carolingian "Libri Memoriales": Exploring or Constructing the Past? / Eva-Maria Butz and Alfons Zettler 79
5. Status and the Soul: Commemoration and Intercession in the Rayonnant Chapels of Northern France in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries / Mailan S. Doquang 93
6. Ritual Excommunication: An "Ars Oblivionalis"? / Christian Jaser 119
PART III: Memory, Reading and Performance
7. "The Speculum Maius", Between "Thesaurus" and "Lieu de Mémoire" / Mary Franklin-Brown 143
8. The Memory of Roman Law in an Illuminated Manuscript of Justinian's Digest / Joanna Frońska 163
9. "Quant j’eus tout recordé par ordre": Memory and Performance on Display in the Manuscripts of Guillaume de Machaut's "Voir Dit" and "Remede de Fortune" / Kate Maxwell 181
10. Acrostics as Copyright Protection in the Franco–Italian Epic: Implications for Memory Theory / John F. Levy 195
PART IV: Royal and Aristocratic Memory and Commemoration
11. Changes of Aristocratic Identity: Remarriage and Remembrance in Europe 900–1200 / Elisabeth van Houts 221
12. Longchamp and Lourcine: The Role of Female Abbeys in the Construction of Capetian Memory (Late Thirteenth Century to Mid-Fourteenth Century) / Anne-Hélène Allirot. Translated from the French by Lewis Beer 243
13. Louis IX and Liturgical Memory / M. Cecilia Gaposchkin 261
PART V: Remembering Medieval France
14 Pierre Loti's "Memories" of the Middle Ages: Feasting on the Gothic in 1888 / Elizabeth Emery 279
15. Celebrating the Medieval Past in Modern Cluny: How Popular Events Helped Shape Collective Memory for a
Small French Town / Janet T. Marquardt 299
16. "A Mere Patch of Color": Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Shattered Glass of Reims Cathedral / Shirin Fozi 321
Index 345
