Project Meeting: Europe in Vernacular: The rise of vernacular languages at the borders of Latin World in Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Age. Contexts and Ideas

International Meeting

Monastic orders and the emergence of vernacular languages: philosophy, spirituality, history, literature, sermons
As ordens monásticas na emergência das línguas vernáculas: filosofia, espiritualidade, história, literatura, sermonística

Alcobaça, Abadia, 23-24 September 2022

The project provides a parallel study of some scientific, philosophical and homiletic texts translated onto vernacular by the end of the Middle Ages. The Portuguese team will approach some translations of Latin texts for the vernacular. The aim is to understand the local linguistic dynamics and, above all, the different use of texts designed for a European intellectual elite by a wider public but geographically and culturally more and more confined by national languages. We therefore intend to approach the question of the birth of local and national communities within medieval latinity through linguistic differentiation, a main characteristic of late Middle Ages and Early Modern Age. This process is particularly interesting in the periphery of Europe, such as Iberian Peninsula and Eastern Europe, where the political and social dynamics developed in peculiar ways and timing. The history of these two regions present similarities due both to their border positions and ties with centralised papacy.

Next meeting will be organized in Bratislava, November 2023.

Program

23 September

10h00-10h30

Welcome
Doutora Ana Pagará, Director of Mosteiro de Alcobaça
Eleonora Lombardo (Porto – Pádua)
Stanislava Kuzmová (Bratislava)
José Meirinhos (Porto)

10h30-12h30

Chair Peter Benka

— Stanislava Kuzmová (Bratislava), Religious Devotion, Female Communities and the Emergence of Vernacular Written Culture in Central Europe

— Maria Luís Leite Pinho (Porto), Monastery of São Dinis de Odivelas Revisited: the Case of Maria Micaela de São Bernardo (XVIII)

— Mário Correia (Porto), Sóror Maria do Céu's Triunfo do Rosário: Theatrical Practices at the Convent of Nossa Senhora da Esperança in Lisbon

14h30-16h30

Chair Joana Matos Gomes

— Mariana Leite (Porto), Leaving the Monasteries, Entering the Royal Courts: on the Iberian Translations and Reception of Peter Comestor's “Historia Scholastica”

— Paula Oliveira e Silva (Porto), The Book of the “Soliloquia” of Saint Augustine (cod. Alcob. CCLXXIII/198) – A Vernacular Version of the 13th Century Pseudo-Augustine's “Soliloquia aimae ad Deum”

—José Meirinhos (Porto), Biblical Interpretation Rules in Part III of the “Horto do Esposo” (mss. Alcobacenses 198 and 212)

17h00-19h00

Chair Mariana Leite

— Peter Benka (Bratislava), Monastic Vernacular Polemic Literature as a Tool in Converting Protestants

— Maria de Lurdes Correia Fernandes (Porto), The use of Portuguese in the 16th entury to Teach Moral Theology to the Laity: “The Memorial de Pecados” (1529) by Fr. Antonio de Beja, OSH)

— João Rebalde (Porto), Jesuit Catechisms and the Development of the Vernacular in 16th Century: Marcos Jorge's “Doutrina cristã”

24 September

9h00-11h00

Chair Stanislava Kuzmová

— Martin Homza (Bratislava), Catholic Orders, Recatolization and the Pre-Codification Efforts at Standardization of the Slovak Language in 1787

— Ivana Labancová (Bratislava), A few Aspects of the Language Practice in the Context of Franciscan Preaching

— Joana Matos Gomes (Porto) — Michel Kabalan (Porto), The Proselytism of the Near: the Portuguese Franciscans and Semitic Languages Teaching (14th-18th)

11h30

Ana Pagará (Director of Mosteiro de Alcobaça), Visit to the Monastery

Closing Words

Project
Europe in vernacular: The rise of vernacular languages at the borders of Latin World in Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Age. Contexts and Ideas
FCT Project bilateral project (FCT/483/15/01/2019/S). Filozofická fakulta Univerzita Komenského v Bratislave – Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto.
http://ifilosofia.up.pt/projects/europa-em-vulgar

Organization
Instituto de Filosofia da Universidade do Porto - FIL/00502 (Gabinete de Filosofia Medieval / TL Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy)
Mosteiro de Alcobaça – Monumento Nacional

José Meirinhos - Mariana Leite - Mário Correia

Funding
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)