scholarly journals Sculptures and Accessories: Domestic Piety in the Norwegian Parish around 1300

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 640
Author(s):  
Ragnhild M. Bø
Keyword(s):  
Source Material ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Devotional Practice ◽  
Physical Evidence ◽  
Latin West ◽  
Devotional Practices ◽  
Parish Churches ◽  
Coherent Source

Eagerly venerated and able to perform miracles, medieval relics and religious artefacts in the Latin West would occasionally also be subject to sensorial and tactile devotional practices. Evidenced by various reports, artefacts were grasped and stroked, kissed and tasted, carried and pulled. For medieval Norway, however, there is very little documentary and/or physical evidence of such sensorial engagements with religious artefacts. Nevertheless, two church inventories for the parish churches in Hålandsdalen (1306) and Ylmheim (1321/1323) offer a small glimpse of what may have been a semi-domestic devotional practice related to sculpture, namely the embellishing of wooden sculptures in parish churches with silver bracelets and silver brooches. According to wills from England and the continent, jewellery was a common material gift donated to parishes by women. Such a practice is likely to have been taking place in Norway, too, yet the lack of coherent source material complicate the matter. Nonetheless, using a few preserved objects and archaeological finds as well as medieval sermons, homiletic texts and events recorded in Old Norse sagas, this article teases out more of the significances of the silver items mentioned in the two inventories by exploring the interfaces between devotional acts, decorative needs, and possibly gendered experiences, as well as object itineraries between the domestic and the religious space.

Translation and Appropriation: Greek Relics in the Latin West in the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade

2017 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 88-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne E. Lester
Keyword(s):  
The West ◽  
Fourth Crusade ◽  
Latin West ◽  
Devotional Practices ◽  
Latin Culture ◽  
To Come

Following the fall of Constantinople to French, Flemish and Venetian forces at the conclusion of the Fourth Crusade, an unprecedented number of relics and other holy objects poured into the West between 1204 andc.1240. Sent as personal and diplomatic gifts, most holy objects moved in the open, with letters of authentication and identification, and not (as has often been suggested) as sacred theft. This article traces the work of translation, carried out by clerics, chaplains, monks, and laymen and women, and the mechanisms of appropriation that gave meaning to these objects in their new devotional contexts. Relics were demanding things; they needed to be enshrined, venerated, described and contextualized, and their movements needed to be accounted for and included within a broader Christian narrative that served to anchor the crusade movement to the apostolic past and to Christ's material presence in the West. Moreover, the materiality of the relics that moved from Constantinople was an important part of their significance and shaped devotional practices and connections, bridging differences between Greek and Latin culture and fostering conceptions of the material that facilitated other acts of Christian translation in the centuries to come.

Church music in English towns 1450–1550: an interim report

Urban History ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline M. Barron
Keyword(s):  
Church Music ◽  
Interim Report ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Religious Ritual ◽  
Devotional Practices ◽  
Parish Churches ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Church

In the towns of late medieval England (where perhaps 10 per cent of the population may have lived) the parish churches were being continuously expanded, adapted and decorated. Chantry and fraternity chapels were added between the nave pillars, or at the eastern ends of the aisles and here, as well as at the high altar, masses were celebrated and prayers recited with incessant devotion by the living for the repose of the souls of those who had died. These intercessory services, together with those of the usual liturgical round which took place in the choir and in the nave, were increasingly accompanied by complex polyphonic music involving several singers, both men and boys, and the playing of organs which were becoming ubiquitous in medieval parish churches. The development of this dynamic parish music has been detected, but not much studied. In part this is the result of the failure of urban historians and musicologists to talk to each other. Historians of late medieval religion have recently been exploring the diversity and sophistication of parochial devotional practices and have reaffirmed the importance of religious guilds and chantry foundations in enriching the liturgical practices of the parish, but they have paid little attention to music, and none to the impact of church music on civic ceremonial and the legitimating processes of urban rulers. Musicologists who have worked on the music of the English church have been, until very recently, comparatively uninterested in what happened beyond the interior of the church and, in any case, more interested in the great royal and collegiate foundations from which some music has survived. The surprising conclusion is that, for both urban historians and musicologists, the connected argument that links religious ritual, broadly defined, with the spatial and social dimensions of life and work in towns barely yet exists.

scholarly journals Der Runen-Stein von Rök und Snorri Sturluson - oder 'Wie aussagekräftig sind unsere Quellen zur Religionsgeschichte der Wikingerzeit?'

