The Articulation of Rib Vaults in the Romanesque Parish Churches of England and Normandy

1997 ◽  
Vol 77 ◽  
pp. 145-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence R. Hoey
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Parish Church ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
Parish Churches ◽  
Precise Moment ◽  
The Church

Rib vaults appear in English architecture at the end of the eleventh century and by the early part of the next had spread throughout most parts of the country and across the Channel into Normandy. Rib construction was pioneered by the builders of great churches, first apparently at Durham, and was then developed and elaborated at sites such as Winchester, Gloucester, Peterborough, Lessay, Saint-Etienne in Caen, and many others. Although it is impossible to pinpoint the precise moment, by the second quarter of the twelfth century ribs were also being constructed in smaller churches in many areas of England and Normandy. Anglo-Norman parish church masons might construct ribs under towers or in porches, but the majority of survivals are in chancels, where the presence of ribs was clearly the result of a desire to distinguish and embellish the functionally most important and most sacred part of the church.

Change and Change Back: the Development of English Parish Church Chancels

1999 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 65-77
Author(s):  
Carol F. Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Local Church ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Parish Church ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Parish Churches ◽  
The Church

The eleventh-century core of the church at Wittering, Northamptonshire (Fig. 1a), is typical of the type of church which served local communities in the Anglo-Saxon period. It has a rectangular nave and a short, square chancel. Kilpeck, Herefordshire (Fig. 1b), is an equally typical example of a post-Conquest, twelfth-century local church. It also has a rectangular nave, but it has a longer, apsidal chancel. Such early twentieth-century authors on the development of English parish churches as A. Hamilton Thompson and Alfred Clapham suggested that the use of apses for smaller, post-Conquest churches is an example of French/Norman influence overriding the existing English/Anglo-Saxon forms. They cite the widespread use of apses after the Conquest not only for smaller churches, but also for virtually every major church built in the wake of the Conquest, and the use of apses for churches of all sizes in France in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. The use of square ends for later medieval parish church chancels such as those at Polebrook, Northamptonshire (Fig. 2a), or Linton, Herefordshire (Fig. 2b), Clapham suggested, marked a return to native English forms after the immediate impact of the Conquest had passed. But is this actually the case? Or are the rectangular, square-ended chancels so typical of later medieval English parish churches a response to new demands being placed upon these buildings? This paper will explore this issue, and ask whether the use of square-ended chancels represents a continuity with, or a change from, older forms.

Monastic Possession of Parish Churches in England in the Twelfth Century

1980 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. R. Kemp
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Religious Orders ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Parish Churches ◽  
Gregorian Reform ◽  
The Church ◽  
Christian Society

The rapid increase in monastic acquisition of parish churches in the twelfth century reflected a number of trends, both temporal and spiritual, in the Christian society of western Europe. It was an expression of the laity's continuing devotion to the monastic ideal, now reinforced by the foundation and spread of new religious orders, and it was in part a consequence of the redefinition of relations between the laity and the clergy following in the wake of the Gregorian Reform. More than that, however, it raised within the Church questions as to the proper relationship between the monastic clergy and the pastoral and juridical structure of the Church. To understand the phenomenon, therefore, it is necessary to examine the motives of donors of parish churches and those of the religious who received them, to bear in mind the climate of respectable opinion (both lay and-ecclesiastical) which came increasingly to deny possession of parish churches to the laity and yet could countenance their passage into the hands of religious houses, and to consider the repercussions of widespread monastic acquisition of churches in the Church at large. This article is concerned in particular to re-examine the means by which monasteries obtained grants of churches, viewed against the background of the Church's assault on lay ownership of churches and tithes, and to reconsider the evolution of the vicarage system, as the ecclesiastical authorities strove to accommodate within the mission of the reformed Church monastic efforts to exploit the churches in their possession.

scholarly journals XV.—The Alien Priority of St. Andrew, Hamble and its transfer to Winchester College in 1391

