Far from the oral society it was once assumed to have been, early medieval Europe was fundamentally shaped by the written word. This book offers a pioneering collection of fresh and innovative studies on a wide range of topics, each one representing cutting-edge scholarship, and collectively setting the field on a new footing. Concentrating on the role of writing in mediating early medieval knowledge of the past, on the importance of surviving manuscripts as clues to the circulation of ideas and political and cultural creativity, and on the role that texts of different kinds played both in supporting and in subverting established power relations, these essays represent a milestone in studies of the early medieval written word.
An exploration of life in the early medieval West, using pigs as a lens to investigate agriculture, ecology, economy, and philosophy From North Africa to the British Isles, pigs were a crucial part of agriculture and culture in the early medieval period. Jamie Kreiner examines how this ubiquitous species was integrated into early medieval ecologies and transformed the way that people thought about the world around them. In this world, even the smallest things could have far‑reaching consequences. Kreiner tracks the interlocking relationships between pigs and humans by drawing on textual and visual evidence, bioarchaeology and settlement archaeology, and mammal biology. She shows how early medieval communities bent their own lives in order to accommodate these tricky animals—and how in the process they reconfigured their agrarian regimes, their fiscal policies, and their very identities. In the end, even the pig’s own identity was transformed: by the close of the early Middle Ages, it had become a riveting metaphor for Christianity itself.
The papers gathered in this volume were all given in 1999 - at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds and during a day conference held at York. They agree that looking at the wide range of narrative forms available provides new ways of viewing the Middle Ages.
Essays suggest or explore reasons why violent acts might have been perpetrated, and attempt to understand the social priorities which governed such acts. Thought-provoking and characterized by a high level of scholarship. HISTORYAn important addition to the dialogue concerning the nature of conflict and its resolution in the early medieval West. HISTORIAN [US] The `violence' oflife in the middle ages is nowadays both taken for granted and little understood. The essays in this collection all suggest or explore reasons why violent acts might have been perpetrated, and attempt to understand the social priorities which governed such acts. Broadly, the studies clarify issues relating to the creation of political identities and the establishment of social order, and cover matters of administration, religious ritual, and gender.Contributors: GUY HALSALL, LUIS A. GARCIA MORENO, PAUL FOURACRE, T.S. BROWN, JANET L. NELSON, N.B. AITCHISON, MATTHEW BENNETT, GUY A.E. MORRIS, S.J. SPEIGHT, ROSS BALZARETTI, JULIE COLEMAN, NANCY L. WICKER. GUY HALSALL is lecturer in the Department of History, Birkbeck College, University of London. Contributors: GUY HALSALL, LUIS A. GARCIA MORENO, PAUL FOURACRE, T.S. BROWN, JANET L. NELSON, N.B. AITCHISON, MATTHEW BENNETT, GUY A.E. MORRIS, S.J. SPEIGHT, ROSS BALZARETTI, JULIE COLEMAN, NANCY L. WICKER.
"Wormald's essays seek to establish that legal history is not just the history of law, nor even that of society, but also that of elite and popular culture in complex and creative symbiosis. This collection will appeal to all interested in the institutions and ideologies of the premodern world."--BOOK JACKET.
Monasticism, in all of its variations, was a feature of almost every landscape in the medieval West. So ubiquitous were religious women and men throughout the Middle Ages that all medievalists encounter monasticism in their intellectual worlds. While there is enormous interest in medieval monasticism among Anglophone scholars, language is often a barrier to accessing some of the most important and groundbreaking research emerging from Europe. The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West offers a comprehensive treatment of medieval monasticism, from Late Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages. The essays, specially commissioned for this volume and written by an international team of scholars, with contributors from Australia, Belgium, Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States, cover a range of topics and themes and represent the most up-to-date discoveries on this topic.
A new narrative history of medieval Christianity, spanning from A.D. 500 to 1500, focuses on the role of women in Christianity; the relationships among Christians, Jews and Muslims; the experience of ordinary parishioners; the adventure of asceticism, devotion and worship; and instruction through drama, architecture and art.
In Dark Age Bodies Lynda L. Coon reconstructs the gender ideology of monastic masculinity through an investigation of early medieval readings of the body. Focusing on the Carolingian era, Coon evaluates the ritual and liturgical performances of monastic bodies within the imaginative landscapes of same-sex ascetic communities in northern Europe. She demonstrates how the priestly body plays a significant role in shaping major aspects of Carolingian history, such as the revival of classicism, movements for clerical reform, and church-state relations. In the political realm, Carolingian churchmen consistently exploited monastic constructions of gender to assert the power of the monastery. Stressing the superior qualities of priestly virility, clerical elites forged a model of gender that sought to feminize lay male bodies through a variety of textual, ritual, and spatial means. Focusing on three central themes—the body, architecture, and ritual practice—the book draws from a variety of visual and textual materials, including poetry, grammar manuals, rhetorical treatises, biblical exegesis, monastic regulations, hagiographies, illuminated manuscripts, building plans, and cloister design. Interdisciplinary in scope, Dark Age Bodies brings together scholarship in architectural history and cultural anthropology with recent works in religion, classics, and gender to present a significant reconsideration of Carolingian culture.