scholarly journals The Onomastic Data of the Fourteenth-Century Poll Tax Returns: A Case for Further Dialectological Study of Late Medieval English

2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-61
Author(s):  
D. Harry Parkin
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
West Midlands ◽  
Tax Returns ◽  
Short Space ◽  
English Dialect ◽  
Poll Tax

Abstract An important source of localisable Middle English dialectological data has recently become widely accessible, thanks to the published transcription of the 1377, 1379 and 1381 poll tax re-turns by Carolyn C. Fenwick (1998, 2001, 2005). As the only collection of onomastic data from the late fourteenth century with national coverage, the name forms in the records can be analysed to further our understanding of Middle English dialect distribution and change. As with many historical records, the poll tax returns are not without damage and so do not cover the country in its entirety, but provided their investigation is carried out with suitable methodological caution, they are of considerable dialectological value. Using the poll tax data, the distributions of two dialect features particular to the West Midlands (specifically rounding of /a/ to /o/ before nasals and /u/ in unstressed positions) are presented and compared with the patterns given for the same features in Kristensson’s (1987) dialect survey of data from 1290-1350. By identifying apparent discrepancies in dialect distribution from these datasets, which represent periods of no more than 100 years apart, it seems that the spread of certain Middle English dialect features may have changed considerably over a short space of time. Other possible reasons for these distribution differences are also suggested, highlighting the difficulties in comparing dialect data from differ-ent sets of records. Through this paper a case for further dialectological study, using the poll tax returns, is made, to add to the literature on Middle English dialect distribution and to improve our knowledge of ME dialect phonologies at the end of the fourteenth century.

John Northwood’s Miscellany Revisited

Insular Books ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy Scase
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
British Library ◽  
Book Production ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Related Material ◽  
English Verse ◽  
West Midlands ◽  
Late Medieval England

London, British Library, MS Additional 37787, a volume of prayers and other devotions and related material, was part-edited by Nita S. Baugh as A Worcestershire Miscellany Compiled by John Northwood c. 1400 (1956). Baugh’s title was based on ownership inscriptions of John Northwood, monk at Bordesley Abbey, Worcestershire, and members of the Throckmorton family also of Worcestershire. These associations have made the manuscript an important witness in narratives about Cistercian participation in the production and circulation of Middle English verse manuscripts in the West Midlands and the role of monasteries in fostering vernacular writing and book production, including the Vernon and Simeon manuscripts. This chapter proposes that this view is called into question by careful codicological examination of the volume. Through challenging these propositions it suggests alternative ways to explore and explain the production of books containing vernacular prayers and devotions in late medieval England.

At the Edge of Reformation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Linehan
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Black Death ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Portuguese Society ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

This book springs from its author’s continuing interest in the history of Spain and Portugal—on this occasion in the first half of the fourteenth century between the recovery of each kingdom from widespread anarchy and civil war and the onset of the Black Death. Focussing on ecclesiastical aspects of the period in that region (Galicia in particular) and secular attitudes to the privatization of the Church, it raises inter alios the question why developments there did not lead to a permanent sundering of the relationship with Rome (or Avignon) two centuries ahead of that outcome elsewhere in the West. In addressing such issues, as well as of neglected material in Spanish and Portuguese archives, use is made of the also unpublished so-called ‘secret’ registers of the popes of the period. The issues it raises concern not only Spanish and Portuguese society in general but also the developing relationship further afield of the components of the eternal quadrilateral (pope, king, episcopate, and secular nobility) in late medieval Europe, as well as of the activity in that period of those caterpillars of the commonwealth, the secular-minded sapientes. In this context, attention is given to the hitherto neglected attempt of Afonso IV of Portugal to appropriate the privileges of the primatial church of his kingdom and to advance the glorification of his Castilian son-in-law, Alfonso XI, as God’s vicegerent in his.

Materiality, Documentary Authority, and the Circulation of the Katherine Group

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-50
Author(s):  
Jenny C. Bledsoe
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
The West ◽  
Manuscript Culture ◽  
Ancrene Wisse ◽  
Textual Community ◽  
West Midlands ◽  
Katherine Group

Written in the decades before Ancrene Wisse, the Early Middle English hagiographies of the Katherine Group depict three virgin martyrs, Katherine, Margaret, and Juliana. Using touch and eyewitness accounts as measures of proof, the legend equates St. Margaret’s body with the textual corpus inscribed on animal hide. The manuscript’s documentary authority is verified through proximity to the holy body of the saint, and, in a similarly body-centred (and precarious) authority, the anchoress functions as the centre of an ephemeral textual community in the early thirteenth century. The Katherine Group narratives and codicological evidence indicate an anchoritic-lay literary culture operating adjacent to clerical manuscript culture, consistent with Catherine Innes-Parker’s theory about co-existing informal and formal vernacular textual cultures in the West Midlands. This “informal,” or ephemeral, textual community shaped lay literacy and manuscript use, including perceptions about the documentary authority of vernacular textual artifacts.

The Architectural Patronage of Two Late Medieval Bishops: Edington, Wykeham and the rebuilding of Winchester Cathedral nave

2012 ◽  
Vol 92 ◽  
pp. 273-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Hare
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Present Form ◽  
The West ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Architectural Patronage ◽  
The Creation

This paper reassesses the transformation of Winchester Cathedral nave in the second half of the fourteenth century from the Romanesque to its present form. It argues for a more complex and earlier development than traditionally accepted, with the rebuilding of the nave itself beginning in the early 1370s rather than in 1394. After the construction of the new porches Edington had planned to rebuild the nave completely, but by the time of his death even the west end was incomplete. His successor, Wykeham, adopted a more cautious and staged remodelling, starting with the creation of a new great arcade which he began in the 1370s and resumed in 1394. Subsequently, Wykeham began to complete the rebuilding with remodelled aisles, the clerestory and the vault. The implications of this proposed earlier dating are explored, including providing a major work in the 1370s for William Wynford, one of the most important architects of the period.

