‘The face of the one who is making for Jerusalem’: The Angel Choir of Lincoln Cathedral and Joy1

This paper examines the Angel Choir of Lincoln Cathedral (c. 1256–80) from the perspective of two interrelated concepts: the heavenly Jerusalem and joy. Building on previous scholarly discussions of the choir’s unusual creativity and profusion of organic and iconographic decoration, it traces connections between the choir and the rich corpus of writing on the joys of the heavenly Jerusalem. In juxtaposition with the hagiography of St Hugh, this opens a valuable seam of meaning and offers a possible explanation for the choir’s decorative intensity. It also reveals a number of ways, previously unnoted, in which Hugh of Avalon and his spirituality are recalled by the choir built to house his relics.     

Roman soil and Roman sound in Irish hagiography

ABSTRACT

Irish hagiography displays considerable interest in communication between Ireland and Rome, particularly as this featured saints, popes and relics. While people and objects travel between the two places, there is also concern to circumvent the distance involved. This article discusses an episode of miraculous communication in the Irish Life of St Colmán Élo. Here messages and messengers travel from Rome, but time and space are also telescoped through aural and material means: the sound of the bell marking the death of Pope Gregory the Great and a gift from him of Roman soil to be spread on Colmán Élo’s cemetery. The article considers how the two elements function within their hagiographical context to connect Rome and Ireland, and how these places shaped the account. The roles of bell and soil both draw on their associations in Ireland and relate to papal communication as this was experienced and imagined more widely.     

‘Water mixed with the blood of Thomas’: contact relic manufacture pictured in Canterbury Cathedral’s stained glass

Four remarkable stained glass panels in the Trinity Chapel of Canterbury Cathedral (executed c.1185–1220) picture the mixing of Thomas Becket’s blood with water at Becket’s tomb. The ‘water of St Thomas’ was among the most widely renowned medieval water relics, reputed to have healed the sick throughout Latin Christendom. This article examines the glass images, comparing them with narratives in the glaziers’ source text, Benedict of Peterborough’s collection of Becket’s miracles. The glaziers presented an enhanced and carefully designed version of the early history of the water relic: the visual images draw strong parallels between the water of St Thomas and the Eucharist, and trumpet the role of the monks of Christ Church Cathedral Priory, Canterbury, the patrons of the glass, in the mixing process. The glass panels also provide suggestive evidence regarding the personnel, vessels and ceremonial involved in the actual mixing of the relic at Canterbury, including the likely participation of a lay sacrist and the possible use of mazers.     

文物的赋存环境及其预防性保护问题

我国是世界上历史最悠久的古国之一,拥有为数众多的具有历史、科学、社会及经济价值的文物。本研究尝试综述了从文物与其赋存环境关系的角度,将文物赋存环境分为全曝露自然环境、半曝露自然环境及人工营造环境,通过分析赋存环境对文物的影响,探讨文物赋存环境的转化过程,提出不同环境条件下文物的预防性保护问题。     

A Byzantine hagiographical parody: Life of Mary the Younger

Abstract

In this paper, it is argued that The Life of Mary the Younger, an anonymous Byzantine text of the eleventh century, has a conscious intertextual dialogue with the oldest Byzantine Life venerating a holy woman, the Life of Macrina written by her brother, Gregory of Nyssa, between 380 and 383. The intertextual relation between these two female Lives takes the form of parody. Following Linda Hutcheon's theory of parody, this article shows how the anonymous hagiographer of Mary reworks Gregory's authoritative text to create a new work, a parody in terms of postmodern literary criticism, whose aim was to criticise old and contemporary customs, conventions and ideologies. In other words, the present article approaches and decodes the literariness, the function and ideology of Mary's Life in the light of Macrina's Life.     

Charles of Anjou,Pope Gregory X and the crown of Jerusalem

This article seeks to dispel the popular myth that Pope Gregory X (1271–6) wanted to change the government of the kingdom of Jerusalem by putting Charles of Anjou on its throne through the purchase of the claim of Maria of Antioch. A study of the Angevin chancery records – little used by crusade historians – demonstrates that Charles had an interest and influence in the kingdom before Gregory became pope. An examination of Gregory's papal registers shows that he consistently treated Hugh of Lusignan as king of Jerusalem and that the pope had no desire for anything to disrupt the peace in Christendom that he deemed necessary for his crusade.     

The making of a minor saint in Drogo of Saint‐Winnoc's Historia translationis s. Lewinnae

In 1058, the Flemish abbey of Saint‐Winnoc stole St Lewinna's relics from a minster in southern England. The community worked to establish her cult in Flanders. Although scholars have focused on the material gain Saint‐Winnoc probably hoped the cult would bring, this article argues that the development of the abbey's communal identity figured more prominently in its motives. The community saw Lewinna primarily as a means to help bolster its bid for independence from its mother house.     

