Merovingian Meditations on Jesus

2020 ◽  
pp. 1070-1105
Author(s):  
Lynda Coon
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Lives Of Saints ◽  
External Influences ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Biblical Texts

The final chapter of this volume explores the conversation on Jesus held between material and textual sources, where monumental works of sculpture extend salvific themes found in the lives of saints and the verses of poets. Merovingian meditations on Jesus are multivocal, reflecting the cross-cultural rhythms of a world open to and receptive of external influences, whether originating in classical or biblical texts or hailing from Mediterranean or Northern lands. In order to prove this hypothesis on the Merovingian body and the embodied savior, three works of sculpture produced during the early Middle Ages serve as sounding boards for Jesus’ earthly ministry as enacted by human players: the crucified savior featured on the seventh-century Moselkern Stele; the eighth-century Hypogée des Dunes’s sculpted relief of the two thieves crucified along with Jesus; and the so-called Niederdollendorf “Christ,” carved most likely in the seventh century. Saintly actors, such as Radegund of Poitiers (d. 587), animate three themes expressed in the sculpted sources respectively: (1) absence, (2) torture, and (3) light. The three subjects—light, torture, and absence—all point to strategies of integrating the realm of humanity within the celestial spheres, and each motif tracks different styles of meditating on Merovingian Jesus.

The Bishop and the Word: Isidore of Seville and the Production of Meaning

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dolores Castro
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Isidore Of Seville ◽  
Biblical Texts

This chapter examines modes of exercising power in the early Middle Ages, focusing on the figure of the bishop in the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo. It explores several aspects of the study and interpretation of the Bible during that period, with the aim of establishing the bishop’s role in the task of interpreting, communicating, and controlling the sacred message. The chapter focuses on the work of Isidore of Seville, bishop c. 600–636. It examines methods of reading, interpreting, and teaching biblical texts adopted and elaborated in Isidorian writings in order to assess the scope of the bishop’s authority, especially his role in the production of meaning and the construction of truth – two processes on which seventh-century episcopal power rested.

The Fate of Small Towns, Hilltop Settlements, and Elite Residences in Merovingian-Period Gaul

2020 ◽  
pp. 610-640
Author(s):  
Luc Bourgeois
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Power Networks ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The Many

The study of places of power in the Merovingian realm has long been focused on cities, monasteries, and royal palaces. Recent archaeological research has led to the emergence of other categories. Four of them are addressed in this chapter. These include the capitals of fallen cities, which continue to mark the landscape in one way or another. Similarly, the fate of small Roman towns during the early Middle Ages shows that most of them continued to host a variety of secular and ecclesiastical powers. In addition, from the fourth century onward, large hilltop fortified settlements multiplied anew. They complemented earlier networks of authority, whether elite residences, artisan communities, or real towns. Finally, from the seventh century onward, the great aristocratic villas of late antiquity were transformed into settlements organized around one or more courtyards and supplemented by funerary and religious structures. The evolution of political spaces and lifestyles explains both the ruptures in power networks that occurred during the Merovingian epoch and the many continuities that can be seen in the four kinds of places studied in this chapter that were marked by these developments.

The Julian Calendar and the Problem of the Equinoxes in the Early Middle Ages

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Philipp E. Nothaft
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Medieval Literature ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Observational Methods ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Julian Calendar ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Solar Astronomy

This chapter familiarizes readers with the ancient back-story of the Julian calendar and describes how one of the central problems inherent in this calendar—the drift of the equinoxes and solstices caused by an overestimation of the length of the tropical year—manifested itself in medieval literature until the end of the eleventh century. It also explores how the development of the computus genre in seventh-century Ireland was instrumental in preserving knowledge of the Western calendar’s Roman-pagan roots. The final two sections show how the existence of diverging traditions for the dates of the equinoxes and solstices in the Julian calendar created an important context for the practice of solar astronomy in early medieval Europe, which included the use of observational methods.

