Medieval History Commons^™

Paving The Way: Women In Music At Ferrara, Italy During The Late 1500s, Ella Yarris

Young Historians Conference

During the late Renaissance period, musical advancement and development thrived in the courts of dukes around Italy. However, in Ferrara around 1580, a group of women began to gain unprecedented attention for their court performances and dedication to music. Interestingly, this region was also home to a prolific group of cloistered musicians. This paper explores the impact that the Ferrarese madrigal singers would have on the future of music professions for women of all social classes, as well as the relationship of court music to religious music in a time where life as a whole was becoming more secular.

Of Vultures, Souls, And Galen: Theology And Medical Cures In Early Medieval Europe, Christina Cannon

Campus Research Month

Examining how medical cures in early medieval Europe reflect the theology of the time is one that involves tracing and defining the emergence of a more defined field of "medicine," beginning with Galen. The work briefly examines prevailing contemporary views of the relation of body to soul, as well as what medical cures looked like. Understanding how 'pagan' thought was conceptualized and related to 'Christian' thought during the period is also helpful, and the work seeks to broadly consider these themes while noting particular examples that answer the question of how theology and medicine were related in medieval Europe.

Res Historica, Volume 1, Lynneth Miller Renberg Phd, Alpha Rho Epsilon Phi Alpha Theta

Res Historica

The inaugural journal of historical research by Anderson University students, Res Historica.

The editorial team for this edition of Res Historica was Dr. Lynneth Miller Renberg, Hunter Curlee, and Johnathan Sorce. Cover art for this volume is the Phi Alpha Theta: Alpha Rho Epsilon logo created by Dr. Lynneth Miller Renberg.

From Spark And Flame: A Study Of The Origins Of Gunpowder Firearms, Avery D. Shepherd

Tenor of Our Times

All modern civilizations look to gunpowder for their weapons of war. Few advancements have been able to match their destructive capabilities, versatility, and ease of production. While it is clear to see the modern usage of the advancement, gunpowder’s origins have been debated over centuries. A study of gunpowder is a study of alchemy throughout the middle ages and across the known world. That study begins in China around the 9th century, where the invention is developed into a weapon of war. Advancements in gunpowder weapons continued as the neighboring Mongols took the technology for themselves. From there, the Westward …

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 …

Words Matter: A Linguistic Analysis Of Cluniac Views On The Use And Abuse Of Violent Force, Amanda K. Swinford

Dissertations and Theses

The goal of this project is to isolate Cluniac attitudes towards violence and the use of martial force in the tenth through twelfth centuries, first by determining in what situations Cluniac authors deemed the shedding of human blood was permissible, and second by tracking the evolution of these attitudes from the abbey's foundation to the height of its influence. Given Cluny's role in European society, there is a rich and longstanding body of scholarship which examines Cluny's support or rejection of force as a means of conflict resolution. This study demonstrates a consistency over time in Cluniac attitudes on the …

The World As We Know It: Maps And Atlases From Special Collections, Archives And Special Collections, Luke Meagher

Library Exhibits

Selections of maps and atlases from Sandor Teszler Library’s Special Collections are presented in this exhibit to show how, over time, cartographers have represented the world as we know it.

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 …

Brigid Of Kildare: The Saint Who Got A Facelift, Aimee Hunt

Student Research

On the outskirts of Papal authority, early medieval Ireland created its own Christian identity separate from other European nations closer to Rome. Saint Brigid of Kildare, one of the patron saints of Ireland, played important yet problematic roles in that identity. After her death, the church began to alter her history. Being a female bishop, performing the first recorded abortion, and having both men and women within her monastery, Brigid had trodden on the male-dominated system in a way that few women had. Deemed unacceptable but having already been sainted, the Catholic church gave Brigid a holy facelift.

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.

British Literature I, Justin Shaw

Syllabus Share

What does it mean to belong? What does it mean to have an identity? This course serves as an entry point to the study of early British literature and its historical contexts. We examine texts written from the 7th to the 17th Centuries that comprise a portion of what we call British literature. This survey engages poetry, prose, and drama that reimagine the complexities of intersectional identity, render the nation as part of a global stage, and challenge conventions of sexuality and gender. It traces early texts written by and about people on the margins of “Britishness” and "Englishness" such …

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.

