The Angel, the Confessor, and the Anchoress

2021 ◽  
pp. 105-136
Author(s):  
Joshua S. Easterling
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Ancrene Wisse ◽  
The Many

Chapter 4 examines thirteenth- and fourteenth-century guidance texts for anchoresses, including Ancrene Wisse and Richard Rolle’s The Form of Living, as well as the Latin vita of Margaret the Lame (d. 1250), anchoress of Magdeburg. In these writings, as elsewhere, the Annunciation (Luke 1:26–38) functions as a remarkable and versatile textual resource that, with its dazzling array of metaphors, came to represent the routinely conflict-ridden relationship between angels, female penitents, and confessors. As visionary anchoresses faced insistent calls for subordination, their angelic capacity to resemble their confessors and to appropriate their spiritual knowledge and discernment undermined those same calls. I argue that these anchoritic writings, and even the many narratives of anchorites from Caesarius of Heisterbach’s thirteenth-century Dialogue of Miracles, draw on the Annunciation in negotiating the uneasy relations between personal inspiration and the imperatives of subordination.

scholarly journals Christa, Christus: Christ’s Transgressive, Gendered Flesh in Late Medieval European Literature

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kathryn Webb
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Woman ◽  
The Body ◽  
Christian Women ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
The Many ◽  
Canonical Texts

This thesis examines responses to Christ’s gendered flesh that are located not in canonical literary texts or traditional saints’ lives, but in the sermons, visions and confessions of devout and orthodox men and women, whose orthodoxy, upon closer examination, is nevertheless decidedly unorthodox. In it, using a series of test cases, I argue that closer scrutiny of these non-canonical texts thus offers a more nuanced understanding of late-medieval notions of interplay between gender, sexuality and the divine than has been considered within previous scholarship. Beginning with the thirteenth-century Liber Specialis of Mechthild of Hackeborn (d. 1298), I demonstrate that, although remaining within the bounds of orthodox scripture and exegesis, the Saxon author nevertheless presents her readers with a Christ whose identity as saviour is predicated on his elevation of the female and the fleshly, and whose symbiotic, fluid relationship with Mechthild implicates her as co-redeemer through a divine, glorious, joyful, and uniquely feminine fecundity. I follow this with a detailed close analysis of the early fourteenth-century transcript of a young woman’s heresy trial in southern France, in which she confesses to equating Christ’s body with the ‘filth’ of the afterbirth, a concept so awful to her that she had been unable to believe in God or the transubstantiation. As I argue, however, Auda Fabri, experiences a species of revelation not unlike other orthodox female mystics, but, lacking their communities of discourse, must remain in a state of abjection from which capitulation to androcentric authority alone can save her. My third case-study is a sermon by the fourteenth-century English priest, John Mirk, in which Christ condemns an unconfessed merchant to Hell through the clotted blood from his feminised side-wound, which he casts at the dying man. I argue that, in attempting to uphold orthodox belief and practices, Mirk reveals a profound anxiety regarding late-medieval beliefs regarding the body and feminised flesh of Christ, whose appearance Mirk eventually demonises. Finally, to initiate my set of conclusions, I focus briefly on a largely unknown thirteenth-century Hebrew text, in which a Jewish woman in Sicily seems to give birth to a messianic figure from her body, which drips honey and oil. The woman’s ecstasy, resonant of the experiences of Christian women mystics like Mechthild, suggests some sort of commonality between the Sicilian Jewish and Christian female communities in pre-plague Europe. Ultimately, then, this thesis argues for – and contributes to – the need for far wider recognition of the importance of non-canonical and more generically varied source material and its closer scrutiny to gain better understanding of the deeply gendered complexities attached to the many labile beliefs concerning Christ’s flesh and blood during the Middle Ages.

Anthology of texts

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven N. Dworkin
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Don Juan ◽  
Alfonso X ◽  
Conde Lucanor ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
General Estoria

This short anthology contains extracts from three Castilian prose texts, one from the second half of the thirteenth century (General estoria IV of Alfonso X the Wise), one from the first half of the fourteenth century (El conde Lucanor of don Juan Manuel), and one from near the mid-point of the fifteenth century (Atalaya de las corónicas of Alfonso Martínez de Toledo, Arcipreste de Talavera). These passages illustrate in context many of the phonological, orthographic, morphological, syntactic, and lexical features of medieval Hispano-Romance described in the body of this book. A linguistic commentary discussing relevant forms and constructions, as well as the meaning of lexical items no longer used or employed with different meanings in modern Spanish, with cross references to the appropriate sections in the five main chapters, accompanies each selection.

scholarly journals The birth of oppida: small towns in Hungary in the Angevin period

Urban History ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Katalin Szende
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Development Strategies ◽  
Private Landowners ◽  
Private Lands ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
The Right ◽  
Mendicant Orders ◽  
Century Development

