Medieval History

The paper aims to present the first results of an in-depth and source-based research about socio-economic inequalities and agricultural growth in the Late Medieval Florentine society.
This area has been intensively studied because of its economic relevance and the rise of a peculiar share-cropping system (mezzadria). Mezzadria lease contracts spread broadly in Tuscany at the end of the Middle Ages (13th c.), linked to the building of the regional city-state by the city-commune of Florence and its raising economy. The system developed before the demographic shocks of Late Middle Ages and continued to develop further during the decline of the Florentine economy in 15th-16th centuries. The role of mezzadria in shaping declining economic trends and socio-economic inequalities, as well as the causes of its rise, are still debated among scholars.
This research would offer an original contribute on these issues through a new in-depth consultation of the Florentine fiscal surveys of the 15th and 16th centuries (the Catasto of 1427 and the Decima repubblicana of the early 16th century) and the use of a social agro-systemic approach. The information entered from sources will be used to draw a picture of the social and property structure of four different sub-regional study-areas within the Florentine territory (characterized by differences in the importance of institutions, in property distribution, in environmental features), comparing the trends and their causal relations for regional differences. The goal is drawing: 1) a more complete figure of agricultural output of mezzadria –  comparing different systems of exploitation and subregions –; 2) an in-depth figure of socio-economic inequalities – property and income distribution, ownership of oxen, access to credit and fiscal incomes. In this way it will be possible to offer a more detailed pattern of explanation of the main dynamics of Late Medieval rural Tuscany.

This is the original version of an article now edited and translated into English (updated with additional illustrations) and republished in "Food, Social Politics and the Order of Nature in Renaissance Europe" (2019), a volume of my collected articles.

espanolEl presente trabajo esta dedicado al analisis de las tecnicas para el vidriado de la ceramica que aparecen documentadas en diversos tratados y recetarios de epoca medieval. Se trata de textos procedentes, en su mayor parte, de la Peninsula Italiana, que incluyen recetas dedicadas al vidriado de la ceramica al plomo y al estano, con particular referencia a la realizacion de la loza dorada. El estudio comenta los textos donde dichas recetas se insertan, las tecnicas de trabajo que mencionan y concluye con un apendice documental en el que se incluye la traduccion al castellano de las recetas estudiadas. EnglishThis work is dedicated to the analysis of techniques for glazing ceramics that are documented in some treatises and recipe books of medieval times. These are texts from, for the most part, the Italian Peninsula, including recipes dedicated to the glazed ceramic with lead and tin, with particular reference to the making of the so-called, golden ceramic. The study discusses the texts in which these recipes are inserted, the techniques of work mentioned and it concludes with an appendix which includes the translation into Castilian language of the prescriptions studied.

This paper studies through a quantitative analysis at micro-scale (the pieve of San Giovanni in Petroio in Mugello) in 1427-1512 the relation between the growing economic inequality of the Florentine rural society found by recent research and a peculiar share-cropping system, the mezzadria. By focusing on the mechanisms of wealth redistribution of this system, the paper suggests the role of mezzadria whether in increasing in the long-run the concentration of land property and in providing for the poorest social layers of rural population at subsistence level. In this regard, the paper contributes to explore the role of institutions in increasing wealth concentration from Middle Ages to the Early Modern times.

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries witnessed an explosion of Christian interest in the meaning and workings of the natural world—a "discovery of nature" that profoundly reshaped the intellectual currents and spiritual contours of European society—yet to all appearances, the Jews of medieval northern Europe (Ashkenaz) were oblivious to the shifts reshaping their surrounding culture. Scholars have long assumed that rather than exploring or contemplating the natural world, the Jews of medieval Ashkenaz were preoccupied solely with the supernatural and otherworldly: magic and mysticism, demonology and divination, as well as the zombies, werewolves, dragons, flying camels, and other monstrous and wondrous creatures that destabilized any pretense of a consistent and encompassing natural order.

