ANNUAL OF MEDIEVAL STUDIES AT THE CEU 1995-1996 Edited by Renata Mikolajczyk and Marina Rossig—Miladinov CEU 4 A V Central European University Budapest Department of Medieval Studies All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the publishers. Department of Medieval Studies Central European University H-1051 Budapest, Nádor u. 9., Hungary © Central European University, 1997 Printed in Hungary TABLE OF CONTENTS Editors' Preface 5 I. Report of the Year Medieval Studies in Central Europe and at the CEU 9 The Fourth Year of Medieval Studies at the CEU 13 Activities/Events in 1995/96 22 Academic Excursions 25 Calendar of the Academic Year 1995/96 28 M.A. Class of 1996 31 Abstracts of the M.A. Theses 37 The Ph.D. Program 66 Resident Faculty: Recent Publications, Papers Read at Conferences, Awards in 1995/96 78 Reports of the Research Projects 86 1. Visual Resources of Medieval East-Central Europe 86 2. Women and Power in Medieval East-Central Europe 99 3. Décréta Regni Mediaevalis Hungáriáé 100 4. Medieval Eastern Europe: an Encyclopedia 101 Summer University, July 1 - 26,1996 102 International Conferences Heremitae, monachi,jr aires. Pannonhalma, March 21-23,1996 106 Abstracts 109 The Year 1000 in Europe. CEU Budapest, 17-21 June, 1996 127 Abstracts 130 Aron Gurevich in Budapest 148 II. Alumni Directory 151 EDITORS7 PREFACE Lectori salutem! It is obvious that this third volume of the Annual is slimmer than the pre­ ceding two have been. We changed the format of the yearbook by eliminating the M.A. thesis chapters or seminar papers. While their preparation for pub­ lication would have taken more time and energy than we could afford, we felt, more importantly, that those papers worth publishing would reach a wider readership if printed in professional journals or edited volumes. We encouraged our best students to submit their papers for publication there and several of them have done so already. This is the reason for our more succint yearbook, which will be the standard for future years. On the other hand, we included abstracts of papers read at the workshops and conferences organized by the department during the academic year. As we intend to make the annual interdisciplinary workshop an on-going tradi­ tion and our research projects will usually be connected with workshops and conferences, such abstracts will become a regular feature of future Annuals. Finally, as the years go on, our Alumni Directory will increase. The con­ tents of the directory will also be enriched by listing the scholarly activities of our ex-students. We are grateful to all those alumni who kept us posted about their professional progress, and we request all former CEU medievalists to do the same in the future. Parti. Report of the Year MEDIEVAL STUDIES IN CENTRAL EUROPE AND AT THE CEU Gábor Klaniczay Many of the heated, sometimes murderous, nationalist, political debates which divide Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in the present have their origins in the Middle Ages. Without studying the ethno- genesis of the peoples inhabiting this region, and without assessing the medieval interactions between Latin Christianity, Orthodox Christianity, and the Muslim world, one can hardly understand the essence of, let alone find solutions to, the present crises. The significance of national pasts, be they real or legendary, for collective self-perception and self-consciousness in the region is proverbial. This situation helps to explain both the ideological importance attributed to medieval studies and much of the manipulation and distortion exerted by various regimes on the discipline since the early 19th century, when nationa­ list ideologies became an important factor in the region. This is not the place to engage in a detailed discussion of these ideological contortions or those based on the Marxist methodology of historical analysis, which followed in the 20th century. But it is worth mentioning that while nationalism and Marxism each tended to produce biased historical analysis in general, their negative effect on medieval studies seems to have been particularly intense: it was here that some of the nationalist myths were expressed in the most absurd manner, here that a younger generation was furthest removed from historiography's most important starting point, the critical study of documentary evidence. Medieval studies was also subjected to another kind of disadvantage beyond the ideological sphere. Mainly through neglect, archival resources and historical monuments tended to deteriorate under communism. Thus classical scholarship fared worse than it should have, its experts left margi­ nalized and devoid of possibilities to educate a younger generation to assume their tasks. While a few outstanding older scholars continued working under these difficult conditions, another group converted to Marxism and con­ firmed their position by paying tribute to ideological commonplaces. But the essence of the situation remained the same: a disruption in the continuity of institutions, museums, academic traditions, intellectual schools, and scholar­ ly craftsmanship. It is not always recognized that those representatives of the intelligentsia oriented toward the maintenance of classical culture suffered nearly as much as outright political dissidents. This may partly explain why some of the more prominent dissidents happened to come from the fields of classical and medieval studies. A case in point is Bronistaw Geremek's dual role as scholar and politician: even during his years of persecution as Lech Walçsa's chief adviser, he regu­ larly held a semi-legal seminar on marginals and outcasts in medieval society Karol Modzelewski, another Solidarity leader, studied medieval "state serf­ dom" after having spent several years in communist prisons. In Moscow, the circle around Aron J. Gurevich was not expressly politicized, but represented an alternative scholarly orientation, a link with French and Anglo-Saxon intellectual life. In Czechoslovakia, post-1968 "normalization" pushed many leading intellectuals, with prominent medievalists among them, either into exile (František Graus), to the margins (František Šmahel), or into silence (Dušan Třeštík). The famous seminar on Plato held in Jan Patočka's apart­ ment in Prague became a symbol for intellectual resistance to communism. Jenő Szűcs, Hungary's most prominent medieval historian in recent decades, became an important figure in the intellectual opposition through his contri­ butions to the 1980 samizdat memorial volume dedicated to István Bibó. It was here that Szucs's famous essay, "The Three Historical Regions of Europe," first saw the light of day. The piece is an attempt to probe the defi­ ciencies of contemporary East-Central European civil society through an examination of the problem's medieval roots. Regarding our own department, it is perhaps not too immodest to men­ tion that János M. Bak was an active participant in the 1956 revolution, spent several decades in exile, and returned from Canada to join this new project. I myself also participated in the activities of the democratic opposition in Hungary. With the establishment of the Medieval Studies Department at CEU Budapest in 1992, we hoped to transmit a new impetus to the field and to rem­ edy some of these problems, according to our capacities. But first we had to make our case in an academic context which was not automatically sensitive to these issues. From the outset, CEU's envisaged role had three key compo­ nents. First, the institution aims to promote regional collaboration by offering East-Central European students and intellectuals a common educational experience at an international standard. Second, CEU has undertaken impor­ tant tasks in supporting the transition process by providing expertise in fields vital for the creation of new, open societies: constitutional law, privatization- oriented economics, "transitology"-oriented political science, European studies, and environmental science. Finally, the pursuit of these goals demanded a combination of teaching, research, and "doing." The idea was to build an unconventional private university which would multiply its impact by sponsoring projects and creating networks within post-communism's chaotic, emerging institutional structures. A program in medieval studies was not an obvious addition to this initial agenda; its subject at first seemed too traditional. We argued, however, that transition should rely not only upon modernization and westernization, but also upon rediscovering the roots of a once existent European identity. Such a tradition was founded and first elaborated during the Latin Middle Ages, and the study of this period can still provide useful models for a return to such orientation. The revitalization of the field also promised to affiliate a different segment of the intelligentsia with the project of open society, one less active in the ideological sphere, but, at the same time, crucial to a renewed regional self-awareness. Finally, we tried to point out that medieval studies could also provide indispensable practical help in preserving or restoring an endan­ gered historical legacy by saving precious artistic and cultural treasures. We could not know then just how acute the need for restoration expertise would soon become as the dreadful destructions in the former Yugoslavia began to take their toll. Practical arguments also