A peripheral heretic? An early fourteenth-century heresy trial from Sweden*

Gustav Zamore

doi:10.1093/hisres/htaa023

A peripheral heretic? An early fourteenth-century heresy trial from Sweden*

Historical Research ◽

10.1093/hisres/htaa023 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 93 (262) ◽

pp. 599-620

Author(s):

Gustav Zamore

Keyword(s):

Fourteenth Century ◽

Close Reading ◽

Unique Case

Abstract This article examines the inquisition against Botulf, the only person known to have been executed for heresy in medieval Sweden. It analyses the tactics of evasion that Botulf employed to escape detection and apprehension by tapping into common conceptions of the Eucharist to gloss his dissent. Through a close reading of the sentence in its historical, cultural and liturgical context, the article argues that it not only records a unique case in medieval Sweden, but that it performs clerical and elite identities by drawing on biblical and liturgical topoi, as well as antiheretical rhetoric to depict Botulf as a ‘membrum diaboli’.

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Irrigation in the Medieval Islamic Fayyum: Local Control in a Large-Scale Hydraulic System

Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient ◽

10.1163/156852012x628482 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 55 (1) ◽

pp. 1-31 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Yossef Rapoport ◽

Ido Shahar

Keyword(s):

Water Supply ◽

Local Control ◽

Water Allocation ◽

Hydraulic System ◽

Large Scale ◽

Close Reading ◽

Unique Case ◽

Islamic Period ◽

Distinctive Aspect

Abstract Because of the unique set of sources available, the Fayyum in Middle Egypt offers a unique case study of large-scale irrigation from antiquity to the Islamic period. A close reading of a cadastral survey of the province from 641/1243-4 shows that the distinctive aspect of the Islamic period was the local control of water supply and management. Drawing on the engineering experience of the villagers, water allocation and management in the gravity-fed canals of the Fayyum were in the hands of iqṭāʿ holders and tribal groups along the main canals, a pattern similar to that which pertained in mediaeval al-Andalus.

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Visualizing Elemental Ontology in the Livre des propriétés des choses

Romanic Review ◽

10.1215/00358118-8007978 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 111 (1) ◽

pp. 106-127

Author(s):

Luke Sunderland

Keyword(s):

Fourteenth Century ◽

Close Reading ◽

French Translation ◽

Ontological Pluralism ◽

Ecological Thought ◽

Modes Of Existence

Abstract This essay offers an encounter with Bruno Latour’s account of ontological pluralism by way of a close reading of the Livre des propriétés des choses, Jean Corbechon’s fourteenth-century French translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s encyclopedia. Engagement with Latour’s Inquiry into Modes of Existence enables a new reading of medieval encyclopedias that takes seriously Latour’s suggestion that premodern cosmologies retain importance for modern ecological thought while simultaneously challenging his arguments about the rigidity of ontologies based on ideas of nature, substance, and matter. This essay argues that the Livre deploys precisely such an ontology in dynamic and flexible ways. The varying visual programs in Livre manuscripts each configure the encyclopedia’s ontology differently, either making humans privileged observers of nature or positioning them as subject to its laws while adopting varying solutions for communicating ontological contentions to readers.

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Introduction

Father Chaucer ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198832386.003.0007 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 1-24

Author(s):

Samantha Katz Seal

Keyword(s):

Fourteenth Century ◽

Canterbury Tales ◽

Close Reading ◽

House Of Fame ◽

The Face ◽

The Canterbury Tales ◽

Literary Fame

This Introduction provides an overview of the pressures that late-fourteenth-century England placed upon traditional models of obtaining human posterity from the achievements of paternity. The introduction sets out the book’s argument that Chaucer himself was deeply concerned with questions of human authority in the face of man’s mortality, providing both biographical detail and a close reading of Chaucer’s discussions of literary fame within his early poem, The House of Fame. This introduction also sets up the book’s methodological priorities, introduces the book’s structure and chapter divisions, and argues in favor of addressing The Canterbury Tales in a fluid, non-traditional order.

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The mid-fourteenth century capital of Mali

The Journal of African History ◽

10.1017/s0021853700012512 ◽

1973 ◽

Vol 14 (2) ◽

pp. 195-206 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

J. O. Hunwick

Keyword(s):

Fourteenth Century ◽

Significant Role ◽

Close Reading ◽

Left Bank ◽

The South ◽

Proper Name ◽

A Site ◽

The City ◽

River Niger

For over a century scholars have been attempting to locate the area and, if possible, the actual site of the capital of the Mali empire in its period of greatness. Since the 1920S attention has been focused on an area near the Sankararni river, a tributary entering the Niger from the south, upstream from Bamako. Over recent years a Polish-Guinean archaeological expedition has been digging a site there, but with inconclusive results so far.A close reading of the few descriptions we have of the capital of Mali, and in particular of the route taken by Ibn Battūta, who visited the capital in 1352, suggests that the city lay on the left bank of the river Niger somewhere between Segu and Bamako. This is in fact a ‘logical] site for the capital of an empire whose tributaries lay mainly in the savannah and Sahel belts, and in whose armies cavalry played a significant role. For this reason, and a number of others, the recent hypothesis of Claude Meillassoux, suggesting a location for the capital south of the R. Falémé (and perhaps also of the R. Gambia), seems doubtful. The proper name for the capital is also discussed.

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