Medieval Studies Commons^™

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.

Woodcuts Of Human Oddities In The Fasciculus Temporum, Brady Brick

Fasciculus Temporum

This paper focuses on two woodcut images of human oddities in Portland State University’s edition of the Fasciculus temporum (Prüss, Strassburg, 1490).

One woodcut shows children with birth anomalies affecting their eyes, arms, and legs. The second is of a cynocephalus or dog-headed man. The history and context of these types of images and their significance within the text are both considered. This paper also examines possible medical explanations for the physical anomalies shown in the woodcut images.

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 …

Sites Of Performance And Circulation, Christopher B. Swift

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

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.

Watermarks In The Psu Codex Fasciculus Temporum And The Paper Trade, Christian Graham

Extra-Textual Elements

Medieval watermarks were introduced into early printed works during the production process of the paper. It is not known exactly when or why they came into common use, but they did come to identify specific paper suppliers.

As the number of paper suppliers grew enormously in concert with the growth of popularity of printed books, identifying the watermarks of specific producers can provide the modern scholar with valuable information about an early printed work, including dating editions and providing insight into trading relationships and connections between paper-makers and printers.

This paper examines some of the watermarks present in the PSU’s …

Rational Creatures: Examining The Cat-Dog Divide In The Medieval World, Emily Price

Capstone Showcase

The spiritual chasm of status that exists between man and beast is daily put to the test by the very beasts kept in our homes. Human beings have a long history of keeping animals for one reason or another, but it has only been recently that the concept of animals purely maintained for companionship has taken center stage. The Middle Ages in particular served as a transformative moment in the history of the “pet,” where not only was the role of the animal within man’s existence re-examined, but so, too, were the specific animals preferred by different cultures more solidly …

The Reconquista And Crusading In The Late 11th And Early 12th Century, Catherine Hill

Capstone Showcase

The purpose of this project is to recount the historiography and literature of the Crusades and the Reconquista and then offer some commentary on their relationship in Spain in the late 11th and early 12th centuries. Both of these fields have a tremendous amount of scholarship to understand these phenomena in medieval history. Therefore, the scope of this project is to compile the main scholarly debates surrounding the connection between the Crusades and the Reconquista and consider the evidence for the various approaches. The relevant background history of the Reconquista contextualizes the literature of the two fields. The main debates …

Rational Creatures: Examining The Cat-Dog Divide In The Medieval World, Emily Price

Capstone Showcase

The spiritual chasm of status that exists between man and beast is daily put to the test by the very beasts kept in our homes. Human beings have a long history of keeping animals for one reason or another, but it has only been recently that the concept of animals purely maintained for companionship has taken center stage. The Middle Ages in particular served as a transformative moment in the history of the “pet,” where not only was the role of the animal within man’s existence re-examined, but so, too, were the specific animals preferred by different cultures more solidly …

Spices, Spirituality, And Scarcity: Experiences Of Food And Drink In The Middle Ages, Thomas Nelson

History - Master of Arts in Teaching

I. Synthesis Essay………………………….......3

II. Primary Documents and Headnotes………27

III. Textbook Critique…………………………...37

IV. New Textbook Entry………………………...40

V. Bibliography…………………………………..49

Tolerance, Prejudice, And The Ornament Of The World, Elijah Zane

History - Master of Arts in Teaching

I. Synthesis Essay…………………………....3

II. Primary Documents and Headnotes…….32

III. Textbook Critique………………………....38

IV. New Textbook Entry………………………42

V. Bibliography………………………………..52

Acts Of Meaning, Resource Diagrams, And Essential Learning Behaviors: The Design Evolution Of Lost & Found, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber

Articles

Lost & Found is a tabletop-to-mobile game series designed for teaching medieval religious legal systems. The long-term goals of the project are to change the discourse around religious laws, such as foregrounding the prosocial aspects of religious law such as collaboration, cooperation, and communal sustainability. This design case focuses on the evolution of the design of the mechanics and core systems in the first two tabletop games in the series, informed by over three and a half years’ worth of design notes, playable prototypes, outside design consultations, internal design reviews, playtests, and interviews.

Reflections Of An Impossible Ideal: Passion As The Will To Downfall In Madame Bovary, Christopher Ramponi

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Broadly speaking, this thesis is an examination of passionate love: its qualities, its presentation, the ends to which it is employed, its paradoxical nature, and set of beliefs surrounding it—in short, the impossibility of it all. More narrowly, this thesis argues that in Madame Bovary, Flaubert attaches a specifically twelfth-century understanding of passion to Emma Bovary, one that is at the heart of troubadour lyric poetry. What is more, I argue that Emma finds in this vision of love, whose structure is built upon a Neoplatonist dialectic and expressed through a paradoxical antithesis, an Ideal—an ideal world, life, and …

Inventing Christine De Pizan: Art And Authorship In Late Medieval France, Adria Leigh Woodruff

