Medieval England

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

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.

With the release of ‘Outlaw King’, the upcoming film ‘Robert the Bruce’ and the long shadow cast by ‘Braveheart’, the wars for Scottish independence of the fourteenth century are being re-fought in modern popular culture, just as they were later in the middle ages, according to Iain MacInnes.

Through a close textual reading and contextual analysis of a short series of early fourteenth-century manorial court roll entries, this paper draws larger conclusions about the interplay between law and equity in a medieval English manor court. It follows a narrative thread focused on a single tenement, which was forfeited by a villein in 1317 due to his fugitive status. The forfeiture was described as permanent in the Great Horwood court roll, and the tenement was transferred by the lord to a new tenant immediately. However, over a decade later the villein’s widow successfully claimed dower in the tenement, and shortly thereafter her son succeeded in regaining the family’s possession of the purportedly forfeited land. The paper reveals the presence of competing interests among various members of the Great Horwood community; the selective marshaling of written evidence, manorial custom, and common law rules; and the exercise of equitable discretion in selecting the “rightful” tenant, possibly guided by extra-legal factors, such as the exigencies of famine. The paper also makes a methodological claim, arguing that a combined textual and contextual analysis of fragmentary evidence can reveal insights that might not come to light through other analytical approaches.

Many of us have by now watched the new Netflix release, Outlaw King. And many on social media have had questions about the film, the period and its history. As I have written elsewhere “historical accuracy” is a problematic consideration, not least because medieval sources never provide a truly “accurate” portrayal of the past. All historical sources, upon which films like Outlaw King are based, were written with a specific purpose in mind, for a specific audience, and with the intention of telling one very specific version of history. This makes it no more accurate, then, than anything we see on the screen. Still, we historians work to interpret the history that has come down to us. As such, we can at least compare Outlaw King to the prevailing historical narrative to sort out what is likely from what is fantasy...

Directed by David Mackenzie and starring Hollywood’s Chris Pine, more usually found in blockbuster franchises such as Star Trek and Wonder Woman, Outlaw King is one of a number of medieval historical dramas soon to make their way to our screens. But, just as the trailer for the upcoming Mary Queen of Scots film prompted criticism across social media for apparent historical inaccuracy after it appeared to show Mary and Elizabeth meeting face to face (an event most historians agree never took place), so too will Outlaw King find itself under similar scrutiny...

The kings of East Anglia and Northumbria both died at the hands of the Great Heathen Army in the late 860s; one became a renowned martyr saint and one a villain. The latter, the Northumbrian Ælla, also became the antagonist in legends concerning the ancestors of the Uí Ímair, principal successors of the northern Great Army and leaders of the tenth-century Insular Norse.  According to a previously neglected text, 'De Northumbria post Britannos', another of northern England’s great dynasties claimed descent from Ælla. The Eadwulfings of Bamburgh were based in northern Northumbria, and appear to have gained leadership of their political community in the late ninth or early tenth century. With the rival position held by the Uí Ímair in the south, it is possible that Ælla’s later reputation and associated legends arose as a bi-product of tenth-century political conflict.

The development of human societies has been studied extensively by historians and social scientists. In Finland, there is a significant and underexplored amount of digitised archaeological material, such as the Finnish Heritage Agency’s database of archaeological sites and monuments. The EU-funded DeepFIN project will analyse the Finnish archaeological and historical data. It will use geographic information systems and other digital humanities methodologies. The project will reassess and create a new understanding of the deep history of archaeological landscapes, historical settlement and material culture development from the Iron Age (500 BCE to 1200/1300 CE) to the Middle Ages (1200/1300 to 1520 CE). This paper presents the goals of the DeepFIN project, and discusses how it builds upon my previous work in GIS/Digital Humanities research.
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/896044

CU Boulder - FREN1200
Offered FA2014, FA2015, FA2016
Course Description: The popularity of George RR Martin's fantasy saga A Song of Ice and Fire and its Emmy-winning HBO adaptation Game of Thrones shows us that major themes from medieval stories still resonate with audiences a thousand years after their composition. This course will examine major epic and romance texts of the Middle Ages such as Beowulf, The Song of Roland, and The Death of King Arthur. We will aim to understand the rich literary tradition that has led to our modern interest in dragons, knights, heroes and magic. We will also look at how representations of medieval culture in contemporary series such as Game of Thrones influence our conceptions (and misconceptions) of the Middle Ages. Much like Sansa, we will find that the stories do not necessarily reflect the reality.

The Language of Abuse provides the first comprehensive examination of marital violence in later medieval England. Drawing from a wide variety of legal and literary sources, this book develops a nuanced perspective of the acceptability of marital violence at a time when social expectations of gender and marriage were in transition. As such, Butler’s work contributes to current debates concerning the role of the jury, levels of violence in late medieval England, the power relationship within marriage, and the position of women in medieval society.

Available for $25, through Brill Mybook.

