The ‘old books of Glastonbury’ and the Muchelney breviary fragment: London, British Library, Additional 56488, fols. i, 1–5

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 307-350
Author(s):  
Jesse D. Billett
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
British Library ◽  
Benedictine Reform

AbstractLondon, British Library, Add. 56488, fols. i, 1–5, is a fragment from a monastic breviary of the first half of the eleventh century, probably made at or for Muchelney Abbey (Somerset). It is here argued on palaeographical, musical and liturgical grounds that this breviary represents a liturgical tradition separate from that of Æthelwold’s network of reformed houses, which imitated the northern French monastery of Corbie. The fragment’s liturgy is based instead on a local ‘secular’ (non-monastic) liturgical tradition that has been minimally supplemented and rearranged to agree with the requirements of the Regula S. Benedicti. The scribe apparently compiled the breviary from several separate exemplars (a collectar, a bible, a homiliary, and what seems to have been a ‘secular’ antiphoner), which may indicate that the liturgy at Muchelney was ‘Benedictinized’ much later than might have been assumed. The same secular tradition seems to be preserved, beneath subsequent layers of modification, in a thirteenth-century Muchelney breviary (London, British Library, Add. 43405–6) and a fifteenth-century ordinal of St Mary’s Abbey, York (Cambridge, St John’s College D. 27). These later sources, while not representing the Benedictine liturgy of the lost ‘old books of Glastonbury’ under Dunstan (as suggested by McLachlan and Tolhurst), are valuable potential witnesses to the otherwise largely unattested Office liturgy used in English minsters before the ‘Benedictine Reform’ of the tenth century.

Anglo-Saxon prognostics in context: a survey and handlist of manuscripts

2001 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 181-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy Michael Liuzza
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
British Library ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Corpus Christi ◽  
Full Page ◽  
Benedictine Reform ◽  
Christ Church ◽  
History Of

The various Latin and Old English texts which have come to be called ‘prognostics’ have not, in general, been well served by scholars. For some texts the only available edition is Oswald Cockayne's Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England from 1864-6; most others are available only in the broad but somewhat unsystematic series of articles published by Max Förster in Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen in the 1910s and 1920s. Anselm Hughes does not include the eight prognostic texts in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 391 in his otherwise fairly thorough edition of much of that manuscript; Peter Baker and Michael Lapidge omit any discussion of such texts from their excellent survey of the history of the computus in the preface to their edition of Byrhtferth's Enchiridion. The mid-eleventh-century Christ Church manuscript now known as London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A. iii has attracted the notice of many fine scholars, including liturgists, linguists and monastic and art historians, who have been drawn to the series of texts at the beginning of the manuscript (fols. 117-73 and 2-27), including two magnicent full-page drawings (117v and 2v) and glossed copies of the Benedictine Rule and the Regularis Concordia. Helmut Gneuss describes this carefully presented series of interrelated texts as ‘a compendium of the Benedictine Reform movements in Carolingian Francia and in tenth-century England’; Robert Deshman has argued that the very sequence of texts is ‘laden with meaning’. Despite their appreciation of these manuscript sequences, however, few scholars have included in their study of this material the eighteen prognostic texts which follow the Regularis Concordia in the manuscript (27v-47), though most of these are in the same hand and are arranged, it may be argued, with equal care.

scholarly journals The northern world of the Anglo-Saxon mappa mundi

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 275-305
Author(s):  
Helen Appleton
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
British Library ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The Mediterranean

AbstractThe Anglo-Saxon mappa mundi, sometimes known as the Cotton map or Cottoniana, is found on folio 56v of London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. v, which dates from the first half of the eleventh century. This unique survivor from the period presents a detailed image of the inhabited world, centred on the Mediterranean. The map’s distinctive cartography, with its emphasis on islands, seas and urban spaces, reflects an Insular, West Saxon geographic imagination. As Evelyn Edson has observed, the mappa mundi appears to be copy of an earlier, larger map. This article argues that the mappa mundi’s focus on urban space, translatio imperii and Scandinavia is reminiscent of the Old English Orosius, and that it originates from a similar milieu. The mappa mundi’s northern perspective, together with its obvious dependence on and emulation of Carolingian cartography, suggest that its lost exemplar originated in the assertive England of the earlier tenth century.

scholarly journals Las técnicas constructivas en las murallas medievales de Almería

X ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro Gurriarán Daza
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Rammed Earth ◽  
Construction Techniques ◽  
Typical Scheme ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Middle Ages

