scholarly journals East meets West

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jürg Gassmann
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Genetic Studies ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Horse Breeding ◽  
And Training ◽  
North Western

By the Late Middle Ages, mounted troops - cavalry in the form of knights - are established as the dominant battlefield arm in North-Western Europe. This paper considers the development of cavalry after the Germanic Barbarian Successor Kingdoms such as the Visigoths in Spain or the Carolingian Franks emerged from Roman Late Antiquity and their encounters with Islam, as with the Moors in Iberia or the Saracens (Arabs and Turks) during the Crusades, since an important part of literature ascribes advances in European horse breeding and horsemanship to Arab influence. Special attention is paid to information about horse types or breeds, conformation, tactics - fighting with lance and bow - and training. Genetic studies and the archaeological record are incorporated to test the literary tradition.

scholarly journals East meets West: Mounted Encounters in Early and High Mediaeval Europe

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-107
Author(s):  
Jürg Gassmann
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Genetic Studies ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Horse Breeding ◽  
And Training ◽  
North Western

Abstract By the Late Middle Ages, mounted troops - cavalry in the form of knights - are established as the dominant battlefield arm in North-Western Europe. This paper considers the development of cavalry after the Germanic Barbarian Successor Kingdoms such as the Visigoths in Spain or the Carolingian Franks emerged from Roman Late Antiquity and their encounters with Islam, as with the Moors in Iberia or the Saracens (Arabs and Turks) during the Crusades, since an important part of literature ascribes advances in European horse breeding and horsemanship to Arab influence. Special attention is paid to information about horse types or breeds, conformation, tactics - fighting with lance and bow - and training. Genetic studies and the archaeological record are incorporated to test the literary tradition.

scholarly journals Arheološki nalazi dekorativno-funkcionalnih elemenata obuće iz kasnoga srednjeg vijeka u Kaštelima

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tonči Burić
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Village ◽  
The Church

Late medieval graves in the Kaštela region have been found to contain, in addition to jewelry, decorative-functional elements of clothing and footwear, termed Gothic according to the stylistic period then in fashion. These are finds from graves that were then on the territory of the commune districts of Split and Trogir. Finds are taken into consideration here that belong to remains of footwear, which so far in Croatia have not even been recognized as such, and which can be stratigraphically and typologically placed in the late Middle Ages (14th-15th cent.). These are objects of a utilitarian character that at the same time have clear stylistic traits, and they have been discovered in the past two decades during systematic excavation of medieval cemeteries in Kaštela. These are large parish cemeteries that grew up around early medieval churches; the cemetery around the church of St. George of Putalj and the cemetery around the church of St. George of Radun. The Putalj cemetery was the graveyard for the inhabitants of medieval Sućurac for more than four centuries (12th-16th cent.), and the Radun cemetery belonged to part of the village of Radun and had an even longer continuity of burial (11th-16th cent.). The first examples were found at these sites, some of them in situ, which enabled a more precise functional determination of them through stylistic-typological parallels and also among dislocated finds in graves with multiple burials, as well as parallels at cemeteries in neighboring regions in central Dalmatia. Finds to the present of shoe buckles can be classified to two typological variants (Pl. I:1-3), one of them called the Radun type according to the eponymous site (Pl. I:1, 3). They are all chronologically coherent and belong to those strata of the cemeteries that are dated according to determined parameters (stratigraphy, typology of the finds) to the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries, when the Gothic style in art was already completely developed. They can thus be attributed as artistic craft products of the artisan workshops in Split and Trogir at that time, which were distributed throughout the area of the urban districts of those communes. Finds of functionally identical objects have been recorded on the territory of Roman Salona and its broader vicinity, but in the period of late antiquity, while in the early modern period (16th-18th cent.) finds of iron hobnails for shoes or boots have been registered at a large number of sites in the hinterland of central Dalmatia. In addition to the rare and generalized tiny depictions of shoe buckles in the artistic sources of the Gothic and Renaissance (paintings, frescoes, sculptures) in Western Europe, references to them can also be found in written sources. One notarial document from the 16th century in Zadar mentions shoe buckles under the term fiube da scarpe. The investigation of this segment of material culture is just beginning, and new data can be expected to be discovered in documents and works of art, and above all in new archaeological finds of buckles for footwear, which will considerably improve our knowledge of this interesting attire detail from the Gothic and Renaissance periods.

