Chivalry in Medieval England (review)

This article explores the use and promotion of contact relics in medieval England. It argues that by the late eleventh and early twelfth century, large English monastic houses were uncomfortable with unauthorised individuals touching high status corporeal relics and so re-introduced and promoted contact relics as alternative objects of veneration. It argues that contact relics were an important aspect of English saints' cults until the Reformation, in a similar manner to Celtic and Brittonic cults.

This article examines the representation of the Miracle of the Harvest, a rare pictorial motif on thirteenth century works, which was carved on four baptismal fonts by the Hegwald workshop operating on Gotland. The unique pictorial representations of this legend on the Hegwald fonts indicates that the workshop was most likely operating around the year 1200 or in the early decades of the thirteenth century and not, as Johnny Roosval suggested in 1918–1925, in the late eleventh or early twelfth centuries. Central to the development of the Romanesque font industry on Gotland was the arrival of the monks from the Cistercian monasteries of Clairvaux and Cîteaux in France, to Alvastra, Nydala (both on the Swedish mainland) and to the Baltic island of Gotland in 1152/53–1164, where the Cistercians founded the monastery of Beata Maria de Gutnalia (Roma). With these developments, a massive stone industry evolved across the North and introduced a major influx of French influences that impacted the numerous workshops producing baptismal fonts, including Hegwald’s. A review of the tetradic scholarship concerning the Hegwald workshop, the subject of the Miracle of the Harvest, the known written and visual evidence, and the construction history of the parish churches, is integrated and analysed within the historical context of the twelfth-and-thirteenth-century Danish-French alliances that contributed to these Baltic developments during the Valdemarian dynasty (1157–1241).

The development of Wales during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in terms of its political and social structures and legal and cultural institutions, has seen much attention over the last twenty years from scholars who have sought to explore the impact of the Normans in the British Isles and locate Wales's experience in an Insular context; the work of Robin Frame, Huw Pryce, John Gillingham, Robert Bartlett, and above all the late Sir Rees Davies has been enormously influential here. Nevertheless, Welsh political culture in the twelfth century has received less detailed attention than it might. The first problem is to define what we might mean by ‘political culture’ in the twelfth century. What was it? What were its features? Moreover, no historian would wish to sustain the argument that the political values, customs, and norms of society in, say, the Vale of Glamorgan were necessarily the same as those of Llŷn or Eifionydd in Gwynedd: we should be addressing the political cultures of Wales in the plural. The Europeanization of political culture in Wales The broad background to this paper is the transformation of Welsh society during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, what Sir Rees Davies identified as ‘far reaching and multi-faceted changes’. These changes fit into a much wider process of social, political, and cultural transformation in Europe's peripheral zones identified by Robert Bartlett in his important and influential Making of Europe .

STUDENTS of mediaeval society have long been aware of a sharp change in attitudes and values which took place in the thirteenth century. During that period, while Europe remained sincerely and completely Catholic, the church lost much of its influence. Though it perfected its organization and carried on its religious activities with great energy, the standards which it had set for secular activities were increasingly disregarded. The forces released by the great revival of civilization in the twelfth century could no longer be controlled by the church. They broke out of the old channels and either found new courses for themselves or dissipated their energy in the swamps and backwaters of uncoordinated endeavor. This secularization of European society is apparent in every field of human activity, in art and literature as well as in politics and economics. But while the fact of secularization is undisputed, the reasons for this great change in European opinion and the way in which the change was brought about are not clear. It is a problem which is well worth studying, not only because it is the key to much of the later history of the middle ages, but also because it is an interesting example of the ways in which public opinion are changed. This paper is an attempt to study one aspect of secularization, the laicization of French and English society in the thirteenth century. Laicization may be defined as the development of a society in which primary allegiance is given to lay governments, in which final decisions regarding social objectives are made by lay governments, in which the church is merely a private society with no public powers or duties. When society has been laicized leadership has passed from the church to the state. In the modern period this assumption of leadership by the state is usually manifested in attempts to control social services, such as education, to regulate family relationships, and to confiscate all, or part of the church's property. These particular manifestations of the idea of laicization should not be confused with the idea itself. There was no demand for government regulation of marriage and divorce in the thirteenth century and very little protest against church control of education. There were efforts to limit the church's acquisition of new property, but only a few fanatics advocated confiscation of what the church already possessed. Yet during the thirteenth century leadership passed from the church to lay governments, and when the test came under Boniface viii it was apparent that lay rulers, rather than the pope, could count on the primary allegiance of the people. Laicization is the political aspect of secularization. As such, it cannot be wholly explained by purely economic factors. I am quite willing to accept the conventional view that the economic changes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries made society more worldly, but worldliness is not the same thing as laicization.

