CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2019
| Author | Montagna von Zeschau, Gustavo |
|---|---|
| Title | Invincible Bishops. Representations of Episcopal Military Actions in Medieval Lotharingia |
| Summary | This thesis analyzes the narrative representation of the Lotharingian bishops’ military actions from the eleventh to the twelfth. The study examines both the proper narrative recreation of battles –and the role that bishops played on them– as well as the relation that those war episodes had to the process of identity-building inside the bishoprics of Liège, Utrecht and the archbishopric of Trier. The bishops’ invincibility, is stated, should be understood as a narrative characteristic. The analysis is based on a given survey of historiographical narratives and bishopric deeds from which the episodes of battles are examined together with their narrative association to the episcopal identities. To analyze the scenes of battle, the methodology consists on a narratological analysis of specific passages in relation to the shaping of combat spatiality. Regarding the link between war scenes and identity, the study examines the diverse strategies of identification which the texts expresses and the ‘grammar of identity’ that support them. Once related, these two approaches show that the narrative invincibility of the bishops was built on a pattern common to diverse Lotharingian written sources in the analyzed period. This pattern consists on separate the combat scenes into spaces of positive singularity and negative plurality. Since the bishops enhanced the positive singularity among their own troops, they narratively avoided the military defeats. This narrative ‘Invincibility’ of Lotharingian bishops helped the chroniclers to project onto the past an episcopal identity that would be protected by those unbeatable prelates. |
| Supervisor | Ziemann, Daniel / Gaspar, Cristian |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2019/montagna_gustavo.pdf |
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