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Journal of medieval history

The Journal of Medieval History is a quarterly journal devoted to all aspects of the history of Europe in the Middle Ages. Each issue comprises around four or five articles on European history, including Britain and Ireland, between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance. It includes review articles, historiographical essays and 'state of research' studies. It is also available at Haverford and Swarthmore in print.
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Current Table of Contents

The Saxons within Carolingian Christendom: post-conquest identity in the translationes of Vitus, Pusinna and Liborius
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 20 November 2009 Eric, Shuler The Franks incorporated Saxony into the Carolingian empire through a long, brutal struggle coupled with forced conversion. When Saxons themselves began to write a few decades afterwards, they had to make sense of this history and of their role and identity in their contemporary Carolingian world. In contrast to the portrayal of Saxons in writers such as Einhard and Rudolf, three ninth-century Saxon accounts of relic translations — those of Vitus, Pusinna and Liborius — reinterpreted history to claim a place for the Saxons as a distinct group equal to the Franks within the populus Christianus under the Carolingian monarchs....
Techniques of seigneurial war in the fourteenth century
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 11 November 2009 Justine, Firnhaber-Baker Despite the many studies devoted to medieval military history, most work has concentrated on royal wars, neglecting the petty seigneurial wars that made up most of the large-scale, organised violence of the middle ages. This article, based on judicial records for dozens of seigneurial wars waged in fourteenth-century southern France, shows that lords' tactics were not keeping up with those of royal commanders. Although royal wars increasingly involved large numbers of foot soldiers, large siege engines, and artillery, local lords' bureaucratic and financial limitations restricted their adoption of new techniques. As had been the case for centuries, most lords' wars...
Editorial board/Publication information
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 35, Issue 4, December 2009, Page IFC [No author name available]
A shared imitation: Cistercian convents and crusader families in thirteenth-century Champagne☆
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 2 October 2009 Anne E., Lester This article examines the relationship between Cistercian nunneries and the crusade movement and considers the role of gender in light of the new emphasis on penitential piety and suffering prevalent during the thirteenth century. Focused on evidence from the region of Champagne in northern France, it argues that female family members of male crusaders adopted Cistercian spirituality as a means of participating in the experience of suffering and the pursuit of the imitation of Christ that had come to be associated with the act of crusading. The connection between Cistercian nuns and crusaders was further strengthened during this period as...
Gift-giving and books in the letters of St Boniface and Lul
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 23 September 2009 John-Henry, Wilson Clay The Anglo-Saxon missionary and archbishop St Boniface (d.754) and Lul, his protégé and successor in the see of Mainz (d.768), left behind a rich collection of letters that has become an invaluable source in our understanding of Boniface's mission. This article examines the letters in order to elucidate the customs of gift-giving that existed between those who were involved in the mission, whether directly or as external supporters. It begins with a brief overview of anthropological models of gift-giving, followed by a discussion of the portrayal of gift-giving in Anglo-Saxon literature. Two features of the letters of Boniface and Lul...
Prouille, Madrid, Rome: the evolution of the earliest Dominican Instituta for nuns
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 20 September 2009 Julie Ann, Smith The lifestyles of the three earliest Dominican women's communities were formulated according to their specific historical conditions and exigencies during the years 1206–21. Initially, the women associated with the preaching mission of Diego of Osma and Dominic Guzman were based at Prouille in the Languedoc and followed the Augustinian Rule. The development of the first instituta for Dominican nuns was the result of 15 years of overseeing the lives of the sisters. However, enclosure, and the institutional requirement for its observance, only came about in 1220 with the establishment of San Sisto, when St Dominic wrote an instituta specifically intended...
The political significance of Christine de Pizan's third estate in the Livre du corps de policie
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 9 September 2009 Tracy, Adams Although the general historical context of Christine de Pizan's Livre du corps de policie (LCP), the Orleanist-Burgundian feud occasioned by the periodic insanity of King Charles VI, has long been recognised, the precise argument that the author wages through her unique configuration of the third part of the body politic has not been explored. This essay reads the LCP as an intervention into the escalating struggle for power between Charles VI's brother, the duke of Orleans, and his cousin, the duke of Burgundy. Christine's purpose emerges most clearly in her peculiar arrangement of the third part of her body politic,...