Senior Independent Study Theses

The Book of the Queen (Harley 4431) is one of the most exquisite and fascinating manuscripts of late medieval France. Compiled for Queen Isabeau of Bavaria between 1411 and 1415 by Christine de Pizan and her small workshop, the codex is one of the largest and most illuminated of Christine’s works. While the literature on the poems of the book is vast, the miniatures have received significantly less attention. I endeavor to contribute to the literature on Christine de Pizan’s illuminations, as they serve as important amplifications of her allegories. Therefore, it is necessary to examine her miniatures in order …

Late Anglo-Saxon Prayer In Practice: Before The Books Of Hours, Kate Thomas

Richard Rawlinson Center Series

This monograph examines the practice of Anglo-Saxon prayer outside of the communal liturgy. With a particular emphasis on its practical aspects, it considers how small groups of prayers were elaborated into complex programs for personal devotion, resulting in the forerunners of the Special Offices. With examples being taken chiefly from major eleventh-century collections of prayers, liturgy, and medical remedies, the methodologies of Anglo-Saxon compilers are examined, followed by five chapters on specialist kinds of prayer: to the Trinity and saints, for liturgical feasts and the canonical hours, to the Holy Cross, for protection and healing, and confessions. Analyzing prayer in …

The Feeling Heart In Medieval And Early Modern Europe: Meaning, Embodiment, And Making, Katie Barclay, Bronwyn Reddan

Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

The heart is an iconic symbol in the medieval and early modern European world. In addition to being a physical organ, it is a key conceptual device related to emotions, cognition, the self and identity, and the body. The heart is read as a metaphor for human desire and will, and situated in opposition to or alongside reason and cognition. In medieval and early modern Europe, the “feeling heart”—the heart as the site of emotion and emotional practices—informed a broad range of art, literature, music, heraldry, medical texts, and devotional and ritual practices. This multidisciplinary collection brings together art historians, …

The Performance Tradition Of The Medieval English University: The Works Of Thomas Chaundler, Thomas Meacham

Early Drama, Art, and Music

Contrary to previous scholarship, which has claimed that university drama did not occur at the English universities before the Tudor period, Meacham argues that there was a vibrant tradition of performance throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. He suggests an earlier tradition has not been recognized because, in addition to the false assumption that medieval pedagogy cannot support such activity, the full range of medieval performance practices or "texts," beyond the traditional play text, have not been considered. This book takes as its focus one of the last medieval university plays, Thomas Chaundler’s Liber apologeticus de omni statu humanae naturae …

The Horse In Premodern European Culture, Anastasija Ropa

Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

This volume provides a unique introduction to the most topical issues, advances, and challenges in medieval horse history. Medievalists who have a long-standing interest in horse history, as well as those seeking to widen their understanding of horses in medieval society will find here informed and comprehensive treatment of chapters from disciplines as diverse as archaeology, legal, economic and military history, urban and rural history, art and literature. The themes range from case studies of saddles and bridles, to hippiatric treatises, to the medieval origins of dressage. It shows the ubiquitous – and often ambiguous – role of the horse …

Inscribing Knowledge In The Medieval Book: The Power Of Paratexts, Rosalind Brown-Grant, Patrizia Carmassi, Gisela Drossbach, Anne D. Hedeman, Victoria Turner, Iolanda Ventura

Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

This collection of essays examines how the paratextual apparatus of medieval manuscripts both inscribes and expresses power relations between the producers and consumers of knowledge in this important period of intellectual history. It seeks to define which paratextual features—annotations, commentaries, corrections, diagrams, glosses, images, prologues, rubrics, and titles—are common to manuscripts from different branches of medieval knowledge and how they function in any particular discipline. It reveals how these visual expressions of power that organize and compile thought on the written page are consciously applied, negotiated or resisted by authors, scribes, artists, patrons, and readers. This collection, which brings together …

Full Of Grace: Little Books Are Big On Beauty, Advice, Jillian M. Ewalt

Marian Library Faculty Publications

What was the best-selling book in Christendom from 1250 to 1550? It wasn’t the Bible, but the Book of Hours.

Brief compiled by University of Dayton Magazine staff from three informational blogs by the author on the Marian Library website.

Reconsidering ‘Soul And Body Ii’: Who Is Culpable For Their Combined Fate?, Sarah Jaran

Masters Theses

Soul and Body II has been considered for many years by scholars to be a less doctrinally complex poem compared to later versions of the topos. Superficially, the poem seems to blame the body fully for the shared doomed fate of the body and soul because the majority of the poem is a speech by the soul claiming that much. I propose in this study, however, that the poet created a dual message for the audience of Soul and Body II. While the easy and more superficial message is that the body is at fault for the damnation of …

Recovered Images: Medieval Echoes In C. S. Lewis’S Space Trilogy, Nathan Earl Houston Fayard

