Robert de Courson and the Northern Reformers

On Hospitals ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 261-294
Author(s):  
Sethina Watson
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Hospital Reform ◽  
New Geography ◽  
Jacques De Vitry ◽  
Papal Legate

This chapter, the first study of hospital reform under papal legate Robert de Courson, offers a new picture of the legation in preparation for Lateran IV. Courson’s hospital decree is well-known from his councils of Paris (1213) and Rouen (1214). The chapter begins by exploring the origins of the decree, finding that it did not emerge from Courson’s own moral theology, nor from the Parisian theological circle of which he was a leading member. Documentary evidence reveals an earlier iteration of the same decree and unearths a lost first council under Courson, at Reims (1213). Further investigation reveals that the legation was not launched at Paris, as has always been assumed, but with a preaching tour of Flanders and Brabant in June 1213, followed by the council at Reims. The new geography offers a new source for the hospital reform, which is explored through the spread of hospital rules, westward out of Brabant, in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century. It argues, finally, that the reform was closely tied to the beguine movement and, especially, to Jacques de Vitry. After Courson’s council at Rouen (1214), it was not adopted at any other council, including Lateran IV.

scholarly journals Lying and Perjury in Medieval Practical Thought

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Corran
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Moral Ambiguity ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Moral Rules

Thought about lying and perjury became increasingly practical from the end of the twelfth century in Western Europe. At this time, a distinctive way of thinking about deception and false oaths appeared, which dealt with moral dilemmas and the application of moral rules in exceptional cases. It first emerged in the schools of Paris and Bologna, most notably in the Summa de Sacramentis et Animae Consiliis of Peter the Chanter. The tradition continued in pastoral writings of the thirteenth century, the practical moral questions addressed by theologians in universities in the second half of the thirteenth century, and in the Summae de Casibus Conscientiae of the late Middle Ages. This book argues that medieval practical ethics of this sort can usefully be described as casuistry—a term for the discipline of moral theology that became famous during the Counter-Reformation. This can be seen in the medieval origins of the concept of equivocation, an idea that was explored in medieval literature with varying degrees of moral ambiguity. From the turn of the thirteenth century, the concept was adopted by canon lawyers and theologians, as a means of exploring questions about exceptional situations in ethics. It has been assumed in the past that equivocation and the casuistry of lying was an academic discourse invented in the sixteenth century in order to evade moral obligations. This study reveals that casuistry in the Middle Ages was developed in ecclesiastical thought as part of an effort to explain how to follow moral rules in ambiguous and perplexing cases.

Living in France

2019 ◽  
pp. 97-140
Author(s):  
William Chester Jordan
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
French Society ◽  
Population Densities ◽  
Northern France ◽  
Louis Ix

This chapter determines just how successful Louis IX's conversion project had been. It first asks how many converted Muslims and pagans had actually settled in France. All the chroniclers and thirteenth-century biographers of Louis IX who write about the conversion project appear to imply that the overwhelming proportion of converts were from Islam. The chapter, however, presents a more complicated picture through the use of documentary evidence, and creates a rough estimate of the converted population in northern France during the thirteenth century. In addition, the chapter explores the other logistical concerns of settling these immigrant converts in France, covering their royal stipends and endowments, occupations, population densities, how well they assimilated into French society, and similar.

COMMERCE, CASH AND POLITICS: ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND THE BEHAVIOUR OF DEHEUBARTH'S WELSH LORDS IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 320-349
Author(s):  
Hugh Brodie
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
The Political ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Potential Influence ◽  
Archaeological Excavation ◽  
Political Behaviour

Although the thirteenth century was a period of significant economic development little has been written about the potential influence this may have had on the political behaviour of native elsh lords his is an important issue because whereas trade generally went with the grain of archer lords political loyalties elsh lords did not enjoy the same easy synergy ack of documentary evidence is a big problem but this article adds to the picture by focusing on eheubarth and the lords of ryslwyn in particular drawing on the results of archaeological excavation ttention has traditionally focused on the contest for territory but the article argues that commerce and the growing use of money had a significant role in shaping the political behaviour of these lords as they grasped opportunities to gain the resources necessary to maintain their position and sense of status

Edward the Confessor

2020 ◽  
pp. 132-172
Author(s):  
George Garnett
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Richard Ii ◽  
Magna Carta ◽  
English Law ◽  
Edward The Confessor ◽  
King John ◽  
Papal Legate

Chapter 4 shows how during John’s reign the baronial opposition appropriated the figure of the recently canonized Edward the Confessor, and used him as a standard against which to judge the current king. A key part was played by the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum, which compiled and in important respects elaborated and extended the compilations of Old English law codes made during the twelfth century. The Collection informed opposition thinking prior to the crisis which produced Magna Carta. The chapter also subjects to minute analysis two very unusual episodes recorded in thirteenth-century annals of provincial churches. First, the St Augustine’s, Canterbury account of Duke William’s having allowed the men of Kent, uniquely, to continue to use Old English Laws and customs. This episode is supposed to have taken place at Swanscombe Down in 1066. The second is the Burton Abbey account of what purports to be a dialogue between King John and a papal legate, allegedly in 1211. The nub of the dialogue is a disagreement about the role of Edward the Confessor. The chapter then shows how Henry III re-appropriated St Edward for the royal cause, but by emphasizing his saintliness rather than his alleged legislation. Henry focussed on the development of the cult, expressed in liturgical, artistic, and architectural terms, and focussed on the rebuilt Westminster Abbey. The chapter concludes with a brief envoi on the later medieval expression of the cult, especially under Richard II.

