Food, drink and ritualised communication in the household of Eleanor de Montfort, February to August 1265

This article investigates the use of feasts and gifts of food in the household of Eleanor de Montfort between February and August 1265. In his influential The dangers of ritual, Philippe Buc argued, through a study of early medieval chronicles, that rituals in medieval Europe were regularly targets for disruption and aggressive manipulation either in practice or in the texts reporting the rituals. This article tests Buc’s thesis against administrative records from thirteenth-century England. The evidence from Eleanor’s household accounts is illuminated through a study of contemporary literary sources and didactic texts. It concludes that the administrative records indicate that rituals in practice were less habitually the subject of manipulation and conflict than the literary evidence indicates.     

English towns in the late middle ages: the case of Great Yarmouth

Historians are divided over the economic fortunes of English towns in the late middle ages. Many argue for a ‘general crisis’ while others emphasize the variety of urban experience. Great Yarmouth is a striking example of a town facing protracted difficulties. Its decline in relation to other English towns between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries is particularly marked. Fourth among provincial towns in the 1334 tax return, Yarmouth ranked eighteenth in 1377 and twentieth in the subsidies of the 1520s.Yarmouth's problems become apparent soon after 1350, but while the Black Death may have killed one-third of its inhabitants, it is not the main cause of the town's misfortunes. Yarmouth depended heavily on two industries: shipping and fishing. The former was undermined by the early stages of the Hundred Years War, and the latter by competition from the Low Countries. A silting harbour which drove away trade and the high cost of building and repairing the town walls added to Yarmouth's difficulties.Whether economic decline is measured in terms of totals, for example total volume of trade, or in terms of individual production or wealth, Yarmouth fared badly. In the second half of the fourteenth century, Yarmouth's trade was much reduced and the town's leading burgesses seem much poorer than their counterparts before 1350. While Yarmouth clearly was in decline from about 1350 onwards, the town's experiences cannot be used to prove the case for a ‘general crisis’. They have to be seen in the context of the continuing prosperity of Norwich and the revival of Ipswich.     

The British Isles and Great Moravia in the early middle ages

The work of the Irish or Iro-Scottish missioneries on the continent of Europe in the sixth to eighth centuries is well known. An attempt is made here to show how the characteristic design of early Celtic churches found its way partly via Bavaria, where for example the Irishman Virgil became bishop of Salzburg in the mid-eight century, into Moravia, along with other Iro-Scottish cultural influences, a century or so before the well-known Christianizing mission launched into that area from Byzantium by the two brothers SS Cyril and Methodius, in 863.     

Arthur's refusal to eat: ritual and control in the romance feast

Arthur's refusal to begin feasting before he has seen a marvel or heard a tale of adventure is a recurring motif in medieval romance. Previous comment on this ritual has suggested that the source for such a taboo on eating may be found in earlier narratives in the Celtic languages. This paper argues that, although the ritual almost certainly originates in pre-chivalric society, romance authors adapted and developed it to reflect the courtly-chivalric preoccupations of their own world. Arthur's ritual gesture may be seen as a means of containing and controlling both interior moral threats and exterior physical peril, and is intimately connected to the courtly conception of the feast. This study draws on the evidence of religious writing and courtesy manuals and explores some highly-developed treatments of the motif in romance in order to suggest that literary engagements with Arthur's refusal to eat have much to say about contemporary ideas of ritual and reality as mediated through the symbolically-charged arena of the medieval feast.     

Arthur's refusal to eat: ritual and control in the romance feast

Arthur's refusal to begin feasting before he has seen a marvel or heard a tale of adventure is a recurring motif in medieval romance. Previous comment on this ritual has suggested that the source for such a taboo on eating may be found in earlier narratives in the Celtic languages. This paper argues that, although the ritual almost certainly originates in pre-chivalric society, romance authors adapted and developed it to reflect the courtly-chivalric preoccupations of their own world. Arthur's ritual gesture may be seen as a means of containing and controlling both interior moral threats and exterior physical peril, and is intimately connected to the courtly conception of the feast. This study draws on the evidence of religious writing and courtesy manuals and explores some highly-developed treatments of the motif in romance in order to suggest that literary engagements with Arthur's refusal to eat have much to say about contemporary ideas of ritual and reality as mediated through the symbolically-charged arena of the medieval feast.     