In _A Remembrance of His Wonders_, David I. Shyovitz disputes this long-standing and far-reaching consensus. Analyzing a wide array of neglected Ashkenazic writings on the natural world in general, and the human body in particular, Shyovitz shows how Jews in Ashkenaz integrated regnant scientific, magical, and mystical currents into a sophisticated exploration of the boundaries between nature and the supernatural. Ashkenazic beliefs and practices that have often been seen as signs of credulity and superstition in fact mirrored—and drew upon—contemporaneous Christian debates over the relationship between God and the natural world. In charting these parallels between Jewish and Christian thought, Shyovitz focuses especially upon the mediating role of polemical texts and encounters, which served as mechanisms for the transmission of religious doctrines, scientific facts, and cultural mores. Medieval Jews' preoccupation with the apparently "supernatural" reflected neither ignorance nor intellectual isolation, but rather a determined effort to understand nature's inner workings and outer limits, and to integrate and interrogate the theologies and ideologies of the broader European Christian society.

The particular circumstances concerning the survival of the Latin kingdom and the pivotal importance of military matters determined the priorities of its ruler. Above all, he needed to ensure effective and complete feudal service as well as the loyalty of all his vassals. This article reveals the originality of some of the clauses found in the Livre au Roi, a custumal on feudal law composed around 1200, demonstrating that its compiler did not shrink from innovating in this area in his intention of giving the monarchy the juridical basis necessary for political centralisation. By examining closely four specific examples from the Livre, which deal with noblewomen (the service of marriage of unmarried heiresses; the remarriage of widows; the rights of wives of heretical and apostate knights; and the fate of wives of knights suffering from leprosy), this analysis of the Livre au Roi shows how the monarchy of Outremer sought to strengthen its domination over noble families by manipulating the fragile status of vassals in the Latin kingdom. As the discussion sheds light on the notion of symbolic violence against women, it can also reveal much about perceptions and representations of women and of their bodies in the middle ages, as well as how male domination was, as a consequence, reinforced.

This is a description (longer than an abstract), and the front matter, of my third book: the annotated translation of the Henryków Book, prefaced by a long introduction. This document was sent to me by the publisher in the process of printing, so these pages are not numbered.

Submitted here is my introduction to my annotated translation of the Henryków Book, titled Local Society in Transition, whose reference matter appears in the Books section of this website. This introduction contextualizes the Book and its authors in the genres of historical writing of which it is an example, and in the monastic, political, economic, and seigneurial world of medieval Silesia, and Piast Poland in general. It is designed to offer an entrée into the history of those two polities, as well as of the text and the monastery. (My most recent book, The Text and the World, also represented in the Books section, takes these aims in several further directions.) I am most grateful to Fred Unwalla of the Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies, for permission to place the entire text on this website.

Venerdì 12 novembre 2021, ore. 20:30
Caspoggio - Sala dell'Immacolata

Conferenza di presentazione dei risultati della prima e seconda campagna di scavi archeologici in località Castello a Caspoggio, sito dell'antico Castrum de Malenco. Il castello è oggetto di scavi di ricerca da parte dell'Università degli studi di Bergamo in regime di concessione ministeriale MIC.

A group of medical historians and paleographers has teamed up informally to create a "Medicine in the Long 12th Century Working Group."  More than 500 extant manuscripts from this period have been identified as containing Latin medical texts.  Adding in citations from 12th-century catalogs, we have at least 650 witnesses to the “common library” that made up learned medical knowledge throughout Europe in the long 12th century:  around 150 different texts in circulation, in some cases found in a single copy but in others in several dozens.  A revolution in medicine did indeed happen in this period.  But it was not a “revolution” based on wholesale absorption of new work made suddenly available in Latin from Arabic.  Nor was it a "revolution" based entirely at the southern Italian city of Salerno, which has long been centrally featured in narratives about medicine in this period.  This project aims to use the collected expertise of the contributors, and the ever-growing availability of digitized manuscripts (many made freely available on the Internet by their holding libraries), to create a comprehensive picture of medicine in this crucial period of change.  Our hope is that many subsidiary projects will emerge out of this, whether they be studies of individual texts, centers for copying manuscripts or studying medicine, or larger questions about the modes or impacts of programs of medical and scientific translations.

