September 22, 2022

8:30–9:30 Registration (with coffee)
9:30–10:00 Welcome (Lucie Doležalová, representatives of the institutions supporting the event) (room 200)
10:00–11:00 Jan Ziolkowski (Harvard University):
From before Attila to beyond Hitler: The Waltharius and the Complications of the German(ic) Past (Keynote)
11:00–11:30 Coffee break
11:30–12:30 Parallel Sessions
I.A Constructing an aetas aurea at a Court (room 200)
Chair: Agostino Paravicini-Bagliani
Antoni Biosca Bas (University of Alicante): Los buenos tiempos del buen rey Jaime. Literatura latina en recuerdo de Jaime I (ES)
Valeria Mattaloni (Università degli Studi di Udine): Weeping From the Exile: Ermoldus Nigellus and the Nostalgia for the Court
I.B The Imagined British past – Geoffrey of Monmouth (room 209)
Chair: Klára Petříková Georg Stenborg (Uppsala University): Nostalgia for the British past? On genre and mentality in Geoffrey of Monmouth and Maistre Wace
Sonia Madrid Medrano and Eduardo Valls Oyarzun (both Complutense University of Madrid): Nostalgia for the Brit(on) that never was: Arthurian Thatcherism in John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981)
I.C Longing women (room 225)
Chair: Farkas Gábor Kiss
Dorota Rojszczak-Robińska and Zofia Bryłka (both Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań): Longing for a Child. A Depiction of Infertility in the Old Polish Apocrypha of the New Testament
Francesca Robusto (Università degli Studi di Torino): Heloise or Redemption from Nostalgia (IT)
12:30–14:00 Lunch break
14:00–15:00 Parallel Sessions
II.A Hrotsvit of Gandersheim (room 200)
Chair: Danuta Shanzer
Tino Licht (Universität Heidelberg): Hrotsvit von Gandersheim in Winchester. Spuren englischer Heimatnostalgie um die erste Jahrtausendwende (DE)
Katja Weidner (University of Vienna): Virginity Lost: Hrotsvitha’s Mary and the Point of No Return
II.B Alcuin’s Nostalgia (room 209)
Chair: Willum Westenholz
Gernot R Wieland (University of British Columbia): Nostalgia in Alcuin’s letters Anna Ritzel (LMU München): Die Zelle als Sehnsuchtsort – Der nostalgische Dichter und fromme Christ in Alkuins ‚O mea cella‘ (DE)
II.C Transmission of Learning: Looking Back with Mixed Feelings (room 225)
Chair: Lucie Doležalová
Erika Kihlman (Stockholm University): Late-Medieval Teaching Material: Conservatism, Nostalgia, Antiquarianism?
Luisa Fizzarotti (University of Udine): Books and Authors from the Past Mourning the Death of Ambrose
15:00–15:30 Coffee break
15:30–17:00 Parallel Sessions
III.A Petrarch and Renaissance Philology (room 200)
Chair: Francesco Stella
Jean-Yves Tilliette (Université de Genève): Iamque arsisse pudet… Sur quelques vers de Pétrarque (FR)
Justin Haynes (Georgetown University): Antagonistic Nostalgia for Antiquity: Petrarch’s Reading of Walter of Châtillon’s Alexandreis Rodney John Lokaj (Università degli Studi di Enna „Kore“): Nostalgic Philology: Bembo’s ‚Ad Herculem Strotium‘
III.B Different Paradises (room 209)
Chair: Mariken Teeuwen
Danuta Shanzer (Universität Wien): Nostalgia and the Theology of Sentiment: Augustine’s Eden and the Pagan Imaginaire. Case Studies from the Latin Middle Ages
Cédric Giraud (Université de Genève ): Heaven can wait? Eden and Heavenly Jerusalem – between Nostalgia and Desire in the central Middle Ages (FR)
Greti Dinkova-Bruun (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies): Longing for Paradise in the Poetry of Peter Riga and Alexander Neckam
III.C Editorial Psychology: Manuscripts and Editions (room 225)
Chair: Erika Kihlman
Marina Giani (Università degli Studi di Milano / KU Leuven): Longing for the Best Copy. The Textual Restoration of Augustine’s De ciuitate Dei in the Carolingian Era
Matteo Salaroli (Università degli Studi di Firenze): Echoes of a Lost Manuscript: the Codex Moissiacensis and the Stemma Codicum of Notker’s Gesta Karoli
Christina Jackel (Universität Wien) and Jiří Černý (Palacký University Olomouc): Tassilo to go. Das Kremsmünsterer Beutelbuch CC 391
17:00–17:30 Coffee break
17:30–18:30 Lars Boje Mortensen (University of Southern Denmark, Odense): A Language Bringing an Empire: Classic Nostalgia and the Empowerment of Imperial Discourse c. 1050-1200 (keynote), introduced by Lucie Doležalová, followed by reception (18:30-20:00)