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 …

Barbarians & Heretics: Anti-Greek And Anti-Latin Sentiments In Crusade-Era Chronicles, 1096-1204, Ryan Saputo

Honors Theses and Capstones

Historians have debated the role of stereotypes and hostile language in the diversion of the Fourth Crusade to Constantinople mostly through the outdated "Clash of Civilizations" lens. This work investigates the role of hostile stereotypes in both Western and Byzantine narrative histories discussing the first four crusades through a deep textual and literary analysis. This work argues that contemporary narrative histories from the first four crusades demonstrate that virulently hostile attitudes abounded in both Byzantine and Western sources, and that these attitudes greatly affected diplomatic and political decision making during Byzantine-Crusader interactions from 1096-1204. This work's close textual examination of …

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.

Preliminary Report 2021: Geophysics, Coring, And Excavations At Hólar; Geophysics At Kálfsstaðir, Guðný Zoëga, John M. Steinberg

Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research Publications

This report outlines the 2021 work at Hólar in Hjaltadalur as part of the Hjaltadalur Archaeological Survey Project (HASP). The results of soil coring suggest that the farmstead of Hólar is the most extensive farmstead measured using this method in the area of Skagafjörður. After over 1200 cores and 17 excavations (6 of which were part of the 2021 research), there are still no confirmed pre-1104 cultural deposits at Hólar. This difficulty in identifying the pre-1104 domestic occupation implies that Viking Age Hólar was probably not large. The Hólar farmstead domestic space seems to be tightly defined and constrained rather …

The Cartulary Of Prémontré: People, Places, And Networks From Medieval To Digital, Yvonne Seale, Heather Wacha

History

The cartulary of the northern French abbey of Prémontré was produced in the mid-thirteenth century, and preserves acts dating mostly from the 1120s to 1230s, with some later additions. Although the abbey of Prémontré was the mother house of a prominent monastic order, and despite the relative abundance of its documentary record, that source base has been comparatively little studied. In this article, we discuss the process of undertaking the first full edition of this manuscript, some preliminary findings, and the scope that new digital technologies might afford in future prosopographical studies of the cartulary.

Life And Health Concerns Of A European Monastic Scribe During The 14th Century, Jared Reiling, Christopher O'Neill, Nick Curatolo

2021 Festschrift: The Interpolated Roman de Fauvel in Context

Writing in a quiet, candle-lit room may sound hygge to some, but monks during the 14th century would describe their work on the scriptorium as cold, depressing, tedious, mundane, and exhausting. The copying of all texts, including biblical and musical, was done by hand with monks working around the clock copying, illuminating manuscripts, and binding books. With the regimented schedule of monastic life, the Church worked scribes till exhaustion which created health problems and aggravated underlying conditions. Though cataracts were a common problem, commoners performed surgery on each other to restore sight, but it only made the situation worse.

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 …

Mentalités And The Search For Total History In The Works Of Annalistes, Foucault, And Microhistory, Jason U. Rose

The Hilltop Review

In this brief essay, the links between the Annales, the works of Michael Foucault, and microhistory are analyzed through the theoretical lens of histoire des mentalités (mentalités). Common threads that link these approaches include the willingness of using outside fields of analysis as well as the willingness to work with vagueness in search of those who Foucault calls, “lost people.” Relatedly, each of these groups and individuals are willing to analyze all aspects of the historical record to fully understand the minds, cultures, and histories of past people. The key to recognizing the relationship of these approaches involve knowing and …

The Virago Paradigm Of Female Sanctity: Constructing The Masculine Woman In Medieval Christianity, Angela Bolen

