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.
Fraxinetum: An Islamic Frontier State in Tenth Century Provence
How did a Muslim mini-state emerge on the southern coast of France in the tenth century?
Louis the Pious and the Conversion of the Danes
This 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.
Lincolnshire and the Arthurian Legend
This article is intended to rectify this, proceeding from the widely-held assumption of the existence of a genuinely ‘historical Arthur’, before going on to consider the even more fundamental question of whether we ought to believe in Arthur’s existence at all.
Narratives of the saintly body in Anglo-Saxon England
This 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.
Notes on a private library in fourth/tenth-century Baghdad
Studies on medieval Arabic bibliophilia have mainly focussed on public and semi-public institutions, for some of which we have detailed information. Less is known about private libraries and their physical arrangement. This paper looks at the library of Abū Bakr al-Ṣūlī (d. 335/947), which is described by the sources in unique terms, contextualising it with al-Ṣūlī’s own words on collecting and organizing books.
The Old English Rune Poem – Semantics, Structure, and Symmetry
The later runic alphabets do, of course, follow the basic pattern of the earlier Germanic Fupark though considerably modified by the late eighth century, decreasing in the number of runes in Scandinavia whilst increasing in number in the runic alphabets of England.
The Frankish Annals of Lindisfarne and Kent
Scholars interested in the processes by which the history of Early Anglo Saxon England came to be recorded have long known of the existence of the annals that are referred to here as ‘The Frankish Annals of Linidisfarne and Kent’.
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.
The Making of Men, not Masters: Right Order and Lay Masculinity According to Dhuoda and Nithard
Setting Nithard’s and Dhuoda’s works in dialogue with one another, this study seeks to explore how the conflicts of the early 840s may have triggered reevaluations of contemporary ideals regarding lay masculinty. At the core of both authors’ works is the understanding that the problems the realm was facing at that time were primarily due to no- blemen’s expression of unmanly modes of conduct.
St Edmund of East Anglia and his miracles: variations in literature and art
Edmund was said to have been crowned at the age of just fourteen years by St Humbert on 25 December 855 in the then royal capital Burna, (probably Bures St Mary, Suffolk). Almost nothing is known of his life and reign, though he was recorded as a just and uncompromising ruler, the embodiment of the Greek ideal of the kalòs kai agathòs – that is, the right balance of the Good and the Beautiful, the combination of virtues that could create the perfect nobleman.
The Murder of St. Wistan
There is more than one ghost story connected with the quiet hamlet of Wistow, which lies off the London road about seven miles from Leicester.
Exegesis According to the Rules of Philosophy or the Rule of Faith?: Methodological Conflict in the Ninth-Century Predestination Controversy
The development of biblical exegesis, as Contreni shows, was rapid, but not homogeneous. On the one hand, one of the main ways to acquire biblical wisdom was to rely on the interpretations and teaching of the Holy Fathers, whose texts were studied, assimilated, simplified, collected, and taught. On the other hand, Alcuin’s revival of the liberal arts6 paved the way for the rise of another method of biblical exegesis.
Alfred the Great: Viking Wars and Military Reforms
The purpose of this piece is to examine Alfred the Greats Viking wars and to ascertain why his kingdom of Wessex survived the Viking onslaught in the ninth century.
Viking Camps in Ninth-century Ireland: Sources, Locations and Interactions
The first part will reflect on how viking bases can be identified in written records. This is followed by a study of the location of these camps.
Hincmar of Reims on King-making: The Evidence of the Annals of St. Bertin, 861–882
The Histories and Chronicles Hincmar had in mind were presumably Frankish ones; and Lothar II, succeeding his father, thus clearly came into this section of Hincmar’s third category. But of the timing or form of Lothar’s becoming king, Hincmar said not a word, preferring, instead, to spell out the Biblical lesson that a bad king (and he hastily disclaimed any allegation that Lothar’s father had been a bad king) would see the succession depart from his line.
The Consuetudines canonice of Lund
In this paper we shall deal with the customs in Lund, the so-called Consuetudines canonice.
John Scotus Eriugena
Eriugena, master of the liberal arts, translator, philologue, poet, philosopher, and theologian, ‘reinvented the greater part of the theses of Neoplatonism’, by his time largely forgotten in the Latin West.
Powerful Women in a Patriarchal Society: Examining the Social Status and Roles of Aristocratic Carolingian Women
The status of aristocratic women hinged on virtue, the ability to manipulate beauty, wealth, marriage status, and Carolingian laws and reforms throughout the ninth century.
The Good, the Bad or the Unworthy? Accusations, Defense and Representation in the Case of Ebbo of Reims, 835-882
In 877, a man fell ill. His name was Bernold, and he was a parishioner in the see of Reims. Bernold received the rites of the dying, did not eat for four days and he was so weak that when he wanted to drink, he could not ask for water.
Conquest or Colonisation: The Scandinavians in Ryedale from the Ninth to Eleventh Centuries
The study of settlement history has developed within the fields of history, archaeology and geography. As a result much of the work carried out in settlement studies has borrowed the research and conclusions of scholars from other disciplines.
What can written sources, sculpture and archaeology tell us about Pictish identity and how this might have changed between the sixth and ninth centuries?
Arguably one of the biggest changes in how the Picts portrayed themselves is understood through their use of sculpture. The earliest is thought to date to around the fifth century (Historic Scotland, 2012) lending itself to the Class I typology.
The Three Recensions of Eriugena’s Versio Dionysii
However, as G. Théry later discovered, Traube’s point of departure—the citations of Dionysius in Hincmar’s treatise on predestination—was faulty. Since Traube published his notes on the manuscripts of the Versio, Théry has proven that the citations in Hincmar’s Liber de praedestinatione come from Hilduin’s translation rather than that of Eriugena.