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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The written was the world of early medieval Iberia. Literacy was limited, but textuality was extensive, in the authority conferred on text and the arrangements made to use it. Roman inheritance is manifest, in documentary and legal culture, engendering literate expectations which define the period; continuity across conquest by Visigoths and Arabs, and the weakness of states in the north of the Peninsula, must lay to rest the traditional coupling of literacy with politics which underlies the paradigm of the Middle Ages. Between the eighth and eleventh centuries, as estates expanded to surmount locality and enter communities which had made do with memory, engagement with documentation was incentivized for the laity. Organization to do so followed, at one remove: the person of the scribe, who wrote the charter and recorded all those involved in and present at it, before recycling the text back into the community by public reading. The scribe mediated the text, and as his occupation consolidated he became more fully a literate interpreter. The charter, once created, had an active afterlife of dynamic circulation, enabled by multiple and accessible archives, particularly in the hands of the clergy. Written evidence was the surest defence in case of dispute; charters were self-promoting in their mutual citation as well as practical efficacy. But they also diffused legal knowledge: as each rhetorical, pragmatic, silent, and legislative reference to written law was read aloud by the scribe, how to capitalize on its provisions became better known, so kings and counts seized the potential. For the clergy, the Bible, canon law, and monastic rules were the texts which bestowed identity, but as they interacted with the laity, they set the charter in the history of salvation, and modelled textuality to society, as their monasteries became the microcosms of its written framework.

La dynastie de Smolensk est une famille princière qui se définit par une origine généalogique particulière (le lignage de Vladimir Monomaque et son fils Mstislav le Grand) et une implantation territoriale (la cité de Smolensk et le territoire environnant). Elle a joué un rôle important dans les destinées de la Rus' médiévale : depuis leurs bases de Smolensk, ses princes ont été au XIIe siècle parmi les compétiteurs les plus importants pour le trône de Kiev, ainsi que dans une moindre mesure ceux de Novgorod et de Galicie, alors même qu’ils établissaient à travers la Dvina (Daugava) des relations commerciales solides avec la Livonie et les réseaux commerçants de la Baltique. Cette situation favorable, qui connaît son acmé dans les années 1212-1223, évolue profondément aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles : très éprouvés par les crises multiples que traverse la Rus', les princes de Smolensk se trouvent progressivement réduits à l’état de satellites des grands ensembles qui se forment alors, la Lithuanie et la Moscovie. Cette évolution, qui n’avait depuis plus d’un siècle fait l’objet que d’études partielles, est reconstituée ici dans son intégralité : à partir de l’ensemble des sources disponibles (chroniques russes et européennes, documents diplomatiques, matériau archéologique), est établie une prosopographie des princes, suivie d’une étude de leurs traditions familiales (cultes, onomastique), de leur implantation territoriale à Smolensk même et dans leurs autres zones d’action ; après quoi vient l’analyse de leur histoire politique, bâtie sur une lecture critique des sources. / The princely house of Smolensk forms a dynasty, whose members shared a common genealogical origin (they stem from Prince Vladimir Monomakh and his son Mstislav the Great) and a territorial implantation in Smolensk, a city today located in Western Russia. This dynasty played an important part in the political life of medieval Rus’: from Smolensk, its princes in the twelfth century often controlled such an important center as Kiev, and also less systematically Novgorod and Galicia; they also were a significant commercial partner of the East Baltic trading networks known as the Hansa. This situation of prominence, which has its acme in the years 1212-1223, is deeply altered after this period: the princes of Smolensk, whose power is heavily handicapped by the multiple crises of the 1220-1250s, start to play the role of a buffer state between the two ascending great powers in the region, Moscow and Lithuania. In 1404, the last prince of Smolensk is expelled from the city for ever, as Grand Prince Vytautas of Lithuania conquers the city. This evolution, which for the last century had not been thoroughly inquired except for numerous partial studies, forms the subject of the present dissertation: on the basis of all the available sources, I attempted to build a prosopography of all the princes, followed by a study of the family traditions (onomastics and local cults), of their implantation in Smolensk and their others areas of action, and a detailed analysis of the dynasty’s political history.

