Cerae Journal marks its fifth year with this Fifth Anniversary Edition: “Representations and Recollections of Empire”.

Cerae was initiated to fill a much-needed platform for post-graduates and early-career researchers in late classical, medieval, and early-modern studies, one of the first open access journals in its field, enabling support, online integration, and the use of multimedia to supplement articles. Over the last five years, the journal has awarded six prizes for articles, and it has won an award for excellence in its own right. As its extended committee continues to grow, so, too, does Cerae’s wider audience, now encompassing readers, committee members, reviewers, and associates from all over the world. The journal has published a growing number of book reviews from publishers of all sizes, attesting to the keen interest that continues to exist in these academic fields.

Cerae’s fifth year began with volume 5’s theme forming a session at the 2018 Leeds Medieval Congress, chaired by volume 4 editor Vanessa Wright, and featuring papers by scholars from around the world on topics spanning from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. During the year, Cerae has also seen its members contributing at conferences such as ANZAMEMS, AEMA, and Kalamazoo, among others. Cerae’s online presence continues to evolve, as does its social media platform. I am encouraged by the steady interest shown in Cerae Journal and the amount of positive feedback we have received from young researchers, established academics, and publishers alike.

Over the years, each editorial team brings with it a new vibrancy and dynamic, and each volume its own challenges. I would like to thank the volume 5 committee for their energy, enthusiasm, and dedication in seeing this volume through. Thanks also to all of the reviewers, authors, and publishers, without whose support, efforts, and valuable time this volume would not have come to fruition.

Stephanie L. Hathaway, Oxford University

Abstract: This paper examines one of the ways in which the classical historian Sallust was read in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and what this reveals about medieval moral thought. In this period, Sallust’s discussion of the character and virtues of Julius Caesar and Cato the Younger became a focus for annotation and commentary. Caesar and Cato were read as the embodiment of contrasting, even opposed, ideas of moral virtue —one liberal and forgiving, the other just and unbending. As medieval commentators recognised, both men embodied Roman virtue, but neither could be straightforwardly imitated. Medieval authors who considered the deeds of these two great Romans were obliged to address how the exercise of virtue was conditioned by circumstance and emphasised the importance of heeding counsel and engaging in debate before taking action. As a result, moral thought in this period can be seen as more contingent and pragmatic and less absolutist than it is sometimes supposed to have been.

Philippa Byrne, University of Oxford

Ceræ Guest Blog Post

Abstract: The term ‘empire’ is frequently applied retrospectively by historians to historical trans-cultural political entities that are notable either for their geographic breadth, unprecedented expansionary ambitions, or extensive political hegemony. Yet the use of the terminology of empire in historical studies is often ill-defined, as exemplified by the territorial hegemonies of Æthelstan (r. 924 –939) and Cnut (r. 1016 –1035). In their programs of territorial expansion and political consolidation, modern historians have credited both Æthelstan and Cnut as the creators and overlords of trans-cultural European empires. Yet common characteristics that warrant categorisation of the polities they governed as ‘empires’ are not readily discernible. Not only were the regions each controlled territorially and culturally distinct, but their methods of establishing political dominance and regional governance were equally varied. This raises the question as to whether the term ’empire’ can be considered to define a distinct and coherent category of political power when applied to medieval monarchical hegemonies. By analysing the Anglo-Saxon ‘empires’ of Æthelstan and Cnut within the frameworks of empire set out by modern political theorists, this paper will establish whether the structural commonalities of their domains supersede their inherent diversity, thereby justifying a common categorisation as ‘empires’.