My remarks today are to be considered as made less with the intention of imparting information than of eliciting it from the discussionwhich I hope that they will provoke. I put them before you with diffidence, since I cannot claim to speak with authority upon either of the two literary spheres that concern me here. At the same time, the kind of correlation which I am attempting has not, I think, been essayed before, and it seems worth investigating whether it can lead us to anysignificant positive results. I welcomeeagerly the decision of those responsible for arranging this Patristics Conference to establish a section specifically concerned with Jewish aspects, and hope that it may be considered appropriate to devote a session to what will primarily be an investigation into method, designed to indicate that rabbinic, patristic, and scholastic studies can still prove mutnallyfertilising in the field of biblical exegesis. My paper will fall into two halves. In the first, I shall concern myself with the way in which a use of Jewish biblical exegesis can aid the study of patristic and later Christian exegesis, and more especially on this occasion, vice versa'; and from this I shall pass to a comparison of the methodology of rabbinic and patristic scriptural hermeneutics respectively. The point of such comparison is to show how either system may exhibit features which are, at first sight, not to be discerned in the other, but which may reveal themselves to a correctly orientated investigation; their initial concealment being due to the circumstance that they must be sought in different places, and expressed in different forms, appropriate to the nature of the psychology, theology, and literature of the system in which they are looked for, since they will not necessarily be categorised in the same way by Judaism and Christianity.

Kniha byla vydána roku 1989 v Praze  / The book was published in 1989 in Prague.

Drazí kolegové, tato kniha je umístěna kvůli jejímu  mimořádnému významu při porozumění archeologii Čech a její špatné dostupnosti zahraničním vědcům a studentům. Naléhavě Vás prosíme, abyste respektovali autorská práva autora a vydavatele. Děkujeme --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear colleagues, this book is placed because of its importance in understanding the archaeology of Bohemia and its poor availability to foreign scientists and students. We urge you to respect the copyrights of author and publishers. Thank you

Kapitola pojednává o jménech Přemyslovců objevujících se v místních jménech v Čechách a na Moravě. Věnuje se také proměnám místních jmen v období kolonizace v okolí slezského kláštera Henrykówa.

The chapter deals with the names of the Přemyslids appearing in toponyms in Bohemia and Moravia. It also deals with the transformation of toponyms around the Henrykow Monastery in Silesia during the colonization period.

This essay examines the intersections of discipline, compassion and community in a selection of monastic texts from the late tenth through to the mid-thirteenth centuries, focusing on disciplinary rituals involving punitive flogging or flagellation. Although members of all of the major religious orders viewed flogging as a necessary method of correction needing little or no justification, as evidenced by customaries, letters, and even miracle collections, few scholars have examined the role of this practice in the shaping of monastic culture. This essay suggests that disciplinary rituals served a number of related functions within coenobitic monasticism: they reinforced hierarchies within communities, tested individuals' mastery of the virtues of humility and obedience, expressed superiors' compassion and love for their subordinates, and reminded penitents and spectators alike of Christ's bodily suffering. These conclusions are further supported by a close reading of Peter the Venerable's vita of the Cluniac prior Matthew of Albano, a text which depicts disciplinary violence as a synthetic element of monastic life, as well as a ritual means of promoting the spiritual growth of individuals and entire communities.

John Skelton is a central literary figure and the leading poet during the first thirty years of Tudor rule. Nevertheless, he remains challenging and even contradictory for modern audiences.

This book aims to provide an authoritative guide to this complex poet and his works, setting him in his historical, religious, and social contexts. Beginning with an exploration of his life and career, it goes on to cover all the major aspects of his poetry, from the literary traditions in which he wrote and the form of his compositions to the manuscript contexts and later reception. Contributors: Tom Betteridge, Julia Boffey, John Burrow, David Carlson, Helen Cooper, Elisabeth Dutton, A.S.G. Edwards, Jane Griffiths, Nadine Kuipers, Carol Meale, John Scattergood, Sebastian Sobecki, Greg Waite

En este texto se relata la crónica o, si se prefiere, el diario de los hechos que siguieron a la publicación del texto de fray Atanasio de Lobera, desde las primeras gestiones de 1598 para buscar una reliquia del santo hasta su consecución en 1644, pasando por su designación en 1617 como patrono de Tarazona o los primeros intentos por presentar dignamente el trofeo.

