Institute for Medieval Studies

Session	608
Title	The Past as Practice, c. 900-1300, II
Date/Time	Tuesday 5 July 2022: 11.15-12.45
Sponsor	Centre for Research in Historiography & Historical Culture, Aberystwyth University
Organiser	Björn Weiler, Department of History & Welsh History, Aberystwyth University
Moderator/Chair	Jacqueline M. Burek, Department of English, George Mason University, Virginia
Paper 608-a	Eigil of Fulda: Abbot, Historian, and Architect of Fulda's Monastic Landscape (Language: English) Benjamin Pohl, Department of History, University of Bristol Index Terms: Historiography - Medieval; Language and Literature - Latin
Paper 608-b	A Tale of Two Archives: Paris, Passau, and the Papal Past in the 10th and 11th Centuries (Language: English) Levi Roach, Department of Archaeology & History, University of Exeter Index Terms: Historiography - Medieval; Language and Literature - Latin
Paper 608-c	The Place of the Domesday Inquest in the History of English Law (Language: English) Paul R. Hyams, Department of History, Cornell University / Pembroke College, University of Oxford Index Terms: Law; Literacy and Orality; Mentalities
Abstract	Across high medieval Europe, contemporaries engaged in reimagining, refashioning, recovering, and recording the past. They did so in a range of genres and media: historical writing, charters, liturgical, and legal texts, works of Biblical exegesis, even in moulding the landscape, in the design of buildings, manuscript illuminations and statues. They did not do so in isolation. Uses and cultures of the past were as much social as they were cultural activities. Authors, informants, patrons, forebears, rivals, benefactors, peers, superiors, dependents, audiences, readers, scribes, copyists all played a part in preserving, shaping and using it. We are concerned with these practices. How did people find out about the past? How was the past experienced? What was the role of patrons, benefactors, peers, rivals, informants, etc.? What can we say about dissemination? And what does answering these questions reveal about the broader social and cultural ferment out of which such engagements emerged?