Academic interdisciplinary study of the Middle Ages
"Medievalist" redirects here. For general appreciation of the Middle Ages, see
Medievalism
.
Medieval studies
is the academic interdisciplinary study of the
Middle Ages
. A
historian
who studies medieval studies is called a
medievalist
.
Institutional development
[
edit
]
The term 'medieval studies' began to be adopted by academics in the opening decades of the twentieth century, initially in the titles of books like
G. G. Coulton
's
Ten Medieval Studies
(1906), to emphasize a more interdisciplinary approach to a historical subject. A major step in institutionalising this field was the foundation of the
Mediaeval (now Medieval) Academy of America
in 1925.
[1]
[2]
[3]
In American and European universities the term
medieval studies
provided a coherent identity to centres composed of academics from a variety of disciplines including archaeology, art history, architecture, history, literature and linguistics. The Institute of Mediaeval Studies at St. Michael's College of the University of Toronto became the first centre of this type in 1929;
[4]
it is now the
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies
(PIMS) and is part of the
University of Toronto
. It was soon followed by the
Medieval Institute
at the
University of Notre Dame
in Indiana, which was founded in 1946 but whose roots go back to the establishment of a Program of Medieval Studies in 1933.
[5]
As with many of the early programs at Roman Catholic institutions, it drew its strengths from the revival of medieval scholastic philosophy by such scholars as
Etienne Gilson
and
Jacques Maritain
, both of whom made regular visits to the university in the 1930s and 1940s.
These institutions were preceded in the United Kingdom, in 1927, by the establishment of the idiosyncratic
Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic
, at
the University of Cambridge
. Although Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic was limited geographically (to the
British Isles
and
Scandinavia
) and chronologically (mostly the
early Middle Ages
), it promoted the interdisciplinarity characteristic of Medieval Studies and many of its graduates were involved in the later development of Medieval Studies programmes elsewhere in the UK.
[6]
Around the same time as the first North American Medieval Studies institutions were founded, the UK saw the development of some scholarly societies with a similar remit, including the Oxford Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature (1932) and its offshoot the Manchester Medieval Society (1933).
[7]
: 112?13
With university expansion in the late 1960s and early 1970s encouraging interdisciplinary cooperation, centres similar to (and partly inspired by) the Toronto Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies were established in England at
University of Reading
(1965), at
University of Leeds
(1967) and the
University of York
(1968), and in the United States at
Fordham University
(1971).
[8]
[7]
: 112?13
The 1990s saw a further wave of Medieval-Studies foundations, partly prompted by the dynamism brought to the field by its embracing of postmodernist thought and the associated rise of
neo-medievalism
in
popular culture
.
[9]
[7]
: 134?36
This included centres at
King's College London
(1988),
[10]
the
University of Bristol
(1994), the
University of Sydney
(1997)
[11]
and
Bangor University
(2005),
[8]
and the merging of the Medieval History and Medieval Language and Literature sections of the
British Academy
to create a Medieval Studies section.
[12]
: 1
Medieval studies is buoyed by a number of annual international conferences which bring together thousands of professional medievalists, including the
International Congress on Medieval Studies
, at
Kalamazoo
MI
,
U.S.
, and the
International Medieval Congress
at the
University of Leeds
.
[13]
There are a number of journals devoted to medieval studies, including:
Speculum
(an organ of the Medieval Academy of America founded in 1925 and based in
Cambridge, Massachusetts
),
Medium Ævum
(the journal of the Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature, founded in 1932),
Mediaeval Studies
(based in the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies and founded in 1939),
Mediaevalia
,
Comitatus
,
Viator
,
Traditio
,
Medieval Worlds
, and the
Journal of Medieval History
.
[14]
[7]
: 112, 121 n. 81
Another part of the infrastructure of the field is the
International Medieval Bibliography
.
[15]
[16]
Historiographical development
[
edit
]
The term "Middle Ages" first began to be common in English-language history-writing in the early nineteenth century.
Henry Hallam
's 1818
View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages
has been seen as a key stage in the promotion of the term, along with
Ruskin
's 1853
Lectures on Architecture
.
[17]
[18]
The term
medievalist
was, correspondingly, coined by English-speakers in the mid-nineteenth century.
[19]
The concept of the Middle Ages was first developed by
Renaissance humanists
as a means for them to define their own era as new and different from what came before?whether a renewal of Classical Antiquity (the
Renaissance
) or what came to be called
modernity
.