The Mont Saint-Michel is a small, rocky tidal island in France located in a large bay at the mouth of the Couesnon.
The granite massif of Mont Saint-Michel is crowned with a medieval abbey. It's a table moutain; a remaining of a prehistoric petrified treetop.
Since 1898, the spire of the abbey church has a statue of Saint Michael that protrudes a hundred and seventy meters above the bay. The island is located about 1 kilometer from the coast near the town of Avranches in Normandy . It was originally a tidal island : it was accessible by land at low tidebut at high tide it was surrounded by water. Today a narrow bridge, with shuttle service, runs to the island. Mont Saint-Michel, with its pedestrian streets, is only accessible to pedestrians.

The first text about an abbey is the 9th-century Latin text Revelatio ecclesiae sancti Michaelis in monte Tumba written by a chanoine living at Mont Saint Michel or at the Cathédrale Saint-André d'Avranches. This text was written at a time of power struggle between Brittany and the County of Normandy against Francia as well as during canon law reforms by Roman emperors.

When Christianity expanded to the area, around the 4th century, Mont Tombe, the original name of Mont Saint Michel, was part of the Diocese of Avranches. By the middle of the 6th century, Christianity had a stronger presence in the bay. By this time, Mont Tombe was populated by religious devotees, hermits (probably some Celtic monks) supplied by the curé of Astériac, (Asterix) who took care of the site and led a contemplative life around some oratories. The hermits Saint Pair and Saint Seubilion dedicated one of the oratories to Saint Étienne, midway through the mont and one to Saint Symphorien, at the foot of the rock.

Saint Aubert
In 710, Mont Tombe was renamed Mont Saint Michel au péril de la Mer ("Mount Saint Michael at the peril of the sea) after erecting an oratory to Saint Michael by bishop Saint Aubert of Avranches in 708. According to the legend, Aubert received, during his sleep, three times the order from Saint Michael to erect an oratory on the Mont Tombe. The archangel was reputed to have left his finger mark on Aubert's skull. This skull is displayed at the Saint-Gervais d'Avranches basilica with such a scar on it.

This sanctuary should be, according to the archangel, a replica of the Gargano in Italy (from the 5th century). Aubert had a local religious artifact removed and instead a circular sanctuary built, made of dry stones. Around 708, Aubert sent two monks to get some artifacts from the Italian sanctuary Gargano (a rock with his foot print and a piece of tissue from the altar). During this mission, the March 709 tsunami is supposed to have destroyed the Scissy forest and turned the Mont into an island. On October 16 709, the bishop dedicated the church and put twelve chanoine there. The Mont-Saint-Michel was born.

The remains of the oratory were found in the chapel Notre-Dame-Sous-Terre. This sanctuary contained the tomb of Aubert and most likely the artifacts brought from Gargano. The chapel Notre-Dame-Sous-Terre is today under the nave of the abbey-church.

The first buildings became too small and under the Western Roman Empire multiple buildings were added. Charlemagne chose saint Michel as a protector of his empire during the 9th century and tried to have the place renamed Mont-Saint-Michel, but during the Middle Ages it was usually called Saint-Michel-aux-Deux-Tombes (Saint Michel with two tombs) (Mons Sancti Michaelis in periculo maris, in reference to Tombelaine).

History of the abbey
Church of Saint Michel during 9th and 10th centuries
The Mont-Saint-Michel monks, during the first century of their institution, venerated the archangel Michael. The Mont became a place of prayer and study, but the stability period, known as the Neustria, during the reign of Charlemagne ended when he died. As the rest of Gaule was fighting invasions, religion and science found some welcoming in the diocese of Avranches and at the Mont-Saint-Michel.

At first, pilgrims kept coming to the Mont. After the Vikings captured the Mont in 847, the monks departed. But, as an island, it offered some protection for the local population and thus never stayed empty.

After the signature of the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, Rollo (Gange-Hrólfr "Rollo" Ragnvaldsson de Normandie) started repairing the damages inflicted to the religious buildings. He generously financed the Mont and called back the monks displaced by the war, returning the Mont to its previous condition.

The wealth and support that the Mont suddenly obtained from Rollo started to fundamentally affect its inhabitants, taking them away from their solitary, religious life. After William I of Normandy took over his father's title as Duke of Normandy in 927, he expanded his support toward monasteries until his assassination in 932; but his wealth, from which they benefited, further exacerbated their mundane life style. Because of their generous contributions to the Mont, the Dukes of Brittany Conan 1st, who died in 992, and Geoffrey 1st, who died in 1008, were buried in the Mont as benefactors.