Constantius,St Germanus and fifth‐century Britain

The two visits of Germanus to Britain that Constantius included in his Life of the saint were long a staple of insular history. Recently, however, they have come under close scrutiny, leading to the second visit in particular being considered unhistorical. This essay re‐examines the two visits in the context of the whole work, concluding that Constantius had access to good‐quality information for Germanus's activities. Focusing on two episodes of the first visit, Germanus's journey to the cult site of St Alban and the ‘Alleluia Victory’, allows us to explore what the bishop achieved in Britain. Recent suggestions that Germanus effectively ‘invented’ the cult of St Alban arguably go beyond the evidence available, but the bishop's interaction with the cult was an important, planned part of his anti‐Pelagian strategy. The passages describing the two visits are also explored in terms of Constantius's wider purposes in writing the Life. In those terms his investment in stories regarding Germanus in Britain enabled him to develop his hero in ways which accord with his overall vision of an exemplary bishop. Germanus's deeds in Britain, therefore, need to be read both in terms of what they can offer in terms of British history and in the context of this author's wider agenda.     

文明的开创与守望--试论南水北调与文物保护

南水北调工程涉及的物数量、质量空前绝后,物保护任务艰巨,是物工作的一次难得的历史机遇。     

Letter-writing and literary culture in Merovingian Gaul

This essay discusses Gregory of Tours' claim that literary culture was in decline in light of the considerable quantity of poetry and letters composed by Merovingian authors. Scholars have come to appreciate the importance of letter-writing for historical inquiry, yet the contrast between Gregory's assessment and aristocratic literary activity remains under-explored. This essay discusses fifth-century precedents and examines the continuity and discontinuity that occurred in the literary transition from late Antique to early-medieval Gaul. It examines the place of literary culture within Merovingian elite friendship networks, focusing on the interconnected writings of three Merovingian authors. Venantius Fortunatus was an Italian-born poet who spent most of his career writing for Merovingian elites. The royal officials Dynamius and Gogo composed letters found in a compilation of sixth-century letters called the Epistolae Austrasicae. Using the letters and poetry of these three writers, this essay argues that literary skill facilitated the creation and maintenance of connections across distance and was a necessary part of elite identity. It shows that Gregory of Tours' dramatic rhetorical claim did not reflect the true state of literature in Gaul.     

Texts,topoi and the self: a reading of Alfredian spirituality*

Challenging the allegation that Alfred's spirituality as Asser presents it is no more than a string of textual fictions, this article outlines a context for understanding Alfred's spirituality as a functional process of living texts, or of ‘textualizing’ the self. The discussion first draws support for this view from the history of early medieval spirituality and then demonstrates the theme's relevance both to Asser's representation of Alfred and to the king's own writings. Attention is given especially to the congruence between Alfred's depiction in the Life and Gregory the Great's teachings on the ideal rector as propounded in the Pastoral Care, a text carefully read and famously translated by Alfred himself. The comparison suggests that the main spiritual models for Alfred's kingly piety may be understood to reside in, and to involve assimilation of, this work of Gregory, making it possible to conceptualize the king's self‐presentation in terms of a conscious project to ‘live’ Gregory's text by bringing the ideals of the Gregorian rector to life in his own person. Such an argument helps to explain Alfred's interest in Gregory, to account for his concern to translate the Pastoral Care, and to legitimize the predominant images associated with the king's spirituality as indicative of a kind of functional piety grounded in the reading of texts, rather than simply reflected, perhaps falsely, in Asser’s Life.     

Gregory the Great, the Rule of Benedict and Roman liturgy: the evolution of a legend

This paper relates the evolution of Gregory the Great’s reputation as creator of the Roman liturgy to the slow process by which the Rule of Benedict acquired authority within monasticism in the seventh and eighth centuries. It argues that Gregory composed the Dialogues to promote ascetic values within the Church, but that this work did not begin to circulate in Spain and then Gaul until the 630s, precisely when Gregory’s known interest in liturgical reform is first attested in Rome. The letters of Pope Vitalian (657-72) provide hitherto unnoticed testimony to the theft of Benedict’s relics by monks of Fleury c.660, marking a new stage in the evolution of monastic culture in Gaul. The paper also argues that the Ordo Romanus XIX is not a Frankish composition from the second half of the eighth century (as Andrieu claimed), but provides important evidence for the Rule being observed at St Peter’s, Rome, in the late seventh century. While Gregory was interested in liturgical reform, he never enforced any particular observance on the broader church, just as he never imposed any particular rule. By the time of Charlemagne, however, Gregory had been transformed into an ideal figure imposing uniformity of liturgical observance, as well as mandating the Rule of Benedict within monasticism. Yet the church of the Lateran, mother church of the city of Rome, continued to maintain its own liturgy and ancient form of chant, which it claimed had been composed by Pope Vitalian, even in the thirteenth century.     

