IMC 2014: Sessions

Session 1312: Remembering Empire, II: Emperors

Wednesday 9 July 2014, 16.30-18.00

Organiser:	Daniel Syrbe, Geisteswissenschaftliches Zentrum für Kultur & Geschichte Ostmitteleuropas e.V. (GWZO), Universität Leipzig
Moderator/Chair:	Daniel Syrbe, Geisteswissenschaftliches Zentrum für Kultur & Geschichte Ostmitteleuropas e.V. (GWZO), Universität Leipzig
Respondent:	Jürgen Strothmann, Historisches Seminar, Universität Siegen
Paper 1312-a	The 'keisere' in the Annolied: Caesar as Beginning of German History? (Language: English) Susann Limmer, Historisches Insitut, FernUniversität Hagen Index terms: Language and Literature - German, Learning (The Classical Inheritance), Political Thought
Paper 1312-b	Augustus: Remembering, Forgetting, and Re-Imagining Rome's First Emperor in the High Middle Ages (Language: English) Penelope Goodman, School of Languages, Cultures & Societies - Classics, University of Leeds Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Learning (The Classical Inheritance), Political Thought
Paper 1312-c	Remembering Charlemagne as Emperor in a Medieval Francophone Context (Language: English) Marianne J. Ailes, Department of French, University of Bristol Index terms: Language and Literature - French or Occitan, Political Thought
Abstract	This second session asks how the Roman and Carolingian emperors Caesar, Augustus, and Charlemagne were remembered during the Middle Ages as examples of successful rulers and how they were used in processes of constructing political and cultural identities. Abstract -a: The Annolied, written about 1077/80 by an anonymous cleric at the height of the Investiture Controversy, at first glance a posthumous panegyric for the Archbishop of Cologne Anno II., is at the same time the earliest poem of a spiritual world history in German language. The Annolied interprets biblical and antique themes in a new and remarkable manner and presents Caesar as a link between universal history and the construction of the Origo of the Germans as a new, gentil-ethnic federation. Abstract -b: As the creator of the principate (system of rule by emperor), Augustus inevitably became a yardstick against which to measure later rulers, both during and after antiquity. This paper explores how memories of Augustus as a ruler evolved in the service of medieval agendas, and asks how interrogating this process can help us to understand his longer-term legacy. Abstract -c: This paper will address the depiction of Charlemagne as emperor in texts where he is better known as 'roi de France' and in francophone areas outside the Frankish empire. It will ask what the Anglo-Norman scribe of the Oxford Chanson de Roland understood when he wrote of Charlemagne as 'nostre emperere magnes', 'our great emperor'. The focus will be on francophone epics of the 12th and 13th century.