The texture of literacy in the testimonies of late-medieval English proof-of-age jurors, 1270 to 1430

This article examines references by jurors in proof-of-age hearings from 1270 to 1430 to writing and written documents. By analysing the incidence of these references decade by decade over the whole period and by close attention to changes in the wording of individual testimonies, some important insights into the place of literacy in the lives and mentalities of quite humble medieval men are apparent. Of only ‘village status’, these jurors' testimonies provide evidence of the way literacy gradually permeated more and more intricately the day-to-day lives of ordinary people, often not replacing older ways of doing things but co-existing with them. Some conclusions as to how literacy affected different occupations and different areas of the country are drawn.     

Slavs in Fredegar and Paul the Deacon: medieval gens or ‘scourge of God’?

This article presents a new interpretation of the accounts of Slavs given by two early medieval Latin narrative sources. The first section discusses Fredegar's Wendish account, while the second section considers Paul the Deacon's view of the Slavs in his Historia Langobardorum . The instrumental use of the Slavs in the domestic affairs of the Frankish and Lombard kingdoms constitutes the emphasis of the last section, in which the author compares Fredegar's and Paul the Deacon's historiographical perspectives.     

Degrading the Male Body: Manhood and Conflict in the High‐medieval Low Countries

Recent studies of medieval manhood have prompted scholars to revisit the established research field of medieval conflict and have directed attention towards the role of gendered violence in (elite) political culture. However, symbolic impermanent defamations of the male body proper remain to be discussed. Drawing from the rich narrative sources from the high‐medieval Low Countries, this article aims in particular at remedying this blind spot by scrutinising specific forms of gendered violence, such as the enforced shearing of an elite man's beard or a public mocking of his chivalric manly fortitude. It also presents the argument that these practices, when used in contexts of conflict and punishment, not only tapped into the authority of ancient traditions and rituals but rather might have served clear contemporary interests relating to the pacification of society. Such tactics would have helped to avoid feud in a world in which aristocratic manly honour regularly seemed to demand it, especially in a time when centralised and consolidated structures for conflict management were still lacking and a religiously inspired peace ideal influenced policy‐making as well as day‐to‐day social dynamics.     

Range of motion and energy cost of locomotion of the late medieval armoured fighter: A proof of concept of confronting the medieval technical literature with modern movement analysis

ABSTRACT

Study of technical, normative, and narrative medieval literature and of archaeological pieces allows the motor skills of armoured members of the aristocracy to be outlined but not quantified. The authors present novel data on the impact of wearing armour on both the freedom of movement and the energy cost of locomotion, and confront the results to systematic analysis of medieval written sources. An accurate harness replica realized in an informed archaeological experimental way, close to medieval material and manufacturing conditions, was used for the experiments. Measurements of the energy cost of locomotion in and out of armour were taken during walking and running on a treadmill. Gait analysis and range of motion of joints were performed with 3-D kinematics. The results indicated an increase in the energy cost of locomotion in slight excess to the added weight and for most movements studied reductions in the range of motion over the joint, potentially to the advantage of the wearer during combat. This proof of concept appears promising for further study in this field of scholarly endeavor.     

Collective living and individual identities in late medieval England

ABSTRACT

Late medieval lodgings within secular, vicarial and collegiate complexes provide an example through which the construction and maintenance of collective and individual identities can be perceived. The remains indicate a middle-status group with a well-defined identity emerging in the Late Medieval period who were provided with accommodation reflecting their new stratum in society. The architectural display, or vocabulary, demonstrated a complicated even conflicting narrative to the medieval audience, which we can identify through analysis of their remains.     

Pure and impure gestes: the generation of history in Jean d’Outremeuse's Myreur des histors

ABSTRACT

Scholars have long debated the place in medieval historiography of Jean d’Outremeuse's Myreur des histors, a universal history in celebration of Liège written in French around 1399. The abundance of Old French epic material in a chronicle that, according to its author, contained translations of only Latin sources, was once a source of outrage. The Myreur now holds significant interest, however, for its evidence of late medieval narrative strategies. This study demonstrates the Myreur's deliberate adaptation of epic material to glorify Liège. The author reimagines the Carolingian past as a source for future historical narratives by knowingly altering the genealogical framework of the chanson de geste universe. Carrying tales of sexual impurity, he describes the demise of the Carolingian line and transforms figures from epic to function within his linear history. This inventive approach allowed him to create a new hero- and history-generating lineage for his universal history.     