Compared with the heyday under the Fatimids, the position of the non-Muslims, or dhimmts, in the late Mamluk period was bleak. Victims of the general demographic and economic decline, objects of considerable hostility on the part of Muslim theologians, and targets of frequent persecution, the Jews and Christians of Egypt found life more difficult and more oppressive in the fifteenth than in the eleventh or twelfth century. For the Jews, hard times were reflected both in tensions with the surrounding Muslim society and in the depressed condition of community life. Most of what we know about the Jews of Egypt in the fifteenth century derives from non-Jewish sources, especially Arabic chronicles and European travellers' descriptions.2 The Cairo Geniza, which has such a rich deposit of documents from the Fatimid-Ayyubid period, contains relatively little information about the condition of the Jews during the late Mamluik period. Hence, every new Geniza discovery relevant to Mamlfk Jewry assumes a heightened significance, especially when it illuminates aspects both of the external relations of the Jews and of their inner, communal life. The recently opened 'Additional Series' of the Cambridge University's Taylor-Schechter Geniza collection contains a large number of fragments of historical interest, mostly collected together in the volumes numbered 145 to 153.3 Most of the documents are small, and, from that point of view, somewhat less valuable than the many long and full letters and other documents contained in the Taylor-Schechter Old and New Series. Uncharacteristic of most of the other AS manuscripts, the one published and discussed below is of considerable historical importance. It sheds new light on a crisis in Mamluk-dhimm7 relations during the middle of the fifteenth century and, at the same time, provides fascinating new data about an obscure chapter in the history of Jewish leadership in Mamlik Egypt.

Although scholars tend to draw a line of confrontation between the conquerors Normans and the conquered Muslims and Greeks in the kingdom of Sicily, the actual relationship among these people was not so simple. In the kingdom there was a relatively developed bureaucracy staffed by officials with varied cultural backgrounds.  The kings and these bureaucrats took a stand against the aristocrats, who had solely Latin Christian backgrounds.  In fact, the keynote of the political history of the kingdom was a process in which the kings together with bureaucrats held down the aristocrats and cities of the peninsula.  The kings and bureaucrats, who had different cultural backgrounds but were highly educated and cultured, took a stand against aristocrats who were not well cultured but trained as warriors.  However, this line of confrontation was visible only during the peacetime.  During the wartime, a line of confrontation was drawn within aristocrats and cities that had military power.  Aristocrats and cities were divided into a pro-king group and an anti-king one, and fought amongst each other, while bureaucrats were usually on the side of the kings.  This suggests that even the mighty Norman kings supported by the bureaucrats were by no means absolute.  The strong Norman kingship of Sicily was in fact only made possible by a delicate balance of power among aristocrats, cities, and bureaucrats.

Further important sources of the empiricism of the Scientific Revolution were to be found in the magical tradition, and these influences can be seen at work in a number of areas. They deserve separate consideration here, however, because they have generated considerable historiographical debate [222; 39]. A number of historians of science have refused to accept that something which they see as so irrational could have had any impact whatsoever upon the supremely rational pursuit of science. Their arguments seem to be based on mere prejudice, or on a failure to understand the richness and complexity of the magical tradition.

The admittance of individuals into a chivalric order was an important tool of late medieval diplomacy which contributed significantly to the reinforcement of political and cultural ties between the order’s leader and admitted member and between their respective social circles. Therefore, this paper analyses the presence of such chivalric orders in medieval Bosnia, with special emphasis placed on the Aragonese Order of the Stole and Jar through the prism of an alliance concluded between King Alfonso V of Aragon (r. 1416-1458) and Stjepan Vukčić (r. 1435- 1466), the Grand Duke of Bosnia who later became the Duke of St. Sava. The most of the individuals admitted to this Order were diplomats who visited Alfonso’s court in Naples. However, the privileges granted to Duke Stjepan Vukčić in 1444 constitute an exceptional case. According to a preserved document, he was granted the right to accept fifty new members and provide them with the insignia of the Order. The paper further contains an analysis and transcription of the text as well as a photographic reproduction of an authorized copy of this charter.

