To die for country, land or faith in Castilian medieval thought

This is an analysis of the concept of patria in the Castilian sources of the period between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries. These texts show that, contrary to the opinion of Nieto Soria, patria did not have the same connotations as in other regions of the late medieval west. Until the fifteenth century at least, ‘country' and ‘land' were seen as largely synonymous in Hispanic thought. ‘To die for the land and for the faith' seems to have been the essential ideological justification for those fighting the Muslim enemy.     

Literacy,reading, and writing in the medieval West

Over the last quarter century, a plethora of studies on literacy, reading, and writing in medieval Europe have contributed significantly to our understanding of medieval society and culture. Nevertheless the sheer number of these studies and their authorship by scholars in several different disciplines have obscured the relationships between these studies, their common themes and their differences. This essay seeks to survey this literature and its background, to explicate its contributions to the field of medieval history, and to suggest avenues for future study. It also reveals how approaches developed outside medieval studies were borrowed and adapted by medievalists, and how the study of literacy, reading, and writing in the Middle Ages has, in turn, influenced the work of ancient and modern historians.     

Literacy, reading, and writing in the medieval West

Over the last quarter century, a plethora of studies on literacy, reading, and writing in medieval Europe have contributed significantly to our understanding of medieval society and culture. Nevertheless the sheer number of these studies and their authorship by scholars in several different disciplines have obscured the relationships between these studies, their common themes and their differences. This essay seeks to survey this literature and its background, to explicate its contributions to the field of medieval history, and to suggest avenues for future study. It also reveals how approaches developed outside medieval studies were borrowed and adapted by medievalists, and how the study of literacy, reading, and writing in the Middle Ages has, in turn, influenced the work of ancient and modern historians.     

Coercion,vengeance, feud and accommodation: homicide in medieval Iceland

Quantitative methods were employed to situate medieval Icelandic homicide in comparative context. Estimates of homicide rates were derived from samtíðarsögur, and found comparable with European rural medieval homicide estimates: late twelfth‐century Iceland was probably not as violent as a qualitative reading of the sagas might suggest. There were significant differences in patterns of vengeance between íslendingasögur and samtíðarsögur. In íslendingasögur, farmers committing homicide faced flight, outlawry or death; chieftains who initiated homicide might escape justice, although most became embroiled in feud. In samtíðarsögur, lethal vengeance following ordinary homicide was less common, and not a source of feud. These results generate a critique of previous notions of reciprocity in Icelandic vengeance, and support more recent interpretations of early medieval Icelandic society as a highly unequal, divided society. Both sources suggest that, although vengeance may have been legitimated in the language of ‘repayment’, vengeance is best understood within a cross‐cultural context as competitive behaviour designed to achieve superiority rather than parity.     

Ritual and interpretation: the early medieval case

In dealing with early medieval ‘rituals’ (whatever this category may mean), historians have to take into account that they were written about, staged, and participated in by members of a culture that was steeped in interpretation, and especially by the exegetical dialectic between letter and spirit. The consequences for narrative techniques, and therefore for our approach to the sources depicting ‘rituals’ are plural. The narratives can heighten or de‐emphasize the ‘ritualness’ of an event, as well as heighten or hide conflict (or consensus) within the ritual event, regardless of what actually happened. Rituals in texts, therefore, should seldom be taken at face value. Such techniques suggest that often enough the textual rendition (or even imagination) of a solemnity had more political impact than its performance.     

Literacy,authorship, and belief in medieval and renaissance Europe

Heresy and Literacy, 1000–1530. Edited by Peter Biller and Anne Hudson, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 23 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xxv + 293 pp., £37.50/$59.95 cloth.

Literature, Politics and National Identity: Reformation to Renaissance. By Andrew Hadfield (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xvii + 261 pp., £35.00/$59.59 cloth.

Early Cambridge Theatres: College, University, and Town Stages, 1464–1720. By Alan H. Nelson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xiv + 179 pp., £35.00/$59.95 cloth.     

Place,space and odyssey: Exploring the future of early medieval sculpture,Rosemarkie, Inverness-shire

Abstract

The world today is often described as ‘postmodern’ - or, recently, post-postmodern. The question is, can postmodern ideas help to explain the many inconsistencies and logical binds in which museums find themselves entangled at the start of the 21st century? The postmodern is set in contrast with the Modern project, with which museums are closely associated. Superstition and disorder were swept aside, in theory at least, by scientific evidence and orderly arrangement, promoting a stable social hierarchy. In the West, the rational, scientific mindset became the dominant way of explaining the world. Museums are deeply implicated in the Modern, as instruments for cataloguing and characterizing first the natural world and, later, the world of invention, design and technology. Can museums, as ‘modern’ institutions, survive in the postmodern age? The museum's salvation could, it is argued, lie in its collections. Museums could shrug off their insistence on exhibitions as their major function: their ‘modern’ face. Instead they could move towards being providers of a service to open up the collections themselves and the knowledge and information about them, rather than guarding them as a private treasure.     

Lords,settlers and shifting frontiers in medieval Catalonia

This article examines how settler conditions on formerly Muslim-ruled land in the area known as New Catalonia (in north-eastern Iberia) changed as the territory was consolidated by Christian landlords and migrants from the north, and increasingly buffered from the border with Islam by conquests against Muslim Valencia over several generations following its conquest in the mid-twelfth century. Most landlords responded to the conditions of the local land market, but there is little evidence that the region as a whole, or even favourable sub-markets, experienced a straightforward trajectory from liberal to heavier tenant obligations. While lords in Old Catalonia are known to have limited peasant mobility from the later twelfth century in order to diminish an exodus to territory with more franchises in New Catalonia, lords in New Catalonia from the early thirteenth century were not able to respond to a similar extent to the territorial offerings in northern Valencia. Their overall ability to erode or reformulate exemptions and other privileges was checked by customary practice, insufficient settlement density and increased regulation which accompanied a rise in royal administrative capacity.     

Lords,settlers and shifting frontiers in medieval Catalonia

This article examines how settler conditions on formerly Muslim-ruled land in the area known as New Catalonia (in north-eastern Iberia) changed as the territory was consolidated by Christian landlords and migrants from the north, and increasingly buffered from the border with Islam by conquests against Muslim Valencia over several generations following its conquest in the mid-twelfth century. Most landlords responded to the conditions of the local land market, but there is little evidence that the region as a whole, or even favourable sub-markets, experienced a straightforward trajectory from liberal to heavier tenant obligations. While lords in Old Catalonia are known to have limited peasant mobility from the later twelfth century in order to diminish an exodus to territory with more franchises in New Catalonia, lords in New Catalonia from the early thirteenth century were not able to respond to a similar extent to the territorial offerings in northern Valencia. Their overall ability to erode or reformulate exemptions and other privileges was checked by customary practice, insufficient settlement density and increased regulation which accompanied a rise in royal administrative capacity.