This article traces the development of the legend of Arthur’s return from Avalon from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s inception of the motif to its early reception history, exploring its relationship to Welsh and Breton prophetic traditions and the impact of Avalon on subsequent English and French understandings of a constructed genre of pan-British political prophecy.

The ancient abbey of St. Antonin in Rouergue was located in the valley of the Aveyron, from which came the name Nobilis Vallis, or Noble Val, by which the site has been known since at least the thirteenth century.1 During the thousand years or more from its reputed foundation in the eighth century until its dissolution at the time of the French Revolution, the abbey went through two major crises. The first, with which this article is largely concerned, was its transfer in the late eleventh century from a house of monks into a chapter of regular canons. The second was during the Wars of Religion in the sixteenth century, when the town of Saint-Antonin was a center of the Protestant reform move-

Monastic literate practices in eleventh- and twelfth-century northern France

<i>Christianity and War in Medieval East Central Europe and Scandinavia</i>

In loving memory of Angle Arvidson (1961-1982)Over a decade ago, Georges Duby wrote his account of the development of the European economy between the seventh and twelfth centuries. The essential change he described was the transition from a society ruled by an elite of warriors, accumulating wealth through conquest, booty, and hoarding, to a society ruled by an elite of landholders, accumulating wealth through economic investment in land and places of production and exchange — workshops, markets, and fairs. The social groupings became increasingly complex. The simple societal divisions — between warriors and peasants, and between the free and the slaves — were replaced by complex and fluid structures of lordship and service. The resulting social arrangements and their language varied in different parts of Europe. Poland completed the transition from an economy based on force and warfare to one based on intensive agriculture and craft specialization in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. This essay describes the structure of rural services and tributes resulting from this transition in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. The first part describes village settlements and division of labor; the second part examines the concept of lordship and in particular the origins of involuntary services rendered by the peasants to the lords — “serfdom” — in Poland during the first decades of the thirteenth century.

Three Tournai Tombslabs in England

Reviewed by: Painting the Hortus Deliciarum—Medieval Women, Wisdom, and Time by Danielle B. Joyner Mihaela L. Florescu Danielle B. Joyner, Painting the Hortus Deliciarum—Medieval Women, Wisdom, and Time (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press 2016) 242 pp. The Hortus deliciarum, which translates into English as "the garden of delights," is an important twelfth-century manuscript because it challenges the traditional view that only men created texts in medieval European culture. The HD was made by women with an immediate female audience in mind beyond the wider audience of men. Danielle B. Joyner has produced a magnificent book on the creation and meaning of the HD. Her informed text connects perfectly with the beautiful images culled from the HD. Unfortunately for medieval purists, the only surviving proof that the HD ever existed comes from later sources. In 1818, Christian Moritz Engelhardt portrayed medieval life as an interpretation of the HD. The mid-nineteenth century saw a study of this important work by Comte Auguste de Bastard. Baptiste Petit-Gerard also studied the codex, his notes only being published in the 1950s. Medieval scholars only have a partial facsimile of the HD, published in 1979 by the Warburg Institute. The facsimile, gathered from nineteenth-century sources, represents the recreation of nearly half of the imagery and two-thirds of the text of the original manuscript. The history of the HD is closely tied to that of the history of the small monastic community of Hohenbourg, in Alsace. Duke Frederick II of Swabia invaded Hohenbourg in the early twelfth century. His son, Frederick Barbarossa, appointed Relinde as abbess and it was under her rule that the [End Page 218] community was rebuilt, Augustinian rule was adopted, and work on the HD was presumably begun. In the early 1170s, Herrad succeeded Relinde as abbess and work on the HD continued. In the manuscript, Herrad is portrayed as producing the codex and directing the work of the nuns, yet nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century scholars were so biased by the mores of their times, they refused to consider that women were capable of such work. The existence of the HD challenged established male hierarchies. Today, however, there is no doubt, and it is openly recognized, that women in the twelfth century were indeed responsible for the production of this magnificent manuscript. The content of the HD features themes from the Bible. It includes the following: fols. 1r–v: introductory texts; fols. 2r–66v: Old Testament visual and textual narratives; fols. 67r–84r: Old Testament textual recapitulation; visual and textual transitional material; fols. 84v–167r: visual and textual narratives of Christ's life; fols. 167v–199r: visual and textual narratives of apostolic missionary work; fols. 199v–241r: visual and textual narratives of moralizing allegories on the soul and Ecclesia; fols. 241v–263v: visual and textual narratives of prophetic end-times; fols. 264r–315v: textual recapitulation, texts on church synods, canon law; fols. 316r–322r: computus tables and texts; fols. 322v–323r: portrait of Hohenbourg past and present; fols. 323v–324v: concluding verses. Chapter 1, "Feminae, Libri, et 'Hortus deliciarum'", places the HD in the context of its times. Herrad is portrayed as giving instructions on iconographies featured in both the Guta-Sintram Codex and the Rupertsberg Scivias. In addition, similar moralizing themes appear in an array of medieval manuscripts. On the topics of pride and virginity the HD is similar to works such as the Speculum virginum, the Liber floridus, and the Zwiefalten. Chapter 1 brings to light a number of further comparisons. Visual distinctions are noted between the HD and St. Albans Psalter. Yet, the HD stands apart from its brethren by its sophisticated imagery and by its use of visuals in places where text would normally be employed. Chapter 2, "Stellae et Tempora", examines the first folios of the manuscript which are devoted to the story of Creation. The addition of sin into the world is compared to the existence of the Trinity and the creation of times. Narrative imagery and diagrammatic images and texts are used to portray the story of Genesis in a display of fluid twelfth century style. In Chapter 3, "Artes et Computus," the liberal arts...