September 23, 2022

9:30–11:00 Parallel Sessions
IV.A Monastic Nostalgia (room 225)
Chair: Cédric Giraud
Theo Lap (University of Groningen): Nostalgic Monks and Homesick Bishops: Discourses of Anti-Nostalgia in High Medieval Letter Collections
Iva Adámková (FF UK): Bernard of Clairvaux: Arguments against Cluniac Monasticism with Reference to the Tradition of the Desert Fathers
Stanislav Hlaváč (Charles University, Prague): The Desire for Reconciliation: Modern Historiography and the Parents of Francis of Assisi
IV.B The Bible Rewritten (room 200)
Chair: Greti Dinkova-Bruun
Carmen Cardelle de Hartmann (Universität Zürich): Looking Back to the Second Temple: Petrus Alfonsi on the Jewish Past
Wojciech Stelmach (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań): Linguistic Expressions of Nostalgia for Paradise Lost in Old Polish Apocrypha about Adam and Eve
Louis Zweig (Harvard University): The Biblical Structure of the Waltharius
IV.C The Linguistics of Regret (room 209)
Chair: Pavel Nývlt Bruno Bon (CNRS-IRHT / UAI-AIBL): La ‚nostalgie‘ en latin médiéval : une étude lexicale comme les autres? (FR)
Krzysztof Nowak (Institute of olish Language (Polish Academy of Sciences)): Beyond Sin. Linguistic Representation of Regret in Medieval Latin Texts
Lucia Castaldi (Università di Udine): Repressed Nostalgia: The Irish World and the Relationship with its Own Origins
11:00–11:30 Coffee break
11:30–13:00 Parallel Sessions
V.A Contemplating the Saints (room 225)
Chair: Stanislav Hlaváč
Rosalind Love (University of Cambridge (ASNC)): Looking Back at St. Augustine of Canterbury
Patryk M. Ryczkowski (Leopold-Franzens-Universtität Innsbruck): Why Did Early Modern Epic Poetry Glorify the Medieval Saints? St. John of Nepomuk in the Nepomuceneis Persicos
Fabio Mantegazza (University of Bologna): Nostalgia and the Scoti peregrini: the case of Donatus Faesulanus’s Vita sanctae Brigidae
V.B The Classics remembered in Humanism (room 200)
Chair: Farkas Gábor Kiss
Kurt Smolak (University of Vienna): In chaos cuncta reverti…[Bohuslaus Hassensteinius a Lobkowitz]: ‚Florebat olim studium [CB 6]‘ (LAT)
Marta Ramos Grané (Universidad de Extremadura): Manipulating Memory, a Mistake in Romberch’s Recalling
Tristan Spillmann (University of Cologne / University of Bonn): Cicero versus Bartolo or Antiquity versus the Middle Ages. The Dualisms of Past and Present in Lorenzo Valla’s Epistola contra Bartolum
V.C Medievalism – Theory (room 209)
Chair: Martin Šorm Rasmus Vangshardt (University of Southern Denmark): Latin Medievalisms and the Ecstasies of Time in Early Modern Drama
