Giorgia Vocino | Université de Namur (University of Namur) (original) (raw)

Papers by Giorgia Vocino

Medieval Worlds, 2022

For biographical collections to form a coherent whole, literary choices had to be made and writin... more For biographical collections to form a coherent whole, literary choices had to be made and writing strategies applied to the individual segments (lives) of what was conceived as an overarching narrative or a textual ensemble. In this chapter we analyse the genres, models and traditions upon which authors, compilers and editors relied to assert the authority of the text and create a product meeting the expectations, tastes and textual practices of the community within which and for whom the biographical collection was written. We furthermore explore authoriality to establish the ways in which an author's opinions, social entanglement and participation in scholarly networks contributed to shaping not only the content but also the style of his or her work. The comparative analysis of the written texts studied in this volume shows that authors also made consistent use of strategies of persuasion. These constituted powerful tools to build and convey a sense of trustworthiness encompassing both texts and authors: modesty (topos humilitatis) and self-confidence were, for example, put on show to strengthen the authority of a text, while prophecy provided a means to boost the legitimacy of the institution, the dynasty or the community celebrated by the biographical collection. Tropes and rhetorical devices can be identified in texts written in distant cultural regions-from Carolingian Brittany to the 14th-century Tibetan Plateau-as they allowed authors and compilers to showcase their learning and make sure to arouse and keep their audience's attention. Focusing on writing strategies thus, surprisingly, reveals an unexpected degree of literary proximity between texts composed across Medieval Eurasia.

Rethinking the Carolingian reforms, 2023

The chapter challenges the idea that a reform of education was ever designed at the Carolingian c... more The chapter challenges the idea that a reform of education was ever designed at the Carolingian court and broadcasted to every school of the realm. It engages with the most influential scholar under Charlemagne’s rule, Alcuin, and investigates the impact of his didactic treatises on ninth-century schools. Manuscript evidence demonstrates that Alcuin did not conceive a coherent didactic programme and that his treatises on the arts of speech were not meant to be adopted in every learning context. Doubtlessly they circulated quickly, particularly during the ninth century, but not everywhere. Two case studies illustrate the patterns of transmission of Alcuin’s treatises in Carolingian Italy, both in the ninth and in the tenth century, and in East Francia. These show that the spread of Alcuin’s pedagogy was not straightforward and can neither be explained according to a top-down nor to a centre-periphery dissemination model. Alcuin’s position at court and his public authority were ultimately less relevant for the impact of both his works and his teaching methods than the personal networks he created and cultivated in his lifetime. Particular attention is paid to the following manuscripts: Munich, BSB, Clm 6407; Wolfenbüttel. HAB, 50 and 77 Weiss.; Vatican City, BAV, Vat. Lat. 11506.

Medieval Worlds - Medieval Biographical Collections: Perspectives from Buddhist, Christian and Islamic Worlds, 2022

In the decades around 1000, an anonymous cleric at Milan Cathedral wrote a booklet on the history... more In the decades around 1000, an anonymous cleric at Milan Cathedral wrote a booklet on the history of his city which he built as a collection gathering, in chronological order, the Lives of the local bishops. The unfinished work not only testifies to the learning and culture of the author but also to the historical relevance of an ambitious text commissioned to support the political claims and the legitimacy of the Milanese church in its quest for primacy in the kingdom of Italy. This chapter explores the refined style of the author and the ways in which he constructed a coherent and cohesive narrative by sewing together individual biographies. The medieval reception of this biographical collection also shows the ways in which the text was repurposed to fulfil different functions and multiple goals, both within and beyond the city of Milan. Finally, this study analyses the text in the light of two interpretative concepts borrowed from the field of social anthropology. De situ clearly appealed to the literary tastes of the scholars trained in the cathedral school, thus addressing an audience shaped as a specific »community of learning«. More generally, the collection contributed to nourishing the sense of identity of the clergy and the people of Milan, that is a »textual community« which, through the acts of reading and listening to the text, felt it belonged to that glorious history and expected to see its reflection in the present.