Power and Historical Figuring: Rachael Pringle Polgreen's Troubled Archive

Rachael Pringle Polgreen, a freed‘mulatto’ woman who owned an infamous brothel/hotel in Bridgetown, Barbados during the 1770s and 1780s became known to her contemporaries through her role in the (sexual) entertainment of transient naval officers and the visits of Prince William of England. Piecing together ‘evidence’ from her will, estate inventory, a nineteenth‐century novel, a lithograph and an interview with a British officer, I engage Polgreen's complicated and fragmented archive, revealing how Polgreen represents an example of the problems with sources depicting women of African descent who lived in a slave society and the silences that inundate their archive. The first part of this article critically re‐examines pieces of her archive, through which an image of Polgreen emerges incommensurable with narratives of her triumphs. Next, through an analysis of the processes by which Polgreen is historically confined by powerful archival and subsequent historical representations, I challenge previous assumptions about her life. Finally, introducing material from the British parliamentary debates in which an incident involving Polgreen is described and new material from Barbados deeds left by Polgreen's former slave, I expose the nuances of Polgreen's ‘agency’ in a slave society – that which depended upon her sexual subjugation of other women of African descent.     

Women as Pilgrims: Memoirs of Iranian Women Travelers to Mecca

A hitherto neglected aspect of the Iranian women's lives and activities is their traveling and travelogues. A number of Iranian women pilgrims to Mecca and the Shi'ite holy shrines of Mesopotamia during the past four centuries have left behind memoirs of their travels. They recorded interesting details about their spiritual experience as pilgrims to the holy lands of Islam and of the difficulties of the journey, especially the notoriously dangerous land route from Iran to Mecca through the Arabian Desert. This paper examines four examples of that genre, the oldest dating from the early eighteenth and the other three from the late nineteenth centuries. As expected, the authors were all members of upper class families: one was a princess, another a former queen, and the other two were also affiliated with the ruling families in one way or another. However, they shared the same goals with all other female, and male, pilgrims: to perform their Muslim religious duty of hajj and to do it right. They all wrote about their spiritual satisfaction but also of the disadvantages and the extra burden that a woman experienced in her pilgrimage journey, simply for being a woman.     

The pilgrimage economy of Early Roman Jerusalem (1st century BCE–70 CE) reconstructed from the δN and δC values of goat and sheep remains

Religious and historical sources suggest that pilgrimage formed a major source of Jerusalem's economy during the Early Roman period due to the Temple's role as a religious and judicial center for the Jewish diaspora. Until now, this assertion has been supported by little material evidence. In this study, the carbon and nitrogen isotope values of local arcahaeological and, modern wild herbivores from known environments were used to determine the environmental origins of domesticated sheep and goat that were traded and consumed in Early Roman Jerusalem. Pinpointing the environmental origins of these herd animals can determine if they were raised in specialized farms in the vicinity of Jerusalem, brought to the city by local pilgrims, or were part of organized importation of sacrifice animals from desert regions that lie beyond the boundaries of the province of Judea. The results indicate that at minimum 37% of the goat and sheep consumed in Jerusalem during the Early Roman period were brought from desert regions. The inter-provincial importation of animals to Jerusalem to meet high demands for sacrifice by pilgrims is the first material evidence for large scale economic specialization in the city. Furthermore, the results imply that desert animals were further marketed for domestic use in contemporaneous farm sites out of Jerusalem.     

The year 1009: St Bruno of Querfurt between Poland and Rus'

This paper deals with the last mission of St Bruno of Querfurt (d.9 March 1009) which has received controversial treatment from a number of scholars working independently of each other. This state of affairs may be explained not only by reference to different preferences of scholarly research in the countries of east-central Europe, but also to the fact that the very sources of the martyrdom are rather problematic in themselves. Our research has shown that accounts produced by Peter Damian or Ademar of Chabannes must be taken more seriously than was the case up to now, since they provide details that, taken together with other sources, show that the martyrdom in question caused a mutual rivalry between Polish and Rus'ian rulers, Boleslaw and Vladimir, for the benefits that might have been derived from St Bruno's glorious death and possession of his relics. It is also to be emphasised that St Bruno's last mission was most promising to the local ruler named Nethimer who received baptism but finally failed to secure the gains of his new status as a Christian ruler. This tug of war between Polish and Rus' rulers may, at least in part, account for the fact that after some initial steps the incipient cult of St Bruno became extinct in their respective countries and his memory was condemned to the long centuries of virtual oblivion.