Archaeologia ◽  
1887 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-262
Author(s):  
Thomas F. Kirby
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
The South ◽  
Southampton Water ◽  
Parish Church ◽  
The North ◽  
North Side ◽  
South West ◽  
A Cell ◽  
The Church

The Priory of St. Andrew, at Hamble, near Southampton, was a cell to the Benedictine abbey of Tyrone (Tirun or Turun), in La Beauce, a district southwest of Chartres, included in the old province of Orléannois. In the Monasticon and Tanner's Notitia it is called a Cistercian abbey, but this is a mistake, and so is the statement in the Notitia that the priory was annexed to New College, Oxford. The priory stood on a “rise” or point of land.—“Hamele-en-le-rys” or “Hamblerice” is its old name—at the confluence of the Hamble river with southampton Water, opposite Calshot castle. Hamble gets its name from Hamele, a thane of the Saxon Meonwaris. Leland calls the place “Hamel Hooke.” The priory church of St. Andrew is now the parish church. It was rebuilt by winchester college in the early part of the fifteenth century, and consists of channel and nave, to which a south aisle was added five or six years ago, and a tower with three bells. There are scarcely any traces above ground of the priory buildings. Like those of the Benedictine convent of St. Swithun, at Winchester, they stood on the south and south-west of the church, so that the graveyard, as at Winchester, is on the north side of the church.

Royal Responsibility in Anglo-Norman Historical Writing

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily A. Winkler
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Perspective

It has long been established that the crisis of 1066 generated a florescence of historical writing in the first half of the twelfth century. This book presents a new perspective on previously unqueried matters: it investigates how historians’ individual motivations and assumptions produced changes in the kind of history written across the Conquest. It argues that responses to the Danish Conquest of 1016 and Norman Conquest of 1066 changed dramatically within two generations of the latter conquest. Repeated conquest could signal repeated failures and sin across the orders of society, yet early twelfth-century historians in England not only extract English kings and people from a history of failure, but also establish English kingship as a worthy office on a European scale. The book illuminates the consistent historical agendas of four historians: William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, John of Worcester, and Geffrei Gaimar. In their narratives of England’s eleventh-century history, these twelfth-century historians expanded their approach to historical explanation to include individual responsibility and accountability within a framework of providential history, making substantial departures from their sources. These historians share a view of royal responsibility independent both of their sources (primarily the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) and any political agenda that placed English and Norman allegiances in opposition. Although the accounts diverge widely in the interpretation of character, all four are concerned more with the effectiveness of England’s kings than with the legitimacy of their origins. Their new, shared view of royal responsibility represents a distinct phenomenon in England’s twelfth-century historiography.

Ami et Amile.

PMLA ◽  
1908 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 471-485
Author(s):  
M. A. Potter
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Chanson De Geste ◽  
Interesting Phenomenon ◽  
Radical Theory ◽  
General Acceptance ◽  
Chansons De Geste ◽  
The Church

It is not so very many years ago that students of Folk-Lore who felt that the indebtedness of Europe to the East in the matter of stories had been exaggerated were greatly interested and pleased by Bédier's work on the French Fabliau. The same scholar is now publishing the results of his investigations in the field of the French epic, results extremely suggestive, not to say exciting. What more startling than to be told that if, because of illness or accident, William of Toulouse had died before he was able to enter the monastery of Aniane and found the monastery of Gellone, not one of the chansons de geste, not one of the legends of the cycle of Orange would exist; and not one of these chansons nor one of these legends would exist, if by chance, three or more centuries after the death of this man in the Abbey of Gellone, the monks of the abbey had not been anxious to attract to his relics the pilgrims of Saint Gilles de Provence and Santiago of Compostela? Whether such a radical theory meets with general acceptance or not, it was well that some one, instead of trying to reconstruct the French epic postulated as existing before the documents which we possess, should examine the latter anew and pay especial attention to what is an interesting phenomenon in nearly every mass of epic literature, the relations of the religious bodies to these great narrative works. No one could have done this more brilliantly than Bédier. No one henceforth will forget how intimate these relations were in France. Nevertheless, it is hard to give up without a struggle what we have fancied were intermediate steps in the evolution of the French epic, when we remember what has gone on in other countries participating in epic activity, and one may well hesitate to attribute to the church so great a rôle as does this latest theorist. Doubts become especially insistent when one reads his remarks upon the Ami and Amile legend, in its three forms, the eleventh century Latin poem on friendship by Raoul le Tourtier, the chanson de geste, and the Vita sanctorum Amici et Amelii of the twelfth century. To do Bédier entire justice, his own words will be quoted as far as possible, even his summary of the legend, with which it is well to start.