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

C. S. Lewis has begun to garner more scholarly attention in the last few decades, but his first novels, his science fiction or Space trilogy, continue to be largely ignored by academia. Yet, these three novels are deserving of more serious study, as they are pioneering works of literary science fiction, and even more surprisingly, of literary medievalism. Though long derided as mere reactionary attacks on Modernism and science, when properly understood, these strange and wonderful tales actually reveal the complexity and nuance of Lewis’s response to his times. In them, the Inkling author creates a unique combination of the …

The Vikings Reimagined: Reception, Recovery, Engagement, Tom Birkett, Roderick Dale

Northern Medieval World

Rediscovering the Vikings explores the changing perception of Norse and Viking cultures across different cultural forms, and the complex legacy of the Vikings in the present day. Bringing together experts in literature, history and heritage engagement, this highly interdisciplinary collection aims to reconsider the impact of the discipline of Old Norse Viking Studies outside the academy and to broaden our understanding of the ways in which the material and textual remains of the Viking Age are given new meanings in the present. The diverse collection draws attention to the many roles that the Vikings play across contemporary culture: from the …

Calling All Corpses: An Examination Of The Treatment Of The Dead In Old English Literature, Jessica Troy

English Language and Literature ETDs

The care and disposal of the dead bodies, an unavoidable reminder of one’s mortality, rarely receives in-depth literary attention. In early medieval England, the Anglo-Saxons dealt with corpses but seldom discussed the undertaking in written documents. Instead they focused on the grandiose deeds of heroes like Beowulf and the holy lives of revered saints.

This dissertation examines various genres of Old English literature to identify times when authors discuss corpses and to what end these discussions led. Hagiographers, for example, describe the corpses of certain saints such as Æthelthryth and Edmund at length while the bodies of other saints are …

Monsters In Society: Alterity, Transgression, And The Use Of The Past In Medieval Iceland, Rebecca Merkelbach

Northern Medieval World

Dragons, giants, and the monsters of learned discourse are rarely encountered in the Sagas of Icelanders, and therefore, the general teratological focus on physical monstrosity yields only limited results when applied to them. This, however, does not equal an absence of monstrosity — it only means that monstrosity is conceived of differently. This book shifts the view of monstrosity from the physical to the social, accounting for the unique social circumstances presented in the Íslendingasögur and demonstrating how closely interwoven the social and the monstrous are in this genre. Employing literary and cultural theory as well as anthropological and historical …

Teaching The Principles Of Research Through The Creation Of Digital Content, Melodie H. Eichbauer

Florida Statewide Symposium: Best Practices in Undergraduate Research

This presentation highlights the outcomes of a series of student internships that resulted in the production of successively more complex content videos for my undergraduate survey EUH 2021 Medieval European History. The production of the videos mirrored the research process and those creating the videos thought about and worked through the steps that a research project takes. Students enrolled in the course, which explores the period c.400 and c.1400 A.D., oftentimes have a difficult time with how to conceptualize the information, how to navigate the information, and how to delve into the information. The students engaged in the video product …

Godfrey Of Viterbo’S Pantheon And John Gower’S Confessio Amantis: The Story Of Apollonius Retold, Thari L. Zweers

Accessus

Even though Gower identifies Godfrey of Viterbo's Pantheon in the first two lines of the "Tale of Apollonius of Tyre" in Book VIII of the Confessio Amantis as the main source for his retelling of this tale, the connection between these two works has long been mostly ignored, and even denied. This essay aims to remedy this oversight by showcasing how Gower went beyond merely mentioning the Pantheon and used Godfrey's version of the tale as a thematic and stylistic model for his account of this incestuous tale of desire. Gower takes his cue from Godfrey in imbuing the titillating …

Undiagnosing Iphis: How The Lack Of Trauma In John Gower’S “Iphis And Iante” Reinforces A Subversive Trans Narrative, C Janecek

Accessus

Trauma has long played a role in queer narratives, including Ovid’s “Iphis and Ianthe”, which many scholars have interpreted as reinforcing heteronormativity through Iphis’s transformation into a man in order to marry Ianthe. However, I argue that John Gower’s rendition of this tale reframes Iphis as a trans man and allows us to understand the poem as a subversive trans narrative that revolts against cisnormative conceptions of gender. Utilizing Judith Butler’s writing on the medicalization of gender, I explore the relationship between trauma, performance, and gender within the Ovidian and Gowerian versions of Iphis.

Foreword, Georgiana Donavin, Eve Salisbury

Accessus

This is the Foreword to Accessus 5.1

“Donning The Skins”: The Problem Of Shapeshifting In The Saga Of The Volsungs, David Mudrak

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

“Fafnir became so ill-natured that he set out for the wilds and allowed no one to enjoy the treasure but himself. He has since become the most evil serpent and lies now upon his hoard” (Byock 59). Regin, recounting the tale of his brother’s transformation to Sigurd, describes an act of shapeshifting, a magical transformation of one’s body. While many scholars of Icelandic sagas focus their attention on the family sagas because of the clear message they provide for the Icelandic society, the magical elements of the mythical sagas also offer insight into the cultural workings of that people. In …