The Uses of Literacy in Early Mediaeval Europe

The Uses of Literacy in Early Mediaeval Europe

Author: Rosamond McKitterick

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1992-04-23

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 9780521428965

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This book investigates the importance of literacy in early medieval Europe in a number of different societies between c. 400 and c. 1000.


Books of Knowledge in Late Medieval Europe

Books of Knowledge in Late Medieval Europe

Author: Pavlina Cermanova

Publisher:

Published: 2021-06-30

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 9782503594637

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This book provides a series of studies concerning unique medieval texts that can be defined as 'books of knowledge', such as medieval chronicles, bestiaries, or catechetic handbooks. Thus far, scholarship of intellectual history has focused on concepts of knowledge to describe a specific community, or to delimit intellectuals in society. However, the specific textual tool for the transmission of knowledge has been missing. Besides oral tradition, books and other written texts were the only sources of knowledge, and they were thus invaluable in efforts to receive or transfer knowledge. That is one reason why texts that proclaim to introduce a specific field of expertise or promise to present a summary of wisdom were so popular. These texts discussed cosmology, theology, philosophy, the natural sciences, history, and other fields. They often did so in an accessible way to maintain the potential to also attract a non-specialised public. The basic form was usually a narrative, chronologically or thematically structured, and clearly ordered to appeal to readers. Books of this kind could be disseminated in dozens or even hundreds of copies, and were often available (by translation or adaptation) in various languages, including the vernacular. In exploring these widely-disseminated and highly popular texts that offered a precise segment of knowledge that could be accessed by readers outside the intellectual and social elite, this volume intends to introduce books of knowledge as a new category within the study of medieval literacy.


Transformation in Anglo-Saxon Culture

Transformation in Anglo-Saxon Culture

Author: Charles Insley

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2017-03-31

Total Pages: 126

ISBN-13: 1785705008

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The five authoritive papers presented here are the product of long careers of research into Anglo-Saxon culture. In detail the subject areas and approaches are very different, yet all are cross-disciplinary and the same texts and artefacts weave through several of them. Literary text is used to interpret both history and art; ecclesiastical-historical circumstances explain the adaptation of usage of a literary text; wealth and religious learning, combined with old and foreign artistic motifs are blended into the making of new books with multiple functions; religio-socio-economic circumstances are the background to changes in burial ritual. The common element is transformation, the Anglo-Saxon ability to rework older material for new times and the necessary adaptation to new circumstances. The papers originated as five recent Toller Memorial Lectures hosted by the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies (MANCASS).


Anglo-Saxon Glastonbury

Anglo-Saxon Glastonbury

Author: Lesley Abrams

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 9780851153698

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A survey of the landed endowment of Glastonbury Abbey before 1066, with a history of its estates. The early history of the religious community at Glastonbury has been the subject of much speculation and imaginative writing, but there are few sources which genuinely further our knowledge of Glastonbury Abbey in the Anglo-Saxonperiod. This has resulted in a lack of serious historical research and hence the neglect of an important ecclesiastical establishment. This study brings together the evidence of royal and episcopal grants of land and combines it with material from Domesday Book, to produce a survey of the landed endowment of Glastonbury Abbey before 1066, and an analysis of the history of its Anglo-Saxon estates. Although there is too little data to formulate a complete account of the Abbey's early landholdings, the surviving evidence, collected together here, outlines a history for each place named in connection with the pre-Conquest religious house; in addition, each case helps to establish an overall framework for the life-cycle of the Anglo-Saxon estate, building on our understanding of actual conditions of tenure and of the various fortunes ecclesiastical land might experience. LESLEY ABRAMS is Lecturer in History, Brasenose College, and Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford University.


The Visigothic Kingdom in Iberia

The Visigothic Kingdom in Iberia

Author: Santiago Castellanos

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2020-11-13

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 0812252535

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The structures of the late ancient Visigothic kingdom of Iberia were rooted in those of Roman Hispania, Santiago Castellanos argues, but Catholic bishops subsequently produced a narrative of process and power from the episcopal point of view that became the official record and primary documentation for all later historians. The delineation of these two discrete projects—of construction and invention—form the core of The Visigothic Kingdom in Iberia. Castellanos reads documents of the period that are little known to many Anglophone scholars, including records of church councils, sermons, and letters, and utilizes archaeological findings to determine how the political system of elites related to local communities, and how the documentation they created promoted an ideological agenda. Looking particularly at the archaeological record, he finds that rural communities in the region were complex worlds unto themselves, with clear internal social stratification little recognized by the literate elites.


Double Agents

Double Agents

Author: Claire A Lees

Publisher: University of Wales Press

Published: 2009-02-01

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 1783163615

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First published in 2001, Double Agents was the first book-length study of women in Anglo-Saxon written culture that took on the insights provided by contemporary critical and feminist theory, and it quickly established itself as a standard. Now available again, it complicates the exclusion of women from the historical record of Anglo-Saxon England by tackling the deeper questions behind how the feminine is modeled, used, and made metaphoric in Anglo-Saxon texts, even when the women themselves are absent.


The Archaeology of Frankish Church Councils, AD 511-768

The Archaeology of Frankish Church Councils, AD 511-768

Author: Gregory Halfond

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2009-11-17

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 904744406X

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Despite growing scepticism concerning the evidentiary value of normative legal sources, scholars continue to mine the legislative acts of ecclesiastical councils for insight into political, religious, and quotidian life in Frankish Gaul. Between the reigns of Clovis and Charlemagne (AD 511-768) at least eighty councils assembled, often on royal command, to discuss issues of concern to the episcopal and clerical attendees. Their published canons were intended to communicate ecclesiastical policy in the Frankish regnum. However, scholars have paid comparatively slight attention to the institution responsible for this body of legislation. This book remedies this lacuna by delineating the functions and modus operandi of the Frankish church council as an administrative body.


A Cultural History of Education in the Medieval Age

A Cultural History of Education in the Medieval Age

Author: Jo Ann Moran Cruz

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2023-04-20

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1350238759

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A Cultural History of Education in the Medieval Age presents essays that examine the following key themes of the period: church, religion and morality; knowledge, media and communications; children and childhood; family, community and sociability; learners and learning; teachers and teaching; literacies; and life histories. The medieval world was a rich blend of cultures and religions within which individuals were shaped and schooled. Men and women learned, taught, worked, fought, and prayed in social contexts that witnessed an expansion of literacy and learning. The chapters in this volume illustrate the extent to which medieval education formed the foundation of the modern educational enterprise. An essential resource for researchers, scholars, and students in history, literature, culture, and education.


The Languages of Early Medieval Charters

The Languages of Early Medieval Charters

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-11-23

Total Pages: 564

ISBN-13: 9004432337

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This is the first major study of the interplay between Latin and Germanic vernaculars in early medieval records, examining the role of language choice in the documentary cultures of the Anglo-Saxon and eastern Frankish worlds.


The Road to Judgment

The Road to Judgment

Author: Robin Chapman Stacey

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2015-08-28

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 1512807575

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Examines the institution of personal suretyship through the remarkable rich sources extant from medieval Ireland and Wales.