The Mohammetan and Idolatry

1984 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 89-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Bray
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
The Church

The anachronistic ascription of membership of the Moslem faith to the persecutors of Christians in the period before the Peace of the Church appears in Anglo-Norman hagiography in the late twelfth century, or early thirteenth, and in English lives later in the thirteenth century. It may be, at least in part, the result of the corruption in meaning of a derivative of the word Mahomet, found in Anglo-Norman as mahumez in the early twelfth century and in English by the end of the same century in the form of maumez, idols. The confusion in identification was made possible by the attribution of the rôle of the Roman officials to the Moslems—both groups martyred Christians in large numbers—and by an association of practices and qualities based on the opposition, real or alleged, of both Romans and Moslems to the Christian faith.

IV. The Norman Church and Door at Stillingfleet, North Yorkshire

Archaeologia ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 106 ◽  
pp. 75-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. V. Addyman ◽  
Ian H. Goodall
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Complex Structure ◽  
Historic Buildings ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The South ◽  
Systematic Account ◽  
Basic Point ◽  
The Church ◽  
Point Of Reference

The great age and unusual character of the south door of St. Helen's Church, Stillingfleet, now in North Yorkshire but formerly in the East Riding, has engaged the attention of antiquaries since the early days of archaeological study. The door and the fine twelfth-century doorway in which it is set have been recorded repeatedly in drawings, photographs, manuscript notes, and published accounts. The systematic account of the church published by Charles Hodgson Fowler in 1877, on the occasion of his restoration of St. Helen's, together with the plans and elevations preserved with the faculty papers, is the basic point of reference (Fowler, 1877; Borthwick Inst. PR 21 STIL). Nevertheless since Hodgson Fowler's day few scholars concerned either with the historic buildings of the locality, or with the general trends of vernacular art in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, or with church ironwork, or church carpentry, have resisted the temptation to comment on the door. Most agree within relatively narrow limits about the date of the doorway, but opinion has been diverse about the date of the door itself. It is a complex structure evidently comprising much original woodwork with additions and alterations from a number of restorations, and there is various structural and decorative ironwork. Hodgson Fowler seems to have been responsible for a sensitive though far-reaching restoration and he was thus probably in possession of more facts about its construction and character than was any later worker until recently. He seems to have been in no doubt, taking the evidence as a whole, that both doorway and door belong to the twelfth century. Most later commentators have been more impressed by the supposed Scandinavian character of the decorative metalwork, and W. G. Collingwood followed by Talbot Rice, Pevsner, and more recently Baggs have questioned the contemporaneity of door and doorway, suggesting that the door might perhaps belong to the eleventh century, and it is included in Wilson's catalogue of Anglo-Saxon metalwork.

