History across languages, stories across seas

Several papers presented at the conference concerned medieval historical works written and copied in multilingual and multicultural contexts. For instance, Serena Ferente, from King’s College London, took into account a complex ‘colonial’ setting at the crossroads of several languages, in which she explored some religious elements. Ferente’s paper focused on a Latin text called Ogdoas, written in the 15th century by the Piedmontese Alberto Alfieri in the Genoese colony of Caffa, on the Black Sea, now in modern-day Crimea. The central subject of her paper was the version of the legend of the Wandering Jew contained in the Ogdoas. The Wandering Jew, a legendary figure of a Jew present at the Crucifixion of Christ who wanders the world to testify to this event, is a myth that dates back to the 13th century. His story spread all over Europe with many different variations and this Ogdoas version has unique characteristics connected to the Genoese colonial context and to the peculiar intersection there of cultures, languages and traditions.

Simon Gaunt (see his powerpoint here) also focused on a ‘colonial’ settlement, but this time about the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César. In the section of this work devoted to biblical history, a group of the manuscripts of the Histore ancienne are particularly concerned about the status of the French language. Sometimes they refer to French as a common language, as ‘our most used language’ (en nos plus usé language). All these manuscripts were copied (or derived from manuscripts copied) in the Latin Kingdoms of the Holy Land, founded after the First Crusade. The population of these kingdoms was composed of French, Occitan, Genoese, Pisan, and other Italian speakers, who generally used French as an ‘international’ language. Therefore, Gaunt argues, this particular status of French in the Holy Land manuscripts was not only a correct perception of the role of this language (spoken all over Europe, in France, Italy, England...), but above all a real condition of everyday life in the Holy Land.

Also presenting was Rosa M. Rodríguez Porto who chose to analyse the connection between multilingual contexts and another kind of language, the visual. She observed how the presence of illuminations in historical manuscripts seems to originate in geographical regions which had a higher coexistence of different languages. Rodriguez Porto showed that as the Histoire ancienne was illuminated in different areas of language and cultural contact (Holy Land, Genoa, Naples) and how this contact is visible also in the illuminations. This is the case with the well-known manuscript London, British Library, Add. 15268, copied at Saint-Jean-d’Acre andcurrently on display at the British Library. On the first folio, before the beginning of the Histoire ancienne, a full page is illuminated with the days of the creation: God is represented in a Byzantine hieratic position from the creation of light to Adam and Eve. The structure of the page, in eight medallions, shows oriental influences and is not usual in western European illumination. But the more evident oriental influence on the illumination of this folio are the people represented in the top of the frame: they wear turbans and are sitting in an oriental way, on the floor with their legs crossed.

Other fascinating papers also focused on multilingual and multicultural contexts too, such as Sicily or Majorca. They were all very interesting and useful to our understanding of different characteristics of historical writing and reception during the Middle Ages. The fact that the conference explored not only works in one language but in different languages and different areas made it possible for the attendees to cross traditions and see recurrent themes.