scholarly journals Revival and Reality: The Carolingian Renaissance in Rome and the basilica of S. Prassede

1970 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 163-192
Author(s):  
Caroline Goodson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Urban Church ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Monumental Architecture ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Papal Authority ◽  
The City

The monumental architecture of the early middle ages in Rome has long been explained as a revival of ancient architecture, specifically Constantinian basilicas, a theory first advanced by Richard Krautheimer in two seminal articles in 1942. This article seeks to explore other ways in which early medieval buildings were significant, taking as its focus the basilica of S. Prassede, built by Paschal I (817-24). Paschal’s church incorporated a very significant collection of martyrs’ relics, translated from the catacombs outside the city into the urban church. Paschal’s church was a saints’ shrine, a mausoleum for his mother, and a locus of a new kind of papal authority. These aspects of the significance of the building were generated more in function than in form.

The diaconiae of Early Medieval Rome: From “Greek” to “Roman”, from “Private” to “Papal”?

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 90-132
Author(s):  
Philipp Winterhager
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Charitable Foundations ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City ◽  
Secular State

Abstract Traditionally, scholarship has seen the history of the diaconiae, charitable foundations in the city of Rome, in line with the alleged general trends in Roman history in the early Middle Ages, i.e. the gradual “Romanization” of formerly “Greek” elements of Byzantine origin, and the “papalization” of secular (state and private) initiatives, both taking place primarily in the mid-8th century. Although the diaconiae had come under papal control as late as the 9th and eventually the 10th centuries, this paper argues that this development took place not as an abandonment of private forms of endowments prominent in Byzantine Rome, but namely through the appropriation of “post-Byzantine” aristocratic endowment practice by the popes around the turn of the 9th century.

The Walls and Aqueducts of Rome in the Early Middle Ages, A.D. 500–1000

1998 ◽  
Vol 88 ◽  
pp. 166-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Coates-Stephens
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Urban Infrastructure ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Dark Ages ◽  
The City

Our knowledge of the city of Rome after the fall of the Western Empire is largely determined by its position as the seat of the Papacy. Historical studies are based principally upon the Liber Pontificalis and the writings of the popes themselves, while architectural and archaeological research has concentrated on the city's numerous churches, many of which for the period A.D. 500–850 are remarkably well-preserved. The best known modern syntheses in English from each field are probably Peter Llewellyn's Rome in the Dark Ages (1971) and Richard Krautheimer's Rome. Profile of a City (1980). If we look beyond the purely ecclesiastical, however, we find very little Archaeological studies of Rome's urban infrastructure—walls, roads, bridges, aqueducts, sewers, housing—tend to stop, at the latest, with the Gothic Wars of the mid-sixth century. The lack of research, and therefore lack of data, have in turn been interpreted as a sign that early medieval Rome was a city bereft of an artificial watersupply, and of the resources necessary to maintain such structures as the Aurelianic Walls. Studies of medieval urbanism have been affected by this dearth of evidence proposing, for example, settlement models with the population of the city crowded into the Tiber bend in order to obtain water.

"Once Mistress of the World :" Rome, St. Peter, and female devotion in the early Middle Ages

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Autumn Dolan
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Rank ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
Papal Authority ◽  
The City

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] I reassess the reception of Rome in the early medieval west from the historiographical background of women's history. Women's conception of Rome as a cult center, an intervening ally, and a devotional adviser between 300-900 CE proved crucial in a coming-of-age period for the papacy, whose spiritual authority had begun to resonate from the Mediterranean northward as the vicar of St. Peter. My consideration of women through the lens of Petrine devotion and Roman networks stands out from previous studies that cite papal legitimacy and Roman influence in the political and rhetorical debates among the pope, bishops, and rulers. Through examinations of women's devotional practices involving Rome, it is possible to see the significance of the city and its representatives in the devotional lives of western Christians along with women's vital part in maintaining and extending papal authority and Roman cults in the first millennium. This study draws from hagiographical, epistolary, and literary sources in addition to the use of material evidence such as inscriptions, devotional objects, and architecture. None of these sources are new to early medievalists, but when read for the Roman affiliations within female devotion, they bring us to expand our impressions of Rome's reception in the west and redefine our expectations of women's religious practices. In order to capture the breadth of early medieval women's associations with Rome, this study takes a broad geographic and social approach. The geographic focus for this study spans from Rome to include Francia and Anglo-Saxon England in order to emphasize the extent of Rome's appeal, and also to demonstrate women's involvement in the widespread travel networks that culminated at the city. Although elite women dominate sources for early medieval women, it is nevertheless possible to tease out from evaluations of cult worship the devotional trends of popular religion, and with them the deeds of the poor or middling ranks in society. This broad examination of devotion in terms of geography and social rank contributes to a dynamic image of the late antique and early medieval worlds, providing further caution against assumptions that the local predominated in the worldview of those living in the centuries following the political fall of Rome. As we continue to gradually reinsert Rome into the narrative of the early medieval west, women should figure in our discussions of the developments in papal authority, the success of the cults of Roman saints, and the facilitation of pilgrimage and exchange routes that extended from Rome through Francia and across the English Channel. The continuity of women's roles in domestic devotion between late antique and early medieval culture grounds the survey of Rome and its reception in the west, even as we struggle with the real changes in its political and economic structures. Although early medieval men and women witnessed a localization of thought and exchange following the withdrawal of the Roman Empire, they were no less aware of the enduring ties between their region and that of Rome, the city that was once “Mistress of the World.