Transformations of Romanness, 2018

Actum Ticini. Ricerche sull'Alto Medioevo pavese, sous la direction de L.C. Schiavi et G. Angelini, Franco Angeli, Milan, 2021., 2021

Le médiévisme érudit en France de la Révolution au Second Empire, 2021

Les communautés menacées au Haut Moyen Âge (vie-xie siècles), 2021

A thriving Roman municipium, Modena was one of the cities that shrank in the transition from late... more A thriving Roman municipium, Modena was one of the cities that shrank in the transition from late antiquity to the Middle Ages: wars and political turmoil aggravated by climatic, demographic, economic and social crisis led to urban reconfiguration. A town in ruins and under threat: thus is Modena remembered in the earliest texts, and thus did literary sources continue to style the city in the following centuries. However, both archaeological and documentary evidence show the revitalisation of the urban setting and the increasing control of the town over the surrounding countryside. The analysis of such a diverse corpus of sources allows us to gauge the distance between the real city recently unearthed by archaeologists, the city described in charters and the city staged in literary texts. This highlights the deliberate construction of a discourse on and about Modena that served the affirmation of episcopal authority in times in which power was progressively taking on a territorial character. Sublimating fears and perceived threats, the anonymous clerics working for the local bishop gave shape to the hagiographic legend of Geminianus, patron saint and protector of Modena against its enemies. The cult thus offered to the local community helped solidify its social cohesion and further linked its identity to the episcopal church as the Carolingian political construction disarticulated and reconfigured itself.

After Charlemagne Carolingian Italy and its Rulers, 2020

The role played by Lombard intellectuals in the early production of Charlemagne’s court is well k... more The role played by Lombard intellectuals in the early production of Charlemagne’s court is well known: the grammarian Peter of Pisa, the theologian Paulinus of Aquileia and the historian Paul the Deacon found favour with the Frankish king thanks to their literary talents. These men were the paragons of a Lombard palace culture and education rooted in the study of the Roman and late antique poets and in the mastery of the arts of speech. The analysis of the poems produced by Lombard scholars attending the Carolingian court and the examination of school miscellanies produced in late eighth- and ninth-century Italy highlight the distinctiveness of a culture in which epideictic literature and Ciceronian rhetoric featured prominently. This unveils the survival of an advanced education, the origins of which can be traced back to late antiquity and, more importantly, such a study brings out continuities in the literary culture of early medieval Italy. Here, a rhetorically elaborated and politically engaged production – written and oral – continued to be favoured in the centres and among the elites more closely connected to the court, thus showing that no cultural break was brought about by Charlemagne’s conquest of the Lombard kingdom.

W. Pezé (ed.), Knowledge and Culture in Times of Threat. The Fall of the Carolingian Empire (ca. 900), 2020

Using and Not Using the Past after the Carolingian Empire, 2019

The earliest migration during the decades around the year 900 was directed towards Francia. The n... more The earliest migration during the decades around the year 900 was directed towards Francia. The name Gunzo is indeed well attested in the Milanese region in the ninth and tenth centuries, when we find several homonyms mentioned in documentary sources. Among them a priest redacting a charter for Archbishop Walpert of Milan in July 963 is a particularly interesting figure. By the early eleventh century, the Italian scholastic system had been restructured to offer a tailored education for students hoping for a future position in the administration of the empire. Post-Carolingian Europe might have been shaken by numerous political crises and endured violent military confrontations, but these did not affect the circulation of scholars and books before and after the so-called ‘Ottonian Renaissance’. The intellectual profile of the Italian masters recruited at court shows the fields in which they excelled and the knowledge they could offer to beat the competition.

Mélanges de l’École française de Rome - Moyen Âge, 2019

This article focuses on a decree prohibiting imperial or royal judges from marrying that was copi... more This article focuses on a decree prohibiting imperial or royal judges from marrying that was copied around the year 1000 into a ninth-century manuscript of canon law now in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence (Edili 82). The article sets the decree in the context of Ottonian legislation in Italy, and of early medieval legislation more generally, and provides a detailed investigation of the manuscript’s contents and likely provenance. It argues that the decree should be read as new evidence for the aspiration of the late Ottonian court’s clerical elites to integrate increasingly autonomous Italian legal professionals into the imperial reforming programme. A critical edition of the decree is provided as an appendix.

Corpus Christianorum Hagiographies : Histoire internationale de la littérature hagiographique latine et vernaculaire en Occident des origines à 1550. International History of the Latin and Vernacular Hagiographical Literature in the West from its Origins to 1550 (CCHAG 7)

PDF with the table of contents (pre-proofs version). Reference to published article: G. Voc... more PDF with the table of contents
(pre-proofs version).

