Culture and Religion in Merovingian Gaul

Culture and Religion in Merovingian Gaul PDF Author: Yitzhak Hen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004103474
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book offers fascinating new thinking about the christianisation of early medieval Gaul, the liturgy of Gaul as a significant component of Merovingian culture, and the place of paganism and superstitions in the Merovingian world.

Culture and Religion in Merovingian Gaul

Culture and Religion in Merovingian Gaul PDF Author: Yitzhak Hen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004103474
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book offers fascinating new thinking about the christianisation of early medieval Gaul, the liturgy of Gaul as a significant component of Merovingian culture, and the place of paganism and superstitions in the Merovingian world.

Culture and Religion in Merovingian Gaul, A.D. 481-751

Culture and Religion in Merovingian Gaul, A.D. 481-751 PDF Author: Yitzhak Hen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004614575
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 323

Get Book Here

Book Description
Although often depicted as a barbaric and uncivilised society, in the full pejorative meaning of these words, Merovingian Gaul was clearly a Christian society and a direct continuation of the Roman civilisation in terms of social standards, morals and culture. Using insights provided by social history, archaeology, palaeography and anthropology, this book studies the problem of Christianisation in early Medieval Gaul from a cultural point of view. While exploiting a huge range of primary and secondary material, Dr. Hen does not confine himself to a functional analysis of various cultural and religious activities in Merovingian Gaul, but goes on to assess the consequences and implications of such activities for the people themselves, and for the subsequent developments in the Carolingian period.

Contesting Inter-Religious Conversion in the Medieval World

Contesting Inter-Religious Conversion in the Medieval World PDF Author: Yosi Yisraeli
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317160274
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Mediterranean and its hinterlands were the scene of intensive and transformative contact between cultures in the Middle Ages. From the seventh to the seventeenth century, the three civilizations into which the region came to be divided geographically – the Islamic Khalifate, the Byzantine Empire, and the Latin West – were busily redefining themselves vis-à-vis one another. Interspersed throughout the region were communities of minorities, such as Christians in Muslim lands, Muslims in Christian lands, heterodoxical sects, pagans, and, of course, Jews. One of the most potent vectors of interaction and influence between these communities in the medieval world was inter-religious conversion: the process whereby groups or individuals formally embraced a new religion. The chapters of this book explore this dynamic: what did it mean to convert to Christianity in seventh-century Ireland? What did it mean to embrace Islam in tenth-century Egypt? Are the two phenomena comparable on a social, cultural, and legal level? The chapters of the book also ask what we are able to learn from our sources, which, at times, provide a very culturally-charged and specific conversion rhetoric. Taken as a whole, the compositions in this volume set out to argue that inter-religious conversion was a process that was recognizable and comparable throughout its geographical and chronological purview.

Pagan Survivals, Superstitions and Popular Cultures in Early Medieval Pastoral Literature

Pagan Survivals, Superstitions and Popular Cultures in Early Medieval Pastoral Literature PDF Author: Bernadette Filotas
Publisher: PIMS
ISBN: 9780888441515
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 454

Get Book Here

Book Description
"This comprehensive study examines early medieval popular culture as it appears in ecclesiastical and secular law, sermons, penitentials and other pastoral works - a selective, skewed, but still illuminating record of the beliefs and practices of ordinary Christians. Concentrating on the five centuries from c. 500 to c. 1000, Pagan Survivals, Superstitions and Popular Cultures in Early Medieval Pastoral Literature presents the evidence for folk religious beliefs and piety, attitudes to nature and death, festivals, magic, drinking and alimentary customs. As such it provides a precious glimpse of the mutual adaptation of Christianity and traditional cultures at an important period of cultural and religious transition."--BOOK JACKET

Men in the Middle

Men in the Middle PDF Author: Steffen Patzold
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110436205
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume studies local priests as central players in small communities of early medieval Europe. As clerics living among the laity, priests played a double role within their communities: that of local representatives of the Church and religious experts, and that of owners of land and other goods. By virtue of their membership of both the ecclesiastical and the secular world, they can be considered as ‘men in the middle’: people who brought politico-religious ideas and ideals to secular communities, and who linked the local to the supra-local via networks of landownerhsip. This book addresses both roles that local priests played by approaching them via their manuscripts, and via the charters that record transactions in which they were involved. Manuscripts once owned by local priests bear witness to their education and expertise, but also indicate how, for instance, ideals of the Carolingian reforms reached the lowest levels of early medieval society. The case-studies of collections of charters, on the other hand, show priests as active members of networks of the locally powerful in a variety of European regions. Notwithstanding many local variations, the contributions to this volume show that local priests as ‘men in the middle’ are a phenomenon shared by the early medieval world as a whole.

