Programme

19^th Symposium of the Mediävistenverband in Würzburg, 05 – 08/03/2023

Norms and ideals

Every culture possesses a set of more or less compulsory rules aimed at organising social coexistence. These are expressed through a variety of media: religious or juridical texts, as well as art, literature, or philosophical discourse. Such medial representations range from religious, ecclesiastical, or secular legal texts, to behavioural rules (e.g. catalogues of virtues) and notions of a good life, to concepts of an ideal king or the ‘ideal beauty’. Throughout these domains of artistic expression, authors have at times strived towards such standards, reinforced them, or put them up for discussion.

Such rules and standards are reflected in codes of conduct destined to prevent violations of expected behaviour and to penalise such violations. Standard-setting authorities are diverse, their origins often impossible to grasp. Religious norms invoke the divine will, as recorded in holy scripture or interpreted by persons of authority. Social norms are the result of long, collective and social developments. Meanwhile, juridical norms are a type of social rules delineating expectations of conduct used to solve or prevent conflict in a particular society. Finally, esthetical norms can also be viewed as belonging to the realm of social rules; their emergence and mutations depend on regional factors, they are influenced by both integration into the liturgical context and the use of certain materials at certain periods.

Regarding norms, the religious and the wide-ranging social realm are deeply interconnected, although they diverge when it comes to their agents. While breaches of religious norms are prosecuted in the afterlife, violations of religious laws can also trigger earthly punishment. Outside the religious domain, breaches of norms are subjected to social control and penalties, and in certain cases to legal evaluation and condemnation. This leads to a merging of secular and ecclesiastical norm-setting.

Every type of normative settlement is both the result of social negotiations and subjected to – more or less quick – mutations. Norms can shift slowly and all but imperceptibly; however, they can be re-set in a moment by legislators, judges or legal scholars. When it comes to norms derived from sacred texts, be they Quran, Hebrew Bible, or New Testament, these changes materialise as new interpretations of existing legal texts which, because divine, were viewed as non-negotiable if perhaps open to interpretation.

Norms prescribe what it is that each member of the community must comply with at any given time. Ideals, on the other hand, are more abstract and broadly formulated. They describe certain behaviours or objectives which, whilst only seldom attained, must be strived for. Although they cannot be articulated through precise definitions or sanctions, these ideals – such as beauty of the arts or generosity and philanthropy of the sovereign – are very potent.

It is the symposium’s aim to discuss the following four perspectives:

1. Synchronic: While different fields of knowledge might refer to the same norms and ideal conceptions, they certainly articulate these through their own mediums. The following questions then arise: How do such processes take place? Regarding the concrete representation of these norms and ideals within a particular medium, are there notable differences? When it comes to (linguistic) mediums, are these representations developed discursively or rather narratively? What are the relations between medium and text? A central aspect is discursive primacy, i.e. the question of who is permitted to ‘speak’ on norms and ideals in a specific society and how bindingly so. Furthermore, are these values absolute or negotiable? Are there limits to norms and ideals such as sovereign largitas? Do these ideal conceptions collide with one another, e.g. what of largitas vs temperance? How are these conflicts represented and negociated?
2. Diachronic 1: Terms used in the context of norms and values often go back to a distant past. It can be assumed that the signification of such terms as well as their connotation shifted over time, that it changed or was even reinterpreted as a result of their reception in different contexts. How did this evolution proceed? How did the substance of these terms change in spite of their unvarying designation, e.g. with virtues or the absorption of roman law in its varying forms? Besides the examination of terminological history, we must ask how the altered understanding of an old term impacts the reception of an older document. For instance, the reception of roman law lead to the adoption of antique legal terms which were imparted with new meaning under the influence of medieval social and religious conceptions.
3. Diachronic 2: What of the reception – particularly in scientific discourse – of medieval norms and ideals in later centuries? How were they shaped and employed? European reception of the Middle-Ages, particularly since the 19th century, has consistently propagated ‘typically medieval’ values. There are different root causes to this: it was a matter of either negatively defining and delimiting the era or using ‘medieval’ values as a projection screen. In effect, we invite contributions about the history of science focussed on the representation of norms and ideals in medieval sources and their later scientific reception. Moreover, colonisation led to a break in colonised territories regarding the continuity of local norms as well as the perception of these regions’ own Middle-Ages which – due to the European lens imposed on colonised peoples by their colonial rulers – was consistently viewed as being inherently deficient vis-à-vis Europe. This resulted in a malaise regarding their own past, which in turn laid the foundation of a perceived inferiority. 19th century European views towards the past attained interpretative authority; are there approaches aiming to overcome such limitations? Finally, which norms and ideals were not received and absorbed by colonised peoples, and why?
4. Comparative: Norms and values vary between different cultural areas, they are embedded in their respective societies in different ways. A comparative analysis could help sharpen the contours of the interplay between norms and ideals on the one hand, and religious prescriptions and the status of laws on the other hand.