Theodore and George

2021 ◽  
pp. 277-306
Author(s):  
Daniel Ogden
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Physical Fight ◽  
Military Saints

Consideration is given to the two major military saints to be associated with dragon fights, Theodore Tyron and George. In contrast to the majority of their saintly peers, they fight their dragons in a duly martial fashion. However, within the span of their narratives, the physical fight itself is typically brief, desultory, and anticlimactic, a coda to a more spiritual battle that has already been won. The two saints’ traditions are contexualized in different ways. The structure and motifs of a fourteenth-century AD account of Theodore’s fight against the Dragon of King Samuel’s City is aligned with those of the dragon fight of a roughly contemporary Byzantine romance, Callimachus and Chrysorrhoe. Whilst the earliest extant narrative of George’s fight against his dragon is relatively late, eleventh-century AD, what today survives as the principal living relic of his dragon-fight, its iconography, can be shown to have its roots in the very beginning of classical antiquity.

Early Accusations of Well Poisoning against Jews: Medieval Reality or Historiographical Fiction?

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 517-539
Author(s):  
Tzafrir Barzilay
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Careful Analysis ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Reliable Evidence

This article reexamines the idea prevalent in existing historiography that Jews were accused of well poisoning before 1321. It argues that the historians who studied the origins of such accusations were misled by sources written in the early modern period to think that Jews were charged with well poisoning as early as the eleventh century. However, a careful analysis of the sources reveals that there is little reliable evidence that such cases happened before the fourteenth century, much less on a large scale. Thus, the conclusions of the article call for a new chronology of well-poisoning charges made against Jews, starting closer to the fourteenth century.

Muslim Roma in the Balkans

2000 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Crowe
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Wild Animals ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Middle Ages

The Roma entered the Balkans from India during the Middle Ages. They reached Persia sometime in the ninth century and by the eleventh century had moved into the Byzantine Empire. According to the eleventh-century Georgian Life of Saint George the Athonite, the Emperor Constantine Monomachus asked the Adsincani to get rid of wild animals preying on the animals in his royal hunting preserve. Adsincani is the Georgian form of the Greek word Atsínganoi or Atzínganoi, from which the non-English terms for Roma (cigán, cigány, tsiganes, zigeuner) are derived. Adsincani means “ner-do-well fortune tellers” or “ventriloquists and wizards who are inspired satanically and pretend to predict the unknown.” “Gypsy” comes from “Egyptian,” a term often used by early modern chroniclers in the Balkans to refer to the Roma. Because of the stereotypes and prejudice that surround the word “Gypsy,” the Roma prefer a name of their own choosing from their language, Romani. Today, it is preferable to refer to the Gypsies as Rom or “Roma,” a Romani word meaning “man” or “husband.” Byzantine references to “Egyptians” crop up during this period as Byzantine political and territorial fortunes gave way to the region's new power, the Ottomans. There were areas with large Roma populations in Cyprus and Greece which local rulers dubbed “Little Egypt” in the late fourteenth century.

A Florilegium on the Ecclesiastical Grades in CLM 19414: Testimony to Ninth-Century Clerical Institution

1970 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger E. Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Sacramental Theology ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Religious Instruction ◽  
Fields Of Study ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
Medieval Canon Law

The treasure manuscriptClm 19414of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich has for many years provided scholars in three fields of study with a rich lode of material. Art historians have found one of the best examples of fourteenth-century GermanBibliae pauperumin this manuscript. Historians of canon law have discovered several books of the early eleventh-centuryCollectio XII Partium. For historians of the barbarian lawsClm 19414contains an excellent witness to theLex Baiuwariorum. The purpose of this article is to bring to light another portion ofClm 19414, a florilegium on the ecclesiastical grades which should be of interest to historians of early medieval canon law, religious instruction, and sacramental theology.