Poet of the Medieval Modern

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
History Of ◽  
Catholic History ◽  
In Parenthesis ◽  
Stone Sculpture

The early Middle Ages provided twentieth-century poets with the material to reimagine and rework local, religious, and national identities in their writing. Poet of the Medieval Modern focuses on a key figure within this tradition, the Anglo-Welsh poet and artist David Jones (1895–1974), and represents the first extended study of the influence of early medieval culture and history from England on Jones and his novel-length late modernist poem The Anathemata (1952). The Anathemata, the second major poetic project after In Parenthesis (1937), fuses Jones’s visual and verbal arts to write a Catholic history of Britain as told through the history of man-as-artist. Drawing on unpublished archival material including manuscripts, sketches, correspondence, and, most significantly, the marginalia from David Jones’s Library, Poet of the Medieval Modern reads with Jones in order to trouble the distinction we make between poetry and scholarship. Placing this underappreciated figure firmly at the centre of new developments in modernist and medieval studies, Poet of the Medieval Modern brings the two fields into dialogue and argues that Jones uses the textual and material culture of the early Middle Ages—including Old English prose and poetry, Anglo-Latin hagiography, early medieval stone sculpture, manuscripts, and historiography—to re-envision British Catholic identity in the twentieth-century long poem. In The Anathemata Jones returned to the English record to seek out those moments where the histories of the Welsh had been elided or erased. At a time when the Middle Ages are increasingly weaponized in far-right and nationalist political discourse, the book offers a timely discussion of how the early medieval past has been resourced to both shore up and challenge English hegemonies across modern British culture.

Aachen — the Second Rome: a City as a Symbol of Power in Poetic Carolingian Texts

Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9 (107)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Maya Petrova
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Poetic Tradition ◽  
Narrative Poetry ◽  
The Third ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
The City

The paper deals the construction of Aachen as a symbol of the power of Charlemagne (742/4 — 814). It discusses the poetic Carolingian texts, which played an important role in the formation of the medieval ideology of the unity of the City and the power of its creator. It is shown that the most striking example of the statement of such a worldview is the third book (v. 1—536) of the anonymous epic poem (not fully preserved), known in the early Middle Ages under the title “Charlemagne and Pope Leo” (Karolus Magnus et Leo Papa). It is noted that this text, containing a description of the construction of the Second Rome — Aachen, influenced the subsequent Carolingian poetic tradition, serving as a turning point in the development of narrative poetry during the reign of Charlemagne.

Urban Change in Early Medieval Italy: The Example of Pavia

1966 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 82-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. A. Bullough
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Social History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Medieval Studies ◽  
Medieval Italy ◽  
Warm Hospitality ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

Prefatory Note.—My interest in Pavia goes back at least to 1951 when I was elected Rome Scholar in Medieval Studies. I began seriously to collect material for the history of the city in the early Middle Ages in the winter and spring of 1953 when I enjoyed the warm hospitality of the Collegio Ghislieri, thanks to the efforts made on my behalf by the late Hugh Last, to whose memory this article is dedicated. The published proceedings of the Reichenau and Spoleto congresses on ‘The early medieval town’ in the 1950s clearly underlined the need for detailed studies of particular towns; but the lack of adequate archaeological evidence discouraged me from attempting such a study of early medieval Pavia. In 1964, however, Dr. A. Peroni, Director of the Museo Civico invited me to read a supplementary paper on this topic to the Convegno di Studio sul Centro Storico di Pavia held in the Università degli Studi at Pavia on July 4th and 5th of that year. The present article is an amplified and corrected version of that paper: I have made no substantial alterations to my account of the ‘urbanistica’ of early medieval Pavia—written for an audience of architects and art-historians as well as of historians—but have dealt more fully with the social history of the city in this period. Professor Richard Krautheimer read a draft of the revised version and made some pointed and helpful comments. I am greatly indebted to Dr. Peroni, not merely for the invitation to present the original paper but also for supplying illustrations and answering queries at a time when he and his staff were engaged in helping to repair the ravages of the Florence floods.

Human–Bovine Plagues in the Early Middle Ages

2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy P. Newfield
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Molecular Clock ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Middle Ages

Two independent molecular clock analyses (mcas) reveal that measles (mv) diverged from rinderpest (rpv) c. 1000 c.e. This evidence, when conjoined with written accounts of non-Justinianic plagues in 569–570 and 986–988 and zoo-archaeological discoveries regarding early medieval mass bovine mortalities, suggests that a now-extinct morbillivirus, ancestral to mv and rpv, broke out episodically in the early Middle Ages, causing large mortalities in both species. Tentative diagnoses of an mv–rpv ancestor help to untangle early medieval accounts of human–bovine disease and facilitate an assessment of the consequences of the 569–570 and 986–988 plagues.

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