Memory and Commemoration in Medieval Culture

In medieval society and culture, memory occupied a unique position. It was central to intellectual life and the medieval understanding of the human mind. Commemoration of the dead was also a fundamental Christian activity. Above all, the past - and the memory of it - occupied a central position in medieval thinking, from ideas concerning the family unit to those shaping political institutions. Focusing on France but incorporating studies from further afield, this collection of essays marks an important new contribution to the study of medieval memory and commemoration. Arranged thematically, each part highlights how memory cannot be studied in isolation, but instead intersects with many other areas of medieval scholarship, including art history, historiography, intellectual history, and the study of religious culture. Key themes in the study of memory are explored, such as collective memory, the links between memory and identity, the fallibility of memory, and the linking of memory to the future, as an anticipation of what is to come.

Elma Brenner is resident Specialist in Medieval and Early Modern Medicine at the Wellcome Library, UK. Her research focuses on medical history and religious culture in medieval Normandy, and she is completing a monograph, Leprosy and Charity in Rouen, c.1100-c.1400.

Meredith Cohen is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the President of the International Medieval Society, Paris. Her research interests include medieval architecture, sculpture and urbanism, as well as nineteenth-century medievalism, particularly in France. In addition to her publications on the Sainte-Chapelle and medieval Paris, she has co-edited the anthologies Difference and Identity in Francia and Medieval France (2010) and Space in the Medieval West: Places, Territories, and Imagined Geographies (forthcoming) for the International Medieval Society, Paris.

Mary Franklin-Brown is Associate Professor in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She has published on Old French romance, the troubadours and encyclopedism. Her monograph, Reading the World: Encyclopedic Writing in the Scholastic Age, was published in 2012.