The Boy Bishop’s Feast: a Case-study in Church Attitudes towards Children in the High and Late Middle Ages

1994 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 243-260
Author(s):  
Shulamith Shahar

THE main sources for the boy bishop’s feast are available in print. These include sections in ceremonial- and service-books, cathedral statutes, councils’ decrees,compotus, that is, accounts of the gifts and offerings of money the boy bishop received, as well as his expenses, household books that include registrations of the expenses for the annual entertainment of the boy bishop and his retinue, as well as two sermons the boy bishop delivered. Chambers, in hisMedieval Stage, first published in 1903, dedicated a detailed description to the feast. A short reference to the feast appears in most research works on medieval schools and a number of articles have also been published on the subject. I’ll thus refer to the origins of the feast, but describe it only briefly, disregarding variations between places, and then turn to the subject of my paper: the boy bishop’s feast, as reflecting the image of childhood, attitudes towards childhood, and medieval educational conceptions. These are expressed in the feast itself and more clearly in the sermons written by adults to be delivered by the boy bishop.

Author(s):  
Pavlína Rychterová

This chapter examines the growing importance of the vernacular languages during the later Middle Ages in shaping the form, content, and audiences of political discourse. It presents a famously wicked king of the late Middle Ages, Wenceslas IV (1361–1419), as a case study and traces the origins of his bad reputation to a group of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century writings. These have often been dismissed as fictions or studied solely as literature, but in fact they represent new modes of articulating good and bad kingship. The chapter shows that, in the context of an increasingly literate bourgeois culture, especially in university cities, these vernacular works transformed Latin theological approaches to monarchy, while rendering mirrors for princes and related literatures accessible to an unprecedented audience.


Author(s):  
Christof Paulus ◽  
Albert Weber

AbstractVenice is considered the best-informed community of the late Middle Ages. The study examines the availability of information for the second half of the 15th century, particularly with regard to the key year 1462/1463, and as a case study concentrates on areas of the supposed Venetian periphery of interest, above all Hungary and the two principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. The result is a thoroughly differentiated system of information acquisition, verification and control. Means of communication, as well as different areas of interest of the Serenissima, can be identified. A distinction is made between information maps and communication maps. The latter also include the distribution of news from the lagoon city exchanged with foreign envoys. During the period concerned, news was exchanged in an astonishingly liberal way, in turn integrating the Serenissima into the information networks of the other Italian states. The study thus places the „information commodity“ within the research field of late medieval gift exchange and patronage structures. In short, a thoroughly pragmatic Venetian approach to news acquisition and evaluation can be observed. Verification of the quality of the information obtained was subject not least to quantitative and ranking criteria. Ultimately, the informational power of Venice was based above all on its outstanding reputation among its contemporaries.


1996 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-123
Author(s):  
Nataliya G. Novichenkova

AbstractFounded in 1892 and now containing ca. 11,000 pieces, the Yalta museum draws on pre-Revolutionary private collections, especially of Classical objects obtained locally and abroad, as well as on objects associated with the Mountain and Southern regions of the Crimea, acquired more systematically as a result of archaeological excavations and chance finds in the region. The most important pre-Revolutionary collection, that of Grand Prince Alexander Mikhajlovich, still contains-despite the destruction of WW II-more than 50 amphoras and 500 other ceramic pieces, especially of Archaic Corinthian and Samian ware. The museum houses many finds from pre-War excavations, e.g. from the Balim-Kosh site (ca. 20,000 Neolithic artefacts) and from the Roman legionary fortress at Charax. The creation after WW II of an Archaeological Department of the Museum has led to a 5-fold increase in the size of its collection. This now includes finds from late classical and early medieval burial grounds (Aj-Todor, Alushta, Druzhnoe, Verkhynaya Oreandal, the Gothic necropolis near Goluboj Zaliv, and the Mesolithic complex of Cape of Trinity I. The most important addition has been of more than 5000 objects from the sanctuary excavated in the past decade at the pass of Gurzufskoe Sedlo, which was in use from the Stone Age to the late Middle Ages. Its heyday was 1st cent. B.C.-1st cent. A.D. and from this period date the overwhelming majority of finds of bronze and silver statuettes, glass, metal instruments, ceramics, arms and coins. Such material provides a rare insight into all of the main phases of Crimean history and coins and other objects from the site have formed the subject of a recent exhibition in the museum.


Images ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-24
Author(s):  
Michele Klein

This case study explores how a general lighting device transformed into a distinctive Jewish ritual object, the Havdalah candle. In late antiquity, the ubiquitous oil lamp served for the fire-light blessing during the end-of-Sabbath Havdalah ritual but in the fourth century, a sage added a torch, avukah, aggrandizing the ceremonial light. Jews showed little concern for the lighting utensil until the late Middle Ages, when a variety of contemporary torch-candles employed in Church ritual and among Christian aristocracy inspired new rabbinic interpretations of the term avukah. Ashkenazi Jews favored a costly Gothic-style implement with intertwined tapers, which particularly suited the words of the ancient Havdalah blessing. This became a distinctively Ashkenazi Jewish ritual object in the sixteenth century, after Christians abandoned the old-fashioned style of torch-candle. Following the drop in cost of wax, and massive Jewish migrations in modern times, all observant Jews adopted the Ashkenazi intertwined candle.


