Medieval History Commons^™

The Edict Of King Gälawdéwos Against The Illegal Slave Trade In Christians: Ethiopia, 1548 -- Featured Source, Habtamu M. Tegegne

The Medieval Globe

This study explores the relationship between documentary-legal prescriptions of slavery and actual practice in late medieval Ethiopia. It does so in light of a newly discovered edict against the enslavement of freeborn Christians and the commercial sale of Christians to non-Christian owners, issued in 1548 by King Gälawdéwos. It demonstrates that this edict emerged from a dramatic and violent encounter between the neighboring Sultanate of Adal, which was supported by Muslim powers, and the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia, which had the support of expanding European powers in the region. The edict was therefore issued to reaffirm and clarify the principles …

Land And Tenure In Early Colonial Peru: Individualizing The Sapci, "That Which Is Common To All", Susan E. Ramirez

The Medieval Globe

This article compares and contrasts pre-Columbian indigenous customary law regarding land possession and use with the legal norms and concepts gradually imposed and implemented by the Spanish colonial state in the Viceroyalty of Peru in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Natives accepted oral histories of possession going back as many as ten generations as proof of a claim to land. Indigenous custom also provided that a family could claim as much land as it could use for as long as it could use it: labor established rights of possession and use. The Spanish introduced the concept of private property …

Chinese Porcelain And The Material Taxonomies Of Medieval Rabbinic Law: Encounters With Disruptive Substances In Twelfth-Century Yemen, Elizabeth Lambourn, Phillip I. Ackerman-Lieberman

The Medieval Globe

This article focuses on a set of legal questions about ṣīnī vessels (literally, “Chinese” vessels) sent from the Jewish community in Aden to Fustat (Old Cairo) in the mid-1130s CE and now preserved among the Cairo Geniza holdings in Cambridge University Library. This is the earliest dated and localized query about the status of ṣīnī vessels with respect to the Jewish law of vessels used for food consumption. Our analysis of these queries suggests that their phrasing and timing can be linked to the contemporaneous appearance in the Yemen of a new type of Chinese ceramic ware, qingbai, which confounded …

The Future Of Aztec Law, Jerome A. Offner

The Medieval Globe

This article models a methodology for recovering the substance and nature of the Aztec legal tradition by interrogating reports of precontact indigenous behavior in the works of early colonial ethnographers, as well as in pictorial manuscripts and their accompanying oral performances. It calls for a new, richly recontextualized approach to the study of a medieval civilization whose sophisticated legal and jurisprudential practices have been fundamentally obscured by a long process of decontextualization and the anachronistic applications of modern Western paradigms.

Editor's Introduction To "Legal Worlds And Legal Encounters" -- Open Access, Elizabeth Lambourn

The Medieval Globe

This introduction presents and draws together the articles and themes featured in this special issue of The Medieval Globe, “Legal Worlds and Legal Encounters.”

The Medieval Globe 2.2 (2016)

The Medieval Globe

No abstract provided.

Mutilation And The Law In Early Medieval Europe And India: A Comparative Study -- Open Access, Patricia E. Skinner

The Medieval Globe

This essay examines the similarities and differences between legal and other precepts outlining corporal punishment in ancient and medieval Indian and early medieval European laws. Responding to Susan Reynolds’s call for such comparisons, it begins by outlining the challenges in doing so. Primarily, the fragmented political landscape of both regions, where multiple rulers and spheres of authority existed side-by-side, make a direct comparison complex. Moreover, the time slippage between what scholarship understands to be the “early medieval” period in each region needs to be taken into account, particularly given the persistence of some provisions and the adapatation or abandonment of …

Common Threads: A Reappraisal Of Medieval European Sumptuary Law, Laurel Wilson

The Medieval Globe

Medieval sumptuary law has been receiving renewed scholarly attention in recent decades. But sumptuary laws, despite their ubiquity, have rarely been considered comprehensively and comparatively. This essay calls attention to this problem and suggests a number of topics for investigation, with specific reference to the first phase of European sumptuary legislation in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It argues that comparative study demonstrates that this chronology closely parallels the development of the so-called “Western fashion system” and that the ubiquity of sketchy or nonexistent enforcement is evidence for the symbolic importance of sumptuary legislation, rather than its instrumentality. Comparison across …

Toward A History Of Documents In Medieval India: The Encounter Of Scholasticism And Regional Law In The Smṛticandrikā, Donald R. Davis Jr.

