The Ritual Stratigraphy of Monuments that Matter

2004 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terje Gansum ◽  
Terje Oestigaard
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Charcoal Kilns ◽  
Grave Goods

This article focuses on one of the two big mounds at Haugar in Tønsberg, Norway, and the role they played in the constitution of the Norwegian kingdom. The monument we will discuss is dated to the ninth century AD. We argue that the stratigraphy represents the rituals performed. There are no finds of grave-goods, but the mound contains an enormous layer of charcoal. Our ambiguity towards designating all mounds as ‘graves’ seeks to open a wider range of explanations of the symbolism in these constructions commonly defined as graves. The monuments look like symbolic charcoal kilns, necessary to the smith's iron-making. Are the symbolic charcoal kilns a materialized association of a ritual transformation of the society, embedding death, monument, charcoal and iron? According to Snorri Sturlason, two of the sons of Harald Hårfagre (Finehair), the first king of Norway, were buried in these mounds in the tenth century AD. An examination of the medieval writer Snorri illuminates the political motives and the ideological use of the mounds in the 1230s among the elite in Norway.

The plundering of the ship graves from Oseberg and Gokstad: an example of power politics?

Antiquity ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 86 (333) ◽  
pp. 808-824 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Bill ◽  
Aoife Daly
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Grave Goods

Not the least of the unusual revelations that have come from the wonderfully preserved ninth-century Norwegian ship burials at Oseberg and Gokstad, is the fact that both had been later broken into—by interlopers who defaced the ship, damaged the grave goods and pulled out and dispersed the bones of the deceased. These ‘mound-breakers’ helpfully left spades and stretchers in place, and through the application of some highly ingenious dendrochronology our authors have been able to date the break-ins with some precision. Mound-breaking, it seems, took place during the domination of Norway by Harald Bluetooth in the tenth century as part of an extensive campaign which included subduing local monuments as well as converting Scandinavians to Christianity. The old mounds retained such power in the landscape that it was worth desecrating them and disinterring their occupants a century after their burial.

scholarly journals Illustrations of damnation in late Anglo-Saxon manuscripts

2003 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 231-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Semple
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Late Ninth Century ◽  
Religious Devotion ◽  
Divine Punishment

‘Many tribulations and hardships shall arise in this world before its end, and they are heralds of the eternal perdition to evil men, who shall afterwards suffer eternally in the black hell for their sins.’ These words, composed by Ælfric in the last decade of the tenth century, reflect a preoccupation in the late Anglo-Saxon Church with perdition and the infernal punishments that awaited sinners and heathens. Perhaps stimulated in part by anxiety at the approach of the millennium, both Ælfric and Wulfstan (archbishop of York, 1002–23) show an overt concern with the continuation of paganism and the evil deeds of mankind in their sermons and homilies. Their works stress the terrible judgement that awaited sinners and heathens and the infernal torment to follow. The Viking raids and incursions, during the late eighth to ninth and late tenth centuries, partially inspired the great anxiety apparent in the late Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical leadership. Not only were these events perceived as divine punishment for a lack of religious devotion and fervour in the English people, but the arrival of Scandinavian settlers in the late ninth century may have reintroduced pagan practice and belief into England.

The Old English Benedictine Rule: writing for women and men

2003 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 147-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohini Jayatilaka
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Monastic Reform ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
Benedictine Reform ◽  
The Status ◽  
Linguistic Level

The Regula S. Benedicti was known and used in early Anglo-Saxon England, but it was not until the mid-tenth-century Benedictine reform that the RSB became established as the supreme and exclusive rule governing the monasteries of England. The tenth-century monastic reform movement, undertaken by Dunstan, Æthelwold and Oswald during the reign of Edgar (959–75), sought to revitalize monasticism in England which, according to the standards of these reformers, had ceased to exist during the ninth century. They took as a basis for restoring monastic life the RSB, which was regarded by them as the main embodiment of the essential principles of western monasticism, and in this capacity it was established as the primary document governing English monastic life. By elevating the status of the RSB as the central text of monastic practice in England and the basis of a uniform way of life the reformers raised for themselves the problem of ensuring that the RSB would be understood in detail by all monks, nuns and novices, whatever their background. Evidence of various attempts to make the text accessible, both at the linguistic level and at the level of substance, survives in manuscripts dating from the mid-tenth and eleventh centuries; the most important of these attempts is a vernacular translation of the RSB.

Sa'adyah Gaon

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Brody
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Fields Of Study ◽  
Language Study ◽  
Characteristic Features

Sa'adyah Gaon was an outstanding tenth-century Jewish thinker — a prominent rabbi, philosopher, and exegete. He was a pioneer in the fields in which he toiled, and was an inspiration and basis for later Jewish writing in all these areas. The last major English-language study of his work was published in 1921, long before Genizah research changed the understanding of the time in which he lived. This work, covering Sa'adyah's biography and his main areas of creativity in an accessible way, is a reassessment of an outstanding figure. The opening chapter, on the geonic period that formed the background to Sa'adyah's life, is followed by an overview that brings out the revolutionary aspects of his work and the characteristic features of his writings. Subsequent chapters consider his philosophical works; his Bible commentaries; his pioneering linguistic work; his poetry; his halakhic activity; and his activity as a polemicist, notably against the Karaites. An epilogue sums up his importance in medieval Jewish culture. Particularly valuable features of the book are the copious quotations from Sa'adyah's works, which facilitate familiarity with his style as well as his ideas; the clarity in presenting complex and difficult concepts; the constant assessment of his relationship to his predecessors in his various fields of study and his own unique contributions to each field; and the contextualization of his contribution within the political, cultural, and religious climate of his times so that both revolutionary and conservative elements in his thought can be identified and evaluated.