A conception of the self in the later middle ages

This paper presents a conception of the nature of the individual self in the late middle ages, involving the stance from which the ‘I’ beholds the world (in this case, one newly more autonomous from the corporate/ecclesiastical world view), and the manner in which the self (‘I’) apprehends itself (in this case, self-apprehension involves sensing that one's essentially public face is ‘being seen’ as standing out from the group by others, as well as knowing oneself via ‘reflections’ from others). A theme of ‘seeing’ the world from a more autonomous standpoint while ‘being seen’ as a more separated psychic entity is discerned, which is in keeping with an emphasis on vision in this age, discerned by other researchers. The paper bases its case partly on examination of the arguments and evidence cited by other researchers who have studied the self or individuality in the later middle ages.     

A tale of two towns: Buntingford and Standon in the later middle ages

The controversy over the fortunes of English towns in the later middle ages has tended to generate more heat than light. Much of the evidence employed in this debate has been drawn from the larger English towns, but this essay suggests a widening of the research agenda to include a more systematic assessment of small towns and village markets. Although weakened by the reduced demand for grain after the Black Death, these places competed for the growing local trade in basic consumer goods. Evidence from northeast Hertfordshire reveals that this competition resulted in a significant restructuring of the hierarchy of local marketing centres, and a decline in the ability of seigneurial and urban authorities to regulate trading activity.     

Commercial fraud in the middle ages: the case of the dissembling pepperer

Medieval business ethics is a topic of recent interest among historians. This study examines a case of commercial fraud, the falsification of saffron, in the southern French town of Montpellier in the mid-fourteenth century. Impure saffron was seized by urban inspectors at the workshop of a pepperer, Johannes Andree. Upon the testimony of witnesses, the impurity of the saffron was corroborated, and municipal justice decreed that it be publicly burned. Johannes Andree chose to contest this verdict, claiming exemption from judgment upon the grounds that he was a royal moneyer. A conflict of jurisdiction ensued, with the vector of Montpelliéret supporting Andree against the municipal consuls and the town bailiff.This study focuses on the documentary evidence of the law suit: the nature of the accusation against Andree, the legitimacy of his defence, the precedents for consular supervision of the pepperers' trade and the importance of quality control over merchandise, and the background of the jurisdictional dispute between the consuls and the rector. Finally, the legal terminology of this case of commercial fraud is considered in the context of legal theory and medieval jurisprudence. From this analysis of municipal justice in practice, standards of business ethics, consumer protection and quality control emerge as important concerns in a trading centre such as Montpellier.     

A multiple myeloma of the late middle ages from unterregenbach,southwestern Germany

In the early 1960s the grave of a probable donor was discovered in the St Veit church in Unterregenbach, Stadt Langenburg, Kreis Crailsheim, southwestern Germany. After a re-examination, the skeleton may be regarded as clearly corresponding to the typical clinical picture of a multiple myeloma/plasma cell myeloma. The 45–55-year-old female individual shows all the characteristics of a malignant plasma cell tumour, with specific osteolytic lesions of the skull, vertebrae, ribs, pelvis, scapulae and long bones, and even-sized single defects without reactive zones on the edges. Several pathological fractures of the ribs and a vertebral compression fracture can be observed. The gnawing-mark-like features on the inner surface of the compact bone and the ‘punched-out’ lesions on the outer are distinguishing marks of a multiple myeloma.     

Feasts and gifts: sharing food in the middle ages

This essay introduces a special issue of the Journal of Medieval History on feasting and gifts of food from the early middle ages through to the early modern period. It discusses the tensions between hierarchy and community, largesse and luxury in the feast, and the continued importance of communal eating throughout the medieval period.     

Luni in the middle ages: The agony and the disappearance of a city

Rich town, center of marble trading, and important port of transit during the Imperial Age, Luni outlived the end of the Roman Empire, although weakend, and experienced without major destruction domination by Byzantines and Longoboards, and annexation to the Carolingian kingdom. Luni held an advantage over other cities of Roman origin in lying along one of the most important land-based routes of the Middle Ages and in lying close to the sea on the mouth of a major river. Yet while neighboring cities were flourishing, Luni reached the lowest point in a decline that culminated in its final abandonment in 1204. The primary cause lay in the vast effects of the area's environmental deterioration. The natural modifications made it nearly impossible to restore its commercial and Mediterranean trading systems and for its population to grow, after the tenth century. Even the presence in town throughout the medieval period of a powerful episcopal authority could not ensure Luni's survival. For the period between the tenth and the thirteenth centuries, the documentation shows considerable activity on the part of the bishops. This was oriented towards the new and more profitable settlements in the countryside around Luni, however, rather than towards the organization and development of lasting economic structures in the city itself. Financial and social elites never arose in the city as in coeval Italian civitates and Luni was unable to become part of the new system of commercial and political relationships in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and was shortly thereafter abandoned.     

