This dissertation examines two major parallel but intersecting trajectories: that of kangaku (Chinese studies), specifically the Kidendô (history and literature) curriculum that flourished at the State Academy in the Heian period (794-1185), and kagaku (waka studies), which emerged in the twelfth century. I trace the concept of "way" (michi) as it evolved from the Chinese studies curriculum to an aesthetic "way of life," characterized by a spontaneous and rigorous pursuit of literature and art. The emergence of the study of waka was significant not only because it functioned as a catalyst for the preservation and renewal of the ancient practice of waka, but also because numerous commentaries on the subject formed a canon that defined Japanese cultural identity in subsequent centuries. As in the European Middle Ages, the long twelfth century (1086-1221) in Japan saw the revival of ancient customs and texts. In the West, the Greco-Roman Classics, particularly Aristotelian philosophy, were rediscovered, partly through Arabic translations. In Japan's case, the "twelfth century renaissance" of court culture was not ushered in through contact with new intellectual trends from overseas. Rather, after a century of regency rule by the non-imperial Fujiwara clan, the imperial rulers of the twelfth century were eager to legitimatize their regimes by applying the standards of newly reinterpreted precedents from the past. Called the "era of retired emperors" (insei-ki), Japanese society in the twelfth century was retrospective in character, and witnessed an effusion of cultural production, including the compilation of numerous literary anthologies, sequels to existing religious and historical texts, and treatises and commentaries on poems from the past. For courtiers, participation in imperial cultural enterprises was their sole means of assuring their families' survival, as warriors established their own government by the early 1190s. Part One examines kanshi and waka traditions before the twelfth century through textual analyses of "prefaces" (jo), the majority of which appear in the literary anthology Honchô monzui (Literary Masterpieces of Japan, ca. 1058-65). This is followed by an examination of the role of the composition of Sino-Japanese poems in the lives of scholar-officials. I show how scholar-officials professionalized this practice as part of their household studies in the ninth through eleventh centuries. As part of my investigation of the literary genre of poetry prefaces, I also analyze the Chinese and Japanese prefaces to the Kokin wakashû (Collection of Japanese Poems from Ancient Times to the Present, 905), and the poet Nôin's preface to his private collection of waka. Part Two turns to the life and works of Ôe no Masafusa (1041-1111), the foremost scholar of his time. I show how Masafusa responded to the changing realities of Kidendô scholars, while idealizing his learned ancestors, their fellow academicians, and their imperial patrons' "passions" (suki) for the composition of Sino-Japanese poems. By closely reading some of the writings attributed to Masafusa, such as the Zoku hochô ôjoden (Biographies of Those Reborn in Paradise in Japan II, ca. 1099-1104) and the Gôdanshô (Notes on Dialogues with Ôe no Masafusa, ca. 1107-11), I argue that Masafusa's nostalgic recollections of literati culture from the tenth and eleventh centuries ushered in the setsuwa (anecdotal tales) mode of narrative that epitomizes literary production in the twelfth century. Part Three investigates the evolution of waka studies in the twelfth century. I first turn to Minamoto no Toshiyori's (1055?-1129?) waka treatise, Toshiyori zuinô (Toshiyori's Principles of Waka, ca. 1111-15) and discuss the peculiarly anecdotal ways in which Toshiyori glosses ancient poetic diction for a female reader. I then examine how the Rokujô school of waka incorporated some of the formal trappings of kangaku scholarship in its revival of waka, while the Mikohidari school of waka further consolidated hereditary studies of poetry by emphasizing the difficulty of mastering waka composition. In sum, by analyzing Chinese and Japanese writings from Japan's long twelfth century, I propose a new intellectual history of Japan in a crucial period of transition from the ancient to the medieval age.

The present study examines the merchant networks which exported slaves from the Black Sea to Genoa, Venice, and Cairo from the late thirteenth to the late fifteenth century on the basis of both Arabic and Latin sources. It begins with an explanation of features distinctive to slavery in the medieval Mediterranean, the most important of which was its ideological basis in religious rather than racial difference, as well as a comparison between the Christian and Islamic laws governing slavery. In subsequent chapters it covers the variety of roles played by slaves in Mediterranean society, how the use of individual slaves was shaped by their gender and origin, and the processes which led to the enslavement of people within the Black Sea region. The heart of the project is the fourth chapter, an analysis of the commercial networks which conveyed slaves from the ports of the Black Sea to those of the Mediterranean. This chapter profiles individual merchants who dealt in slaves, traces the routes and identifies the logistical challenges of the slave trade, and analyzes the relative importance of various groups of merchants in supplying the Mediterranean demand for slaves. The next chapter explains the process of finding, inspecting, and buying a slave in the marketplace and how it differed from the purchase of other commodities. The final chapter addresses the place of the Black Sea slave trade in the political and religious context of the late medieval crusade movement. Proponents of the crusades argued that Christian merchants, especially the Genoese, were strengthening the sultan of Egypt to the detriment of the crusaders by supplying him with slaves for military service. The validity of these accusations is examined in light of the sources informing the rest of the study.

