Calendar

Young Czech Hebraist Milan Žonca (Charles University, Prague) will speak about spectacular, scurrile and blasphemous Jewish medieval narratives about the life of Jesus Christ

The lecture is a part of the cycle Life and Biography in the Middle Ages.

Programme

Annotation:

The course aims to depict the forms and shapes of the genre of biography in the Middle Ages. It attempts to cover a broad spectrum of cultures and languages – Latin, Hebrew, Middle High German, Occitan, Old Norse or Balkan – and a full range of figures whose life medieval biography could depict: heathen and Christian kings, heroes, saints, Jesus as well as adventurers and dark heroes.

However, the course plans to offer more than an analysis and classification of biography subgenres and picturesque personalities. All the lectures should address the question of what was substantial in a human life for the medieval man, what gave it value and endowed it with meaning.

All the lectures and discussions will be in English, the lectures will be held by guest professors from foreign universities.

Young German scholar Florian Deichl (Ludwig-Maxmilians-Universität München) will speak about the sinister figure of Hagen in the German medieval Song of the Nibelungs and try to uncover the origins of the human fascinations by so called “dark heroes”

The lecture is a part of the cycle Life and Biography in the Middle Ages.

Programme

Annotation:

The course aims to depict the forms and shapes of the genre of biography in the Middle Ages. It attempts to cover a broad spectrum of cultures and languages – Latin, Hebrew, Middle High German, Occitan, Old Norse or Balkan – and a full range of figures whose life medieval biography could depict: heathen and Christian kings, heroes, saints, Jesus as well as adventurers and dark heroes.

However, the course plans to offer more than an analysis and classification of biography subgenres and picturesque personalities. All the lectures should address the question of what was substantial in a human life for the medieval man, what gave it value and endowed it with meaning.

All the lectures and discussions will be in English, the lectures will be held by guest professors from foreign universities.

Session “Defining the genre”
• Distinctions in the Late Middle Ages: Exempla and the Habit of Distinguishing
Kimberley Rivers (University of Wisconsin Oshkosh)
• Le Liber distinctionum super Psalterium d’Eudes de Châteauroux. Un recueil de distinctiones ?
Franco Morenzoni (U. of Geneva)
• The genre of Master Mathias of Sweden’s (d. c. 1350) Alphabetum distinccionum: a combination of a concordance and distinctions
Sanna M. Suponen (U. of Helsinki)

Anyone interested, please register with Marjorie Burghart at medieval.distinctiones@gmail.com .

Project presentation
• Distinguo, a knowledge base for the study of distinctiones
Marjorie Burghart (CNRS)
Session “Conforming (or not) to prescriptions of the artes”
• “Predicare est arborizare”. The mnemotechnic tradition of preaching thanks to tree structured distinctiones
Naïs Virenque (U. of Tours and CEFRES USR 3138, Prague)
• Tales autem fac distincciones. The role of distinctions (and the lack of it) in the treatise Aurissa of Iacobus de Saraponte
Jan Odstrcilik (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna)

Anyone interested, please register with Marjorie Burghart at medieval.distinctiones@gmail.com .

Session “Visualisations”
• Visualizing distinctiones: a comparative view
Ayelet Even-Ezra (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
• Distinctiones and visual representations in Hugh of Saint-Cher’s postils on Ezekiel
Véronique Rouchon (Univrsité Lyon 2)

Anyone interested, please register with Marjorie Burghart at medieval.distinctiones@gmail.com .

Session “Distinctiones and preaching”
• Hispanic Distinctiones: three examples
Oriol Catalán Casanova (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona)
• Preaching with Peter – Textual aids for preachers in Petrus Capuanus’s Alphabetum in artem sermocinandi
Tuija Ainonen (Merton College/Bodleian Libraries, Oxford)

Anyone interested, please register with Marjorie Burghart at medieval.distinctiones@gmail.com .

Session “Distinctiones and other genres”
• Dicta Chrysostomi and Distinctiones
Ilya Dines (Library of Congress, Washington)
• Distinctiones in the Castilian Crown through the miracles of Santo Domingo de Silos and the Virgin of Guadalupe during the 13th and 15th centuries
Juan Manuel Carmona Peres (U. of Sevilla)
• Les distinctions, un intermédiaire entre les encyclopédies et les sermons ?
Sophie Delmas (CIHAM – Lyon)

Anyone interested, please register with Marjorie Burghart at medieval.distinctiones@gmail.com .