Noble Women’s Position in the Capetian Dynasty
In this paper, I will try to show mainly the women’s position in the noble family and its marriage in the Capetian Dynasty which is considered as a typical feudal period.
Inquiring into Adultery and Other Wicked Deeds: Episcopal Justice in Tenth- and Early Eleventh-Century Italy
This article suggests that Italian bishops often had recourse to spiritual penalties to exercise their coercive authority over serious offences during the tenth and early eleventh centuries.
Identifying Women Proprietors in Wills from Fifteenth-Century London
Most Londoners lodged their post obit requests with the Husting Court, the county court of London. The testators were primarily wealthy artisans and merchants, since one needed to possess a substantial amount of property in order to register the details of the division of that property.
“Walkynge in the mede” : Chaucerian gardens and the recasting of the Edenic fall
In 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.
Intermarriage in fifteenth-century Ireland: the English and Irish in the ‘four obedient shires’
The so-called ‘four obedient shires’ of Meath, Kildare, Louth and Dublin are a fruitful area for a study of marriage between the English of Ireland and the Irish, as these counties comprised the region of the colony most firmly under English control in the fifteenth century. Much of the anti-Irish rhetoric that survives in sources from the period…
Licit and Illicit Sexuality in Medieval Iberia: A Survey of Las Siete Partidas
This thesis examines Las Siete Partidas, a thirteenth-century Castilian legal code of laws, including on marriage and illicit sexual behaviors.
Personal’ Rituals: The Office of Ceremonies and Papal Weddings, 1483-1521
This analysis reveals the increasing involvement of papal ceremonialists in the preparation and supervision of wedding events,5 highlighting the ceremonialists’ own broad definition of their mandate and a pragmatic approach to the boundaries of papal ritual.
The Church and sexuality in medieval Iceland
From its earliest days Christianity has attempted to control human sexuality. The letters of Paul and the writings of the Church Fathers praise the state of virginity above that of marriage, and within matrimony permit sex only for procreation.
“Full Faith and Credit” in Merrie Olde England: New Insights for Marriage Conflicts Law from the Thirteenth Century
Here the subject is full faith and credit and the implications which the exposure of the myth of universality might carry for the recognition of judgments concerning marriage. As with the choice of law problem, so with the recognition of judgments, there is discovered in the anti- quities of English law a perception and comprehension exceeding our own.
Marriage between King Harald Fairhair and Snæfriðr, and their Offspring: Mythological Foundation of the Norwegian Medieval Dynasty?
Historians in Nordic countries since the turn of the twentieth century have become increasingly aware of the problem using these primary sources from earlier times, especially the sagas from the late twelfth- and thirteenth centuries, about three hundred years after Harald assumedly lived. It was Halvdan Koht(1873-1965)who introduced this point of view into Norwegian historiography, although some researchers, including Yngvar Nielsen, had cast doubt on the accuracy of the account before him.
Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages
The Middle Ages are often viewed as a repository of tradition, yet what we think of as traditional marriage was far from the only available alternative to the single state in medieval Europe.
Matrimonial politics and core-periphery interactions in twelfth- and early thirteenth-century Scotland
The medieval kingdom of Scotland was a rich amalgam of diverse ethnic elements which reflected the turbulent history of the first millennium of its development.
Juana “The Mad”: Queen of a World Empire
It was not until the mid-nineteenth century that scholars discovered new material about Juana in the Spanish and Austrian archives that gave another side to the person of the woman who had been con- sidered “la loca.”
The Church in Fourteenth-Century Iceland: Ecclesiastical Administration, Literacy, and the Formation of an Elite Clerical Identity
In what follows, therefore, I provide a detailed study of Icelandic clergy and the institutions of the Icelandic Church in the period from 1300 to 1404.
The Wife of Bath: a Tragic Caricature of Women
The Wife is characterized by a preoccupation with sex, which she uses to manipulate her husbands, of which she has had five, into acquiescing their land and money to her control.
Noble and Urban Family-Structures in the Late Middle Ages in the Hungarian Kingdom
The everyday life of the clan people was filled with disputes over small plots, since it was the main duty of each generation to preserve and enlarge the lands of the clan. It was also the basic interest of the members of the clans to secure the survival of the clan by marriages that were fertile in every sense. It was a sign of the strength of the clan that the members had to consult before taking decisions in questions of marriage, inheritance.
Shifting Experiences: The Changing Roles of Women in the Italian, Lowland, and German Regions of Western Europe from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period
Specifically, the thesis compares and analyzes the changing roles that women could employ economically, politically, socially, and religiously.
“The Softness of Her Sex”: Matilda’s Role in the English Civil War of 1138-1153
This thesis examines the life of the Empress Matilda (1102-1167), focusing on how factors beyond her control directed much of its course. It discusses her attempts to take control of the political realm in England and the effect this had on her, her supporters, and her kingdom. It also analyzes her later years and influence on her son Henry II.
Prescribing Love: Italian Jewish Physicians Writing on Lovesickness in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
This paper begins with a general survey of early modern European medical literature concerning lovesickness. This is followed by a short introduction to the Jewish physicians who lived and worked in the geographic area currently constituting Italy during the beginning of the early modern period, focusing on three physicians who wrote about lovesickness…
The Punishment of Bigamy in Late-medieval Troyes
The ecclesiastical judges of Troyes perceived the crime of bigamy as an attack on the very nature of sacramental marriage. The punishment for bigamy resembled that of heresy, or an offence on the level of a priest who committed homicide.
The status of women in Roman and Frankish law
Under both Roman and Frankish laws, women, although they did not have judicial equality with men, did have many legal rights and freedoms.
A Historiography of Chastity in the Marriage of Edith of Wessex and Edward the Confessor
While records of Edith’s life and her marriage to Edward are poor, the historiography of those who narrated her life after her death is rich. In some ways, the historiography of her life was directly related to that of her husband’s.
The development of incest regulations in the early Middle Ages : family, nurturance, and aggression in the making of the medieval West
In the late sixth century, Brunhild, queen mother for one branch of the Merovingians and herself a Visigothic princess, met with Guntram, the over-king of the Franks, to discuss the marriage of her daughter Chlodosind to her first cousin once removed, Reccared.
The Curious Case of Mary Felton
Mary Felton was at one point or another during her complex life was married to Edmund Hemgrave, Thomas Breton, Geoffrey Worsley, and John Curson, consectively, though not always exclusively; she was also ‘sometime’ widow, mistress, divorcee, nun, apostate, and mother.