The Athelstan Gift Story: Its Influence on English Chronicles and Carolingian Romances

PMLA ◽  
1952 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-537
Author(s):  
Laura Hibbard Loomis
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Chanson De Roland ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
William Of Malmesbury

To saints and their relics in the Middle Ages great men did great reverence. The mighty Charlemagne zealously collected and distributed relics of Christ and the saints; so, too, did the noble King Athelstan of England, who was, to his own contemporaries, something of “an English Charlemagne.” Certain tales relating to these two famous rulers and the holy relics acquired by them, are full of interest in themselves and in the relationship, at special stages, of the stories to each other. The Continental Carolingian narratives—the Pèlerinage de Charlemagne, the Descriptio qualiter Karolus Magnus clavum et coronam Domini a Constantino poli Aquis Grani detulerit, the Fierabras tell how Charlemagne, either on a fabulous journey to the East, or by warfare in Spain, got a hoard of precious relics which included some from the Crucifixion but never, in the oldest versions of these stories, any part of the Passion Lance. An ancient story, of English origin, tells how Athelstan received, as a gift from France, a hoard which likewise included some Passion relics. Among the gifts was the Passion Lance which was said to have belonged to Charlemagne; there was also the vexillum of St. Mauricius. For the Carolingian stories named above there is no extant text that antedates the latter half of the twelfth century, no conjectured source that antedates the latter half of the eleventh century. The Athelstan Gift Story, as we shall call it, was first set forth in an Anglo-Latin poem eulogizing the English king (d. 939). This panegyric was quoted and summarized by William of Malmesbury (1125) and is now accepted, though it was long ignored, as an authentic tenth century source. It may have been this almost unknown poem which inspired in the Chanson de Roland, in that earliest Anglo-Norman copy known as the Oxford Roland, four concepts connected with Charlemagne's reported possession of a bit of the Passion Lance. Our concern here, however, is not with the ancient Latin poem, but with the version of its Gift Story by William of Malmesbury. To it he gave new life, new currency; its influence can be traced in various chronicles and in certain English Carolingian romances. It throws new light on their development and relationships. Strangely enough, it was in these English Carolingian stories and not in their Continental sources and analogues that the idea that Charlemagne had once possessed the Passion Lance took root and flourished.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily A. Winkler
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
High Expectations ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
Henry Of Huntingdon

Chapter 1 introduces the core argument of the book, which is that twelfth-century writers of history in England accorded more individual responsibility, both causal and moral, to eleventh-century English kings than did their historical sources. In their conquest narratives, the four historians redistribute responsibility away from the English as a collective, revealing proportionally high expectations for English kings. This change, which occurs across the four historians’ diverse genres of writing, arose from their wide reading, experience with Anglo-Norman rule, and the precedents for foreign kings of England set by the Danish and Norman Conquests of the eleventh century. The chapter examines the nature of explanation in twelfth-century historical narratives (including the role of fortune and Providence), outlines the careers of the four writers (William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, John of Worcester, and Geffrei Gaimar), and provides an overview of each writer’s approach to narrating the English past.

The Date of H. Theodoroi at Athens

1933 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 163-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Megaw
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
The West ◽  
Additional Note ◽  
Byzantine Era ◽  
Greek Scholar ◽  
The Church ◽  
Contrary Evidence

In my study on the chronology of Middle-Byzantine churches after considering the contrary evidence I accepted the dated inscription in the west front of H. Theodoroi at Athens as a record of the erection of the present building. In an additional note reference was made to an article by Xyngopoulos, published after my own had gone to press. To support his dating of the church in the twelfth century he introduces new arguments which I suggested demanded a re-examination of the evidence. More recently Laurent has dealt conclusively with some of the points in connection with the inscriptions raised by the Greek scholar. But, while his verdict on their content may be accepted with confidence, for the archaeologist the question is not yet closed. Laurent's main theses are that in the first place the date on the smaller stone should be reckoned by the Byzantine era and interpreted as 1049, and, secondly, that the metrical inscription should be attributed to the eleventh century, if not earlier, in preference to the twelfth. However, of the relation of the two stones to one another and to the church into which they are built he speaks with less conviction. He favours the prima facie view that the present building was erected by Kalomalos in 1049, but, if the church is shewn on stylistic grounds to be of later date, he is prepared to dissociate both the dated and the metrical inscription from the foundation and to place the latter in the tenth century or even earlier (p. 82).

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