“Reading Archival Latin”
Mediterranean Studies Summer Skills Seminar
22—25 May 2023 • Remote
Course overview
The Archive of the Crown of Aragon (ACA) in Barcelona contains one of the largest and richest archival collections relating to medieval Europe, comprising hundreds of thousands of documents, most from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, and including financial records, royal letters, administrative documents, trial records, treaties, and many other genres. The documentation can be used for a whole range of topics including social, economic, political, institutional, gender, diplomatic, cultural and religious history.
The territories of the Crown of Aragon included much of the Iberian Peninsula, parts of southern France, Sicily and southern Italy, parts of Tunisia and Greece, the Balearics, Sardinia and other Mediterranean islands. It had a large and diverse urban population, was highly integrated into Mediterranean and European trade systems, and had significant populations of Muslims and Jews. It developed one of the earliest and most robust chanceries of medieval Europe; the collections of which have weathered the vicissitudes of history all but intact. Much of the documentation has yet to be used by historians. The skills seminar focused on the Latin-language documentation (from the eleventh to the mid-fourteenth centuries) in the archive’s collections.
This four-day intensive skills seminar focussd on a hands-on introduction to reading unedited Latin documents from a variety of the archive’s fonds and provide participants with an overview of the collections of the ACA, including access to online resources and reproductions.
Topics included: manuscript abbreviations, dating systems, place and personal names, and research resources and techniques. As much as possible the content will be catered to participants’ interests and needs. Medievalists of all disciplines, graduate students, and qualified undergraduate students, as well as library and archival professionals were encouraged to apply.
The goal was to provides attendees with a solid preparation for conducting work remotely via the PARES web portal and on-site at the ACA. Participants will find the skills and techniques which the course focuses on useful not only at the Archive of the Crown but at other medieval archives across Spain and Europe.
This Summer Skills Seminar builds on the experience of earlier editions, which participants signaled as “transformative” in terms of their research, and which provided them with an opportunity to network and lay the foundations for future collaborations. For information and participant reviews of our former Skills Seminars.
Participant Impressions:
“I'm really thankful to Prof. Catlos for delivering information in a concise yet comprehensive way. It was a good class and it helped me advance my paleographic skills.”
“I felt the course was both extremely engaging and challenging. Through the intensive four hour a day study, I feel like I gained a wonderful baseline to continue to build the skill of archival reading, as well as the resources and techniques to make the task less daunting as I pursue it further.”
“I had taken a Spanish Paleography course while in the Universidad de Granada, and wanted to expand on those skills in more detail. I am also very interested in Brian Catlos' work, and was excited by the opportunity of being able to study Latin paleography with him at the head.”
Program
The course was via ZOOM. Each session combined lecture and reading practice. The first day consisted mostly of lectures and we moved progressively to more sight reading as the Seminar progresses. As we will be using various media simultaneously (camera, powerpoint, screen captures) while browsing the archive’s digital collection, please plan on using a laptop or desktop — the larger the screen, the better. Each day consisted of two sessions: the first, 10am-noon and the second, 1—3pm.
Monday, 22 May
10am-noon; 1:00-3:00pm
1. The History & Structure of the Archive of the Crown of Aragon
2. Pergaminos/Pergamins
Tuesday, 23 May
10am-noon; 1:00-3:00pm
1. The Royal Chancery: The Registers
2. Reading the Registers
Wednesday, 24 May
10am-noon; 1:00-3:00pm
1. Royal Letters
2. Using Royal Letters
Thursday, 25 May
10am-noon; 1:00-3:00pm
1. Beyond the Chancery
2. Research techniques
Faculty
The course will be conducted by Prof. Brian A. Catlos (Religious Studies, CU Boulder). A graduate of the University of Toronto’s Centre for Medieval Studies (Phd, 2000) and now a historian of pre-Modern Spain and the Mediterranean, Catlos has been using the collections of the ACA since 1995, primarily for research into the social and economic history of the Crown of Aragon and Muslim-Christian-Jewish relations.
Participants
Nicole Archambeau
(History, Colorado State University)
Nicole Archambeau is the author of Souls under Siege: Stories of War, Plague, and Confession in Fourteenth-Century Provence. She researches the history of health and healing during times of human and environmental crisis by contextualizing the testimonies in canonization inquests. Her new research project considers constructed environments for animal husbandry and energy production in medieval Provence. She is an Associate Professor at Colorado State University.
Shiri Birenboim
(School of Historical Studies, Tel Aviv University)
Shiri Birenboim is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate at Zvi Yavetz School for Historical Studies. Her dissertation, supervised by Dr. Naama Cohen-Hanegbi, is titled: "Medicine as Culture: Health Preservation, Polemics, and Collaboration between Jews and Christians in late medieval Marseille." Her thesis examines the role of preventive medicine in late Medieval Marseille in inter- religious and cross-religious contexts between Jews and Christians in shared urban spaces. It strives to extend our knowledge of the means and measures Marseille's authorities employed to keep a clean urban environment and preserve public health, as well as ways and methods taken by individuals to maintain their personal health and living environment. In May 2018, she received my MA (Hons.) from Tel Aviv University, Thesis Title: "Original Sin and Fall Theology in the Eyes of Science – Issues in Medicine and Sexuality in Hildegard of Bingen's Causae et Curae," also supervised by Dr. Naama Cohen-Hanegbi. Her doctoral research is supported by The Dan David Prize scholarship, The Aran merit scholarship at Zvi Yavetz School for Historical Studies, and the Levkovitz Foundation at Tel Aviv University.