[9]
: 678?79
This gave nineteenth-century
Romantic
scholars, in particular, the intellectual freedom to imagine the Middle Ages as an
anti-modernist
utopia
?whether a place nostalgically to fantasise about a more conservative, religious, and hierarchical past or a more egalitarian, beautiful, and innocent one.
[9]
: 678?81
European study of the medieval past was characterised in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by
romantic nationalism
, as emergent
nation-states
sought to legitimise new political formations by claiming that they were rooted in the distant past.
[20]
The most important example of this use of the Middle Ages was the nation-building that surrounded the
unification of Germany
.
[21]
[22]
[23]
Narratives which presented the nations of Europe as modernizing by building on, yet also developing beyond, their medieval heritage, were also important facets underpinning justifications of
European colonialism
and
imperialism
during the
New Imperialism
era. Scholars of the medieval era in the
United States
also used these concepts to justify their
westward expansion
across the
North American
continent. These colonialist and imperialist connections meant that medieval studies during the 19th and 20th centuries played a role in the emergence of
white supremacism
.
[24]
[25]
However, the early twentieth century also saw the increasing professionalisation of research on the Middle Ages. In this context, researchers tended to resist the idea that the Middle Ages were distinctively different from modernity. Instead they argued the so-called '
continuity thesis
' that institutions conventionally associated with modernity in Western historiography like nationalism, the emergence of states, colonialism, scientific thought, art for its own sake, or people's conception of themselves as individuals all had a history stretching back into the Middle Ages, and that understanding their medieval history was important to understanding their character in the twentieth century.
[9]
Twentieth-century Medieval Studies were influenced by approaches associated with the rise of
social sciences
such as
economic history
and
anthropology
, epitomised by the influential
Annales School
. In place of what the Annalistes called
histoire evenementielle
, this work favoured study of large questions over
long periods
.
[26]
In the wake of the
Second World War
, the role of medievalism in
European nationalism
led to greatly diminished enthusiasm for medieval studies within the academy?though nationalist deployments of the Middle Ages still existed and remained powerful.
[27]
The proportion of medievalists in history and language departments fell,
[28]
encouraging staff to collaborate across different departments; state funding of and university support for archaeology expanded, bringing new evidence but also new methods, disciplinary perspectives, and research questions forward; and the appeal of interdisciplinarity grew. Accordingly, medieval studies turned increasingly away from producing national histories, towards more complex mosaics of regional approaches that worked towards a European scope, partly correlating with post-War
Europeanisation
.
[27]
An example from the apogee of this process was the large
European Science Foundation
project
The Transformation of the Roman World
that ran from 1993 to 1998.
[29]
[30]
Amidst this process, from the 1980s onwards medieval studies increasingly responded to intellectual agendas set by
postmodern
critical theory
and
cultural studies
, with
empiricism
and
philology
being challenged by or harnessed to topics like the
history of the body
.
[31]
[26]
This movement tended to challenge the
progressivist
account of the Middle Ages as belonging to a continuum of social development that begat modernity and instead to see the Middle Ages as radically
different
from the present.
[9]
Its recognition that scholars' views are shaped by their own time led to the study of
medievalism
?the post-medieval use and abuse of the Middle Ages?becoming an integral part of Medieval Studies.
[32]
[33]
In the twenty-first century,
globalisation
led to arguments that post-war Europeanisation had drawn too tight a boundary around medieval studies, this time at the borders of Europe,
[34]
with Muslim Iberia
[35]
[36]
and the
Orthodox Christian
east
[37]
seen in western European historiography as having an ambivalent relevance to medieval studies. Thus a range of medievalists have begun working on writing
global histories of the Middle Ages
?while, however, navigating, the risk of imposing Eurocentric terminologies and agendas on the rest of the world.
[37]
[38]
[39]
[40]
[41]
[42]
By 2020, this movement was being characterised as the 'global turn' in Medieval Studies.
[43]
Correspondingly, the
UCLA
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, founded in 1963, changed its name in 2021 to UCLA Center for Early Global Studies.
