IMC 2007: Sessions

Paper a: Absent from the twelfth-century ideologies of Translatio Studii and Emperii, Paris becomes the mythical center of French power in the later Middle Ages, and the analogy is developed between Paris and Paradise, a common place for poets and intellectuals. Thanks to the Seine River, Paris is shown as benefiting from a mild climate, and a fecundity of thought in its university where knowledge and wisdom “run”. The royal city is also the location of the relics in the Sainte Chapelle; it is a fertile terrestrial paradise and its people are God’s chosen. The image of the Seine which epitomizes the Parisian encounter of peripatetic thoughts with the History of Salvation – a reenactment of Translatio Studii and Emperii- seems reconciled with other fourteenth-century poetic images of the city as mercantile, labyrinthine, and subtle.
Paper b: In this paper we examine in brief the image of Nicaea, city of northwestern Asia Minor, given by the Byzantine scholar and emperor Theodore II Ducas Lascaris (1222-1254).
Theodore II, emperor of the so-called 'empire of Nicaea' and a scholar with a great concern about the classical heritage in the form of both texts and monuments, provides us a very interesting rhetorical text (Ekphrasis) on Nicaea, capital of his state, which functioned as a Byzantine 'empire in exile'. In this rhetorical work the city of Nicaea is presented in a condition perceived in a way ranging between realistic and imaginary.
Paper c: The way Portuguese medieval Latin authors describe and praise medieval cities has been largely influenced by ancient Greek and Latin literature. The ways cities were founded or, by some reason or (un)known circumstances, were moved to another place followed the same principles inherited from the ancient classical and Christian world up to the Middle Ages. It influenced ancient toponymy, where the Christian church and their saints, the new heroes, played also an important role.