Within the Lotharingian space, the role played by advocacy in the shaping of princely territories from the tenth to the eleventh century has been viewed as fundamental by ancient studies sharing a juridical and institutional perspective. However, a recent reassessment of relationships between nobility and monasteries, makes necessary a re-evaluation of the links between advocates and monasteries. Our rereading is carried out in three steps: a critical view on the historiography of advocacy, a deconstruction of the monastic discourse on advocates and a fresh look at the links between comital advocates and abbey and on advocacy as a space of bilateral negotiation. The dominant discourse on the advocacy’s evolution has led to the development of an image from an institutional perspective, starting with its Carolingian origins and the « advocates-agents » of the central power (« Beamtenvogtei »), then moving to the ducal and comital advocates during the eleventh and twelfth centuries (« Edelvogtei » or « Herrenvogtei »), leading to the progressive abandonment of advocacy in the course of the last three centuries of the Middle Ages. To oversimplify, advocacy is pictured as an institution (« Rechtsinstitut ») with well-defined normative and juridical characteristics. However, its socio-cultural aspects, viewed in the larger context of relationships between nobility and regular clergy, remain neglected. As a result, advocacy is frequently perceived negatively as a source of conflicts with monasteries. It was in the course of the second half of the eleventh century that was born the image of a society polarised between a reformed monastic environment attempting at freeing itself from the laity and « usurping » counts-advocates « oppressors » of monks and rural communities. It then developed before entering modern and contemporary historiography. One needs to relativize and nuance such views, on the one hand by deconstructing the monastic discourse, by disclosing its strategies, and, on the other, by taking a wider look at other socio-cultural links between advocates and monasteries for which they ensure protectio. Indeed, the polarizing discourse carried by monastic sources hide many instances of positive representation of ducal and comital advocates, particularly between the middle of the tenth century and the middle of the twelfth, pertaining to the « high » advocacy exerted by dukes and counts. It is only with the development of the « inferior » advocacy (“Untervogtei”), which occurred in the beginning of the twelfth century, that advocacy started to be portrayed as a plague to be fought. One must therefore view the usage of that negative image of the advocate in terms of a strategy adopted by monasteries, aiming at permanently renegotiate rights between the two parts in the management of monastic patrimony. The analysis of links between the advocates and their monasteries necessitates taking into account elements that are at the same time complex and of various orders: social features such as the seigniorial world’s social and political hierarchy, economical factors such as the evolution of monastic lordship, religious factors such as memoria shared between monks and prominent laypeople. By taking into account other actors such as central power, ministerials and representatives of rural communities, the so-called gradual regulations of the advocates’ rights appear more like parts of exchange processes, of (re)negotiations or strengthening of common interests, shared between the lay and the monastic worlds.

La « parenté épiscopale » a été présentée comme un des freins à la formation des lignages en Germanie aux Xe et XIe siècles. En Lotharingie, cette thèse a été illustrée par le cas de la « parentèle épiscopale » des « Adalbéron » au sein de la « famille d’Ardenne », donc des descendants du comte Wigéric (899-916/919). Pour ce cas spécifique, la transmission des fonctions épiscopales du Xe au XIIe siècle doit cependant être revue en fonction de la transmission du nom programmatique d’« Adalbéron », de sa charge symbolique, de son objectif et des différents aspects de sa pratique (formation, parcours, élévation à la dignité épiscopale, arrangements et conflits internes au groupe parental, relation au pouvoir central). L’étude montre le passage de la « parentèle épiscopale » fondée sur l’alliance et l’amitié à une nouvelle structure d’organisation parentale, le « lignage épiscopal ». Celui-ci constitue au début du XIe siècle une étape transitoire vers la lignée fondée sur la transmission patrilinéaire du château. Contrairement à cette dernière, il met au centre la transmission d’oncle à neveu et résulte d’une situation de concurrence au sein de la « Maison d’Ardenne », du poids politique accru de la fonction épiscopale et du contrôle croissant du pouvoir ottonien, et s’achève logiquement avec la Réforme Grégorienne.

This volume contains the proceedings of the 14th Journées Lotharingiennes, held at the University of Luxembourg, in October 2006 and devoted to the analysis of the development of political identities in Lotharingia, from the ninth century onward. It contains 17 contributions groupes une the following headings: (1) Eléments fédérateurs; (2) Dissensions internes et identités régionales ; (3) Vecteurs identitaires; (4) La persistance de l'idée lotharingienne.

This preface highlights the seminal role played by professor Michel Parisse in the research on to medieval Lotharingia, and to whom this volume is dedicated.

