Royal Power and the Episcopacy: Eleventh-and Twelfth-Century Relics from Oviedo Cathedral

2019 ◽  
pp. 203-234
Author(s):  
Raquel Alonso Álvarez
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Royal Power

The English Navy in the Twelfth Century*

2020 ◽  
Vol 135 (575) ◽  
pp. 743-774
Author(s):  
Susan Raich Sequeira
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
Crucial Component ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
Trading Networks ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract This article investigates the naval strategies of England’s post-Conquest kings, especially from c.1100–1189, a period for which modern scholarship has yet to recognise the existence of a royal navy. It demonstrates that post-Conquest kings deployed warships, summoned defensive fleets, and launched their own invasion navies throughout the long twelfth century. Previously unnoticed evidence for the maintenance of warships under Henry II is discussed and records of fleet recruitment are used to shed light on the systems behind naval levies. Given all this evidence, it can firmly be concluded that there was a navy at the disposal of England’s Anglo-Norman and Angevin kings. The origins of this navy are twofold. Firstly, twelfth-century tactics drew on Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Danish systems and precedents, suggesting the long continuity of post-Conquest naval activities rather than sudden naval innovation under any particular king. The ‘English navy’ therefore did not decline after the Norman Conquest, nor was it a new foundation of Richard I. Secondly, England’s twelfth-century rulers relied upon the maritime skills and co-operation of coastal and port inhabitants across the realm. These coastal denizens’ motivations for participation in royal navies reveal both the extent and the limitations of English royal power. Royal naval activities took place against the backdrop of a European north that was becoming ever more connected by sea routes. English navies were therefore a crucial component of territorial expansion and warfare across a realm situated in the midst of extensive pan-European trading networks.

Leges Scocie and the Lawcodes of David I, William the Lion and Alexander II

2009 ◽  
Vol 88 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Legal Procedure ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
Manuscript Tradition ◽  
Anglo Norman

This paper examines Leges Scocie (LS), the main source used by Patrick Wormald in ‘Anglo-Saxon Law and Scots Law’. It is shown here that the capitula of LS reveal much not only about the development of legal procedure in Scotland but also about the nature of medieval Scottish society in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. In the process of this discussion, some conclusions put forward by Wormald about this material are questioned. This paper also shows that the ‘laws’ of David, William and Alexander II, once believed to be nebulous texts without any clear manuscript form, are, in fact, coherent legal compilations worthy of study in their own right. This corrects the impression that the early laws of Scotland survive in a manuscript tradition too late and too complicated to be studied with any fruitful results and thus opens up the material in volume i of The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland for further study. The paper concludes by arguing that the evidence contained in all these lawcodes can provide rather different narratives of subjects that are key to our understanding of Scotland during the central Middle Ages: the exercise of royal power, the ‘Anglo-Norman Era’ and the extent of the Scottish state before the twelfth century.

Utopia’s Moorish Inspiration: Thomas More’s Reading of Ibn Ṭufayl

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Regnier
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Philosophical Novel ◽  
Ibn Tufayl

A promising but neglected precedent for Thomas More’s Utopia is to be found in Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān. This twelfth-century Andalusian philosophical novel describing the self-education and enlightenment of a feral child on an island, while certainly a precedent for the European Bildungsroman, also arguably qualifies as a utopian text. It is possible that More had access to Pico de la Mirandola’s Latin translation of Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān. This study consists of a review of historical and philological evidence that More may have read Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān and a comparative reading of More’s and Ṭufayl’s two famous works. I argue that there are good reasons to see in Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān a source for More’s Utopia and that in certain respects we can read More’s Utopia as a response to Ṭufayl’s novel. L’Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān d’Ibn Ṭufayl consiste en un précédent incontournable mais négligé à l’Utopie de More. Ce récit philosophique andalou du douzième siècle décrivant l’auto-formation et l’éveil d’un enfant sauvage sur une île peut être considéré comme un texte utopique, bien qu’il soit certainement un précédent pour le Bildungsroman européen. Thomas More pourrait avoir lu l’Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān, puisqu’il a pu avoir accès à la traduction latine qu’en a fait Pic de la Miradolle. Cette étude examine les données historiques et philologiques permettant de poser que More a probablement lu cet ouvrage, et propose une lecture comparée de l’Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān et de l’Utopie de More. On y avance qu’il y a non seulement de bonnes raisons de considérer l’Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān d’Ibn Ṭufayl comme une source de l’Utopie de More, mais qu’il est aussi possible à certains égards de lire l’Utopie comme une réponse à l’Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān.

Cowal part of Strathclyde in the early twelfth century

2003 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-233
Author(s):  
John Durkan
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century

Excavations at Crookston Castle, Glasgow 1973–75

2003 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN LEWIS
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
12Th Century

Three seasons (1973–75) of excavation were undertaken at several locations around Crookston Castle, which is thought to have begun as a timber and earth fortification in the twelfth century. This was replaced by a stone castle around AD 1400. Trenches were opened across the castle's outer defences, the entrance, the E range and in and around the extant stone tower. There was evidence to suggest that the original counterscarp of the ditch was repaired some time after the stone castle was built and that the gatehouse area was refashioned on more than one occasion. No dating evidence was found to date the construction of the main defensive ditch, which is presumed to have been dug in the 12th century.

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