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

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

Download Full-text

The Church and the Law in the Early Middle Ages

Studies in Church History ◽

10.1017/stc.2019.2 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 56 ◽

pp. 7-35

Author(s):

Rosamond McKitterick

Keyword(s):

Middle Ages ◽

Canon Law ◽

Procedural Knowledge ◽

Eighth Century ◽

Historical Narrative ◽

Early Medieval ◽

Early Middle Ages ◽

Medieval Manuscript ◽

History Of ◽

And Function

Two case studies from eighth-century Rome, recorded in the early medieval history of the popes known as the Liber pontificalis, serve to introduce both the problems of the relations between secular or public and ecclesiastical or canon law in early medieval Rome and the development of early medieval canon law more generally. The Synod of Rome in 769 was convened by Pope Stephen III some months after his election in order to justify the deposition of his immediate predecessor, Pope Constantine II (767–8). Stephen's successor, Pope Hadrian, subsequently presided over a murder investigation involving Stephen's supporters. The murders and the legal process they precipitated form the bulk of the discussion. The article explores the immediate implications of both the murders and the convening of the Synod of Rome, together with the references to law-making and decree-giving by the pope embedded in the historical narrative of the Liber pontificalis, as well as the possible role of the Liber pontificalis itself in bolstering the imaginative and historical understanding of papal and synodal authority. The wider legal or procedural knowledge invoked and the development of both canon law and papal authority in the early Middle Ages are addressed. The general categories within which most scholars have been working hitherto mask the questions about the complicated and still insufficiently understood status and function of early medieval manuscript compilations of secular and canon law, and about the authority and applicability of the texts they contain.

Download Full-text

Charlemagne’s Defeat in the Pyrenees

10.5117/9789463721059 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Xabier Irujo

Keyword(s):

Iberian Peninsula ◽

Internal Structure ◽

Western Europe ◽

Eighth Century ◽

Historical Event ◽

Medieval Period ◽

Early Medieval ◽

Chanson De Roland ◽

The One ◽

Epic Poems

The Battle of Rencesvals is the one of the most dramatic historical event of the entire eighth century, not only in Vasconia but in Western Europe. This monograph examines the battle as more than a single military encounter, but instead as part of a complex military and political conquest that began after the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in 711 and culminated with the creation of the Kingdom of Pamplona in 824. The battle had major (and largely underappreciated) consequences for the internal structure of the Carolingian Empire. It also enjoyed a remarkable legacy as the topic of one of the oldest European epic poems, La Chanson de Roland. The events that took place in the Pyrenean pass of Rencesvals (Errozabal) on 15 August 778 defined the development of the Carolingian world, and lie at the heart of the early medieval contribution to the later medieval period.

Download Full-text

Edelmetallgegenstände als Quellen zu sozialen Prozessen der Spätawarenzeit (8.–9. Jahrhundert n. Chr.)

Acta Archaeologica ◽

10.1556/072.2021.00019 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 72 (2) ◽

pp. 417-452

Keyword(s):

Spatial Distribution ◽

Precious Metal ◽

Eighth Century ◽

Carpathian Basin ◽

Early Medieval ◽

High Quality ◽

Cultural Changes ◽

Archaeological Material ◽

Metal Artefacts ◽

The Social

Abstract The present paper analyses the precious metal artefacts, scarcely known in the huge archaeological material of the “late Avar period” (eighth to early ninth centuries AD). Unlike in the previous era the majority of the gold and silver objects of the late Avar period are stray finds; in particular high-quality goldsmith's artefacts are absent in the grave assemblages of the eighth century. The significance of precious metal objects in grave assemblages reached its low ebb around the middle of the late Avar period; afterwards not only new object types appeared but a new grave-horizon emerged comprising precious metal objects. This paper, based on the quality and morphology of the objects, their archaeological contexts as well as their spatial distribution, draws a conclusion concerning the social and cultural changes in the early medieval Carpathian Basin.

Download Full-text

Tradition and Exegesis in the Eighth Century: The Use of Patristic Sources in Early Medieval Scriptural Commentaries.

