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PL
This article explores the ways episcopal milieus on the north-eastern peripheries of Europe created and renewed their identities and symbols of episcopal authority by domesticating their immigrant saints during the high Middle Ages. By comparing the examples of holy bishops arriving to Poland and Sweden (St Adalbert, St Sigfrid, St Henry), it studies the episcopal mythopoesis, that is, the creation of foundational myths and mythologies as well as their adaptation to specific local needs and changing historical circumstances. The article further probes to what extent these mythopoetic efforts were original or imitative in comparison to the Western European episcopal centres and other peripheries. How similarly or differently did the bishops in the “old” and “young” Europe respond to the question: What beginnings do we need today? And what role did the appropriation, commodification, and domestication of holy bishops’ images and body parts play in building the institutional identities of bishoprics?
EN
This article explores the ways in which the political legitimacy of the elites was produced and demonstrated through feasting as it was practised in two peripheral high-medieval polities, Poland and Norway. By paying attention to the ways the political and moral economy of feasts and their use as a means of propaganda and political recognition were presented in contemporary sources, this article, through two case studies of peripheral languages of power and legitimisation, traces the similarities and differences in elite feasting in these disconnected contexts. Three aspects of political feasting are studied in comparison. First, the question of the supernatural charisma of rulers and ruling dynasties demonstrated through their – mythically and historically framed – ability to provide economic prosperity for their people and followers is examined. Second, we discuss how the rulers’ social power, entitlement, and ability enabled them to extract material resources from the rest of the elites and their subjects, how resources were then redistributed and what symbolic capital these endowed upon the elites. The third section focuses on high-status feasts at which foreign elites from European centres were entertained to secure international recognition of the peripheral elites and gain institutional advantages such as coronations, archepiscopal titles, etc.
EN
In this introduction, we argue that the key to understanding the means and dynamics of political order in the peripheral polities during the era of Europeanization (1000–1300) lies in exploring the practices of (self-)legitimisation by the peripheral elites in Poland and Norway. The article proposes a novel agenda-setting theoretical and methodological framework for how medievalists can study elite legitimation and relations between core European and peripheral polities from a comparative perspective. This introduction launches this agenda in five steps. First, it outlines the key conceptual tools for studying the elites and the languages of power they used as means of symbolically legitimising themselves. Second, it re-assesses Robert J. Bartlett’s thesis of diffuse Europeanization to argue how a comparative focus on the peripheral elites and their languages of power can give a new perspective on this research topic. Third, it lays out the methodological tenets of an experimental comparative framework for elite legitimation on the peripheries. Fourth, it fleshes out these postulations in connection to our two contrasting cases and contexts, Polish and Norwegian. Finally, it presents the specific comparative case studies in this special issue.
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