Suchergebnisse

The thesis of 'urban decline' in the late Middle Ages has been largely based on changes within incorporated boroughs. Loughborough was a small town in Leicestershire, closely involved in intra-regional exchange between three different farming regions. By the late fourteenth century, if not before, its central precinct had a definite urban form, including a specialized marketing form. Indicators (such as demographic estimates, litigation, and property-holding) suggest that the town did not suffer any substantial decline in the late Middle Ages. Structural changes in the countrysides, with a greater emphasis on specialization of production, may have maintained the town as a centre of exchange and consumption.

In the first centuries of the barbarian kingdoms the most striking feature is the gens, the tribe, as the principle of unity, even if the ethnic homogeneity often was missing. The myth of the Germanic State of the early Middle Ages was in the first place a myth of the common origin of the gens.These histories of tribal origins have some times been influenced by powerful Ancient literary patterns, especially the Trojan myth of Virgil. But the concern of presenting the origin of the gens in mythical form is no doubt Germanic. And it seems probable that the tribal origins are more ancient than the genealogies of royal families with alleged divine ancestors. The kingship among the Germanic tribes was secondary in relation to the tribe. The king was rex Francorum; the king of a certain country or geographic territory is a later conception. The power comes from below; the king is an exponent of the tribe. All the Germanic words for "king" are derivations from terms for "kin, people, tribe." The limitation of the power of the king is also indicated by institutions like the right to resistence, the possibility to depose the king, the participation by all free men in the judicial and criminal procedure through self-help and blood feud.

Between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, the rise of international trade, the growth of towns and cities, and the politics of diplomacy all helped to foster productive and far-reaching connections and cultural interactions between Britain and Italy; equally, the flourishing of Italian humanism from the late fourteenth century onwards had a major impact on intellectual life in Britain. The aim of this book is to illustrate the continuity and the variety of these exchanges during the period. Each chapter focuses on a specific area (book collection, historiography, banking, commerce, literary production), highlighting the significance of the productive interchange of people and ideas across diverse cultural communities; it is the lived experience of individuals, substantiated by written evidence, that shapes the book's collective understanding of how two European cultures interacted with each other so fruitfully

When a Spanish monk struggled to find the right words to convey his unjust expulsion from a monastery in a desperate petition to a sixth-century king, he likened himself to an aborted fetus. Centuries later, a ninth-century queen found herself accused of abortion in an altogether more fleshly sense. Abortion haunts the written record across the early middle ages. Yet, the centuries after the fall of Rome remain very much the "dark ages" in the broader history of abortion. This book, the first to treat the subject in this period, tells the story of how individuals and communities, ecclesiastical and secular authorities, construed abortion as a social and moral problem across a number of post-Roman societies, including Visigothic Spain, Merovingian Gaul, early Ireland, Anglo-Saxon England and the Carolingian empire. It argues early medieval authors and readers actively deliberated on abortion and a cluster of related questions, and that church tradition on abortion was an evolving practice. It sheds light on the neglected variety of responses to abortion generated by different social and intellectual practices, including church discipline, dispute settlement and strategies of political legitimation, and brings the history of abortion into conversation with key questions about gender, sexuality, Christianization, penance and law. Ranging across abortion miracles in hagiography, polemical letters in which churchmen likened rivals to fetuses flung from the womb of the church and uncomfortable imaginings of resurrected fetuses in theological speculation, this volume also illuminates the complex cultural significance of abortion in early medieval societies. Zubin Mistry is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Queen Mary University of London

Authority, intercession, and penance -- Roman aristocratic traditions, imperial penal law, and sanctuary -- Reassessing early medieval sanctuary legislation -- The transmission and reception of sanctuary legislation in the early middle ages -- Sanctuary, blood feud, and the strength of Anglo-Saxon government -- Sanctuary in the century after the Norman conquest -- Sanctuary and Angevin law reforms -- The role of canon law in the destruction of sanctuary