ANNUAL OF MEDIEVAL STUDIES AT CEU VOL. 17 2011 Edited by Alice M. Choyke and Daniel Ziemann 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 permission of the publisher. Editorial Board Niels Gaul, Gerhard Jaritz, György Geréby, Gábor Klaniczay, József Laszlovszky, Marianne Sághy, Katalin Szende Editors Alice M. Choyke and Daniel Ziemann Technical Advisor Annabella Pál Cover Illustration Beltbuckle from Kígyóspuszta (with kind permission of the Hungarian National Museum, Budapest) Department of Medieval Studies Central European University H-1051 Budapest, Nádor u. 9., Hungary Postal address: H-1245 Budapest 5, P.O. Box 1082 E-mail: [email protected] Net: http://medievalstudies.ceu.hu Copies can be ordered at the Department, and from the CEU Press http://www.ceupress.com/order.html ISSN 1219-0616 Non-discrimination policy: CEU does not discriminate on the basis of—including, but not limited to—race, color, national or ethnic origin, religion, gender or sexual orientation in administering its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs. © Central European University Produced by Archaeolingua Foundation & Publishing House TABLE OF CONTENTS Editors’ Preface ............................................................................................................ 5 I. ARTICLES AND STUDIES ........................................................... 7 Tatiana Krapivina The Role of Dialectic in the Ninth-Century Predestination Polemics: Between Doctrina Mundana and Doctrina Coelestis .................................. 9 Zita V. Tóth Scientifi c Method in John Buridan ................................................................... 23 András Vadas Late Medieval Environmental Changes on the Southern Great Hungarian Plain – A Case Study ............................................................................................. 41 Jeremy Mikecz The Place that Lies Between: Slavonia in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries .... 61 Teodora Artimon A New Approach to the Moldavian Exterior Wall Painting Using Visual Rhetoric .............................................................................................. 81 Vedran Bileta At the Crossroads of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages – The Rise and Fall of the Military Elite of Byzantine Histria ...................... 100 Ethnicity – A Disputed Concept in History and Archaeology .. 123 Daniel Ziemann The Problem of “Ethnicity” – An Introduction ........................................... 125 Dóra Mérai Digging for Ethnicity - Perspectives in Archaeological Research ...................... 140 Kyra Lyublyanovics The Cumans in Medieval Hungary and the Question of Ethnicity ................ 153 Irene Barbiera Warlike Masculinity and the Image of Roman and Early Medieval Warriors from Unità d’Italia to Fascism .............................. 170 Alena Kliuchnik Ethnogenesis Theories Concerning the Belorussians ........................................ 191 Lived Space in Past and Present: Challenges in the Research and Management of Townscape and Cultural Heritage .................... 199 Katalin Szende Lived Space in Past and Present: Course Report and Sample Studies ............ 201 Anngret Simms Diverse Approaches to the Study of Urban Landscapes in Anglo-American Geography (with Particular Emphasis on Urban Morphology) ...................... 204 Thomas Stiglbrunner Communication in Fourteenth-Century Novgorod .......................................... 218 Ágnes Flóra Between Sacred and Profane. Council Election in the Lived Space of the Medieval and Early Modern Town of Cluj ............................................. 231 II. REPORT OF THE YEAR ......................................................... 245 György Geréby Report of the Year ........................................................................................ 247 Abstract of MA Thesis Defended in 2010 ................................................ 251 PhD Defenses during the Academic Year 2009–2010 ............................. 258 Anna Somfai Visual Thinking and Diagrammatic Images in Medieval Manuscripts. Research Project (2009–2012) ................................. 292 József Laszlovszky & Hedwig Röckelein Medieval Monastic Regions in Central Europe – The Spiritual and Physical Landscape Setting of Monastic Orders and Religious Houses ......................................................... 296 EDITORS’ PREFACE Lectori salutem! th We are happy to present the 17 volume of our Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU. In it you will fi nd some of the main research results from the 2009–2010 academic year. As usual, the fi rst section contains articles based on the most innovative MA theses of 2010 as well as other papers presented by some of our students at conferences. As befi ts the multi-disciplinary nature of our department, the topics covered in these student papers are wide-ranging, refl ecting the main intellectual strands within the department itself. The fi rst paper deals with early medieval dialectics in Frankish ecclesiastical texts. The second paper concerns aspects of the foundation of physics in medieval philosophical thought, followed by an assessment of the degree of climatic deterioration in the Hungarian Kingdom in the fourteenth century, mostly using charter texts as a primary source material. A medieval borderland is the central point of the next paper, followed by observations concerning the use of wall-paintings on exterior church walls as political propaganda in late medieval Moldavia. The fi nal contribution to this fi rst part contains an examination of military elites in Byzantine Histria. This year we are proud to present two interesting thematic blocks. The fi rst one is dedicated to the question of ethnicity and ethnogenesis, a topic that has been in the focus of historical research for some decades now. Most of the articles are based on discussions in a PhD seminar in the 2009 Fall Term. Participants in the seminar reviewed state of the art research questions related to the notion of ethnicity in history and archaeology and discussed the outcomes and consequences for future research. Special focus was placed on various models of ethnicity, for instance the ones developed in the so-called Vienna and Toronto Schools. Interestingly, the debate surrounding this topic was sparked off a few years ago in a study of the Goths and their “ethnogenesis”. The debate not only revealed the different approaches to the topic or a certain diversity of opinions but ignited a debate on what constituted the basis of historical research. The question at stake is about nothing less than the limits of historical methodology. How much do the sources tell us about past societies and how much does the form of our interpretation tell us about our own academic or political environment? Given the history of our own discipline we need to be constantly aware of the limits in our capacity to understand past societies. Talking about ethnicity always implies adoption of our own concepts of society transplanted onto past societies that had a different perception of social reality. Nevertheless, recent discussions have produced 5 interesting studies concerning various concepts of ethnicity using examples from Antiquity until the present. Though the seminar focused mainly on the Migration Period and the Early Middle Ages, the issue of ethnic interpretation is relevant for later periods as well. The articles in the present volume demonstrate how recent discussions can infl uence different areas and research fi elds. The second thematic block originates from a CEU Summer University course “Lived Space in Past and Present: Challenges in the Research and Management of Townscape and Cultural Heritage” held at the Department of Medieval Studies in June 2010. The course was organized by Katalin Szende (CEU) as course director with the participation of many well-known specialists in this fi eld as guest faculty, such as Sarah Rees Jones, Peter Johanek, Rossina Kostova, Anngret Simms, Gábor Gyáni, and József Laszlovszky. The course aimed to follow up on recent trends in historical, archaeological, geographical, architectural and environmental studies dedicated to the exploration of the urban fabric. The participants also discussed the consequences of these research trends, focusing on questions like how the elements of present townscapes reveal the development of past periods and what needs to be done to preserve their values. Within the broad fi eld of cultural heritage, the role of the historian analyzing the built and natural environment of a place had to be reconsidered as well. The course revealed fruitful and interesting outcomes, some of which can be followed in four articles of the present volume written by Anngret Simms, Thomas Stiglbrunner, Ágnes Flóra, and Katalin Szende. Part II of the Annual follows the practice of previous volumes. Thus the Head’s Report gives a summary of the main events of the Academic Year 2009– 2010. Abstracts of the MA theses and the PhD dissertations for that year provide additional insight into the work of our new graduates. At the end of the volume Anna Somfai presents her research project on visual thinking and diagrammatic images in medieval manuscript research. József Laszlovszky concludes the present volume with a report on a joint project between