The Medieval Globe

In order to understand the legal use and significance of documents in medieval India, we need to start from the contemporaneous legal categories found in the Sanskrit scholastic corpus called dharmaśāstra. By comparing these categories with actual historical documents and inscriptions, we gain better insight into the encounter of pan-Indian legal discourse in Sanskrit and regional laws in vernacular languages. The points of congruence and transgression in this encounter will facilitate a nuanced history of documents and their use beyond unhelpfully broad categories of written and oral. A new translation of one major scholastic discussion of documents is presented as …

Juan Rodríguez Del Padrón, Triunfo De Las Donas / The Triumph Of Ladies, Emily C. Francomano

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

The Triunfo de las donas (The Triumph of Ladies) (1438-1441) by Juan Rodríguez del Padrón (fl. 1440s), is among the very first contributions in Hispanic literature to the pro-feminine modality of the querelle des femmes, or querella de las mujeres. Composed as the preface and dedication to María of Aragón (1396-1445), queen consort of Juan II of Castile (1405-1454), for Rodríguez del Padrón's Cadira de honor (The Seat of Honor), a treatise in defense of noble lineages, the Triunfo de las donas asserts the superiority of women over men, and in so doing, the supremacy of Queen María …

Abstract.Docx

Sara-Kate Hollis

No abstract provided.

Gender Reflections: A Reconsideration Of Pictish Mirror And Comb Symbols, Traci N. Billings

Theses and Dissertations

The interpretation of prehistoric iconography is complicated by the tendency to project

contemporary male/female gender dichotomies into the past. Pictish monumental stone sculpture

in Scotland has been studied over the last 100 years. Traditionally, mirror and comb symbols

found on some stones produced in Scotland between AD 400 and AD 900 have been interpreted

as being associated exclusively with women and/or the female gender. This thesis re-examines

this assumption in light of more recent work to offer a new interpretation of Pictish mirror and

comb symbols and to suggest a larger context for their possible meaning. Utilizing the Canmore

database, …

Old English Manuscripts In The Early Age Of Print: Matthew Parker And His Scribes, Robert Scott Bevill

Doctoral Dissertations

Covering the first dedicated program in the study of and publication of Anglo-Saxon texts, my dissertation examines the sixteenth-century origins of medieval studies as an academic discipline. By placing recent scholarship on media, materiality, cognition, and intellectual history in conversation with traditional paleographical methods on medieval and renaissance manuscript culture, I argue for a new way of understanding how early modern scholars studied and presented the medieval past. I take as my focus a corpus of emulative Anglo-Saxon manuscript transcriptions produced under Elizabethan Archbishop Matthew Parker. Equal parts facsimile and edition, these transcriptions are a unique example of early modern …

Mozarab Readers Of The Bible, From The Córdoban Martyrs To The Glossa Ordinaria, Geoffrey Kyle Martin

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I offer four case studies in how medieval Iberia’s Arabic-speaking Christians (Mozarabs) appropriated Latin, Arabic, and Islamic culture. I have focused upon the Mozarabs’ reading of the Bible: (1) how they translated it from Latin to Arabic, (2) how they thought about the Last Days, (3) how they read it with a foremost interest in the meaning of individual words and phrases, and (4) how they employed biblical commentaries to understand scripture better. As the reader will see, the Mozarabs’ translations of the Bible into Arabic and the Latin manuscripts which they annotated in that language have …

Heterogeneous Immunological Landscapes And Medieval Plague : An Invitation To A New Dialogue Between Historians And Immunologists., Fabian Crespo, Matthew B. Lawrenz

Fabian Crespo

Efforts to understand the differential mortality caused by plague must account for many factors, including human immune responses. In this essay we are particularly interested in those people who were exposed to the Yersinia pestis pathogen during the Black Death, but who had differing fates—survival or death—that could depend on which individuals (once infected) were able to mount an appropriate immune response as a result of biological, environmental, and social factors. The proposed model suggests that historians of the medieval world could make a significant contribution to the study of human health, and especially the role of human immunology in …

Responding To Modern Flooding: Old English Place-Names As A Repository Of Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Richard L.C. Jones