Reference to published article:
G. Vocino, L’agiografia dell’Italia Centrale (750-950), in M. Goullet (ed.), Hagiographies: Histoire internationale de la littérature hagiographique latine et vernaculaire en Occident des origines à 1550, vol. VII, Brepols, Turnhout, 2018, pp. 95-268.

Walter Pohl, Clemens Gantner, Cinzia Grifoni, Marianne Pollheimer-Mohaupt (eds.), Transformations of Romanness: Early Medieval Regions and Identities, De Gruyter, Berlin-Boston, 2018

Ever since its foundation, the city of Rome has been the inescapable centre of gravity in the his... more Ever since its foundation, the city of Rome has been the inescapable centre of gravity in the history of Central Italy. The hagiographic sources produced in the duchy of Spoleto reflect the region's close proximity to the capital of the empire and, later on, the head of the western Church. In the mind of the hagiographers writing in early medieval central Italy, Rome was indeed eternal. But the city, along with its institutions and inhabitants, never stopped to metamorphose under their eyes. The choice of a particular shade of Romanness might have been influenced by the political circumstances of the present, but the eternal city with its cultural world and history could meet almost every need.

Models for bishops were established from the very beginning of Christianity and late antique hagi... more Models for bishops were established from the very beginning of Christianity and late antique hagiography played a prominent role in their development. The lives of Sts Martin, Hilary, Ambrose and Augustine helped in shaping the portrait of the ideal bishop while other literary documents also contributed to the definition of episcopal authority and action – for instance homilies, funeral orations and letters in which hagiographical and biblical exempla also played an important part. While martyrdom was no longer an option, the model of the holy confessor was moving to the front scene.
The prominent role of bishops is one of the main features of the Carolingian polity, but how and along which lines did these leading men conceive their own authority and sphere of influence?
Building on the latest works by Mayke de Jong on episcopal authority and the interplay between literary representation and political action, this article investigates the different facets of episcopal identity as they are conveyed in literary and documentary sources written in the kingdom of Italy between the late eighth and ninth century. For this period sources are particularly abundant and varied to allow a comparison with other areas of the empire as well as with pre-Carolingian times.

The manuscript preserved today in Bern at the Burgerbibliothek, MS 363 opens a window into the Ca... more The manuscript preserved today in Bern at the Burgerbibliothek, MS 363
opens a window into the Carolingian classroom and into the scholarly experience of one of its many anonymous attendants. Bern 363 is a miscellany compiled in the second half of the ninth century and contains an intricate and at times obscure ensemble of marginalia.
After a brief presentation of the manuscript and its content, the article provides a classification of the different typologies and functions of its marginalia. Secondly, it discusses the process of the accumulation and incorporation of distinct layers of annotations. The third section considers the personal input of the Bern master in the light of a specific set of marginal notes and discusses the nature and organisation of learning reflected by the manuscript. The historical and intellectual profile of the individual behind the production of Bern 363 is finally delineated through the study of his participation in one of the most heated and popular debates of his time.

Study and critical edition of the eighth-century Hymn dedicated to Sts Syrus and Iventius, founde... more Study and critical edition of the eighth-century Hymn dedicated to Sts Syrus and Iventius, founders and early bishops of the Church of Pavia. The hymn survives today only in a late Carolingian manuscript from Saint Gall (Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek 566) and represents a crucial testimony of the first development of the hagiographic legend of the patron saints of Pavia in the Lombard period.

Compétition et sacré au haut Moyen Âge : entre médiation et exclusion, Jul 2015

The Carolingian Life of Ambrose (De vita et meritis sancti Ambrosii) survives in only one manuscr... more The Carolingian Life of Ambrose (De vita et meritis sancti Ambrosii) survives in only one manuscript from St. Gall dated to the late ninth century (Stiftsbibl. 569). This long and complicated hagiographic text (more than 95 pages in the manuscript) is clearly unsuited for liturgical practices. It was written especially for a learned Milanese archbishop capable of decrypting and appreciating an extremely skilled and elaborate compilation. The writing combines different sources (classics, patristics, hagiography, ecclesiastical history, exegesis) to draw a portrait of the patron saint of Milan and father of the Church. My paper shall focus on the use of these sources – above all the Historia Tripartita and Ambrose’s political letters – showing to what extent the anonymous compiler was aware of the contemporary political and ecclesiastical debates about the role of bishops and rulers in a Christian society. He also shared the literary tastes and narrative expedients of the most eminent Carolingian scholars of the time (Hincmar, Paschasius Radbertus, Sedulius Scottus). The last section of my paper shall deal with the use of contemporary textual witnesses as well as late antique and early medieval hagiography highlighting the prestige and fame of Ambrose: the Milanese father is indeed depicted as being at the pinnacle of an illustrious gathering comprising the most prestigious late antique saints as well as biblical heroes.

