IMC 2026: Sessions

Paper 714-a:

This paper analyses comparatively the representation of three different episcopal military actions, and how these changed over time. While the study of military actions conducted by bishops has received considerable attention in scholarship, there is a lack of both comparative and diachronic analyses that connect different case studies and their development throughout the Middle Ages. By following the concept of ‘textual trajectories’, meaning how each literary representation interacted with previous traditions, with other elements within the same text and manuscript where it was written down first, and how it was read and copied by later scribes, I will suggest ideas to fill this gap by tracing trajectories for each case and examining their continuities and transformations. The case studies are those of bishops Ansfrid of Utrecht and the defence of his town against the Vikings (1007), Notger of Liège and the destruction of Chèvremont (987), and Ulrich of Augsburg at the Battle of the Lech (955). The focus will be on the interactions between the historiography of the warlike events and the historiography/hagiography of the bishops involved, considering that the first was a contested saint, the second a celebrated but non-saintly bishop, and the latter an "officially" canonised saint.

Paper 714-b:

Drawing on Brodarics’s eyewitness narrative, Fugger newsletters, and 19th–20th-century poetry, painting, and state commemorations, this paper traces the evolving perceptions of the Battle of Mohács (1526): from Catholic providential and early Protestant punitive times, through Habsburg “redemptive” imperial moments and the “Second Mohács” (1687), to Romantic long mourning, interwar reconciliation (1926), socialist secularization (1976), and post-1989 lieux de mémoire. I argue that Mohács functions as a recurring time-marker—calendrical, political, and emotional—that Hungarians (and their neighbors) used to map past losses and envision future possibilities. The case reinterprets medieval defeat as a resilient temporal tool for identity in Central Europe.

Paper 714-c:

This paper examines Martín García Cerezeda’s Tratado de las campañas (1540s), the memoir of a Spanish arquebusier who fought in the Italian Wars. While usually read as a repository of military detail, the work is better understood as a carefully crafted memoir, aimed at securing the patronage of Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, 3rd Duke of Sessa. Cerezeda frames his decades of service through selective recollection, proximity to Charles V, and the presentation of himself as a principled Christian soldier. His memoir thus negotiates multiple temporalities: the immediacy of battlefield memory, the retrospective construction of a veteran’s identity, and the longer imperial chronology of Charles V’s campaigns.

Although composed in the early modern period, Cerezeda’s strategies resonate with traditions of medieval Europe. His emphasis on chivalric values, eyewitness authority, and the search for patronage link his narrative to medieval military memoirs and to broader currents of knightly and aristocratic self-representation. Situating the Tratado at the crossroads of medieval and early modern traditions allows us to explore continuity and change in the ways European soldiers remembered, recorded, and justified their service. In doing so, this study contributes to early modern Iberian history and the wider historiography of medieval warfare and military culture.

Paper 714-d:

This paper examines the narrative of the locust invasion of 873 in the Chronicon of Regino of Prüm, arguing that it can be read as a symbolic critique of the military order in the late ninth century. While other contemporary annalists and chroniclers portrayed the locusts as divine punishment or natural disaster, Regino stands out by describing them in explicitly military terms—organized in ranks, led by commanders, and displaying discipline in movement and encampment. This unique metaphor invites interpretation not merely as a literary device but as a veiled commentary on the failures of Frankish military structures during the period of political fragmentation and increasing vulnerability to external invasions. Methodologically, the paper adopts a comparative textual analysis, juxtaposing Regino’s account with those of other contemporaneous sources, biblical models, and classical texts Regino likely drew upon. The research asks: To what extent does Regino use the locusts allegorically to criticize the disorganized, ineffective military responses of his time? By situating the chronicle within its historical context—marked by Norman incursions and Carolingian decline—the study explores Regino’s role not only as a chronicler but also as a didactic voice reflecting on political and military decay through historical symbolism.