Abstracts
The Kingdom of Abkhazia as a Case of Politogenesis between Christianity and Islam (the Late 8th – Early 10th Century)
The article is dedicateded to the case of the Kingdom of Abkhazia as an experience of politogenesis in the contact zone between Christianity and Islam. Emerged due to the falling away from Byzantine suzerainty the Kingdom of Abkhazia continued to keep his commitment to Christianity until the establishment of his own Church and missionary activities in the Caucasus. To maintain its independence, the Abkhazian Kingdom was forced to resort, like Byzantium, temporary alliances with various neighbouring states (Khazar khaganate, Bagratids principalities, etc.). One of the major challenges for the Abkhazian kings was to overcome the internal fragmentation provoked by heterogeneous ethnic and political nature of their Kingdom.
The Ruler and His Namesakes
in the North and in the East of Europe
Dynastic life in medieval Europe was subject to a complex network of norms, rules, and prohibitions. Some of these were recorded in writing, although, as a rule, with a significant delay, when the rules themselves were about to fall out of use. Others, despite remaining unwritten, regulated many aspects of everyday dynastic life, which repeatedly confirmed their existence. One of the spheres regulated by such unwritten but very effective norms was that of name-giving. Based on evidence from various European royal courts between the 9th and early 13th centuries, we can identify a set of parameters according to which names could be given to members of the ruling family and establish which of these parameters were relevant to each dynasty. These structural links are of interest in themselves, both for creating a comprehensive dynastic portrait, be it of the rulers of France, Hungary, Poland, Rus or Scandinavia, and for identifying certain legal relations with the help of proper nouns. The following are perhaps the most significant and systemic parameters, which determined all others: Could a new member of a dynasty receive the name of his living father or grandfather and Could dynastic names be widely used outside a dynasty? In the Middle Ages, newborns in all European ruling families were most likely to receive the names of their ancestors. The question is whether the names of living relatives could be used, or whether, based on vestigial archaic notions about a kind of reincarnation of an ancestor in his progeny, only the names of dead ancestors could be used.
The Codex Gertrudianus after Gertrud.
The Fate of a Book on Dynastic Crossroads of the 12th Century
The so called
Right to Myth.
An Introduction to the Poetics of the School of Chartres
This article is an introduction to some most important texts, linked to the so called School of Chartres: the
Wise Saints and Virtuous Pagans:
John of Wales on the “Problem of Paganism”
Franciscan theologian and industrious collector of exempla John of Wales (t ca. 1285) was a forerunner of socalled “classicizing” movement within the Franciscan order. “Classicising friars” had a special concern in Antiquity and inclined to combine scholastic background and classical tradition and literature while working on educational and didactic texts. John who was definitely fascinated by lives of pagan philosophers and intended to use their stories as sources of moralising