[44]
Centres for medieval studies
[
edit
]
Many
Centres / Centers for Medieval Studies
exist, usually as part of a university or other research and teaching facility. Umberella organisations for these bodies include the Federation Internationale des Instituts d’Etudes Medievales (FIDEM) (founded 1987) and Co-operative for Advancement of Research through Medieval European Network (CARMEN). Some notable ones include:
- The
Centre for Medieval Studies, Bangor
at
Bangor University
(
Official site
)
- The
Centre for Medieval Studies, Bergen
at the
University of Bergen
(
Official site
)
- The
Centre for Medieval Studies, Bristol
at the
University of Bristol
(
Official site
)
- The
Department of Medieval Studies, CEU
at the
Central European University
(
Official site
)
[45]
- Groupe d'Anthropologie Historique de l'Occident Medieval at the
Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales
(
Official site
)
- The
Centre for Medieval Studies, Exeter
at the
University of Exeter
(
Official site
)
- The
Center for Medieval Studies, Fordham
at
Fordham University
(
Official site
)
- The
Center for Medieval Studies, Freiburg
at the
University of Freiburg
(
Official site
)
- The
Center for Late Antique and Medieval Studies
, or CLAMS, at
King's College London
(
Official site
)
- The
Institute for Medieval Studies, Leeds
at the
University of Leeds
(
Official site
)
- The
Liverpool Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
at the
University of Liverpool
(
Official site
)
- CMRS Center for Early Global Studies, at
University of California, Los Angeles
(
Official site
)
- The
Centre d'Etudes medievales de Montpellier
or Center for Medieval Studies at the
university of Montpellier
(
Official site
)
- The
Center for Medieval Studies, Minnesota
at the
University of Minnesota
(
Official site
)
- The
Medieval Institute
, Notre Dame at the
University of Notre Dame
(
Official site
)
- The
Laboratoire de medievistique occidentale de Paris
or Paris Laboratory for Western Medieval Studies at the
Pantheon-Sorbonne University
(
Official site
)
- The
Center for Medieval Studies, Pennsylvania
at Pennsylvania State University (
Official site
)
- The
Centre d'etudes superieures de civilisation medievale
or Center of Advanced Studies in Medieval Civilization at the
University of Poitiers
(
Official site
)
- The
Centre for Medieval Studies, Prague
at
Charles University in Prague
and the
Czech Academy of Sciences
(
Official site
)
- The
Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies, Reading
at the
University of Reading
(
Official site
)
- The
Institute for Medieval Studies, Lisbon
at the
Nova University of Lisbon
(
Official site
)
- Institut fur Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der fruhen Neuzeit at the
Paris Lodron Universitat Salzburg
(
Official site
)
- The Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Culture at the
University of Southampton
(
Official site
)
- The
Centre for Medieval Studies, Sydney
at the
University of Sydney
(
Official site
)
- The
Centre for Medieval Studies, Toronto
at the
University of Toronto
(
Official site
)
- The
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies
at the
University of Toronto
(
Official site
)
- The
Utrecht Centre for Medieval Studies
at the
Utrecht University
(
Official site
)
- The
Centre for Medieval Studies, York
at the
University of York
(
Official site
)
- The
Medieval Institute
at
Western Michigan University
(
Official site
)
- The
Center for Medieval and Byzantine Studies
at
The Catholic University of America
(
Official site
)
- The
Centre d'etudes medievales, Montreal
a l'
Universite de Montreal
(
Official site
)
- The
Medieval History Research Centre
at
Trinity College, Dublin
(
Official site
)
- The
Turku Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies
at the
University of Turku
(
Official site
)
- The
Centre for Medieval Studies
at
Tallinn University
(
Official site
)
- The
Center for Medieval Studies
at the
University of Bucharest
(
Official site
)
See also
[
edit
]
Notes
[
edit
]
- ^
George R. Coffman, ‘The Mediaeval Academy of America: Historical Background and Prospect’,
Speculum
, 1 (1926), 5?18.
- ^
William J. Courtenay, 'The Virgin and the Dynamo: The Growth ofMedieval Studies in North America: 1870?1930', in
Medieval Studies in North America: Past, Present, and Future
, ed. by Francis G. Gentry and Christopher Kleinhenz (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1982), pp. 5?22.
- ^
Luke Wenger, 'The Medieval Academy and Medieval Studies in North America', in
Medieval Studies in North America: Past, Present, and Future
, ed. by Francis G. Gentry and Christopher Kleinhenz (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1982), pp. 23?40.
- ^
H. Damico, J. B. Zavadil, D. Fennema, and K. Lenz,
Medieval Scholarship: Philosophy and the arts: biographical studies on the formation of a discipline
(Taylor & Francis, 1995), p. 80.
