Medieval friendship networks

INTRODUCTION

Friendship was for a long time regarded by medievalists as marginal to key concepts, events and movements in society, and also as fundamentally unproblematic, as an easily recognised universal. In the first half of the 20th century, it was studied by some historians, but their approach was partial, mostly focusing on theological or spiritual aspects. Later, more differentiated ways of studying the subject developed, resulting in a great variety of publications. Scholars focused for example on ecclesiastical networks and the philosophy of friendship in western medieval history, they concentrated on lay friendships and constitutional history, or they became embroiled in issues of kin versus non-kin in Byzantine society. Most of these studies have in common that ‘the question of friendship’ has been pursued predominantly as an aspect of the history of spirituality or of psycho-history, often commenting on specific texts in isolation, both discursive theoretical treatises and texts, narrative and interactive, which demonstrate friendship in action.

Contacts

Dr. Julian Haseldine (overall coordinator)j.p.haseldine@hull.ac.uk

Recent research however has established the relationship of friendship and networks of friendship to important social and political networks in medieval society by showing that these texts relate to a specific, explicitly acknowledged ideal of disinterested public friendship and to identifiable social networks with important political implications. Medievalists now try to interpret the language of friendship related rigorously to its context and the historical circumstances of its deployment, through a more sophisticated reading of the texts, and to understand the role of such exchanges in the formation, maintenance and activation of networks, and ultimately to the workings of politics. Or they discuss the problem of understanding friendship as the expression of a social as well as a personal relation which refers to the broader context of social structures and textual or educational environments.

The British Academy Network for “Medieval Friendship Networks” (2004-2010) is an international network of western medievalists and Byzantinists bringing together different methodological approaches to friendship and to friendship texts in a rigorous comparative matrix of Scandinavia, western Europe and the Byzantine world. The aim of this network is to develop a better understanding of the language of friendship in its social, political and cultural context, to create methodologies for the reconstruction and analysis of relations and networks, and to visualize multi-layered processes of communication. Through a period of five years, international workshops and congresses on various topics (e.g. letters and narrative in medieval social networks, the (body) language of friendship, gesture in art and literature, functioning of political/episcopal/monastic/secular networks, detection of relationships, friendship across the boundaries (for example Islam, medieval Jewish communities, Rus), digital network mapping, friendship and gender) are planned. Research results will be presented through individual contributions, as well as through generalizing, comparative and cross-fertilizing publications.

Senior Lecturer at the University of Hull, where he has been since 1998. Published an edition of The Letters of Peter of Celle (Oxford Medieval Texts, 2001), and had also written articles on friendship and friendship networks in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Edited the volume arising from the first international conference on medieval friendship held in 1996. PhD: A study of the Letters of Abbot Peter of La Celle (c. 1115-1183), Cambridge, 1992. Currently working on friendship in monastic letter collections of the twelfth century. (www.hull.ac.uk/history/dept/)

Walter Ysebaert completed his PhD in May 2004 (title: Written communication and the construction of personal networks in the

Prof. Margaret Mullett (budgetary control)
m.mullett@qub.ac.uk
Director of the Institute of Byzantine Studies at the Queen's University of Belfast; published "Theophylact of Ochrid. Reading the Letters of a Byzantine Archbishop" (Aldershot 1997), articles on Byzantine literary theory, epistolography, monasticism.(www.qub.ac.uk/ibs)

Prof. Jon Vidar Sigurdsson
j.v.sigurdsson@mellomalder.uio.no

Dr. Michael Grünbart (electronic resources)
gruenbart@uni-muenster.de
Studied at the University of Vienna (PhD in 2000); published "Epistularum Byzantinarum Initia" (Hildesheim 2001) and "Formen der Anrede im byzantinischen Brief vom 6. bis zum 12. Jahrhundert" (Vienna 2005) and various articles on medieval Greek letterwriting; currently head of the special library of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Vienna (www.univie.ac.at/byzneo/fachbib.htm)

Dr. Walter Ysebaert (area coordinator: Latin West - dutch/francophone)
walter.ysebaert@vub.ac.be
 twelfth century. The letter-collections of Stephen of Orléans as a mirror of ecclesiastical milieux in the Capetian Kingdom? A methodological survey) He is actually working as a Postdoctoral Fellow of Research Foundation Flanders (FWO - Flanders) at the Free University of Brussels. His fields of interest include all aspects of medieval letters and letter-collections, methodological problems regarding to the research of medieval friendship, personal relations and networks in the 9th-13th centuries, the so-called 12th century Renaissance and medieval diplomatics.

Dr. Emilia Jamroziak (area coordinator: Latin West - anglophone)
E.M.Jamroziak@leeds.ac.uk
Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Leeds. Published Rievaulx abbey and its social context 1132-1300: memory, locality and networks (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005) and a number of articles on social and economic networks in medieval Britain as well as co-edited with Janet Burton a collection of essays on religious and lay connections in Northern Europe between 1000 and 1400. Currently working on social networks on the medieval frontiers in Scotland and Pomerania. www.leeds.ac.uk/history/