| Abstract | Paper-a:
This paper examines the role of the past in creating and maintaining the concept of 'witchcraft' within the context of medieval Ireland. It begins with a brief overview of how medieval Irish writers understood their past, and actively used the past to create or reinforce a particular kind of present. It then uses witchcraft as a case study to explore this more specifically. It demonstrates the importance of the past for the medieval understanding and interpretation of the present, and probes tensions in scholarship between regionally or locally specific concepts of magic and witchcraft on the one hand, and more universalist interpretations of the terms.
Paper- b:
The treatise 'On the Extension of the World' (abridged title) has been handed down to us for the first time in a Georgian manuscript from the year 1188-1210. As the author of the text is indicated Saint Basil (of Caesarea?). However, some statements in the work lead us to conclude that the treatise was composed by a Georgian, who gathered information from various sources. The origin of the text dates back perhaps to the Early Middle Ages. The text offers in the first and the third part primarily information about Gymnosophists. Gymnosophists are here equated with scriptural Rechabites. In the second part of the treatise is described initially the route from the paradise in the uttermost East of the inhabited world up to India. The author provides further a depiction of the sea route, of the land route and then again of the sea route from India to Aksum, Nubia, Antioch, Constantinople, Rome and the city of Cádiz (Ghadir), which is marked as the outermost Western point of the earth. According to the anonymous author, Christians inhabit vast territories from the paradise up to India. The treatise 'On the Extension of the World' is for the second time reproduced in the Early Modern Period. The text was integrated into the compendium 'Kartlis Zkhovreba' ('Georgian History'), which had been copied in 1633-1646 by order of Georgian queen Mariam. 'Kartlis Zkhovreba' is a medieval compendium of Georgian historiographic works. It included at the end of the Middle Ages approximately 11 chronicles. The compendium in its original version was compiled on the initiative of the Georgian Royal Court supposedly in 11th-12th century. The purpose of this paper is first of all to examine motives and reasons, which prompted in the 17th-century copyists of the compendium or their patroness, the queen Mariam, to incorporate the medieval text 'On the Extension of the World' iin the collection and to place it ahead of medieval chronicles, at the beginning of the book. In the end should be analysed, which new significations emerge for recipients by repeated application of the text, by its transfer into different historical context and collocation with partly different texts.
Paper -c:
Jan Długosz (1415-1480) was one of the most prominent historians in Polish Middle Ages (WOJCIECHOWSKI 2000: 439). He masterfully compiled dozen of older chronicles and documents into the monumental work written in Latin - Annales - which exhibits Polish history from the legendary times (before the christianization of Poland in 966) till the last days of Długosz' life. As one may suspect, such an abundance of sources, often inconsistent and various, required from him great historical conscientiousness and sometimes forced him to determine which event was real and which was barely a legend, as well as to convince an experienced reader about the rightness of his decision. Hereby arises the very interesting question - how would he accomplish that? My study aims to investigate the lexical evidence of Długosz' credibility, especially his confidence about factual status of presented events. To achieve it, chronicler exploits modal particles such as certe 'certainly' or profecto 'for sure' - words that 'convey the writer/speaker's view and estimate of [event's] validity and actuality' (ROSÉN 2009: 321). This appears to be almost essential issue for the historian, to whom 'befits to value lower everything but truth' (ANNALES I: 61 [own translation]). In this speech I would like to present the usage of modal particles in Annales and to discuss the methods of introducing them into the narration. To maximize the correctness and efficiency I would employ not only my own observations, but also studies conducted on Classical Latin corpora since Jan Długosz was well-read in works of his literary predecessors, e.g. Livy and Sallust.
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