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The Latin word virago, in its simplest definition, means “a man-like, warrior woman.” For Christian men and women in the Patristic era and the central Middle Ages, the virago represented a woman who denied all biological characteristics of her womanhood, fiercely protected her virginity, and fully embodied the virtues of Christian masculinity. The virago paradigm of female sanctity, a creation of male writers, reconciled a pervasive fear of the female sex with an obvious admiration for holy women. Additionally, the virago model maintained the supremacy of masculine virtues, upheld a patriarchal hierarchy, and created a metaphorical space that validated …

The Heart Of Academia: Medieval Universities, Textbooks, And The Birth Of Academic Libraries, Christopher Proctor

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The contemporary academic library occupies a crucial role in the teaching and learning mission of universities. This centrality is perhaps best exemplified by the popular saying that the library is the heart of the university. But has this always been the case since the inception of universities in the High Middle Ages? To help answer this question, the following discussion traces the creation of universities within the medieval world, the textual traditions that informed their scholarship and pedagogy, and the later birth of academic libraries within the college and university system. The author attempts to demonstrate that the rise of …

Playing With Fire: The Medieval Judicial Ordeals And Their Downfall, Aaron Larson

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

Trials by ordeal in the Middle Ages prove to be some of the most complex secular trials in all of history. Both trial by fire, and trial by water looked to call God's judgment into play, hoping that He would make the decisions of guilt or innocence. God is all-knowing. He is all-powerful. Therefore He has all of the relevant information to determine the fates of those who go through the ordeals. Despite this, the theologians in the medieval Church looked to lessen clerical involvement in the ordeals. In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council met, and the ordeals ceased to …

Medieval Infertility: Treatments, Cures, And Consequences, Zia Simpson

The Forum: Journal of History

Since the first civilizations emerged, reproductive ability has been one of the most prominent elements in assessing a woman’s value to society. Other characteristics such as beauty, intelligence, and wealth may have been granted comparable consequence, but those are arbitrary and improvable. Fertility is genetic, and for centuries it was beyond human control. Among the medieval European nobility, fertility held even greater power. The absence of an heir could, either directly or indirectly, bring about war, economic depression, and social disorder. Catholicism provided a refuge by allowing barren women to retain their hopes, while simultaneously enriching Rome’s coffers. Other women …

Full Issue

The Forum: Journal of History

No abstract provided.

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. …

Session 2: Panel 1: Presenter 1 (Paper) -- The Struggle Of The Soul Medieval Women Mystics And The Constraints Of The Orthodoxy, Kasaundra A. Bonanno

Young Historians Conference

First Corinthians 14:34 tells us, “let your women keep silence in the churches for it is not permitted unto them to speak.” But what happened when medieval women in the 12-15th centuries did speak, and what techniques did they apply to gain credibility? This paper explores the various methods (along with cultural aspects such as the appearance of piousness) women mystics utilized to gain power within the Church in a time when their voices were silenced, and the factors that allowed individuals such as Catherine of Siena to gain incredible influence where individuals like Joan of Arc were burned at …

Meddling In The Post-Black Death Economy: Edward Iii’S Policies To Repress The Peasantry, Leah Diciesare, Daniel Melleno

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

The Black Death caused a mass mortality in England, drastically affecting society. However, it was the aftermath of the plague that had the greatest impacts. The loss of life removed pressure on the economy due to population density, which gave the peasants opportunities to improve their lives. But that was a short-lived phenomenon; the peasantry ultimately remained repressed, as they had been prior to the plague. Edward III meddled in the English economy in the wake of the Black Death by introductions price and wage regulations. These efforts were to maintain the status quo in English society so that the …

L’Émergence D’Une Monarchie Française Indépendante, 1100-1314 : Le Rejet De La Suprématie Papale, Kent Mcneil

Articles & Book Chapters

The struggle between the Pope and secular rulers of Western Europe for political supremacy was a dominant theme in the medieval world. The kings of France and England in particular asserted their authority and independence, leading to the development of nation states. This form of political organization was standardized in Europe in 1648 by the Peace of Westphalia and exported to the rest of the world through colonialism. This article tells the story of the power struggle between the Pope and the kings of France, from which the kings emerged victorious, contributing to the creation of the modern world.