Building techniques in the medieval walls of AlmeríaAlmería was one of the most important cities in al-Andalus, a circumstance that was possible thanks to the strength of its port. Its foundation as an urban entity during the Caliphate of Córdoba originated a typical scheme of an Islamic city organized by a medina and a citadel, both walled. Subsequent city’s growths, due to the creation of two large suburbs commencing in the eleventh century, also received defensive works, creating a system of fortifications that was destined to defend the place during the rest of the Middle Ages. In this work we will analyse the construction techniques used in these military works, which cover a wide period from the beginning of the tenth century until the end of the fifteenth century. Although ashlar stone was used in the Caliphate fortification, in most of these constructions bricklayer techniques were used, more modest but very useful. In this way, the masonry and rammed earth technique were predominant, giving rise to innumerable constructive phases that in recent times are being studied with archaeological methodology, thus to know better their evolution and main characteristics. 

The Merovingian monastery of St Evroul in the light of conflicting traditions

1972 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 31-40
Author(s):  
Marjorie Chibnall
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Historical Truth ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Old Men

Historians of early monasticism in Frankish Gaul either have little to say about the monastery founded by St Evroul or, like Dom Laporte, devote their attention to a discussion of the probable date of his life. The disappearance of almost all early documentary sources is one reason for this: there was certainly a break in the occupation of the site for perhaps half the century between the destruction of the monastery in the tenth century and its refoundation in 1050, and only one charter, dated 900, was rescued and copied in the eleventh century. The fact that there has been no systematic excavation of the site, so that archaeological evidence of buildings before the thirteenth-century church is lacking, is another. Early annals and reliable lives of other saints have nothing at all to say on the subject. The first historian to tackle it, Orderic Vitalis, writing in the early twelfth century, had to admit that he could discover nothing about the abbots for the four hundred years after St Evroul; and he had to draw on the memories and tales of the old men he knew, both in the monastery and in the villages round about. Needless to say he harvested a luxuriant crop of legends and traditions of all kinds. The problem of the modern historian is to winnow a few grains of historical truth out of the stories that he garnered, and the hagiographical traditions, some of which he did not know.

Rolls of Arms of Kings: Some Recent Discoveries in the British Library

1990 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Goodall
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
British Library ◽  
Single Source ◽  
Intensive Study ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Selection Of

As the intensive study of the medieval rolls of arms continues it is becoming ever more clear that, even in the thirteenth century, the general rolls were drawing material from existing collections—often in blocks of entries. One of the features of many of the general rolls, both in England and on the continent, is a section devoted to the arms of emperors and kings; sometimes with a selection of oriental and African potentates (Appendix I). Such series were also used in decoration; as in the windows formerly in the great hall of the Bishop's Palace at Lincoln, in wood carvings at St Mary's, Barton on Humber, and the early fifteenth-century painted ceiling in St Alban's Abbey. These appear, in most of the rolls, as self-contained units, and vary in number and content. There was, therefore, no single source from which the compilers drew their material. In the present study the author proposes to examine some of the problems and to introduce two newly discovered English medieval rolls of arms relevant to the subject.

Western Converts to Islam (Later Eleventh to Later Fifteenth Centuries)

Traditio ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 153-231
Author(s):  
A. J. Forey
Keyword(s):  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Mediterranean Regions ◽  
Crusader States ◽  
Made In

The early expansion of Islam led in time to widespread conversions of Christians in conquered territories. In the later eleventh century, however, western Christendom was in turn launching offensives against Islam on several fronts. Territorial gains were made in various Mediterranean regions and, although by the end of the thirteenth century the Holy Land had been lost again, Sicily remained in Christian hands, and in the second half of the thirteenth century in the Iberian peninsula only Granada remained under Muslim control: the whole peninsula was under Christian rule before the end of the fifteenth century. This expansion was accompanied, especially in the thirteenth century, by attempts to convert Muslims and other non-Christians. Yet in the period from the late eleventh until the later fifteenth century some western Christians converted to Islam. The purpose of the present paper is to consider the situations that prompted the adoption of Islam, and the reasons for such conversions, although the evidence is usually insufficient to indicate exactly why a particular Christian became a Muslim: the preconceived ideas voiced in western sources about forced conversions can be misleading and, although a crude distinction might be made between conversions from conviction and those based on worldly considerations, motives did not necessarily always fit neatly into just one of these two categories. But obviously not all converts would have had an equal understanding of the nature of Islamic beliefs and practices. The response of western ecclesiastical and secular authorities to renegades will also be considered. Further conversions of Christian peoples who had already for centuries been living under Muslim rule will not be examined, but only the adoption of Islam by those whose origins lay in western Christian countries or who were normally resident in these, and by westerners whose lands were newly conquered by Muslim powers after the eleventh century; and the focus will be mainly, though not exclusively, on the crusader states and the Iberian peninsula.

