Download PDF | (East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450-1450) Peter Stih , The Middle Ages Between the Eastern Alps and the Northern Adriatic, Select Papers on Slovene Historiography and Medieval History, 2010.
488 Pages
PREFACE
The papers in the present book are the fruit of over twenty-five years of intensive involvement with the medieval history of the region between the Northern Adriatic and the Eastern Alps. Translated into English and published together in one place by a reputed publishing house, they are now accessible to a wide audience of interested researchers. For this, I would like to express my gratitude in the first place to Florin Curta, general editor of the series East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450-1450, and Julian Deahl, senior acquisitions editor at the Brill publishing house.
I would further like to thank (in alphabetical order) Klaus Allesch, Rajko Bratoz, Alan McConnell Duff, Paul Gleirscher, Miha Kosi, Darja Miheli¢, Peter MikSa, Matjaz Rebolj, Mateja Rihtaréig¢, France Smrke, and Barbara Satej for their invaluable assistance in the preparation of this book, as well as the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, and the Slovenian Book Agency for their financial support for its translation and the Landesmuseum Karnten in Klagenfurt for kindly lending several photographs.
I dedicate this book to Bogo Grafenauer (1916-1995) and Herwig Wolfram, the two historians whom I consider to have been my most important teachers and to whom I owe a lasting debt of gratitude. Grafenauer introduced me to scientific work during my studies in Ljubljana, while Wolfram made me see history in a new light at the Institut fiir Osterreichische Geschichtsforschung at the University of Vienna.
Peter Stih Ljubljana, September 1, 2009
INTRODUCTION
The phrase “(Slovene) medieval history” in the book’s subtitle should be understood in its geographical, not ethnic sense: it does not mean that the papers deal with the history of the Slovenes, but rather with historical developments and phenomena from the Middle Ages in the area that is today associated with (the Republic of) Slovenia. At the same time, we must be aware that even such a geographical definition can only be approximate and provisional: the contemporary framework of the state certainly should not limit our view or research when dealing with remote periods, when many political, linguistic, ethnical, and other borders differed essentially and the area had a different structure.
The developments in the coastal towns of present-day Slovenia, for instance, cannot be adequately understood and described without knowledge and consideration of the conditions in the whole of Istria, the historical province that is today divided between Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia, or without giving due consideration to the roles played by the Byzantine, Frankish, or Venetian authorities in the peninsula. To quote another example, the situation is similar to that of Styria (or Carinthia, or Gorizia, etc.).
Since 1918, that historical Land, formed in the 12th century, has been divided between two states, Austria and Slovenia (Yugoslavia) into Austrian and Slovene Styria, and the latter occupies about one third of the former Land. It is clear, then, that we can research and describe some chapters from its history only if we focus on Styria as a whole, regardless of its current borders; or, in other words, if we view it - and this is true of everything in history - as a variable historical category that cannot be treated outside the context of the period we are interested in.
The region addressed in individual chapters of this book is therefore generally wider than the Slovene territory, which is however their principal focus. This region extends from the Northern Adriatic in the south to the Danube in the north, and from Friuli and Venetia in the west to western Hungary or Pannonia in the east. It is largely identical with the term “Alpine-Adriatic” as it was defined in an extensive monograph by several authors on the history of the Alpine-Adriatic region published a few years ago.
It is also a region that virtually defies any definition in terms of geographical, historical, or cultural criteria, but is nevertheless a region marked throughout history by intensive communications at very diverse levels. Furthermore, the region has always been open: individual parts were associated with centres lying beyond its borders, and they enjoyed more intensive communications with those centres than with other parts of the Alpine-Adriatic region or with centres located in the region itself.
Though this facilitated a fast spread of external influences, it also turned the Alpine-Adriatic region, which is located anyway on the periphery of four great European geographical systems (the Alps, the Mediterranean, the Pannonian steppe, and the Dinaric Mountain Range), into a peripheral area of great political, cultural, and economic realms. One might even say that its peripheral nature was an outstanding characteristic of this otherwise quite centrally located European region. But as soon as we speak of a peripheral area, we take for granted contacts and encounters, since that too is a function of every periphery, and it bestows onto the idea of periphery a much more positive meaning than we usually associate with it. Those characteristics of the Alpine-Adriatic region are reflected in the following chapters in their own, specific way.
I likewise hope that the chapters of this book will show quite clearly that we cannot deal with the Middle Ages within coordinates or in ways set by a national, or rather nationalized, view of history. Numerous studies published in recent decades have made it perfectly clear that entire edifices of nationally conceived histories rest on extremely shaky foundations, and that the claimed ancient histories of nations largely obtained their image as late as the 19th century: their purpose was to awaken nationalism(s), historically legitimate the emerging nations, and satisfy their needs for historical consciousness as part of their national identity.
