Chiara Benati, Università di Genova: Erwirdiger freundt Bernnharde…: Friendship and Community Among Late Medieval Surgeons as Presented in the Vernacular Translations of Lanfranc of Milan’s Surgical Works
As McVaugh (2006: 9) observes, “between 1240 and 1320, a new genre of medical writing appeared in Western Europe: Latin general surgery.” In the works produced during those eighty years, various authors developed a shared conception of surgery as a rational and scientific discipline. This is evident not only in the dedications to friends and colleagues in the proems of their works (e.g., to Bernard of Gordon in Lanfranc’s Chirurgia parva and magna), but also in how their texts build upon the teachings and experiences of their teachers, and predecessors, contributing to the growing body of collective knowledge. Despite the general tendency to reduce dedications and other rhetorical elements in the vernacular translations and adaptations of these Latin works, this sense of shared expertise continues to be present and is even more pronounced, as the core texts are often supplemented with remedies and techniques from other authors. This talk will focus on the Germanic translations of Lanfranc of Milan’s surgical works, particularly examining the additions suggesting that a late medieval surgical community really existed and was not a mere rhetorical convention.
Albrecht Classen, University of Arizona, Department of German Studies: Community and Peace: The Political Discourse in the Late Middle Ages Regarding the Peaceful and Harmonious Community: Margareta Ebner, Christine de Pizan, and Frances Eiximenis
This talk will highlight the political treatises by Christine de Pizan and the Catalan Francesc Eiximenis addressing their society and outlining utopian concepts of harmony and peace within their respective community. On that basis, other late medieval narratives will be consulted, including negative examples, such as Heinrich Wittenwiler’s remarkably negative allegorical poem Der Ring. Examples of a working spiritual community based on the friendship between Heinrich von Nordlingen and Margareta Ebner will provide good stepping stones.
Gabriella DaCosta-Yulsman, Dept of English & Comparative Literature, Columbia University: Summum Bonum, Summum Malum: Saint Augustine’s de Civitate Dei as Ancient Sermon Against Troubled Times
In his relatively understudied, “magnum opus et arduum” de Civitate Dei, Saint Augustine propounds an understanding of the good life, or “summum bonum,” through the use of trinitarian theology. In his theory, Augustine proposes that the best human life and by extension human society, stems from the triune relationship of man to God, to neighbor, and to the Holy Spirit which flows between them. Such holy love fulfills man’s innate need for the consummation of desire in an eternal source, enabling him to do and feel good beyond the pursuit of empty worldly treasures. Thus, the people of Christ, in Augustine’s view, enjoy true happiness in this life and the next through their devotion to the triune God and their practice of trinitarian love, in contradistinction to vain pagan philosophers and people of the world, or “carnal city,” who seek happiness in a deceptive and dangerous materiality (as well as erroneous philosophy and false gods). Straddling two empires, Saint Augustine’s prescription for the human condition during the fall of Rome reads all the more saliently in today’s turbulent times.
