Medieval History Commons^™

Mikołaj Kopernik 1473-1543 Astronom - Matematyk, Który Wstrzymał Słońce, Ruszył Ziemię, Polskie Go Wydało Plemię, Polish-Canadian Business Professionals Association Of Windsor, Leddy Library, University Of Windsor

Windsor Polonia

Exhibit on 550th anniversary of Nicolaus Copernicus' birth, in Polish

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Nineteenth- And Twentieth-Century Readings Of The Medieval Orient: Other Encounters, Liliana Sikorska

Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

Travel narratives and historical works shaped the perception of Muslims and the East in the Victorian and post-Victorian periods. Analyzing the discourses on Muslims which originated in the European Middle Ages, the first part of this book discusses the troubled legacy of the encounters between the East and the West and locates the nineteenth-century texts concerning the Saracens and their lands in the liminal space between history and fiction.

Drawing on the nineteenth-century models, the second part of the book looks at fictional and non-fictional works of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century which re-established the “Oriental obsession,” stimulating …

Nineteenth- And Twentieth-Century Readings Of The Medieval Orient: Other Encounters, Liliana Sikorska

Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

Travel narratives and historical works shaped the perception of Muslims and the East in the Victorian and post-Victorian periods. The book discusses that troubled legacy drawing on the discourses on Muslims originating in the European Middle Ages, and locates the nineteenth-century texts concerning the Saracens and their lands in the liminal space between history and travel accounts.

Space, Image, And Reform In Early Modern Art: The Influence Of Marcia Hall, Arthur J. Difuria, Ian Verstegen

Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

The essays in Space, Image and Reform in Early Modern Art build on Marcia Hall's seminal contributions in several categories crucial for Renaissance studies, especially the spatiality of the church interior, the altarpiece's facture and affectivity, the notion of artistic style, and the controversy over images in the era of Counter Reform. Accruing the advantage of critical engagement with a single paradigm, this volume better assesses its applicability and range. The book works cumulatively to provide blocks of theoretical and empirical research on issues spanning the function and role of images in their contexts over two centuries. Relating Hall's investigations …

Thinking Queerly: Medievalism, Wizardry, And Neurodiversity In Young Adult Texts, Jes Battis

Premodern Transgressive Literatures

Why do we love wizards? Where do these magical figures come from? Thinking Queerly traces the wizard from medieval Arthurian literature to contemporary YA adaptations. By exploring the link between Merlin and Harry Potter, or Morgan la Fey and Sabrina, readers will see how the wizard offers spaces of hope and transformation for young readers. In particular, this book examines how wizards think differently, and how this difference can resonate with both LGBTQ and neurodivergent readers, who’ve been told they don’t fit in.

Teaching The Black Death During Covid-19, Rachel Podd

Developing Pedagogy Graduate Student Showcase

On the 13th of November 2020, the Renaissance Society of America, in conjunction with Fordham University, hosted on a symposium, “Plagues, Pandemics, and Outbreaks of Disease in History”, including a series of presentations focused on pedagogical strategies related to the topic of disease in Early Modern History. As part of this pedagogy roundtable, Rachel Podd developed a variety of materials suitable for educators in secondary or higher education; these materials use the current pandemic, COVID-19, as a teaching tool and analytical lens for the study of historical pandemics and, more specifically, of the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Conceived …

Medieval Futurity: Essays For The Future Of A Queer Medieval Studies, Will Rogers, Christopher Michael Roman

New Queer Medievalisms

This collection of essays asks contributors to take the capaciousness of the word "queer" to heart in order to think about what medieval queers would have looked like and how they may have existed on the margins and borders of dominant, normative sexuality and desire. The contributors work with recent trends in queer medieval studies, blending together modern concepts of sexuality and desire with the queer configurations of eroticism, desire, and materiality as they might have existed for medieval audiences.

The Wisdom Of Exeter: Anglo-Saxon Studies In Honor Of Patrick W. Conner, Edward J. Christie

Richard Rawlinson Center Series

This interdisciplinary volume collects original essays in literary criticism and literary theory, philology, codicology, metrics, and art history. Composed by prominent scholars in Anglo-Saxon studies, these essays honor the depth and breadth of Patrick W. Conner’s influence in our discipline. As a scholar, teacher, editor, administrator and innovator, Pat has contributed to Anglo-Saxon studies for four decades. It is hard to say which of his legacies is most profound.

Middle English "Tarantulas": A New Edition Of The Destruction Of Jerusalem, Kara Mcshane

Faculty Baden Presentations

In this Baden presentation, Kara McShane gives an overview of her forthcoming edition of the understudied Middle English Destruction of Jerusalem, a late medieval siege narrative, and explores how the poem expands contemporary understandings of religious and cultural contact, conflict, and exchange in medieval English literature. The talk includes an interactive introduction to editing medieval texts.