Architecture and Western Civilization

1946 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-222
Author(s):  
John U. Nef
Keyword(s):  
Social Development ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
European History ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
Western European ◽  
Law Courts ◽  
The Mind

All aspects of the life of an age are interrelated, even when the interrelations express themselves in cross purposes and intellectual dissolution. Whether or not they embody forms and ideas worthy to be dignified by the name of architecture, the buildings of any period are an expression of it. They reflect, in varying degrees, its economic and social development, the enactments of its legislative bodies, the acts of its administrative officials, the decisions of its law courts, the character and course of its wars. They also express, again in varying degrees, its methods of education, its religious life, its natural science, its thought and its art. They are, to some extent, the expression of past traditions and works of the mind which have retained a hold on the life of the period or have been revived by its thinkers and artists, as classical antiquity has been revived again and again in Western European history since the eleventh century.

scholarly journals Theodore Gabras and His Seals

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 254-269
Author(s):  
Andrey Yu. Vinogradov ◽  
◽  
Victor N. Chkhaidze ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Early Stage

This publication examines the life of Theodore Gabras, one of the highest Byzantine dignitaries in the 1080–1090s. The early stage of his career is uncovered by a miniature from a manuscript residing in St. Petersburg which depicts a scene with ktetores, patrikios, and topoteretes Theodore Gabras and his wife Irene. The similarity of this miniature and an eleventh-century fresco in the Senty Church in Alania (modern Karachay-Cherkessia) indicates that Irene was probably of Alanic origin like his second wife. The account of Theodore Gabras appeared in Anna Komnene’s Alexiad and John Zonaras’ chronicle. In 1075, Theodore Gabras freed Chaldia from Seljuks, and when Alexios I Komnenos ascended to power and tried to make Theodore one of his supporters, he appointed the latter the doux of the theme of Chaldia. In the late eleventh century, Theodore Gabras was de facto independent ruler of Trebizond. In 1098, he died as a martyr for refusing to convert to Islam. Already in the twelfth century, Theodore Gabras was a locally venerated saint, and in the fourteenth century he was canonized. In the year of his death, Theodore held the title of sebastos, which was among the highest in late eleventh century Byzantium. This paper analyses four known seals of Theodore Gabras, which legends mentioned his title of sebastos and position of the doux (of Chaldia). The Appendix lists eighteen known seals from the eleventh and twelfth century which belonged to at least fifteen members of the aristocratic family of Gabrades.

Canon Law Aspects of the Eleventh Century Gregorian Reform Programme

1962 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. T. Gilchrist
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Reform Programme ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Factions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Gregorian Reform

The year 1048 is generally recognised as a decisive date in the history of the medieval papacy. In that year the emperor Henry III appointed Bruno, bishop of Toul, to succeed to the papal throne, who accepted only on condition that his election be confirmed by the people and clergy of Rome. The significance of this act depends on seeing it against previous elections. Despite often re-iterated claims to spiritual supremacy the papacy had for long been the tool of political factions, so much so that the period 801–1049 is regarded as the era of Caesaropapism. Reacting against this temporal domination the new pope Leo IX and his successors, especially Gregory VII (1073–85), laid the foundations of a different relationship (called by Ullman ‘the hierocratic system’) in which the temporal powers, under the leadership of the emperor, were subservient to the spiritual under the leadership of the papacy, a unity, so it was argued, for the commonweal of Christendom. By the fourteenth century the system had repeatedly proved itself unworkable, and the concept received its final blow from Marsiglio of Padua's Defensor pads. But, until that time, the concept with all its ramifications constituted both the object and the context of medieval political thought. The outlines of this thesis are by no means new, but what is only now becoming realised is the part played by the canonists in both determining the theory and advancing the arguments for its support.

scholarly journals And We cast upon his throne a mere body: A Historiographical Reading of Q. 38:34

2004 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.O. Klar
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
World History ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Islamic Historiography ◽  
Islamic Society

This paper focuses on Q. 38:34 from the perspective of early and medieval works of Islamic historiography and collections of tales of the prophets: the early tenth century works of cUmāra b. Wathīma and Ṭabarī, the eleventh century Tales of the Prophets by Thaclabī, the twelfth century folkloric collection of Kisāↄī, along with Ibn cAsākir's History ofDamascus, the thirteenth century world history by Ibn al-Athīr, and the fourteenth century historiographical work by Ibn Kathīr. These various works are viewed not as any particular stage in the development of a genre, but as variations on a (Qur'anic) theme, and the avenue of medieval historiographers and storytellers is utilised as a bridge to explore various possible interpretations of the Qur'anic passage. Historiographers and storytellers provide us with an illustration of how lessons of admonition implied in the Qur'anic text were perceived in medieval Islamic society. They also, as will become clear, provide a picture of Solomon that is consistent with the Qur'anic figure as a whole.

