L'Agenda des Médiévistes

Depuis la Renaissance, l’architecture médiévale occidentale suscite rejets et émerveillements. Ce colloque a pour but de montrer comment les édifices du Moyen Âge, qu’ils soient civils ou religieux, ont été analysés, interprétés, imités, critiqués ou tout simplement représentés. En s’intéressant à la perception de l’architecture médiévale au cours du temps et ses réminiscences dans un contexte plus contemporain, il s’agira de réfléchir à la manière dont l’architecture médiévale a continué à être une référence incontournable. Du patrimoine bourguignon au Met-Cloisters de New York, en passant par le château de Guédelon et son chantier d’archéologie expérimentale, les conférenciers présenteront une vision du Moyen Âge renouvelée et toujours d’actualité.

Programme :

Samedi 3 octobre 2026

Paray-le-Monial, Théâtre Sauvageot

• 8 h 00 : Accueil des participants au Centre culturel et de Congrès
• 9 h 00 : Présentation et introduction du colloque Catherine Vincent, Présidente des Amis de la basilique romane, Nicolas Reveyron, Conseiller scientifique des Amis de la basilique romane

9 h 30 : Début des travaux

• Nicolas Reveyron, Professeur émérite, Université Lyon 2-Lumière « Patience et langueur des temps font plus que force ni que dommages »
• Jean-François Grange-Chavanis, Architecte en Chef des Monuments Historiques (h) « Nous avons le bonheur de vivre au Moyen Âge »
• Emmanuel Gleyze, Sociologue et anthropologue « Guédelon, la concordance des temps »

12 h 30 : Déjeuner

Possibilité de déjeuner en commun au restaurant Le Domaine des Marguerites ; sur inscription

14 h 15 : Reprise des travaux 

• Géraldine Mallet, Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry – Centre d’études médiévales de Montpellier (CEMM EA 4583)« L’architecture médiévale à New York : le Met-Cloisters »
• Cédric Lesec, EPHE (Paris) et Musée des Confluences (Lyon)« L’aventure des éditions Zodiaque »
• Lucas La Barbera, docteur en histoire de l’art (Université de Strasbourg), membre associé ARCHE (UMR 3400)« Un gothique bourguignon ? Genèse et postérité d’un concept régionaliste »

Cocktail et rencontre avec les conférenciers

Dimanche 4 octobre 2026

Matinée : Visite des églises de Mont-Saint-Vincent et de Gourdon

Départ de Paray-le-Monial à 8 h 45 ; rendez-vous au parking de la Place de l’Europe à Paray-le-Monial ; covoiturage.

12 h 00 : Déjeuner

Possibilité de déjeuner en commun au restaurant du Champ de Foire (Paray-le-Monial) ; sur inscription

15 h 30 : Concert

Concert par Michaël Parisot, « Le claviorganum, un instrument entre clavecin et orgue » à la salle des Boiseries dans le Cloître du prieuré. (Uniquement sur incription : les participants au colloque bénéficieront d’une place réservée.)

Informations pratiques :

3-4 octobre 2026
Théâtre Sauvageot et Centre Culturel et de Congrès – Boulevard du Collège
Paray-le-Monial, France (71600)

Source : Calenda

Appel complet : ici

The Libraries as Links in Learning: Making the Meaning of Manuscripts project invites papers for a strand at Leeds IMC 2027 on the mediating role of libraries with respect to medieval manuscripts from c. 1800- c. 1970. The strand hopes to facilitate comparisons across institutional contexts (e.g. private, public, university, city, national libraries), and will be international in scope. Focusing on the period from c. 1800 (the dawn of a period of substantial change for institutional libraries) to c. 1970 (before the introduction of wide-spread digital practices in libraries) we wish to query how medieval manuscripts have been treated within libraries and the impact of such collection contexts on their subsequent scholarly, professional and public interpretation.

Deadline for abstracts: 28 August 2026

Source : Medieval Studies

Regular canons played a central, yet still insufficiently recognised, role in the religious and institutional history of the Latin Middle Ages. They did not constitute a homogeneous body, but a constellation of communities, networks, and congregations, from the Mortarians and Portuensians to the canons of the Great St Bernard, the Premonstratensians, and the later Congregations of the Lateran Canons and Windesheim, united by the common life but distinguished by their customs, institutional structures, pastoral vocations, and patterns of settlement.

In connection with “Communities,” the special thematic focus of the 2027 International Medieval Congress, these sessions will explore how communities of regular canons constructed, negotiated, performed, and transmitted their identities between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. Particular attention will be paid to the circulation of rules, ordines, customs, individuals, liturgical practices, architectural models, and works of art across networks of affiliation extending beyond individual foundations.

