Medieval Worlds Comparative & Interdisciplinary Studies
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medieval worlds comparative & interdisciplinary studies No. 8/2018 medieval worlds comparative & interdisciplinary studies Volume 2018.8 Transcultural Contacts and Literary Exchanges medieval worlds comparative & interdisciplinary studies All rights reserved ISSN 2412-3196 Online Edition Media Owner: Institute for Medieval Research Copyright © 2018 by Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna Cover design, layout: Anneke Gerloff Cover image: A fold out page from the ›Iskandar Horoscope‹, London, Wellcome MS Persian 474 (used under CC BY 4.0 / modified). Austrian Academy of Sciences Press Dr. Ignaz Seipel Platz 2, 1010 Vienna, Austria Tel. +43-1-515 81/DW 3402-3406 Fax +43-1-515 81/DW 3400 hw.oeaw.ac.at, verlag.oeaw.ac.at Editors Walter Pohl, Austrian Academy of Sciences/University of Vienna Andre Gingrich, Austrian Academy of Sciences/University of Vienna Editorial Board Maximilian Diesenberger, Austrian Academy of Sciences Christian Gastgeber, Austrian Academy of Sciences Johann Heiss, Austrian Academy of Sciences Nina Mirnig, Austrian Academy of Sciences Claudia Rapp, Austrian Academy of Sciences/University of Vienna Helmut Reimitz, Princeton University Irene van Renswoude, Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands/ Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Pavlína Rychterová, Austrian Academy of Sciences Celine Wawruschka, Danube University Krems Veronika Wieser, Austrian Academy of Sciences International Advisory Board Glenn Bowman , University of Kent Sabrina Corbellini, University of Groningen Mayke de Jong, Utrecht University Nicola di Cosmo, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton Stefan Esders, Free University of Berlin Patrick Geary, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton John Haldon, Princeton University William C. Jordan, Princeton University Osamu Kano, Nagoya University Hugh Kennedy, SOAS, University of London Gábor Klaniczay, Central European University Elisabeth Lambourn, De Montfort University Leicester Eduardo Manzano, Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales (CSIC) Lars Boje Mortensen, University of Southern Denmark Marina Rustow, John Hopkins University Dittmar Schorkowitz, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Teresa Shawcross, Princeton University Naomi Standen, University of Birmingham John Tolan, University of Nantes Przemysław Urbańczyk, Polish Academy of Sciences Dan Varisco, University of Bonn Luo Xin, Peking University Journal Management Ingrid Hartl Homepage www.medievalworlds.net Table of Contents Editor’s Preface 2 Walter Pohl and Ingrid Hartl World Literature is Trans-Imperial: A Medieval and a Modern Approach 3 Christian Høgel The Global Eminent Life: Sixth-Century Collected Biographies from Gregory of Tours 22 to Huijiao of Jiaxiang Temple James T. Palmer The Aristotle of Pippin III. Greek Books Sent to the Frankish Court (ca. 758 AD) 42 Christian Gastgeber Biblical Elements and the ›Other‹ in the Chronicon regum Legionensium 66 Patrick S. Marschner »The messenger is the place of a man’s judgment«: 86 Diplomacy between Emperors and Caliphs in the Tenth Century Courtney Luckhardt The Geopolitics on the Silk Road: Resurveying the Relationship of the Western Türks 109 with Byzantium through Their Diplomatic Communications Li Qiang and Stefanos Kordosis Project reports Dynamics in Buddhist Transfer in Eastern Central Asia 6th-14th Centuries: A Project Report 126 BuddhistRoad Team Mobility, Empire and Cross-Cultural Contacts in Mongol Eurasia (MONGOL) 135 Michal Biran Greek into Arabic. Philosophical Concepts and Linguistic Bridges 155 Cristina D’Ancona, Gerhard Endress and Andrea Bozzi Writing the History of Aristotelian Logic During the Long Ninth Century 162 Christophe Erismann The THESIS Project 170 Monica Brinzei Origins of the Vernacular Mode: Medieval Theology, Politics and Religious Identities 179 Pavlína Rychterová eISSN-Nr. 2412-3196 DOI 10.1553/medievalworlds_no8_2018s1 medieval worlds • No. 8 • 2018 • 1 2 Editor’s Preface Walter Pohl and Ingrid Hartl Engaging in comparative history is a process which involves challenging one’s own research traditions, well established in decades of scholarly discussion, and at the same time facing those of other disciplines, equally deep-rooted. Our journal aims to promote forming inter- disciplinary connections and we are very happy to present such contributions to a global perspective in this issue. Medieval Worlds 8 follows a strong interest in recent submissions in dealing with transcultural and diplomatic contacts and with intellectual and literary ex- changes. In World Literature is Trans-Imperial, a new axis of comparison for ›trans-imperial‹ texts is explored. Literary concepts are viewed from a different comparative angle in The