Location
Tour Jean Sans Peur
Workshops:
Ladicte salle fut très grandement et plentureusement servie, et tant belle chose estoit a veoir que merveilles: Luxury details in Medieval and Renaissance banquets
Karlštejn Castle, Prague, Czech Republic
24 January 2024
Oaths, gifts and etiquette: How diplomacy was expressed through banquets
Paris, Tour Jean Sans Peur
20 February 2024
Images from the gastronomic world: Society and culture explained through the illustrations of food and its environment
Tours, Institut Européen d’Histoire et des Cultures de l’Alimentation
19 March 2024
Ladicte salle fut très grandement et plentureusement servie, et tant belle chose estoit a veoir que merveilles: Luxury details in Medieval and Renaissance banquets
Karlštejn Castle, Prague, Czech Republic | 24 January 2024
Luxury in banquets is a topic that have been fascinating scholars in the last decades, with the result of bringing to the attention of the public the importance of specific objects, materials, ritual and diplomatic procedures or ingredients within these feasts. The sources employed were many and heterogenous, ranging from documents – including inventories, payment receipts, letters, personal journals, festival books, manuals and treatises – miniatures and paintings or archaeological evidences. This workshop intends to draw attention specifically to the material culture of banquets, exploring further the reasons for the choices made choosing the decorations, the table setting, the food offer and the costumes that would have been used for such occasions, from the 14th to the 17th century. The charm of Karlštejn Castle (https://www.hrad-karlstejn.cz/en) will be the perfect frame to welcome a one-day workshop dedicated to the discussion of new insights on table culture, tableware, precious fabrics, rich garments designed for specific banquet-related purposes, exotic ingredients and any other subject that can be connected with luxury aspects and attitudes in Medieval and Renaissance banquets.
The organizers of this workshop (Maddalena Bellavitis and Milan Svoboda) invite papers addressing issues that can shed new light and provide new interdisciplinary research trajectories on any topic that can be connected with the introduction of luxury items (including, but not only, tableware, clothes, furniture, decorations…), materials, ingredients and attitudes that could be used and found in Medieval and Renaissance banquets.
To be considered for participation, please provide a single pdf document including a one-page proposal in English for a 20-minute presentation of an unpublished research and a short bio. Applications may be sent to maddalena.bellavitis@gmail.com by 31 August 2023, specifying in the object the title of the workshop you are applying for (participants will be notified in September).
Oaths, gifts and etiquette: How diplomacy was expressed through banquets
Paris, Tour Jean Sans Peur | 20 February 2024
The importance of banquets’ organization within the diplomatic policy of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance has been often underlined by scholars. Banquets were the occasion for strengthening the relation with another court, celebrating new alliances, promoting devotional challenges like the crusades or demonstrating power and richness with showing off precious table settings, expensive food, sophisticated decorations and entremets. Scholars have been working to shed light on the meaning, intentions and results of these festivals from the diplomatic point of view by digging into the rich documentation left by the reports and accounts of the expenses incurred by the courts or patrons who organized these feasts, historical records, letters, journals or visual evidences like the representations found in paintings, miniatures or prints. But to these, some further kinds of evidences can be added, which include the lists of the dishes and delicacies offered during these banquets, descriptions of clothes and jewels, mentions of the gifts exchanged, reports on the etiquette required and any other information about how the organizer, the main guest or guests, and the other people invited intended to interact with each other in order to reach their objectives. The workshop will take place in the Tour Jean Sans Peur of Paris, a charming vestige of the Medieval Paris and of the difficult time of the war between Burgundians and Armagnacs.
The organizers of this workshop (Maddalena Bellavitis, Loïc Bienassis and Milan Svoboda) invite papers addressing issues that can shed new light and provide new interdisciplinary research trajectories on any topic that can be connected with the study of diplomatic aspects of Medieval and Renaissance banquets. To be considered for participation, please provide a single pdf document including a one-page proposal for a 20-minute presentation of unpublished work and a short bio. Presentations will be in French and English. Applications may be sent to maddalena.bellavitis@gmail.com by 30 September 2023, specifying in the object the title of the workshop you are applying for (participants will be notified in October).
Images from the gastronomic world: Society and culture explained through the illustrations of food and its environment
Tours, Institut Européen d’Histoire et des Cultures de l’Alimentation | 19 March 2024
Images related to the world of gastronomic culture can bring interesting information about various aspects related to society, showing how such culture differed according to the period, and to the historical and geographical context. This particular category of visual sources can thus provide a fundamental means for interdisciplinary research by helping scholars not only to better understand certain aspects of documentary sources and material culture that would otherwise remain partially obscure, providing complementary information to descriptions found in chronicles, letters, recipes or festival books, but also to explain the function, form and decorative motifs of a range of objects related to table culture. Illustrations related to the world of gastronomy obviously offer the possibility of exploring eating habits and the ingredients used, but also some forms of diversion, the table setting and layout, the tableware used, the distribution of sits at the table at banquets, the relative decorative choices of the halls in which banquets were organized, or, in the case of more modest social environments, the living conditions and access to certain foods by different layers of the population. The study of such images is therefore of interest not only to art historians, food historians or those interested in material cultures, but also to archaeologists, experts in botany, social history, diplomacy, production techniques or etiquette.
The organizers of this workshop (Maddalena Bellavitis, Loïc Bienassis and Milan Svoboda) invite papers that address issues that can shed new light and provide new interdisciplinary research trajectories on any topic that can be connected with the study of illustrations and representations of banquets and gastronomy during the centuries, from antiquity to the 19th century.
To be considered for participation, please provide a single pdf document including a one-page proposal for a 20-minute presentation of unpublished work and a short bio. Presentations will be in French and English. Applications may be sent to maddalena.bellavitis@gmail.com by 30 September 2023, specifying in the object the title of the workshop you are applying for (participants will be notified in October).