Eleanor Congdon
(Humanities and Social Sciences, Youngstown State University)
“I am doing this seminar in order to refresh and sharpen my skills with Latin in archival documents as I try to bring my 1997 PhD dissertation to publication. Despite studying at Cambridge University under the tutelage of David Abulafia, when I achieved the PhD, I felt that I had not completely solved a couple of questions in the research which needed to be done before publishing. My career as a University Professor has involved so much teaching that I have not been able to prepare the manuscript for press. The stresses of working for a state university which is in crisis, impacted my health. Last summer, I had emergency life-saving surgery. Feeling that I have been given a second lease on life, I determined that I have to spend more time on my research and less on teaching in order to accomplish my life’s work. I have three major research projects: 1) Venetian merchants in Syria in the 1480s, 2) the architecture of my great-grandfather (Henry Martyn Congdon 1834-1922) and 3) my dissertation about Venetian merchants in the Western Mediterranean around 1400. For this last project, I want to be able to read in the papers of Martin the Humane about his relation with foreign merchants and about the Catalan fleet which attacked North Africa in 1403.”
Dana Fishkin
(Graduate School of Jewish Studies, Touro University)
Dana Fishkin holds a dual appointment at Touro University’s Lander College for Women and Graduate School of Jewish Studies where she teaches about general and Jewish medievalhistory and literature. Dana’s research interests lie in the Italian peninsula and specifically the medieval Jewish experience in Rome and the Adriatic region known as Le Marche. Her first book Bridging Worlds: Poetry and Philosophy in the Works of Immanuel of Rome (Wayne State, 2023) explores the intersection of literature and philosophy in the oeuvre of a late medieval Roman Jewish poet, Immanuel of Rome, known for his Dantesque Hebrew celestial tour. She is currently working on a critical edition of Immanuel’s biblical commentary on Ecclesiastes, as well as collecting archival documents concerning interactions between Jews and communal governments in Le Marche.
Alejandro Gonzalez
(History, Kenyon College)
Alejandro González is an undergraduate student at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. He is particularly interested in medieval cartography, and is currently preparing to work on a translation of Muhammad al-Idrisi's tabula rogeriana, also known as the for my senior project. In the project, he intends to also study al-Idrisi's ,نزھة المشتاق فى اختراق الآفاق cartographic influence in Renaissance geographic treatises, like Goro Dati's "La Sfera". In addition, he has a deep interest in the transmission and acceptance of classical texts throughout the medieval Arab world, and their role in forming the European Renaissance. Already his knowledge of Arabic, Latin, and Spanish have been a great help in furthering my knowledge of the topic, and the opportunity to improve my archival abilities this summer excites him even further. He looks forward to seeing everyone in class!
Natalie Greenfield
(Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Brandeis University)
As a rising sophomore at Brandeis University, Natalie Greenfield is pursuing a major in Medieval and Renaissance Studies and intends to continue on to a Masters and Ph.D. upon completion of my undergraduate studies. She is currently working with Professor Amy E. Singer on manuscript research into mentions of Hadrianopolis in Ptolemy and medieval trade accounts, as well as on tracking immigration patterns of Ottoman communities in the late 19th century. She is personally interested in socio-medical texts such as the Trotula or Aberdeen MS 123, manuscript as well as more general social history of the 13th-16th centuries. She has studied Latin, both spoken and written, for five years, Spanish for two, and will begin Italian studies this coming Spring.
Chelsea Kennedy
(Religious Studies, University of Colorado Boulder)
Chelsea Kennedy received her BA in Philosophy from the University of Portland. She is currently an M.A. student in the Department of Religious Studies at University of Colorado, Boulder. Her research interests focus on Islamic intellectualism and Philosophy, particularly the interactions and influence the Islamic tradition and Arabic speaking world had on the medieval Latin west. Her current project investigates the contemporary impact of the western historical narrative of non-western philosophical traditions as it pertains to pedagogy, nomenclature, and exclusion within the academy. Chelsea is the recipient of the 2023 Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, which she will utilize to study Arabic at Middlebury College. She currently serves as the Religious Studies Departmental Representative to the Graduate and Professional Student Government, as well as Lead TA for the department through the Center for Teaching and Learning’s Leads Fellowship.
Eileen Morgan
(Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame)
Eileen is a doctoral candidate in the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame researching Mediterranean foodways. Her dissertation, Structuring Nature: Peacocks, Food, and the History of Science, c. 1250-1550, is a longue durée comparative study of the widespread phenomenon of serving roasted peacocks in their skin as though they were alive. She uses the roasted peacock to think through questions of labor, the materiality of intellectual practices, and constructions of race prior to the Atlantic slave trade. While her primary research interest lies in food studies, more broadly she is fascinated by the concept of technical expertise and the transmission of embodied knowledge.
Emma Olson
(History, University of Michigan)
Emma Olson is a PhD student in History at the University of Michigan. She received a BM in music performance from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and an MA in Medieval Studies from Yale University. Her research interests include sound studies, performance, documentary practices, social class, and cultural contact in thirteenth-fourteenth century Europe. Her recent article in the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (May, 2023), "Margery Kempe as Mankind: An Early Textual Witness to East Anglian Performance Culture," explores the influence of East Anglian morality plays on The Book of Margery Kempe and its relevance to Kempe's readers, the Carthusians of Mount Grace Priory. In her PhD, she is turning her focus to the western Mediterranean to explore the deployment of sound in performances of power and cultural encounter.
Katherine Tapia
(Comparative Literature, University of Michigan)
Katherine Tapia is a third year PhD student at the Comparative Literature department at the University of Michigan. I study the interaction of Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the medieval Iberian Peninsula with a focus on authorship, translation, reception, and self-inscription. My current research project deals with questions on authorship and reception through the works of don Juan Manuel and Alfonso X, and the legacy of Arabic literature and culture in the Iberian Peninsula. Parallel to that, I am also working on understanding female presence and intervention in Aljamiado texts with a focus on the works of el Mancebo de Arévalo.