Bigamy: A Male Crime in Medieval Europe?

Crime is often gendered. This article argues that the crime of bigamy was a male crime in the fifteenth‐ and sixteenth‐century Catholic world. Courts prosecuted male bigamists far more often and more harshly than female offenders. However, drawing in particular on records from the fifteenth‐century bishop's court of Troyes, I argue that women also committed bigamy. Judicial and social gender biases identified only male bigamy as fully criminal behaviour.
The reasons for this gender difference lie in the different roles of spouses as prescribed in Christian law, theology and culture. For a man to commit bigamy fundamentally violated his responsibilities as a husband. Female bigamy, by contrast, was to an extent tolerated as a lesser evil. Better a woman have two living husbands, one present and one absent, than no husband at all.     

A Marginal Occupation? The Medieval Laundress and her Work

Drawing upon a wide range of primary sources, this article argues that a study of the medieval laundress can illuminate wider social attitudes to hygiene as well as to low status women. Having considered the many types of laundry workers active in England and northern France between c.1300 and 1550, it examines the techniques they used, as well as the hazards encountered through exposure to difficult conditions. Such factors, along with the freedom of movement enjoyed by many laundresses, often harmed their collective reputation. That responses to those who dealt with the community's dirty clothing were highly ambivalent is reflected in contemporary writing about laundresses, and in the measures taken to regulate them. Finally, we turn to remuneration. The sporadic survival of financial evidence means that our knowledge of wage rates remains impressionistic. But some laundry workers were surprisingly well rewarded. This confirms the value placed, in elite households at least, upon the cleanliness of personal linen.     

Cities of God? Medieval urban forms and their Christian symbolism

Situated in the context of recent geographical engagements with 'landscape', this paper combines 'morphological' and 'iconographic' landscape interpretations to examine how urban forms were perceived in late medieval Europe. To date, morphological studies have mapped the medieval city either by classifying urban layouts according to particular types, or by analysing plan forms of particular towns and cities to reveal their spatial evolution. This paper outlines a third way, an 'iconographic' approach, which shows how urban forms in the Middle Ages conveyed Christian symbolism. Three such 'mappings' explore this thesis: the first uses textual and visual representations which show that the city was understood as a scaled-down world – a microcosm – linking city and cosmos in the medieval mind; the second 'mapping' develops this theme further and suggests that urban landscapes were inscribed with symbolic form through their layout on the ground; while the third looks at how Christian symbolism of urban forms was performed through the urban landscape in perennial religious processions. Each of these 'mappings' points to the symbolic, mystical significance urban form had in the Middle Ages, based on religious faith, and they thus offer a deepened appreciation of how urban landscapes were represented, constructed and experienced at the time.     

The Medieval sea‐state

EUROPE

Pilgrim Spots in Galloway. By G. Marianne M'Kerlie. London : Sands and Co., 1916. Price 5s. net.

Midsummer Motoring in Europe. By De Courcy W. Trom. New York and London : G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1916. Price 10s. 6d. net.

ASIA

A Naturalist in Borneo. By the late Robert W. C. Shelford, of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, M.A., etc., late Curator of the Sarawak Museum, and Assistant Curator of the Hope Department of Zoology, Oxford University Museum. Edited, with a Biographical Introduction, by Edward B. Poulton, D.Sc., LL.D., F.R.S., Hope Professor of Zoology, and Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. London : T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd., 1916. Price 15s. net.

In Far North‐East Siberia. By I. W. Shklovsky (“Dioneo”). London : Macmillan and Co. Price 8s. 6d. net.

Provincial Geographies of India. The Panjab, North‐West Frontier Province, and Kashmir. By Sir James Douie, M.A., K.C.S.I. Cambridge : University Press, 1916. Price 6s. net.

AMERICA

David Thompson's Narrative of his Explorations in Western America, 1784–1812. Edited by J. B. Tyrrell. Toronto : The Champlain Society, 1916.

AUSTRALASIA

Australia. (University Manuals.) By J. W. Gregory, F.R.S. Cambridge : University Press, 1916. Price 1s. 3d. net.

GENERAL

Naval and Military Geography of the British Empire (considered in Relation to the War with Germany). By Vaugiian Cornish, D.Sc. London : Hugh Rees, 1916. Price 3s. 6d. net.

