Medieval History Commons^™

Reimagining History Dataset 3.0, Michelle R. Warren, Neil Weijer

Other Faculty Materials

The Middle English prose Brut chronicle survives in nearly two hundred manuscripts. This corpus has been the subject of extensive study for more than a hundred years. The most recent research, however, has turned out to be the most fragile. In 2017, the multiyear digital humanities project “Imaging History: Perspectives on Late Medieval Vernacular Historiography” disappeared from the live Internet, only a decade after its publication. Shortly afterwards, we began a project called "Re-Imagining History"--to create a new dataset of information about the Brut manuscript corpus and learn how digital infrastructure might shape the production and preservation of historical data. …

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 …

Reinterpreting Medieval Islamic Autobiography: The Case Of Al-SakhāWī’S Irshād (1428/831 Ah - 1497/902 Ah), Maha Shawki

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis research aims to contribute to the study of medieval Arabic autobiographies by examining the autobiography of one of fifteenth-century Mamluk scholars, Muḥammad Ibn ʿabd al-Raḥmān al-Sakhāwī (1428/831 AH - 1497/902 AH).

The objective of this research is to understand more about the art of writing an autobiography during the late Mamluk period and how it relates to broader Islamic tradition. This will be done by considering al-Sakhāwī’s autobiography in the context of other similar concurrent texts written during the late Mamluk period to detect possible links and investigate how a medieval autobiography can be shaped by the character …

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.

Female Masculinity In The Embodied Beowulf Wetlands: A New, Radical, Ecofeminist Approach, Teresa Pilgrim

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This article argues that the embodied characterization of Grendel’s mother offers us an alternative heroic model for women, from the titular hero, Beowulf, around whose heroic life and legacy the Old English poem is structured and more usually celebrated. In doing so, it addresses the problematic legacy of the heroic, masculinist poem and its pedagogical role as a canonical text for English literature and national identity which also informs our cultural attitudes to gender-based violence. This article examines female masculinity in the embodied Beowulf wetlands to recover an alternative, powerful, legacy for feminism. Grounded within previous feminist, queer, ecofeminist, and …

Crisis, Identity And Urban Continuity In Seventh Century Byzantium: A Hagiographic Reassessment, Daniel Joseph Kelly

Theses and Dissertations

Hagiography, or Saints’ Lives or Miracles, often record significant details about the period in which the saint under discussion lived or the period in which the hagiography originated. These documents are useful in attempting to understand the Seventh Century Crisis Period, the period when the Eastern Roman Empire transitioned into the Byzantine Empire. Central to this is the survival of a Romano-Byzantine identity throughout the crisis period and beyond. This dissertation examines six Byzantine Hagiographies in an attempt to understand this critical and complex period in Byzantine and Near Eastern History: the Life of Symeon the Holy Fool, the Life …

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 …

Medieval Women, Material Culture, And Power: Matilda Plantagenet And Her Sisters, Mary Dockray-Miller

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

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.

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 …

Odin, Lord Of The Dead: Religious Legitimization For Social And Political Change In Late Iron Age And Early Medieval Scandinavia, Ty Karnitz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Recently, scholars of pre-Christian religions in Scandinavia have argued against a unified pantheon with Odin at its head. Instead, scholars have argued that religious beliefs in pre-Christian Scandinavia should be understood as a body of interrelated beliefs that varied by region, social class, and environmental setting. Significant cults within pre-Christian Scandinavia include those of Thor, Freyr, Odin, and a cult of the dead. Acknowledging that various religious beliefs coexisted leads to the question of how they interacted with each other. The cult of Odin has often been considered a cult of royalty and elites. Scholars have argued that Odin's various …

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 …

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 …

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.

Foreword To “Gender, Science, And The ‘Natural’ World”, Laura Kalas

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

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Gender, Science, And The Natural World: Essays On Medieval Literature From The 2020 Gender And Medieval Studies Conference, Linda E. Mitchell, Daisy E. Black

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Introduction to the special issue of literature articles from the 2020 Gender and Medieval Studies Conference.

“Let Him Walk With You”: Telling Stories About Fifteenth-Century Men, And The Women They Left Behind, Rachel E. Moss

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

In this article I use a blend of autoethnography and historical storytelling to explore the role of outdoor space in forming relationships between fifteenth-century men and their maintenance of hegemonic power. By weaving together three striking vignettes from late fifteenth-century England, constructed as creative retellings of the historical evidence, with autoethnographic notes on my own lived experience, I am able to fill in the gaps of the historical record and open up questions about the implications of what has been left out. I argue that the medieval cultural understanding of the outdoors as both spiritually and physically beneficial, as well …

Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, And Race In The Middle Ages, C. Libby

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

The Matter Of Virtue: Women’S Ethical Action From Chaucer To Shakespeare, Masha Raskolnikov

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.