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The STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI issue article summary
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Abstract: This volume appeared as an outcome of the conference entitled “The Role of Medievalism in the Writing of National Histories” held at Oxford University in 2006, although some of the contributions included here were subsequently added. Sixteen authors affiliated to various European Universities and to two national academies are responsible for providing the book’s fourteen chapters and its conclusion. Two of these authors are also the volume’s editors, their competency being ensured by the positions they presently hold: R. J. W. Evans is Regius Professor of History at the University of Oxford and Guy P. Marchal is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the University of Lucerne.
The studies are grouped, depending upon the country to which they refer, into four geographical sections, although the inclusion of Italy and Switzerland into Central Europe is controversial. The Introduction signed by Guy P. Marchal establishes the fact that not only powerful nations glorified their medieval past. On the contrary, young states (those founded in the 19th or 20th centuries), political formations which lacked independency for a period of time (states that existed for a time in the medieval period, but afterwards lost their autonomy for a number of decades or even centuries), states which survived from the medieval period, but suffered some constitutional changes during the nineteenth century (such as Switzerland and Austria), and states that constantly needed to respond to a comparison with their Antiquity (as was the case of Italy, for example) all needed to carefully choose their symbols and heroes when inventing their nations during the 19th century. |
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