Scott DeGregorio / Paul Kershaw (Eds.), Cities, Saints, and Communities in Early Medieval Europe. Essays in Honour of Alan Thacker. (Studies in the Early Middle Ages, Vol. 46.) Turnhout, Brepols 2020

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.

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Educated Wandering Jews, 800–1250

The Chosen Few ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691144870.003.0008 ◽

2012 ◽

Author(s):

Maristella Botticini ◽

Zvi Eckstein

Keyword(s):

Iberian Peninsula ◽

Middle Ages ◽

Western Europe ◽

Byzantine Empire ◽

Early Medieval ◽

Early Middle Ages ◽

Jewish Diaspora ◽

Medieval Europe ◽

Business Opportunities ◽

Vast Territory

This chapter shows that once the Jews became literate, urban, and engaged in skilled occupations, they began migrating within the vast territory under Muslim rule—stretching from the Iberian Peninsula to India during the eighth through the twelfth centuries, and from the Byzantine Empire to western Europe via Italy and within western Europe in the ninth through the thirteenth centuries. In early medieval Europe, the revival of trade concomitant with the Commercial Revolution and the growth of an urban and commercial economy paralleled the vast urbanization and the growth of trade that had occurred in the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates four to five centuries earlier. The Jewish diaspora during the early Middle Ages was mainly the outcome of literate Jewish craftsmen, shopkeepers, traders, scholars, teachers, physicians, and moneylenders migrating in search of business opportunities to reap returns on their investment in literacy and education.

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Penitents and Their Proxies: Penance for Others in Early Medieval Europe

Church History ◽

10.1017/s0009640717000038 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 86 (1) ◽

pp. 1-32 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Gavin Fort

Keyword(s):

Middle Ages ◽

Eleventh Century ◽

Religious Practice ◽

Early Medieval ◽

Early Middle Ages ◽

Medieval Europe ◽

Liturgical Texts

This article investigates the religious practice of suffering for others in the early Middle Ages. In proxy penance, one person completed a penitential work for another, who received the spiritual benefit. This practice was based on the idea that one person could stand in for another to bear his burden. Using penitential, conciliar, liturgical, and epistolary sources, I uncover two types of proxy penance. First, priests shared in the penance of those who confessed to them. Liturgical texts include Masses in which the priest completes the penance for someone who could not complete it himself. Penitential texts admonish the priest to “share in the foulness” with the sinner in order to bring about the remission of his sin. Second, there was both a promotion and a criticism of proxy fasting among the laity. Thissic et nonrhythm shows that early medieval penitential culture could not control the demand for proxy penance. Some attention is also paid to the practice of proxy penance in the eleventh-century monastic milieu of Peter Damian. This article broadens the scope of current scholarship on penance by focusing on its substitutionary ability. Also, this article explores the changing notions of and metaphors about sin in this period—from medical to economic—that fueled proxy activity.

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Sanctity and secularity in the early Irish church

Studies in Church History ◽

10.1017/s0424208400006069 ◽

1973 ◽

Vol 10 ◽

pp. 21-37

Author(s):

Kathleen Hughes

Keyword(s):

Roman Empire ◽

Middle Ages ◽

Outer Edge ◽

Social Organisation ◽

Early Church ◽

Early Medieval ◽

The West ◽

Early Middle Ages ◽

Medieval Europe ◽

The World

Ireland was odd in the early middle ages. She lay on the outer edge of the world, the survivor of that Celtic civilisation which had once covered much of the west. She had never immediately known the pervading influence of Rome, which continued in so many ways for so long after the Roman empire collapsed. Christianity had reached her rather early (there were enough christians to make it worth while to send a continental bishop, Palladius, in 431) and it came before many of the developments which determined the nature of monasticism in early medieval Europe. Ireland’s political and social organisation were somewhat different from those of the Germanic peoples of the west; and though the early church in Ireland had an episcopal, diocesan structure, within two hundred years or so of its inception it had been fundamentally modified by native Irish laws and institutions. It is therefore not surprising to find that both Ireland’s sanctity and her secularity had peculiar features.

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