Prison and sacrament in the cult of saints: images of St Barbara in late medieval art
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 9 September 2009 Megan, Cassidy-Welch This article analyses the changing visual representation of St Barbara during the later middle ages. The article identifies a shift in St Barbara's iconography: whereas earlier medieval representations of the saint almost always show her with her prison tower, a number of fifteenth-century representations show the saint holding a chalice and host. The article traces how and why this shift occurred. In particular, the article explores the ways in which medieval thinking linking incarceration and liberation were integrated into new representations of St Barbara to stress her intercessionary, sacramental functions. Overall, the article argues that the visual transformation of St...
Discipline, compassion and monastic ideals of community, c.950–1250
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 9 September 2009 Katherine Allen, Smith Those who are not flogged here on earth are not received as sons there in heaven […] and will be flogged alongside the devil for eternity.Ambrose of Milan1This essay examines the intersections of discipline, compassion and community in a selection of monastic texts from the late tenth through to the mid-thirteenth centuries, focusing on disciplinary rituals involving punitive flogging or flagellation. Although members of all of the major religious orders viewed flogging as a necessary method of correction needing little or no justification, as evidenced by customaries, letters, and even miracle collections, few scholars have examined the role of this...
Editorial board/Publication information
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 35, Issue 3, September 2009, Page IFC [No author name available]
Truth, plausibility, and the virtues of narrative at the millennium
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 35, Issue 3, September 2009, Pages 221-238 Justin C., Lake While it is widely understood that medieval historiographers employed the techniques of rhetorical invention in their work, less attention has been paid to the way in which the standard of plausibility, upon which rhetorical invention was premised, could be reconciled with the historian's traditional obligation to tell the truth. This paper examines the ways in which the rhetorical doctrine of narratio probabilis was understood and put into practice by three authors active around the turn of the millennium: Richer of Saint-Rémi, Dudo of Saint-Quentin, and Adalbero of Laon. All three had been trained in the schools of northern Francia in...
Anti-Jewish rhetoric in Guibert of Nogent's Dei gesta per Francos
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 35, Issue 3, September 2009, Pages 239-253 Elizabeth, Lapina When Guibert of Nogent, a Benedictine monk living in northern France, re-wrote the anonymous Gesta Francorum, an eyewitness chronicle of the First Crusade, he changed more than just the style and the title. One of Guibert's most significant additions to his model was vitriolic anti-Jewish rhetoric. The present article explains some of the reasons why Guibert felt the need to deride the Jews of the Old Testament, particularly the Maccabees, as part of his narrative of the First Crusade. It attempts to demonstrate that Guibert's playing down the achievements of Jewish warriors of the past was inseparable from his aim...
Matthew Paris on the writing of history
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 35, Issue 3, September 2009, Pages 254-278 Björn, Weiler Matthew Paris was one of the most prolific and influential historians of the central middle ages. Matthew's significance rests both on the range of his interests and the scope of his writing. Yet, even basic questions about his outlook on writing, his concept of history, or the relationship with his audience, have hardly been asked. These issues are central themes of this article, and will be used to consider wider questions about Matthew's concept of truth, his handling of information, and his view of the world around him. The article, furthermore, extends coverage beyond the Chronica majora or Matthew's vernacular...
Disputing legal privilege: civic relations with the Church in late medieval England
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 35, Issue 3, September 2009, Pages 279-296 H., Carrel This article explores how provincial town governments sought to bolster civic authority in the period from c.1350 to c.1500. It focuses on royal boroughs, such as York, Chester and Norwich, which had a strong sense of lay civic identity and political pride. In these places, the king was the direct overlord, but the power of civic government was nonetheless frequently challenged by the franchises of local abbeys and convents, cathedral chapters, bishops' palaces, areas of sanctuary and the estates of local nobles. The main case study is urban relations with the Church, in particular disputes with local religious houses and...