Course description: More than any other secular variety of premodern writing, romances connect the literature of the Middle Ages with that of both earlier and later periods. They blend Classical myth with Celtic mystique, and oriental exotica with local concerns. Romances tell stories about King Arthur and his court, the crusades, and ancient English princes, many of which recur in the works of Shakespeare, Tennyson, or Eliot. In this course we will explore the romance tradition in England, with special attention to the origin and development of the Arthurian canon, the political meaning of Englishness and Britishness, the self-examination of courtly ethics and gender relations, and the ideological origins of the British Empire. The course will not only examine the aristocratic culture of medieval England but will also demonstrate how premodern writings inform the literature of later periods.

In her ground-breaking new study, Katie Bugyis offers a new history of communities of Benedictine nuns in England from 900 to 1225. By applying innovative paleographical, codicological, and textual analyses to their surviving liturgical books, Bugyis recovers a treasure trove of unexamined evidence for understanding these women's lives and the liturgical and pastoral ministries they performed. She examines the duties and responsibilities of their chief monastic officers--abbesses, prioresses, cantors, and sacristans--highlighting three of the ministries vital to their practice--liturgically reading the gospel, hearing confessions, and offering intercessory prayers for others. Where previous scholarship has argued that the various reforms of the central Middle Ages effectively relegated nuns to complete dependency on the sacramental ministrations of priests, Bugyis shows that, in fact, these women continued to exercise primary control over their spiritual care. Essential to this argument is the discovery that the production of the liturgical books used in these communities was carried out by female scribes, copyists, correctors, and creators of texts, attesting to the agency and creativity that nuns exercised in the care they extended to themselves and those who sought their hospitality, counsel, instruction, healing, forgiveness, and intercession.

Although the sympathetic depiction of Otherness in The Travels of Sir John Mandeville is acknowledged to be indicative of the writer's celebrated tolerance, few critics have ventured to explore how Mandeville creates it. Yet his presentation of the Other is as much a product of his cultural openness as it is the result of a conscious process of careful psychological negotiation of difference in which the text engages with the reader via the medium of the Mandeville persona. The Other is imagined so convincingly by this fourteenth-century writer that he endows it with a complex existence of its own which transcends what Ian Macleod Higgins calls a 'self-critical mirror'. Foucault's notion of 'transgression' proves instrumental in elucidating the way in which Mandeville erects his image of the Other and then, by employing a number of examples, how the text and the language of The Travels convey this 'transgression'. The second aprt of the article evaluates Mandeville's categories of perception by comparing them with the cognitive paradigms expressed by his sources and some of his contemporaries.

Edizione critica, traduzione e commento a cura di Giovanni Paolo Maggioni.
Nel contesto della turbolenta storia d’Irlanda dei primi decenni del XIV secolo, l’arcivescovo di Cork, il domenicano Philip de Slane, viene inviato ad Avignone come legato del re d’Inghilterra Edoardo II, per discutere con papa Giovanni XXII della complessa condizione dell’isola: in seguito al fallimento dello sbarco di Edward Bruce, fratello del re di Scozia, gli Anglonormanni continuavano a spadroneggi re e ad opprimere gli Irlandesi. Philip, membro di una famiglia anglonormanna, reca in dono al pontefice un libro, la «Piccola descrizione dell’Irlanda», una rilettura aggiornata della «Topographia Hibernica» di Giraldo Cambrense. Sorprendentemente, nel testo che ci è pervenuto, il diritto della corona inglese a dominare l’Irlanda viene fortemente messo in discussione: questo diritto spetta al papa e solo lui può concederlo ad altri, a certe condizioni. E queste condizioni sono state disattese dai re d’Inghilterra… Non sono esattamente le parole che ci si attenderebbe dal legato di Edoardo II. Un mistero letterario medievale, qui per la prima volta pubblicato in edizione critica.

La Peste Negra redefinió una realidad para todas las esferas de la sociedad medieval. Este violento encuentro con la muerte, presupone un cambio de visión absoluta sobre el mundo conocido. La Inglaterra de 1348, es un mundo visto desde realidades muy diversas y a menudo opuestas, esto lleva a formular diversas hipótesis sobre el protagonismo del género femenino. Las fuentes medievales nos describen cómo es necesario adaptarse a una realidad incierta y los dilemas que surgen a raíz de estos cambios. La mujer es una protagonista clave del escenario fluctuante del siglo XIV. Varias historias que a primera vista se encuentran contrastadas, eventualmente se mezclan y entrelazan. Así, se unen para darnos un panorama nuevo, con otro significado sobre la participación femenina, sin extremos. Independiente de su rango social o religión. Podremos apreciar y explorar las transformaciones que estas mujeres viven, al asumir este profundo cambio en la historia y lo que se lucha por conservar.

