Maimonides Revised: The Case of the Sefer Miṣwot Gadol

1997 ◽  
Vol 90 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey R. Woolf
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Great Book ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
Intensive Work ◽  
Bear Witness

The Sefer Miṣwot Gadol (The Great Book of the Commandments) of R. Moses b. Jacob of Coucy (mid-thirteenth century), is one of the central works of halakhic codification stemming from Franco-German (Ashkenazic) Jewry in the High Middle Ages. It has long had a reputation for being one of the classic compilations of the tosafist age, a period of efflorescence of talmudic scholarship which spanned the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Its influence both as a legal source and schoolbook was wide-ranging, as the large number of extant manuscripts of the work, as well as the intensive work of annotation and commentary that it inspired, bear witness.

Two Notes on Germanic Antiquity Today

Traditio ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 9-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Goffart
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Historical Science ◽  
Ammianus Marcellinus ◽  
Old Norse Literature ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
History Of ◽  
Difficult Terrain ◽  
Bear Witness

The history of the early Germans is controversial terrain. This is known, though not invariably admitted. A few years ago, Klaus von See summed up the underlying predicament:Germans (Deutsche) have it hard with the origins of their national past. The oldest texts are not indigenous; they stem from Latin and Greek authors — Tacitus, Ammianus Marcellinus, Procopius. If stone vestiges are sought, one mostly has to be content with Celtic and Roman remains…. Supplementary efforts are made to unearth authentic Germanic monuments in large parts of Old Norse [literature]… — it being readily overlooked that the Edda and the sagas bear witness not to Germanic antiquity, but to the Scandinavian early and high Middle Ages, [and were] only written long after Christianization. As a result, studies of the early Germans are a difficult terrain for historical science….

scholarly journals I Second That Emotion: Modelling the Anxious Experiences of Thirteenth-Century Episcopal Office

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Philippa Byrne
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Institutional Authority ◽  
Emotional Language ◽  
Christian Service ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
The Church

Abstract The episcopacy in the High Middle Ages (c.1100–1300) can be understood through the idea of a shared emotional language, as seen in two treatises written to advise new bishops. In them, episcopal office was largely defined by the emotions it provoked: it was a cause for sorrow, a burden akin to back-breaking agricultural service. The ideas most associated with episcopal office were anxiety, labour and endurance. Ideas about Christian service as painful labour became particularly important in the twelfth century, alongside the development of the institutional authority of the Church. As episcopal power began to look more threatening and less humble, this emotional register provided one means of distinguishing episcopal power from secular lordly power: both were authorities, but bishops were distinguished by sorrowing over office and ‘enduring’, not enjoying it.

The thirteenth-century runic revival in Denmark and Iceland

2016 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 114-129
Author(s):  
Tarrin Wills
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Cultural Revival ◽  
Royal Court ◽  
Textual Production ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
Revival Movement

While in the High Middle Ages runic literacy appears to have been very much alive in urban centres such as Bergen, interest in runes appears to have been of a different nature in learned circles and in other parts of the Scandinavian world which had adopted widespread textual production of the Latin alphabet. This paper examines a number of runic phenomenon from the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries in Denmark and Iceland to argue that they belong to a cultural revival movement rather than forming part of a continuous runic tradition stretching back into the early Middle Ages. Some of these runic texts show some connection with the Danish royal court, and should rather be seen as forming part of the changes in literary culture emanating from continental Europe from the late twelfth century and onwards: they all show a combined interest in Latin learning and vernacular literary forms.