Abstract This article revisits the origins of small towns in medieval Hungary from the perspective of their owners and seigneurs. The fourteenth-century development of small towns on the estates of private landowners resulted from the coincidence of several factors. Among these, the article considers the intersection of royal and private interests. The aristocrats’ concern to endow their estate centres with privileges or attract new settlers to their lands was dependent on royal approval; likewise, the right to hold annual fairs had to be granted by the kings, and one had to be a loyal retainer to be worthy of these grants. The royal model of supporting the mendicant orders, which were gaining ground in Hungary from the thirteenth century onwards, added a further dimension to the overlords’ development strategies. This shows that royal influence, directly or indirectly, had a major impact on the development of towns on private lands in the Angevin period (1301–87).

scholarly journals Plague and the Fall of Baghdad (1258)

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-177
Author(s):  
Nahyan Fancy ◽  
Monica H. Green
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Epidemic Disease ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
Abbasid Caliphate ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
A Minor

AbstractThe recent suggestion that the late medieval Eurasian plague pandemic, the Black Death, had its origins in the thirteenth century rather than the fourteenth century has brought new scrutiny to texts reporting ‘epidemics’ in the earlier period. Evidence both from Song China and Iran suggests that plague was involved in major sieges laid by the Mongols between the 1210s and the 1250s, including the siege of Baghdad in 1258 which resulted in the fall of the Abbasid caliphate. In fact, re-examination of multiple historical accounts in the two centuries after the siege of Baghdad shows that the role of epidemic disease in the Mongol attacks was commonly known among chroniclers in Syria and Egypt, raising the question why these outbreaks have been overlooked in modern historiography of plague. The present study looks in detail at the evidence in Arabic sources for disease outbreaks after the siege of Baghdad in Iraq and its surrounding regions. We find subtle factors in the documentary record to explain why, even though plague received new scrutiny from physicians in the period, it remained a minor feature in stories about the Mongol invasion of western Asia. In contemporary understandings of the genesis of epidemics, the Mongols were not seen to have brought plague to Baghdad; they caused plague to arise by their rampant destruction. When an even bigger wave of plague struck the Islamic world in the fourteenth century, no association was made with the thirteenth-century episode. Rather, plague was now associated with the Mongol world as a whole.

The Establishment of the Mathematical Bookshelf of the Medieval Hebrew Scholar: Translations and Translators

1997 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 431-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony LÉvy
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Major Part ◽  
Western Mediterranean ◽  
Mathematical Activity ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Original Works ◽  
Wide Readership ◽  
Medieval Hebrew

The ArgumentThe major part of the mathematical “classics” in Hebrew were translated from Arabic between the second third of the thirteenth century and the first third of the fourteenth century, within the northern littoral of the western Mediterranean. This movement occurred after the original works by Abraham bar Hiyya and Abraham ibn Ezra became available to a wide readership. The translations were intended for a restricted audience — the scholarly readership involved in and dealing with the theoretical sciences. In some cases the translators themselves were professional scientists (e.g., Jacob ben Makhir); in other cases they were, so to speak, professional translators, dealing as well with philosophy, medicine, and other works in Arabic.In aketshing this portrait of the beginning of Herbrew scholarly mathematics, my aim has been to contribute to a better understanding of mathematical activity as such among Jewish communities during this period.

Some Thoughts About Genre in Old Javanese Literature

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter John Worsley
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Poetic Form ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Poetic Work

Robson in 1983 and 1988 in his reconsideration of the poetics of kakawin epics and Javanese philology drew readers’ attention to the importance of genre for the history of ancient Javanese literature. Aoyama in his study of the kakawin Sutasoma in 1992, making judicious use of Hans Jauss’s concept of “horizon of expectation”, offered the first systematic discussion of the genre of Old Javanese literary works. The present essay offers a commentary on the terms which mpu Monaguna and mpu Prapañca, authors of the thirteenth century epic kakawin Sumanasāntaka and the fourteenth century Deśawarṇana, themselves, employ to refer to the generic characteristics of their poems. Mpu Monaguna referred to his epic poem as a narrative work (kathā), written in a prakṛt, Old Javanese, and rendered in the poetic form of a kakawin and finally as a ritual act intended to enable the poet to achieve apotheosis with his tutelary deity and his poem to be the means of transforming the world, in particular to ensure the wellbeing of the readers, listeners, copyists and those who possessed copies of his poetic work. Mpu Prapañca described his Deśawarṇana differently. Also written in Old Javanese and in the poetic form of a kakawin—he refers to his work variously as a narrative work (kathā), a chronicle (śakakāla or śakābda), a praise poem (kastawan) and also as a ritual act designed to enable the author in an ecstatic state of rapture (alangö), and filled with the power and omniscience of his tutelary deity, to ensure the continued prosperity of the realm of Majapahit and to secure the rule of his king Rājasanagara. The essay considers each of these literary categories.

