Between Three Seas: Borders, Migrations, Connections: The Third Biennial Conference of the Medieval Central Europe Research Network

BETWEEN THREE SEAS: BORDERS, MIGRATIONS, CONNECTIONS: THE THIRD BIENNIAL CONFERENCE OF THE MEDIEVAL CENTRAL EUROPE RESEARCH NETWORK The Third Biennial Conference of the Medieval Central Europe Research Network (MECERN) on the theme Between Three Seas: Borders, Migrations, Connections took place at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Zagreb (Croatia) between 12 and 14 April 2018. The major international event attracted almost 100 participants from 15 countries in Europe and North America. MECERN (Medieval Central Europe Research Network) was founded in 2014 at Central European University in Budapest. The purpose of this interdisciplinary network is to keep scholars and students working on any aspect of the history and culture of medieval Central Europe “from the Baltic to the Adriatic” informed on research projects, publications, meetings, and resources. Until now, the network associates over 200 researchers from different countries all around the world. The conferences organized by the network appear in abiannual schedule. The conference in 2016 was hosted in Olomouc, the expected 2020 conference will take place in Gdańsk and further events are planned across the Central Europe. The recent conference focused on the impact of both mass and individual movements on the region, the permeability of borders, and the manifold connections that reached beyond purely local contexts. In other words, the conference explored medieval Central Europe on topics from political, cultural, economic, ecclesiastical, intellectual, legal, urban, literary and artistic historical topics. The contributions of the participants covered all medieval periods of the Central Europe as well as all regions in widely understood Central Europe from Baltic to Adriatic, and from Germany to Ukraine. Special guest of the conference was the professor of the University of South-California Paul W.Knoll who presented the paper The Fourteenth-Century G-6: Contacts, Cooperation, and Commonalities in East Central Europe. Some of the other noteworthy presentations were given by Márta Font (University of Pécs): Coloman the King of Galicia: The Problems of Coronation or Emir O.Filipović (University of Sarajevo): ‚Colluding with the Infield‘: The Alliance between Ladislas of Naples and the Turks; Daniel Ziemann (Central European University): The Power of Dividing: The Border between Bulgaria and Byzantium in the Early Middle Ages (7th–10th Centuries); Marta Graczyńska (National Museum in Kraków): Palimpsest or Stylistic Monolith? Comments on the Architecture until the End of the Eleventh Century in the Domi nations of Přemyslids, Arpad and Piast; Jadranka Neralić (Croatian Institute of History): Collecting Money form the Apostolic Chamber in the 14th— 15th Century Dalmatia; Members of FOVOG— Forschungstelle für Vergleichende Ordensgeschichte Project Nicholas Youmans (TU Dresden): Rituals of Mobility and Hospitality in the Teutonic Knights, Phillip Stöver (TU Dresden): Medieval Voyages to Asia in the 13th and 14th Centuries and Cristina Andenna (TU Dresden): ARefugee in aSouthern Italian Monastery: The Case of Giovanni da Caramola; Olga Kalashnikova (Central European University): ATraveling Concept of the Renaissance: The Dawn of ‚Bohemian Pre-Humanism‘; Gordan Ravančić (Croatian Institute of History): Control of the Roads as aStrategy of the Creation of the Feudal Possessions of the Krk Princes up to the Beginning of the 14th Century; Dragoslav Magdoško (Pavol Jozef Šafárik University, Košice): Natives, Newcomers, 156 PRAGUE PAPERS ON THE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 2/2018 and Membership of the Outer Council in Late Medieval Košice; Farkas Gábor Kiss (Eötvös Loránd University): The Textual Strategies of the Diffusion of Humanism: Vergerio, Vitéz, and the Classics (until 1454); Snežana Filipova (The Saints Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje): Early Christian Similarity in Artistic Models, Connections and Influences in the Case of Macedonia or Julija Vercholancev (UniPenn): ‘The Land Named Charvaty’ in Central European Mythistorical Imagination’. All the abstracts from the conference are accessible online at http://mecern.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/mecern-zagreb18-booklet.pdf. Czech members of the MECERN network appear regularly at the conference events, this year namely Jakub Izdný (Charles University, Prague): Widukind of Corvey: ASaxon Witness of aSlavic Mission?; Antonín Kalous (Palacký University of Olomouc): Fifteenth-Century Papal Legates and their Travelers and three members of Centre of Medieval Studies (Czech Academy of Science) who presented the interim results of their grant project— Jaroslav Svátek: Presentation of the Project‚ Transmission of Knowledge: The Fortune of Four Bestsellers in Late Medieval Czech Lands‘, Pavlína Cermanová: The Readers and Interpreters of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Secrets of Secrets in Medieval Bohemia and Vojtěch Bažant: Use of Chronicle Martiniani in Late Medieval Bohemia. The regular event of MECERN conference provides an interesting and important meeting of scholars from many countries (with aregular participation of leading scholars from distant universities). Afriendly and open atmosphere of the conference gives agood hope for the future of the mediaeval research in the region that is incorrectly understood as aperiphery of mediaeval Europe. Jakub Izdný— Anna Košátková