Johannes Wierix after Marten van Cleve, 1568:
A Pilgrim Tells A Woman Stories, no. 7 of the series „Flemish Proverbs“,
Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich, D 6318, Public Domain Mark 1.0.

 

 

10^th Interdisciplinary Summer Course

Knowledge Organization in the Middle Ages: The Universitas

Kompetenzzentrum Zürcher Mediävistik

August 30 to Sept 3, 2021

email agoeing@fas.harvard.edu for more information

 

 

 

Building on the reference book "Information: A Historical Companion" (2021)[1], this course is looking at the topic of "Knowledge Organization in the Middle Ages: The Universitas" from an information-historical point of view, which we would like to outline below. Briefly about the term: Outside the context of the second half of the 20^th and beginning of the 21^st century, we understand information very broadly as an etic (externally applied) reference term to describe and analyze a group of concepts, formats, objects, practices and processes. Information is understood here as a meaningful message that is passed on by means of various media, with the media and their technological systems of transmission quite often playing a prominent role in the interpretation of the message.

 

Taking into account a variety of different religious and cultural areas of the medieval world, we have structured the five days of the summer course around the following six categories. This categorization is inspired by the writings of Elias Muhanna, Associate Professor for Comparative Literature with a focus on Classical Arabic Literature and Islamic Intellectual History, Brown University, especially his award-winning book The World in a Book: al-Nuwayri and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition (Princeton University Press, 2018) and his chapter entitled "Realms of Information in the Medieval Islamic World" in handbook (Princeton University Press, 2021).

 

1. Orality, written exchanges, and the question how information circulates

This topic relates to the transmission of religion and belief in different religions. Religious institutions and their officials played an important role in the passing on of news, values, information, behavioral patterns and the like down to the modern age. What are the formats and genres of oral information transmission, what is their scope? What changed in the role of the pastor and teacher and what changed in the community when paper became available in greater quantities and cheaper? It makes sense to discuss ways of conveying information, both within one community, and from an inter-regional perspective, taking into account pilgrimage and trade routes.

 

2. School objectives and the classification of teaching disciplines

Here we are thinking primarily of the theory and practice of learning, then the diversification of the canon to form the artes liberales, and also the institutional and extra-institutional practice of training (education and self-education) for young people. The universitas studiorum was one of these paths, similar to the madrasa in the Islamic world. This topic also includes the question of the written form and what effect the text materials (papyrus, parchment, paper, textile) had on the experience of teaching and learning.

 

3. Compendia

Encyclopedias, but also chronicles and lists, represent some of the many methods of  summarizing authoritative information into units of knowledge. Topics in this categoy include the Summaries of the Alexandrians and the history of their transmission over several centuries, languages and regions; the role of Isidore of Seville's etymologies in preserving writings from late antiquity; and the history of the collections of dates and events in prose form, that have been taken to represent history since late antiquity. It would be important to place the European culture of compendia in a global context by considering for example Asian and Islamic cultures of summarizing.

 

4. Visualizations, translations, and passages of knowledge

How did authors transfer what they thought of as true from one genre or doctrine into other genres or areas of social conduct? Ideas for this topic include translations into and from the vernacular, sermons delivered orally and recorded on paper, all forms of note taking, short hand and methods of encrypting and deciphering. Also, the broad area of visualization of knowledge is part of this topic.

 

5. Libraries, archives, bureaucracy

This topic analyzes the nature and origins of the various institutions that collected textual and visual information, categorized it and made it findable for posterity, from monastery libraries to the first government archives. This includes introducing the professions and practices associated with these organizations, such as the scribe for example.

 

6. Domains of information generation and dissemination

This topic is primarily dedicated to the institutions in medieval society that generated, disseminated, but also managed information of a certain kind, that is general knowledge believed to be true. They included not only the universities and their equivalents in the non-Christian regions or the collections as mentioned above, but also hospitals for the welfare of the poor and the healing of sick people and courts of justice where sentences for offenses were discussed and determined.

 

The summer course is a block course and is aimed at advanced students and doctoral students from all disciplines. The number of participants is limited to 20 people. The organizers ask students to read selected chapters and articles sent out a couple of weeks before the course begins. In addition to individual preparation, we expect active participation in class discussions. In the case students want the course to be credited (3 ECTS credits), we expect a short paper presentation.

Since the summer course takes place outside the regular semester, the booking is made centrally after the registrations have been received.