1990 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 58-71
Author(s):  
Preben Meulengracht Sørensen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Social Anthropology ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
Source Criticism ◽  
The Common ◽  
Written Sources ◽  
The Middle Ages

The article contributes to the discussion on source criticism within the research field of Old Norse religion. It examines the common assumption that archaeological sources are always to prefer above written sources from the Middle Ages where the Viking Era is described as such accounts are invariably tendentious and biased. Influenced by theories from the field of social anthropology, however, the article argues for the worth of written sources as a complement to the material ones. As an example, the effort to interpret the inscriptions on the runic stone from Rök are introduced. The article suggests that different kinds of source material offer a spectrum of possibilities out of which none alone, but rather all taken together, can deepen the researcher’s knowledge about the object under study.

scholarly journals In Search of a National Epic: The use of Old Norse myths in Tolkien's vision of Middle-earth

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-36
Author(s):  
Tommy Kuusela
Keyword(s):  
Second Life ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Literary Sources

In this article some aspects of Tolkien’s work with regard to his relationship to folklore and nationalism are presented. It is also argued, contrary to Lauri Honko’s view of literary epics, that pre-literary sources constitute a problem for the creators of literary epics and that their elements can direct the choice of plot and form. Tolkien felt that there was a British – but no English – mythology comparable to the Greek, Finnish or Norse ones. He tried to reconstruct the ‘lost mythology’ with building blocks from existing mythologies, and dedicated his work to the English people. In this, he saw himself as a compiler of old source material. This article considers his use of Old Norse sources. With Honko’s notion of the second life of folklore it is argued that Tolkien managed to popularise folklore material while his efforts to make his work exclusively English failed; for a contemporary audience it is rather cross-cultural.

scholarly journals Jan Długosz and the first seven parish churches in Lithuania

2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Darius Baronas
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Parish Churches ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Comprehensive Study ◽  
The Middle Ages

This paper is part of a more comprehensive study intended as a renewed interpretation of the account given by the Polish chronicler, Jan Długosz (1415–1480) about the conversion of Lithuania in 1387. For the moment it offers a critical approach to one seemingly unproblematic statement advanced and upheld by Polish and Lithuanian historians alike, a statement according to which Jogaila, the king of Poland and grand duke of Lithuania, established the first seven churches in Lithuania in 1387. This study is conducted on two tracks. First it shows that the documentary evidence for the churches in question (Ukmergė, Maišiagala, Nemenčinė, Medininkai, Krėva, Oboltsy and Haina) is scanty to the point that it does not allow us simply to believe that all the churches were established in one and the same year. Secondly, this article tries to intepret this piece of information supplied by Długosz in the light of a number of other accounts of the first steps in building the ecclesiastical organization of particular countries. It becomes clear that the number seven is a conventional number which has been evoked quite frequently in similar situations by other medieval bookmen and also by Długosz himself (e. g. while describing the conversion of Poland in 966). The final argument of the article calls for renewed attempts to gain a better understanding of the first decades of established Catholic organization in Lithuania, based on the extant source material rather than conventional clichés that were quite widespread in the chronicles of the Middle Ages.

scholarly journals Horizontale und vertikale Achsen in der vorchristlichen skandinavischen Kosmologie

1990 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 35-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Schjødt
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Model ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship

The article analyses the cosmology of Old Norse religion before the arrival of Christianity to Scandinavia and strives to illuminate the image of the world upheld in this context on the basis of the scarce source material that is available. Special attention is given to the relationship between the so-called vertical and horizontal sub-systems included in the spatial model for understanding Scandinavian religion, proposed by E. M. Meletinskij. The article discusses the dichotomies of culture and nature, cosmos and chaos that are often alluded to in the source texts and their interpretation as symbols for order/un-order on the basis of a structuralist analysis.

scholarly journals Was Guðmundr á Glasisvǫllum Irish?