The Conquest in Historical Writing from the Late Thirteenth Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 173-208
Author(s):  
George Garnett
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old English ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of

Chapter 5 analyses three genres of historical writing about England in the later middle ages: histories of individual churches, universal histories, and histories of the kingdom. It confirms the provisional judgement reached in Chapter 4: that with respect to the Conquest and earlier England, historical writing fossilized. There were, however, exceptions, most of which could be categorized in the first genre. These are examined in great detail, and follow on from the treatment of the unusual episodes recorded during the thirteenth century at St Augustine’s, Canterbury and Burton Abbey which were considered in Chapter 4. The first is the problematic, neglected Historia Croylandensis attributed to (Pseudo-)Ingulf, which is for the most part a fabrication of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, but which masquerades as the work of the abbot at Crowland at the end of the eleventh century, and therefore as contemporaneous with the great post-Conquest histories of England. The second is the early fourteenth-century Lichfield Chronicle, written by Alan of Ashbourn. The third is a general history of England conventionally attributed to John Brompton, abbot of Jervaulx in the early fifteenth century, and perhaps written at the abbey. All three pay a great deal of attention to (different) twelfth-century compilations of Old English and immediately post-Conquest law. This unusual characteristic accounts for their exceptional interest in the Conquest. The chapter also includes a briefer discussion of the more conventional histories into which condensed earlier discussions of the Conquest were inserted.

A Deity’s Conquest of China

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barend J. ter Haar
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Northern China ◽  
Cultural Influence ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
Mind Set ◽  
Oral Stories

From the eleventh century onwards we see an increasing importance of supra-local cults for anthropomorphic deities all over China, including the worship of Lord Guan. In the conventional account of the spread of the cult, it is assumed that people were acquainted with the deity’s image from written narrative traditions, especially the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. This account derives in large part from the typical mind-set of literate elites (including modern scholars) that written texts trump all other forms of cultural influence. This chapter argues that the cult was transmitted all across northern China in particular in the form of oral stories that featured a miraculous event demonstrating Lord Guan’s power. It will be shown how the cult was already widespread by the first half of the early fourteenth century, long before the narrative traditions of the Three Kingdoms acquired their phenomenal popularity and were transformed into written texts.

The Uffington White Horse

Antiquity ◽  
1931 ◽  
Vol 5 (17) ◽  
pp. 37-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Piggott
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
North Slope ◽  
Corpus Christi ◽  
The North ◽  
White Horse ◽  
The Village

The White Horses cut in the turf of the Wessex Downs are familiar to most people who have wandered over the hills of western England, and many have no doubt paused to look at one or another of them and perhaps to ‘hazard a wide solution’ as to its antiquity or origin. But of the fifteen White Horses in Wiltshire and the adjoining counties, only one can be attributed to a date before the eighteenth century. This, the sire of them all, is cut on the north slope of the Berkshire Downs, above the village of Uffington, and gives its name to the fertile plain of mid-Berkshire-the Vale of the White Horse. Camden in writing of the Vale was wholly contemptuous of the Horse, saying that the inhabitants named the district ‘I wotte not from what shape of a white horse, imagined to appeare in a whitish chalky hill’. But despite Camden's scepticism, the Uffington White Horse very definitely exists, and has been cited as a landmark since the eleventh century, when the cartulary of Abingdon abbey records that one Godfric was possessed of Sparsholt juxta locum qui vulgo mons Albi Equi nuncupatur. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the Horse is several times mentioned in connexion with the tenure of lands near it. Mr T. H. Ravenhill has recently drawn attention to an early fourteenth century manuscript in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, entitled Tractatus de mirabizibus Britanniae, in which the White Horse is given second place among the Marvels, Stonehenge being first.

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