Thomas de Houghton: A Royal Carpenter of the Later Thirteenth Century

1950 ◽  
Vol 30 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 28-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
General Problem ◽  
Present Note ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Building Craftsmen ◽  
General Work

Much attention has been paid in recent years to the careers and conditions of service of some of the foremost English royal masons of the later medieval period. The craftsmen in wood, however, are on the whole less well known, partly, perhaps, because their medium is less durable than the mason's and therefore relatively fewer outstanding examples of their work have survived to witness to their skill. Carpenters of the capacity of Hugh Herland and timber work of the scale and quality of Westminster Hall roof are exceptions that prove the rule. There is, however, no lack of documentary evidence, the great bulk of it still unpublished, for the activities of many royal carpenters in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. But the details are scattered in works accounts and wardrobe books, Liberate and Memoranda rolls, and until these prolific sources are searched systematically for the almost limitless information they contain, the foundation for any authoritative general work on medieval English building craftsmen will scarcely have been laid. Such a search has yet to be undertaken. Meanwhile, the purpose of the present note is to illustrate the general problem and the nature of some of the available sources by collating facts about a single craftsman that have come to light more or less accidentally in the course of research directed to another objective.

The Typology of Early Medieval Shrines—A Previously Misidentified ‘Tomb-Shrine’ Panel from Winchester Cathedral

1990 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Crook
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Round Window ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
General Review ◽  
The Reformation

SummaryAfter a short, general review of medieval shrine types, a particular category is defined and examined: ‘tomb-shrines’: which were a form of shrine-base with round, window-like openings, constructed over the pre-existing grave of a saint. The archaeological and documentary evidence (including evidence from drawings and painted glass) for tomb-shrines is examined, and the few extant structures are described and discussed. In the light of these findings an important fragment of thirteenth-century Purbeck work from Winchester Cathedral is reassessed: it is argued that it derived from the tomb-of St Swithun. This stood on the site of the saint's original grave until the Reformation, and was a focus of veneration that was as important as the main reliquary behind the high altar within the cathedral itself.

scholarly journals "Catching the Eel" - Documentary Evidence for Concepts of the Arabic Book in the Middle Period

1970 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 224-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konrad Hirschler
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Main Criterion ◽  
Middle Period ◽  
Physical Shape ◽  
Library Catalogue

This article reflects on the concept of the ‘book’ in the Middle Period(fifth/eleventh to early tenth/sixteenth centuries). On the basis of a seventh/thirteenth-century library catalogue from Damascus it discusseshow contemporaries faced the challenge of defining what a book actuallywas. Focusing on the catalogue’s section on composite manuscripts(majāmīʿ) it suggests that this document’s writer employed two—ultimately irreconcilable—definitions of a book: the book as a discrete textual item (taking the title as the main criterion) and the book as defined by its physical shape. This writer’s cataloguing practices illustrate the fluid nature of the ‘book’ well beyond the Formative Period between the first/seventh and the fourth/tenth century.

scholarly journals Caskets of Silver and Ivory from Diverse Parts of the World: Strategic Collecting for an Iberian Treasury

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Therese Martin
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Visual Analysis ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Carbon 14 ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
The World ◽  
Multiple Meanings ◽  
Technical Studies

Abstract By focusing on San Isidoro de León in the central Middle Ages, this study investigates the multiple meanings behind the presence of objects from other cultures in a royal-monastic treasury, suggesting a reconsideration of the paths by which such pieces arrived. The development of the Isidoran collection is reexamined through a close analysis of a charter recording the 1063 donation together with early thirteenth-century writings by Lucas of Tuy. Documentary evidence is further weighed against visual analysis and technical studies of several key pieces from the medieval collection. In particular, the Beatitudes Casket (now at the Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid) is singled out to demonstrate how art historical, epigraphic, and historical research come together with carbon-14 testing, revealing that this object was assembled in a very different moment from those traditionally assumed.

Daughters of Rome: All One in Christ Jesus!

1990 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 101-115
Author(s):  
Brenda M. Bolton
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Jacques De Vitry ◽  
Do So

Jacques De Vitry (c. 160-1240) was a most perceptive and sympathetic observer of all that the religious life meant to women at the beginning of the thirteenth century. He thus took care to address some of his preaching to particular groups of these women. In his Sermones vulgares, probably set down at some time after 1228, he put forward messages appropriate to each of these groups. He was uniquely qualified to do so.

Walter, Archdeacon of London, and the “Historia Occidentalis” of Jacques de Vitry

1981 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-151
Author(s):  
Alfred J. Andrea
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
To Come ◽  
Full Relief ◽  
Jacques De Vitry ◽  
Christian Society

Jacques de Vitry's Historia Occidentalis is one of the more remarkable and informative studies of contemporary western Christendom to come out of the thirteenth century. As numerous commentators have pointed out, it is unmistakably the product of the spiritual-intellectual school of Master Peter the Chanter of Paris, who inspired a generation of scholars and churchmen to marry popular preaching with the theology of the schools. Written early in the third decade of the thirteenth century, the Historia Occidentalis analyzes the moral state of the western church and juxtaposes in full relief the modes of both degeneracy and religious renewal within that society. Its thesis is that despite all the evils of the day, God is still working in and through the various elements of Christian society to sanctify his people; and these Christian people, for all of their failings, continue to share in the spiritual regeneration of Providence. The Historia Occidentalis has been characterized by one modern historian as “pulpit history.”

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