Was there an imperial distribution of Buddha relics in ninth-century China?

2005 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 451-454
Author(s):  
T. H. BARRETT
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Sacred Objects ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Buddha

To judge from one recorded case, the Huichang persecution of Buddhism in China of 840–44 could have brought a number of relics of the Buddha into the hands of the government, and this might further have allowed the succeeding, more pro-Buddhist, emperor to carry out a redistribution of these sacred objects to enhance his own prestige, as had already been done twice by earlier rulers. But while it is clear that he was prepared to send a relic to Korea as part of a diplomatic mission, there would appear to be no surviving records confirming that any systematic large-scale distribution was carried out at this time. We must provisionally conclude therefore that a later systematic distribution in the tenth century was influenced—perhaps indirectly—by the earlier examples, not by any event of the mid ninth century.

The Political Background to the Establishment of the Slavic Nomocanon in the Thirteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 78-92
Author(s):  
Marija Koprivica
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Slavic Language ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Political Background ◽  
Selection Of

The first collection of canon law translated from the Greek into the Slavic language in the ninth century supported the consolidation of Christianity among the Slav peoples. This article focuses on the nomocanon of St Sava of Serbia (Kormchaia), a collection which was original and specific in its content; its relationship to other contemporary legal historical documents will be considered. The article also explores the political background to the emergence of Orthodox Slav collections of ecclesiastical and civil law. The political context in which these collections originated exercised a determinative influence on their contents, the selection of texts and the interpretation of the canons contained within them. The emergence of the Slavic nomocanon is interpreted within a context in which Balkan Slav states sought to foster their independence and aspired to form autocephalous national churches.

The Roman Missa sponsalicia

2002 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-166
Author(s):  
John Boe
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Roman Culture

Proper chants unique to the Roman wedding Mass - the introit Deus Israel, the gradual Vxor tua and the communion Ecce sic benedicetur - are not found in the unnotated northern Mass antiphoners of Hesbert's Sextuplex. Heavily edited and fitted with Gregorian melodies (or else unnotated), these texts appear sporadically in northern graduals beginning in the mid-tenth century. Their compilation can therefore be dated to the second half of the ninth century. Because the melodies for these Propers were assembled from formulas in common use at a time when new chants were no longer being composed at Rome and because they are certainly free of Gregorian influence, the nuptial chants disclose how certain formulas were being sung shortly before Roman culture and papal institutions began to decline.

III. ‘Al-Hind’ India and Indonesia in the Islamic World-Economy, c. 700–1800 A.D.

Itinerario ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
André Wink
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
North India ◽  
The Political ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Indonesian Archipelago ◽  
Political Unity ◽  
Abbasid Caliphate ◽  
Extended Scale ◽  
Vast Area

In the aftermath of the Islamic conquests of the seventh and early eighth centuries the territory which came under effective domination of the caliphate extended from the Iberian peninsula and North Africa to Central Asia and into the Persian-Indian borderland of Sind which for three centuries remained its easternmost frontier. Beyond Sind a vast area was left unconquered which the Arabs calledal-Hindand which, in their conception, embraced both India and the Indianised states of the Indonesian archipelago and Southeast Asia. In the countless kingdoms ofal-Hindthe Muslims penetrated, up to the eleventh century, only as traders. By the time that Islamic power was established in North India the political unity of the Abbasid caliphate was already lost. Neither India nor Indonesia were provinces of the classical Islamic state. But in the Middle East three decisive developments had occurred and these created patterns which were to survive the political fragmentation of the empire. Most important was that a thoroughly commercialized and monetised economy with a bureaucracy and a fiscal polity had been established which continued to expand. Secondly, from the ninth century onwards, the Islamic military-bureaucratic apparatus had begun to be staffed with imported slaves on an extended scale. And thirdly, from its Arab roots the Islamic conquest state had shifted to a Persianised foundation, adopting Persian culture and the Sassanid tradition of monarchy and statecraft.

The integri of Cicero's Topica

1996 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 403-410
Author(s):  
Michael Winterbottom
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Tenth Century

Cicero's Topica is transmitted as part of the so-called Leiden corpus; but it appeared in only two of the three Carolingian manuscripts carrying that corpus (Leiden, Voss. Lat. F. 84 = A and Lat. F. 86 = B; their agreement is dubbed β), and in both it lacked 1–3, 28 (magis)tratuum–73 Haec. During the ninth century, however, B was supplemented by the addition of folios (BA) which completed the text. In 1860 these folios were officiously transferred to A. There are a large number of integri, dating from the tenth century on. Editors have picked more or less at random from this pile to back up the evidence of β. They are also blessed with a detailed and intelligent commentary on the Topica written by Boethius. ‘That the text of the commentary influenced manuscripts of Cicero has been suspected but not proved’ (M. D. Reeve).

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