Housing and Honouring the Saints: English Medieval Architecture and the Cult of Relics

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-39
Author(s):  
John Maddison
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
New Work ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Medieval Architecture ◽  
Architectural Language ◽  
Cult Of Saints ◽  
Symbolic Content ◽  
Architectural Detail ◽  
Access Security

This article considers the architecture of English medieval churches and how it was affected by its function as a setting for the cult of saints. It looks at the impression which the patrons of medieval buildings were hoping to make on the minds and spirits of those who visited them. It is not concerned so much with the functional planning issues surrounding access, security, and the management of pilgrims as it is with the symbolic content of those larger spaces within which the shrine and its immediate surroundings are contained and visually celebrated. Plans, forms, and decoration carrying specific associations with prestigious buildings in Rome are considered in relation to some early medieval buildings. The new work at Canterbury, following the fire of 1174, created a new and influential architectural language adopted by other cathedrals in which aspects of the saint could be signaled by architectural detail and decoration. The article ends with the thirteenth-century Chapel of the Nine Altars at Durham as a setting for the shrine of Cuthbert.

Bearing the Stigmata

2020 ◽  
pp. 23-59
Author(s):  
Carolyn Muessig
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Francis Of Assisi

Chapter 1 traces the patristic and early medieval exegesis of Galatians 6:17. It assesses how language and imagery were appropriated and developed by eleventh- and twelfth-century monastic theologians (especially Peter Damian) into a soteriological system of penance and redemption that focused on Christ’s wounds. Significantly, it looks at examples of stigmatization before Francis of Assisi. These cases vary in their form; they gradually move from stigmata being almost exclusively associated with the sacerdotal order in the early Middle Ages to being linked to the laity by the early thirteenth century as with the cases of Peter the Conversus and Mary of Oignies.

The Still Undiscovered Origin of Portolan Charts

1983 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. C. Freiesleben
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Board Ship ◽  
Modern Form

The term ‘portolan chart’ first occurs in Italy in the thirteenth century, not long after this aid to navigation came into general use on board ship. The Italian word portolano, however, can best be translated as ‘pilot book’ or ‘sailing directions’, a different aid to navigation of which one example survives from the fourth century b.c., and pilot books are indeed still published in modern form by all seafaring nations. References by Herodotus in the History make it probable that such documents already existed in his time, and under the name of periplus they continued up to the sixth century a.d.; after which they do not appear again until the golden age of navigation in Italy and Catalonia in the late Middle Ages, apart from some much simpler early medieval types. The portolano or periplus is a description of ports, with information required by the navigator concerning anchorages, dangers threatening landfall and the winds and weather over wider areas. Commercial information was sometimes included, obviously also a matter of interest to the mariner who could read, though it may be doubted if many of them then could.Italian portolan charts exist from almost the same period as the portolani, both of them denoted by the same word compasso, but while the pilot books have their modern successors the charts were only produced up to the beginning of the seventeenth century and are not really the forerunners of the modern sea chart.

scholarly journals The Vida of Queen Fredegund in Tote listoire de France: Vernacular Translation and Genre in Thirteenth-Century French and Occitan Literature

2017 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Léglu
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Vernacular Literature ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
Old Occitan ◽  
Occitan Literature ◽  
Historical Writings

This article examines a translation into a hybrid French-Occitan vernacular of an eighth-century historical narrative of adultery, treason and murder. It compares this to the narrative structures and content of the troubadour vidas and razos, which were created in the same period and regions as the translation. The aim is to uncover a possible dialogue between early medieval narrative historiography and the emergence of Old Occitan narrative in prose. In so doing, this enquiry intends to develop further the question of the importance of translation to medieval vernacular literature and historical writings

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.

Early Medieval Bone Spoons from Winchester

1979 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 375-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Collis ◽  
Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Form Part ◽  
Late Roman

SummaryWinchester has produced six bone spatulate spoons decorated with Ringerike–Winchester style engravings which are, in some cases, dated by their contexts to the eleventh century. The range of motifs and the style of execution suggest they are the work of an individual craftsman. They form part of a sequence of spoons spanning the period from the late Roman to the thirteenth century, but unlike the examples in more precious substances, which have primarily Christian ecclesiastical associations, the wooden and bone spoons of the eleventh century seem, at least from their contexts, to be domestic.

High Victorian Gothic and the Architecture of Normandy

2003 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gavin Stamp
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Napoleonic Wars ◽  
English Channel ◽  
Medieval Architecture ◽  
Number Of Publications ◽  
Cultural Connections

High Victorian Gothic in England was an exotic style, and the importance of Italian Gothic precedents in its development has long been recognized, as has the interest in thirteenth-century French Gothic in the 1850s. What has received much less attention is the influence of the medieval buildings of Normandy. In this article, I examine the historical and cultural connections between England and Normandy, which were stimulated by the Napoleonic Wars and the threat of invasion, and were further encouraged by the ease of crossing the English Channel. Seeking the origins of English Gothic and Romanesque architecture, antiquaries and artists explored Normandy in the decades after Waterloo, anticipating the interest of architects. Whether the results of travel or study of a growing number of publications on the medieval architecture of Normandy, numerous midcentury buildings show intimate acquaintance with thirteenth-century churches in Normandy-old village churches with saddleback towers or distinctive spires, which, paradoxically, resemble High Victorian designs in their rugged austerity.

scholarly journals Early Medieval stylistic rhetoric

Literator ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 48-61
Author(s):  
A. G.P. Van der Walt
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Letter Writing ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Medieval Rhetoric ◽  
Artes Praedicandi ◽  
The Middle Ages

According to the well-known expert on medieval rhetoric, James J. Murphy, the three typical medieval forms of rhetoric are the art of letter writing, the art of preaching and the art of poetry (Murphy, 1971, p. xv). In this paper we are concerned only with the second of these arts, namely, the rhetoric of preaching. Though the perceptive treatises on the rhetoric of preaching, the so-called artes praedicandi, did not originate before the thirteenth century, pulpit rhetoric was very much alive in the earlier part of the Middle Ages and fine examples of this kind of eloquence can be quoted.

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