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.

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.

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.

Early Latin Discussions of the Eternity of the World in the Thirteenth Century

Traditio ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 171-197
Author(s):  
Richard C. Dales
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The World ◽  
Preceding Period

Although the doctrine of the eternity of the world had evoked much concern and opposition among the Fathers of the Christian Church, it ceased to engage the attention of Latin Christian writers during most of the early Middle Ages. When interest in the question revived during the twelfth century, it was nearly always considered in the context of Plato's Timaeus or Boethius’ De consolatione philosophiae. By 1270, the issue seemed to be between the supporters and the opponents of Aristotle. Although the story of Latin discussions of the eternity of the world during the 1260s and 1270s has been quite thoroughly investigated, the preceding period from about 1230 to 1260 has been largely ignored. It is the purpose of the present study to elucidate this neglected stage in medieval discussions of the eternity of the world and to show its relationship to the earlier and later periods.

Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother: Some Themes in Twelfth-Century Cistercian Writing

1977 ◽  
Vol 70 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 257-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Walker Bynum
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Spiritual Growth ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Erotic Love ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
The Image Of God ◽  
Idea Of God

A number of scholars in this century have noticed the image of God or Jesus as mother in the spiritual writings of the high Middle Ages. The image has in general been seen as part of a “feminine” or “affective” spirituality, and neither of these adjectives is incorrect. The idea of God as mother is part of a widespread use, in twelfth-century spiritual writing, of woman, mother, characteristics agreed to be “feminine,”and the sexual union of male and female as images to express spiritual truths; the most familiar manifestation of this interest in the “female” is the new emphasis on the Virgin in doctrinal discussions and especially spirituality. And the frequency of references to “mother Jesus” is also part of a new tendency in twelfth-century writing to use human relationships (friendship, fatherhood or motherhood, erotic love) in addition to metaphysical or psychological entities to explain doctrinal positions or exhort to spiritual growth.

scholarly journals Uses of the Past in Twelfth-Century Germany: The Case of the Middle High German Kaiserchronik

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-38
Author(s):  
Mark Chinca ◽  
Christopher Young
Keyword(s):  
Original Composition ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Geoffrey Of Monmouth ◽  
Middle High German ◽  
Vernacular Literature ◽  
Salvation History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Multiple Contexts ◽  
High Middle Ages

AbstractDespite its broad transmission and its influence on vernacular chronicle writing in the German Middle Ages, the Kaiserchronik has not received the attention from historians that it deserves. This article describes some of the ideological, historical, and literary contexts that shaped the original composition of the chronicle in the middle of the twelfth century: Christian salvation history, the revival of interest in the Roman past, the consolidation of a vernacular literature of knowledge, and the emergence of a practice of writing history as “serious entertainment” by authors such as Geoffrey of Monmouth and Godfrey of Viterbo. Placed in these multiple contexts, which have a European as well as a specifically German dimension, the Kaiserchronik emerges as an important document of the uses of the past in fostering a sense of German identity among secular and ecclesiastical elites in the high Middle Ages.

scholarly journals Writing Self, Writing Empire

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 106-110
Author(s):  
Aria Fani
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Literary Aesthetics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Textual Production ◽  
Northern India ◽  
Literary Environment

The seventeenth century marks an exciting period in the life of Persian literarycultures in northern India. Established as a language of administration byTurco-Afghans in the early thirteenth century, several centuries later Persianhad extended well beyond its initial administrative strongholds to become animportant medium for literary and religious composition, historiography, andtranslation. In a literary environment that prized both literary aesthetics andfierce rivalries, the massive textual production on vastly diverse subjects, aswell as the presence of literary salons, standalone bookstalls, and mushā‘irahs(poetic assemblies), cumulatively point to a lively Persian literary culture thatechoed across political, religious, and socio-cultural terrains.Unfortunately, most of the scholarship on Persian in the medieval Indiancontext over the past decades has failed to illuminate this dynamic scene.Moreover, most studies seek to highlight Persian’s influence on India or examineIndia’s civilizational impact on Persian. Both paradigms assume a natural(read: Iranian) ecumene for Persian and thus do not critically considerthe slippage between linguistic, ethnic, and geographic designations wh

The Military Orders

2020 ◽  
pp. 247-263
Author(s):  
Jochen Burgtorf
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Church Reform ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
Military Orders ◽  
The Military ◽  
Order State

The chapter discusses the two major international military orders of the high Middle Ages, the Templars and the Hospitallers. It outlines their origins in the twelfth-century Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem, as well as the factors that contributed to their emergence, such as pilgrimage, the eleventh-century Church reform, knighthood and chivalry, the Crusades, and the role of the papacy. It then considers the comparative historiography of Templars and Hospitallers, including the scholarly debate on the Templars’ suppression and the Hospitallers’ survival. The chapter goes on to address the question of the military orders’ identity by examining the extent of the Templars’ charity and hospitality, the question of the Hospitallers’ militarization, and the genesis of the concept of an ‘order state’. It concludes with suggestions for future research.

Bearing the Stigmata

2020 ◽  
pp. 23-59
Author(s):  
Carolyn Muessig
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Francis Of Assisi

Chapter 1 traces the patristic and early medieval exegesis of Galatians 6:17. It assesses how language and imagery were appropriated and developed by eleventh- and twelfth-century monastic theologians (especially Peter Damian) into a soteriological system of penance and redemption that focused on Christ’s wounds. Significantly, it looks at examples of stigmatization before Francis of Assisi. These cases vary in their form; they gradually move from stigmata being almost exclusively associated with the sacerdotal order in the early Middle Ages to being linked to the laity by the early thirteenth century as with the cases of Peter the Conversus and Mary of Oignies.

The Theory of Natural Consequence

Vivarium ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 340-366
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Martin
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Natural Consequence ◽  
History Of ◽  
Connexive Logic ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Special Case

Abstract The history of thinking about consequences in the Middle Ages divides into three periods. During the first of these, from the eleventh to the middle of the twelfth century, and the second, from then until the beginning of the fourteenth century, the notion of natural consequence played a crucial role in logic, metaphysics, and theology. The first part of this paper traces the development of the theory of natural consequence in Abaelard’s work as the conditional of a connexive logic with an equivalent connexive disjunction and the crisis precipitated by the discovery of inconsistency in this system. The second part considers the accounts of natural consequence given in the thirteenth century as a special case of the standard modal definition of consequence, one for which the principle ex impossibili quidlibet does not hold, in logics in which disjunction is understood extensionally.

Agnes of Harcourt, Felipa of Porcelet, and Marguerite of Oingt: Women Writing about Women at the End of the Thirteenth Century

2007 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 298-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean L. Field
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Religious Women ◽  
Clemence Of Barking ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
Women Writing ◽  
European Women

Three vernacular religious biographies were written by women about other women around the year 1300: Agnes of Harcourt's FrancienVie d'Isabelle de France(ca. 1283), Felipa of Porcelet's ProvençalVida de la benaurada sancta Doucelina(begun ca. 1297), and Marguerite of Oingt's Franco-ProvençalVia seiti Biatrix virgina de Ornaciu(between 1303 and 1310). Although a limited number of similar texts had been composed in Latin dating back to the early Middle Ages, and a few twelfth-century women such as Clemence of Barking had refashioned existing Latin lives of early female martyr-saints into Anglo-Norman verse, the works of Agnes, Felipa, and Marguerite are the first extant vernacular biographies to have been written by European women about other contemporary women. Just as strikingly, after the three examples studied here, few if any analogous works appeared until the later fifteenth century, with most writing by women about other religious women in the intervening period instead being found in “Sister Books” and convent chronicles.

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