dc.contributor.author | Strenga, Gustavs | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2015-09-15T09:45:54Z | |
dc.date.available | 2015-09-15T09:45:54Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2013 | |
dc.identifier.citation | Strenga, G. 2013. Remembering the dead: collective memoria in late medieval Livonia. Queen Mary University of London. | en_US |
dc.identifier.uri | http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/8672 | |
dc.description | PhD | en_US |
dc.description.abstract | Memoria or the medieval remembrance of the dead is integral to our understanding of
medieval society. However, memoria was not just a liturgical practice intended to lessen
purgatorial suffering, but a ‘total social phenomenon’ that impacted every aspect of life.
This thesis follows in the tradition of the German Memoriaforschung school, especially
the concepts formulated by Otto Gerhard Oexle. These concepts are here particularly
applied to memoria as a group phenomenon. A particular contention of this thesis is that
memoria was socially constitutive and thus not only a vehicle to remember the past but
a means to create and maintain social groups. Therefore this thesis takes the form of
series of case studies drawn from late medieval Livonia (present day Latvia and
Estonia) c. 1400-1525. The groups chosen –associations of the urban elites, non-elite
brotherhoods, the clergy and the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order – reflect both
the strength of the surviving source material and the particular characteristics of the
region.
Each case study is considered through a series of research questions. How did
memoria constitute and shape social relationships? How did memoria create and sustain
groups? In what ways was memoria used for political purposes? How did groups use
their past to maintain their identities in the present? What role did charity and the poor play?
In addition to exploring the above themes, this thesis particularly argues that
memoria was used to legitimize power by urban governments and by the Teutonic
Order and the archbishops of Riga. This thesis also shows that memoria created the
cultural memory of the Teutonic Order and the Rigan church. Memoria sustained the
identities of urban elite groups and was essential to creating relationships between the
urban elites and non-elite groups | en_US |
dc.description.sponsorship | Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) | |
dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
dc.publisher | Queen Mary University of London | |
dc.subject | Early Modern Empire, | en_US |
dc.subject | East India Company | en_US |
dc.title | Remembering the dead: collective memoria in late medieval Livonia | en_US |
dc.type | Thesis | en_US |
dc.rights.holder | The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author | |