Fidel Fajardo-Acosta, Creighton University, NE: Pax Arthuriana: The Illusion of Peace, Friendship, and Community in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Taken at face value, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tells a story of peace, community, and friendship disrupted by the arrival of the Green Knight, an arrogant and disrespectful guest motivated, as we later learn, by the jealousy of Arthur’s sister, Morgan, who is bent on aggravating and causing trouble for her brother. The setting of the banquet and Christmas celebrations at the moment when the Green Knight arrives itself suggests associations of Arthur’s court with ideas of Christian fellowship and communion, including imagery of the Last Supper, with Morgan and her enviously green envoy playing the role of Judas-like agents threatening the unity of the community. Such a reading of the story, together with its happy ending, are characteristic aspects of a work meant as courtly entertainment, of a kind with the stories of adventure that Arthur craves as appetizers before his feasts. That understanding of the story, however, holds good only on the surface and only for an audience of self-indulgent courtiers, much like those in Arthur’s retinue. Indeed, beneath the atmosphere of peaceful celebration, material abundance, and jolly camaraderie of a community of loyal and selfless peers, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tells a tale that exposes the violence, cruelty, and injustice that underwrite the seemingly idyllic lives of the king and his followers, also hinting at the harsh lives of those outside the charmed circle of the court at Camelot. The centerpiece of what is, at the core, a Christian morality tale, the “Chrystemas gomen” (283; Christmas game) that the Green Knight proposes, “strike a strok for an oþer” (287; to strike a stroke for another stroke) alludes, it seems quite directly, to both the Christian Golden Rule and Matthew 26:52 (“all who draw the sword will die by the sword,” NIV). It is also an implicit test of the character of the Arthurian knights. The test takes the form of a choice between peace and violence, represented by the branch of holly the Green Knight holds in one hand and the axe he grips in the other. Though the Green Knight dares his hosts to deal him a blow of the axe, which he offers as a gift, he also assures them that “I passe as in pes, and no plyȝt seche” (266; I come in peace, and seek no quarrel”), further specifying to Arthur that he does not intend to fight, “Nay, frayst I no fyȝt, in fayth I þe telle’ (279; no, I fight no fray, I tell you in faith). There is then an explicit option of peace, while the axe embodies the temptations of pride, anger and violence, also acquisitiveness. The daring of the stranger, however, is sufficient to enrage Arthur, who can see nothing but an insult to his pride and challenge to his authority. What makes the situation most serious is not just the Christmas setting, hardly consistent with carrying out decapitations in the dining room, but also the ancient Greek context of the sacred ξένος (xenos; the stranger), a much feared figure in classical culture, justifying the imperatives of hospitality of the ξενία (xenia) ritual. The xenos is to be feared, in particular, because it could be a god in disguise, testing the piety of the chosen host. With Gawain as his willing tool, Arthur thus falls squarely into a spiritual trap. The exposure of the vices and flaws of Arthur and his knights continues in the form of the symbolic animals hunted by Sir Bertilak — the does (lechery and cowardice), the boar (blind rage and brutality), and the fox (deceptiveness and treachery) — and the mirror hunt his wife conducts after Gawain. The fact that, in the last instance, the Green Knight is merciful and does not decapitate Gawain is an act of Christian forgiveness, also a warning, but one that is wasted on the likes of Gawain and Arthur, as, after the adventure, they continue living as before, frivolously adopting the symbolic green sash as a fashionable decoration, never for a moment pausing to consider its deeper significance. The Pax Arthuriana then can be seen as just another Pax Romana, a false state of peace grounded on brutality and pride, not to speak of treachery and deception, therefore doomed to the fate of all violent and unjust kingdoms, nations, or empires.
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Filip A. Jakubowski, PhD, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland: Happiness Not Only Inside the Muslim umma. The Case of The Meadows of Gold by al-Masʽūdī (d. 956)
Throughout history and in diverse cultures, happiness has been a significant subject of deep philosophical and theological contemplation but it has not been conceptualized in a uniform way. In the Islamic tradition, for example, the pursuit of happiness is envisaged differently from the more transient forms celebrated in modern, secularized cultures. Islamic thought emphasizes the attainment of enduring happiness derived from the fulfillment of religious and moral obligations
Not all the Arabic texts aligned with the Islamic beliefs about the nature of happiness. The aim of this paper is to explore the extraordinary descriptions of the subject of happiness in a tenth-century historical work The Meadows of Gold, authored by a renowned 10th-century historian and polymath Abū al-Ḥasan ʽAlī Al-Masʽūdī (d. 956), the author of over twenty works on theology, history geography and natural sciences, of which only few have survived until our times. The Meadows of Gold is his magnum opus, in which he describes both Islamic and pre-Islamic history until the third decade of the tenth century based both on witnesses’ accounts and his own observations. The descriptions of the many nations included in this work offer a wide array of insights into the lived experiences of diverse communities within and beyond the Muslim world.
