scholarly journals ROYAL POWER SACRALIZATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND EARLY MODERN AGE AS STUDIED BY DOMESTIC HISTORIANS IN XX – EARLY XXI CENTURY

Author(s):  
E. N. Deniskevich

The author analyzes the main stages of the research process conducted by domestic historians in the sphere of the European  rulers’ power sacralization in the Middle Ages and early Modern Age.  The author estimates the level of interest of Soviet and Russian  specialists for the issue, determines the coherence between this  issue actualization, formation of new scientific approaches and  objective research conditions, as well as prevailing methods,  concepts and theories of historic science. It is indicated that study  methods have transformed due to a change of conjuncture and  possibility to use West-European experience, where socio-cultural  history has been developed by the use of postmodern trends,  anthropology data and interdisciplinary approaches for historic past.  The author estimates the contribution of contemporary Russian  medievalists into power sacralization studies and describes the most  significant domestic specialists in the field, their methods and works. 

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 294-295
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen

This volume treats one of the worst crimes people can commit, murder, as it was perceived and evaluated in the Middle Ages and the early modern age. Originally conceived in 2013, the project then grew out of a number of scholarly events organized by Larissa Tracy. While much work has already been done on violence in the Middle Ages, murder in its specific legal and cultural connotations certainly deserves particular and further attention, although crime and punishment have also been addressed even quite recently (Crime and Punishment in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age, ed. A. Classen and Connie Scarborough, 2012; here not consulted). Crime constitutes a legal case, and should be studied first of all through the lens of legal history, which is the case here in the first section of papers. But it remains unclear how the entire volume really intends to embed the deed within the legal discourse, although Tracy refers to some major law books (leaving out others, again, such as Eike von Repgow’s famous Sachsenspiegel, ca. 1225/1230). The discourse on crime at large, and on murder in specific allows us to understand any society throughout time because murder has been a universal phenomenon. Would it hence make sense to quote Michel Foucault (Discipline and Punish, here in the trans. by Alan Sheridan, 1995), who had only a vague idea about the Middle Ages and claimed that the legal system as we know it today emerged only in the early modern age (6)? Tracy uses him as a fig <?page nr="295"?>leaf and quickly turns away from him because early medieval societies knew already of extensive legal codes, some of which are here taken into consideration by individual contributors.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document