Angli cum multis aliis alienigenis: crusade settlers in Tortosa (second half of the twelfth century)
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 35, Issue 3, September 2009, Pages 297-312 Antoni, Virgili In the spring of 1147 Anglo-Norman and Flemish crusaders set out from Dartmouth in the direction of the Holy Land to take part in the Second Crusade. On their way they participated in the siege of Lisbon (October 1147) and the campaign against Tortosa which finished with the surrender of the city on the last day of 1148. A significant number of crusaders from the British Isles settled in Tortosa and its environs after the successful campaign, appearing in the documents as Angli, Anglici and Angles. The article describes the archival information for the role of these Anglo-Norman crusaders in...
Editorial board/Publication information
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 35, Issue 2, June 2009, Page IFC [No author name available]
Learning to be a man: public schooling and apprenticeship in late medieval Manosque
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 35, Issue 2, June 2009, Pages 113-135 Steven, Bednarski , Andrée, Courtemanche This article looks at teachers' contracts and apprenticeship contracts from the Provençal town of Manosque. It argues that, in late medieval Manosque, education was institutionalised and gendered. Manosquin society implemented formal systems in order to inculcate a particular type of masculine identity. This identity, a function of the growing burgher class of townsmen, was driven by rapid urban expansion, economics, and secularisation. This article demonstrates how gender acquisition took place. It also explores in detail the form and content of secular schooling for young boys and apprenticeship for adolescents.
The Master and Marguerite: Godfrey of Fontaines' praise of The Mirror of Simple Souls**
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 35, Issue 2, June 2009, Pages 136-149 Sean L., Field This article examines the evidence for the intellectual and practical relationship between Marguerite Porete and the secular master of theology Godfrey of Fontaines. It analyses the nature, timing, and importance of Godfrey's response to The Mirror of Simple Souls, and argues that considering the interaction between these two figures has important consequences for our understanding of both of their careers.
Notes on Templar personnel and government at the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 35, Issue 2, June 2009, Pages 150-170 Alan, Forey The Hospital of St John is thought to have been in various respects in a rather more healthy condition than the order of the Temple in the late thirteenth century, and comparisons and contrasts between the two orders have recently been made, often to the detriment of the Templars. This view is examined with reference to recruiting, the role of sergeants, ignorance among brothers, provincial administration, central government, and roles after the collapse of the crusader states. The argument is advanced that the Temple was not in a noticeably worse state than the Hospital and that on many issues the...
Storm flooding, coastal defence and land use around the Thames estuary and tidal river c.1250–14501
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 35, Issue 2, June 2009, Pages 171-188 James A., Galloway Climatic deterioration in the later middle ages was associated with an increasing frequency of marine storm surges affecting the coasts of the southern North Sea. This paper investigates the impact of storm surges upon the lands bordering the Thames estuary and tidal river between the mid-thirteenth and mid-fifteenth centuries. Land use in the coastal and riverine marshes is reviewed, and the means and costs of defence against marine flooding explored. The impact of flooding upon human use of the marshlands, upon the suburbs of medieval London and upon the Thames fisheries are all investigated. Stress is placed upon the complex interaction...
Family and familiars. The concentric household in late medieval penitentiary petitions
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 35, Issue 2, June 2009, Pages 189-203 Philip, Grace Few studies to date have examined the relational aspects of life within a non-nuclear medieval household. This article aims to show that the affective bonds that were prescribed for members of the nuclear family in the late middle ages were also prescribed for members of the larger household, though to a lesser degree. ‘Familiars’ were expected to develop bonds of loyalty that cut across distinctions of social estate. A series of petitions to the papal penitentiary from German-speaking areas during the fifteenth century shows that both elite and non-elite individuals exhibited such affective bonds of support in violent situations as...
Anti-corruption campaigns in thirteenth-century Europe
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 35, Issue 2, June 2009, Pages 204-219 William Chester, Jordan The thirteenth century in France saw the initiation of a series of reforms intended to define, identify and root out corruption in government. The principal architect of the campaign was King Louis IX (1226–70), ably supported by a coterie of special officials. Inspired in part by his desire to purify his kingdom in the long preparation for the crusade of 1270, he also drew on longstanding precedents in French administrative history. The campaign on the whole was quite successful. What is also remarkable is that, generated partly from the unique circumstances of individual polities and partly from circumstances, like crusading...