What is remarkable about al-Masʽūdī’s The Meadows of Gold is that unlike the Islamic tradition which emphasizes happiness is possible solely in the other world, it suggests that it can be experienced also in this one and outside the Muslim community. The author explains its strong reliance on the complex interplay of social, economical, and political realities. This paper will analyze how al-Masʽūdī’s describes happiness in three different non-Islamic communities. In the account of Alexandria, he shows how it derives from the city’s cosmopolitan nature where people of different faiths and races coexisted in a state of harmony, engaging in intellectual and commercial pursuits. In the section about India, al-Masʽūdī’s inserts an interesting dialogue between the Macedonian and a unnamed Indian philosopher who explains how a ruler gives happiness to his subjects, “being their creator”. Finally, in the passage about Persia, the historian shows its inhabitants a multifaceted understanding of happiness, rooted in their own cultural and religious traditions.
The Meadows of Gold are a work of extraordinary erudition and open-mindedness. As one of few intellectual work of Arabo-Islamic culture of this period, it challenges the notion that happiness is exclusively accessible within the Muslim umma. Through his expansive and inclusive narrative, al-Masʽūdī presents a rich tapestry of insights into the diverse manifestations of happiness across various cultures and civilizations, underscoring its variety and social background.
William M. Mahan, Northern Arizona University: The Perfect Community? Proto-Capitalism and Proto-Socialism as Conceptual Antimonies in Medieval Visions of Utopia
In the present day, notions of utopia and dystopia have the additional burden of accounting for the coexistence of humans with artificial intelligence. The technology we create threatens us with (self-)destruction, and yet some are still hopeful of a paradisiacal future in which human and machine coexist in an ecologically stabilized world. Even more intriguing are the echoes of medieval imagination in the contradictions of utopia.
Epistemologies for the happiest possible earthly existence have reflected the possibility of an ideal community as early as antiquity. In the Middle Ages, happiness was achievable in the everyday sense; nonetheless, changing notions of happiness reflected hopes that it could be attained by creating and living in the perfect community. According to Frederic Jameson, authors such as Thomas More began to imagine alternatives to both feudalist society and to pastoral life. More is credited with the notion of Utopia, coining the title of his work from the Greek term, hence, a non-place, but also considered eutopia, or “good place.” As Jameson rightly observes, the imagined egalitarian, Commune-like social structures were proto-Marxist, but were also proto-capitalist in their emphasis on commerce, materialism and reification. Utopias were somewhat materially oriented and yet proposed notions of equality and abolition of private property. Examples include the poetry of Hartmann von Aue, the mythical medieval land of Cockaigne, the book Utopia by Thomas More, and the early modern mythical land of Arcadia. Ideas of various community sizes, political features, and locations varied greatly, but a commonality was some form of equality contributing to happiness. Many groups indeed relocated together in attempts to build a new, morally structured society.
While More’s vision included various (invented) religions coexisting in peaceful tolerance as well as an abolition of private property, there were paradoxically two slaves assigned to each household. Returning to present-day considerations, it is telling that the Czech and Russian word “robota” also means slave and labor. Medieval utopias seem to be an attempt to combine imagined notions of life without labor and ideas of how lasting peace could be reached. The abolition of property in this example seems not to be absolute and still creates dichotomies between privilege and servitude. This paper will seek to assess these imagined utopias not only in terms of Marxism (cf. Marxism in Medieval Studies), but also in terms of freedom, health, ecological friendliness and other measurements of well-being. This essay will consider fictional writings and poetry of the Middle Ages that imagines the ideal community, analyzing equality and other factors necessary for communal happiness.
Emanuele Piazza: Department of Educational Sciences, University of Catania, Catania, Italy: A PATH TO PEACE AT THE END OF THE CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE: A READING OF THE GESTA KAROLI MAGNI IMPERATORIS OF NOTKER THE STAMMERER
The Gesta Karoli Magni imperatoris of Notker the Stammerer (ca. 840-912) reconstructs the figure of the great Frankish ruler, paying particular attention to highlighting the portrait of a pious and wise emperor rather than a great warrior. These virtues allowed Charlemagne to maintain peace in his kingdom, an objective that, according to Notker’s testimony, he achieved by, for example, disciplining the actions of the bishops and demonstrating his great value not only on the battlefields (although the strictly warlike dimension remains in the background), but also in establishing diplomatic relations with other politica! entities that came into contact with the Carolingians. In the Gesta, therefore, it is possible to trace some features of Charlemagne as a peaceful Emperor who, according to our author’s intentions, could have been a model for Charles the Fat, if the crisis of the imperial structure and the subsequent abdication had not interrupted the latter’s political! project.
