History Commons^™

Lawful Violence: The Relationship Between Marriage And Conflict In The Wars Of The Roses, Hannah R. Keller

Masters Theses

England’s King Edward IV married Elizabeth Woodville in 1464. Edward’s sister Margaret of York married Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, in 1468. Both marriages occurred during England’s fifteenth-century conflict, the Wars of the Roses. And both created conflict between Edward, Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick, and France’s King Louis XI. Most historians regard this conflict as either a sign of or product of disorder. I, however, argue that both marriages could have been a calculated form of “lawful” violence known as disworship used to damage the political capital of Warwick and Louis and thereby instigate war with France. …

Architectural Representation And The Dragon’S Lair In Beowulf, Margaret Heeschen

Masters Theses

Since the early twentieth century, the dragon’s lair of Beowulf has been primarily associated with the early megalithic mounds of northern Europe. This interpretation of the space, however, does not account for the many contradictions present in the poet’s descriptions. In order to fully understand the quiddity of the dragon’s lair, we must resolve three major issues with previous interpretations: the use of rare words with unclear meanings, contradictions in descriptions of the physical space, and an assumption by scholars that the poet is describing a single type of space identifiable in the historical record. By addressing each of these …

An Analysis Of The Metal Finds From The Ninth-Century Metalworking Site At Bamburgh Castle In The Context Of Ferrous And Non-Ferrous Metalworking In Middle- And Late-Saxon England, Julie Polcrack

Masters Theses

This thesis opens with an investigation of the evidence for blacksmithing and non-ferrous metalworking in Anglo-Saxon England during the Middle- and Late-Saxon periods, c. 700-1066. The second chapter of this thesis focuses on knives and non-ferrous strap-ends during this period in order to discern any regional distinction in metalworking from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. I initially conjectured that Northumbrian knives and strap-ends would show stylistic differences from knives and strap-ends made in other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, but in this chapter, I conclude that Northumbrian metal objects were homogenous with the assemblages from the remaining kingdoms. In the final chapter of …

“Clamor Validus” Vs. “Fragilitas Sexus Feminei”: Hrotsvit Of Gandersheim On The Agency Of Women, Caroline Jansen

Masters Theses

Hrotsvit of Gandersheim has generated interest among scholars of gender and sexuality due to her status as a woman and writer of Latin legends, epics, and plays in the Ottonian Empire. As the only prominent female playwright of her time, Hrotsvit presents an intriguing, complex treatment of female characters and their sexuality, particularly her plays, which rework both well-known lives of female saints and the tropes of the Roman playwright Terence’s comedies. One issue that has not been fully addressed, however, is the gendering of the heroines populating Hrotsvit’s plays—while some scholars refer to the characters as “overcoming femininity” others …

Ransoming For The Faith: Medieval Perceptions Of The Role Of Mercedarians In Catalan Society, Spencer Thomas Hunt

Masters Theses

The Medieval advent of institutionalized religious ransoming marked a clear shift in popular concern for captive aid. The present study examines the Catalan based Order of Merced in an attempt to reevaluate the role of religious ransoming in Christian communities. This project reconstructs internal and external perceptions of the Mercedarian brothers and their chosen vocation of ransoming through an analysis of contemporaneous discourse about the order and patterns of lay engagement with the brothers. The first section utilizes published collections of papal and royal records. These documents, combined with the polemic and apologetic texts of the thirteenth-century Christian author Pedro …

Agents Of Justice: Female Plaintiffs In The King’S Court In Thirteenth And Fourteenth-Century England, J. Savannah Shipman

Masters Theses

It has often been assumed that medieval women, noble or common, had little or no agency, were forced into submissive roles by dominating men, and had little control over their day-to-day lives. Theoretical statements about law served to support these assumptions as they forbade women from prosecuting men for any crimes other than the murder of her husband or for rape. Yet the records of the court proceedings before the king and his justices and the Calendar of Patent Rolls paint a very different picture. The sources themselves show that women regularly came to court to gain compensation and justice …

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 …

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 …

The Sense Of The Past In Saint Antoninus Of Florence's Summa Historialis, Brian Nathaniel Becker

Masters Theses

This study examines Antoninus of Florence’s Chronicles for the presence of a "sense of the past.” Through the careful examination of those sections of the Chronicles that are original to Antoninus and the utilization of important scholarly works on medieval and Renaissance Italian literature, it is shown that the Chronicles is characteristic of both a history written in the traditional "medieval” style and the increasingly modem style of historical writing that was coming into vogue during the later part of his life in mid-fifteenth century Florence. By defining a "sense of history” as containing, and organizing the three body chapters …

