Nottingham Medieval Studies

Peter Abelard, in criticizing his master, Anselm of Laon, c. 1114, describes how theology was taught at Anselm’s school, which was the most influential teaching institution in Latin Europe. Abelard provides information in particular about the commentaries or glosses — both oral and written — on the books of the Bible, which were Anselm’s speciality. These established themselves as the Ordinary Gloss, comprising a commentary on the whole Bible, which remained a standard work until the seventeenth century. Through biblical commentaries like Anselm’s, theological questioning was developed and students began to depend on the textbooks of their masters rather than on hearing them lecture and remembering their traditional wisdom. The conflict of Anselm and Abelard marks the beginnings of universities in France.

The article offers an overview of how contemporary users of Anglo-Norman conceived, identified, and defined the dialect that they used. A close analysis of first-hand evidence for linguistic self-consciousness shows how attitudes to Insular French changed as the multilingual and multicultural contexts which conditioned its use developed over time.

Strengleikar, the compilation of Old French narrative lays rendered into Old Norwegian in the thirteenth century, contains four items whose Old French sources have not survived. One is Strandar Strengleikr (‘The Lay of the Beach’), which largely fails to conform to the generic paradigms recognized by modern critics. Close examination of this text provides insights into the medieval conception of the lay, and may impact on current understanding of this medieval genre.

This paper studies the second, so far largely unknown, copy in London, British Library, MS Additional 10,374 of ‘Against the King’s Taxes’, a poem in Anglo-Norman and Latin on the taxation imposed by Edward III to finance his 1338 French campaign. It describes the manuscript and its history, and compares this copy to the well-known one in London, British Library, MS Harley 2253 from a scribal and textual aspect, concluding that the Harley copy is the better one. It proposes a stemma codicum and discusses historical background, circulation, author, and readership. The text of the Additional copy is given in the appendix.

With a larger diffusion of manuscripts towards the end of the Middle Ages, the poets’ adaptations of literary discourses and revisions of their own works show a growing awareness of personal responsibility for their writings. This article examines new links between pivotal texts by Brunetto Latini and Guillaume de Machaut. It shows that both poets presented themselves as supreme ‘translators’ of knowledge, recipients of traditional images of Nature, but that taking up in particular from innovative poetics of Nature in the Romance of the Rose written by Guillaume de Lorris and continued by Jean de Meung, they were concerned with their work in the making, their craftsmanship, but also their claim to authorial achievement. It shows, for instance, the relevance of the first part of the Rose for Latini in Il Tesoretto and the importance of the entire Rose for Machaut in his Prologue to his entire work. Finally, as both mediating first-person protagonists bestowed by Nature, the article demonstrates their self-awareness as participating authors, mindful of the unity of their works and legacy in their respective language and artistry.

This article examines possible links between the fictional teller of the Manciple’s Tale and its plot, the story of a crow whose message is unwelcome. It suggests links with proverbs about careless servants or unreliable messengers as crows, and with medieval biblical tradition which underlies this proverbial use: a tradition that the raven which Noah sent out failed to return to the ark because it was feasting on carrion floating in the sea. Allusions to this cluster of associations occur in several medieval texts, English and Welsh, and the widespread familiarity with it that these indicate make it likely that Chaucer had the ideas in mind both when he portrayed the General Prologue manciple as an untrustworthy servant cheating his masters over their catering and also in linking such a character to a tale about a crow-messenger.

The debate regarding a perceived dichotomy between secular and spiritual wisdom has long divided scholars of the Byzantine world. This dichotomy has been fiercely argued about not only by modern scholars but also by the Byzantines themselves, who had organized education into two distinct categories: ‘inner’ (Christian) and ‘outer’ (pagan or secular) learning. A more specific aspect of the same dilemma was the one surrounding hesychia or hesychasm and the stance of the clergy and laymen towards it. It is this aspect of this wider intellectual context that this paper will deal with. In particular, it will focus on one of the main thinkers of late Byzantium, Nicholas Kavasilas, the nephew of hesychast Neilos Kavasilas. Although Nicholas Kavasilas has received significant scholarly attention, his laudatory works in honour of St Demetrius have not been commented upon to any great extent before. This new analysis will form part of a re-appraisal of Nicholas Kavasilas in an attempt to paint afresh his multi-faceted intellectual profile.

Probate records have long been recognized as important sources for the lives and concerns of medieval individuals, and the value of those wills and testaments that evolved over a period of years, rather than being drafted in a single sitting on a testator’s death bed is all the greater. The will of Humphrey Stafford of Southwick, the Yorkist Earl of Devon, stands out among the latter category as an example of a small number of wills drafted by the victims of the political violence of the Wars of the Roses on the eve of their executions. It sheds new light on the character of an otherwise obscure and poorly documented royal favourite.

This paper argues that there are strong parallels between the literary Orkneys — Gawain and his brothers — and the Scots family Sinclair, associated, like their literary forebears, with Orkney, Norway, and Lothian. It suggests that the Dalhousie Manuscript, a text linked to the Sinclairs and which comprises a variety of Norwegian, Orcadian, and Scots materials, reflects Sinclair recognition of their Arthurian ‘brothers’, and that they may have identified the similarity between their family and Gawain’s either as a result of reading Scots insular writings, chronicle, and romance, or — potentially — through Malory’s Morte Darthur. It is proposed that further research be undertaken on the circulation of William Caxton’s prints in Scotland, and the potential accessibility of Malory’s text to a Scottish audience.

This article examines the influence of the poems of John Lydgate in Scotland in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The nature of this influence is assessed particularly through the evidence afforded by the Scottish manuscript circulation of his poems. Such evidence suggests that Lydgate’s influence in Scotland is perhaps less extensive than has been sometimes assumed.

Although the concept of anti-clericalism in the early sixteenth century has been successfully challenged, there remain the questions whether and to what extent there was dissatisfaction with the secular clergy. The comprehensive consideration of the Catholic clergy by Peter Marshall approached those issues from a variety of angles. More recently, Tim Cooper has exonerated the secular clergy of the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield. Attitudes to the clergy in that diocese are re-examined here through a detailed analysis of testamentary bequests by the laity to the secular (parochial) clergy, from the late 1520s to 1546, throughout the various mutations in direction of the Henrician Reformation. A certain level of indifference is detected in the general paucity of death-bed considerations for the clergy.