Daniel F. Pigg, University of Tennessee at Martin: Finding Empowering Communities: Margery Kempe’s Quest for Friendship and Affirmation
Readers of The Book of Margery Kempe are often surprised by Margery Kempe’s behavior as it appears at times eccentric, obsessive, dangerous, and erratic. For those who read the work carefully, what seems apparent is that Kempe is looking for a community, not a location, even in the one in which she lives in King’s Lynn. In the course of Book One she meets a variety of regular clergy, bishops/archbishops, friars, monks, and nuns as well as a host of those in various kinds of civil government and ordinary people. Patterns emerge very quickly that certain people, perhaps based on their orientation to life, are more amenable to Kempe than others. Cloistered nuns often call upon her for spiritual advice. She often encounters monks who call her “false flesh.” She encounters civic officials who are worried about the influence that she will have over women in their community. Why is she wearing white clothing when it is clear that she is a married woman? Do her direct communications with Jesus or the Spirit threaten or enhance her participation in various communities?
This paper will examine the way in which Margery Kempe engages with various kinds of relatively fixed, stable communities and what those connections tell us about her. While to the casual observer it might look like Kempe simply wants to be understood, what actually emerges is that she engages with communities from a position of mutuality. Such a position both challenges and confirms her status a woman of the middling sort—the rising middle class—in fifteenth-century England. Why is community participation important? How does that contribute to her understanding of the good life? Why do those most cloistered find her a source of spiritual comfort and spiritual engagement? While one intention of such “community building” is to legitimate Kempe’s religious experience on the part of the scribe, at the same time those same connections seem to play off against one another in a way that renders Kempe both a person desirable for community, but at the same time outside some of its boundaries. It is not surprising then that those in religious communities find her most delightful and helpful. In that sense, Kempe has found who her “friends” really are.
John Pizer, Louisiana State University: Poetic Community, Social Standing, Friendship, and Happiness in Contexts of War and Peace: Contrasting Simon Dach with Sigmund von Birken
The Baroque Age in Germany witnessed the flourishing of poetic communities (“Sprachgesellschaften”) that were inspired by similar Italian societies already existent in the fifteenth century. While most of the German societies were devoted to developing a viable vernacular poetry that could rival the Latin verse prevalent at the time, these communities were disparate in terms of social standing, the thematization of war and peace, and the pursuit of happiness. The Kürbishütte (pumpkin cottage) was a society founded during the Thirty Years’ War and featured Simon Dach among its leading members. The group used the term “Kürbis” in its name to signal the transient and evanescent nature of life, exemplified by this short-lived plant. Dach’s poem on friendship as a mode of consolation in dire circumstances has attained a canonic status. Indeed, religion, community, and friendship are viewed as the only modes of happiness available by Dach and his colleagues in this society, who were primarily members of the middle class. On the other hand, poetic organizations such as the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft (fruit-bearing society) and the Pegnesischer Blumenorden (Pegnitz order of flowers) had many aristocratic members. Poems generated by these groups often put aside the horrors of war and were frequently bucolic pastorals redolent with the simple, harmonious life of the shepherd. Relationships between figures in this poetry, while not devoid of rivalry, are largely amicable, sometimes amorous, and peaceful. A leading member of both societies was Sigmund von Birken, who had a close working relationship with Duke Anton Ulrich of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel and was a prolific composer of pastoral poetry. My paper would contrast these differing modes and moods of poetic community by examining the often-antithetical attitudes of Dach and Birken with respect to their poetic communities, peace, happiness, and friendship, primarily as expressed in their poetry and as influenced by their social standing.