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.     

St Darerca and Her Sister Scholars: Women and Education in Medieval Ireland

This article examines largely neglected evidence for women's education in Irish saints’ Lives and integrates it with findings from other medieval Irish texts, such as chronicles, devotional works and poetry. The sources attest that education was available to at least some girls and women under male and female teachers in mixed and single–sex schools from the earliest days of the Irish church until the mid–fifteenth century. Their history points to the power, agency and authority open to medieval Irish women and the respect, affection, and admiration their brothers felt for them.     

Late Medieval Jugs with Lettering

Previous interpretations of medieval moated sites, rooted in functionalist and culture-historical theoretical frameworks, describe moat owners as defending themselves from threats of physical violence or emulating a fashionable status symbol. This study takes an alternative framework by exploring moated sites’ active role in producing medieval ideologies of inequality. A set of case studies from the eastern Weald in south-east England provides evidence for how moats alter patterns of movement, produce spaces of stratified accessibility, and enhance the visibility of structures and spaces bounded by moats. Spatial data from surface survey is synthesized with historical context and ‘imagined’ moated spaces found in pictorial and textual sources to determine how moats may have been perceived by different groups of people in medieval society. By altering the physical and symbolic landscape, moated sites constituted the authority of their owners and contributed to the maintenance, or in some cases contestation, of medieval structural inequalities.     

The ‘Injunction of Jeremiah’: papal politicking and power in the Middle Ages

Throughout the Middle Ages, the ‘Injunction of Jeremiah’ (Jer. 1:10) was employed by countless ecclesiastical writers. Building on an established tradition, medieval contemporaries began applying the allegory of ‘uprooting and destroying, building and planting’ with an intentionally moral and political message. This article examines the Old Testament call narrative with a view to understanding how and why it served medieval popes and other high-ranked ecclesiastics as a political and rhetorical mechanism for legitimising ecclesiastical authority. It argues for a noticeable and deliberate shift in textual interpretation in the ninth century, after which period medieval popes and influential church figures alike marshalled the Injunction to help strengthen the centralising ideology of Rome and her bishop. The effect, it is concluded, contributed ultimately to reinforcing the papacy's claims to govern spiritual and temporal matters throughout Christian society.     

Fairy Beliefs and other Folklore Notes from County Leitrim

Recent writing on the medieval origins of the concept of the witches' sabbath have emphasized the importance of beliefs in nocturnal processions or cavalcades of spirits, known in modern times by the umbrella term of the ‘Wild Hunt’. This article suggests that the modern notion of the Hunt was created by Jacob Grimm, who conflated different medieval traditions with modern folklore. It further argues that a different approach to the study of medieval spirit processions, which confines itself to medieval and early modern sources and distinguishes between the types of procession described in them, results in different conclusions, with regard both to the character of the Hunt and to its relationship with the sabbath.     

ANOTHER NOTE ON HENRY TIMBERLAKE’S ROUTE FROM GAZA TO JERUSALEM IN 1601

Abstract

The recent republication of the narrative of Henry Timberlake’s journey from Gaza to Jerusalem in 1601 has disclosed a new section of the route between these two cities used in medieval times, which appears to have been previously unknown.     

Secrecy and Genoese commercial practices

Genoese commercial practices, among the best known in medieval Europe, relied on notaries and their cartularies to create and preserve valid contracts. This system of generating records raises questions about how private or secret Genoese business was, and whether it was safe from fraud and forgery. Legal and notarial sources reveal methods of organizing commerce that fostered trust by involving suitable witnesses and discreet notaries. The Genoese sacrified some privacy in order to acquire a reputation for predictable and reliable contracts and markets.     

Modern and Medieval Approaches to Pilgrimage,Gender and Sacred Space

This article examines both modern ethnographical, and medieval hagiographical, constructs of sacred space in the context of female pilgrimage. Beginning with an overview of the ways in which anthropological theories of sacred space and gender have informed pilgrimage scholarship over the last fifty years, it focuses in particular on two conceptual models: that which argues that spatial practices employed by cult centres served to distance women from holy places, and that which contends that accommodation was reached between the devotional aspirations of female pilgrims on the one hand, and the institutional policies of the Church on the other. In turning to the Middle Ages, the second part of the article examines narrative representations of sacred space, and reveals that the spatial challenges posed by female pilgrimage in the medieval West were addressed and mediated in hagiography in surprisingly similar ways.     

