Exchange, religion, identity and central places in the early Middle Ages

2004 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frans Theuws
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Imaginary World ◽  
Central Places ◽  
Prestige Goods ◽  
Political Perspective ◽  
Norms And Values ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractExchange in the early Middle Ages has traditionally been studied from a ‘technological’, ‘economic’ or ‘socio-political’ perspective, and has examined such issues as transport practices, supply and demand, or the ways in which exchange helps to maintain and reproduce the socio-political order. A particular focus of research has been the significance of the exchange of prestige goods for the power of the king and the aristocracy. There has been almost no analysis to date of the complexity of the exchange system as a whole, which – together with the exchange of commodities and gifts – includes the keeping of objects. Nor have archaeologists paid much attention to the relationship between forms of exchange (and the norms and values associated with them) and the imaginary world from which ‘value’ is derived in exchange. In the early medieval Frankish world there seems to have been a close relationship between exchange and the imaginary Christian world. In this contribution, I will attempt to examine the relationship between exchange and the imaginary world in the early Middle Ages, and to demonstrate how the results can modify the picture we have of central places like Maastricht (an old centre) and Dorestad (one of the new emporia).

The cosmology of the early medieval emporia?

2004 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 138-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Hodges
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Imaginary World ◽  
Central Places ◽  
The Relationship

This characteristically thoughtful essay by Frans Theuws illustrates how far our analysis of central places in the early Middle Ages has advanced. Like his study of Maastricht (2001), it reveals a close reading of the archaeological and historical sources. Indeed, as Michael McCormick's encyclopaedic volume (2001) on the origins of the medieval economy shows with stunning authority, as archaeologists we have taken huge strides since Philip Grierson quipped, ‘It has been said that the spade cannot lie, but it owes this merit in part to the fact that it cannot speak’ (1959, 129). Hence it comes as no surprise that Theuws is exploring the ‘relationship between forms of exchange and the imaginary world from which “value” is derived’ (p. 121).

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.

scholarly journals The Medieval Concept of Music Perception. Hearing, Calculating and Contemplating

1996 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 369-376
Author(s):  
Elzbieta Witkowska-Zaremba
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Music Theory ◽  
Music Perception ◽  
Significant Feature ◽  
Medieval Music ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Abstract Categories ◽  
Medieval Music Theory ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Seeking to indicate the most salient features of the medieval perception of music, we must first of all point to the close relationship between the sensual and intellectual elements. This relationship is most conspicuous in the term "harmonica" introduced in the Latin Middle Ages by Boethius and defined as follows: "harmonica is the faculty of perceiving through senses and the intellect the differences between high and low sounds". The same definition reveals another significant feature of the perception of music, namely, that the importance is attached not to individual sounds, but to the differences or relationships between them, that is to the intervals. Since - in accordance with the Pythagorean tradition, which was a major force in medieval music theory - the relationship between sounds can be expressed numerically, it may therefore be considered in terms of the relationship of two numbers, apart from actual sound and beyond physical time. The question arises whether this concept of music could influence the perception of a medieval listener. For instance, can listening to music be understood as a process which engages both cognitive powers and concerns reducing in some unspecified manner the data perceived and processed by the senses to abstract categories which can be conceived only by the intellect?.

Closer to the essence of the early Middle Ages. A reply

2004 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-159
Author(s):  
Frans Theuws
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Study Groups ◽  
European Science Foundation ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Separate Spheres ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Foundation Programme ◽  
Production Distribution ◽  
European Science ◽  
The Relationship

Ideas do not develop in a vacuum, they are stimulated by debate. The European Science Foundation programme on the ‘Transformation of the Roman world’, in which I participated, was a magnificent opportunity for the rekindling of this debate. The project entailed the creation of different study groups around such topics as economy, rituals and power, and culture. As a consequence, the realization dawned that the organizational separation into these social spheres generated just as many new perspectives as it hid from view. Once the separate spheres had been scrutinized, our perception of the relationship between rituals, economy and culture remained a key objective of research. It is most fortunate that Richard Hodges and John Moreland, representatives of the ‘production, distribution and demand group’, have now joined the debate because their contributions lead to further refinements, thus bringing us closer to the ‘essence of the early Middle Ages’.