Global Eminent Life, where sixth-century biographical collections and their organisational contexts from different world regions are analysed. The contents and purpose of a list of Greek books at Pippin III’s court are critically re-examined in The Aristotle of Pippin III. Biblical and transcultural elements in an almost forgotten text from the twelfth-century Iberian Peninsu- la are presented in Biblical Elements and the ›Other‹ in the Chronicon regum Legionensium. In the later sixth century, a number of exceptional diplomatic exchanges between Turkic and Byzantine rulers took place. Embassies between the Muslim and Byzantine courts are also quite well documented in the tenth century. Both cases provide unusual insights into long- range imperial power politics and cultural encounters in early medieval Eurasia (The Geo- politics on the Silk Road, Diplomacy between Emperors and Caliphs in the Tenth Century). Medieval Worlds 8 thus focuses on connectivity, often between very distant macro-re- gions. A substantial number of project reports give a good overview of the variety of ap- proaches to issues of cultural translation and knowledge transfer in current ERC grant pro- jects. The coming issues will deal with the topics of the social impact of religious institutions and uses of the past in times of transition, and submissions are welcome. Readers of this journal may already be aware that from 2019, there will be another journal with a name very similar to ours, the ›Journal of Medieval Worlds‹ edited by the University of California Press. The similarity of the name is, perhaps, unfortunate, but we hope that readers will not confuse the two journals. We gather from the Californian initiative that our concept has worked well, and wish the new journal success. At a time in which ›The Global Turn‹ (the title of the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America) is intensifying interest in a wide-open research field on global comparison and connectivity in the medieval period, there will be enough potential for two journals focusing on this fascinating topic. In any case, we will maintain our open-access and no-fee policy. The support of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, its Press and its Institute for Medieval Research make this possible. Download figures well into the four-digit numbers show that the journal meets an increasing demand by authors and readers, even though we do not have the means for publicity that major presses have. Ingrid Hartl has now taken over as an executive editor of Medieval Worlds from Celine Wawruschka, to whom we owe thanks for having accompanied the journal through its initial phase. eISSN-Nr. 2412-3196 DOI 10.1553/medievalworlds_no8_2018s2 medieval worlds • No. 8 • 2018 • 2 3 World Literature is Trans-Imperial: A Medieval and a Modern Approach Christian Høgel* Various concepts guide discussions on global literature, not least ›transnational‹. The present text advocates, however, for the term trans-imperial, as offering a more correct definition of world literature, or global literature, both in pre-modern and modern times. Imperial spheres build up worlds of strong interconnections, and the languages they employ become privileged languages that may last beyond the time span of a given empire. These imperi- al spheres with their one central language therefore form the hardest borders for the dis- semination of texts, now and then. By being trans-imperial, texts therefore constitute the true global literature. In medieval times trans-imperial texts would comprise especially fable stories, holy texts, philosophy and science, and mirrors of princes. These were the texts most often carried from one imperial sphere, or rather imperial language, to another, through translations. This article, consequently, offers definitions of what constitutes an imperial language. Central to identifying and safeguarding a language and making it perform as an imperial language was the establishment of a grammar and/or a set of canonized texts de- fining the language, the actual use of it by an empire in running its administration, and the performance of the empire’s self-images through it. In many cases, secondary imperial lan- guages – like Greek in the Roman world or Persian in the Caliphate – would hold a lower but still privileged place in the empire’s life and communication. Many such secondary imperial languages could then subsequently rise to the status of imperial languages, as several vernac- ular languages later did from Latin. The text argues that these features, which are probably most clear-cut in a pre-modern context, also hold true in a modern context, and that what we normally refer to as successful national languages (English, French, Spanish, Russian, etc.) were, from early on, imperial rather than national languages, and that their literature, in being global, was