Medieval Cologne


Book Description

In Anglophone literature, historical questions about urban, socio-economic, political, religious, and cultural development have often been answered using Anglo-French, Anglo-Low Countries, and Anglo-Italian paradigms and sources. Medieval Germany has been largely overlooked, seen as a peripheral and irrelevant anomaly. Conversely, scholars from the German Rhineland have mostly remained within the traditions of civic public history and Landesgeschichte. As a result, they rarely engage with the historical questions raised in wider European discourses. This volume challenges these historiographical propensities by offering a fresh perspective on medieval urban Germany. It aims to integrate Cologne and the Rhineland more accurately and equitably into the wider histories of medieval Europe. The book engages with historical questions of wider relevance across both German and European medieval histories. It invites all scholars and students of medieval Europe to utilize Cologne as a key source for their research and writing.




St. Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne


Book Description

The cult of St. Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgin Martyrs of Cologne was the most widespread relic cult in medieval Europe. The sheer abundance of relics of the Eleven Thousand Virgins, which allowed for the display of immense collections, shaped the notion of corporate cohesion that characterized the cult. Though the primacy of St. Ursula as the leader of this holy band was established by the tenth century, she was conceived as the head of a corporate body. Innumerable inventories and liturgical texts attest to the fact that this cult was commemorated and referenced as a collective mass - Undecim millium virginum. This group identity informed, and was formulated by, the presentation of their relics, as well as much of the imagery associated with this cult. This book explores the visual, textual, performative, and perceptual aspects of this phenomenon, with particular emphasis on painting and sculpture in late medieval Cologne. Examining the ways in which both texts and images worked as vestments, garbing the true core of relics which formed the body of the cult, the book examines the cult from the core outward, seeking to understand hagiographic texts and images in terms of their role in articulating relic cults.




Painting and Patronage in Cologne, 1300-1500


Book Description

Cologne in the later Middle Ages was an elegant and wealthy mercantile city much favoured by popes and emperors. The largest town in Northern Europe, the site of an important university and seat of a major archbishopric, it had a cosmopolitan population of painters, illuminators, sculptors and goldsmiths and a patrician class who were sophisticated collectors and knowledgeable patrons of art. This book - the first such study in English - traces the development of the Cologne school of painting over two centuries. It begins with the period before 1400, when the adaption of French ideas to the indige- nous tradition produced an elegant, genteel art, characterized by elongated figures and graceful gestures. A change was heralded by the Veronica Master's introduction of the International Courtly Style around 1400, with its sophisticated iconography, costly pigments, exquisite punchwork, gesso jewels and precious brocade fabrics, and by the Dombild Master's introduction around 1440 of Eyckian proportions and realism. In the final phase of this development, the Master of the St Bartholomew Altarpiece opened the door to the Renaissance with his highly distinctive style and innovative iconography. The book is fully illustrated and accompanied by a translation of the guild regulations; a biographical index of archbishops and lay patrons; and a hand- list of cited panels grouped according to location.




The Imperial City of Cologne


Book Description

The Imperial City of Cologne: From Roman Colony to Medieval Metropolis (19 B.C.-1125 A.D.) is an urban history of Cologne from its imperial Roman origins as a northeastern frontier military outpost to a medieval metropolis on the German Empire's northwestern border. This first history of Cologne, available in English, challenges received notions of late Roman ethnic identities, a Dark Age collapse of urban life, devastating Viking and Magyar incursions, and the origins of medieval urban government.




Family, Commerce, and Religion in London and Cologne


Book Description

This book explores the contacts between England and Cologne during the central Middle Ages.




The Growth of the Medieval City


Book Description

The first part of David Nicholas's massive two-volume study of the medieval city, this book is a major achievement in its own right. (It is also fully self-sufficient, though many readers will want to use it with its equally impressive sequel which is being published simultaneously.) In it, Professor Nicholas traces the slow regeneration of urban life in the early medieval period, showing where and how an urban tradition had survived from late antiquity, and when and why new urban communities began to form where there was no such continuity. He charts the different types and functions of the medieval city, its interdependence with the surrounding countryside, and its often fraught relations with secular authority. The book ends with the critical changes of the late thirteenth century that established an urban network that was strong enough to survive the plagues, famines and wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.