Rural Life and Work in Northern Gaul During the Early Middle ages

2020 ◽  
pp. 692-717
Author(s):  
Edith Peytremann
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Rural Life ◽  
Agricultural Activity ◽  
Rural Settlements ◽  
Human Occupation ◽  
Land Distribution

The study of the Merovingian landscape allows us to distinguish two important steps in the transformation of the countryside that followed the end of the Roman Empire. The first, which extended from the end of the fifth to the mid-seventh century, attests to three different forms of land use in the countryside transformed by human occupation. It consisted of dispersed habitations that were sometimes located in the immediate proximity of an ancient settlement, a semi-grouped settlement in a loose organization, and finally a more densely organized grouped settlement. This first stage marked the return to construction largely in wood and earth, with characteristic architectural types such as sunken huts. Beyond agricultural activity, rural settlements provide evidence of artisanal activity such as metallurgy. Many changes characterized the second developmental stage (mid-seventh to late eighth century), which marked the end of antiquity. Land distribution was modified, and grouped habitation became the predominant form of settlement. Settlements were organized more clearly, and sometimes sections were specially reserved for artisanal or agricultural activities. It is during this period that religious structures and/or funerary structures were created among the settlements and cemeteries. Some modifications in construction were equally perceptible. The organization of artisanal and agricultural production also saw important changes.

The Church and the Law in the Early Middle Ages

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 7-35
Author(s):  
Rosamond McKitterick
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Procedural Knowledge ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval Manuscript ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Function

Two case studies from eighth-century Rome, recorded in the early medieval history of the popes known as the Liber pontificalis, serve to introduce both the problems of the relations between secular or public and ecclesiastical or canon law in early medieval Rome and the development of early medieval canon law more generally. The Synod of Rome in 769 was convened by Pope Stephen III some months after his election in order to justify the deposition of his immediate predecessor, Pope Constantine II (767–8). Stephen's successor, Pope Hadrian, subsequently presided over a murder investigation involving Stephen's supporters. The murders and the legal process they precipitated form the bulk of the discussion. The article explores the immediate implications of both the murders and the convening of the Synod of Rome, together with the references to law-making and decree-giving by the pope embedded in the historical narrative of the Liber pontificalis, as well as the possible role of the Liber pontificalis itself in bolstering the imaginative and historical understanding of papal and synodal authority. The wider legal or procedural knowledge invoked and the development of both canon law and papal authority in the early Middle Ages are addressed. The general categories within which most scholars have been working hitherto mask the questions about the complicated and still insufficiently understood status and function of early medieval manuscript compilations of secular and canon law, and about the authority and applicability of the texts they contain.

“Touch No Unclean Thing”: Apocalyptic Expressions of Ascetic Spirituality in the Early Middle Ages

1997 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 240-251
Author(s):  
Douglas W. Lumsden
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
The Church ◽  
Apocalypse Of John ◽  
Christian History

The earliest Latin commentaries on the Apocalypse of John interpret this strange and powerful text as a revelation of the Christian community's drama as it fulfills the conditions leading to its glorious triumph in the final chapter of God's temporal plan. According to early Latin exegetes, one event—the opening of the seven seals, described in Apocalypse 6:1 through 8:1—represents a microcosm of the whole, revealing the entire purpose for the church's historical development. Throughout the first millennium of Christian history, biblical authorities analyzing the account of the seven seals for its underlying message concluded that God causes history to unfold and mature in order to allow the assembly of the elect to separate itself from its false brethren within the church. Processed and purified by history, the elect will exist in a state of readiness for their ascension into eternity.

Signs of Salvation: The Evolution of Stigmatic Spirituality Before Francis of Assisi

2013 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-68
Author(s):  
Carolyn Muessig
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
The Face ◽  
Biblical Commentaries ◽  
The Ideal

Francis of Assisi's reported reception of the stigmata on Mount La Verna in 1224 is widely held to be the first documented account of an individual miraculously and physically receiving the wounds of Christ. The appearance of this miracle, however, in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, is not as unexpected as it first seems. Interpretations of Galatians 6:17—“I bear the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ in my body”—had been circulating in biblical commentaries since the early Middle Ages. These works posited that clerics bore metaphorical and sometimes physical wounds(stigmata)as marks of persecution, while spreading the teaching of Christ in the face of resistance. By the seventh century, the meaning of Galatians 6:17 had been appropriated by bishops and priests as a sign or mark of Christ that they received invisibly at their ordination, and sometimes visibly upon their death. In the eleventh century, Peter Damian articulated a stigmatic spirituality that saw the ideal priest, monk, and nun as bearers of Christ's wounds, a status achieved through the swearing of vows and the practice of severe penance. By the early twelfth century, crusaders were said to bear the marks of the Passion in death and even sometimes as they entered into battle. By the early thirteenth century, “bearing the stigmata” was a pious superlative appropriated by a few devout members of the laity who interpreted Galatian 6:17 in a most literal manner. Thus, this article considers how the conception of “bearing the stigmata” developed in medieval Europe from its treatment in early Latin patristic commentaries to its visceral portrayal by the laity in the thirteenth century.

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