Kristof Szitar, Yale University and Université de Lausanne: The Concept of Peace in Ghaznavid Poetic Sources
The concept of “universal civility” (ṣulḥ-i kull/ṣulḥ ba-hama, lit. “peace with all”), developed by the prominent statesmen Abū l-Fażl and Faiżī, has been widely discussed for its role in promoting peaceful relations during Akbar’s rule in Mughal India (Sheffield 2014 & 2025, Kinra 2020, et al.). However, less attention has been paid to the role of peace in the ethnically, religiously, and culturally diverse Ghaznavid Empire, particularly during the reigns of Maḥmūd (r. 998–1030), Muḥammad (r. 1030), and Masʿūd (r. 1030–1040). Ghaznavid court poetry, primarily composed during these periods but preserved in later Mughal-Safavid manuscripts, reveals reflections on peace in the context of the empire’s military and political expansion across Central and South Asia.
This presentation examines the conceptual development of “peace” in the dīvāns of ʿUnṣurī and Farrukhī, whose works juxtapose war (jang, razm) with peace (ṣulḥ), offering insights into the political and religious transformations of the period. In their poetry, peace and happiness (shādī) are contrasted with devastation (vīrānī), strife fitnāʾ), and instability. While the Ghaznavid period was not devoid of conflict, the prominence of peace and harmony in court poetry sponsored by Ghaznavid rulers has been insufficiently explored. Through specific examples, this study demonstrates how ʿUnṣurī and Farrukhī portrayed their patrons as harbingers and maintainers of peace, crucial for the stability of the increasingly diverse communities unified under the Ghaznavid Empire. The presentation also addresses critical textual challenges in the study of Ghaznavid literature, highlighting newly discovered archival sources that shed light on this formative period.
Leyla H. Tajer, independent scholar, member of MESA: A Commitment to Happiness: Transforming Nature of Love in Rumi’s Cosmology
Jalaluddin Rumi (1207–1273) offers profound insights into the interplay of love (‘Ishq), happiness (Shādī), and self-realization in his Mathnawī. His philosophy suggests love as a transformative alchemical force that transcends individual boundaries, dissolves the ego, and connects humanity with the Divine. Rumi’s concept of happiness, rooted in the soul’s journey toward its source, reflects a dynamic spiritual state where sorrow and joy are inseparably linked, emphasizing self-awareness and surrender.
Building on contemporary scholarship, this paper situates Rumi’s vision of love within broader discussions of community building in Sufi traditions. It interrogates the relational dynamics of Rumi’s nafs al-mutma’inna (soul at peace), exploring how inner transformation fosters external harmony. Although Rumi’s focus on the ‘individual self’ and the ‘Divine Self’ might initially seem individualistic, his teachings ultimately emphasize the broader impact of personal spiritual growth in nurturing and enriching the community. This paper argues that Rumi’s notion of love – expanding beyond the self – lays the groundwork for communal flourishing by cultivating empathy, interconnection, and collective well-being.
By examining key passages from Mathnawī and Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi, this paper delves into Rumi’s poetic brilliance to uncover profound insights into the human condition. It explores how his teachings on inner joy and divine love transcend temporal and cultural boundaries, offering transformative frameworks for addressing modern challenges. Through a synthesis of spiritual reflection and practical application, the paper illustrates how Rumi’s vision promotes unity, empathy, and resilience, laying the foundation for more harmonious and compassionate communities in today’s fragmented world.
David Tomíček, Jan Evangelista Purkyně University, Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic: Plague and Consolation: Medical Treatises as Tools for Coping with Crisis in Early Modern Bohemia
One of the most serious threats that human societies have faced for centuries is infectious disease epidemics. This fact is well reflected in interpretations that identify one of the apocalyptic horsemen with the pestilence. Physicians belong to those professions where people seek help, explanation and encouragement in illness, and the numerous treatises on the plague can thus be read as texts on coping with existential crisis. Their content was certainly not intended to evoke a feeling of happiness, but it undoubtedly offered some consolation, which had a positive effect on the mental state. In my paper I would like to focus on Czech-language printed treatises on the plague from the 16th and 17th centuries. I will examine their communicative strategies and the discursive means by which medical consolation is constructed and offered to readers. I will also be interested in the forms of its instrumentalization. How the authors of the plague treatises, following the medieval concept of res non naturales, used consolation as a prophylactic and therapeutic intervention.
