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Full-Text Articles in Medieval History

Jewish Daily Life In Medieval Northern Europe, 1080-1350, Tzafrir Barzilay, Eyal Levinson, Elisheva Baumgarten Nov 2022

Jewish Daily Life In Medieval Northern Europe, 1080-1350, Tzafrir Barzilay, Eyal Levinson, Elisheva Baumgarten

TEAMS Documents of Practice

Designed to introduce students to the everyday lives of the Jews who lived in the German Empire, northern France, and England from the 11th to the mid-14th centuries, the volume consists of translations of primary sources written by or about medieval Jews. Each source is accompanied by an introduction that provides historical context. Through the sources, students can become familiar with the spaces that Jews frequented, their daily practices and rituals, and their thinking. The subject matter ranges from culinary preferences and even details of sexual lives, to garments, objects, and communal buildings. The documents testify to how Jews enacted …


Anglo-Danish Empire: A Companion To The Reign Of King Cnut The Great, Richard North, Erin Goeres, Alison Finlay Jun 2022

Anglo-Danish Empire: A Companion To The Reign Of King Cnut The Great, Richard North, Erin Goeres, Alison Finlay

Northern Medieval World

Anglo-Danish Empire is an interdisciplinary handbook for the Danish conquest of England in 1016 and the subsequent reign of King Cnut the Great. Bringing together scholars from the fields of history, literature, archaeology and manuscript studies, the volume offers comprehensive analysis of England's shift from Anglo-Saxon to Danish rule. It follows the history of this complicated transition, from the closing years of the reign of King Æthelred II and the Anglo-Danish wars to Cnut's accession to the throne of England and his consolidation of power at home and abroad. Ruling from 1016 to 1035, Cnut drew England into a Scandinavian …


Negotiating Boundaries In Medieval Literature And Culture: Essays On Marginality, Difference, And Reading Practices In Honor Of Thomas Hahn, Valerie B. Johnson, Kara L. Mcshane Mar 2022

Negotiating Boundaries In Medieval Literature And Culture: Essays On Marginality, Difference, And Reading Practices In Honor Of Thomas Hahn, Valerie B. Johnson, Kara L. Mcshane

Festschriften, Occasional Papers, and Lectures

Thomas Hahn’s work laid the foundations for medieval romance studies to embrace the study of alterity and hybridity within Middle English literature. His contributions to scholarship brought Robin Hood studies into the critical mainstream, normalized the study of historically marginalized literature and peoples, and encouraged scholars to view medieval readers as actively encountering others and exploring themselves. This volume employs his methodologies – careful attention to texts and their contexts, cross-cultural readings, and theoretically-informed analysis – to highlight the literary culture of late medieval England afresh. Addressing long-established canonical works such as Chaucer, Christine de Pizan, and Malory alongside understudied …


The Gaelic Background Of Old English Poetry Before Bede, Colin A. Ireland Jan 2022

The Gaelic Background Of Old English Poetry Before Bede, Colin A. Ireland

Richard Rawlinson Center Series

Seventh-century Gaelic law-tracts delineate professional poets (filid) who earned high social status through formal training. These poets cooperated with the Church to create an innovative bilingual intellectual culture in Old Gaelic and Latin. Bede described Anglo-Saxon students who availed themselves of free education in Ireland at this culturally dynamic time. Gaelic scholars called sapientes (“wise ones”) produced texts in Old Gaelic and Latin that demonstrate how Anglo-Saxon students were influenced by contact with Gaelic ecclesiastical and secular scholarship. Seventh-century Northumbria was ruled for over 50 years by Gaelic-speaking kings who could access Gaelic traditions. Gaelic literary traditions provide …


Database Of Marginal Notation In The Psu 1490 Codex: Objectives, Organization, And Continuation, Andi Johnson Jan 2022

Database Of Marginal Notation In The Psu 1490 Codex: Objectives, Organization, And Continuation, Andi Johnson

Extra-Textual Elements

Portland State University Library's combined 1490 editions of the Fasciculus temporum and Malleus maleficarum contain over 150 individual marginal markings and notations. These marks have been made by numerous readers throughout the monograph's five-century lifespan.

This report accounts for efforts to construct a tool that would allow future students and scholars to visually compare and organize marks was needed before any in-depth analysis of readership could be made, describing the objectives, processes and applications that have defined its development. The tool that was needed was a visual database that enables the visual comparison of markings within the two texts. This …


Review, Introduction, And Preliminary Documentation Of Marginalia In Portland State University’S Fasciculus Temporum/Malleus Maleficarum Sammelband, Samuel Barnack Jan 2022

Review, Introduction, And Preliminary Documentation Of Marginalia In Portland State University’S Fasciculus Temporum/Malleus Maleficarum Sammelband, Samuel Barnack

Extra-Textual Elements

This paper presents an overview of the contents of the new database of written marginal notations in Portland State University’s fifteenth-century printed codex, and some of the research threads that can be taken up from a study of those notations.

