Multi Disciplinary Approaches To Medieval Brittany

While it is well-established that Brittany and the Insular world were closely linked during the medieval period, the precise nature of these connections continues to spark debate. Was there a significant migration in the fifth century, or were the connections more multi-faceted and enduring than medieval accounts suggest? And how might we triangulate the Atlantic connections with other influences on medieval Brittany, including those from the Carolingian world? Drawing together research that was first presented at the conference 'Brittany and the Atlantic Archipelago: Contact, Myth and History 450-1200', held in Cambridge in December 2017, this volume seeks to present new and ground-breaking research into both Brittany and its broader European context during the medieval period. The chapters gathered here range across various disciplines, including textual history, archaeology, hagiography, onomastics, and the study of liturgical evidence, offering new insights into our understanding of medieval Brittany, as well as drawing out particular connections (and disconnections) between Brittany and its neighbours.

"Brittany is rich in arch ...

Situates Celtic languages and literatures in relation to European movements, in the tradition of Helen Fulton's groundbreaking research. Professor Helen Fulton's influential scholarship has pioneered our understanding of the links between Welsh and European medieval literature. The essays collected here pay tribute to and reflect that scholarship, by positioning Celtic languages and literatures in relation to broader European movements and conventions. They include studies of texts from medieval Wales, Ireland, and the Welsh March, alongside discussions of continental multicultural literary engagements, understood as a closely related and analogous field of enquiry. Contributors present new investigations of Welsh poetry, from the pre-Conquest poetry of the princes to late-medieval and early Tudor urban subject matters; Welsh Arthuriana and Irish epic; the literature of the Welsh March - including the writings of the Gawain-poet; and the multilingual contexts of medieval and post-medieval Europe, from the Dutch speakers of polyglot medieval Calais to the Romantic poet Shelley's probable ownership of a Welsh Bible.

This volume focuses on Wendy Davies's work on early medieval Breton texts and their implications. Beginning with core analyses of the Redon and Landévennec cartularies, it continues with papers that tease out some of the key social implications of the 9th-century Redon material - on the nature of political power, on rural communities, on the settlement of disputes, and on transmission of property. While the Redon charters have long been known as a source of fundamental importance for Breton history, the author's database (established in the 1980s) allowed much greater understanding of the role of individuals - at all social levels, and particularly peasant level - than had previously been possible. Attention to the detail of the east Breton past also includes papers on some of the results of her fieldwork, on building stone in particular. Early medieval Brittany is not merely interesting in itself (and it is certainly not some Celtic backwater): Breton evidence can usefully be differentiated from the evidence of other Celtic areas and has a significant role in wider issues of European history. As well as papers on the familiar themes of kingship, rulership, cult sites and cemeteries, the final section highlights the distinctive quality of the Breton evidence for the protection of sacred and personal space, for slavery and serfdom and for village-level courts.

A dozen essays extend and elaborate arguments that Jones, who is not further identified, advanced in the 16 essays of his 1988 The Creation of Brittany as to why the late medieval duchy of Brittany may be considered a largely autonomous state within the greater kingdom of France. Most began as conference papers or contributions to anthologies, and so were written for a variety of audiences and purposes. They are reproduced from their original publication 1986- 2000. Three are in French. The remaining in English consider such topics as the Capetians; Edward III's captains; Jeanne de Navarre, Duchess of Brittany and Queen of England (1368-1437); and aristocracy, faction, and the state in the 15th century. Annotation 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

This volume focuses on new research on the archaeology of the early medieval Celtic churches c AD 400-1100 in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, south-west Britain and Brittany. The 21 papers use a variety of approaches to explore and analyse the archaeological evidence for the origins and development of the Church in these areas. The results of a recent multi-disciplinary research project to identify the archaeology of the early medieval church in different regions of Wales are considered alongside other new research and the discoveries made in excavations in both Wales and beyond. The papers reveal not only aspects of the archaeology of ecclesiastical landscapes with their monasteries, churches and cemeteries, but also special graves, relics, craftworking and the economy enabling both comparisons and contrasts. They likewise engage with ongoing debates concerning interpretation: historiography and the concept of the Celtic Church, conversion to Christianity, Christianization of the landscape and the changing functions and inter-relationships of sites, the development of saints cults, sacred space and pilgrimage landscapes and the origins of the monastic town .

Depuis une décennie, la genèse de l'État moderne préoccupe beaucoup les historiens européens. Problématique fructueuse qui a contribué à une redécouverte de l'histoire des institutions, du droit, de la politique, peut-être longtemps délaissée en France. Le “retour du politique” ne signifie pas l'oubli du social. La table ronde de 1991, tenue à Paris, questionnait les fondements de la modernité monarchique, du 14e au 17e siècle en France, pour s'interroger sur le bien-fondé des problématiques de l'État et de la modernisation : l'État ou le roi ?