The notions we have of the past are not so much history in the sense that we would try to understand what once was, but rather visions of the past, nurtured by individual national elites at the time of the formation of their nations and related to their politicalnational ideals; visions which have remained largely unchanged through the following periods and into the present. Given the rapidly dwindling persuasive power of nationally conceived histories, their imaginations from the repertoire of ethnic-national and state-national historical interpretations — drawing borders where none existed before, and enlisting people in individual nations in periods when nations did not yet exist - it has today become untenable to cling to concepts and explanations elaborated in the late 18th and 19th centuries; these are indeed not capable of adequately describing or understanding the historical and social dimensions that determined pre-modern society.
But how difficult it is to treat history from a wider perspective, to go beyond the national framework, and to renounce established views that are cherished as orthodox truths, is among other things illustrated by some reactions to the efforts of freeing our view of the medieval history of the Slovene territory from its national shackles in order to understand better the medieval humanity, its world and society, and in accordance with the contemporary findings of historiography and related disciplines. Among those endeavours were the great international and interdisciplinary symposium on the history of the Slovene territory and its neighbouring provinces in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, which took place in 1998,’ and the 2006 Congress of Slovene Historians on myths and stereotypes in the Slovene view of history.
In spite of the fact that researchers with the highest international qualifications participated in the symposium, their papers filling two large volumes with over one thousand pages, and despite the publication, a couple of years later, of a special supplement to the symposiums proceedings - to date, the most extensive monograph on Carantania° - a critic and, what is more, historian holding the title of University Professor, viewed the symposium as little more than pure propaganda. Another critic of the same qualifications went as far as denouncing his fellow historians, who drew attention to the numerous myths and stereotypes in the view of Slovene history and who are much more critical of this history and have less nationally exalted views of it, as national renegades.
For those reasons, it seemed positively necessary to begin this book with chapters dedicated to the examination of the established national historical narrative. Those chapters lay bare the structure of that narrative, the time of its origin, and the function that narrative had. They also list concrete examples to draw attention to historical mythology, a universally valid and inevitable historical constant that is obviously indispensable to the identity of ancient and early medieval peoples, as well as modern nations. Finally, the following chapters plead for a “different Middle Ages.’
The second section of the book is dedicated to issues pertaining to the history of the Early Middle Ages. Much attention is paid in this section to the Slavs and the Slavic ethnogeneses in the Alpine-Adriatic region, where contemporary studies of early medieval gentes indeed enable us to re-read known sources with a new focus, a new understanding of the information they provide and the semantics of individual terms, and to redraw the image of the Early Middle Ages in the region under study. Carantania, the principality of the Carantanians, stands out from this image in all respects: the Carantanians are the only people defined as Slavic of which we have at least some knowledge from before the late 8th century, and in many ways they played a pioneer role in the context of the entire Slavic world.
The third and last section of the book is dedicated to the High and Late Middle Ages. The chapters of those sections address various aspects of the medieval history of the region under consideration. At the same time, those chapters extend beyond that region in the sense that themes like, for instance, the southward expansion of the Bavarian nobility all the way to Istria, or the enthronement of the Carinthian dukes, which ever since the Late Middle Ages has fascinated many historians, may well be of interest to researchers who do not deal directly with the history of the Alpine-Adriatic region.
We may further say that the chapters of this book explore avenues of research that are relevant to the wider field of historiography. Nearly all of them strive to follow modern models, methodological and conceptual approaches, as well as quite concrete findings from international medieval studies. Those models and approaches (as well as findings) as they are for instance provided by researches into early medieval gentes, Otto Brunner’s concept of a Land, or researches into the nobility — have been tested against sources and cases from the region at hand, and they have proved to be highly useful tools. Therefore, they not only enrich our knowledge and understanding of the Middle Ages between the Alps and the Adriatic, but also contribute to broader debates in the current historiography of the Middle Ages.
With the exception of the immediate neighbours of the country, the historiography produced in Slovenia, particularly that pertaining to the Middle Ages, is poorly known abroad. This is especially true of the English-speaking world where the lack of translations of relevant works is even more conspicuous. It is highly illustrative in this context that the present book, by its volume and contents - even though fragmentary — is by far the most extensive text by any Slovene medievalist on Slovene medieval history and among studies published in English related to that history.
I therefore sincerely hope that it will serve the interested scientific community as a useful introduction to the issues addressed, and also as an invitation to further study. The Slovene Middle Ages are after all a part of the European Middle Ages and very likely relevant to various discussions going on in European medieval studies.
To conclude, the reader should be aware of the fact that all chapters of this book are studies previously published elsewhere and that adequate information on them is provided by the list of first publications at the beginning of the volume. The texts published here differ more or less from the original publications: obvious errors have been corrected in some places, the bibliographical information has been complemented in others, or the content has been expanded, while some have been (substantially) abridged, especially where their contents overlapped with other treatises. Nevertheless, a certain amount of repetition of contents has been unavoidable and I hope the reader will accept and understand its purpose.
As for place names, they are given in the language of the country in which those places are now located; an exception was however made for the names of some noble families deriving from place names, since outside Slovenia such place names are better known in the German than in the Slovene form (e.g. counts of Cilli instead of counts of Celje; lords of Auersperg instead of lords of Turjak).
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق