On December 16, an international conference on the topic of discursive traditions will take place in Klagenfurt, organized by the local Department of Romance Studies and the Academy project "Biblical Glossaries as Hidden Bearers of Culture." Representatives from the Academy projects “ALMA—Knowledge Networks in Medieval Romania” and “Biblical Glossaries as Hidden Bearers of Culture” will participate.

For the Mediterranean region and thus for the Romance languages, contact between the Arab, Jewish, Byzantine, and Latin worlds played a decisive role throughout the Middle Ages. The emergence of knowledge cultures and, in particular, the history of medicine were also strongly influenced by these interconnections across linguistic and religious boundaries. The ALMA project, which has been funded by the Academies' Program since fall 2022, aims to investigate the expansion of Romance languages of knowledge from 1100 to 1500 and to shed light on the cognitive-conceptual and linguistic aspects of this process. One of the domains that the project examines paradigmatically is medicine, a domain that is significantly influenced by cultural contact and knowledge transfer between ancient Greek, Jewish, and Arabic traditions and the emerging reception of Medieval Latin and Romance vernacular languages. The planned conference will examine this polycentric knowledge transfer as one of the central prerequisites for the linguistic expansion processes analyzed by ALMA. In dialogue with researchers from the fields of history, the history of knowledge (and science), textual philology, and linguistics, the constellations that enable contact and transfer processes—processes of demarcation or appropriation—in the domain of medical knowledge will be examined. This will create the conditions for embedding conceptual and linguistic change in their respective contexts of reception and production and making their historical contingency transparent.

Download poster (PDF)

As part of the collaboration between the University of Bergamo and the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities , an international conference on lists and enumerations Academy of Sciences and Humanities place on October 28 and 29, at which three representatives from the Academy’s project “Biblical Glossaries as Hidden Carriers of Culture” will also be in attendance.

Download the program (PDF)

On May 21, 2025, at 6:15 p.m., in the Ernst-Robert-Curtius Hall of the Department of Romance Languages at Heidelberg University, Judith Kogel will give a public lecture on the Maqre Dardeqe, organized by the “Bible Glossaries” project and the Abraham Berliner Center.
The Maqre Dardeqe is an alphabetically organized glossary (the oldest manuscript dates to around 1410) in which lexemes of Biblical Hebrew are listed alphabetically according to their roots. The root is followed by an Old/Middle French word, which, unlike in other Judeo-French glossaries, is not vocalized. The text is therefore of great interest to both Hebrew studies and Romance studies.
Ms. Kogel is a recognized expert on Judeo-French texts in general and on the Maqre Dardeqe in particular.

Download the poster for the lecture "What about nouns in Maqre Dardeqe" (PDF)

The FRM Heidelberg would like to draw your attention to the following event:
The project “Bible Glossaries as Hidden Cultural Vessels” and the University of Bergamo will celebrate the launch of their joint collaboration on December 19, 2024, at 6:00 p.m. Following opening remarks by Hanna Liss and Stephen Dörr, Maria Grazia Cammarato (University of Bergamo) will present the details of the collaboration, followed by a keynote address by Richard Trachsler (University of Zurich).
Everyone is warmly welcome; please register at hadw.

The 2024–2025 winter semester will begin soon, and starting on October 24, 2024, S. Tittel’s advanced seminar / introductory seminar+ on digital textual criticism will be held every Thursday from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m. in Room 020 of the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Heidelberg.
Auditors are very welcome.

Description:
In this practice-oriented course focused on the methods of the digital humanities, we will work together to create a (partial) edition of one or more medieval manuscripts containing French medical or legal texts. The goal of the course will be to produce an edition of text fragments using both a simple text editor and algorithm-based, automated transcription. The transcriptions will be annotated using XML/TEI; an introduction to XML and XML/TEI will be part of the course—though prior knowledge is certainly helpful. To participate in this course, you will need your own computer (MS Windows, Mac OS, Linux), a text editor installed on it, e.g., Visual Studio Code [free] or oXygen [paid, but a university-wide license is currently being acquired] (please test before the course begins to ensure the installation was successful and you can edit files without issues). The theoretical, text-philological foundation builds upon the seminar on editorial philology from the summer semester of 2024. Having attended this seminar is advantageous but not a prerequisite for participation in the course announced here.
A prerequisite for successful participation is regular and active attendance and the creation of your own small edition as a counterpart to a term paper.