- ^
MI History
, University of Notre Dame
- ^
Michael Lapidge, 'Introduction: The Study of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic in Cambridge, 1878-1999', in
H. M. Chadwick and the Study of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic in Cambridge
, ed. by Michael Lapidge (Aberystwyth: Department of Welsh, Aberystwyth University, 2015),
ISBN
9780955718298
, pp. 1-58 [=
Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies
, 69/70 (2015)].
- ^
a
b
c
d
Alaric Hall, '
Leeds Studies in English
: A History',
Leeds Medieval Studies
, 2 (2022), 101?39
doi
:
10.57686/256204/24
.
- ^
a
b
G. McMullan and D. Matthews,
Reading the medieval in early modern England
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 231.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
Freedman, Paul, and Gabrielle Spiegel, 'Medievalisms Old and New: The Rediscovery of Alterity in North American Medieval Studies',
American Historical Review
, 103 (1998), 677?704.
doi
:
10.1086/ahr/103.3.677
.
- ^
"King's College London - About us"
.
www.kcl.ac.uk
. Retrieved
2016-10-05
.
- ^
D. Metzger and L. J. Workman,
Medievalism and the academy II: cultural studies
(Boydell & Brewer, 2000), p. 18.
- ^
Alan Deyermond, 'Introduction', in
A Century of British Medieval Studies
, ed. by Alan Deyermond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 1?5.
- ^
W. D. Padenm
The Future of the Middle Ages: medieval literature in the 1990s
(University Press of Florida, 1994), p. 23.
- ^
A. Molho, and G. S. Wood,
Imagined histories: American historians interpret the past
(Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 238.
- ^
Sawyer, Peter (2009). "The Origins of the
International Medieval Bibliography
: Its Unwritten History (as told by its Founder)".
Bulletin of International Medieval Research
. 14 for 2008: 57?61.
- ^
Macartney, Hilary (2007). "La
International Medieval Bibliography
como herramienta de investigacion para la historiografia de ciudades medievales y sus territorios".
La Ciudad Medieval y Su Influencia Territorial: Najera. Encuentros Internacionales del Medievo 3, 2006
: 439?450.
- ^
Robert I. Moore, 'A Global Middle Ages?', in
The Prospect of Global History
, ed. by James Belich, John Darwin, Margret Frenz, and Chris Wickham (Oxford:
Oxford University Press
, 2016), pp. 80-92 (pp. 82-83).
- ^
"medieval, adj. and n.", "middle age, n. and adj." Accessed 5 August 2018. OED Online, Oxford University Press, June 2018, www.oed.com/view/Entry/115638; www.oed.com/view/Entry/118142. Accessed 5 August 2018.
- ^
"medievalist, n." OED Online, Oxford University Press, June 2018, www.oed.com/view/Entry/115640. Accessed 5 August 2018.
- ^
Ian Wood, 'Literary Composition and the Early Medieval Historian in the Nineteenth Century', in
The Making of Medieval History
, ed. by Graham Loud and Martial Staub (York: York Medieval Press, 2017),
ISBN
9781903153703
, pp. 37-53.
- ^
Bastian Schluter, 'Barbarossa's Heirs: nation and Medieval History in Nineteenth-cand Twentieth-Century Germany', in
The Making of Medieval History
, ed. by Graham Loud and Martial Staub (York: York Medieval Press, 2017),
ISBN
9781903153703
, pp. 87-100.
- ^
Bernhard Jussen, 'Between Ideology and Technology: Depicting Charlemagne in Modern Times', in
The Making of Medieval History
, ed. by Graham Loud and Martial Staub (York: York Medieval Press, 2017),
ISBN
9781903153703
, pp. 127-52.
- ^
Christian Lubke, 'Germany's Growth to the East: From the Polabian Marches to Germania Slavica', in
The Making of Medieval History
, ed. by Graham Loud and Martial Staub (York: York Medieval Press, 2017),
ISBN
9781903153703
, pp. 167-83.
- ^
Allen J. Frantzen,
Desire for Origins: New Language, Old English, and Teaching the Tradition
(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990).
- ^
John M. Ganim,
Medievalism and Orientalism: Three Essays on Literature, Architecture and Cultural Identity
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
- ^
a
b
Graham A. Loud and Martial Staub, 'Some Thoughts on the Making of the Middle Ages', in
The Making of Medieval History
, ed. by Graham Loud and Martial Staub (York: York Medieval Press, 2017),
ISBN
9781903153703
, pp. 1-13.