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-95
Author(s):  
Felix Lummer
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Folk Tales ◽  
Literary Figure ◽  
Local Background

This article tackles the question of a possible Irish origin for the Old Norse literary figure Guðmundr á Glasisvǫllum. The images of Guðmundr, his realm Glasisvellir, and the sometimes associated territory of Ódáinsakr fluctuate in various ways in the different saga narratives in which they occur. The variability of the Guðmundr á Glasisvǫllum narrative has caused scholars to debate its possible origin for over a century. The more widely supported notion is that a mythological compound around Guðmundr must have originated in Irish mythology and folklore rather than being an indigenous, Nordic construct. The present article aims to follow up on this discussion, comparing the original Old Norse source material and that found in Gesta Danorum to Irish accounts that might have influenced them. By highlighting the differences between the Guðmundr á Glasisvǫllum complex and the suggested Irish sources, the degree to which it seems likely the motif could actually have originated in Irish thought will be assessed. Norwegian folk tales about the magical island Utrøst will then be considered to highlight the possibility of a more local background for Guðmundr and his realm.

scholarly journals Fragments of the past: how to study old Norse religion

1999 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Britt-Mari Näsström
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Great Problem ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
Combination Of Methods ◽  
Linguistic Aspect ◽  
Christian Influence ◽  
The Sacrifice

The state of the sources of the Old Norse religions presents a great problem. Most of them were written down two hundred or even three hundred years after the Christianization of the North, based on an oral tradition going back to the pre-Christian ages. This situation has led to an intense discussion about the Christian influence or even interpolations in the text or what are genuine proofs of Old Norse religion. The examples represent varying methods of overcoming source problems show that it is necessary to put new questions to the source material such as: What was the purpose of the sacrifice? Who sacrificed and who received it? Which sacrifices took place in calendar rites, in rites of passage or in crisis? And what are the areas of purification or avoidance in the sacrificial situation? A combination of methods encompassing both the comparative and the linguistic aspect provides an opportunity to overcome the difficulties encountered by the students of Old Norse mythology, especially the problems with the sources.

Use of SEM, X-ray analysis and TEM to localize Fe3+ reduction in roots

1988 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 392-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
William P. Wergin ◽  
P. F. Bell ◽  
Rufus L. Chaney
Keyword(s):  
Electron Microscopy ◽  
Root Hairs ◽  
Rapid Reduction ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Physical Evidence ◽  
Transmission Electron ◽  
Young Root ◽  
Insoluble Precipitate ◽  
Uptake And Transport ◽  
Scanning Electron

In dicotyledons, Fe3+ must be reduced to Fe2+ before uptake and transport of this essential macronutrient can occur. Ambler et al demonstrated that reduction along the root could be observed by the formation of a stain, Prussian blue (PB), Fe4 [Fe(CN)6]3 n H2O (where n = 14-16). This stain, which is an insoluble precipitate, forms at the reduction site when the nutrient solution contains Fe3+ and ferricyanide. In 1972, Chaney et al proposed a model which suggested that the Fe3+ reduction site occurred outside the cell membrane; however, no physical evidence to support the model was presented at that time. A more recent study using the PB stain indicates that rapid reduction of Fe3+ occurs in a region of the root containing young root hairs. Furthermore the most pronounced activity occurs in plants that are deficient in Fe. To more precisely localize the site of Fe3+ reduction, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), x-ray analysis, and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were utilized to examine the distribution of the PB precipitate that was induced to form in roots.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document