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to World Christianity

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to World Christianity PDF Author: Lamin Sanneh
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405153768
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 782

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to World Christianity presents a collection of essays that explore a range of topics relating to the rise, spread, and influence of Christianity throughout the world. Features contributions from renowned scholars of history and religion from around the world Addresses the origins and global expansion of Christianity over the course of two millennia Covers a wide range of themes relating to Christianity, including women, worship, sacraments, music, visual arts, architecture, and many more Explores the development of Christian traditions over the past two centuries across several continents and the rise in secularization

A Companion to the Medieval World

A Companion to the Medieval World PDF Author: Carol Lansing
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118499468
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 603

Get Book Here

Book Description
Drawing on the expertise of 26 distinguished scholars, this important volume covers the major issues in the study of medieval Europe, highlighting the significant impact the time period had on cultural forms and institutions central to European identity. Examines changing approaches to the study of medieval Europe, its periodization, and central themes Includes coverage of important questions such as identity and the self, sexuality and gender, emotionality and ethnicity, as well as more traditional topics such as economic and demographic expansion; kingship; and the rise of the West Explores Europe’s understanding of the wider world to place the study of the medieval society in a global context

A Companion to Gregory of Tours

A Companion to Gregory of Tours PDF Author: Alexander C. Murray
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004307001
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 685

Get Book Here

Book Description
Gregory, bishop of Tours (573-594), was among the most prolific writers of his age and uniquely managed to cover the genres of history, hagiography, and ecclesiastical instruction. He not only wrote about events (of the secular, spiritual, and even natural variety) but about himself as an actor and witness. Though his work (especially the Histories) has been recycled and studied for centuries, our grasp of an even basic understanding of it, never mind Gregory’s significance in the history of the late antique West, has hardly yet attained a definitive perspective. A Companion to Gregory of Tours brings together fourteen scholars who provide an expert guide to interpreting his works, his period, and his legacy in religious and historical studies. Contributors are: Pascale Bourgain, Roger Collins, John J. Contreni, Stefan Esders, Martin Heinzelmann, Yitzhak Hen, John K. Kitchen, Simon Loseby, Alexander Callander Murray, Patrick Périn, Joachim Pizarro, Helmut Reimitz, Michael Roberts, Richard Shaw.

Songs of Sacrifice

Songs of Sacrifice PDF Author: Rebecca Maloy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190071540
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 345

Get Book Here

Book Description
Between the seventh and eleventh centuries, Christian worship on the Iberian Peninsula was structured by rituals of great theological and musical richness, known as the Old Hispanic (or Mozarabic) rite. Much of this liturgy was produced during a seventh-century cultural and educational program aimed at creating a society unified in the Nicene faith, built on twin pillars of church and kingdom. Led by Isidore of Seville and subsequent generations of bishops, this cultural renewal effort began with a project of clerical education, facilitated through a distinctive culture of textual production. Rebecca Maloy's Songs of Sacrifice argues that liturgical music--both texts and melodies--played a central role in the cultural renewal of early Medieval Iberia, with a chant repertory that was carefully designed to promote the goals of this cultural renewal. Through extensive reworking of the Old Testament, the creators of the chant texts fashioned scripture in ways designed to teach biblical exegesis, linking both to patristic traditions--distilled through the works of Isidore of Seville and other Iberian bishops--and to Visigothic anti-Jewish discourse. Through musical rhetoric, the melodies shaped the delivery of the texts to underline these messages. In these ways, the chants worked toward the formation of individual Christian souls and a communal Nicene identity. Examining the crucial influence of these chants, Songs of Sacrifice addresses a plethora of long-debated issues in musicology, history, and liturgical studies, and reveals the potential for Old Hispanic chant to shed light on fundamental questions about how early chant repertories were formed, why their creators selected particular passages of scripture, and why they set them to certain kinds of music.

The Visigothic Kingdom in Iberia

The Visigothic Kingdom in Iberia PDF Author: Santiago Castellanos
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812252535
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book Here

Book Description
The structures of the late ancient Visigothic kingdom of Iberia were rooted in those of Roman Hispania, Santiago Castellanos argues, but Catholic bishops subsequently produced a narrative of process and power from the episcopal point of view that became the official record and primary documentation for all later historians. The delineation of these two discrete projects—of construction and invention—form the core of The Visigothic Kingdom in Iberia. Castellanos reads documents of the period that are little known to many Anglophone scholars, including records of church councils, sermons, and letters, and utilizes archaeological findings to determine how the political system of elites related to local communities, and how the documentation they created promoted an ideological agenda. Looking particularly at the archaeological record, he finds that rural communities in the region were complex worlds unto themselves, with clear internal social stratification little recognized by the literate elites.