The study of the priory of Useldange, founded at the end of the 11th or at the beginning of the 12th century nearby the homonymous castle, allows us to deepen our understanding of the more general question of castral priory foundations in the Meuse-Moselle area. Numerous such foundations are documented for the southern Lorraine region, most notably those of the Burgundian Molesme Abbey. Dispatching monks to the North, more precisely to Useldange, was an exceptional move and deserves study. Aside from the more local context, this foundation enables an in-depth study of the features that characterise this period of profound upheavals: the social hierarchy of the lay aristocracy, the appearance of combined castral and monastic seigneuries (“seigneuries bifaces), the radiation of the Benedictine resurgence in rural areas and its influence on the origins of small towns, and, lastly, the peculiarities of the different types of castle landscapes (“Burglandschaften”) and monastery landscapes (“Klosterlandschaften”) on both sides of the frontier between France and the Empire.

This volume collects studies on the role of monastic institutions in the exchange of cultural and socio-economic capital in the medieval diocese of Liège. During the high Middle Ages, the bishopric of Liège found itself at a cultural crossroads between the German Empire and the French lordships. The Liègeois themselves summed up the situation when they declared that: ‘Gaul considers us its most distant inhabitants, Germany as nearby citizens. In fact we are neither, but both at the same time’. This same complexity is also echoed by present-day historians, who have described Liège as a hub of interactions between two great civilisations. Medieval monastic communities in Liège were key sites of this exchange, actively participating in the cultural developments, social networks, and political structures of both regions. Bringing together the work of international scholars, this collection of essays addresses the problem of monastic identity and its formation in a region that was geographically wedged between two major competing socio-political powers. It investigates how monastic communities negotiated the uncertainties of this situation, while also capitalizing on the opportunities it presented. As such, this book sheds light on the agency of monastic identity formation in a small but complex region caught at the crossroads of two major powers.

This anthology is devoted to Lothringia, once a key territory in the Carolingian Empire and later a border and contact zone between the Kingdoms of Germany and France. The essays seek to encourage systematic research on the relationship between the papacy and this dynamic territory in the heart of Europe, thus encouraging consideration of a Lotharingia pontificia.

This book is divided into three main parts, dealing with historical narration, territory and language. Historical narrations have played a key role in ‘inventing’ national, gendered, ethnic and racial identities, and in presenting deterministic and essentialist conceptions of time and human action. The importance of (abstract and social) space in the production of history and the equal importance of the temporal dimension in the production of geography have been underlined by Doreen Massey. Her concept of ‘space/time’ abolishes the binary opposition of time and space and defines them as interrelated.This double process of spatial and temporal construction of identity is analysed here in a diachronic way from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century, comprising the period traditionally considered as key to nation-building processes as well as current trends towards de-and renationalisation. The scale of this study is limited to discourse in Luxembourg and concerns the production of internal and external borders. Part One retraces the ‘genealogy’ of the master narrative from the early modern period and examines its absorption into public expressions of political self-identity after 1919. It then looks at the dissemination of the master narrative by means of textbooks, celebrations, literature and popular culture. Finally, it highlights the transformations of this narrative, the opening of fields of possibilities and new trends. Part Two examines how representations of space complement the master narrative by embedding past experiences in a certain territory and within certain defined borders. Territorial delimitations are projected back in time and legitimised by reference to the same bounded space in the past. Two different discursive strategies for the creation of ‘collective identity’ are distinguished: the centripetal and the centrifugal. The former characterises the national master narrative, while the latter has more of a supranational, Great Regional or European focus. Part Three traces the evolution of Luxembourgish, which still is in full nationalisation mode. Once again, the watershed here seems to have come in 1919, when the language began to be seen not as a mere dialect of German, but as a distinctly different tongue. On first sight, a native language seems to be a constant of human existence, in the sense both of history and of an individual’s life. As its title indicates, however, this book seeks to deconstruct the notion of a natural language and focuses on the act of creation and on the social actors involved in this process. The evolution of the language is, moreover, placed in a broad context. Th e gradual codification of Luxembourgish was part of a larger movement which aimed to give the comparatively young state a sense of substance and meaning. As in most European nationstates, the state of Luxembourg existed before any systematic attempts at nation-building were undertaken. It was—and still is—heavily involved in this process. Thus, in recent years, Luxembourg has created new national institutions, such as the Central Bank in 1998, the University of Luxembourg in 2003, and the establishment of several Luxembourg-related research institutes between 1995 and 2008. This book investigates whether this nationalisation tendency may be confirmed by the study of the representations of the past, the territory and the language from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day.