Bringing together history, liturgical studies, anthropology, art history, and musicology, the sessions will examine canonical life in its historical, social, and material dimensions. They will consider institutions and relationships with wider society alongside the liturgical, spatial, architectural, and artistic forms through which canonical communities organised themselves and made their identities visible.

Proposals may address Italy or any other area of the medieval West between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. Comparative studies and contributions combining documentary, normative, and liturgical sources with the analysis of buildings, spaces, and works of art will be especially welcome.

Proposals addressing the following themes will be particularly welcome:

• Rules, customs, statutes, and their role in defining communal affiliation;
• Identities, differences, relationships, and processes of reform within canonical networks and congregations;
• Relationships with ecclesiastical and political institutions and with urban and territorial communities;
• Pastoral care, hospitality, charitable provision, and relationships with lay society;
• Liturgy, spatial organisation, and the articulation of the common life as instruments of communal identity;
• Architecture and art as means of constructing affiliation, distinction, and memory;
• Patronage, artistic production, and the circulation of individuals, texts, works of art, models, and practices;
• Communities of female canons and comparisons between different forms of canonical life.

Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words, together with a short CV and the information requested by the IMC, by 14 September 2026, to Cristina Andenna (cristina.andenna@uni-saarland.de) and Fabio Massaccesi (fabio.massaccesi3@unibo.it).

Source : Medieval Art Research

October 23rd and 24th, 2026. Sá da Bandeira Theatre, Santarém, Portugal

The Art History Institute at NOVA FCSH, in partnership with the Municipality of Santarém and the Diocesan Museum of Santarém, is pleased to announce the Call for Papers for the International Conference Claustrum: Medieval Art, Iconography and Spirituality in Franciscan Convents, to be held in a hybrid format on 23–24 October 2026.

The conference is organised within the framework of the IHA seed-project Claustrum. Convent of St Francis, which examines the cloister of the Franciscan Convent of Santarém as an experimental research laboratory, bringing together different scholarly disciplines to investigate the construction, decoration and lived experience of one of the oldest medieval Franciscan convents in Portugal.

Held during the eighth centenary of the death of St Francis, this conference aims to provide an interdisciplinary forum for discussion, bringing together Art History, History, Spirituality, Ecology (Environmental History and Ecotheology), Epigraphy and Heraldry, with a chronological focus spanning the 13th to the 15th centuries. Its purpose is to explore how Franciscan thought and religious practice shaped medieval European visual culture, while also laying the historical foundations for a sensitivity towards, and respect for, the natural world that continues to resonate today.

Researchers, established scholars and doctoral candidates working in these fields are invited to submit proposals addressing one of the following thematic strands:

Theme 1: Medieval Art History and Iconography

• Artistic representations of St Francis and the Franciscan Order.
• Architecture, urbanism and the built heritage of Franciscan convents.
• Manuscript illumination, painting, sculpture and the decorative arts within the Franciscan tradition.

Theme 2: Medieval Spirituality, History and Written Sources

• The study of written sources, chronicles, hagiographies and theological texts.
• The expansion of the Order of Friars Minor throughout medieval Europe, and the dynamics of patronage and artistic commissions within Franciscan convents.
• Franciscan mysticism, poverty and theology from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, and their relationship to the artistic culture of the Order’s convents.

Theme 3: St Francis and Ecology: Historical, Artistic and Philosophical Perspectives

• The Canticle of the Creatures and the emergence of a new understanding of the natural world.
• The representation of nature and the natural world in medieval Franciscan iconography and its dissemination.
• Environmental History, Ecotheology, and the continuing relevance of Franciscan thought in the face of contemporary environmental and climate challenges.

Submission Guidelines

Proposals should be submitted in Word or PDF format by email to claustrum2026@gmail.com and must include the following:

1. Anonymous Cover Page

• Title of the paper (clear and concise);
• Abstract (maximum 300 words);
• Up to five keywords;
• Indication of the thematic strand under which the proposal is submitted.

2. Author Information (submitted as a separate document)

• Full name(s) of the author(s);
• Institutional affiliation (University and/or Research Centre);
• Short biographical note (maximum 100 words);
• Contact / e-mail address.

Official Languages: Portuguese, Spanish and English.

Presentation Format: Each paper will be allocated 20 minutes for presentation.