The Mission to Constantinople in 968 and Liudprand of Cremona

Traditio ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 55-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon N. Sutherland
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Detailed Record ◽  
East West

Of the documents that concern the relationship between Byzantium and Western Europe in the early Middle Ages, none is more famous or more frequently read than Relatio de Legatione Constantinopolitana, Liudprand of Cremona's description of his mission to Constantinople in 968 for Otto I. Much has been learned from his vivid if acid narrative about the Byzantine court of Nicephorus II Phocas and about East-West relations in the tenth century. Over the last forty years research has reached beneath the vivid prose in search of the true significance of that mission. But since Liudprand's is the only first-hand, detailed record of an embassy to Constantinople of that era, some scholars have given it more contemporary importance than it actually had, and, by extension, they have turned Liudprand's thoughts into subtle expressions of official Western policy. The danger in these inquiries has been to divorce the mind and moods of the creator from his creation and bestow on Relatio undeserved exaltation. The problem is to keep the document in its perspective while draining every sentence of its implications.

scholarly journals Persons and Things in Marseille and Lucca, 1300–1450

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Lord Smail
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Extended Phenotype ◽  
Prestige Goods ◽  
Social Distinction ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Debt Collection ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship

In later medieval Europe, a rising tide of wealth changed the material regime and, with it, the relationships that defined the matrix of persons and things. Some of our best evidence for the changes afoot in the era can be found in the massive documentation generated by the legal institutions of the period. Featured in this chapter are household inventories and inventories of debt collection from the cities of Marseille and Lucca. Although the things found in these documents are not tangible, the approach known as “documentary archaeology” allows us to treat the words that describe them as fragments or traces left by things that once existed. Many of the things found in people’s houses were used for the purposes of social distinction, whether that means the individual pursuit of prestige or status, through competitive consumption and display, or a group’s pursuit of group identity, through the display of badges or totems that define membership in a group. The use of materiality for the purposes of distinction has a deep natural history. But in exploring distinction, it is important to bear in mind that prestige goods had other affordances and lent themselves to other ends. Particularly prominent in many human societies, including that of later medieval Europe, is the capacity for things to serve as stores of value. Also important is the fact that people form emotional connections with things. The complex nature of the relationship between people and things in the later Middle Ages is best understood if we treat things as part of the extended phenotype of persons, or as part of a matrix or network that treats both humans and things as equivalent nodes.

Scriptoria and Libraries

2020 ◽  
pp. 736-768
Author(s):  
Donatella Nebbiai
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Reading Habits ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Book Collections ◽  
Book Collectors ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Mendicant Orders ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter explores the relationship between scriptoria and libraries during the Middle Ages, from the monastic houses of the early Middle Ages through the changes wrought by the universities and schools after the eleventh century. The author discusses the location of libraries and book collections within monasteries, private libraries and book collectors of the Carolingian period, the role of changing reading habits on the housing of books, the production of library booklists, the function of books withing the Mendicant orders.

scholarly journals TROVAS LEMOSINAS OR LLENGUA CATALANA: MAJADEROS DE CASTILLA AND THE MANY NAMES FOR THE CATALAN LANGUAGE

2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 301-311
Author(s):  
John Scott Lucas
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Real Analysis ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The Many ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Previous attempts to understand the usage of the terms Catalan, Provençal, Occitan, and Limousin and the languages these designations represent have fallen short of any real analysis. Most scholars to date have either presented historical data without linguistic explication or have attempted to use the data to argue for particular political views on the question of Catalan and its many names. The present study of the names used for Catalan in different regions and at different times helps us understand the relationship of diglossia that existed between the Occitan and Catalan languages for about two hundred years and bears witness to the emergence of linguistic consciousness in Catalonia and in Valencia from the early Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century.

Rural churches and settlements in late-antique and Early Mediaeval Tuscany

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 223-247
Author(s):  
Gabriele Castiglia
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Rural Settlements ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Rural Churches ◽  
Spatial Changes ◽  
Continued Use ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between Roman villas and their re-use as ecclesiastical buildings in late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages has been much investigated in recent years. This topic is now integrated into the debate about the end of the villas and of rural settlements more generally. Since the bibliography is extensive, I shall highlight only the main interpretative and more recent studies. As is argued in a series of studies focusing on the Italian peninsula, Roman villas underwent structural, functional and spatial changes from the end of the 4th c. despite their continued use. The most striking modification is the erection of churches on rural settlements. The chronology and nature of this Christianisation of the countryside are still subject to debate. I will examine the best-known villas in the territory corresponding to northern Tuscany, paying close attention to those of the late-antique period. I will then proceed to an analysis of those villas where the foundation of churches can be identified during the transition from late antiquity to the Early Middle Ages.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document