Editorial board/Publication information
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 35, Issue 1, March 2009, Page IFC [No author name available]
Constructing a diocese in a post-conquest landscape: a comparative approach to the lay possession of tithes1
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 35, Issue 1, March 2009, Pages 1-33 Thomas W., Barton This article explores how territorial conquest and consolidation of Muslim-ruled lands in the medieval Iberian Peninsula influenced the restoration and growth of frontier episcopal sees through an analysis of tithing. In comparing two neighbouring dioceses in the Crown of Aragon, Tortosa and Lleida, restored following the same mid-twelfth-century expedition with similar privileges yet differing frontier conditions, the study finds that the ability of dioceses to develop parishes and impose episcopal privileges was limited by conditions on the frontier which in turn conditioned the course and progress of seigniorial and royal territorial consolidation. In the wake of conquest, bishops in both...
Masculinity and medicine: Thomas Walsingham and the death of the Black Prince☆
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 35, Issue 1, March 2009, Pages 34-51 David, Green This article examines the nature of the illness that plagued Edward the Black Prince (1330–76) for the last nine years of his life and caused his death. The prince's premature death had profound political repercussions and a discussion of his symptoms provides a lens through which to examine late medieval attitudes to a wide range of social, religious and medical issues. The prince's symptoms, especially those described by Thomas Walsingham in his Chronica maiora, suggest traditional explanations of his death are incorrect. This article offers a number of varied but connected medieval and symbolic interpretations as well as a consideration...
Magnificent entrances and undignified exits: chronicling the symbolism of castle space in Normandy
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 35, Issue 1, March 2009, Pages 52-69 Leonie V., Hicks Recent years have seen an increase in the number of studies on the symbolism of the castle, particularly in relation to lordship. Such studies are interdisciplinary in nature and often employ the language of the use of space in order to determine how castles functioned and how they were perceived. This article considers what the chroniclers of eleventh- and twelfth-century Normandy meant by castle space. This analysis can help us to determine how space was used, its connection to ideas about social relationships, including gender, and the chroniclers' purpose in including the events they described in their narratives. Many of...
An English chronicle entry on Robin Hood
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 35, Issue 1, March 2009, Pages 70-76 Julian M., Luxford This short article introduces a previously unknown pre-Reformation chronicle entry about Robin Hood. Until now, no English chronicle entry has been discovered, and only Scottish authors are thought to have set Robin in a chronological context. The new find places Robin Hood in Edward I's reign, thus supporting the belief that his legend is of thirteenth-century origin. It contains a uniquely negative assessment of the outlaw, and provides rare evidence for monastic attitudes towards him (topical, in light of the outlaw's anti-monastic behaviour). By mentioning Sherwood it buttresses the evidence for a medieval connection between Robin and the Nottinghamshire forest...
Intentional ethics and hermeneutics in the Libellus de symoniacis: Bruno of Segni as a papal polemicist
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 35, Issue 1, March 2009, Pages 77-96 Leidulf, Melve The Investiture Contest has at regular intervals been considered as a ‘revolution’, largely because it contributed forcefully to the reorganisation of the Church in the centuries to come. But the Contest has also been seen as heralding a new and more critical way of thinking, in which the traditional reliance on authorities was giving way to new approaches to the textual past. These new approaches are best evident in an extensive polemical literature that accompanied the struggle. From the 1030s and until the end of the Contest with the Concordat of Worms in 1122, a number of contending issues were...
Parties and factions in the late middle ages: the case of the Hoeken and Kabeljauwen in The Hague (1483–1515)
Publication year: 2009 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 35, Issue 1, March 2009, Pages 97-111 Serge, ter Braake The late medieval political history of Holland is dominated by two opposing parties of noblemen and citizens: the ‘Hoeken’ (Hooks) and ‘Kabeljauwen’ (Cod). From approximately 1350 until 1500 these two parties determined the political landscape in Holland on a provincial and local level. The situations of open conflict between the two parties, usually in times that the position of the count of Holland was weak, have been studied thoroughly in recent years. The networks of both parties during periods of relative peace, however, have been for the most part neglected. Here it is argued that it is vital to study...