Le « martyre d’amour » n’est pas seulement un thème relevant du « mal d’aimer » à l’époque médiévale.C’est aussi un lieu du lyrisme d’où un « je » souffrant tourne sa douleur en poème d’amour, ou en chanson, à l’instar des troubadours et des trouvères. L’étudier dans le roman en vers de la seconde moitié du douzième à la fin du treizième siècle, ce n’est donc pas observer qu’un thème ressortissant à la douleur d’aimer, à la mélancolie amoureuse de nombreux héros, amants, c’est plutôt essayer à travers ce thème, de reconnaître comment, le « je » souffrant du romancier donne naissance au roman en vers. C’est tenter de mettre en relief la part de lyrisme qui émane de ce roman à travers les images qu’il renvoie à la fois de lui même,de son mouvement, de sa forme, et de son créateur et observer comment le roman en vers devient un objet d’amour littéraire, un travail d’art. Enfin c’est montrer comment le roman du « je » assure une transition entre le grand roman courtois et le « dit » d’amour. / Not only is the « martyre for love » a theme rooted in the « pain for loving » at medieval times. This isalso a lyricism place from where a suffering « I » turns his martyrdom into either a poem of love or a song,as troubadours and trouveres use to do. Considering this theme in verse romance from the second half ofthe twelfth century to the end of the thirteenth is more than observing a theme bound to the pain in lovingand the love-melancholy of numerous heroes and lovers ; instead, the intent is to recognize how the verseromance originates from the poet’s suffering « I ». It is about highlighting the lyricism share that comesfrom the romance through the images it projects from itself, its rhythm, its form, and its creator, then,observing how the verse romance becomes a literary love object, a work of art. Lastly, the intent is to showhow the romance of the « I » ensures a transition from the great courtly romance to the « dit » of love.

This thesis examines the post-Roman and Anglo-Saxon religious reuse of Roman structures, particularly burials associated with Roman structures, and churches on or near Roman buildings. Although it is known that the Anglo-Saxons existed in and interacted with the vestigial, physical landscape of Roman Britain, the specific nature and result of this interaction has not been completely understood. The present study examines the Anglo-Saxon religious reuse of Roman structures in an attempt to understand the Anglo-Saxon perception of Roman structures and the impact they had on the developing ecclesiastical landscape. In particular, the study reveals how we may better understand the structural coincidence of Roman buildings and early-medieval religious activity in the light of the apparent discontinuity between many Roman and early-medieval landscapes in Britain. The study begins by providing an overview of the evidence for existing Roman remains in the Anglo-Saxon period. It examines the archaeological and historical evidence, and discusses literary references to Roman structures in an attempt to ascertain how the ruins of Roman villas, towns and forts would have been perceived. Particular attention is paid to The Ruin, a poem in Old English which provides us with our only contemporary description of Roman remains in Britain. The first chapter concludes by examining the evidence for the religious reuse of Roman secular structures in Gaul and Rome, providing a framework into which the evidence in the subsequent chapters is placed. The examination the proceeds to burials on or associated with Roman structures. It shows that the practice of interring the dead into Roman structures occurred between the fifth and eighth centuries, but peaked at the beginning of the seventh, with comparatively few sites at the extreme end of the data range. The discussion is based on the evidence of 115 sites that show this burial rite, but it is very apparent that this number is only a fragment of the whole, as these inhumations are often mistakenly identified as Roman, even when the stratigraphy demonstrates that burial occurred after the ruin of the villa, as is often the case. The placement of the bodies show a conscious reuse of the ruinous architecture, rather then suggesting interment was made haphazardly on the site: frequently the body is placed either centrally within a room, or is in contact with some part of the Roman fabric. Some examples suggest that there may have been a preference for apsidal rooms for this purpose. Churches associated with Roman buildings are then examined, and their significance in the development of the English Christian landscape is discussed. Churches of varying status – from minsters to chapels – can be found on Roman buildings throughout the country. Roman structures were clearly chosen for the sites of churches from the earliest Christian period into the tenth, and probably even the eleventh century. Alternatives to the so-called proprietary model are examined, and their origins and development are discussed, particularly in reference to the continental evidence. The end of the study places the thesis into a wider landscape context, and introduces potential avenues of further exploration using GIS. The study concludes that there are a number of causes underlying the religious reuse of Roman buildings, each not necessarily exclusive of the other, and that the study of these sites can further any investigation into the development of the ecclesiastical topography of England, and the eventual development of the parochial landscape.