Making a Manly Impression: The Image of Kingship on Scottish Royal Seals of the High Middle Ages

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia J. Neville
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Keen Interest ◽  
Central Aspect ◽  
Latin Language ◽  
High Middle Ages

A central aspect of the growing sophistication of government in thirteenth-century Scotland was the crown’s use of written deeds authenticated with the great seal as instruments through which to express the royal will. This chapter, using sigillography (the study of seals) argues that over the course of the high and later Middle Ages the rulers of Scotland demonstrated a keen interest in the images, words and symbols that appeared on their great seals, encoding into these objects a complex and constantly evolving series of messages about their conceptualisation of kingship. The decorated surface of the seal and its accompanying Latin-language legend offered the kings a unique medium through which to project powerful images of Scottish identity, masculinity and power.

scholarly journals Pain in Medieval and Modern Contexts

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donna Trembinski
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Medical Training ◽  
Cartesian Dualism ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Medical Learning ◽  
Medieval Universities ◽  
The University

Intellectual historians of the High Middle Ages have generally argued that scholastic medicine had little influence on the study of theology in medieval universities, especially in the thirteenth century. Yet three chairs of theology at the University of Paris in the early 1200s had previous careers as physicians. Their extant work suggests that they did turn to their medical roots to explicate theological problems, sometimes rarely, as in the work of Guerric of St. Quentin, but sometimes more often as in the work of Roland of Cremona. Indeed Roland’s work on human and divine emotions, including his discussions of sadness and pain, demonstrates that Roland was dedicated to integrating his medical learning into his theological arguments and to ensuring that the positions of his medical training were in agreement with the theological arguments he made. A short conclusion suggests historiographical reasons for why the medical influence on early Parisian theological treatises has generally been overlooked, pointing to the separate nature of study of mind and body that has occurred since the rise of Cartesian dualism in the seventeenth century.

The Landholding Structure of a Northern Manor: Troutbeck, c. 1250–1800

2013 ◽  
pp. 28-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Healey
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Lake District ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Long Run ◽  
High Middle Ages

Troutbeck in the Lake District has a long run of landholding records, dating from the village's first appearance in the thirteenth century until modern times. This article uses these to recreate the nature of landholding across a broad span of history from the high Middle Ages to the end of the eighteenth century. It finds that numbers of customary landholders continued to grow despite the recurrent disasters of plague, famine and war in the fourteenth century, and showed growth again between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The seventeenth century then brought two major changes: there were a growing number of subtenants up until the 1620s. Then, after old restrictions on the parcelling of tenements were lifted in the 1670s, landholdings started to fragment, and a group of small customary landholders developed and survived into the eighteenth century.

Bastard Feudalism and the Framing of Thirteenth-Century England

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Coss
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Great Work ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

In the introduction to his great work of 2005, Framing the Early Middle Ages, Chris Wickham urged not only the necessity of carefully framing our studies at the outset but also the importance of closely defining the words and concepts that we employ, the avoidance ‘cultural sollipsism’ wherever possible and the need to pay particular attention to continuities and discontinuities. Chris has, of course, followed these precepts on a vast scale. My aim in this chapter is a modest one. I aim to review the framing of thirteenth-century England in terms of two only of Chris’s themes: the aristocracy and the state—and even then primarily in terms of the relationship between the two. By the thirteenth century I mean a long thirteenth century stretching from the period of the Angevin reforms of the later twelfth century on the one hand to the early to mid-fourteenth on the other; the reasons for taking this span will, I hope, become clearer during the course of the chapter, but few would doubt that it has a validity.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
G.E.M. Lippiatt
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
Governing Institutions

Historians of political development in the High Middle Ages often focus on the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries as the generations in which monarchy finally triumphed over aristocracy to create a monopoly on governing institutions in Western Europe. However, it was precisely in this period that Simon of Montfort emerged from his modest forest lordship in France to conquer a principality stretching from the Pyrenees to the Rhône. A remarkable ascendancy in any period, it is perhaps especially so in its contrast with the accepted historiographical narrative. Despite the supposed triumph of monarchy during his lifetime, Simon’s meteoric career took place largely outside of royal auspices. Simon’s experience provides a challenge to an uncomplicated or teleological understanding of contemporary politics as effectively national affairs directed by kings.

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