Este estudo analisa as relações entre a difusão da religião cristã e a afirmação da hegemonia aristocrática no processo de constituição do regime senhorial na Península Ibérica entre os séculos IV e VIII. Considera-se essencial à caracterização deste processo a articulação entre cultura, religião e relações sociais de produção em desenvolvimento no período, eixo a partir do qual se abordam as complexas questões relacionadas à conversão e à preservação de crenças e práticas alheias ao cristianismo, concebidas no quadro das relações de dominação e resistência. Com base na análise de fontes primárias de natureza diversa, como a legislação régia, a coleção das atas conciliares, a literatura hagiográfica, os sermões, a liturgia, a poesia cristã e alguns tratados dogmáticos, destaca-se a íntima correlação entre a concepção de mundo, das relações travadas pelo homens entre si e com a natureza, divulgadas pelo cristianismo, e a afirmação da ascendência aristocrática na sociedade e no período em questão. / This work analyzes the connection between the spread of the Christian religion and the establishment of the aristocratic hegemony in the formation process of the landowner system in the Iberian Peninsula between 4th and 8th centuries. The articulation among culture, religion, and the social relationships of production being developed at the time are considered essential in order to characterize this process. From that point on, complex issues regarding the conversion to Christianity and the maintenance of alien beliefs and practices as part of the framework of domination and resistance relations were investigated. Based upon the analysis of primary sources of varied nature, such as regal legislation, a collection of conciliar documents, hagiographic literature, sermons, liturgy, Christian poetry and dogmatic treatises, emphasis was placed on the close correlation between the conception of the world – the relationships among men and their peers, and between men and Nature – spread out by Christianity and the establishment of the aristocratic ascendancy in society.

Este estudo analisa as relações entre a difusão da religião cristã e a afirmação da hegemonia aristocrática no processo de constituição do regime senhorial na Península Ibérica entre os séculos IV e VIII. Considera-se essencial à caracterização deste processo a articulação entre cultura, religião e relações sociais de produção em desenvolvimento no período, eixo a partir do qual se abordam as complexas questões relacionadas à conversão e à preservação de crenças e práticas alheias ao cristianismo, concebidas no quadro das relações de dominação e resistência. Com base na análise de fontes primárias de natureza diversa, como a legislação régia, a coleção das atas conciliares, a literatura hagiográfica, os sermões, a liturgia, a poesia cristã e alguns tratados dogmáticos, destaca-se a íntima correlação entre a concepção de mundo, das relações travadas pelo homens entre si e com a natureza, divulgadas pelo cristianismo, e a afirmação da ascendência aristocrática na sociedade e no período em questão. / This work analyzes the connection between the spread of the Christian religion and the establishment of the aristocratic hegemony in the formation process of the landowner system in the Iberian Peninsula between 4th and 8th centuries. The articulation among culture, religion, and the social relationships of production being developed at the time are considered essential in order to characterize this process. From that point on, complex issues regarding the conversion to Christianity and the maintenance of alien beliefs and practices as part of the framework of domination and resistance relations were investigated. Based upon the analysis of primary sources of varied nature, such as regal legislation, a collection of conciliar documents, hagiographic literature, sermons, liturgy, Christian poetry and dogmatic treatises, emphasis was placed on the close correlation between the conception of the world – the relationships among men and their peers, and between men and Nature – spread out by Christianity and the establishment of the aristocratic ascendancy in society.

This thesis questions the prevailing historical models of the medieval family, using the Paston family as a test case. It reviews the theories of three prominent historians of the medieval family: Lawrence Stone, Ralph Houlbrooke and Joel Rosenthal. Whether the Paston family and particularly the women fit the models of families as defined by the above mentioned historians is the underlying question. If the Paston family does not fit these models, what does that tell us about the current assumptions made concerning the fifteen th century family? The thesis illustrates that the family models of Stone do not always apply to the Pastons. Houlbrooke's and Rosenthal's ideas on family are much more reflective of the lives actually led by the Pastons. Therefore, while we can not say that the Pastons were average, they were certainly not exceptional. The lives of the women did not fit the models as established by Stone. Their power came from the home itself, as they managed the estates, educated their children, protected their property and looked after the future financial interests of the family. Houlbrooke allows for this form of power in his studies on women. Rosenthal tends to skirt the issues of women focusing more on the power that they received as widows not as wives. If the theories of our three historians were correct or encompassing enough they would have enfolded the Paston family. Houlbrooke's theories did this. Rosenthal's arguments did not include all aspects of the family, particularly children and education. Stone's arguments, with few exceptions, did not fit the Pastons at all. If we allow for a diversity of family structures and a diversity of roles and relationships within that structure, then we will have a much more accurate picture of the fifteenth century family.

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Résumé : À la fin du Moyen Âge, la parenté constitue une structure sociale, cellule de base sur laquelle s’édifie la société. Dans ce contexte, quelle place trouvent les personnes seules, parfois isolées ? Qui sont ces personnes seules, comment vivent-elles leur solitude dans le cadre urbain de Montpellier ? Comment leur situation est-elle perçue par les autres ? C’est à travers une étude sociodémographique des personnes seules et l’analyse de leurs réseaux de sociabilité que l’on parvient à comprendre la manière dont elles s’insèrent dans la société aux XIVe et XVe siècles. Différentes formes de solitude se manifestent dans la ville, des solitudes spécifiques à l’âge et au sexe des individus, qui entraînent des réponses et réactions adaptées au cas de chaque personne. Souvent pauvres et vulnérables, les personnes seules de Montpellier sont des acteurs importants de la société urbaine tardomédiévale souvent oubliés par l’historiographie. / Abstract : At the end of the Middle Ages, kinship is a social structure, the basic unit on which society is built. In this context, how people living alone, sometimes isolated, fit in the urban society? Who are these people and how do they live their loneliness in the city of Montpellier? How is their situation perceived by others? It is through a sociodemographic approach and an analysis of their social networks that we are able to understand how they fit into the urban society, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Loneliness occurs in different ways in the city, ways that depend on age and gender of the individuals. Identifying those lonelinesses lead us to understand the responses and reactions toward each situation. Ofien poor and vulnerable, people living alone take an important part in the late medieval urban society of Montpellier, a part often forgotten by historians.