Instrumenta Patristica et Mediaevalia - The Scriptures and Early Medieval Ireland ◽

10.1484/m.ipm-eb.4.000810 ◽

1999 ◽

pp. 217-239 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Thomas O'Loughlin

Keyword(s):

Eighth Century ◽

Early Medieval

Download Full-text

Karaite Synagogue Poets

Jewish Hymnography ◽

10.3828/liverpool/9781874774303.003.0008 ◽

1997 ◽

pp. 408-432

Author(s):

Leon J. Weinberger

Keyword(s):

Thirteenth Century ◽

Eighth Century ◽

Early Years ◽

Jewish Law ◽

Prayer Book ◽

Verse Forms

This chapter examines the Karaite synagogue poets. The Karaites, a Jewish sect originating in the first half of the eighth century, are distinctive mainly because of their refusal to accept the authority of the talmudic-rabbinic tradition. Although the Karaites were at odds with their Rabbanite brethren in matters relating to Jewish law, they readily adopted the latters’ models in hymnography. The Karaite liturgy, which in the early years of the sect consisted of recitation from the Psalms and other scriptural readings, soon developed into rich and varied genres for fasts and feasts. The new hymnography was preserved in the thirteenth-century Karaite prayer-book edited by the scholar-poet Aaron b. Joseph the Elder from Crimea and Constantinople. Like their Rabbanite counterparts, Karaite hymnists served a didactic function, instructing the laity in their religious obligations. Karaite poets also used the liturgy as a means of instructing their congregations in current philosophical issues, particularly those relating to Jewish Neoplatonism and the nature of the soul. In their aesthetic function, Karaite hymnists resembled the Rabbanite Hispanics, favouring Arabic quantitative metres and verse forms. Caleb Afendopolo (d. 1525) of Kramariya (near Constantinople) was the master of this poetic art, as seen in his liturgical (and secular) writings.

Download Full-text

‘He’ll latin-runes tellan in his horror-coat standing’

10.1093/oso/9780198860136.003.0005 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 170-208

Author(s):

Francesca Brooks

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

East Coast ◽

Eighth Century ◽

Anglo Saxon ◽

Early Medieval ◽

Contested Space

Chapter 4 focuses on the area across the east coast of Britain first thought to have been settled by post-Roman migrants, that of the East Anglian and Lincolnshire fenland, and the exploration of this contested space in ‘Angle-Land’. In the part of ‘Angle-Land’ focused on the fen Jones engages in a poetic search for the lost Britons of the early medieval fen by reading the eighth-century Anglo-Latin Vita Sancti Guthlaci Auctore Felice alongside recent archaeological finds from Caistor-by-Norwich. This chapter proposes that this search ultimately questions the extent of the foreignness of the Welsh in this supposedly ‘Anglo-Saxon’ space, allowing Jones to reimagine Guthlac as an Anglo-Welsh saint and to create a new macaronic language for twentieth-century Britain.

Download Full-text

ISTANBUL 2: a hieroglyphic fragment from Tabal in the Haluk Perk Collection

Anatolian Studies ◽

10.1017/s0066154600008784 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 61 ◽

pp. 55-60

Author(s):

İlknur Taş ◽

Mark Weeden

Keyword(s):

Eighth Century ◽

Historical Narrative ◽

Rare Combination

AbstractThe article publishes an unprovenanced fragment of a stele housed in the Haluk Perk Museum in Istanbul. Palaeography and manner of inscription suggest an origin in the eighth century BC in the region known to the Neo-Assyrians as Tabal. The new text is largely incomprehensible due to its fragmentary state, as well as the fact that it contains otherwise unattested words and signs. However, in one case, a rare combination of signs persuades us to revise the reading of part of another recently published hieroglyphic document from the same period and area. The Istanbul text appears to contain a historical narrative relating to a warlike encounter. The article presents the text in hand-copy, photo, transliteration and translation, as well as supplying a detailed philological commentary.

Download Full-text

Scottish Transnational Discourse of the Great War: A Genealogy of Eric Bogle’s “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda” and Hugh MacDiarmid’s “At the Cenotaph”

Culture Studies &#x2194 Critical Methodologies ◽

10.1177/1532708618819640 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 19 (5) ◽

pp. 323-331

Author(s):

J. Rubén Valdés Miyares

Keyword(s):

Discourse Analysis ◽

Critical Discourse Analysis ◽

Cultural Practices ◽

Historical Narrative ◽

Great War ◽

Historical Discourse ◽

Narrative Structures ◽

Transnational Discourse ◽

Time Critical ◽

The Great War

A comparison of a 1971 popular song, Eric Bogle’s “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda” with a 1935 poem, Hugh MacDiarmid’s “At the Cenotaph,” enables this article to produce a transnational, trans-genre and trans-historical discourse analysis of memories of the Great War of 1914-1918. While an ethonosymbolic approach allows for the discovery of resemblances and continuities, Nietzschean genealogy criticizes such monumental, associative views of the past and focuses instead on the casual connections between disperse moments in time. Critical discourse analysis, in turn, offers a possible synthesis by distinguishing historical narrative structures, cultural practices (the Anzac parades and cenotaphs to honor the heroic dead), and textual events, in this case the satirical representation of the Great War in later song and poetry.

Download Full-text