Abrupt climate change in the past is thought to have disrupted societies by accelerating environmental degradation, potentially leading to cultural collapse. Linking climate change directly to societal disruption is challenging because socioeconomic factors also play a large role, with climate being secondary or sometimes inconsequential. Combining paleolimnologic, historical, and archaeological methods provides for a more secure basis for interpreting the past impacts of climate on society. We present pollen, nonpollen palynomorph, geochemical, paleomagnetic and sedimentary data from a high-resolution 2700 yr lake sediment core from central Italy and compare these data with local historical documents and archeological surveys to reconstruct a record of environmental change in relation to socioeconomic history and climatic fluctuations. Here we document cases in which environmental change is strongly linked to changes in local land management practices in the absence of clear climatic change, as well as examples when climate change appears to have been a strong catalyst that resulted in significant environmental change that impacted local communities. During the Imperial Roman period, despite a long period of stable, mild climate, and a large urban population in nearby Rome, our site shows only limited evidence for environmental degradation. Warm and mild climate during the Medieval Warm period, on the other hand, led to widespread deforestation and erosion. The ability of the Romans to utilize imported resources through an extensive trade network may have allowed for preservation of the environment near the Roman capital, whereas during medieval time, the need to rely on local resources led to environmental degradation. Cool wet climate during the Little Ice Age led to a breakdown in local land use practices, widespread land abandonment and rapid reforestation. Our results present a highresolution regional case study that explores the effect of climate change on society for an underdocumented region of Europe.

Ήταν πριν ακριβώς εκατό χρόνια, όταν στην Καβάλα ιδρύθηκε «η Ιατρική Εταιρεία Καβάλας, ο ΙΠΠΟΚΡΑΤΗΣ» ένα σωματείο επιστημονικό, κοινωφελές, μη κερδοσκοπικό, πριν ακόμη ιδρυθούν οι Ιατρικοί Σύλλογοι. Ο κύριος σκοπός του ήταν η οικοδόμηση, συντήρηση και διεύθυνση του φθισιατρείου Καβάλας. Πρώτος του πρόεδρος ήταν ο χειρουργός γιατρός Ιωάννης Αστεριάδης (1885-1959) και ο χώρος συνάντησης των μελών του το φαρμακείο Παναγιώτη Αινείτη στην γωνία Λεωνάτου-Ομονοίας.

The period 550 to 750 was one in which monastic culture became more firmly entrenched in Western Europe. The role of monasteries and their relationship to the social world around them was transformed during this period as monastic institutions became more integrated in social and political power networks. This collected volume of essays focuses on one of the central figures in this process, the Irish ascetic exile and monastic founder, Columbanus (c. 550-615), his travels on the Continent, and the monastic network he and his Frankish disciples established in Merovingian Gaul and Lombard Italy.

The post-Roman kingdoms through which Columbanus travelled and established his monastic foundations were made up of many different communities of peoples. As an outsider and immigrant, how did Columbanus and his communities interact with these peoples? How did they negotiate differences and what emerged from these encounters? How societies interact with outsiders can reveal the inner workings and social norms of that culture. This volume aims to explore further the strands of this vibrant contact and to consider all of the geographical spheres in which Columbanus and his monastic communities operated (Ireland, Merovingian Gaul, Alamannia, Lombard Italy) and the varieties of communities he and his successors came in contact with — whether they were royal, ecclesiastic, aristocratic, or grass-roots.

