L'Agenda des Médiévistes

Au cours du XIIe siècle, les quatre premières filles de Cîteaux (traditionnellement reconnues, en tenant compte des travaux récents sur Preuilly peut-être fondée en 1116), fondées entre 1113 et 1117, ont eu des pratiques communes, à savoir un réel empressement à obtenir des écrits pour préserver la mémoire de leurs acquisitions accompagné d’un souci constant de conservation de leurs originaux, la rédaction d’une grande majorité de leurs actes par leurs scriptoria respectifs, une forte tendance à se tourner vers les évêques pour notifier et/ou confirmer leurs documents. Si le recours aux pancartes est une pratique courante, presque une routine, à La Ferté, Clairvaux et Morimond pour toute la période, à Pontigny en revanche un autre choix a été fait en mettant en chantier dès les années 1160 un premier cartulaire. Ces dissemblances sont liées non seulement à la structure différente des acquisitions faites par les monastères entre, d’une part, les trois premiers qui ont vu grossir leurs patrimoines par l’entrée d’une multitude de biens de petite taille et, d’autre part, Pontigny qui a acquis des terres de plus grandes dimensions, mais aussi aux usages des diocèses dans lesquels ils sont implantés. Celui d’Auxerre en effet ne semble pas avoir eu recours aux pancartes alors que la pratique s’est développée dans ceux de Langres, de Toul, de Chalon ou encore de Besançon, notamment pour notifier les biens acquis par les ordres nouveaux, cisterciens comme prémontrés. Dans ces conditions, ces quatre abbayes sont à la fois des réceptrices d’usages extérieurs qu’elles adaptent à leurs besoins et des productrices de solutions innovantes pour traiter la documentation reçue.

Table des matières :

Introduction

Chapitre premier. Les actes dans toute leur diversité

Chapitre deux. Les pancartes : entre actes récapitulatifs et chartes confirmatives

Chapitre trois. Des actions aux actes : le rôle de la société régionale dans la constitution des patrimoines

Chapitre quatre : Auteurs, autorités et validations des actes : les choix stratégiques des cisterciens

Chapitre cinq. Le discours diplomatique comme révélateur du milieu de rédaction

Chapitre six. Jeux d’écriture sur peau de parchemin

Conclusion

Annexes
Bibliographie
Index

Informations pratiques :

Marlène Helias-Baron, Des moines et des actes. Les pratiques de l’écrit diplomatique chez les cisterciens au XIIe siècle (La Ferté, Pontigny, Clairvaux, Morimond), Turnhout, Brepols, 2026 ; 1 vol., 364 p. (Atelier de recherche sur les textes médiévaux, 36). ISBN : 978-2-503-61813-5. Prix : € 110,00.

Source : Brepols

In 1461 the eyes of much of Europe were trained on Scotland. King Henry VI of England had fled into exile there following his defeat by Edward of York at Towton. This attention may have been exceptional, but it demonstrates that despite its location, Scotland was an integral part of the European political world and, in particular, between the 1450s and 1490s, a key external player in the Wars of the Roses.

However, although Scotland’s role in these decades was never confined to Britain, scholarship has tended to downplay its continental connections. This book demonstrates the extent to which the Scots were active and engaged participants on a wider stage. Military, dynastic, and economic contacts meant that during the fifteenth century, Scotland was a recognised factor in the diplomacy of rulers from Italy to Scandinavia. It shows the importance of maintaining external relationships for the Scots, the fluctuating value of these relationships to other rulers, and how English political events were also bound up with wider patterns abroad.

MICHAEL BROWN is the Professor of Scottish History at the University of St Andrews.

Table des matières :

Introduction.
Chapter One: A people worthy of friendship and fame: Scotland and Europe (1419-1449).
Chapter Two: A mighty prince and a courageous knight: James II and the rulers of the west (1449-1460).
Chapter Three: Scotland and the Lancastrian cause (1460-1464).
Chapter Four: ‘Petites Alliances’: Scotland and her neighbours (1464-1477).
Chapter Five: The brothers’ war (1477-1484).
Chapter Six: Much strife and bitter wars: Stewarts and Tudors (1484-1498).
Chapter Seven: The defence of the land: Scotland’s borders.
Chapter Eight: Scotland and European politics in the later fifteenth century.
Bibliography
Index

Informations pratiques :

Michael H Brown, Scotland, the Wars of the Roses, and European Politics. War and Diplomacy in the Later Fifteenth Century, Woddbridge, The Boydell Press, 2026 ; 1 vol., 320 p. (St Andrews Studies in Scottish History, 18). ISBN : 9781837654147. Prix : USD 130,00.

Source : Boydell and Brewer

Dissident Women, Beguines, and the Quest for Spiritual Authority focuses on the responses of a group of twenty-first-century women to the lives and writings of thirteenth-century beguine mystics, and reveals how the struggle to discover their own inner spiritual authority connects two groups of women across centuries.