Editorial board/Publication information
Publication year: 2008 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 34, Issue 4, December 2008, Page IFC [No author name available]
Tartars in Spain: renaissance slavery in the Catalan city of Manresa, c.1408
Publication year: 2008 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 34, Issue 4, December 2008, Pages 347-359 Jeffrey, Fynn-Paul This article presents a summary and analysis of the slaves and slave owners who were living in a particular late medieval city at a particular time. The data for this overview comes from the 1408 Liber Manifesti of Manresa, a tax document which is quite similar to the Florentine Catasto of 1427. Unlike the Catasto, however, the Liber Manifesti consistently designates slaves as distinct from other servants. As a result, the Manresan document allows us to know many basic but often elusive figures such as the total number of slaves in our town, the proportion of slaves to free people,...
Most beautiful and next best: value in the collection of a medieval queen
Publication year: 2008 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 34, Issue 4, December 2008, Pages 360-373 Marguerite, Keane The 1396 will of Blanche of Navarre (c.1331–98), dowager queen of France, has long been of interest to scholars for the extraordinary detail of its bequests; it is unusual in that it describes the provenance of many of the objects that Blanche owned, and in some cases elaborates on the motivation of the queen for bestowing an object on a particular heir. It is a document of the personal history of collecting for a medieval woman — how her books, reliquaries and other valuable objects came into her possession, what their particular history was, and how she perceived their value...
Fornicating with nuns in fifteenth-century Bologna
Publication year: 2008 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 34, Issue 4, December 2008, Pages 374-382 Trevor, Dean The article opens with the prosecution in 1432 of a spicer for abducting a nun. This is first of all presented as the story of a trial: the formation of the indictment, the defence tactics, the deposition of witnesses, and only then are the experience of the nun, and the gender relations in the event, examined. This leads to numerous contexts: legal (the development of the law on sexual relations with professed nuns); judicial (similar cases in late fourteenth-/fifteenth-century Bologna); monastic (the unstable history of convents); social (the place of the nunnery in the local sexual economy); and historiographic (Ruggiero's...
What has Iberia to do with Jerusalem? Crusade and the Spanish route to the Holy Land in the twelfth century
Publication year: 2008 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 34, Issue 4, December 2008, Pages 383-395 Patrick J., O'Banion In spite of repeated papal injunctions forbidding them to abandon their homeland, Iberian Christians, like their co-religionists throughout Europe, were energised by a desire to participate in the Holy Land crusades. The most significant and creative attempt in the first half of the twelfth century to respond to this Spanish desire was the development of the idea of the iter per Hispaniam, which was fostered by Iberian archbishops and monarchs such as Diego Gelmírez of Santiago de Compostela and Alfonso I of Aragon. This Spanish route was intended to unite the conflicts in the peninsula and the Holy Land, forming...
The incongruities of the St Albans Psalter
Publication year: 2008 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 34, Issue 4, December 2008, Pages 396-416 Donald, Matthew The twelfth-century English illuminated manuscript now in Hildesheim was in the seventeenth century at Lampringe, a monastery of the English congregation. The earliest art historians who studied the manuscript ascribed its origins to St Albans, but recently it is often asserted to have been designed or adapted for the use of Christina of Markyate. This paper discusses the various names given to the manuscript and questions the validity of assigning a role in its production to Christina. Roger the hermit, Christina's protector, was associated in some way with the manuscript before her and his importance as a religious figure is...
Treason, sodomy, and the fate of Adenolfo IV, count of Acerra
Publication year: 2008 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 34, Issue 4, December 2008, Pages 417-432 Jean, Dunbabin The article recounts the charges brought against Adenolfo IV, count of Acerra, a magnate of the Regno in the reigns of Charles I and Charles II, and his execution for sodomy in 1293. This is one of the earliest, if not the earliest, known cases of the death penalty being exacted for sodomy in Europe. Behind it lies a trial in which Adenolfo was convicted of treason but received a royal pardon five years later. The story casts light on relations between the rulers of the Regno and their overlords the popes, on the judicial methods employed in the Regno,...
King Stephen, the English church, and a female mystic: Christina of Markyate's Vita as a neglected source for the council of Winchester (August 1139) and its aftermath
Publication year: 2008 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 34, Issue 4, December 2008, Pages 433-444 Karen, Bollermann , Cary J., Nederman One of the central reasons for the disintegration of royal authority (sometimes called ‘the Anarchy’) during the reign of King Stephen of England is generally thought to have been his troubled relationship with the English church. The king was summoned to appear before the legate in England, Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester (who was also Stephen's brother), at a church council called for Winchester on 29 August 1139, in order to show cause for his conduct in arresting several prominent bishops and in confiscating their property. Several major chroniclers discuss the events leading up to and occurring at the...