The “École d’été 2024 – Philologie romane et édition des textes” will be held at the University of Klagenfurt this year from September 15 to 20.
The summer school has been in existence for many years and is organized by Stephen Dörr (Heidelberg), Franz Lebsanft (Bonn), Richard Trachsler (Zurich), Raymund Wilhelm (Klagenfurt), and Fabio Zinelli (Paris). It enjoys great popularity and has been highly successful in providing young scholars with a solid education in textual criticism and in fostering international networks. The work done at the summer school typically culminates in a joint book publication.
For more detailed information, see the flyer here or visit the summer school’s website directly.

On Tuesday, June 4, 2024, a study day titled "French and Italian Allographic Texts in the Middle Ages" will take place in Heidelberg at the College of Jewish Studies, Landfriedstraße 12 (Room S3). At this event, researchers from the Academy Project “Bible Glossaries as Hidden Carriers of Culture” and the project “Manuscripta Italica Allographica” (MIA), funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, will deliver a total of six presentations.
The program will follow; participation is open to all without prior registration.

Poster: "Study Day: Allographic Texts of the Middle Ages"

ALMA is participating in this year’s Medieval Day at Heidelberg University, which will take place on June 8, 2024, from 2:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., with activities on Universitätsplatz and at the Neue Uni. A PDF of the program can be found here.

During the summer semester of 2024, S. Tittel taught a lecture and seminar on textual criticism.

Whether the reader chooses the bilingual edition of *Parzival* in the Reclam series or a multi-volume scholarly edition, they are holding not only different kinds of books but, in some cases, different versions of the same text. Behind this lie the methods and schools of textual criticism, that is, the scholarly study of the analysis of (historical) textual sources. Textual criticism is key to understanding our history and culture, as it provides textual sources not only for linguistics and literary studies but also for historical research. In the history of textual criticism, there are several scholarly schools that apply different methods of textual criticism—that is, the practical editing of a textual source—to produce a scientifically sound edition. We aim to present these schools along with their sometimes polemical debates. Additionally, important auxiliary disciplines such as codicology and paleography will be outlined. Particular attention will be paid to the important interplay between editorial philology and lexicography on the one hand, and between editorial philology and history on the other. Finally, the course will also address the methods of compiling and publishing a text edition: traditional publication as a book versus digital and online publication using technologies and methods from the field of digital humanities. The course combines lectures with academic exercises (in individual or group work) designed to put the learned theory into practice and anchor it there: we will edit small passages from medieval manuscripts ourselves and conceptualize what a larger academic work on the manuscripts we examine might look like. To bridge the gap between the exercises and the realities of professional work, the course will also include participation in a research project focused on editorial philology.

On Wednesday, February 28, 2024, at 6:30 p.m., the opening ceremony of the FRM Heidelberg will take place in the Ernst-Robert-Curtius Hall of the Department of Romance Languages (Room 218) at Heidelberg University: Prof. Dr. Raymund Wilhelm (University of Klagenfurt) will deliver an opening lecture titled “The Spread of Discourse Traditions and the Development of Romance Cultural Languages—Religious Poetry in the Quatrain Monorime d’Alexandrins in the 13th and 14th Centuries.” The event is open to everyone, and the FRM Heidelberg looks forward to a lively exchange with a large audience over a glass of wine.

Opening Remarks, Stephen Dörr / Sabine Tittel:

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
Sabine Tittel and I, Stephen Dörr, are delighted that you have accepted our invitation to the opening of the Center for Romance Medieval Studies. Before we turn the floor over to our keynote speaker, Raymund Wilhelm, we would first like to explain why we established this center.