 

 

 

 

Session Topics

 

• Anja-Silvia Göing (UZH/Harvard, History of Humanism and Higher Education): Institutions, Networks, and the Creation of Academic Information and Knowledge (Introductory Session)

 

• Kathryne Beebe (University of North Texas, Medieval History): Orality, Religion and Circulation of Information: Pilgrimage and Travel

 

• Marc Winter (UZH: Sinology): Teaching Confucius: Higher Education in China

 

• Andreas Sohn (Sorbonne, Paris, Medieval History): Benedictine Teachers and the Monastery Library of Admont

 

• Inga Mai Groote (UZH, Musicology): The Circulation of Musical Manuscripts: Working Techniques and Textual Formats

 

• Iolanda Ventura (University of Bologna, Medieval Studies): Medical Compendia in and outside the Late Medieval Classroom

 

• Paul Michel (UZH, German Studies): Visualizations of Abstract Concepts

 

• Urs Leu (ZB Zürich, Director of Rare Books): Storage: Early Libraries and Archives

 

• Henrike Gaetjens (UZH, German Studies), Anja-Silvia Göing (UZH/Harvard), Eveline Szarka (UZH, History): Domains of Information Generation and Dissemination (Concluding Session)

 

 

 

Selected Literature

 

Beebe, Kathryne. Pilgrim and Preacher: The Audiences and Observant Spirituality of Friar Felix Fabri (1437/8-1502). Oxford Historical Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Behringer, Wolfgang. “Communications Revolutions: A Historiographical Concept,” translated by Richard Deveson, German History 24, no. 3 (2006), 333–74.

Berkey, Jonathan P. The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo: A Social History of Islamic Education, 1992.

Bethencourt, Francisco, and Florike Egmond, eds. Correspondence and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400–1700, 2007.

Blair, Ann. Information in Early Modern Europe, in: Blair, Ann, Duguid, Paul, Goeing, Anja, Grafton, Anthony, eds. Information: A Historical Companion, 2021, 61-85.

Blair, Ann. Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age, 2010.

Blair, Ann. “Managing Information,” in Oxford Illustrated History of the Book, edited by James Raven, 2020.

Bloom, Jonathan. Paper before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World, 2001.

Brentjes, Sonja. “Teaching the Mathematical Sciences in Islamic Societies: Eighth–Seventeenth Centuries,” in Handbook on the History of Mathematics Education, edited by A. Karp and G. Schubring, 2014, 85–108.

Brokaw, Cynthia J., and Kai-Wing Chow, eds., Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China, 2005.

Brun, Peter, Schrift und politisches Handeln : eine "zugeschriebene" Geschichte des Aargaus 1415-1425, 2006.

Buringh, Eltjo. Medieval Manuscript Production in the Latin West, 2011.

Dunphy, Graeme. "Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle Online". Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle Online. (updated 2016). <https://brill.com/view/db/emco>. Web. 12 Jul. 2020.

Dyson, Matthew, and Ibbetson, David. Law and Legal Process, 2013.

Fried, Johannes, Die Aktualität des Mittelalters: Gegen die Überheblichkeit unserer Wissensgesellschaft, 3^rd ed. 2003.

Gardt, Andreas, Mireille Schnyder, Jürgen Wolf, Hgg.,  Buchkultur und Wissensvermittlung im Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Berlin 2011.

Goeing, Anja. Teaching, in: Blair, Ann, Duguid, Paul, Goeing, Anja, Grafton, Anthony: Information: A Historical Companion, 2021, 800-805.

Ghobrial, John Paul, Networks and the Making of a Connected World in the Sixteenth Century , in Blair, Ann, Duguid, Paul, Goeing, Anja, Grafton, Anthony: Information: A Historical Companion, 2021, 86-103.

Grafton, Anthony. Premodern Regimes and Practices, in: Blair, Ann, Duguid, Paul, Goeing, Anja, Grafton, Anthony: Information: A Historical Companion, 2021, 3-20.

Grafton, Anthony and Megan Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius and the Library of Caesarea, 2006.

Hansen, Valerie. The Silk Road: A New History with Documents, 2017.

Head, Randolph. Records, Secretaries, and the European Information State, circa 1400–1700, in: Blair, Ann, Duguid, Paul, Goeing, Anja, Grafton, Anthony: Information: A Historical Companion, 2021, 104-127.

Hirschler, Konrad. “From Archive to Archival Practices: Rethinking the Preservation of Mamluk Administrative Documents,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 136, no. 1 (2016): 1–28.

Hobbins, Daniel. Authorship and Publicity before Print: Jean Gerson and the Transformation of Late Medieval Learning, 2009.

Horden, Peregrine. Cultures of Healing: Medieval and after: Collected Studies, 2019.

Hülsen-Esch, Andrea von. Gelehrte im Bild: Repräsentation, Darstellung und Wahrnehmung einer sozialen Gruppe im Mittelalter, 2006.

Jāsim Mūsawī, Muḥsin. The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction, 2015.

Kasten, Ingrid, und Laura Auteri, Hgg. Transkulturalität und Translation. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2017.

Koziol, Geoffrey. The Politics of Memory and Identity in Carolingian Royal Diplomas: The West Frankish Kingdom (840-987), 2012.

Kupfer, Marcia, Adam S. Cohen and J. H. Chajes,eds. The Visualization of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Studies in the Visual Cultures of the Middle Ages, vol. 16), Turnhout: Brepols, 2020.

Lynch, Jack. You Could Look It Up, 2016.

