Talk. Lars Boje Mortensen "Roman Identity in Imperial and Nordic Historiography c. 1070-1200"

Lars Boje Mortensen will be giving a lecture at the Institute for Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences on Thursday December 5, 2019. 

Abstract

With the ‘imperial turn’ in historical and literary studies, the Roman identity claimed for their communities by a variety of high medieval authors suddenly makes much more sense than it did in the national paradigms of the 20th century. In this lecture, Prof. Mortensen will discuss two interrelated phenomena: how can we link the new classicism of the long 12th-century renaissance (c. 1050-1200) with concerns of empire? Which special dynamics were a orded by the peculiar situation of the sacred authority of the Empire (the Papacy) being acknowledged by all of Latin Europe and the secular authority only to some extent, and how is this traceable in the historiography of the period? This talk will mainly draw on examples from Imperial and Nordic historiography.