The culture of the learned elite in the Latin world bordering on the Mediterranean and stretching north into Europe underwent a profound transformation between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries. Although the traditions of the immediately preceding period were never completely submerged, speculative and literary activity from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries on began to generate a kind of work that speaks to us with a philosophical immediacy that almost nothing from the seventh through eleventh centuries can presume to do. As with any cultural process, the roots of the change reached back deep in time, and in its entirety it extended to all areas of society, economic and political as well as literary and intellectual. It is no accident that the twelfth century has been characterized by Western medievalists as a period of “renais-sance,” while the origins of “Europe” as we think of it, and as it has exercised power in the modern world, have increasingly been pushed back to that era. In a guide to medieval philosophy there is no need to engage this historical phenomenon in all its breadth or to speculate very deeply on its causation. Reduced to the scope of medieval intellectual history, our concern is with the emergence of “scholasticism” in its strictest sense – or, as the title of this chapter suggests, with the appearance of a cultural sphere linked to the universities. Despite the fact that either orientation – broadly cultural or narrowly intellectual – must necessarily go seriously astray about the place it assigns the history of Arabic culture or of Byzantine Greek culture (see Chapters 1 and 3), the perspective they both provide gives us an entree to a cultural shift of dramatic proportions.

Was there a women’s movement in the thirteenth century and is such a question meaningful in its medieval context? Far from being resolved, the issue of whether women had a thirteenth-century renaissance has still decisively to unsettle the periodization of Western European history in twelfth and sixteenth-century humanist renaissances. Herbert Grundmann long ago demonstrated the participation of women in the eremitically-inspired reforming movements of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and in the production of vernacular literature. Yet it is upon his work that this volume builds, for the diocese of Liège is the key area in this development. It was from Liège that Jacques de Vitry approached the papacy to secure permission for the women of the bishopric of Liège, France and Germany to live together and to promote holiness in each other by mutual example. The seventeen contributors to this volume examine not only the beguine religious life in the southern Low Countries, but also the impact of this movement on later medieval Sweden, England and France, the new modes of influence exerted by women in their religious lives, and the revivals of feminine spirituality in the late medieval West through to contemporary North America. Research does not yet allow for a whole new synthesis, but this volume directs scholars to detailed work on specific localities and persons, with an awareness of the problems and possibilities of wider European comparisons.

Was there a women’s movement in the thirteenth century and is such a question meaningful in its medieval context? Far from being resolved, the issue of whether women had a thirteenth-century renaissance has still decisively to unsettle the periodization of Western European history in twelfth and sixteenth-century humanist renaissances. Herbert Grundmann long ago demonstrated the participation of women in the eremitically-inspired reforming movements of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and in the production of vernacular literature. Yet it is upon his work that this volume builds, for the diocese of Liège is the key area in this development. It was from Liège that Jacques de Vitry approached the papacy to secure permission for the women of the bishopric of Liège, France and Germany to live together and to promote holiness in each other by mutual example. The seventeen contributors to this volume examine not only the beguine religious life in the southern Low Countries, but also the impact of this movement on later medieval Sweden, England and France, the new modes of influence exerted by women in their religious lives, and the revivals of feminine spirituality in the late medieval West through to contemporary North America. Research does not yet allow for a whole new synthesis, but this volume directs scholars to detailed work on specific localities and persons, with an awareness of the problems and possibilities of wider European comparisons.

Book Review| December 01 1984 Review: French Gothic Architecture of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, California Studies in the History of Art, Vol. 20 by Jean Bony French Gothic Architecture of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, California Studies in the History of Art, Vol. 20Jean Bony François Bucher François Bucher Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (1984) 43 (4): 367–368. https://doi.org/10.2307/990046 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation François Bucher; Review: French Gothic Architecture of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, California Studies in the History of Art, Vol. 20 by Jean Bony. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 1 December 1984; 43 (4): 367–368. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/990046 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the Society of Architectural Historians Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1984 The Society of Architectural Historians Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.