Editorial board/Publication information
Publication year: 2008 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 34, Issue 3, September 2008, Page IFC [No author name available]
The bishop and the Basques: The diocese of Calahorra and the Basque provinces of Alava and Vizcaya under Bishop Rodrigo Cascante, 1147–1190
Publication year: 2008 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 34, Issue 3, September 2008, Pages 229-244 Carolina, Carl Under Bishop Rodrigo Cascante (1147–90), the northern Iberian diocese of Calahorra made its first significant administrative inroads into Alava and Vizcaya since its nominal assimilation of those Basque provinces around 1090. An examination into the fluctuating history of Calahorra's administrative penetration of its Basque provinces during this period highlights the extreme difficulty of this undertaking, which was severely hampered by the opposition of a strong Basque regional nobility. It also reveals a close connection between the fluctuations that characterized Calahorra's administrative fortunes north of the Ebro and the see's turbulent political context, defined by its position straddling a volatile frontier...
Louis IX, crusade and the promise of Joshua in the Holy Land
Publication year: 2008 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 34, Issue 3, September 2008, Pages 245-274 M.C., Gaposchkin Joshua, the Old Testament patriarch who led the Israelite army into the Holy Land, was seen as a type for the crusader in ways that informed Louis IX's crusading ideology and his kingship. The parallel between Joshua's divinely sanctioned wars and Louis' own crusading ambitions structured a teleology that incorporated Louis into salvation history. The story of Joshua lent Louis exalted expectations for his first crusade. After the failure of Louis' first crusade, the story of Joshua provided a scriptural lens through which Louis could interpret those events and moulded his reaction as king and military leader. An episode from...
Franciscan inquisition and mendicant rivalry in mid-thirteenth-century Marseille
Publication year: 2008 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 34, Issue 3, September 2008, Pages 275-290 Holly J., Grieco Although Dominicans are more widely studied as the work force behind medieval inquisitions, Franciscan friars began to act as inquisitors of heretical depravity within Provence and elsewhere by the mid-thirteenth century. In this article, the testimony of a Marseille priest, Master Durand, found in the Archives Départementales de Vaucluse Cordeliers d'Avignon 24 H 3, reveals much about the period of political intrigue within the commune of Marseille when the order of Friars Minor first assumed control of the inquisition within the county of Provence. The testimony exposes the tensions between members of the Dominican convent at Marseille and the Franciscan...
Fathers and sons: preparing noble youths to be lords in twelfth-century Germany
Publication year: 2008 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 34, Issue 3, September 2008, Pages 291-310 Jonathan R., Lyon The most prominent noble lineages of the twelfth-century German empire drew much of their authority from scattered collections of heritable rights and properties, a state of affairs that led each family to exercise its lordship in a unique manner. As a result, it was important for the success of a lineage that heirs understood the diverse administrative, political, diplomatic and military foundations of their family's power before they came into their inheritance. This article argues on the basis of evidence from several leading noble houses — including the Staufen, Welf, Zähringen, Wittelsbach, Andechs and Wettin — that fathers played an essential...
‘Faites le mien desir’: studious persuasion and baronial desire in Jordan Fantosme's Chronicle
Publication year: 2008 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 34, Issue 3, September 2008, Pages 311-346 Geoff, Rector This article examines the remarkable ‘changes and transpositions’ of form found in Jordan Fantosme's Chronicle, an important Anglo-Norman estoire recounting the rebellion against Henry II in 1173–74. By reading these literary changes as accommodations of circumstances and persons, they can be used to locate the Chronicle in very specific historical and social contexts. Jordan, clerk of the bishop of Winchester and master of the city's grammar schools, places himself, both socially and discursively, within a community of administrative barons, who are very carefully remembered in the Chronicle as a coherent social affinity, or foedus amicitiae, both alienated from and seeking...
