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Christianity Archive
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How Christian Were Viking Christians?
Posted on June 15, 2013 | No CommentsWhat did the Vikings know of Christianity, how did they appreciate Christian teaching per se and in comparison with their native beliefs, in what way was Christianity enrooted in the minds of pagan Scandinavians? -
Civic and Religious Understanding of the Mentally Ill, Incompetent, and Disabled of Medieval England
Posted on May 20, 2013 | No CommentsThis brief summary covered the fourth paper given at KZOO's Mental Health in Non-medical Terms. It covered ways in which theologians, like Thomas Aquinas, tried to categorize mental disability. Aquinas also tried to prove that the mentally impaired were able to receive sacraments depending their lucidity and where they fit in his four categories. It was an interesting and enjoyable paper. -
Mental Disability and Intellectual Impairment in the Middle Ages: Some Preliminary Research Findings
Posted on May 19, 2013 | No CommentsThis interesting paper was one of the four given in the Mental Health in Non-medical Terms session at KZOO. It looked at philosophy, iconography and the way mental disability was viewed in the Middle Ages. -
Going Mad in French: Royal Notaries and Charles V’s Translation Project
Posted on May 19, 2013 | No CommentsThis was another interesting paper from the Mental Health in Non-medical Terms session at KZOO on notaries, and how crimes committed under "mental duress" were processed. -
Infant Burials and Christianization: The View from East Central Europe
Posted on May 19, 2013 | No CommentsThis was the second paper in the Early Medieval Europe I series given at KZOO and another fabulous archaeology paper. It contrasted infant grave sites in early converted medieval Poland and Anglo Saxon England. -
Feasting with Early Medieval Chiefs: Locating Political Action through Environmental Archaeology
Posted on May 18, 2013 | No CommentsThis excellent paper was the first given in the session on Early Medieval Europe. It looked at various archaeological excavations in Iceland and Denmark and the political role feasting played in pre-Christian Viking societies. -
Louis the Pious and the Conversion of the Danes
Posted on May 17, 2013 | No CommentsThis paper was part of a very interesting session on the Early Middle Ages. The papers covered Eastern European Infant Burial, the archaeology of medieval feasting and conversion. This paper contrasted the conversion policies of Charlemagne versus those of Louis the Pious. -
Student Violence at the University of Oxford
Posted on May 9, 2013 | No CommentsMy first foray of KZOO 2013 couldn't have been off to a better start with, “I just don’t want to die without a few scars”: Medieval Fight Clubs, Masculine Identity, and Public (Dis)order. There were only two papers in this session and both were riveting. I felt like I couldn't type fast enough to get it all in! The first paper was given by Professor Andrew Larsen of Marquette University. Professor Larsen published a book on high and late medieval student violence and the Saint Scholastica's Day Riot at Oxford university. -
Networking Scribes
Posted on May 5, 2013 | No CommentsThis was the keynote paper given at the Celtic Studies Association of North America Annual Conference at the University of Toronto April 18 - 21, 2013. -
Book Review: Shadow on the Crown
Posted on May 4, 2013 | No CommentsA review of Patricia Bracewell's book: Shadow on the Crown. -
‘Fromm thennes faste he gan avyse/This litel spot of erthe’: GIS and the General Prologue
Posted on May 2, 2013 | No CommentsThis paper was given at the Canada Chaucer Seminar on April 27, 2013. -
The Seven Deadly Sins: Some Problems of Research
Posted on April 28, 2013 | No CommentsIn the following pages, I should like to point out a number of aspects or areas which my own study of acedia has convinced me must and can be fruitfully explored.The account does not aim at comprehensiveness; certainly, other students of mediaeval thought and literature will be able to point out other desiderata. If it merely revives some interest in its subject, it will have fulfilled its purpose. -
The Eucharistic Man of Sorrows in Late Medieval Art
Posted on April 28, 2013 | No CommentsEucharistic devotion also found it's ways of visual expression in the art of the period. Numerous new iconographical types were created in late medieval art for the purpose of visualizing the mystery of the Eucharist. -
“Walkynge in the mede” : Chaucerian gardens and the recasting of the Edenic fall
Posted on April 21, 2013 | No CommentsIn this thesis, I intend to illustrate how Chaucer uses his knowledge of garden traditions, both biblical and practical, to discuss the concept of the Garden of Eden and the Fall of humanity. -
Penance and Peter Abelard’s Move Within