Cambridge Travel Books. The Earliest Voyages round the World, 1519–1617. Edited by Philip P. Alexander, M.A., Hertford College, Oxford. Cambridge : At the University Press, 1916. Price 3s.

The German Colonial Empire. By Paolo Giordani. Translated by Mrs. Gustavus W. Hamilton. London : G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1916.

EDUCATIONAL

New Regional Geographies.—(1) The Americas. (2) Asia and Australasia. By Leonard Brooks, M. A. (Cantab.), F.R.G.S. London : University of London Press, Ltd., 1916. Price 3s. each.

A Nursery Geography. By George S. Dickson. London : T. C. and E. C. Jack. Price 3s. 6d. net.     

Bayvil in Cemais: An Early Medieval Assembly Site in South-West Wales?

Abstract

WELSH EARLY MEDIEVAL LANDSCAPES of authority and assembly have received less attention than they should as a result of a restricted archaeological and written record. Analysis of the location of a 14th-century Pembrokeshire fair charter, however, suggests that the site may also be the location of a hitherto lost 12th-century feast of translation and a pre-Conquest assembly. If so, it presents one of the first examples of an early medieval assembly site in Wales, situated in a landscape setting that lends weight to indications elsewhere in Britain and Ireland of a shared understanding of the spatial expression of early medieval communal interaction and authority.     

Seamen on Land? A Preliminary Analysis of Medieval Ship Graffiti on Cyprus

This article reports on the results of a research project entitled ‘KARAVOI. The Ship Graffiti on the Medieval Monuments of Cyprus: Mapping, Documentation and Digitisation’, during which 233 ship graffiti were recorded in 44 different monuments on the island, dating from the 15th to the 20th centuries. Innovative recording techniques have been used to mitigate the effects of the subjective or partial recording of graffiti lines on tracing paper. Apart from the study of ship graffiti as iconographic sources, particular emphasis has been given to their geographical and social context through a comprehensive analysis of the graffiti types and their spatial distribution in the monuments as well as the monuments location on the island.     

Medieval Embroidered ‘Water Flowers’

The term ‘water flower’ has been taken by some to refer to all embroidered conventional flowers found on some late medieval English copes and chasubles. It is argued here that the term was used in medieval times in the sense of ‘water flower deluce’, and referred to a particular type of conventional flower, which has a conical, sword-like body, flanked by two pairs of strap-like leaves.     

Of saints,sows or smiths? Copper-brazed iron handbells in Early Medieval England

ABSTRACT

Copper-brazed iron handbells were a distinctive feature of monastic life in Early Medieval Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Handbells were used in liturgy, prayer, worship, and later as reliquaries. In England, brazed bells of the seventh to ninth centuries take on a greater range of sizes and forms and are found on a wider variety of sites. As a consequence, their roles within Christianity have been questioned, and associations with animals and itinerant smiths have been emphasised instead. Recent archaeological investigation of an Anglo-Saxon marsh-island at Little Carlton, Lincolnshire has resulted in one of the largest assemblages of copper-brazed iron bells from any site in England, comparable to similar collections from Flixborough and Brandon. Taking into consideration the inclusion of brazen bells in some ritualistic ‘closure hoards’, this paper argues that whilst Anglo-Saxon plain iron bells may have fulfilled a range of profane functions, those that were copper-brazed, regardless of their size, were important objects amongst early Christian communities in England, and the Northumbrian church in particular.     

Can Lost Maps Speak? Toward a Cultural History of Map Reading in Medieval China

Despite the fact that virtually no Chinese maps have survived from the first millennium, it is nonetheless possible to reconstruct a rich context associated with their production, use and perception from a variety of written sources. Three cases from the Tang dynasty (618–907 ce) are presented in this article in which the characteristics of the missing maps emerge through their associated texts, which have outlasted them. These examples include two documents that once accompanied maps presented to the emperor and an anecdote that refers to a map of the remote southern frontier. They demonstrate that the maps were designed not only to encapsulate imperial territory but also to serve as guideposts for aspirational travel. They were also perceived by their users as invitations to experiences both desirable and undesirable.