Krešimir Vuković (LMU München): Medieval and Classical Sources of Nostalgia in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion
Jeff Rider (Wesleyan University): Semper Fi: How Can I Feel Nostalgic for the Middle Ages?
13:00–14:00 Lunch break
14:00–15:00 Parallel Sessions
VI.A Architrenius (room 225)
Chair: Kurt Smolak Lorenzo Carlucci (Sapienza University of Rome) and Laura Marino (University of Cassino and Southern Lazio): The Architrenius as an Epic of Nostalgia (IT)
Floriane Goy (University of Geneva): « Omne bonum ueterum labiis distillat » : L’exemple de l’Antiquité dans l’Architrenius de Jean de Hanville (FR)
VI.B Reception of the Classics in Poetry (room 209)
Chair: Marek Thue Kretschmer
Hannelore Segers (Harvard University): The Late Antique Cento and Virgil’s Golden Age
Susanna Fischer (Universität zu Köln/LMU München): Cities and Ruins – Troy, Rome, and the Memory of Past Glory in Medieval Latin Poetry
VI.C Walahfrid in Exile (room 200)
Chair: Mariken Teeuwen
Walter Berschin (Universität Heidelberg): Walahfrid Strabo’s „Tagebuch“ a. 815 bis a. 825 (DE)
David Traill (University of California at Davis): Nostalgia in Gottschalk and Walahfrid
15:00–15:30 Coffee break
15:30–16:30 Parallel Sessions
VII.A Visigothic Longings (room 200)
Chair: Carmen Cardelle de Hartmann
Joel Varela Rodríguez (Universidad Complutense de Madrid): La Visio Taionis y la nostalgia por el pasado visigodo (ES)
Sergey Vorontsov (St. Tikhon University (Moscow)): The Nostalgic Self and the Literary Culture of Seventh-Century Visigothic Spain
VII.B Building an Ideal Monastic Community (room 209)
Chair: Wim Verbaal
Jan Ctibor (Charles University): (Monastic) Paradise Lost and Regained. The Image of Ur-Monasticism in Idung of Prüfening‛s Dialogus
Caecilia-D. Hein (LMU München): Discourse and Community. The Writings of Bernhard of Waging in the Context of Late Medieval Monastic Reform
VII.C Medical Nostalgia (room 225)
Chair: Marie Novotná
Agnieszka Maciąg-Fiedler (IJP PAN): Miracles were Done Once – The Medicine of Nicholas of Poland
Conan Doyle (Charles Univeristy): Ubi sunt medici qui ante nos fuerunt? Nostalgia for the Imperial Past in Agnellus of Ravenna, the Epistola peri heresion, and early medieval Latin medical corpus
16:30–17:00 Coffee break
17:00–18:00 Barbara Newman (Northwestern University): Innova dies nostros, sicut a principio: Novelty and Nostalgia in the First and Second Lives of St. Francis (keynote), introduced by Danuta Shanzer (room 200)
19:00–20:00 concert of Schola Gregoriana Pragensis at 19:00 (Church of St. Martin in the Wall, 10-minute walk)