2010 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-137
Author(s):  
Signe Rotter-Broman

ABSTRACTThe changes in time perception that emerged in the late Middle Ages have not only left their mark on musical notation or the isorhythmic motet, but also on the composition of polyphonic songs. This article proposes an analytical approach to late Trecento songs that takes these changes into account. A case study of Andrea da Firenze's ballataNon più doglie ebbe Didoreveals how the temporal structures of the text and the music interact.


Architectura ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
David Wendland

AbstractAlthough the affinity of medieval architectural drawings to the graphic procedures of setting-out has been extensively discussed, the role of scale drawings in the design practice of the late Middle-Ages and the Early Modern period is still subject of debate. This regards also the drawings of complex late Gothic rib vaults. An opportunity for better understanding their precise use and function within the design and planning of complex stone structures is given by a case study on the vault in St. Catherine’s chapel in Strasbourg Cathedral, where an original drawing of the plan can be compared with the existing structure as it was actually built. The vault with looping ribs was completed in 1547. The comparative study of the drawing and the building is based on the previous research on the procedures of stone-planning in late Gothic vaults, and comprises also building archaeology, surveys, and geometric analyses of the vault.


2021 ◽  
pp. 67-87
Author(s):  
Massimo Della Misericordia

This essay analyzes the ways in which rural lordship was legitimized, maintained and sometimes contested in the late Middle Ages. The focus is not on the local societies and the political competition within the regional state, but rather on the position of seigneurial power in the interstices of international relations. Specifically, the dynamics of the frontier allowed the lords to enforce their power, but produced situations that put their authority in risk, providing opportunities for their subjects to contrast it. Political brokerage is the key to exploring the competition and the relationship between a variety of local actors and the state authorities. The source I selected is the Carteggio sforzesco, consisting of the written correspondence between these protagonists. From this viewpoint and thanks to records rich in narrative and descriptive contents, I will try to reconstruct economic tensions, military instability, the need for diplomatic agreements and for individual protection, that define the relationship between the Duchy of Milan, Valais, Switzerland and Grisons. Finally I will go into depth in the case-study of Val Formazza, where the domination of the lords family was in decline during the 15th Century, while local protagonists of this diversified local world – highlanders of lower social conditions settled in a peripheral valley forming an ethno-cultural minority of German speakers – were capable.


Author(s):  
Р.М. Мунчаев

Сборник составлен по материалам, представленным на Международную на- учную конференцию по археологии Северного Кавказа «Кавказ в системе куль- турных связей Евразии в древности и средневековье» – XXX «Крупновские чте- ния». Тематика докладов отражает широкий круг проводимых археологических исследований, охватывающих хронологический диапазон от каменного века до позднего средневековья. The collection was compiled from the materials presented at the International Scientific Conference on the Archeology of the North Caucasus «The Caucasus in the System of Cultural Relations of Eurasia in the ancient time and the Middle Ages» – XXX «Krupnovsky Readings». The subject of the reports reflect a wide range of ongoing archaeological studies covering the chronological range from the Stone Age to the late Middle Ages.


2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Kogen

Le livre d’Heures McGill, MS 156 n’a jamais fait objet d’une étude scientifique exhaustive, hormis quelques notices plaçant son élaboration en Franche-Comté ou en Bourgogne après 1450. En effet, ce manuscrit offre plusieurs difficultés d’identification et d’interprétation. Ainsi, le caractère composite de ses textes liturgiques, tout en pointant vers l’Est de la France, rend opaque la définition de son usage ; son décor, partiellement détérioré et mutilé, ne fut jamais lié à un atelier particulier ; son hagiographie se réfère à un horizon cultuel apparemment hétéroclite. Nous tenterons de relever ces défis grâce à une analyse détaillée des dimensions codicologique, hagiographique, liturgique et artistique de ce manuscrit, laquelle mènera à de nouvelles hypothèses concernant l’usage liturgique, les circonstances de l’élaboration et la datation de ce livre d’Heures. De même, nous proposerons d’associer le décor de ce manuscrit à l’atelier d’un des enlumineurs les plus intéressants de l’Est français de la fin du Moyen Âge. The Book of Hours McGill, MS 156 has never been the subject of an exhaustive scientific study apart from some notices placing its production in Franche-Comté or Burgundy after 1450. In fact, this manuscript includes many challenges of identification and interpretation. While pointing toward the east of France, the composite character of these liturgical texts makes it difficult to define its usage; its illumination, partially deteriorated and mutilated, was never linked to a particular workshop, and its hagiography pertains to a seemingly incongruous religious background. We will attempt to remedy these issues by means of a detailed analysis of the codicological, hagiographical, and artistic dimensions of this manuscript, which will lead to a new hypothesis concerning its liturgical usage, the circumstances of its production, and the date of this Book of Hours. Likewise, we will propose to associate the decoration of this manuscript with the workshop of one of the most interesting illuminators of eastern France during the late Middle Ages.


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