As you may know, Sabine and I have spent many years working side by side, so to speak (to be precise: since 1997, when Sabine joined the team). We were part of the editorial team of the Dictionnaire étymologique de l’ancien français(DEAF) at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, which was originally founded by Kurt Baldinger in 1965 and continued by Frankwalt Möhren until 2007, and finally by Thomas Städtler. The other half, the “East Team” in the office, which sat across from us as the “West Team,” was for the longest time comprised of Frankwalt Möhren and Thomas Städtler (and other colleagues in the period following Frankwalt Möhren’s transition to “pseudo”-retirement). After the DEAF project was discontinued in 2020, we were assigned different tasks: Sabine joined the Altgaskognisches Wörterbuch (DAG) and the “Nepal Project” of Academy of Sciences and Humanities then a research initiative here at Heidelberg University; I joined the Lessico Etimologico Italiano (LEI) in Mannheim.
To our great surprise and delight, we were then able to secure funding for two major academy projects in 2022 and 2023: Sabine, together with Maria Selig of Academy of Sciences and Humanities Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities and Wolfgang Schweickard (Elton Prifti has since joined the project leadership team) of Academy of Sciences and Humanities Mainz Academy of Sciences and Humanities, for the ALMA project— "Knowledge Networks in Medieval Romania," and I, together with Hanna Liss from the Heidelberg College of Jewish Studies, the project "Biblical Glossaries as Hidden Carriers of Culture."
Both projects thus focus on the Middle Ages and thereby continue at least part of the DEAF’s work. Furthermore, we are both striving to continue implementing the scholarly methods—the DEAF tradition—and to pass them on to the next generation of scholars. We also aim to support this by officially launching the focus on Medieval Romance Studies today. However, that alone was not the reason for founding the FRM. Rather, we have had to acknowledge in recent decades that medieval studies in German-language Romance philology have fallen significantly behind. A prime example of this is textual criticism.

In noting this, we are in good company. As Franz Lebsanft put it in his 2012 article “Le xxie siecle: le crépuscule de la philologie romane en Allemagne?”: "In the field of historical linguistics, it is primarily the major projects in historical lexicography that sustain interest in medieval studies, even if we must admit that this interest is very limited and occupies a rather marginal position in university education [...]. On the other hand, dictionaries have not served as catalysts for a revival of theoretical issues in textual criticism in Germany, which, incidentally, is not their primary task either.”
Three years later, in 2015, Raymund Wilhelm wrote, Text Edition in German Romance Studies: Current Trends and Prospects for an Uncertain Future (with a Look at the Italian Situation): "Major lexicographical projects, such as the DEAF or the LEI, which are affiliated with the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and the Mainz Academy of Sciences, respectively, are in fact marginal within the academic world. Furthermore, these projects are not driven by significant theoretical interests; in textual criticism they mostly follow—or followed until recently—what we might call a ‘convenient Bédierism,’ programmatically limiting themselves to a single (not even necessarily the ‘best’) witness … Romanic philology as a medieval discipline survives, though we do not know for how much longer, primarily thanks to non-university institutions.”

To ensure that Romance medieval studies regain greater recognition and that research in the field of the Middle Ages is once again pursued more intensively, we have decided to join forces under the umbrella of the FRM. We plan to organize and promote several conferences and lectures each year.
In addition to today’s lecture by Raymund Wilhelm, we can already announce a study day at the College of Jewish Studies for the summer semester, on June 4, 2024, focusing on allographic texts from the Romance Middle Ages, primarily in English and French.
Sabine will continue to focus on the Middle Ages in her teaching. And we can also well imagine collaborating in our teaching and in support of the students. At this point, I would also like to mention the Klagenfurt Summer School on Editorial Philology, where participants learn how to prepare an edition of a medieval text [see the entry further up on this page].
Developments in Romance studies, which unfortunately now make it impossible to choose Romance studies as a second major in the “Interdisciplinary Master’s in Medieval Studies,” and recent discussions about what can be done from the Romance studies side to counter this trend, demonstrate how crucial it is to reinvigorate medieval studies in Romance languages—in both teaching and research!
To the students here today, we can already say: There are great topics for academic theses (master’s theses, doctoral dissertations) that revolve around medieval sources and themes! And with that, I am now very pleased to hand the floor over to Raymund Wilhelm, who, as a renowned medievalist and philologist, will demonstrate how linguistics and literary studies can intertwine!