Dr. Gion Wallmeyer

Publications

Books

• Wissen über Ungewisses. Politische Berater und die spätmittelalterlichen Kreuzzugspläne (1274–1336) [engl. Knowledge about the Uncertain. Political Advisors and the Plans for a Crusade in the Later Middle Ages (1274–1336)], (Europa im Mittelalter 43), De Gruyter: Berlin / Boston 2023.

Articles (peer-reviewed)

• (with Jan-Hendryk de Boer, Marcel Bubert, Michele Campopiano, Vanina Kopp, Silvia Negri, Christian Neumann, Daniel Pachurka and Maximilian Schuh) Epistemische Rivalitäten. Zum Umgang mit Sonderwissen an den Höfen des 14. Jahrhunderts [engl. Epistemic Rivalries. Dealing with Specialist Knowledge at 14th-Century Courts], In: Historische Zeitschrift 317/3 (2023), pp. 572–611.
• Zur falschen Zeit am rechten Ort. Der Kreuzzugsplan des Bischofs von León neu datiert [engl. In the Right Place at the Wrong Time. The Bishop of León’s Plan for a Crusade Redated], in: Historisches Jahrbuch 142 (2022), pp. 447–462.
• With Pen and Sword. Knights as Crusade Advisors between the 12th and 14th Century, in: Francia 46 (2019), pp. 453–468.

Books chapters

• Zwischen Verzicht und Verlust. Visionäres Charisma an der Wende zum 13. Jahrhundert [engl. Between Renunciation and Loss. The Charisma of Visionaries at the Turn of the 13th Century], in: Winterhager, Philipp (Ed.): Verzicht. Mediävistische Perspektiven, Herder: Freiburg i. Breisgau 2024 (forthcoming).
• Die Absichten der Toten. Ein okzitanisches Medium strukturiert die soziale Welt, in: Bubert, Marcel / de Boer, Jan-Hendryk (Hg.): Anthology of the DFG-Network „Die Absicht der Anderen“ (accepted).
• Wie der Kreuzzug marktfähig wurde Überlegungen zur Anwendung des Marktbegriffs auf das höfische Ratgeberwesen des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts [engl. How the Crusade got marketable. Reflections on the Application of the Concept of Markets to Courtly Counselling in the 13th and 14th Centuries], in: Füssel, Marian; Knäble, Philip; Elsemann, Nina (Eds.): Wissen und Wirtschaft. Expertenkulturen und Märkte vom 13. bis 18. Jahrhundert, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht: Göttingen 2017, pp. 279–312.

Review articles in „Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters“, „H-Soz-Kult“, „Médiévales“ and „Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken“.

Research Projects

Religious Charismatics and Social Change (9th to 12th Centuries)
The question of the relationship between continuity and social change has long fascinated medievalists. In particular, the (supposed) emergence of a feudal society after the final collapse of the Carolingian Empire has been controversially discussed in the past under the generic term 'mutation de l'an mil' or 'feudal revolution'. This project seeks to reopen the debate from the perspective of the sociology of religion, using hagiographic sources. It focuses on religious charismatics, such as saints, visionaries or magicians, to whom contemporaries attributed supernatural gifts. As these personalities responded directly to their contemporaries' need for orientation and order (i.e. theodicy and sociodicy), they provide an ideal medium for observing processes of social change such as the feudal transformation. The impact of these charismatics will be analysed on the basis of hagiographical sources such as miracle collections and visionary reports from the late Carolingian period to the 12th century. Because of their formal constancy, these texts are much better suited to cross-regional and diachronic comparisons of structural change than the administrative sources that have dominated the debate to date. The sources will be analysed using both case studies of individual charismatics and quantitative content analysis. The focus will be on the social guiding differences that the charismatics observed, commented on, created or attempted to overturn.

The Production of Crusade Experts at the Royal Courts of the Late 13th and Early 14th Centuries (completed)
In 1291, the Egyptian Sultan conquered the last crusader strongpoints left in the Levant. Western rulers, however, refused to accept the loss of their Holy Land and immediately began planning a new crusade. In the wake of utter defeat, they started to question existing knowledge and tried to find new ways and means to conduct a crusade. This epistemic crisis of crusading knowledge became the focus of numerous expert advisors who tried to use their expertise to devise sometimes risky, sometimes conservative recovery projects. The project aims to examine the activities of these advisors from the perspective of the history of knowledge by analysing how crusading knowledge was generated, translated and evaluated at Western courts. It combines hermeneutic approaches with quantitative methods from the fields of content analysis and social network analysis.

• DFG-Network „Die Absicht der Anderen. Zur sozialen Wirksamkeit von Intentionszuschreibungen im europäischen Mittelalter“
• Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East
• Mediävistenverband e.V.