Palabras claves: Peste Negra – Mujeres – Inglaterra – Medieval – Género
Keywords: Black Death – Women – England – Medieval – Gender

In this text the authors want to explain the relation between the field in Hunwick as a possible site for the Battle of Brunanburh and four sites closely to the field that are likely to be burial sites for the lost ones in the battle. There is possibly an ancient burial site close to the proposed field and there are three different sites that might relate to three different segments of the invading force. There was a local chapel one mile from the proposed field, there is possibly a Scottish site half a mile from there and another site only half a mile therefrom that could relate to the Danish Vikings from Dublin.  In this paper we look at these sites as well as other possible sites further afield.

Daniel J. Boorstin’s concept of pseudo-events has been around almost as long as Queen Elizabeth’s reign as monarch. 2012 was the year of the Diamond Jubilee, a 60th year anniversary, which can be viewed as a giant pseudo-event made from smaller pseudo-events. Compliant media were ready and willing to present images reinforcing the power, authority, and naturalness of the monarchy. This study frames the Diamond Jubilee by reconceptualizing pseudo-events using the analogy of a Mesocyclone.

[An updated version was published in Media Watch.]

Please note there is no free download of 'The Book of Margery Kempe' - to purchase this as a print book please go to
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-book-of-margery-kempe-9780199686643?cc=gb&lang=en&
Or to play.google.com to download as an ebook

The reading of the literary series "Saxon Stories" (2004), by British author Bernard Cornwell, inspires discussion regarding the relations between Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons in British territory in the 9 th century, as it presents an overview of this historical moment. From this perspective, the main goal of this article is to identify expressions of memory about the history of England, by means of the concepts appropriated mainly by Pierre Nora (1993), Maurice Halbwachs (2015), Michael Pollak (1992), and Jacques Le Goff (2013). Thus, we aim to emphasize in the narrative of Uhtred, the protagonist of the work, memories that bring new perspectives on the history of England in the 9 th century. For this purpose, we use only the first three books in the series as an object of study.

Excavation at this site revealed two early, possibly Saxon, features considered to represent small structures or buildings. Later features indicated that the digging and working of clunch, a hard variety of chalk, had been carried out at this site. Dating evidence suggests that this activity continued throughout much of the medieval period and indicates that this is one of the earliest identified incidences of the digging and working of clunch in Isleham. Isleham became known for its clunch industry in the early modern period.

Il nome di John Fortescue (1396 ca.-1478 ca.), il più eminente giurista e teorico politico inglese del XV secolo, a lungo presidente della suprema corte di giustizia sotto Enrico VI, durante la guerra delle Due Rose, è legato soprattutto alla sua analisi dei diversi modelli costituzionali, al cui centro è l’idea che l’Inghilterra sia «un regime politico e regale», una monarchia limitata. Il volume esamina la genesi di questa formula e le ragioni della sua fortuna, nonché la natura del sistema di governo che essa descrive e il ruolo assegnato a parlamento, consiglio ristretto e giudici nel vincolare il potere regio. Nel contempo, in questa prima monografia italiana dedicata alla figura di Fortescue, si affrontano altri nodi cruciali della sua riflessione, quali la concezione della legge, l’adozione di un metodo comparativo nei confronti dei differenti sistemi costituzionali, giuridici ed economici, il fermo ripudio della tortura, l’impegno verso il contrasto alla povertà e, infine, una dottrina sull’origine e sul fondamento della proprietà privata molto vicina a quella teorizzata in seguito da John Locke: tutti elementi che riflettono la fase di transizione dal medioevo alla prima età moderna in cui affondano le radici del suo pensiero.

An arrowhead was found in an archaeologically dated late thirteenth-century context in the deserted medieval village of Gomeldon, Wiltshire, England. An arrow with a replica of the head was shot against simulated padded armour and against mail. The Gomeldon arrowhead was more effective than a bodkin point at penetrating a padded gambeson but less effective at penetrating mail.

This is a synopsis of my 2 volume work. It provides a new perspective on the origins of many Scottish Clans - identifying many of the lies fabricated to suit the necessity of the times and since believed and consistent with a sensible chronology. Supporting this there is a wholly new understanding of Pictish place names and of the origins of Heraldry, a rechronologising of Norwegian history covering the period 800-1015 together with a narrative overview of the politics of the Scotland of the day. Many people, such as Crinan and Duncan I's wife are identified for the first time.

The twelfth-century foundations at Godstow Abbey, just outside Oxford, and Clerkenwell Priory, just outside London, are unusual among English nunneries in that each has left us a cartulary remarkably rich in twelfth-century documents. Both charter collections also present a high incidence of lay women in a variety of capacities in these early charters. This paper examines the roles of these women as donors, consentors, and witnesses, quantifying them and comparing them with three other contemporary charter collections (those of Eynsham and Thame Abbeys in Oxfordshire and of the twelfth-century earls of Gloucester). We see that, within certain limits, convents provided lay women with enhanced opportunities for patronage, networking, and other economic activity. The paper also looks at the implications the results of this study for the gendered meanings of donation, consent, and witnessing in these documents.