Table of Contents

Preface
List of Abbreviations
Maps
Contributors
Foreword Walter Pohl
Part I: Columbanus in Context
Chapter 1: Introduction: Columbanus and Europe Alexander O'Hara
Chapter 2: Columbanus and the Language of Concord Damian Bracken
Part II: The Insular Background
Chapter 3: The Political Background to Columbanus's Irish Career Dáibhí Ó Cróinín
Chapter 4: Movers and Shakers? How Women Shaped the Career of Columbanus Elva Johnston
Chapter 5: Columbanus's Ulster Education Alex Woolf
Part III: The Frankish World
Chapter 6: Columbanus in Brittany Ian Wood
Chapter 7: Columbanus and Shunning: The Irish peregrinus between Gildas, Gaul, and Gregory Clare Stancliffe
Chapter 8: Orthodoxy and Authority: Jonas, Eustasius, and the Agrestius Affair Andreas Fischer
Chapter 9: Columbanus and the Mission to the Bavarians and the Slavs in the Seventh Century Herwig Wolfram
Part IV: On the Fringe: Columbanus and Gallus in Alamannia
Chapter 10: Between the Devil and the deep Lake Constance: Jonas of Bobbio, interpretatio Christiana, and the Pagan Religion of the Alamanni Bernhard Maier
Chapter 11: Drinking with Woden: A Re-Examination of Jonas's Vita Columbani I. 27 Francesco Borri
Chapter 12: Between Metz and Überlingen: Columbanus and Gallus in Alamannia Yaniv Fox
Chapter 13: Quicumque sunt rebelles, foras exeant! Columbanus's Rebellious Disciple Gallus Philipp Dörler
Part V: Lombard Italy and Columbanus's Legacy
Chapter 14: Columbanus, Bobbio, and the Lombards Stefano Gasparri
Chapter 15: Disputing Columbanus's Heritage: The Regula cuiusdam patris (with a translation of the Rule) Albrecht Diem

Monasticism became part of European culture from the early period of Christianity and developed into a powerful institution that had a profound effect on the greater Church, on wider society, and on the landscape. Monastic communities were as diverse as the societies in which they lived, following a variety of rules, building monasteries influenced by common ideals and yet diverse in their regionalism, while also contributing to the economic and spiritual well-being inside and outside their precincts.

This interdisciplinary volume presents the diversity of medieval European monasticism with a particular emphasis on its impact on the immediate environs. Geographically it extends from the far west in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, to the east in Romania and the Balkans, through the north of Scandinavia to the south of the Iberian Peninsula. Drawing on archaeological, art and architectural, textual and topographical evidence, the contributors explore how monastic communities were formed, how they created a landscape of monasticism, how they wove their identities with those around them, and how they interacted with all levels of society to leave a lasting imprint on European towns and rural landscapes.

A decade of studying the topography/archaeology/history/geography of the Surrey parish I grew up in has left me with a clutch of discoveries of local and supra-local significance, as well as a host of questions to be answered in the future by myself and any more capable researchers who might be interested in taking up the challenge. The paper (like the extended and extensive research process behind it) takes what is very much a long view to the subjects in hand. So far as the medieval period is concerned, it sets out the evidence that suggests the landscape was recast during a "long twelfth century" which saw Puttenham emerge as a manor, village and parish, but within a more complex and heterogenous local context. Further research should show the degree to which the situation within the parish matched or was at odds with that from other parishes within Surrey and beyond.

***Follow link below to view paper***

Research on early medieval Cyprus has focused on the late antique " golden age " (late fourth/early fifth to seventh century) and the so-called Byzantine " Reconquista " (post-AD 965) while overlooking the intervening period. This phase was characterized, supposedly, by the division of the political sovereignty between the Umayyads and the Byzantines, bringing about the social and demographic dislocation of the population of the island. This book proposes a different story of continuities and slow transformations in the fate of Cyprus between the late sixth and the early ninth centuries. Analysis of new archaeological evidence shows signs of a continuing link to Constantinople. Moreover, together with a reassessment of the literary evidence, archaeology and material culture help us to reappraise the impact of Arab naval raids and contextualize the confrontational episodes throughout the ebb and flow of Eastern Mediterranean history: the political influence of the Caliphate looked stronger in the second half of the seventh century, the administrative and ecclesiastical influence of the Byzantine empire held sway from the beginning of the eighth to the twelfth century. Whereas the island retained sound commercial ties with the Umayyad Levant in the seventh and eighth centuries, at the same time politically and economically it remained part of the Byzantine sphere. This belies the idea of Cyprus as an independent province only loosely tied to Constantinople and allows us to draw a different picture of the cultural identities, political practices and hierarchy of wealth and power in Cyprus during the passage from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages.