Medieval Worlds, 2022

Rethinking the Carolingian reforms, 2023

Medieval Worlds - Medieval Biographical Collections: Perspectives from Buddhist, Christian and Islamic Worlds, 2022

Transformations of Romanness, 2018

Actum Ticini. Ricerche sull'Alto Medioevo pavese, sous la direction de L.C. Schiavi et G. Angelini, Franco Angeli, Milan, 2021., 2021

Le médiévisme érudit en France de la Révolution au Second Empire, 2021

Les communautés menacées au Haut Moyen Âge (vie-xie siècles), 2021

After Charlemagne Carolingian Italy and its Rulers, 2020

W. Pezé (ed.), Knowledge and Culture in Times of Threat. The Fall of the Carolingian Empire (ca. 900), 2020

Using and Not Using the Past after the Carolingian Empire, 2019

Mélanges de l’École française de Rome - Moyen Âge, 2019

PDF with the table of contents (pre-proofs version). Reference to published article: G. Voc... more PDF with the table of contents
(pre-proofs version).

Walter Pohl, Clemens Gantner, Cinzia Grifoni, Marianne Pollheimer-Mohaupt (eds.), Transformations of Romanness: Early Medieval Regions and Identities, De Gruyter, Berlin-Boston, 2018

Compétition et sacré au haut Moyen Âge : entre médiation et exclusion, Jul 2015

To what extent have our current notions of reform and correctio been shaped by the secondary lite... more To what extent have our current notions of reform and correctio been shaped by the secondary literature on the subject?

To what extent do contemporary sources reflect the terminology being used in modern historiography, and vice versa?

To what extent do ideas about early medieval states, politics, histor(iograph)y etc. impinge on our idea of "reform" at the time?

This workshop hopes to take a fresh look at Carolingian correctio starting from these three issues, since they have strongly influenced, if not determined, the discussion about "reforms" over the past decades.

Medieval learning has often been judged as lacking originality: it has been dismissed as a limite... more Medieval learning has often been judged as lacking originality: it has been dismissed as a limited canon of classical and Christian authorities handed down by medieval authors and scribes whose intellectual achievements did not go beyond the rather stiff and pedestrian reproduction of older knowledge and wisdom. Recent and current research focusing on manuscript evidence, however, has demonstrated that the originality of medieval authors and schools consisted in the ways in which ‘old texts’ were reshaped (in the various ways that fall under the category of réécriture), brought together and updated (with annotations, glosses, commentaries) to serve evolving purposes and needs. Earlier texts were thus adjusted and reshuffled to offer new products (compilations, books) fitting the demands of the various medieval audiences (religious, lay, scholastic, female communities, etc.).
The products of these writing and compilatory strategies are the focus of this workshop. Authorial vademecums, scholastic miscellanies, liturgical and canon law collections are but a few of the many fields in which we can appreciate the sophistication of medieval learning. Moreover, medieval miscellanies defy the sharp taxonomy of the typologies des sources inherited from nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship and urge us to rethink medieval learning as a much more polyhedric, permeable, informal and creative intellectual achievement.

Mastering Knowledge and Power. Bishops, Schools and Political Engagement in Early Medieval Europe... more Mastering Knowledge and Power. Bishops, Schools and Political Engagement in Early Medieval Europe

The connection between culture and political influence is the primary area of interest we would like to investigate in our sessions at the IMC 2016. Our attention shall therefore focus on the schools and centres of learning where bishops acquired the knowledge and the tools necessary for the performance of their duties and the wielding of their authority. Bishops had often been teachers before taking up their office and “education” – both in a restricted and wider sense – often remained a primary area of interest after their episcopal election. The education bishops received before reaching the top of the church hierarchy, their personal involvement in teaching and the impact their learning and didactic experience had on their political actions are three intertwined aspects we shall like to explore.
The main question we would like to address is the following: how was the education and learning of bishops actualised in their writings – in the form of authorial works as well as commentaries, glosses and annotations in margin of other texts – and, more generally, in their pastoral and political discourse and activities?

archat.hypotheses.org, 2019

Public Disability History, 2019