September 24, 2022

9:30–11:00 Parallel Sessions
VIII.A Nostalgia for and Future of Medieval Latin (roundtable) (room 200)
Francesco Stella (Università di Siena): Medieval Latin Handbooks
Agostino Paravicini-Bagliani (S.I.S.M.E.L., Florence): Medieval Latin tools and repertories
Wim Verbaal (Ghent University): Decolonialising Latin: on paradigms, self-evidences, and the place of Latin in a changing world
VIII.B Expressing Emotions (room 225)
Chair: Krzysztof Nowak
Daniela Mairhofer (Princeton University): The Dynamics of Nostalgia in the Thirteenth Century
Alfonso García Leal (Universidad de Oviedo): Emociones en la epigrafía medieval hispana (ES)
Zdzisław Koczarski (Polish Academy of Sciences): Language of Desire for Change: Wish Particle ‚utinam‘ in Jan Długosz‘ Annales
VIII.C Digital Turn in Manuscript Studies (roundtable) (room 209)
Mariken Teeuwen (Huygens Institute, Leiden University): The Transformation of Manuscript Research in the Digital Age
Martin Roček (Charles University): Annotations, Editions and Semantic Analysis
Ondřej Fúsik (Charles University): Linguistic Data
11:00–11:30 Coffee break
11:30–13:00 Parallel Sessions
IX.A Nostalgia in Late Medieval Politics (room 209)
Chair: Petra Mutlová Pavlína Cemanová (Centre for Medieval Studies, Prague): Return to Innocence: Apocalyptic Mutation in Hussite Radicalism
Wilken Engelbrecht (Univerzita Palackého, Olomouc & Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski): Nostalgie bestätigt: das kaiserliche Privilegium der friesischen Freiheit vom Jahre 1417 (DE)
Pavel Nývlt (Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences): Nostalgias in Hussite Bohemia
IX.B Texts and Contexts for Nostalgia (room 225)
Chair: Jeff Rider
Marek Thue Kretschmer (Centre universitaire de Norvège à Paris): Les voix du passé – les sources latines du Compendium historial d’Henri Romain (FR)
Elena Vishnevskaya (IWL RAS): Nostalgia in Medieval Latin Sequences: From Bitterness to Joy
IX.C Later Medieval Poetry and Poetics (room 200)
Chair: Francesco Stella
Matouš Jaluška (Institute of Czech Literature, Czech Academy of Sciences): Reshaping the Golden Age in Old Czech Chivalric Fiction
Farkas Gábor Kiss (Eotvos Lorand University): Imitation and Nostalgia: the Poetria nova and its Poetic Influence in the Late Middle Ages
Martin Šorm (Institute of Philosophy, CAS, Prague): Appeals doomed to futility – poetics of the Czech verse chronicle
13:00–14:00 Lunch break
14:00–15:30 Parallel Sessions
X.A Late Medieval Nostalgia (room 225)
Chair: Christoph Uiting
Petra Mutlová (Masaryk University Brno): Discens factus est sciens: Recommendation Speeches in Late Medieval Bohemia Wojciech Mrozowicz (University of Wrocław): Egressi de sacro Lubensis cenobii paradyso. Über das Gefühl der Sehnsucht im Leben der Mönche (anhand der schlesischen mittelalterlichen Klostergeschichtsschreibung) (DE) Dom Clemens Galban (Stift Klosterneuburg): The Statutes of Raudnitz-Klosterneuburg of 1420 and their Redaction
X.B Nostalgic Style (room 209)
Chair: Marta Ramos Grané
Adam Poznański (University of Wrocław): Peter the Venerable and Classical Latin. A Stylistic Analysis of „Contra Petrobrusianos“ Willum Westenholz (Independent scholar): Fuit quondam in hac re publica virtus – Nostalgia for an Imagined Past in Medieval Historiography
Justin Stover (University of Edinburgh): Theognis Latinus: Henricus Aristippus and the Greek Past
X.C Longing and Bereavement in Historiography (room 200) Chair: Agostino Paravicini-Bagliani
Roberto Gamberini (Università di Cassino e del Lazio Meridionale): In Search of the Lost Biblical Commentaries by Anselm of Baggio: Nostalgia for the Primitive Church in the Midst of the Investiture Controversy Hanna Rajfura (University of Warsaw and Institute for the History of Science, Polish Academy of Sciences): The Past as Source of Knowledge, Longing, and Legitimacy: The Case of the Late Medieval Polish Historian Jan Długosz Jesús Rodríguez Viejo (Goethe University Frankfurt): A Bereaved Daughter: Dynastic Memory and Performance in the Royal Pantheon of León, Spain
15:30–16:00 Coffee break
16:00–17:00 Wrap-Up Session (Plenary)
17:00–18:00 Meet the Editors (Plenary)

Further details: https://medialatinitas2022.ff.cuni.cz, more information: Lucie Doležalová lucie.dolezalova@ff.cuni.cz, phone: +420-605-758079

The event was supported by the European Regional development Fund project „Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World“ (reg. no.: CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000734), as well as by the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Humanities of the Charles University and by the Philosophical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (Centre for Medieval Studies and Cabinet of Classical Studies.

In the novel Lʼignorance (2000) Milan Kundera noted the conceptual link in Spanish between nostalgia and not knowing—between añoranza and ignorance: „Nostalgia seems like the pain of ignorance, of not knowing. You are far away, and I don’t know what has become of you. My country is far away, and I don’t know what is happening there.“ Such engagement with the past, sometimes romanticized, other times disenchanted, has been examined recently by Zygmunt Bauman in Retrotopia (2017). In other titles to scholarly books, David Lowenthal twice appropriated a famous phrase from the British writer L. P. Hartley, first in The Past is a Foreign Country (1985) and again, in a retrospective three decades later, in The Past is a Foreign Country – Revisited (2015). In these studies, the American historian noted how „nostalgia is today’s favoured mode of looking back“ and how it can be both an attraction and an affliction.  This sort of instrumentalized and sought-after palliative nostalgia involves thinking one does or can know.