Makleff, Ron. "Sovereignty and Silence: The Creation of a Myth of Archival Destruction, Liège, 1408,” Archival Journal, 2017.

Michel, Paul, ed. Allgemeinwissen und Gesellschaft: Akten des internationalen Kongresses über Wissenstransfer und enzyklopädische Ordnungssysteme, vom 18. bis 21. September 2003 in Prangins. Shaker Verlag, 2007.

Michel, Paul. “Batrachotheologia : Über Frösche und Wunder bei Johann Jakob Scheuchzer.” Librarium: Zeitschrift der Schweizerischen Bibliophilen-Gesellschaft= Revue de la Société Suisse des Bibliophiles, 3358-3, 0024-2152, 39, 1996, 2, 129-145.

Michel, Paul. “Habent sua fata picturae : Rezyklierte Bilder in Büchern des 16. Jahrhunderts.” Librarium: Zeitschrift der Schweizerischen Bibliophilen-Gesellschaft= Revue de la Société Suisse des Bibliophiles, 3358-3, 0024-2152, 62, 2019, 1, 26-39.

Muhanna, Elias. "Realms of Information in the Medieval Islamic World" in Blair, Ann, Duguid, Paul, Goeing, Anja, Grafton, Anthony: Information: A Historical Companion, 2021, 21-37.

Muhanna, Elias. The World in a Book: Al-Nuwayrī and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition, 2018.

Müller, Lothar. White Magic: The Age of Paper, translated by Jessica Spengler, 2014.

Noonan, F. Thomas. The Road to Jerusalem : Pilgrimage and Travel in the Age of Discovery. Material Texts. Philadelphia : [Washington, D.C.]: University of Pennsylvania Press ; in Association with the Library of Congress, 2007.

Paravicini Bagliani, Agostino. Medicina e scienze della natura alla corte dei papi nel Duecento, 1991.

Rexroth, Frank, ed. Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte der Gelehrten im späten Mittelalter, 2010.

Ridder-Symoens, Hilde de, ed. Universities in the Middle Ages, 1992.

Roest, Bert. A History of Franciscan Education (c. 1210–1517), 2000.

Rouse, Mary, and Richard Rouse. Manuscripts and their Makers: Commercial Book Producers in Medieval Paris, 1200–1500, 2000.

Rück, Peter. “Die Ordnung der herzoglich savoyischen Archive unter Amadeus VIII. (1398–1451),” Archivalische Zeitschrift 67 (1971): 11–101.

Schnyder, Mireille. Über Grenzen. Narrative des Mittelalters. In: Transkulturalität und Translation. Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters im europäischen Kontext. Hg. von Ingrid Kasten und Laura Auteri. Berlin 2017, 71-83.

Sohn, Andreas (ed.). Benediktiner als Historiker. Bochum: Winkler, 2016 (Aufbrüche. Interkulturelle Perspektiven auf Geschichte, Politik und Religion, vol. 5).

Sohn, Andreas. Colleges and the University of Paris, Professors and Students, Religion and Politics: Some Remarks on the History of Europe in the Late Middle Ages (Thirteenth to Fifteenth Centuries), in: Anja-Silvia Goeing, Glyn Parry, and Mordechai Feingold, eds., Early Modern Universities: Networks of Higher Learning, 2021, 17-42.

Sohn, Andreas. “Fons limpidus scientiarum: Zur Rolle und Bedeutung der Universität Paris für die Lehrentwicklung der Theologie im mittelalterlichen Europa,” in Glaube(n) im Disput: Neuere Forschungen zu den altgläubigen Kontroversisten des Reformationszeitalters, ed. Karl-Heinz Braun, Wilbirgis Klaiber, and Christoph Moos, 2020, 123–42.

Sohn, Andreas. and Jacques Verger, ed., Die universitären Kollegien im Europa des Mittelalters und der Renaissance/Les collèges universitaires en Europe au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance, 2011.

Teuscher, Simon. Lords’ Rights and Peasant Stories: Writing and the Formation of Tradition in the Later Middle Ages, 2012.

Ventura, Iolanda. Typologies and Pharmaceutical Markets: The Reception of Pseudo-Mesue’s Schriftencorpus in Print, in: Goeing, Anja-Silvia, Parry, Glyn, Feingold, Mordechai, eds., Early Modern Universities: Networks of Higher Learning, 2021, 349-370.

Wallis, Faith. Medieval Medicine, 2010.

Weerdt, Hilde de. Information, Territory, and Networks: The Crisis and Maintenance of Empire in Song China, 2015.

Winter, Marc. Sorge Um Den Rechten Weg Des Konfuzianismus : Fang Dongshus Kritik an Dai Zhen Und Der Hanxue. Worlds of East Asia ; v. 24. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2016.

Ziegler, Tiffany A. Medieval Healthcare and the Rise of Charitable Institutions, 2018.

Zwierlein, Cornel, ed. The Dark Side of Knowledge: Histories of Ignorance, 1400 to 1800, 2016.