Materiality, Documentary Authority, and the Circulation of the Katherine Group

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-50
Author(s):  
Jenny C. Bledsoe
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
The West ◽  
Manuscript Culture ◽  
Ancrene Wisse ◽  
Textual Community ◽  
West Midlands ◽  
Katherine Group

Written in the decades before Ancrene Wisse, the Early Middle English hagiographies of the Katherine Group depict three virgin martyrs, Katherine, Margaret, and Juliana. Using touch and eyewitness accounts as measures of proof, the legend equates St. Margaret’s body with the textual corpus inscribed on animal hide. The manuscript’s documentary authority is verified through proximity to the holy body of the saint, and, in a similarly body-centred (and precarious) authority, the anchoress functions as the centre of an ephemeral textual community in the early thirteenth century. The Katherine Group narratives and codicological evidence indicate an anchoritic-lay literary culture operating adjacent to clerical manuscript culture, consistent with Catherine Innes-Parker’s theory about co-existing informal and formal vernacular textual cultures in the West Midlands. This “informal,” or ephemeral, textual community shaped lay literacy and manuscript use, including perceptions about the documentary authority of vernacular textual artifacts.

LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND POWER IN GUILLEM DE TORROELLA’S LA FAULA

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
JILL ROSS
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
French Language ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Appropriation ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
The Third ◽  
Cultural Power

This article examines the role of French language and culture in the fourteenth-century Arthurian text, La Faula, by the Mallorcan, Guillem de Torroella. Reading the appropriation of French language and literary models through the lens of earlier thirteenth-century Occitan resistance to French political and cultural hegemony, La Faula’s use of French dialogue becomes significant in light of the political tensions in the third quarter of the fourteenth century that saw the conquest of the Kingdom of Mallorca by that of Catalonia-Aragon and the subsequent imposition of Catalano-Aragonese political and cultural power. La Faula’s clear intertextual debt to French literary models and its simultaneous ambivalence about the authority and reliability of those models makes French language into a space for the exploration of the dynamics of cultural appropriation and political accommodation that were constitutive of late fourteenth-century Mallorca.

scholarly journals The Parish Clergy of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: The Alexander Prize Essay, 1911–12

1912 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 89-128
Author(s):  
H. G. Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Black Death ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
Parish Clergy ◽  
Parish Priests ◽  
Prize Essay ◽  
The Middle Ages

Until the thirteenth century records touching the parish clergy are scanty, but thereafter they increase in bulk and, with the fourteenth century, there exist, side by side, a number of literary works which afford more than a passing glance at their lives and deeds. The parish priests and clerks of these centuries were not perhaps typical of the mediaeval period, since no century or centuries will afford a type of any class or institution which will be true for the whole of the Middle Ages; and it is possible that the tenthcentury parish and its people resembled the parish and people of the fourteenth century as little—or as much—as the Elizabethan parish resembled the parish of the present day. The changes that affected so profoundly the organisation of the manor during the course of the Middle Ages did not leave its counterpart, the parish, unaltered; and the same economic forces that helped to make the villein a copyholder and serfdom an anachronism, helped also to raise the chaplain's wages from five to eight marks within thirty years of the Black Death. But although the

Een nieuw fragment van handschrift A van de Roman der Lorreinen (Michigan State University, Criminology Collection, XX KJC7690.A48 1687)

2021 ◽  
Vol 137 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-121
Author(s):  
Remco Sleiderink ◽  
Ben van der Have
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Old French ◽  
Michigan State University ◽  
State University ◽  
Chanson De Geste ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Binding Material ◽  
The Many

Abstract Among the many books in Michigan State University’s Criminology Collection is a Corpus juris militaris, published in Germany in 1687. Its binding contains four small parchment strips with medieval Dutch verses. Although the strips are still attached in the spine, the verses can be identified as belonging to the Roman der Lorreinen, and more specifically as remnants of manuscript A, written in the duchy of Brabant in the second quarter of the fourteenth century. Manuscript A originally must have consisted of over 400 leaves, containing more than 150.000 verses (note: there are no complete manuscripts of the Roman der Lorreinen). Only 7% of manuscript A has been preserved in several European libraries, mainly in Germany. The new fragment suggests that manuscript A was used as binding material not earlier than the end of the seventeenth century (after 1687). The newly found verses are from the first part of the Roman der Lorreinen, which was an adaptation of the Old French chanson de geste Garin le Loherenc. This article offers a first edition and study of the verses, comparing them to the Old French counterparts. This comparison offers additional evidence for the earlier hypothesis that manuscript A contained the same adaptation of Garin le Loherenc as the fragmentary manuscripts B and C.

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