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IMC 2013: Sessions

Session 1210: Texts and Identities, III: Organising Knowledge and Constructing Communities

Wednesday 3 July 2013, 14.15-15.45

Sponsor:Institut für Mittelalterforschung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien / Utrecht Centre for Medieval Studies, Universiteit Utrecht / Faculty of History, University of Cambridge
Organisers:E. T. Dailey, School of History, University of Leeds
Gerda Heydemann, Institut für Mittelalterforschung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien / Institut für Geschichte, Universität Wien
Moderator/Chair:Rosamond McKitterick, Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge
Paper 1210-aAuthority and Community in Bavarian Canonical Texts
(Language: English)
Sven Meeder, Afdeling Geschiedenis, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
Index terms: Canon Law, Ecclesiastical History, Mentalities
Paper 1210-bThe Other Approach: Glossaries as a Record of Medieval Information Management
(Language: English)
Evina Steinová, Universiteit Utrecht is Ingeschreven
Index terms: Manuscripts and Palaeography, Mentalities
Paper 1210-cOf Audience, Actors, and Letters: A Methodological Approach on the Variae of Cassiodorus
(Language: English)
Otávio Luiz Vieira Pinto, School of History, University of Leeds / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)
Abstract

This session applies new approaches to the legal and other normative texts produced during the Early Middle Ages, with a view to processes of organising knowledge and their impact on social values and practices. Sven Meeder approaches the compilation of canonical texts in Carolingian Bavaria as vital to the creation of social norms themselves, re-evaluating the presence of quotations from biblical or patristic sources within these texts. Rather than see such quotations merely as evidence of their authoritative quality, Meeder reframes the discussion in terms of 'imagined communities' engaged in a discourse through which values are established and communicated. Evina Steinova traces the practice of arranging and re-ordering textual knowledge in another type of normative source material. She looks at medieval glossaries from the perspective of information management, i.e. As a source for the reception of classical texts and the practice of learning in the early Middle Ages.