Visions of the Self in Late Medieval Christianity: Some Cross-Disciplinary Reflections

1992 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 89-103
Author(s):  
Sarah Coakley
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Cloud Of Unknowing ◽  
Medieval Christianity

In a volume devoted to philosophy, religion and the spiritual life, I would like to focus the later part of my essay on a comparison of two Christian spiritual writings of the fourteenth century, the anonymous Cloud of Unknowing in the West (1981), and the Triadsof Gregory Palamas in the Byzantine East (1983). Their examples, for reasons which I shall explain, seem to me rich with implications for some of our current philosophical and theological aporias on the nature of the self. Let me explain my thesis in skeletal form at the outset, for it is a complex one, and has several facets.

scholarly journals Mac Giolla Phádraig Clerics 1394-1534 AD: Part I

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 42-65
Author(s):  
Mike Fitzpatrick
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Century Science

Mac Giolla Phádraig Clerics 1394-1534 AD is a three-part series, which provides an account of all known individual Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics in the late medieval era and details their temporalities, occupations, familial associations, and broader networks. The ultimate goal of the series is the full contextualisation of all available historical records relating to Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics alongside the genealogical record that can be extracted by twenty-first century science – that being the science of Y-DNA. The Papal Registers, in particular, record numerous occurrences of Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics, predominantly in the dioceses of Cill Dalua (Killaloe) and Osraí (Ossory), from the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth century. Yet, no small intrigue surrounds their emergence. Part I of Mac Giolla Phádraig Clerics 1394-1534 AD examines the context surrounding the earliest appointments of Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics, which is in neither Cill Dalua nor Osraí but the diocese of Luimneach (Limerick). Once that context is understood, a pattern of associations emerges. A ‘coincidental’ twenty-first century surname match from the Fitzpatrick Y-DNA project leads to a review of the relationship between the FitzMaurice of Ciarraí (Kerry) clerics and Jordan Purcell, Bishop of Cork and Cloyne (1429-1472). The ‘coincidence’ then leads to an examination of a close Y-DNA match between men of the surnames Purcell and Hennessey. That match, coupled with the understanding that Nicholas Ó hAonghusa (O’Hennessey), elected Bishop of Lismore and Waterford (1480-1483) but with opposition, is considered a member of Purcell’s household, transforms the ‘coincidence’ into a curiosity. Part I morphs into a conversation, likely uncomfortable for some, relating to clerical concubinage, illegitimacy, and the ‘lubricity’ of the prioress and her nuns at the Augustinian nunnery of St Catherine's O’Conyll. The nunnery was located at Mainistir na gCailleach Dubh (Monasternagalliaghduff), which lay just a stone’s throw from where Bishop Jordan Purcell and Matthew Mac Giolla Phádraig, the first Mac Giolla Phádraig cleric recorded in the Papal Registers, emerged. Part I makes no judgments and draws no firm conclusions but prepares the reader for Part II by ending with some questions. Do the Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics of Osraí, who rose to prominence in the late-fifteenth century, have their origins in Deasmhumhain (Desmond)? Could the paternal lineages of Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics be, at least from the mid-fourteenth century, with the house of the Geraldine FitzMaurice clerics of Ciarraí? And, could some of the modern-day descendants of the Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics be those Costigans, FitzGeralds, and Fitzpatricks who are found under haplotype R-A1488?

THE DIALECTS OF THE WEST MIDLANDS IN MIDDLE ENGLISH

1927 ◽  
Vol os-III (10) ◽  
pp. 186-203
Author(s):  
MARY S. SERJEANTSON
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
The West ◽  
West Midlands

Dialect Boundaries and Dialect Translation: The Case of Middle Scots and Middle English

2016 ◽  
Vol 134 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim William Machan
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
The Other ◽  
Primary Concern ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Linguistic Repertoire ◽  
English Dialect

AbstractThe late-medieval Scottish–English border had a porous impermeability. Politically, there was in theory a demarcation between Scotland and England that remained relatively fixed from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries, though a zone of marches surrounded that demarcation, and border disputes continued throughout the period. On the English–Scottish linguistic border, such porous impermeability took several forms. The extremes would be works written primarily in either Scots or some form of English and arrayed between them is what might be called the interlinguistic marches: works written in a language neither entirely Scots nor entirely English that somehow depends on and elides any easy distinctions between the varieties. These marches, and what they say about the Scots–English linguistic border, are the focus of this paper. The paper begins by looking at several texts whose language challenges any easy pronouncements about Scots–English dialect boundaries. Originally written in one variety, they survive as well in copies wherein the text has been rewritten, in all or in part, in the other variety. These rewritings might be called ‘dialect translations’, though other terms also could apply, each of them reframing not only the rewritings but also the varieties and language dynamics they help create. From these examples the paper turns to the larger issue that is its primary concern: the medieval English linguistic repertoire, including the grammatical integrity and social significance of medieval English regional varieties in general. Language and dialect boundaries certainly do matter, but it is speakers who decide how and when.

THE DIALECTS OF THE WEST MIDLANDS IN MIDDLE ENGLISH

1927 ◽  
Vol os-III (9) ◽  
pp. 54-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARY S. SERJEANTSON
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
The West ◽  
West Midlands
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