The Stigmata in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Muessig
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Introductory Overview ◽  
Devotional Practices ◽  
The Face ◽  
Biblical Commentaries

Francis of Assisi’s reported reception of the stigmata on Mount La Verna in 1224 is often considered to be the first account of an individual receiving the five wounds of Christ. The thirteenth-century appearance of this miracle, however, is not as unexpected as it first seems. Interpretations of Galatians 6:17—I bear the stigmata of the Lord Jesus Christ in my body—had been circulating in biblical commentaries since late antiquity. These works explained stigmata as wounds that martyrs received, like the apostle Paul, in their attempt to spread Christianity in the face of resistance. By the seventh century, stigmata were described as marks of Christ that priests received invisibly at their ordination. In the eleventh century, monks and nuns were perceived as bearing the stigmata in so far as they lived a life of renunciation out of love for Christ. By the later Middle Ages holy women like Catherine of Siena (d. 1380) were more frequently described as having stigmata than their male counterparts. With the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century, the way stigmata were defined reflected the diverse perceptions of Christianity held by Catholics and Protestants. This study traces the birth and evolution of religious stigmata as expressed in theological discussions and devotional practices in Western Europe from the early Middle Ages to the early seventeenth century. It also contains an introductory overview of the historiography of religious stigmata beginning in the second half of the seventeenth century to its treatment and assessment in the twenty-first century.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Sources Of Authority ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Periods

The concluding chapter highlights how the cultural history of graphic signs of authority in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages encapsulated the profound transformation of political culture in the Mediterranean and Europe from approximately the fourth to ninth centuries. It also reflects on the transcendent sources of authority in these historical periods, and the role of graphic signs in highlighting this connection. Finally, it warns that, despite the apparent dominant role of the sign of the cross and cruciform graphic devices in providing access to transcendent protection and support in ninth-century Western Europe, some people could still employ alternative graphic signs deriving from older occult traditions in their recourse to transcendent powers.

A neverending stream : human trafficking in Medieval Europe

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Christopher Paolella
Keyword(s):  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Labor Demand ◽  
Sex Industry ◽  
Agricultural Labor ◽  
Long Distance

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] This study focuses on human trafficking patterns from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Era. I argue that while slavery, as a means of compelling agricultural labor, disappeared across much of Western Europe by the middle of the twelfth century, the commercial sex industry grew. As slavery died out, the slave trade withered across Western Europe and gradually reoriented itself around the Mediterranean basin. Yet, human trafficking networks remained in Western Europe, if in attenuated form. They continued to supply a smaller, but no less persistent, labor demand that was now fueled by brothels and prostitution rings instead of agriculture. I argue further that the experiences of women link the sex trade and the slave trade, and that twelfth-century socio-economic development linked the earlier long-distance slave trade and the local and regional trafficking networks of the later Middle Ages.

The Candle of Distinction: A Cultural Biography of the Havdalah Light

Images ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-24
Author(s):  
Michele Klein
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Ashkenazi Jewish ◽  
Ashkenazi Jews ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Cultural Biography ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Jewish Ritual

This case study explores how a general lighting device transformed into a distinctive Jewish ritual object, the Havdalah candle. In late antiquity, the ubiquitous oil lamp served for the fire-light blessing during the end-of-Sabbath Havdalah ritual but in the fourth century, a sage added a torch, avukah, aggrandizing the ceremonial light. Jews showed little concern for the lighting utensil until the late Middle Ages, when a variety of contemporary torch-candles employed in Church ritual and among Christian aristocracy inspired new rabbinic interpretations of the term avukah. Ashkenazi Jews favored a costly Gothic-style implement with intertwined tapers, which particularly suited the words of the ancient Havdalah blessing. This became a distinctively Ashkenazi Jewish ritual object in the sixteenth century, after Christians abandoned the old-fashioned style of torch-candle. Following the drop in cost of wax, and massive Jewish migrations in modern times, all observant Jews adopted the Ashkenazi intertwined candle.

