Ritual and reality in the early medieval ordines

1975 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 41-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet L. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Know How ◽  
Full Picture ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
The Way

To know what was generally believed in all ages, the way is to consult the liturgies, not any private man’s writings.’ John Selden’s maxim, which surely owed much to his own pioneering work as a liturgist, shows a shrewd appreciation of the significance of the medieval ordines for the consecration of kings. Thanks to the more recent efforts of Waitz, Eichmann, Schramm and others, this material now forms part of the medievalist’s stock in trade; and much has been written on the evidence which the ordines provide concerning the nature of kingship, and the interaction of church and state, in the middle ages. The usefulness of the ordines to the historian might therefore seem to need no further demonstration or qualification. But there is another side to the coin. The value of the early medieval ordines can be, not perhaps overestimated, but misconstrued. ‘The liturgies’ may indeed tell us ‘what was generally believed’—but we must first be sure that we know how they were perceived and understood by their participants, as well as by their designers. They need to be correlated with other sources, and as often as possible with ‘private writings’ too, before the full picture becomes intelligible.

The Rise of the Dutch Spice Trade in the Middle Ages

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-12
Author(s):  
Wei Zheng ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Spice Trade ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
The Way

For medieval Europe, spices have always been of great significance, so the spice trade has become the object of competition for various countries in Western Europe. With the improvement of navigation technology, countries obsessed with spices have opened up the way to explore the origin of spices and monopolize the spices trade. Among them, the most typical country is the Netherlands. From the perspective of the spice trade, this paper discusses how the beneficiary of the spice trade, the Netherlands, has become a generation of marine hegemons by transferring spice to monopolizing the spice trade.

Invoking the Authority of the Middle Ages in Nineteenth-Century Ireland: The ‘Irish Crosses’ of Earley & Powells

2020 ◽  
pp. 185-206
Author(s):  
Colleen M. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Culturally Diverse ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
The Middle Ages

This essay challenges the claim of the antiquarian artist Henry O’Neill that the publication of his 1857 book on early medieval crosses in Ireland sparked the nineteenth-century Celtic cross industry. While acknowledging O’Neill’s contribution as a founding researcher of medieval high cross scholarship, it argues that the design and significance of Celtic crosses developed in Victorian Ireland through social networks of antiquarians, monument makers and their culturally diverse, elite clients. Highlighted is the Irish ecclesiastical decorating firm, Earley & Powells, which began producing Celtic cross monuments in the 1860s. The significance of the Celtic cross silhouette which featured in landscape paintings alongside medieval ruins is considered in view of the conflicted relationship between landscape and Irish aristocracy. The essay concludes with a discussion about two of Earley & Powells’ clients and the monumental Celtic crosses they commissioned.

The life and times of Giambattista Morgagni, F. R. S. 1682-1771

1952 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-243
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
World Power ◽  
Old City ◽  
Adriatic Coast ◽  
Northern Plain ◽  
Infinite Variety ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
The Way

On a northern plain of Lombardy, backed by the Euganean hills and festooned with gardens and vineyards stands the old city of Padua. Its gleaming towers and Byzantine domes1 reflect a history whose origins are lost in antiquity. A thriving city in Roman times, the birthplace of Livy (50 b.c.), it suffered severely from the invasions of the barbarians for it stood directly in the way of the restless migrations of peoples from east to west. Along the Adriatic coast ran the great Roman road, south and west to Altinum, Concordia, Aquileia and the pass of ‘ Fontes frigidae ’ ; along this route surged Attila and the Huns, the Lombards, Franks and Hungarians leaving behind them a trail of devastation. The Middle Ages saw Padua, a Guelfic commune, struggling against local tyrants and an infinite variety of combines of neighbouring jealous towns, rising to fame under the rule of beneficent princes, declining in shame from the persecution of cruel and inhuman tyrants and eventually condemned to mediocrity as Venice rose to world power. Within its walls lived and died a saint, Anthony, the most celebrated of the followers of St Francis of Assissi. Here, too, flowered the genius of the Florentine Giotto and the Padovan Mantegna.

Capitalism in Medieval Islam

1969 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Subhi Y. Labib
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Other ◽  
Islamic Culture ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Medieval Islam ◽  
Holy Book ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
The Way

He who looks for the term “capitalism” in the Islamic sources of the Middle Ages will look in vain. On the other hand, the term “capital” has been known since the beginning of Islamic culture. Even in the Holy Book of Islam, in the Sūrat al-Baḳara, the idea of capital appears in connection with trade, business, and the illicit practice of loaning for profit—usury. “O you who believe, keep your duty to Allah and relinquish what remains [due] from usury, if you are believers. But if you do [it] not, then be apprised of war from Allah and His messenger; and if you repent, then you shall have your capital. Wrong not, and you shall not be wronged.” In the same Sūrah God forbids usury but not Bai', trading, or buying. At another place God's commands clear the way for investments. “O you who believe, devour not your property among yourselves by illegal methods, although you may engage in trading by mutual consent. And kill not your people. Surely Allah is merciful to you.”The Islamic merchant tried to follow this system of ethics.

Mysteries of State: An Absolutist Concept and Its Late Mediaeval Origins

1955 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernst H. Kantorowicz
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Spiritual Power ◽  
Mutual Exchange ◽  
Secular Power ◽  
The Middle Ages

Mysteries of State as a concept of Absolutism has its mediaeval background. It is a late offshoot of that spiritual-secular hybridism which, as a result of the infinite cross-relations between Church and State, may be found in every century of the Middle Ages and has deservedly attracted the attention of historians for many years. After A. Alföldi's fundamental studies on ceremonial and insignia of Roman emperors, Theodor Klauser discussed more recently the origin of the episcopal insignia and rights of honor, and showed very clearly how, in and after the age of Constantine the Great, various privileges of vestment and rank of the highest officers of the Late Empire were passed on to the bishops of the victorious Church. At about the same time, Percy Ernst Schramm published his compendious article on the mutual exchange of rights of honor between sacerdotium and regnum, in which he demonstrated how the imitatio imperii on the part of the spiritual power was balanced by an imitatio sacerdotii on the part of the secular power. Schramm carried his study only to the threshold of the Hohenstaufen period, and he was right to stop where he did. For the mutual borrowings of which he speaks—insignia, titles, symbols, privileges, and prerogatives—affected in the earlier Middle Ages chiefly the ruling individuals, both spiritual and secular, the crown-wearing pontiff and the mitre-wearing emperor, until finally the sacerdotium had an imperial appearance, and the regnum a clerical touch.

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