This thesis is an attempt to address the surprising lack of study into the question of usurpation in late antiquity. During a period defined by a textual corpus (289-389), the thesis looks at how usurpers and usurpation were presented in the panegyrics delivered to emperors and their courts. That usurpation features very heavily in this corpus should tell us something in itself, but it is a feature of these texts which has hardly been observed. The thesis shows how the panegyrics employed aggressive rhetorical tactics that sought not to bury usurpers in silence but rather to glory in their destruction and to create characters for the usurpers and their regimes that were designed to reinforce the legitimacy claims of the victorious emperor. The language of the panegyrics concerning usurpers and usurpation is thus virtually worthless as a tool to reconstruct the historical actualities of the people and times that they discuss. It cannot be used, as some scholars have done, to give insight into the working of particular usurpations. But the study also demonstrates that the panegyrics are far too valuable a body of sources to simply ignore, as many more scholars have tended to do. The panegyrics demonstrate the beginnings of the processes of memory sanction, or damnatio memoriae, that were imposed upon defeated usurpers and, as such, give us a valuable insight into how imperial Romans recorded their history and conceived of the power structures through which they were governed. Panegyrics are vital to our understanding of usurpers and usurpation because they are the first step in the process of understanding why our narrative sources are so unreliable concerning such men.

This thesis on medieval sermon manuscripts aims to increase our understanding of the Franciscan Berthold von Regensburg, who is considered to be the most significant German preacher of the late Middle Ages. For this reason, I have selected twenty-one Latin and six German codices, dating from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. These codices have been analyzed to identify the writing material, internal structure and paratextual features. The underlying idea is that the codicological and paratextual organisation delivers insight not only into the date and provenance of the manuscripts, but also into their function and actual use. I set out, in my first chapter, with some general thoughts about the specific process of communication involved in sermon manuscripts. The focus of my second chapter is on the structural and guiding elements in manuscripts, such as indices, numbering systems and various types of rubrication. The third chapter is concerned with marginal annotations, which can refer to the content of the text, call for attention, or even aim to deter from reading or copying a particular passage. In chapter four, I discuss a number of current issues in codicology and the complexity of codicological structures, which leads me to the proposition of a new concept of ‘corresponding codicological units’. In the fifth chapter, I argue that the attribution of Berthold’s sermons to his name fades in the late-thirteenth century, in favour of the term Rusticanus, which fills the position of the author for the the most part of the fourteenth century. In my final chapter, I discuss different concepts of book ownership. By demonstrating the significance of material and structural features, I show the strength of a codicological approach in achieving a new, in-depth understanding of Berthold von Regensburg and medieval sermon culture in general.

This study seeks to contribute to a growing discussion about Islamic intellectual endeavours in the Middle Periods, providing new evidence from the genre of anti-innovation tracts (anti-bid‘a tracts) that has hitherto received relatively little modern scholarly attention. Specifically, this thesis examines tradition and innovation in Islam during the Mamluk period (648/1250 – 922/1517) through the lens of two jurists and their anti-innovation tracts. Ibn al-Ḥājj (d. 737/1336) was a Mālikī from North Africa who wrote Madkhal al-shar‘ al-sharīf. Ibn al-Naḥḥās (d. 814/1411), by contrast, was a Shāfi‘ī (and former Ḥanafī) from Damascus, who wrote a tract contained within his Tanbīh al-ghāfilīn, a work concerned with the duty of commanding right and forbidding wrong, and with naming and briefly discussing various sins and innovations. Ibn al-Ḥājj’s and Ibn al-Naḥḥās’ anti-innovation tracts are studied here for the first time in their own right, together with English translations of representative passages of their work that allow the reader to gain a direct impression of them. In addition to this, this thesis makes three unique arguments. First, anti-innovation tracts should be read as prescriptive yet flexible examples of furū‘. Second, the authors of the tracts investigated here, Ibn al-Ḥājj and Ibn al-Naḥḥās, were both ‘outsiders’ to Mamluk Egypt, who used this genre to define and regulate correct Muslim practices, in less formal ways that were both new and continuous with earlier thinking. Ibn al-Ḥājj’s programme - urging fledgling scholars, in almost encyclopaedic fashion, to know about and teach against innovative practices - was more important for him than addressing the topics of intention and innovation that feature in the full title of his work. Ibn al-Naḥḥās is an interestingly obscure figure. In an abbreviated and direct style, he urged non-specialists in Mamluk lands to censure innovations, and even to prevent them. Third, Ibn al-Ḥājj and Ibn al-Naḥḥās conceived of loyalty to their legal school in ways that require us to expand the terms of modern scholarly debates about such loyalty. This study contributes to the relatively recent, and fast-growing, literature on the Mamluk period in general, and its legal literature in particular. It supports a recent perspective on the Mamluk period, by illustrating the continuity and evolution of legal thinking during this period, which is both predicated upon, and differs substantially from, earlier periods of Islamic history. and deserves study in its own right.

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