For contemporary women who are disenchanted with the institutional church and who seek spiritual direction, models deeply rooted within the tradition may not be the most helpful. The author explores the value of exemplars from the fringes, ushering Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete into the spotlight. The contemporary women studied developed a relationship with the beguines that transformed and influenced their own journeys. Their encounters underline the importance of re-membering the beguine mystics, the value of contemplative engagement with historical mystics, and the need for explicit validation of the richness of the edges of tradition within spiritual direction.

Dissident Women, Beguines, and the Quest for Spiritual Authority will be of particular interest to scholars of mysticism and spirituality as well as practical, pastoral, and feminist theology.

Table des matières :

1. Introduction: ‘Why Have I Not Heard of These Women?’ 2. ‘Finding My Own Voice’: Spiritual Direction and Women’s Discovery of Spiritual Authority 3. ‘I’m Out of Here’: The Relationship between Internal and External Spiritual Authority 4. The Beguine Movement 5. ‘The Spring Gushes Forth’: How to Read the Beguines 6. ‘Nothing Less Than Love’: Responding to Hadewijch 7. ‘Living in the Flow’: Responding to Mechthild 8. ‘Without a Why’: Responding to Marguerite 9. ‘No Longer Alone’: Engaging with the Beguines 10. ‘A Hook to Hang My Experience On’: Implications for Spiritual Direction Practice and the Church 11. Conclusion: Placing My Stone in the Divine Heart

Informations pratiques :

Catherine Lambert, Dissident Women, Beguines, and the Quest for Spiritual Authority, Londres Routledge, 2026 ; 1 vol., 202 p. (Explorations in Practical, Pastoral and Empirical Theology). ISBN : 9781032801698. Prix : € 55,99.

Source : Routledge

Throughout history, law and literature have always been in constant dialogue, sharing significant connections and exerting mutual influences. Both are artificial creations, products of human imagination that use language and metaphors to build meanings and shape the world around us. In the Middle Ages, the proximity of these two genres is even more pronounced. This is not only because many literary figures were also jurists, but also because medieval legal texts can be classified as a distinct literary genre known as ‘legal literature’. Additionally, medieval jurists did not hesitate to draw upon literary texts, understood as genuine sources of law (‘auctoritates morales’), to fill gaps in their legal knowledge.

The contributions collected in this volume examine precisely this intersection between law and literature in medieval literary and legal texts. The volume follows four axes: law in literature, law as literature, literature in law, and literature as Law. The volume aims to raise awareness of the proximity of two apparently distant worlds and to provide a perspective for interdisciplinary analysis that transcends traditional rigid barriers.

Ignazio Alessi is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge, and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Trinity Hall. He holds a joint Ph.D. in legal history from the EHESS in Paris and the University of Palermo. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the Universities of Fribourg and Geneva, and a visiting scholar at the Centre Relais Culture Europe in Paris and at Wolfson College, University of Oxford.

Gavino Scala is a postdoctoral researcher at University of Geneva. He has a joint Ph.D. in Romance Philology at University of Siena and University of Zurich. He was postdoctoral researcher at University of Fribourg (CH). 

Table des matières :

Foreword
Sara MENZINGER

Introduction
Ignazio ALESSI and Gavino SCALA

‘Par bataille ou par juise’. Ordeal by Combat in Thirteenth-Century Arthurian Prose Romances
Claudio LAGOMARSINI

La fiction judiciaire amoureuse (XIIe-XVe s.). Enjeux procéduraux
Cassandre CRESPIN

(Don’t) call me by your name. Lexical Gleanings of Droit Non
Marta MILAZZO

Procès du loup, procès de l’homme. La justice dans ‘Le valet aus douze femes’
Federico NOVELLO

Le meurtre de Lancelot Ier dans la fin particulière des témoins Paris, Ars. 3348 et New Haven, Beineke Library, MS 227 de l’Estoire del Saint Graal. Une vendetta à l’épreuve du droit féodal
Davide NOVATI

Acoustic Effects and Kinesic Imagination in Archbishop Wulfstan of York’s Legal Writing
Chen CUI

Exploring Legal and Linguistic Dimensions in Late Medieval English Jurisprudence. William Lyndwood’s Provinciale and Inheritance Practices
Matthew CLEARY

Conclusions. Literature as a Field of Legal Experimentation
Noëlle-Laetitia PERRET and Adrien WYSSBROD

Informations pratiques :

Law and Literature. An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Medieval Texts, éd. Ignazio Alessi, Gavino Scala, Turnhout, Brepols, 2026 ; 1 vol., 243 p. (Interdisciplinary Studies in Medieval Legal Sources, 1). ISBN : 978-2-503-62034-3. prix : € 80,00.

Source : Brepols