- ^
a
b
Patrick Geary, 'European Ethnicities and European as an Ethnicity: Does Europe Have too Much History?', in
The Making of Medieval History
, ed. by Graham Loud and Martial Staub (York: York Medieval Press, 2017),
ISBN
9781903153703
, pp. 57-69.
- ^
Robert I. Moore, 'A Global Middle Ages?', in
The Prospect of Global History
, ed. by James Belich, John Darwin, Margret Frenz, and Chris Wickham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 80-92 (pp. 83-84).
- ^
Ian Wood, 'Report: The European Science Foundation's Programme on the Transformation of the Roman World and the Emergence of Early Medieval Europe',
Early Medieval Europe
, 6 (1997), 217-28.
- ^
Jinty Nelson, 'Why Reinventing Medieval History is a Good Idea', in
The Making of Medieval History
, ed. by Graham Loud and Martial Staub (York: York Medieval Press, 2017),
ISBN
9781903153703
, pp. 17-36.
- ^
Caroline Bynum, "Why All the Fuss about the Body? A Medievalist's Perspective",
Critical Inquiry
22/1, 1995, pp. 1-33.
- ^
David Matthews, Medievalism: A Critical History, Medievalism, 6 (Cambridge: Brewer, 2015).
- ^
Ulrich Muller, 'Medievalism', in
Handbook of Medieval Studies: Terms ? Methods ? Trends
, ed. by Albrecht Classen, 5 vols (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), pp. 850?65.
- ^
Little, Lester K., 'Cypress Beams, Kufic Script, and Cut Stone: Rebuilding the Master Narrative of European History',
Speculum
, 79 (2004), 909-28.
- ^
Richard Hitchcock, 'Reflections on the Frontier in Early Medieval Iberia', in
The Making of Medieval History
, ed. by Graham Loud and Martial Staub (York: York Medieval Press, 2017),
ISBN
9781903153703
, pp. 155-66
- ^
Hisham Aidi, '
The Interference of al-Andalus: Spain, Islam, and the West
',
Social Text
, 24 (2006), 67-88;
doi
:
10.1215/01642472-24-2_87-67
.
- ^
a
b
Michael Borgolte, 'A Crisis of the Middle Ages? Deconstructing and Constructing European Identities in a Globalized World', in
The Making of Medieval History
, ed. by Graham Loud and Martial Staub (York: York Medieval Press, 2017),
ISBN
9781903153703
, pp. 70-84.
- ^
James Belich, John Darwin, and Chris Wickham, 'Introduction: The Prospect of Global History', in
The Prospect of Global History
, ed. by James Belich, John Darwin, Margret Frenz, and Chris Wickham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016),
doi
:
10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198732259.001.0001
, pp. 3--22.
- ^
Moore, Robert I., 'A Global Middle Ages?', in
The Prospect of Global History
, ed. by James Belich, John Darwin, Margret Frenz, and Chris Wickham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 80-92.
- ^
Robinson, Francis, 'Global History from an Islamic Angle', in
The Prospect of Global History
, ed. by James Belich, John Darwin, Margret Frenz, and Chris Wickham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 127--45.
- ^
The Global Middle Ages
, ed. by Catherine Holmes and Naomi Standen, Past & Present Supplement, 13 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018) (=
Past & Present
, 238 (November 2018)).
- ^
Michael Borgolte,
Die Welten des Mittelalters: Globalgeschichte eines Jahrtausends
(Munich: Beck, 2022), ISBN 978-3-406-78446-0.
- ^
Phelpstead, Carl (2022).
"Kringla Heimsins: Old Norse Sagas, World Literature and the Global Turn in Medieval Studies"
.
Saga-Book
.
46
: 155?78.
- ^
Jonathan Riggs, '
Reimagining the scope and approach of the UCLA Center for Early Global Studies
',
UCLA Newsroom
(15 December 2021).
- ^
On the origins of the department, see Gabor Klaniscay, 'Medieval Origins of Central Europe. An Invention or a Discovery?', in The Paradoxes of Unintended Consequences, ed. by Lord Dahrendorf, Yehuda Elkana, Aryeh Neier, William Newton-Smith, and Istvan Rev (Budapest: CEU Press, 2000), pp. 251-64.
External links
[
edit
]
This audio file
was created from a revision of this article dated 2 December 2014
(
2014-12-02
)
, and does not reflect subsequent edits.