Key Dates

• Deadline for abstract submission: 4 September 2026
• Notification of acceptance: 12 September 2026
• Publication of the provisional programme: 25 September 2026
• Conference dates: 23–24 October 2026

Review Process

All submitted abstracts will undergo peer review by members of the Scientific and Organising Committee:

• Carla Varela Fernandes (IHA – NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
• João Luís Fontes (IEM – NOVA FCSH)
• Luís Urbano Afonso (ARTIS – FLUL)
• Paulo Almeida Fernandes (IHA – NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
• Pedro Almeida Flor (UAb, IHA – NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)

Contact Information

For further information, please contact the Organising Committee at claustrum2026@gmail.com or visit our website https://claustrum.godaddysites.com

Source : Medieval Art Research

Call for Papers for a series of Sessions at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds 2027 (Special Strand: Communities)

An English chronicler writes that the French king seeks to eradicate the Flemish language in the city of Damme; Georgian and Armenian are implemented as liturgical languages in the Orthodox Church; Buddhist texts are translated into multiple languages; Arabic-Latin treaties reveal substantial differences between the two languages to appeal to their respective communities. While geographically and chronologically disparate, these cases have one thing in common: they occur in settings characterised by a multitude of languages, and this multilingualism is used to shape communities. The Middle Ages were an inherently multilingual period that was both spatially and socially characterised by a diversity of languages that entailed a wide range of cross-linguistic and cross-dialectal contacts. This diversity of languages is evident in a wide variety of sources, from charters to cookbooks, from graffiti to saints’ lives, from scientific treatises to chronicles, and many others.

Yet not all languages held the same status in their respective societies. This status was not fixed and could fluctuate according to social, political, and religious circumstances. While some languages were outlawed, others could be elevated to the status of sacred. Others became the language of power, of legal practice, or of knowledge. Medieval multilingualism was therefore constantly negotiated. In this context, the choice of a language was used to define, create, and exclude communities.

Such processes of language negotiation are at the core of the proposed sessions. By bringing together papers from different linguistic, political, and legal contexts in the Global Middle Ages, these sessions aim to explore the ways in which language contributed to the creation of communities through legal status, narrative constructions, and political decisions by secular and religious authorities, together with their socio-economic ramifications.

If you want to participate, please send a short abstract by 7 September 2026 to Robert.friedrich@lmu.de. Submissions may address one or more of the following topics; further relevant topics are also welcome.

– Language and Power
How was language used as an instrument of power, for example through limiting participation by restricting the language permitted, for example during court procedures?
Were there dedicated ‘language politics’, for example in post-conquest settings?
How did the choice of language reflect power dynamics, or was it used explicitly to appear as part of a certain community?

– Language and Religion
How did the languages of liturgy, preaching, and theology shape communities of the faithful and the development of religious traditions?

– Narratives of linguistic communities
How do narrative sources use mentions and discussions of language and linguistic differences to create or dismiss communities?
How are these narratives connected to the construction of identities centred on language?
How were speakers of certain languages stereotyped, revered, or mocked in narrative sources?
Did diaspora groups use language narratives to shape their identity?

– Communities of Language Learning
How does language learning material reflect linguistic communities and their need to learn a specific language?
Who produced language manuals and glossaries, and in what contexts?
What does this tell us about the sociolinguistic structure of this particular society?

– Translation and Knowledge
How did translations or translation movements allow for the creation of new communities of knowledge?
How did the choice of language for a text included or excluded certain actors from access to knowledge and participation in the scientific community?

Kontakt : robert.friedrich@lmu.de

Source : H-Soz-Kult

Call for proposals for “Communities of Bodily Care in the Middle Ages,” a series of sessions at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds, 5–8 July 2027.

Rosalie Gabay Bernheim (London/Jerusalem) and Kerstin Mayerhofer (Vienna) invite proposals for “Communities of Bodily Care in the Middle Ages,” a series of sessions at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds, 5–8 July 2027.

The sessions will examine bodily care as a collective practice through which medieval communities defined responsibility, belonging, and exclusion. We welcome papers on the social networks surrounding illness, injury, pregnancy, childbirth, disability, ageing, and death, as well as on the circulation of medical and embodied knowledge. Contributions may also consider how care was shaped by gender, religion, status, kinship, or professional authority, and how practices intended to sustain vulnerable bodies could also entail discipline, coercion, surveillance, or control. Comparative, interdisciplinary, and theoretically informed approaches are particularly encouraged, including work on under-represented regions, traditions, languages, and communities.

If you are interested in participating in our session(s), please submit a title, an abstract of up to 250 words, a short biography, and your preference for presenting in person or online to mayerhk2[at]univie.ac.at or rosalie.bernheim[at]gmail.com by 15 September 2026.

Kontakt

Dr Kerstin Mayerhofer
(no pronouns)

Post-doctoral assistant
Department of Jewish Studies
University of Vienna
Spitalgasse 2, Court 7.3
1090 Vienna

Source : H-Soz-Kult