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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. -
Signs and Senses: Diagnosis and Prognosis in Early Medieval Pulse and Urine Texts
Posted on April 28, 2013 | No Commentsin which they were made. These early medieval anthologies are quite different from Scholastic anthologies such as the Artkella, which were compiled as curriculum texts for the new, formalized medical instruction of the nascent universities. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem as prototypical NGO
Posted on March 31, 2013 | No CommentsWhile the term non-governmental organization and its definition are modern, the common traits of NGOs today can be found in the equivalents of medieval times. -
A question of time or a question of theology: A study of the Easter controversy in the Insular Church
Posted on March 31, 2013 | No CommentsTo date scholarly research has approached this topic from a medieval historical perspective. It has, however, never been approached from a purely theological stance. Questions regarding the Insular 84-year cycle have occupied scholars over the past one hundred years or so. A review of the literature reveals an advance in understanding the techniques of the computus of the Insular church. -
Best Clothes and Everyday Attire of Late Medieval Nuns
Posted on March 25, 2013 | No CommentsThe habit symbolises humility because it nulifies any difference of estate; it signifies the will to chastity because it disguises the feminine form of the body; and it displays outer obedience to divine com- mands by its timelessly simple cut and fabric of linen or wool. Given this sort of symbolism, fashion and nuns appear to be mutually exclusive themes. -
The Metaphysics of Peter Abelard
Posted on March 24, 2013 | No CommentsI’ll begin with Abelard’s antirealism about universals, since it is the key to his irrealism. It provides the foundation for his conviction that only individuals exist, a thesis that calls for further analysis of the nature of individuals -
The Monk as an Element of Byzantine Society
Posted on March 20, 2013 | No CommentsIn Byzantium, the monk - at least as a projected ideal - embodied the aspirations of his society as a whole. -
Sisters Between: Gender and the Medieval Beguines
Posted on March 17, 2013 | No CommentsThe origins of the Beguines can be traced to two important medieval religious reform movements: monastic mysticism and the vita apostolica, or "apostolic life." -
Abelard’s Legacy: Why Theology is not Faith Seeking Understanding
Posted on March 17, 2013 | No CommentsIn this paper I will challenge the common definition of the theological task as faith seeking understanding, where the faith of a tradition commandeers the critical enquiry of the theologian. -
BOOKS: Happy St. Patrick Day! New reads to celebrate Medieval Ireland!
Posted on March 17, 2013 | No CommentsBOOKS: Happy St. Patrick Day! New reads to celebrate Medieval Ireland! -
Narratives of the saintly body in Anglo-Saxon England
Posted on March 10, 2013 | No CommentsThis dissertation investigates narratives of the saintly body in Anglo-Saxon England. Specifically, it examines the ways in which the bodies of holy men and women were constructed through such narratives and read in local appropriations of emblematic vitae and passiones. -
The Liber Vitae of Durham (BL MS Cotton Domitian A. vii): a discussion of its possible context and use in the later middle ages
Posted on March 10, 2013 | No CommentsThe Durham Liber Vitae belonged in the later Middle Ages to Durham Cathedral Priory and, to understand its context, the history of the communities which produced it must be understood. -
Reality and Truth in Thomas of York: Study and Text
Posted on March 10, 2013 | No CommentsThe investigation is conducted through a study of opposites into which being is divided. These opposites are principally the one and the many, potency and act, truth and falsity. -
Bernard of Morlaix: the literature of complaint, the Latin tradition and the twelfth-century “Renaissance”
Posted on March 9, 2013 | No CommentsBernard of Morlaix was a monk of the order of Cluny who flourished around 1140. Excerpts from one of his poems appear in some anthologies of medieval Latin verse1 and he is briefly noticed in some works on the twelfth-century renaissance, but he has received little critical attention and only one of his poems has been translated from the Latin. -
“The Wrath of the Northmen”: The Vikings and their Memory
Posted on March 2, 2013 | No CommentsThese raiding peoples emerge out of all three Scandinavian homelands--Norway, Sweden, and Denmark--sending off their young men all over the known world in search of wealth and prestige. -
What was the Investiture Controversy a Controversy About?
Posted on February 19, 2013 | No CommentsThis thesis will aim to demonstrate that the Investiture Controversy was primarily a clash originating from fifth century ideas which were put into practice and developed by an eleventh century papacy. -
The monastic thought and culture of Pope Gregory the Great in their Western context, c.400-604
Posted on February 15, 2013 | No CommentsGregory was the first monk to be pope; proverbially, he would have preferred to have remained a monk; the audience he addressed was almost always made up of monks. -
Literal and Symbolic: the Language of Asceticism in Two Lives of St Radegund
Posted on February 10, 2013 | No CommentsSince Radegund was never martyred, it is through her ascetic practice, a vicarious martyrdom, that her sanctity must be constructed. Both Fortunatus and Baudonivia treat Radegund's ascetic practices as a means of creating the powerful body of a saint, a living relic, but the differences in the two writers' approaches are notable. -
Making the martyr: the liturgical persona of Saint Thomas Becket in visual imagery
Posted on February 10, 2013 | No CommentsHow was the historical figure of the worldly chancellor reconciled to the saintly archbishop who was martyred for his faith on the floor of Canterbury Cathedral? One of the most important vehicles of expression in the Middle Ages was the liturgy. -
The speaking cross, the persecuted princess and the murdered earl: the early history of Romsey Abbey
Posted on February 5, 2013 | No CommentsThe Old-English note may have begun life as an endorsement, either to the grant of privileges or (what is perhaps more likely) to the agreement about the woodland belonging to Romsey, a notice of which has become attached to it; it was not uncommon when diplomas were collected into cartularies for such endorsements to be used as ‘headings’ for the text. -
Testimonies of the Living Dead: The Martyrology-Necrology and the Necrology in the Chapter-Book of Mont-Saint-Michel
Posted on February 5, 2013 | No CommentsOn the face of it, a necrological record indicating the day of the year on which a subject died might be nothing more than the point at which to draw the line. In fact, the place, or even places, in which such records occur yields significant information about the subject’s life, rather than his death.