IMC 2013: Sessions
Session 112: Medieval Letters and Letter-Collections, 1000-1500: A Pleasurable Reading?!
Monday 1 July 2013, 11.15-12.45
| Sponsor: | Monumenta Germaniae Historica |
|---|---|
| Organiser: | Karoline Dominika Döring, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, München |
| Moderator/Chair: | Markus Krumm, DFG-Projekt 'Herrschaftsumbruch und Historiographie', Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München |
| Paper 112-a | Letters in Frutolf's Chronicle: Entertainment, Information, Authenticity (Language: English) Index terms: Archives and Sources, Historiography - Medieval |
| Paper 112-b | Unpleasant Affairs That Please Us: Admonition and Rebuke in the Letter Collections of the Archbishops of Canterbury, 11th and 12th Centuries (Language: English) Index terms: Archives and Sources, Ecclesiastical History, Rhetoric |
| Paper 112-c | Beautiful Daughters and Rich Tournaments: Pleasures of the East in Correspondences between Ottoman Sultans and Christian Princes, 14th and 15th Centuries (Language: English) Index terms: Archives and Sources, Printing History, Rhetoric |
| Abstract | The session analyses a variety of medieval letters and letter-collections from different historical contexts and textual traditions. The first paper deals with the Benedictine monk Frutolf of Michelsberg (d. 1003), who is the author of one of the first world chronicles in medieval Central Europe. It investigates Frutolf's intentions when inserting real or fictitious letters into his pile of historical observations. The second and third papers discuss affairs that might please us readers today, but were at the time of their writing certainly not meant to amuse. Complaints of improper clerical behaviour in archiepiscopal letter-collections and demonstration of oriental splendour in mostly fictitious correspondences between Christians and Muslims touch on serious historical realities. |