Editorial board/Publication information
Publication year: 2008 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 34, Issue 2, June 2008, Page IFC [No author name available]
Conversing with the minority: relations among Christian, Jewish, and Muslim women in the high middle ages
Publication year: 2008 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 34, Issue 2, June 2008, Pages 105-118 Monica H., Green This essay introduces a special issue of the Journal of Medieval History on the topic of ‘Conversing with the minority: relations among Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Women in the High Middle Ages’. Despite the fact that both interfaith relations and women's history are now well established subdisciplines within the field of medieval studies, the question of how medieval women themselves established cross-sectarian relations has rarely been explored. Documenting women's history is almost always problematic because of limited source materials, but this essay suggests that much can be learned by looking at areas where Christian, Jewish, and Muslim women shared certain...
The bonds that bind: money lending between Anglo-Jewish and Christian women in the plea rolls of the Exchequer of the Jews, 1218–1280
Publication year: 2008 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 34, Issue 2, June 2008, Pages 119-129 Victoria, Hoyle The plea rolls of the Exchequer of the Jews represent the single most important source for understanding the interrelations and interactions of Jewish and Christian women in thirteenth-century England. A uniquely voluminous series of documents pertaining to the bureaucracy that grew up around Jewish lending after 1190, the rolls reveal the many ways in which women of different faiths were brought into contact — both amicable and oppositional — through financial transactions, predominantly the borrowing and lending of money. It further considers the shared family interests, credit networks and daily necessities that such transactions signified. Finally, by examining specific cases...
A thirteenth-century Anglo-Jewish woman crossing boundaries: visible and invisible
Publication year: 2008 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 34, Issue 2, June 2008, Pages 130-145 Charlotte Newman, Goldy In 1242, the private life of an Anglo-Jewish couple, Muriel and David of Oxford, became very public when David asked the royal curia to intervene in the Jewish court (bet din) which had either refused or stalled his divorce from the childless Muriel. The curia not only agreed to force the divorce, but used it as an excuse to ban all betai din, catching the whole Anglo-Jewish community in the growing anti-Judaism of the time. Though David married a fertile widow who bore him a son shortly before his death in 1244, Muriel lived on in growing poverty. David was...
The care of women's health and beauty: an experience shared by medieval Jewish and Christian women
Publication year: 2008 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 34, Issue 2, June 2008, Pages 146-163 Carmen, Caballero-Navas In this article I intend to elucidate the extent to which medieval western Jewish and Christian women shared customs, knowledge and practices regarding health care, a sphere which has been historically considered as part of women's daily domestic tasks. My study aims to identify female agency in medical care, as well as women's interaction across religious lines, by analysing elusive sources, such as medical literature on women's health care, and by collating the information they provide with data obtained from other textual and visual records. By searching specific evidence of the dialogues that must have occurred between Christian and Jewish...
Conscripting the breast: lactation, slavery and salvation in the realms of Aragon and kingdom of Majorca, c. 1250–1300
Publication year: 2008 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 34, Issue 2, June 2008, Pages 164-184 Rebecca Lynn, Winer This essay examines the ideals and practices surrounding motherhood and wet nursing in the realms of Aragon and kingdom of Majorca c. 1250–1300. Despite powerful messages — from ecclesiastical pronouncements to lay devotional manuals to artwork in churches — that linked maternal breastfeeding to an educative and caring ideal of mothering, social and economic pressures on wealthy urban and knightly women to remain as sexually available and as fecund as possible caused a shift to increased use of wet nurses, many of whom were of Muslim origin. Although the latter would have been nominally baptized, in practice, if not normative...
The trial of Floreta d'Ays (1403): Jews, Christians, and obstetrics in later medieval Marseille
Publication year: 2008 Source: Journal of Medieval History, Volume 34, Issue 2, June 2008, Pages 185-211 Monica H., Green , Daniel Lord, Smail In 1403, a Jewish midwife, Floreta, widow of Aquinon d'Ays, was brought before the criminal court of Marseille to answer for the death in childbirth of a Christian woman. Floreta was charged with having performed a procedure that precipitated the patient's haemorrhaging and death. This is the first known case of a malpractice trial against a midwife and an unusual case of anti-Judaic sentiment in a city hitherto quite tolerant of its Jewish minority population. Aside from Floreta's statements in her own defence, all the recorded testimony comes from Christian women who were present in the birthroom, giving us a...