IMC 2015: Sessions

Throughout the Middle Ages, the past has been a major source of inspiration for anyone actively involved in trying to figure out their place in the world around them, or even to influence their social surroundings. Whether reflecting on recent history or reaching back across the millennia, whether re-inventing mythology or collecting saints' lives, the traditions represented by images of the past continued to be seen as powerful tools to shape the present as well as the future. The papers in this session will each shed light on specific ways of appropriating the past at various points in the long Middle Ages. First, N. Kıvılcım Yavuz will assess the story of Troy and its reception from its first appearance in Western literary history until the establishment of early medieval historiographical traditions, with specific attention being devoted to its historicity for the late antique and early medieval audiences. Then, Diarmuid Ó Riain will discuss the using the compilation history of the Magnum Legendarium Austriacum, illustrating how the texts included in this massive high medieval summa hagiographica were assembled, ordered and edited, and teasing out the motivations which lay behind the project. Finally, Courtney Booker will introduce an Oratio allegedly spoken by Boniface on the occasion of the coronation of Pippin III, but which is most likely the product of an early modern re-imagining of that event. Through an analysis of this text, he will show how its form, content, and the historical context of its appearance not only reveal fraudulence, but also demonstrate how early modern polemics shaped the remembrance of the early medieval past, and by what criteria its truth value was assessed.