The World Chronicle Of Guillaume De Nangis: A Manuscript's Journey From Saint-Denis To St. Pancras, Daniel Williman, Karen Ann Corsano

Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

The heart of this book is the biography of a manuscript codex, British Library Royal MS 13 E IV: the Latin Chronicle (Creation to 1300) of Guillaume de Nangis, copied in the abbey library of St-Denis-en-France. This volume was used as evidence in the legal and political battles of the French royal family until it came into the treasure of Jean, duc de Berry. In 1416 it vanished from Paris and France. Modern British scholarship has placed it in the library of King Henry VIII, whose autograph notes appear in its margins. The authors show how it traveled from one …

Marginalia And Nota Bene In The Fasciculus Temporum: Frontispiece And Folios 4-23, Michael Jeremy Maly

Fasciculus Temporum

The goal of this project was the creation of a catalogue of all marginal notes and nota bene intended to draw attention to specific passages within the Fasciculus temporum.

This catalogue is meant to be used as a quick reference for readers to assist in finding specific marginalia and nota bene with greater ease. It covers folios 4-23. This compilation of notes written in the Fasciculus temporum could also be used as a research tool for further study of this edition (Prüss, Strassburg, c.1490) of the Fasciculus temporum.

This catalogue describes the notations by folio and location on the …

Noah’S Ark And Burning Sodom: Woodcuts In The Psu Codex Fasciculus Temporum, Amber L. Shrewsbury

Fasciculus Temporum

Early printed books were illustrated by means of woodcut block illustrations. These illustrations frequently depicted well-known biblical events or stories and cities, and the woodcuts were frequently reused, sometimes within the same edition.

The focus of this paper is two woodcut illustrations in PSU’s 1490 edition of Werner Rolewinck’s Fasciculus temporum: Noah’s Ark and the destruction of Sodom. Comparisons are made between these two illustrations and relevant woodcuts in other editions of the Fasciculus temporum, as well as those found in a 1493 edition of the Nuremberg Chronicle by Hartmann Schedel.

Fasciculus Temporum: Extra-Textual Genealogy, Amanda Swinford

Extra-Textual Elements

Following the printed text of the Fasciculus temporum in PSU Library's codex is a concise, six-line, handwritten verse genealogy which lists the three husbands and three daughters, all named Mary, of St. Anne, the mother of Mary and maternal grandmother of Jesus.

The source of this addition is the Legenda aurea, a popular compilation of hagiographies, composed in Latin by Jacob Voragine (1230 - c.1298) in approximately 1270. This content was included by the publishers of certain other editions of the Fasciculus temporum, but is not included in the printed portion of the PSU edition.

Pope Innocent Viii (1484-1492) And The Summis Desiderantes Affectibus, Maral Deyrmenjian

Malleus Maleficarum

The papal bull (or decree) Summis desiderantes affectibus, issued in 1484 by Pope Innocent VIII (1484-1492), specifically addressed the malign presence of witches and witchcraft in the Holy Roman Empire and authorized a formal inquisition into their activities. It was one of several official condemnations of heretics and other enemies of Christendom, both groups and individuals, issued during Innocent VII’s reign.

Heinrich Kramer, the primary author of the Malleus maleficarum (1486/7) prefaced the second edition of his witch-hunting manual with the Summis desiderantes affectibus without explicit permission; scholars argue that he considered it likely to bolster the work’s authority …

Women Or Witches? Why Women Were The Target Of The Malleus Maleficarum, Remington Mederos

Malleus Maleficarum

The fifteenth century saw advancements in a variety of fields, including the discovery and development of the printing press. Despite developments in many aspects of society, women lived under a cloud of misogyny. The inquisition and the witch hunts that became prevalent during this period made many women targets of mass hysteria and violence.

Witches became the focal point of clerical demonologists who sought to study the manner in which the devil worked through women to interfere with God’s creation and sacraments. One such demonologist was Heinrich Kramer, who wrote a manual for the discovery, interrogation, prosecution, and eventual execution …

Drach, Prüss, And The Fifteenth-Century Book Trade, Jonathan Taylor

Extra-Textual Elements

The development of the moveable-type press in the mid-fifteenth century led to the rise of a new industry, the manufacture and trade of printed books. Before this, written works existed as handwritten manuscripts individually produced by scribes.

The printing press allowed works such as the Malleus maleficarum and Fasciculus temporum contained within Portland State University’s codex to be produced in a significantly more efficient manner. The printers of the two volumes contained in the codex, Peter Drach and Johann Prüss, successfully avoided the pitfalls facing early printers to become successful in their trade, and may have actively cooperated in the …

The Carthusian Influence On Werner Rolewinck’S Approach To History, Nathaniel Harris

Fasciculus Temporum

The Carthusian Order was founded in 1084 by St. Bruno of Cologne and a small number of followers, all seeking greater solitude and a more austere, contemplative monasticism. Carthusian monks lived predominantly isolated lives, only coming together co-operatively for prescribed religious purposes.

The intellectual and separate life of a Carthusian monk appealed to Werner Rolewinck (1425-1502), the author/compiler of the Fasciculus temporum, one of the two texts (together with the Malleus maleficarum) included in Portland State University Library’s late fifteenth-century codex. With its structure modeled on early chronicles and biblical conventions, its inclusion of a variety of woodcut …