Journal of Ecological Anthropology

Place-names are used to communicate Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) by all indigenous, aboriginal and First Nations people. Here and for the first time, English place-names are examined through a TEK lens. Specifically, place-names formed in Old English—the language of the Anglo-Saxon—and coined between c. 550 and c. 1100 A.D., are explored. This naming horizon provides the basic name stock for the majority of English towns and villages still occupied today. While modern English place-names now simply function as convenient geographical tags Old English toponymy is shown here to exhibit close semantic parallels with many other indigenous place-names around the world. …

Research And Study Of Fashion And Costume History Spanning From Ancient Egypt To Modern Day, Kaitlyn E. Dennis Miss

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Through a generous donation to Morehead State University, research has been conducted on thousands of slides containing images of artwork and artifacts of historical significance. These images span from Egyptian hieroglyphs to the inaugural dress of every first lady of the United States. The slides are in the process of being recorded and catalogued for future use by students in hopes of furthering academic comprehension and awareness of the influence of fashion and costume history through the ages. Special thanks to the family of Gretel Geist Rutledge, faculty mentor Denise Watkins, as well as the Department of Music, Theatre, and …

Pilgrimage Project, David Sheffler, Mike Boyles, Christopher Baynard, Ron Lukens-Bull

DHI Digital Projects Showcase

The University of North Florida Pilgrimage Project combines interdisciplinary approaches with digital and STEM technologies and applies them to the study of pilgrimage with a special focus on the Camino de Santiago.

Sean L. Field, Robert E. Lerner, And Sylvain Piron, Eds., Marguerite Porete Et Le Miroir Des Simples Âmes: Perspectives Historiques, Philosophiques Et Littéraires. Paris: Vrin, 2013. 368 Pp. Notes, Bibliography, And Index. $43.00 U.S. (Pb). Isbn 978-2-7116-2524-6, Tanya S. Stabler

History: Faculty Publications and Other Works

A review of Marguerite Porete et le Miroir des simples âmes: Perspectives historiques, philosophiques et littéraires.edited by Sean L. Field, Robert E. Lerner, and Sylvain Piron.

The Oxford Handbook Of Women And Gender In Medieval Europe, Jacqueline Murray

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Back Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.52 No.1 2016

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Seeking Holiness: The Contribution Of Nine Vernacular Narrative Texts From The Twelfth To The Fourteenth Centuries, Stephanie Grace Petinos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Spirituality has been increasingly studied to determine the laity’s role within Church history in the Middle Ages. However, secular literature is often overlooked as a source of understanding lay spirituality, even though it is a crucial aspect of cultural and social history. I fill this gap by analyzing nine important vernacular texts to uncover several distinctive definitions of holiness, all of which blend the religious and the secular. Close reading of these texts reveals various paths to holiness, which undermine the Church’s attempts at sole control over spirituality. This study demonstrates that secular authors were concerned with exploring spiritual matters; …

Front Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.52 No.1 2016

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

The Space Between A Wound And A Scar: The Negotiation Of Heroic Identity In Gregory Of Nyssa's Life Of Macrina, Jaimie Gunderson

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Sexual Culture In The Literature Of Medieval Britain, Christopher Flavin

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

The Strange Case Of Ermine De Reims: A Medieval Woman Between Demons And Saints, Mary Anne Gonzales

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Silencing Female Reason In Boccaccio’S Teseida Delle Nozze D’Emilia, Margaret Franklin

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

The legendary Amazons of antiquity threatened social institutions that relied on communal adherence to the assumption of inherent female limitations, and confrontation between these viragoes and classical heroes provided a fruitful arena for exploring gender politics. Giovanni Boccaccio contributed to this tradition with a unique restaging of Amazonomachy and its consequences in his Teseida delle nozze d’Emilia (1339-1341?). While modern critical consensus holds that Teseo’s subjugation of the Amazons redounds both to his heroism in particular and the wellbeing of society in general, I argue that his unyielding repudiation of their desires and objectives is problematized throughout the text. These …

"Slayn For Goddys Lofe": Margery Kempe's Melancholia And The Bleeding Of Tears, Laura Kalas Williams

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Founding Feminisms In Medieval Studies: Essays In Honor Of E. Jane Burns, Felice Lifshitz

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Joan De Valence: The Life And Influence Of A Thirteenth-Century Noblewoman, Jitske Jasperse

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.