History Commons^™

Unius Regulae Ac Unius Patriae: A Standardizing Process In Anglo-Saxon England, Daniel Matteuzzi O'Gorman

Dissertations

My dissertation investigates the value of `standards' and `standardization' as tools for historians to interpret social and political dynamics in the Middle Ages. To date, medieval scholarship has utilized these concepts in a relatively unsophisticated manner; standardization has been taken to simply mean the imposition of uniformity. My dissertation uses the work of contemporary engineers and sociologists to problematize this understanding of standardization. I argue that the term, properly employed, signifies a process of consensus, of horizontal rather than hierarchical relationships and of ongoing revision. Further, I contend that standardization is a means and not an end, and that those …

Censorship And Intolerance In Medieval England, Richard Obenauf

Dissertations

Censorship is difficult to prove conclusively in the Middle Ages because manuscript culture is susceptible to the destruction of evidence, namely by burning works deemed unacceptable. Moreover, medieval authors were subject to many forms of intolerance which shaped their literary decisions. This dissertation proposes that the roots of formal print censorship in England are to be found in earlier forms of intolerance which sought to enforce conformity and that censorship is not distinct from intolerance, but rather is another form of intolerance. I draw on political writings by Peter Abelard, John of Salisbury, and William of Ockham to establish a …

Bound By Words: Oath-Taking And Oath-Breaking In Medieval Lceland And Anglo-Saxon England, Gregory L. Laing

Dissertations

The legal and literary texts of early medieval England and Iceland share a common emphasis on truth and demonstrate its importance through the sheer volume of textual references. One of the most common applications of truth-seeking in these sources occurs in the swearing of oaths. Instances of oath-taking and oath-breaking, therefore, are critical textual loci wherein the language of swearing unites an individual’s socially constructed reputation and his personal guarantees under the careful supervision of the community. Traditionally, scholars looking at truth and attestation from the later medieval period tend to view early cases of swearing as procedural, artless, or …

Liturgical Celebrations With Emotional Expectations In Auxerre, 840-908, Thomas A. Greene

Dissertations

Scholars traditionally date the origin of "affective piety" to the late-eleventh century. The place of emotions in early medieval devotional activity, therefore, has yet to be properly acknowledged. Based on exegetical and homiletic material written at the monastery of Saint-Germain (Auxerre) between 840 and 908, I argue that liturgical celebrations were to take place in a context suffused with both the experience and expression of emotions.

Life And Local Administration On Fifteenth Century Genoese Chios, Brian Nathaniel Becker

Dissertations

This dissertation combines a comparative analysis of the colonial administrations of Genoese Chios (1346-1566) and Venetian Crete (1211-1669) with an examination of the internal dynamics of Chian society under Genoese rule. It asks how society functioned on Chios and what role the ruling Genoese Mahona, or association of ship owners involved in the conquest, played in its construction. This study demonstrates, on the one hand, how often a colonial administration lacking strong direction from its home state, as was the case with the Mahona, crossed various constructed boundaries to establish mixed relationships with other states and also the island's indigenous …

The Taifa Of Denia And The Medieval Mediterranean, Travis Bruce

Dissertations

This dissertation treats the Muslim kingdom of Denia on the Spanish Mediterranean coast. Through a singular political program, the eleventh-century rulers of Denia created a maritime kingdom based on the resources and networks of the Mediterranean. Denia played a unique role as a Mediterranean polity, developing economic links with Christian Barcelona, Sardinia, Pisa and Genoa that would connect Muslim and Christian populations over several centuries. The dissertation demonstrates the importance of economics in the Muslim-Christian relations of the western Mediterranean using Latin archival documents, Latin and Arabic narrative sources, and archaeological and numismatic evidence. It explores the extent to which …

Far From The Heart: The Social, Political, And Ecclesiastical Milieu Of The Early Abbotsof La Chaise-Dieu, 1052-1184, Maureen M. O’Brien

Dissertations

This study examines the institutional development of the abbey of La Chaise-Dieu, whose evolution depended upon its community of monks, its patrons, and its response to the demands placed upon it by the society at large and the Church in general. It examines these factors as they were managed by its first eightabbots by tracing the development of their personal, social, political, and ecclesiastical networks in an effort to identify how those interactions took place and why they took the forms they did. This analysis rests on the examination of charters that were drawn up by the abbey and by …

Making An Early Medieval Ethnie: The Case Of The Early Slavs (Sixth To Seventh Century A.D. ), Florin Curta

Dissertations

This study approaches the problem of the early Slavs from the perspective of current anthropological theories on ethnicity. The relationship between material culture and ethnicity is also examined, with particular emphasis on the notion of style. The historiography of the subject is vast and its survey shows why and how a particular approach to the history of the early Slavs was favored by linguistically minded historians and archaeologists. The historiography of the early Slavs is also the story of how academic discourse was used for the construction of national identity.

The study of the written sources indicates that the history …

Alexander Hegius (Ca. 1433-98) : His Life, Philosophy, And Pedagogy, John V. Matthews

Dissertations

Problem. There are scholars who have suggested that Alexander Hegius was among the three most important educators of the fifteenth century. Whether or not this can be substantiated is open to question. The fact remains that he was a pivotal figure in the development of education in the Northern Renaissance. Scholars have argued at length about his life, the obscure details of which are significant for understanding the youth of Desiderius Erasmus. There are also a few outdated studies that deal in a cursory manner with his pedagogy. Although some of this material is based on genuine primary research, only …