scholarly journals Lying and Perjury in Medieval Practical Thought

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Corran
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Moral Ambiguity ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Moral Rules

Thought about lying and perjury became increasingly practical from the end of the twelfth century in Western Europe. At this time, a distinctive way of thinking about deception and false oaths appeared, which dealt with moral dilemmas and the application of moral rules in exceptional cases. It first emerged in the schools of Paris and Bologna, most notably in the Summa de Sacramentis et Animae Consiliis of Peter the Chanter. The tradition continued in pastoral writings of the thirteenth century, the practical moral questions addressed by theologians in universities in the second half of the thirteenth century, and in the Summae de Casibus Conscientiae of the late Middle Ages. This book argues that medieval practical ethics of this sort can usefully be described as casuistry—a term for the discipline of moral theology that became famous during the Counter-Reformation. This can be seen in the medieval origins of the concept of equivocation, an idea that was explored in medieval literature with varying degrees of moral ambiguity. From the turn of the thirteenth century, the concept was adopted by canon lawyers and theologians, as a means of exploring questions about exceptional situations in ethics. It has been assumed in the past that equivocation and the casuistry of lying was an academic discourse invented in the sixteenth century in order to evade moral obligations. This study reveals that casuistry in the Middle Ages was developed in ecclesiastical thought as part of an effort to explain how to follow moral rules in ambiguous and perplexing cases.

The Middle Ages

2020 ◽  
pp. 14-26
Author(s):  
Kati Ihnat
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The Arts ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
Large Churches ◽  
North Western ◽  
The Middle Ages

The High Middle Ages witnessed Christmas emerge as a major Christian feast in western Europe, a time of merriment and miracles. Always intended to celebrate the Incarnation, Christmas became a time to honour the little baby in the manger and his loving mother, as part of a spiritual shift towards remembering the human Jesus. Although Kalends traditions continued on from Antiquity, which engaged the lay population in carnivalesque revelries that included mumming, games, and feasting, clerics developed new practices that infused ecclesiastical celebrations with the same sense of inversion and fun. Feasts of Fools, Boy Bishops, and extravagant liturgical dramas allowed reformers to channel festive energy in ways that showcased developments in the arts, especially in the large churches of north-western Europe, without losing the joyful character that came with honouring the paradox of God made man.

The First Principles of Latin Neoplatonism: Augustine, Macrobius, Boethius

Vivarium ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Gersh
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
First Principles ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Systematic Theory ◽  
De Trinitate ◽  
Chronological Sequence ◽  
Thierry Of Chartres ◽  
Traditional Manner ◽  
Selection Of

Abstract This essay attempts to provide more evidence for the notions that there actually is a Latin (as opposed to a Greek) Neoplatonic tradition in late antiquity, that this tradition includes a systematic theory of first principles, and that this tradition and theory are influential in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. The method of the essay is intended to be novel in that, instead of examining authors or works in a chronological sequence and attempting to isolate doctrines in the traditional manner, it proceeds by identifying certain philosophemes (a concept borrowed from structuralist and post-structuralist thought and here signifying certain minimal units from which philosophical “systems” can be constructed), and then studying the combination and re-combination of these philosophemes consciously and unconsciously by a selection of important medieval writers. These philosophemes occur in Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram; Augustine, De Trinitate; Augustine, De Vera Religione; Augustine, De Musica; Macrobius, Commentarius in Somnium Scipionis; and Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae. The sampling of medieval authors who use these philosophemes includes Eriugena, William of Conches, Thierry of Chartres, and Nicholas of Cusa.

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