Nostalgic sentimentality links the present to the medieval past. The Middle Ages have been envisaged as „ye good olde days.“ For at least two centuries, the Latin language and literature of the era have been seen through a tavern haze of wine, women, and song, of devil-may-care student rituals and revels. Think of Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame. The Carmina Burana and their translators have done their part. And learned antiquarianism has played a salient role in the early music movement. In the meantime, in universities and academies, traditions believed to have originated in the Middle Ages live on in ceremonies, costumes, and customs. In popular culture, old books, especially medieval manuscripts, and dead languages, perhaps Latin in particular, enjoy a special cachet and allure. They are to conjure with. We see the impact of Celtic and Old Norse in Tolkien and Latin in C.S. Lewis.

Was anything equivalent experienced during the Latin Middle Ages? Medieval nostalgia might seem like a contradiction in terms, for the word as first attested in English in 1770 and in French in 1802 designates a medical condition, a particular type of melancholy marked by „suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.“ Johannes Hofer from Switzerland had already used the term „nostalgia“ in this sense in his Latin dissertation of 1668.  But nothing intrinsically precludes a medieval conception of the same pain, for nostalgia is related both to place and to time, and many times and places existed before the Middle Ages. Happy associations with an imagined past could have arisen either for individuals or collectively. Nostalgia may have had a niche in medieval conceptions of the past, memory, and emotions.

We have deliberately broadened the scope of Medialatinitas IX, by inviting scholars to explore this very present theme of nostalgia as it relates to the Latin Middle Ages. We hope that papers will deploy and explore as well as problematize and challenge the concept. What patterns does it follow? In what contexts does it appear? How is nostalgia linked to the present and even future rather than simply to the past? How might we distinguish an orientation towards the past that sees it as sacred and exemplary from more modern conceptions of nostalgia? Could we characterize the backwards glance of medieval Christian reformers to the apostolic age as a form of nostalgia?

And then there is politics. Nostalgia has at times been appropriated by political movements that instrumentalize stereotypes of the European Middle Ages as an imagined Age of Faith, heroism, authenticity, and ethnic origins. More recently the sentiment has been linked to rejection of social change in the demographic, technological, and other spheres. And, if nostalgia emerges from a constructed, fake memory, it risks becoming a manipulation of the past with potentially paralyzing consequences for future. The medieval era could become a battlefield, with racial supremacy, religious intolerance, national identity, and cultural elitism all entering the fray.

Possible topics for sessions and papers might include, but are not limited to:

– Nostalgia and impossibility of perfect reproduction of an original (for instance, in manuscript culture). Nostalgia and politics in manuscript layout and political overtones of certain scripts and carryover to printed fonts.
– Nostalgia (and negativism) about old books, old scripts, and old libraries: Did unsentimentality towards manuscript culture result in the destruction and loss of manuscript heritage?
– The sense of a lost Golden Age in Latin and vernacular literary and theological texts.
– Classical as well as Judaeo-Christian notions of a happy imagined past, both for either individuals or collectively.
– Personal and communal nostalgia and spatial projections:  Eden, the Earthly Paradise, Heaven, Fairyland, and Utopia. Or temporal projections:  desire for childhood and youth, longing for future – eschatology.
– Those before: Trojans, Romans, foundation-legends and aborigines in historiography.
– The dynamics of looking back – nostalgia and the passage of time: the past, its legacy, and its assessment.  Present chaos and decay as opposed to past purity and order. Nostalgia as a generalized sentiment towards antiquity. Desire to reform the present on the basis of past models (return to origins – religious movements, medieval renaissances, foundational figures, such as Arthur, rex quondam rexque futurus, Charlemagne, and Charles IV for reviving the past).
– Nostalgia and medieval medicine for the soul (how to cure anxiety, feelings of loss, and melancholy in medical  and theological writers.
– Literary medievalisms, including nostalgia for the Latin Middle Ages as embodied in modern novels, from Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris and Scheffel’s Ekkehard (1855) through Eco’s Name of the Rose (1980) and Baudolino (2000).
– Medievalism in cinema and the Latin Middle Ages.
– Medievalism as Reenactment and Creative Anachronism.
– Spatial and temporal separation, and the patterns of idealization, escapism, denial and rejection of the present.
– Constructing and manipulating memory, fake memory, imagination, stimuli and triggers of memory.
– Nostalgia explored in the history of emotions: longing, desire, and pain.