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 …

Expositeo Attonis Episcopivercellensis In Epistolam Sancti Pauli Ad Romanos: Introduction And Partial Text, Steven R. Cartwright

Masters Theses

Manuscripts of the commentary of Atto of Vercelli on the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romans were transcribed and collated, and a critical edition of the commentary, from the Prologue to Atto’s comments on chapter two, verse thirteen of the biblical text, was produced, noting textual variants, Scriptural quotations, and Patristic sources. This edition was compared with previous editions of the commentary, and variants were listed. A comparison was made with manuscripts of another commentary on Romans which was paraphrased from Atto’s, and similarities and differences were noted.

Microfilms of two manuscripts were used in the transcription: Vercelli Biblioteca …

Robert Grosseteste's De Ubero Arbitrio, Andrew L. Pearson

Masters Theses

De Libero Arbitrio of Robert Grosseteste (ca. 1170-1253) represents his primary exploration of that aspect of man's relationship to nature, to other human beings, and to God, known as free choice. This thesis explores the relationship of his treatise De Libero Arbitrio to his treatises De Veritate, De Veritate Propositionis, and De Scientia Dei. It also offers an outline and summary of De Libero Arbitrio and presents an English translation of Ludwig Baur's edition of the first recension of this treatise with updated notes.

The Myth Of Tereus And The Nightingale Motif In Classical And Medieval Literature And In The Works Of Chauce, Betty Vanderwielen

Masters Theses

In the myth of Tereus a woman is metamorphosed into a nightingale, in which form she perpetually laments her killing of her son. An investigation into the use of the myth in classical literature ranging from Homer to Ovid shows that certain themes recur: truth reveals itself in a non-conventional manner, sorrow is paradoxically linked with joy, the victim is the perpetrator of her own suffering.

In the Middle Ages the nightingale motif is associated with joy rather than lament and connected with love (both lascivious and sacred). References to the nightingale seem to have little connection with the myth, …

Manual Labor: The Twelfth-Century Cistercian Ideal, Dennis R. Overman

Masters Theses

Throughout the history of western monasticism three principal occupations were repeatedly emphasized for the monk: prayer, lectio divina (spiritual reading/ meditation), and manual labor. Periodically, cultural mindsets, social structure, or even geography have produced in a variation in the practice of these occupations, resulting in the dominance of one or the other, or even the disappearance of one altogether.

The emergence of the Cistercian Order at the end of the eleventh century was characterized by a spirit of simplicity and austerity with a renewed emphasis on manual labor which had been a neglected element in the monastic regime in the …

The Albigensian Heresy And The Gnostic Tradition, John Stine Penman

Masters Theses

That the Albigensian heresy represents a resurgence of early Christian Gnosticism is the thesis of this work. The study defines Gnosticism in terms of its pattern of prevalent characteristics and traces the course of Gnosticism and its emergence as the Albigensianism of the Middle Ages. Using the finding of Hans Soderberg's La Religion des Cathares: Etudes, sur le gnosticisme de la basse antiquite et du moyen age as a point of departure through the analysis of documents discovered since 1949, the study shows that Gnosticism and the Albigensian heresy represent a continued tradition of religious expression as a recognizable alternative …

The Monastic Libraries Of The Diocese Of Winchester During The Late Anglo-Saxon And Norman Periods, Steven F. Vincent

Masters Theses

The objective of this thesis was to describe the libraries of the monastic houses of the diocese of Winchester in the century following the Norman Conquest. An analysis was made of lists of surviving books and of books which could be identified through other primary and secondary sources. A study was also made of the careers of bishops, abbots, priors, and other scholars known to have worked at each of these establishments, in order to determine the nature of the intellectual activity at each monastery. Catalogs of other twelfth century monastic libraries were compared with the works identified in the …

The Second And Third Crusades: Their Justification And Goals As Seen By The Clergy, Hugh Clifton Griffith

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Ecclesiastics Of The Crown Under King Edgar: A Prosopographical Study Of Bishops And Abbots In Anglo-Saxon England, 959-975, Valerie Catherine Hauch

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

The Experience Of God In The De Contemplando Deo Of William Of Saint Thierry, Patrick H. Ryan

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.