This dissertation examines Deccan India’s earliest surviving stone constructions, which were founded during the 6th through the 8th centuries CE and are known for their unparalleled formal eclecticism. Whereas past scholarship explains their heterogeneous formal character as an organic outcome of the Deccan’s “borderland” location between north India and south India, my study challenges the very conceptualization of the Deccan temple within a binary taxonomy that recognizes only northern and southern temple types. Rejecting the passivity implied by the borderland metaphor, I emphasize the role of human agents—particularly architects and makers—in establishing a dialectic between the north Indian and the south Indian architectural systems in the Deccan’s built worlds and built spaces. Secondly, by adopting the Deccan temple cluster as an analytical category in its own right, the present work contributes to the still developing field of landscape studies of the premodern Deccan. I read traditional art-historical evidence—the built environment, sculpture, and stone and copperplate inscriptions—alongside discursive treatments of landscape cultures and phenomenological and experiential perspectives. As a result, I am able to present hitherto unexamined aspects of the cluster’s spatial arrangement: the interrelationships between structures and the ways those relationships influence ritual and processional movements, as well as the symbolic, locative, and organizing role played by water bodies. The project therefore reimagines the Deccan’s sacred centers not as conglomerations of disjointed monuments but as integrated environments in which built structures interact with, and engage, natural elements, and vice versa.

This study uses the analysis of communication practices and strategies to argue for a new understanding of papal power in the years 1050 to 1250. Historians frequently argue that the high medieval papacy increased the scope and effectiveness of its authority through the creation, maintenance, and use of centralized governmental institutions. According to this view, legates, councils, delegated justice, legal codification, and a remarkable production of letters all allowed the bishops of Rome to reach into the far corners of Christendom to shape in profound ways the spiritual, political, and economic trajectories of medieval Europeans. But how effective were those institutions? To what degree was the papacy able to implement policy at the local, national, and international levels? The following study attempts to answer this question by considering the specific communicative mechanisms and strategies that the papacy employed in a variety of policy realms. Four case studies analyze the papacy’s efforts to: 1) resolve the York-Canterbury primacy dispute at the turn of the twelfth century; 2) mobilize political support during the papal schism of 1159; 3) reform the Church in the wake of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215; and 4) convene the Council of Rome to fight Emperor Frederick II in 1240. Each case reveals innovations in papal communication practices while simultaneously highlighting key limitations in the papacy’s ability to implement its will. The papacy, once a model of institutional centralization for medieval historians, suddenly appears much less centralized—and, in many cases, much less effective—of an institution than many scholars had led us to believe. This conclusion forces us to rethink what we know about one of the single most important institutions in European history.

This study foregrounds the problem of the center and periphery of Gothic architecture near Paris. Taking architectural citation as its interpretive framework, it focuses on a core group of rural parish churches situated in the land of the Paris cathedral chapter. It addresses the visual links between Notre-Dame of Paris and the village churches, the ways in which architectural citation was put into practice, and the institutional context that imbued the resemblances with meaning. It demonstrates that quoting the architecture of the cathedral of Paris was the exception, not the rule, in the villages of the cathedral chapter. When they occurred, the citations were mostly superficial, not structural, and resulted from contact between the community of secular canons installed at the cathedral and the administrators responsible for the village churches. The introduction sets the problem of architectural citation in the land of the Paris cathedral chapter against the backdrop of architectural citation in other contexts in medieval France: namely, Cluniac, Cistercian, and Capetian. Proceeding according to the Notre-Dame of Paris construction sequence, Part One reveals the architectural citations of the cathedral of Paris found in the chapter’s land: at Saint-Germain of Andrésy, Saint-Hermeland of Bagneux, Saint-Lubin of Châtenay, Saint-Christophe of Créteil, Saint-Germain of Itteville, Notre-Dame of Jouy, Saint-Mathurin of Larchant, Saint-Nicolas of Mézières, Notre-Dame of Rozay, Saint-Martin of Sucy, and Saint-Fortuné of Vernou. Part Two introduces the Paris cathedral chapter as an institution and a community of individual canons, maps the chapter’s rural property as it expanded from the ninth to the fourteenth century, articulates the language the chapter used to describe its villages and land, and explores the canons’ secular and sacred authority in its villages. Part Two concludes by bringing the institutional relationship to bear on the architectural evidence presented in Part One.