Wynflæd's wardrobe

1979 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 195-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gale R. Owen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old English ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
British Library ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Relative Value

An Old English document, composed probably in the middle of the tenth century and extant in a not very careful, mutilated, eleventh-century copy, London, British Library, Cotton Charter, VIII, 38, lists the bequests of a woman named Wynflæd. The bequests of clothing in this will are particularly interesting. Anglo-Saxon testaments do not itemize elaborate garments as do some English wills of the later Middle Ages; they refer to clothing only rarely, and then sometimes in general terms. Wynflæd's will is unusual in mentioning several different items of clothing and in specifying them more precisely. Descriptive references to non-military clothing are uncommon in Old English texts generally. Although many garment-names are documented, some which occur only in glossaries or translations from Latin may never have been in common use in England and some words are of uncertain meaning. In most cases the sex of the wearer of a named garment and the relative value of the garment are unknown. The garment-names in Wynflæd's will, by contrast, refer to items of clothing which were certainly worn by women at a known date and were valuable enough to be bequeathed.

Medieval Lexicography on Arabic and Persian Terms for City and Countryside

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 465-478
Author(s):  
Roy P. Mottahedeh
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
Architectural Features ◽  
Eastern Iran ◽  
The Rich

AbstractMedieval Arabic to Persian dictionaries are a relatively untapped source for the conceptual world in the time of their authors. This essay closely examines four such dictionaries from the late fifth/eleventh century to the seventh/thirteenth century written in eastern Iran. These dictionaries are quite rich in terminology for cities, towns, farmland, pasture and desert. They also describe architectural features of buildings. They offer scant but valuable information on markets and social structure. The information from these dictionaries combined with the rich detail available in the Islamic geographers of the third/ninth and fourth/tenth century allows us to form a more perfect picture of medieval Iranian society.

scholarly journals And We cast upon his throne a mere body: A Historiographical Reading of Q. 38:34

2004 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.O. Klar
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
World History ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Islamic Historiography ◽  
Islamic Society

This paper focuses on Q. 38:34 from the perspective of early and medieval works of Islamic historiography and collections of tales of the prophets: the early tenth century works of cUmāra b. Wathīma and Ṭabarī, the eleventh century Tales of the Prophets by Thaclabī, the twelfth century folkloric collection of Kisāↄī, along with Ibn cAsākir's History ofDamascus, the thirteenth century world history by Ibn al-Athīr, and the fourteenth century historiographical work by Ibn Kathīr. These various works are viewed not as any particular stage in the development of a genre, but as variations on a (Qur'anic) theme, and the avenue of medieval historiographers and storytellers is utilised as a bridge to explore various possible interpretations of the Qur'anic passage. Historiographers and storytellers provide us with an illustration of how lessons of admonition implied in the Qur'anic text were perceived in medieval Islamic society. They also, as will become clear, provide a picture of Solomon that is consistent with the Qur'anic figure as a whole.

‘De tradicione Guenonis’: An Edition with Translation

Traditio ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 201-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
William D. Paden ◽  
Patricia Harris Stäblein
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
British Library ◽  
Chanson De Roland ◽  
Editio Princeps ◽  
Wilhelm Grimm ◽  
Latin Version

British Library manuscript Cotton Titus A.xix, a miscellany compiled in the fifteenth century, contains on folios 153r–155r an untitled Latin version of the legend of Roland with the colophon ‘Explicit de tradicione Guenonis.’ This text was first published in 1837 by Francisque Michel as an appendix to the editio princeps of the Chanson de Roland in the Oxford manuscript, with no commentary of any kind. In 1838 Wilhelm Grimm declared that the Latin version was a deliberate condensation of the legend and hazarded that it might have been composed in the twelfth century. In 1839 the Swiss scholar Johann Caspar von Orelli reprinted Michel's text in a classicizing orthography with occasional conjectural improvements, and dated the poem in the twelfth or thirteenth century on the basis of its resemblance to the Ysengrimus and the Speculum stultorum.

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