"This publication presents the first study of the defining features of Psellos' Chronographia, written in the 11th century.
Character is the single most important feature of the Chronographia written by Michael Psellos (1018-1081?). It is an historical account of the events at court from the time of Basil II (986-1025) to Michael VII Doukas (1071-1078) with the insight of someone whose career developed within the imperial court and his unsurpassed eye for details of personality was enlightened by his intellectual interests. During his lifetime, Psellos was considered the forefront of philosophical studies in the capital and therefore was named consul of philosophers (ὕπατος τῶν φιλοσόφων) in 1047 and he credited himself with reintroducing Plato on the cultural scene of Constantinople. It was his attractive manner of speech which led him to remain in the emperor’s presence and his rhetorical ability also plays an important role in the Chronographia, especially when he emphasizes or fabricates events to justify his understanding of a person’s mind. Many have employed Psellos’ Chronographia for its value in shedding light on historic events, itself important, though it often neglects the fact that Psellos’ historiography is not based on factual details to explain multiple causes for events, but seeks to attribute blame or merit to the personality of the ruling emperor."

Том 2 на Дубровнишки документи за историята на България и българските земи обхваща 115 документи за периода 1407-1505 г. от Дубровнишкия архив, както и допълнителни 9 документа от други архиви, отнасящи се за отношенията на Дубровнишката република, Османската империя и Балканите.

J'adresse mes premiers remerciements à mon directeur de mémoire, Jean-Jacques Schwien, qui me suit depuis plusieurs années sur le projet de Granges malgré toutes les incertitudes que ce sujet laissait planer. Il a répondu présent quand cela était nécessaire et a réussi à effacer les doutes qui ont pu se mettre en travers du chemin.

The axe-carrying bird-men and the remaining iconography of the cross-slab from Papil, West Burra, Shetland, are described and analysed. Special emphasis is placed on examining the Papil birdslab is suggested to date to the early 9th century, based on technique and comparative iconographic in the Hebrides, Shetland and southern Pictland is also discussed.

At the beginning of the thirteenth century the commercial commune of Pisa was one of the two most powerful maritime forces in the Mediterranean, alongside Venice and ahead of Genoa. By the end of the century, however, the city had declined to a position of solely regional political and economic importance. This dissertation delves into the reasons behind Pisa’s decline during the very period when Italy’s three most famous commercial economies of Venice, Genoa, and Florence were experiencing their greatest growth. This study primarily utilizes traditional historiographic approaches for examining Pisa during the long thirteenth century, but also incorporates the interdisciplinary use of statistical and social network analyses to uncover facets of the socio-economic landscape during the final decades of the century.

The strength of the present work lies in the chronological breadth of its study, encompassing just over a century of Pisan history. Unlike previous scholarship which has focused more narrowly on a few decades, a broader period of study permits the uncovering of communal behavioral trends and patterns in decision making. The causes of thirteenth-century decline can generally be divided into four categories: imperial allegiance at all costs, ignoring structural changes in the global economy, unquenchable Sardinian aspirations, and the consequences of the traumatic naval defeat at Meloria in 1284. Since at least 1081 Pisa had traded its allegiance for imperial commercial concessions, often to the consternation of the city’s mostly papally-aligned neighbors. During the thirteenth century, as imperial power in Italy waned and factional conflict intensified, Pisa adherence to the imperial strategy repeatedly brought them into military conflict with the rest of Tuscany, ultimately isolating Pisa politically on the mainland. Pisa had built its economic-political prominence primarily through the spice trade with the East and the success of its leather industries at home. Political events and changing consumer preferences conspired to move the primary trade routes northward and westward while market demand for spices was eclipsed by demand for woolen textiles; while Pisa was slow to respond to these changes, the city’s chief competitors adapted quickly and reaped the bulk of the benefits, largely excluding Pisa from later entry.

In Sardinia, what had begun as a twelfth-century argument with Genoa over episcopal supremacy evolved into a land grab by Pisa’s most powerful families. As these families wielded significant political power, their personal ambitions bent communal policies to their own interests, repeatedly bringing the commune into violent competition with Genoa. One such encounter was the Battle of Meloria in 1284 which resulted in the death or capture of over 10,000 Pisan men, possibly 25% of the city’s population. This demographic tragedy, combined with the counterproductive policies of a series of strongmen and oligarchies, sent the city spiraling into a protracted economic depression. This depression, discovered for the first time by the statistical and social network analyses of the present study, crippled the already declining economic and political importance of the city, permanently removing any hope of the municipality achieving anything beyond regional importance.