Blood-brothers: a ritual of friendship and the construction of the imagined barbarian in the middle ages

This article analyses the history of blood-covenants in the middle ages. Appearing in various historiographical and literary texts from antiquity onwards, these covenants have hitherto mostly been interpreted by modern authors as a typical feature of pre-modern or even ‘primitive’ societies. A closer inquiry into the context of the existing source-material reveals, however, that this motif can be characterised as a part of discriminatory narrative strategies which aim at the exclusion of foreign and non-Christian cultures. The analysis of the medieval texts, which were mainly produced from the twelfth century onwards, clearly shows a tendency to attribute this ritual of blood-brotherhood either to representatives of the so-called ‘Saracens’ or allegedly heterodox cultures, like the Byzantines or the Irish, which populated the margins of the Latin west. Not only does this topical use of the motif invalidate part of the texts' factual source value, but it also proved misleading for the interpretation of pre-modern societies by modern historians. While an older tradition of classical political history mainly tended to note the ritual as a cultural curiosity, more recent studies of ritual structures are in danger of misrepresenting the cultures they focus on.     

Rhetoric and morale: a study of battle orations from the central middle ages

Courage and morale are often overlooked factors in medieval warfare. Nevertheless, they were as important in the middle ages as they are today. Although there is no psychological evidence of the type compiled in recent wars, the chroniclers of the central middle ages do provide a considerable amount of information about the different factors that stimulated the fighting spirit of medieval armies. They wrote hundreds of battle orations, harangues to the knights before or during combat, that show in detail the kinds of motive appeals the chroniclers believed would be most effective in building morale. This article analyzes battle orations as a rhetorical genre for the psychological insights they provide into the mentality of the medieval man at arms.     

Allochthonous red pigments used in burial practices at the Copper Age site of Valencina de la Concepción (Sevilla,Spain): characterisation and social dimension

The use of red pigments linked to burial practices is widely documented in the Iberian prehistoric record and very often it has been traditionally interpreted as a ritual practice entailing the utilisation of local raw materials (iron oxides). Some research works, nevertheless, have also detected the use of red pigments which can only be interpreted as allochthonous. The red pigments spread over a single inhumation in a monumental Megalithic tomb surrounding Valencina de la Concepción Copper Age settlement was studied by means of X-ray diffraction, field emission scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, X-ray microfluorescence, micro-Raman and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopies. This approach allowed characterising the red pigments as cinnabar, mixed with tiny amounts of iron oxides. The presence of cinnabar, a product that was necessarily imported, in a context of an exceptional set of grave goods, suggests that the use of cinnabar was linked not only to ritual but also to practices related to the display of social status.     

明代以来江南市镇的内涵与发展——太湖南部四镇的个案剖析

明代以来江南地区出现了众多的市镇,各市镇的经济内涵是有所不同的,市镇经济内涵的形成与市镇发生的历史背景以及所处的地理位置有着十分重要的关系,而市镇的经济内涵又决定着市镇的发展前景.     

Conversing with the minority: relations among Christian,Jewish, and Muslim women in the high middle ages

This essay introduces a special issue of the Journal of Medieval History on the topic of ‘Conversing with the minority: relations among Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Women in the High Middle Ages’. Despite the fact that both interfaith relations and women's history are now well established subdisciplines within the field of medieval studies, the question of how medieval women themselves established cross-sectarian relations has rarely been explored. Documenting women's history is almost always problematic because of limited source materials, but this essay suggests that much can be learned by looking at areas where Christian, Jewish, and Muslim women shared certain facets of their lives: either by reason of social relations tied to religion and ethnicity (money-lending being a common bond between Jewish and Christian women, slavery between Christian women and Muslims) or by reason of events that connected them due to their shared sex and gender (childbirth, caring for the dead, even cosmetics). By actively looking for ‘spaces’ where women would be found, we can begin to hear the dialogues that passed among women across religious lines.