Warren Tormey, English Department, Middle Tennessee State University: “A Faire Field Full of Folk”: Envisioning Community in Piers Plowman
Scholars of Langland’s Piers Plowman have in recent decades come to recognize its intensely communal character. Borne out of the author’s rural roots and also his deep immersion in the life and culture of fourteenth century London, Piers Plowman features multiple communities across the 22 chapters of its fullest C-text version. Langland first portrays struggling denizens of that urban world who collectively fall prey to the distractions of everyday life and so remain spiritually incomplete. He also portrays academic communities, represented in allegorical figures, who debate and argue about the contours of Christianity, the nature of salvation, and the spiritual fate of unbaptized pagans. He fashions an agrarian everyman hero of sorts in the evolving figure of Piers Plowman himself, who is positioned firstly as an idealized representative of rural community and later as a Christ-like embodiment of human potential and human experience. Finally, this enigmatic author seeks and creates community between himself, an ephemeral persona revealing itself in select tangible details, and a keen, discerning readership capable of discerning his poem’s allegorical nuances across the nearly two-decade process of its composition. True to his clerkly culture and origins, he seeks to reconcile these inactive and preoccupied spiritual laborers with those who work more productively to sustain the larger society as well as those privileged few who escape the mundane duties of everyday labor. The purpose of this essay is to consider the multiple forms of engagement with the concept of community embedded in Langland’s poem, and to consider select representations of that idea, flawed, fallen and also fulfilled, that the poet articulates across the full narrative of his poem.
Birgit Wiedl, Institute for Jewish History in Austria, St. Pölten, Austria:: My dear friend, the Jew. The Multitude of Jewish-Christian Relations in Medieval Ashkenaz
My dear friend, the wise and honorable David Steuss the Jew: Thus Johann Ribi von Platzheim-Lenzburg, Bishop of Gurk and chancellor of the Austrian Duke Rudolf IV addressed his business partner, the Viennese Jewish man David Steuss, who bore him nothing but loyalty and friendship, in 1364. Such friendly, sometimes even familiar addresses, while not to be over-interpreted, hint at Jewish-Christian interaction that went beyond the stereotypical business relations and anti-Jewish pogroms. Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages were for a long time seen – and researched – as two separate entities that lived according to their own religions, customs, and laws. While their respective cultural identities, with all the regional and temporal differences, are still acknowledged (and researched), current research has turned to topics such as Jewish-Christian neighborhoods, to keywords such as entanglement and both gendered and social status. Modern scholarship therefore finds Jews and Christians in a multitude of relations: they acted as arbitrators together and sat as assessors in local courts; Jewish craftspeople worked for Christian customers and in Christian workshops, and vice versa; and although forbidden by both Christian and Jewish authorities, sexual relations were not unheard of. On a personal level, business contacts could develop into personal relationships based on trust and confidence in each other, and neighborly encounters might lead to closer acquaintance and even friendship.
Thomas Willard, University of Arizona: From Christian Rosencreutz to Christianopolis: The Utopian Journey of Johann Valentin Andreae: The Utopian Journey of Johann Valentin Andreae (1586–1654)
By a curious coincidence, Johann Valentin Andreae is known primarily for his juvenilia, conceived and written with others before he completed his undergraduate studies in 1606. Meanwhile, his mature masterpiece, the novel Christianopolis (1619), has received relatively little attention, even though it is recognized as a major contribution to utopian literature in the Western world. The reason for this lies in Andreae’s career path as a candidate for the Lutheran ministry and then a deacon and candidate for ordination. His entry into the theology faculty over which his grandfather once presided was delayed for six years because his satiric verse and imaginary prose raised doubts among university officials. Then his promotion from deacon to pastor was delayed for several more years after an early text about Christian Rosencreutz was printed without his permission and widely debated. Between the early story of a supposed medieval fraternity and the final description of a social and religious utopia, Andreae wrote a series of largely satiric works about contemporary life in the early seventeenth century. This essay explores the development of his thought from satires to the satiric but serious utopian novel.