The motive for this project was an interest in readership usage of the codex and the two books contained within it. It begins by discussing terms that Andi Johnson and I elected to use to tag and name different categories of features, then I discuss some of the findings and possible future research avenues that can expand on them.

Finally, …


Hunting The Other: Witch Trials In Lorraine, 1490s-1590s, Morgan Gubser Jan 2022

Hunting The Other: Witch Trials In Lorraine, 1490s-1590s, Morgan Gubser

Malleus Maleficarum

This paper provides a general survey of witch trials in sixteenth-century Lorraine, where Portland State’s 1490 incunable was held by the abbey of Saint-Avold (Saint-Nabor) of Metz. It includes a brief introduction to the region, information on structures of authority, and a description of the witch trials undertaken there.

It will also include notes on what statistical analysis currently exists regarding Lorraine witch trials, as well as notes regarding the connection that witch hunting has to the PSU Malleus Maleficarum in Lorraine. There is also a statistical analysis included that takes data collected from the existing database of witch trial …


How Tales Of Blood Libel Travel: Depictions Of Jews In Fifteenth-Century European World Chronicles, Rachel Bard Jan 2022

How Tales Of Blood Libel Travel: Depictions Of Jews In Fifteenth-Century European World Chronicles, Rachel Bard

Fasciculus Temporum

This paper considers the correlation between the popularity of Werner Rolevinck’s Fasciculus Temporum and other world chronicles, and the antisemitic tropes and blood libel accusations directed against Jewish communities in later medieval Europe.

The Fasciculus repeats many stock tales of Jewish ritual murder, including a relatively little-known story from Bern, Switzerland, that Rolevinck may have adapted from the Berner Chronik. This paper also considers the connection the first Spanish printing of the Fasciculus Temporum, in Seville in 1480, with the only known Jewish ritual murder accusation in Spain, which dates to 1490, and which in turn may have been …


Watermarks Of Portland State University’S 1490 Codex, Duane Wiegardt Jan 2022

Watermarks Of Portland State University’S 1490 Codex, Duane Wiegardt

Extra-Textual Elements

This paper and its accompanying research endeavored to locate, catalog, and identify as fully as possible the watermarks observed throughout Portland State University’s (PSU) 1490 bound codex containing the Fasciculus temporum omnes antiquorum cronicas complectens (FT) and Malleus Maleficarum (MM).

Dozens of watermarks of several categories have been located and cataloged. A listing of the marks found on each leaf of the FT and MM has been constructed for continued use by future researchers. Study of the watermarks also sheds light on the codex’s binding.


Witchcraft Trials In The Rhine Region In The Sixteenth Century, Adam Cooper Jan 2022

Witchcraft Trials In The Rhine Region In The Sixteenth Century, Adam Cooper

Malleus Maleficarum

This paper examines the dynamics of witchcraft trials in the Lorraine through a selection of late sixteenth-century examples. It shows that local dynamics, including personal relationships between accused witches and their accusers, as well as the accused’s social class, could affect trial proceedings and outcomes.


Prominence Of Manicules Within Early Editions Of The Malleus Maleficarum, Matthew Jurkiewicz Jan 2022

Prominence Of Manicules Within Early Editions Of The Malleus Maleficarum, Matthew Jurkiewicz

Extra-Textual Elements

Marginal notation is extremely common in incunabula. The Portland State University Malleus Maleficarum (1490) is no exception to this trend, and contains various types of marginal notation throughout the text. Among them are three examples of manicules, a form of notation where readers draw a hand to note important sections of a text.

This paper examines the frequency of manicules in fifteen different early copies of the Malleus Maleficarum, along with the sections of the text in which the manicules are concentrated, in order to ascertain whether or not the usage of the PSU Malleus Maleficarum shares similarities with …


Studying The Binding Of Portland State’S Codex To Localize Production, Allison Kirkpatrick Jan 2022

Studying The Binding Of Portland State’S Codex To Localize Production, Allison Kirkpatrick

Extra-Textual Elements

This paper examines Portland State’s 1490 codex as a material object by studying the stamp designs on its covers to determine where and when it may have been bound.

Four stamp designs are discernible, and these were compared to rubbings of stamp designs from fifteenth- and sixteenth-century incunable bindings in the Einbanddatenbank and Scott Husby Database. The findings from this study point to Erfurt, Germany, and more specifically the workshop of Nicolaus von Havelberg (active 1477–1506), as the probable binding site.


Vernacular Print, Johann Prüss, And The Fasciculus Temporum, Julia Hines Jan 2022

Vernacular Print, Johann Prüss, And The Fasciculus Temporum, Julia Hines

Fasciculus Temporum

This research discusses biographical information on Strasbourg printer Johann Prüss and his vernacular German work, and offers a statistical and categorical comparison to other contemporary Strasbourg printers and their vernacular German works.

Using the British Library's Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (ISTC) and other sources, I created a table in the appendix that lists all the known vernacular works of each printer and their date of publication. Lastly, this paper discusses the similarities and differences between the 1490 Latin edition of the Fasciculus Temporum and the following German edition printed by Prüss in 1492.