IMC 2014: Sessions

Paper -a:
Among the vast expanse of St Albans abbey's manors there were small towns and proto-urban settlements. Were they a result of deliberate efforts on the part of the monastery, or that of some objective economic circumstances and development of the manors? Is it possible to ascertain a specific policy of the abbey on the issue of urbanisation? The paper aims to answer these questions and contributes to the subject of 'low-level urbanisation' and also explores the role of the monastic institutions in it.

Paper -b:
Notifications left by legates of Holy See during the epoch of Crusades demonstrate not only specifics of medieval Europe but make clear the differences with Byzantine and Islamic world as well. The topic aims to compare Oriental and Occidental cities according to the records of Jacob de Vitry and generalize them in a wider historical context. The city as a social phenomenon represents in the best way the nature of society.

Scanty Georgian sources make difficult to construct clearly the social structure of cities here. Therefore, researches do accent on the western examples and without strong arguments are given many concepts such as communes, self governance, estate-representative institutions etc. We suppose that conclusions of this topic should gain more importance in case of generalizing not only European but also Georgian historiographical context and give a chance to avoid false attitudes.

Paper -c:
In the later Middle Ages, the city of Shkodra, north-western Albania, was at the centre of a network of bishoprics, each one of them situated at less than a dozen of kilometres away from it: Drivasto, Sarda, Suacio, Dagno. Does this dense network of bishoprics indicates a high demographic density in the Shkodra basin itself, or is the status of bishoprics granted to these autonomous cities linked to the vast mountainous hinterland which these bishoprics represent at the ecclesiastical level?