Matthew Firth, Flinders University

Ceræ Guest Blog Post

Abstract: In composing Vita Karoli Magni, Einhard borrows heavily from Suetonius’s De vita Caesarum – Vita divi Augusti in particular – and Annales regni Francorum. A close reading, however, reveals that the distribution of the source materials within Vita Karoli Magni is quite uneven: when it comes to historical events, Einhard relies on the Annales; when it comes to more private matters such as appearance and habits, he turns to Suetonius for specific phrases and words. Moreover, while neither Annales nor Vita divi Augusti shies away from colourful accounts of miracles that foreground the subject’s greatness, Einhard only includes ill omens in the very last part of Vita Karoli Magni, around the time of Charlemagne’s death, as if to warn the readers/audience of the dark time to come. But why is Vita Karoli Magni thus composed? The reason behind, I argue, first lies in Einhard’s recognition of the similarity between Augustus and Charlemagne: both belong to the second generation of a ruling house that had no legal claim to the throne; and, by placing Charlemagne alongside Augustus, Einhard reconciles two different ideas of kingship, one derived from the Frankish tradition, the other attached to the Roman Empire. Second, Vita Karoli Magni is a text about the past as much as about the present and the future: on the one hand, Einhard’s choice and arrangement of the sources reflect his anxiety caused by the unsettling events under Louis the Pious and his criticism towards the new Emperor. On the other hand, it helps to draw Louis’s attention and impose Einhard’s own ideology of a good ruler on him.

Minjie Su, Linacre College, Oxford

Ceræ Guest Blog Post

Abstract: Rudolf II’s passionate appetite for works by celebrated German artist Albrecht Dürerled to an aggressive campaign to acquire original works and promote his court artists to create imitations of Dürer’s works. This paper explores the question of how and why Emperor Rudolf set about collecting works of art by Dürer that were originally intended for a religious devotional context and how his interest in Dürer’s religious works can be connected to representations of Rudolf’s cultural and imperial legacy. By examining Dürer’s Feast of the Rosary (1506), this paper will consider how the artist’s legacy and German heritage became interwoven with the changing perception of the status of the art object which positioned Dürer’s artworks as an allegorical representation of himself and his heritage. Within the Rudolfine court, Dürer’s altarpieces functioned as representations of Rudolf’s cultural legacy through the appropriation of religious images of his imperial claim and lineage. Through the shifting veneration of the artist, a new material culture of Empire was established through the collecting habits of the Rudolfine Court.

Miranda Lee Elston, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Volume 5 Essay Prize Winner

Ceræ Guest Blog Post

Thomas W. Barton, Susan McDonough, Sarah McDougall, and Matthew Weanovix, eds., Boundaries in the Medieval and Wider World: Essays in Honour of Paul Freedman (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017). Print, 348pp., £90, ISBN: 9782503568454.

Reviewed by: Kirsty Bolton, University of Southampton

Susan Broomhall, ed., Early Modern Emotions: An Introduction. (London and New York: Routledge, 2017). Print, 386pp., £36.99, ISBN: 9781138925755.

Reviewed by: Mark Neuendorf, University of Adelaide

Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, ed., Entangled Empires: The Anglo-Iberian Atlantic, 1500-1830. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). Print, 344 pp., US$55, ISBN: 9780812249835.

Reviewed by: Derek R. Whaley, University of Canterbury

Daniel Donoghue, How the Anglo-Saxons Read Their Poems (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). Print, 248 pp., US$69.95/£56.00, ISBN: 9780812249941.

Reviewed by: Matthew Firth, Flinders University

Julianna Grigg, The Picts Re-Imagined (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2018). Print, 108pp., £11.95, ISBN: 9781641890915.

Reviewed by: Erica Steiner, University of Sydney

Richard Huscroft, Making England, 796-1042 (Abingdon & New York: Routledge, 2018). Print, 306pp., £110, ISBN: 9781138182455.

Reviewed by: Matthew Firth, Flinders University

Christian Raffensperger, The Kingdom of Rus’ (Kalamazoo and Bradford: Arc Humanities Press, 2017). Print, 92 pp., £11.95, ISBN: 9781942401315.

Reviewed by: Erica Steiner, University of Sydney

Kathryn E. Salzer, Vaucelles Abbey. Social, Political, and Ecclesiastical Relationships in the Borderland Region of the Cambrésis, 1131-1300, Medieval Monastic Studies, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017). Print, 365pp., €100.00, ISBN: 9782503555249.

Reviewed by: Stephanie L. Hathaway, University of Oxford

Elizabeth Yale, Sociable Knowledge: Natural History and the Nation in Early Modern Britain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). Print, 346 pp., US$69.95/£56.00, ISBN: 9780812247817.

Reviewed by: Mark Neuendorf, University of Adelaide