The Gender of the Religious: Wo/Men and the Invention of Monasticism

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albrecht Diem
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Dominant Male ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
The Common ◽  
Female Monasticism ◽  
Common Perception

This article analyzes the different textual techniques that, by marginalizing female religious life, have created the common perception that female monasticism was a mere variant of a dominant male monastic model. As a counter to that common perception, I examine what female and male monasticism shared in the early middle ages, and I ask to what extent we can regard medieval monastic life as a sequence of unisex experiments, that is, experiments of communal religious life that were not predominantly determined by the gender of practitioners. I then show that many central aspects of medieval monasticism were more rooted in concepts derived from female religious life than from male traditions, especially male traditions derived from desert eremeticism. Figuratively spoken, the first “medieval monk” may have been a nun.

Rome’s orbit

2018 ◽  
pp. 59-87
Author(s):  
Kriston R. Rennie
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Gravitational Pull

A monastery’s relationship with Rome raises fundamental questions about its origins and nature. Exemption privileges form an important part of this story – a connecting link between the centre in Rome and the Christian periphery. This chapter questions the monastery’s impetus for seeking special exemption from Rome by examining the practice’s development from the papal perspective. It seeks to understand the gravitational pull of ‘Rome’s orbit’, which reveals the precedent, pragmatism, and vision of early medieval popes in the organization and governance of religious life. Formulating the popes’ attitude towards, and involvement in, western monasteries, this chapter explains why the granting of monastic exemptions became so pronounced a feature of papal government in the early Middle Ages.

The Making of the Frisian Clay Landscape 800–1600

2017 ◽  
Vol 77 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 88-116
Author(s):  
Philippus H. Breuker
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Natural Streams ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Middle Ages

The Frisian Clay area consists of a northern part, the Bouwhoek (‘arable corner’), and a southern and older part, the Greidhoek (‘grassland corner’). In both areas, the terpen are the original areas of residence, containing the farms. The terpen formed hamlets which during the Middle Ages expanded to villages. In the Greidhoek, the corresponding land stretched in all directions, whereas in the Bouwhoek, it stretched in elongated parcels on either side. The land in the Greidhoek was bordered by natural streams, slenken, whereas the Bouwhoek land was delimited by dug maren, dating from the early Middle Ages. The Greidhoek also has dug waters, the leien, mainly dating to the early and high Middle Ages. The land of a hamlet was called hemrik: some of it was the fixed property of the farms (the staten), whereas the land further afield was used commonly. Later, hemrik changed its meaning and came to indicate only the common land. The word then coincided with meenschar and fell into disuse. From 1200 the meenscharren became ever smaller in size due to their continuous assignment to farms, until they had nearly all been divided up in the sixteenth century.

Slavery

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally McKee
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Sexual Exploitation ◽  
Physical Appearance ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Domestic Servants ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Sexual Service ◽  
The Common ◽  
Female Slaves

The potential for sexual service played a key role in the changing demand for slaves in medieval Europe. From the early Middle Ages on, the demand for male slaves declined while the market for female slaves rose. Although male and female slaves were vulnerable to sexual exploitation, only enslaved women's sexual service was tacitly sanctioned in the parts of Christian Europe where slavery was practiced. Their suitability for sexual service factored into their prices, in contrast to free domestic servants, whose wages were not influenced by their physical appearance. As a consequence of the common practice of slaves' sexual service in the cities where slavery was still practiced, the presence of children of slaves and masters in households gave rise to social pressures that diminished the demand for slaves within European households at the same time that slavery in European colonies was on the rise.

scholarly journals Myths of the state in the West European Middle Ages

1972 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 160-169
Author(s):  
Lennart Ejerfeldt
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Criminal Procedure ◽  
The State ◽  
Common Origin ◽  
Striking Feature ◽  
The West ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Self Help ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Right

In the first centuries of the barbarian kingdoms the most striking feature is the gens, the tribe, as the principle of unity, even if the ethnic homogeneity often was missing. The myth of the Germanic State of the early Middle Ages was in the first place a myth of the common origin of the gens.These histories of tribal origins have some times been influenced by powerful Ancient literary patterns, especially the Trojan myth of Virgil. But the concern of presenting the origin of the gens in mythical form is no doubt Germanic. And it seems probable that the tribal origins are more ancient than the genealogies of royal families with alleged divine ancestors. The kingship among the Germanic tribes was secondary in relation to the tribe. The king was rex Francorum; the king of a certain country or geographic territory is a later conception. The power comes from below; the king is an exponent of the tribe. All the Germanic words for "king" are derivations from terms for "kin, people, tribe." The limitation of the power of the king is also indicated by institutions like the right to resistence, the possibility to depose the king, the participation by all free men in the judicial and criminal procedure through self-help and blood feud.

Religious life of Crimea in the early Middle Ages

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-29
Author(s):  
A. Mineeva
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The Crimea ◽  
History Of

The paper describes a brief history of the Crimean ethnic groups, describing their religion and the development of culture and Christianity in the Crimea during the early middle Ages.

The Western Church and Astrology during the Early Middle Ages

1941 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 251-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. L. W. Laistner
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The Common ◽  
Preliminary Study

It is now nearly forty years ago that two scholars independently drew attention to Ambrosiaster's attacks on the paganism of his age. Cumont in a brilliant article, La polémique de l'Ambrosiaster contre les paiens, analyzed and discussed Quaestio CXIIII, Adversus paganos, and Quaestio CXV, De fato, of the writer whose identity must still be regarded as uncertain. The purpose of Souter's admirable monograph, A study of Ambrosiaster, was quite different. Primarily he was concerned to prove once and for all that the pseudo-Augustinian Quaestiones veteris et novi testamenti CXXVII were composed by the same author as the highly individual commentary on the thirteen epistles of St. Paul included among the works of Ambrose. The common authorship of the two works is now universally accepted. Souter's book was also a preliminary study for his definitive edition of the Quaestiones which appeared some years later in the Vienna Corpus.

ISLAM AND TOLERANCE: LOOKING THROUGH THE PRISM OF CENTURIES

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 4-8
Author(s):  
Abror A. Odilov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The Social ◽  
Index Terms ◽  
The Middle Ages

This article analyzes issues related to religious life in Central Asia, specifically in the Movarounnahr and Khorasan regions, from the early Middle Ages to the Mongol invasion. The author describes the spread of Islam in the region, its causes, the fact that the principle of tolerance towards other religions in Islam has become an integral part of the social life. It is also the theory that the land of Movarounnahr was the place where tolerance emerged in the Middle Ages Index Terms: Islam, religion, Movarounnahr, Khorasan, tolerance, Christianity, Judaism, territory, other religions, mosque, church, temple

THE FATE OF RURAL TEMPLES IN LATE ANTIQUITY AND THE CHRISTIANISATION OF THE COUNTRYSIDE

2004 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Béatrice Caseau
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Rural Landscape ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
Early Byzantine

Throughout the Roman period the countryside was a landscape of sacred sites both monumental and natural. Rural temples were numerous and essential to the religious life of peasants and landowners. The fate of rural temples reveals something of the conflicting religious beliefs that were present in the rural landscape until the 6th c. Rural temples were among the first temples to be destroyed on some Christian estates, but in other places their power of attraction remained strong until the Early Middle Ages, even when they were in ruins. In the Early Byzantine period, however, temples were too visible, causing some Christians to lead expeditions against them. Convinced pagans searched for other, more remote, cult places to where they could maintain some form of pagan practice. These included inner sanctuaries inside their homes, or remote natural sites. Temple traditions were lost as a result.

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