Posted on April 21, 2013 | No CommentsOf the many individuals in the twelfth century whose fame in their own time has reached down to ours, figures like Thomas Becket, Frederick Barbarossa and Bernard of Clairvaux, there is no one whose fame surpassed that of Master Peter Abelard and no figure more public. Indeed, fame was something Abelard coveted, something he consciously built. -
The Roots of Rhythm: The Medieval Origins of the New Orleans’ Mardi Gras Beignet
Posted on April 15, 2013 | No CommentsThis paper argues that the beloved Mardi Gras beignet, eaten in advance of the Lenten fast, derives from deep-fried pastries used to break the Ramadan fast by medieval Muslims living in Spain. -
The “Battle with the Monster”: Transformation of a Traditional Pattern in “The Dream of the Rood”
Posted on April 14, 2013 | No CommentsThus, although I would not suggest that “The Dream of the Rood” was composed orally in performance, it is, I would contend, oral-derived, and it is that presumption upon which this analysis is founded. The poem, in other words, straddles both worlds, having ties to both textuality and orality. -
Teaching the Creed and Articles of Faith in England: Lateran IV to Ignorantia sacerdotum
Posted on April 14, 2013 | No CommentsThe broad conclusion of this thesis is that the available evidence shows that the basic principles of Christian doctrine were available both to the lower clergy who would preach and teach the Creed and Articles of Faith and also to the laity who would receive this preaching and instruction. -
Julian of Norwich’s “Christ as Mother” and Medieval Constructions of Gender
Posted on April 13, 2013 | No CommentsRecent Christian feminists have revived an interest in women mystics and feminine religious imagery. In light of what most people generalize about medieval misogyny and about the veneration of the Virgin as a surrogate for a female divinity, Julian of Norwich's trope of Christ as Mother seems even more remarkable. -
Wonders and Wisdom: Anglo-Saxons and the East
Posted on April 11, 2013 | No CommentsWhat the Anglo-Saxons ‘‘knew’’ about Moslems and Jews, and about Babylon and Egypt and India, depended upon Biblical exegesis, saints’ lives, and other texts derived from Latin sources. Numerous Old English texts, as well as Latin versions that circulated and were copied in Anglo-Saxon England, concern Asia; these are quite varied in genre and in content. -
Christian reactions to Muslim conquests (1st-3rd centuries AH; 7th-9th centuries AD)
Posted on April 7, 2013 | No CommentsWe in fact find a great diversity of reactions to Muslim expansion from Christian authors, depending on their particular circumstances and point of view -
Corpus Christi Plays and the Stations of the Cross: Medieval York and Modern Sydney
Posted on April 1, 2013 | No CommentsThe earliest surviving reference to the Corpus Christi festival in York is dated 1322, when Archbishop William Melton commended it as „the glorious feast of the most precious sacrament of the flesh and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ‟. In 1408 the York Guild of Corpus Christi was established „as a confraternity of chaplains and lay persons, with the encouragement of the city government, probably to form the focus of the civic Corpus Christi Day procession‟. -
The Cathedral of Bourges: A Witness to Judeo-Christian Dialogue in Medieval Berry
Posted on April 1, 2013 | No CommentsPositing any kind of Jewish-Christian “golden age” in Western Europe during the medieval centuries may seem somewhat foolish in light of what happened to Jews between 1240 and 1492: expulsions, forced conversions, social and political ostracism, deprivation of income and compa- rable economic oppression, accusation of and prosecution for so-called “crimes” against Christians, periodic rampages by Crusaders, and other attacks—both physical and mental— which functioned as insults to Judaism. -
Sugar and Spice and All Things Nice: From Oriental Bazar to English Cloister in Anglo-French
Posted on April 1, 2013 | No CommentsUntil recently, such limited interest as late Anglo-French was able to arouse amongst scholars specializing in medieval French has been confined, with only a very few exceptions, to the efforts made in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries to teach what was by now a language unknown to most of the inhabitants of a country moving inexorably towards the unchallenged dominance of English as the national language. -
Heorot and the Plundered Hoard: A Study of Beowulf
Posted on March 31, 2013 | No CommentsTime and again the Beowulf poet's choice of words and details reveals that he practised his craft within a tradition in which his creativeness was bound and disciplined by the objectiveness of a particular structure of images. We perceive in all the rich variety of his work the unifying effect of the typological imagination. It is in the typological mode of Beowulf that the key to its meaning and artistry is to be found.