Cette thèse est la première étude approfondie et transversale sur le sattaka, un genre dramatique indien dont la particularité réside dans sa langue, le prâkrit. Le nom de ce genre remonte à Kohala (IIe-IVe siècles), mais est devenu connu grâce à la Karpuramanjari de Rajashekhara (IXe-Xe siècles, Kannauj) qui cite, pour la première fois, dans le prologue de cette pièce, sa définition. Selon celle-ci, il s’agit d’un genre apparenté à la natika, genre hybride du théâtre classique. Le prâkrit - terme générique de divers dialectes - s’est développé parallèlement au sanskrit, en tant que langue littéraire. Ses variétés régionales ont été attribuées aux divers personnages dans le théâtre classique pour indiquer leur statut social. Rajashekhara, rompant avec les règles plurilinguistiques du théâtre classique appliquées, entre autres, à la natika, a conçu son sattaka entièrement en prâkrit, en accord avec les règles sur les qualités phonétiques des langues littéraires dans l’art poétique indien. Son choix de langue a fait l’objet de nombreuses spéculations parmi les théoriciens et sa Karpuramanjari est devenue le standard pour les auteurs des sattaka tardifs. Dans cette thèse, après avoir retracé l’évolution de ce genre, nous analysons non seulement les diverses théories attestées au sujet de la langue et de la structure dramatique de la Karpuramanjari, mais également les pièces, afin d’élucider la question suivante : qu’est-ce que le sattaka ? Ce travail vise également à promouvoir les recherches connexes sur l’évolution de l’art dramatique durant le Moyen Âge, sur les auteurs, ainsi que leurs époques. Cette étude comporte de nombreuses citations des sattaka, dont nous donnons la première traduction française et, pour certains, la toute première traduction. / This thesis is the first in-depth and comprehensive study on Sattaka, an Indian dramatic genre whose characteristic lies in its language, the Prakrit. The name of this genre goes back to Kohala (2nd to 4th centuries), but it has become known by Rajashekhara’s Karpuramanjari (9th-10th centuries, Kannauj) who gives, for the first time, in the prologue of this play, its definition. According to this, it is a genre related to the Natika, a hybrid genre of classical theater. Prakrit - the generic term for various dialects – has developed in parallel with Sanskrit as a literary language. Its regional varieties have been attributed to various characters in classical theatre in order to indicate their social status. Rajashekhara, breaking with the multilingual rules of classical theater applied, inter alia, to the Natika, composed his Sattaka entirely in Prakrit, in accordance with the rules on phonetic qualities of literary languages in Indian poetics. His choice of language has been the matter of discussion among theoricians and his Karpuramanjari has become the standard for the later authors of Sattakas. In this thesis, after having traced the evolution of this genre, we analyze not only the various theories about the language and the dramatic structure of the Karpuramanjari, but also the plays themselves, in order to elucidate the following question: what is a Sattaka? This work also aims to promote related research works on the evolution of dramatic art during the Middle Ages, on the authors, as well as on their times. This study contains numerous citations of Sattakas, of which we give the first French translation and, for some of them, the very first one.

In the past historians have used the works of Honorius Augustodunensis to answer the question of who he was. In doing this the intellectual importance of his work has often been overlooked. Honorius was one of the most popular writers of the early twelfth century, and his most popular work was the Imago Mundi. The purpose of this study is to examine the work and its historical context and to furnish an English translation of the complete text. The present work looks at each book of the Imago Mundi and its sources to develop a concept of Honorius' writing style and his methods. It also examines twelfth-century manuscripts of the Imago Mundi and their houses of origin to construct a reason for the work's popularity, both in Honorius' own time and for centuries after.

This dissertation examines a late fifteenth-century conflict between Otto von Sonnenberg, bishop of Constance, and the City Council of Bern over attempts to temporarily reanimate dead infants in order to baptize them. Thousands of people were bringing their dead, unbaptized infants to the chapel of Oberbüren, heating them up over hot coals until they detected signs of life, and then baptizing them before they again died. Once baptized, the tiny corpses were buried in the consecrated ground surrounding the church, and the people celebrated the miracle by which another soul was saved from eternal damnation. But to the bishop, the heating did not work and the bodies did not return to life, which meant the people were baptizing corpses (which was ineffective) and violating consecrated ground by burying people still stained by original sin. While the bishop condemned this set of practices as a “superstition,” the City Council of Bern claimed that the resuscitations were legitimate miracles and should be promoted. Such reanimation practices were not new at this time or at this place, but conflicts over them were unusual. By situating this conflict in a long history of (temporary) infant reanimation across Central Europe and the baptismal imperative of the medieval Christian Church, this dissertation turns to the changing contexts of the natural world, with magic, medicine and witchcraft, to help explain why the reanimation practices would be causing such a stir at this particular juncture. “Alive Enough” shows how different epistemologies—a religious one based in affect, ritual, and faith and a naturalistic one based on human intention, material manipulation, and the test of reason—could be combined (and contested) to produce new understandings of life itself. It also calls into question the secular/ecclesiastical divide in determining religious belief, showing—in the decades before the Reformation—the important role of secular authorities in determining even these very exceptional moments of divine intervention in the world, moments that should be the example par excellence of ecclesiastical prerogative.

Abstract not available

<p>This paper discusses runic inscriptions from the middle ages on Gotland and how they portray social structure. It focuses on three themes: (1) fixed time and space, (2) women and the nuclear family and (3) profession and social status/structure. It also discusses changes brought on by a more structured and established Christianity, as well as differences between medieval rune stones on Gotland and their predecessors Viking Age rune stones in the Mälar Valley.</p>