North Rhine-Westphalia Rough Guides Snapshot Germany (includes Cologne, Brühl, Bonn, The Siebengebirge, Aachen, Wuppertal, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Essen, Dortmund, The Lower Rhine, Soest, Paderborn, Detmold, Lemgo and Münster)


Book Description

The Rough Guide Snapshot to North Rhine-Westphalia is the ultimate travel guide to Germany's most populous state. It guides you through the region with reliable information and comprehensive coverage of all the sights and attractions, from Cologne's cathedral to Bonn's museums and eating and drinking in Düsseldorf. Detailed maps and up-to-date listings pinpoint the best cafés, restaurants, hotels, shops, bars and nightlife, ensuring you have the best trip possible, whether passing through, staying for the weekend or longer. Also included is the Basics section from the Rough Guide to Germany, with all the practical information you need for travelling in and around Germany, including transport, food, drink, costs, festivals and outdoor activities. Also published as part of the Rough Guide to Germany. Full coverage: Cologne, Brühl, Bonn, The Siebengebirge, Aachen, Wuppertal, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Essen, Dortmund, The Lower Rhine, Soest, Paderborn, Detmold, Lemgo and Münster (Equivalent printed page extent 112 pages).




Routledge Revivals: Medieval Jewish Civilization (2003)


Book Description

First published in 2003, this is the first encyclopedic work to focus exclusively on medieval Jewish civilization, from the fall of the Roman Empire to about 1492. Based on the research of an international, multidisciplinary team of specialist contributors, the more than 150 alphabetically organized entries, written by scholars from around the world, include biographies, countries, events, social history, and religious concepts. The coverage is international, presenting people, culture, and events from various countries in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.




Fragmented Devotion


Book Description

Medieval art survives today as fragments of larger works, usually displayed by historical period, geographic location, artistic medium, or iconographic theme. Fragmented Devotion is the first exhibition to explore the meanings these fragments have in our understanding of medieval art and religious life from the Middle Ages to the present. Most of these objects have never been shown before in North America, and many have not been published since the beginning of the twentieth century. The catalog includes essays by historians, art historians, philosophers, and theologians. The writings discuss the meanings these objects had in medieval religious practice. The essays then go on to trace how those original meanings changed when the objects were collected and installed by Alexander Schnutgen within the larger context of Catholicism and nationalism in nineteenth century Germany. Finally, the contributors look at the 1920s and 1930s when the objects were installed in a museum-like setting and consider this installation in light of the developments in medieval art history and the policies of national socialism.




Push Me, Pull You


Book Description

Late Medieval and Renaissance art was surprisingly pushy; its architecture demanded that people move through it in prescribed patterns, its sculptures played elaborate games alternating between concealment and revelation, while its paintings charged viewers with imaginatively moving through them. Viewers wanted to interact with artwork in emotional and/or performative ways. This inventive and personal interface between viewers and artists sometimes conflicted with the Church’s prescribed devotional models, and in some cases it complemented them. Artists and patrons responded to the desire for both spontaneous and sanctioned interactions by creating original ways to amplify devotional experiences. The authors included here study the provocation and the reactions associated with medieval and Renaissance art and architecture. These essays trace the impetus towards interactivity from the points of view of their creators and those who used them. Contributors include: Mickey Abel, Alfred Acres, Kathleen Ashley, Viola Belghaus, Sarah Blick, Erika Boeckeler, Robert L.A. Clark, Lloyd DeWitt, Michelle Erhardt, Megan H. Foster-Campbell, Juan Luis González García, Laura D. Gelfand, Elina Gertsman, Walter S. Gibson, Margaret Goehring, Lex Hermans, Fredrika Jacobs, Annette LeZotte, Jane C. Long, Henry Luttikhuizen, Elizabeth Monroe, Scott B. Montgomery, Amy M. Morris, Vibeke Olson, Katherine Poole, Alexa Sand, Donna L. Sadler, Pamela Sheingorn, Suzanne Karr Schmidt, Anne Rudloff Stanton, Janet Snyder, Rita Tekippe, Mark Trowbridge, Mark S. Tucker, Kristen Van Ausdall, Susan Ward.




Recent Books