THE ISLIP ROLL RE-EXAMINED

2017 ◽  
Vol 97 ◽  
pp. 231-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Payne

The mortuary roll of John Islip (1464–1532), Abbot of Westminster, is the finest example of its kind to survive in England. The drawings, possibly by Gerard Horenbout, afford the only views of the interior of Westminster Abbey before the Dissolution. The discovery of eighteenth-century copies of an unknown, coloured version of the roll provides important new evidence for both the circumstances of the production and the later history of both rolls. It also provides, for the first time, an authentic colour view of the interior of Westminster Abbey in the late medieval period, and new information on its decoration.

2022 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Franco Motta ◽  
Eleonora Rai

Abstract The introduction to this special issue provides some considerations on early modern sanctity as a historical object. It firstly presents the major shifts in the developing idea of sanctity between the late medieval period and the nineteenth century, passing through the early modern construction of sanctity and its cultural, social, and political implications. Secondly, it provides an overview of the main sources that allow historians to retrace early modern sanctity, especially canonization records and hagiographies. Thirdly, it offers an overview of the ingenious role of the Society of Jesus in the construction of early modern sanctity, by highlighting its ability to employ, create, and play with hagiographical models. The main Jesuit models of sanctity are then presented (i.e., the theologian, the missionary, the martyr, the living saint), and an important reflection is reserved for the specific martyrial character of Jesuit sanctity. The introduction assesses the continuity of the Jesuit hagiographical discourse throughout the long history of the order, from the origins to the suppression and restoration.


2012 ◽  
pp. 12-32
Author(s):  
Rebecca Oakes

This article presents new data on mortality in the late medieval period, and suggests methodologies for analysing incomplete datasets. Using data collated from the records of Winchester College this study follows the lives of 2,692 individuals, and analyses adolescent mortality in the sample group for the period 1393–1540. This study of mortality among 10–18 year olds is the first of its kind to produce data for a sample of adolescents in late medieval England, and thereby contributes significant new data to our understanding of late medieval mortality. These data are placed within the context of that obtained for other medieval population samples, most notably with studies of medieval monastic groups.


Author(s):  
Agnès Graceffa

The Merovingian period has long been contested ground on which a variety of ideologies and approaches have been marshaled to debate the significance of the “end” of antiquity and the start of the Middle Ages. Particularly important to these discussions has been the role of this period in shaping national identity across western Europe; interpretations of the Merovingians have varied as political realities have changed in Europe, going back, in some cases, as far as the late medieval period. This chapter focuses mainly on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but offers examples as early as the seventeenth century as to how the Merovingian period has been harnessed for a large number of purposes and how these sometimes polemical interpretations have encouraged or stymied our understanding of this period.


Author(s):  
Brian Cummings

Autobiography as a concept asks deep questions about the periodization of history. It is also a scene of persistent rivalry in the construction of medieval and Renaissance models of history. Since Jakob Burckhardt’sDie Kultur der Renaissance in Italienof 1860, there has been a war of ownership over the rise of human subjectivity. This article examines the debate over the history of autobiography by focusing on St. Augustine and hisConfessions. It considers the exposure of theConfessionsto different kinds of reading during the late medieval period, including that by Petrarch. It argues that theConfessionshas been read more extensively in the twentieth century than ever before and that the Augustine of the “invention of subjectivity” is a writer of a specifically twentieth-century imagination. In this way it also assesses the impact of the Reformation on theConfessions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-377
Author(s):  
PAUL NAYLOR ◽  
MARION WALLACE

AbstractThe life of Ayuba Sulayman Diallo (also known as Job ben Solomon) receives a fresh examination in this article, based primarily on his own writings. The son of an Imam from Bundu in Senegambia, Diallo was enslaved in 1731 and transported to America. He survived to gain his freedom, make his mark in London society, and return to Africa in 1734. This article offers an analysis of documents from the British Library, including items that have not been previously analysed and are here translated into English for the first time. In addition, they bring together what is known of his archive, including the letters he wrote before, during, and after his time in London, the Qur'ans he scribed there, and the scraps and snippets created as he discussed the Arabic language with friends.A close analysis of Diallo's writings reveals new information about his life history; his relationships with the elites in both Bundu and London; his scholarly abilities; and the history of Bundu itself. Diallo used the technology of writing to direct the course of his own life and career, converting a disastrous course of events into favourable opportunities for himself.


2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Baranna Baker

AbstractWith Medieval Philosophy Redefined as the Latin Age, John Deely has written a truly revolutionary book. Both medieval historians and semioticians alike will gain a new perspective on their subject matter upon reading Medieval Philosophy Redefined. In it, Deely traces the history of the sign by going to its roots in the writings of Augustine, and following it through to the time of John Poinsot. John Poinsot, a previously marginalized philosopher from the late medieval period, factors greatly in Deely’s book. Poinsot makes it possible to get through the “thicket” of nominalism and see beyond Renaissance Humanism. Perhaps even more remarkable is the fact that, by using the sign as the point of departure, Deely has found a constant thread that runs through the Medieval Ages, making it, the sign, a key to understanding medieval philosophy from its start to its finish.


