Seven stories high...

That's how high London is: 7 stories. Occasionally 8. Anywho...Well, here I am, Saturday evening, a very hard week of studying under my belt, and a good meal (for once) in my belly, and it's time to think about the weekend. Yes, my weekend tends to be one day, and that's Sunday. I've never really had a problem with a six-day workweek, as long as I generally have the flexibility to use Saturday as I need to. I actually broke down and bought a filling meal of fish and chips...or more accurately, fish and french fries, with mushy peas and washed down with a cold beer. It was a fine change of pace from ice cream bars, Cadbury bars (nothing wrong with them, but...), cookies, pies, and water. So, now I can sit back, work on my conferencen proposal for Kalamazoo 2009, my lesson plans for my classes, and what will now be a much-improved conference paper for next week. Seriously, without these British libraries, I would have missed much. Just goes to show you, right when you think you know your subject, you really don't know it at all.

Apparently what the MGH has been turning to in recent years is commisioning scholars to prepare critical editions of medieval correspondence. So you have, for example, the Admonter Briefsammlung, of which I heard too late to make much of an impact on my second year paper in 2007. Browsing the IHR's very complete collection of the MGH today, I grasped by chance Die Juengere Hildesheim Briefsammlung, which is a fascinating collection of letters held by the chancery of the bishopric of Hildesheim. Most interesting of all, it has an entire series of correspondence around the years 1187-1189, when Barbarossa and Philip of Cologne were at loggerheads. There has apparently been a lot of controversy over the validity of these letters, which older historians dismissed as stylistic exercises of the chancery school (so-called Stiluebungen), or as too doctored to use. More recently, Ferdinand Opll has defended the validity of many of these letters, as has another chap, can't remember his name right now, Brent or Brendt, I think. This is a relief, since they should come in quite useful for this book chapter I'm finishing on Barbarossa's crusade preparations. And, giving the letters a quick look-through, I must say that they strongly support my interpretation of the months between Audita tremendi (Gregory VIII's crusade bull of 1187) and the departure of the imperial army from Regensburg in May, 1189. They fit with the rest of the evidence, and to my mind it points to a very serious political/military situation in northwest Germany during that time--far more serious than current historians like to admit. If you doubt me, you can read about it in a year or so...if they still want the chapter when I'm done with it (long-passed deadlines...).

Apparently some of the reservations about the collection center on the formulas for opening and closing letters, to which many in this collection do not strictly adhere. But, while we must be cautious, I think there is a great danger of becoming too dogmatic about what was, in the end, an undogmatic process, particularly in the case of letters which were not meant for public distribution. That may not have been many letters, as Giles Constable has discussed in an old French publication (can't remember the title right now), but there were still some which were meant as communications between person and person, and not person and community.

Well, enough of that. If you want to read further, and are fluent in German and Latin, the link is http://mdzx.bib-bvb.de/dmgh_new/. Click on ''Epistolae,' and then on 'Die Briefe der deutschen Kaiserseit.'

I have eight minutes left on my computer time, so let me toss out another bone on which folks can chew...Here's one to which I will return in the weeks to come.

A few weeks after Kalamazzo, this very provocative article was published in the Weekly Standard, called 'A Dark Age for Medievalists
At their annual congress in Kalamazoo, it's no longer your grandfather's Middle Ages,'
by one Charlotte Allen. .http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/146etleh.asp. The reaction this article has drawn from the medieval blogging world (such as it is) has been absolutely devastating, and (as I see it) out of proportion to its punch or predictable impact. This despite Larry Swain's passionate post at The Ruminate, http://theruminate.blogspot.com/2008/06/allen-furor.html.

Well, anyway...to be continued.