(UN)DOING HISTORY: A CASE FOR EPISTEMOLOGICAL ALTERITY

This article addresses two primary tensions that currently beset medieval history. The first concerns a contentious debate within the field regarding the relative merits of two interpretative approaches: that which seeks to situate the Middle Ages within a narrative of continuity wherein aspects of the medieval bear some relationship of familiarity with the present and that which accords a radical alterity to the past that instigates moments of historical rupture. The second tension concerns the fraught relationship between history as a site of knowledge production with some proximity to engaging and producing truth and history as constructed, wherein its purported object of study, the past, is not an ontological fact but a cultural artifact. In this instance, what we witness is less a debate among scholars within history than an amorphic anxiety about history. This article makes a case for engaging the radical alterity that confronts the historian of the Middle Ages. It does so, however, cognizant of an ontological impasse: if alterity is attentive to difference, a difference that resists translation into modern knowledge regimes, then what does it mean to engage it historically—that is, through a temporal structure that would have been foreign to the very period of study?     

Wild Birds of the Italian Middle Ages: Diet,Environment and Society

ABSTRACT

Wild birds are intrinsically associated with our perception of the Middle Ages. They often feature in heraldic designs, paintings, and books of hours; few human activities typify the medieval period better than falconry. Prominent in medieval iconography, wild birds feature less frequently in written sources (as they were rarely the subject of trade transactions or legal documents) but they can be abundant in archaeological sites. In this paper we highlight the nature of wild bird exploitation in Italian medieval societies, ranging from their role as food items to their status and symbolic importance. A survey of 13 Italian medieval sites corresponding to 19 ‘period sites’, dated from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries, reveals the occurrence of more than 100 species (certainly an under-estimate of the actual number). Anseriformes and Columbiformes played a prominent role in the mid- and late medieval Italian diet, though Passeriformes and wild Galliformes were also important. In the late Middle Ages, there is an increase in species diversity and in the role of hunting as an important marker of social status.     

Sermon,preacher and society in the middle ages

Over the past twenty-five years, studies produced on medieval preaching and sermons have grown so considerably that they now constitute a discipline known as sermon studies. The discipline incorporates various methodologies which include exegesis, liturgy, theology, social history, cultural history, literary criticism, textual criticism, and art history. Therefore, this essay can only be a sampling of some of the literature which has recently appeared. The essay is ordered under the headings: ‘sermon’, ‘preacher’, and ‘society’. The section on sermons isolates methodological issues which form the basis of sermon studies. It outlines the criteria scholars have established to use medieval sermons as an historical tool. The second section investigates the diversity of preachers and considers their role as educators. The third section on society considers those studies which have examined sermons as sources which reflect as well as influence moral and intellectual tendencies in the Middle Ages.     

Climatic anomalies,food systems,and subsistence crises in medieval Novgorod and Ladoga

Climatic factors have affected subsistence strategies throughout human history. In northern Europe and Russia, short-term climatic anomalies and weather extremes are commonly thought to underlie famines in the Middle Ages. However, medieval subsistence crises were not just natural disasters and medieval people were not passive victims of climatic anomalies. In addition, the capacity to cope with climatic anomalies has varied temporally and spatially throughout the Middle Ages. Yet only a few studies have explored the climatic impact on regional medieval food systems comprehensively. This article examines the significance of climate variability on subsistence crises in medieval Novgorod and Ladoga (Russia), focusing on the relationship between short-term climate anomalies and crop cultivation. In addition, this paper evaluates the impact of crop failures, frosts, and other weather phenomena on the food system. The materials are drawn from medieval sources, paleoclimatological reconstructions, and archaeological evidence. The results show that short-term climatic anomalies alone rarely lead to severe subsistence crises, and during every famine period there is evidence of other contributing factors, such as unfavourable weather phenomena, disease, or social unrest. The variety of cultivated crops and agricultural techniques is shown to increase the region’s resilience to climatic anomalies and to crop failures.