Chronos ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 103-128
Author(s):  
Tasha Voderstrasse

This article will present an overview of the archaeological work done on medieval Lebanon from the 19th century to the present. The period under examination is the late medieval period, from the 11th to the 14th centuries, encompassing the time when the region was under the control of various Islamic dynasties and the Crusaders. The archaeology of Lebanon has been somewhat neglected over the years, despite its importance for our understanding of the region in the medieval period, mainly because of the civil war (1975-1990), which made excavations and surveys in the country impossible and led to the widespread looting of sites (Hakiman 1987; Seeden 1987; Seeden 1989; Fisk 1991; Hakiman 1991; Ward 1995; Hackmann 1998; Sader 2001. In general, see Fisk 1990). Furthermore, many collections within Lebanon itself could not be visited for the purpose of study and even collections outside Lebanon remained largely neglected. The end Of the civil war, however, marked a time of renewed interest in the country's archaeology, particularly in the city of Beirut. Also, the identification of large numbers of Christian frescoes in the region meant that churches and their paintings were studied in detail for the first time. Although much had been lost during the civil war, it was clear the archaeological heritage of Lebanon remains critical to our understanding of the archaeology of the Levant. As a crossroads for Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the late medieval period, the region that is now Lebanon was of great importance in the 1 lth to 14th centuries.


Author(s):  
Claude Panaccio

Especially written for the English version, this Postscript discusses a number of recently published contributions on the history of mental language in connection with the claims made in the present book. Those are divided into five groups according to whether they have to do with (1) Ancient and Patristic sources, (2) Augustine and Boethius, (3) Abelard and the twelfth century, (4) Aquinas and the thirteenth century, and (5) Ockham and the late medieval period. It is shown that quite an amount of new material is now to be added to the picture, but that nothing of importance needs to be withdrawn.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
BENJAMIN MOLINEAUX ◽  
JOANNA KOPACZYK ◽  
RHONA ALCORN ◽  
WARREN MAGUIRE ◽  
VASILIS KARAISKOS ◽  
...  

The spelling conventions for dental fricatives in Anglic languages (Scots and English) have a rich and complex history. However, the various – often competing – graphemic representations (<þ>, <ð>, <y> and <th>, among others) eventually settled on one digraph, <th>, for all contemporary varieties, irrespective of the phonemic distinction between /ð/ and /θ/. This single representation is odd among the languages’ fricatives, which tend to use contrasting graphemes (cf. <f> vs <v> and <s> vs <z>) to represent contrastive voicing, a sound pattern that emerged nearly a millennium ago. Close examinations of the scribal practices for English in the late medieval period, however, have shown that northern texts had begun to develop precisely this type of distinction for dental fricatives as well. Here /ð/ was predominantly represented by <y> and /θ/ by <th> (Jordan 1925; Benskin 1982). In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, this ‘Northern System’ collapsed, due to the northward spread of a London-based convention using exclusively <th> (Stenroos 2004). This article uses a rich body of corpus evidence for fifteenth-century Scots to show that, north of the North, the phonemic distinction was more clearly mirrored by spelling conventions than in any contemporary variety of English. Indeed, our data for Older Scots local documents (1375–1500) show a pattern where <y> progressively spreads into voiced contexts, while <th> recedes into voiceless ones. This system is traced back to the Old English positional preferences for <þ> and <ð> via subsequent changes in phonology, graphemic repertoire and letter shapes. An independent medieval Scots spelling norm is seen to emerge as part of a developing, proto-standard orthographic system, only to be cut short in the sixteenth century by top-down anglicisation processes.


1976 ◽  
Vol 108 (2) ◽  
pp. 136-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ananda S. Kulasuriya

Dynastic changes are not an uncommon feature in history. In the history of Sri Lanka they have been especially common and have sometimes taken place in such a rapid succession that one might form the impression of their being a recurrent feature. One observes the succession of the Moriyas by the Lambakaṇṇas, followed by the Pāṇḍyas and the Kāliṅgas. Usually such changes have been the result of the weakness of the central political authority, internal discord, factional disputes, and other such decisive forces which provided excellent conditions and ideal opportunities for ambitious kings, particularly from the sub-continent, to invade the island. Sometimes they have been caused by less hostile circumstances, at least in their initial stages, such as appeals for intervention by rulers to outside powers. There seem to have been certain special forces and features that marked the changes that occurred in the late medieval period. We shall be concerned here with a discussion of those forces with a view to understanding the special features of the process of change, the manner in which a comparatively insignificant clan of foreign descent acquired power and rose to the highest ranks of the governing élite, and also the forces that brought about its downfall. The question, “Why were the new élite unable to gain sovereign power when it was just within their grasp?” will engage our special attention.


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