The Mediaeval Journal

The Great Sanctuary pavement at Westminster Abbey, on which the kings of England were crowned, features a design of rotated squares, around a central roundel of unusual Egyptian alabaster, set within a circle of bright blue glass. The roundel’s visual resemblance to the world and the firmament is underlined by a surrounding inscription, identifying it as the world, the macrocosm. This paper proposes that the design and meaning of the Great Sanctuary pavement reflect the square macrocosmic mantle in which the English king was wrapped during the coronation ceremony. This paper underlines the special nature of the English coronation mantle within the context of other royal and imperial cosmic mantles. Its square form was unique, and it featured in the English coronation liturgies in a way that European mantles did not. The English liturgies stressed its role as a representation of the world or macrocosm.

This article reconstructs the pre-manuscript history of the Sibylla Tiburtina, a late antique prophetic text, which was very widespread after c. 1000. It argues against the prevailing belief that a single intelligence structured the Latin text to a single meaning in the eleventh century. By identifying early medieval interpolations this article offers a new account of the work’s textual development in the centuries before 1000. This suggests the text known as the Ottonian Sibyl had a far less distinct moment of creation than is usually assumed and was actually the product of interpolators independently adding to its late antique core over a long period and without a common purpose.

The article analyses and edits a chapter from the unpublished Summa de temporibus (c. 1260-64), a compendium on historical chronology written by the Dominican philosopher Giles of Lessines. It will be shown that this chapter contributed a number of original ideas to the thirteenth-century debate on the eternity of the world, ranging from sophisticated arguments based on natural philosophy (astronomy and geology) to a scriptural refutation of Origen’s doctrine on the pre-existence of souls. Attention will also be paid to the relation between Giles’text and the anti-eternalistic arguments found in other contemporary writers. Some signs of doctrinal convergence with the works of Albertus Magnus confirm the view that the latter was Giles’ teacher.

This essay argues that the Hunger episode in Passus 6 of the B text of William Langland’s Piers Plowman was very likely influenced by Langland’s knowledge of the myth of Erysichthon found in Book 8 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Although any association between Langland and the ‘classics’ has generally been discounted, when one considers the popularity of Christian moralized forms of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the fourteenth century, the important place of Ovid’s work in the school curriculum, and the use of Ovid’s myths in sermons and handbooks for priests, it is clear that Langland would have had easy access to some form of Ovid’s work. The myth of Erysichthon in the Ovidius Moralizatus of Pierre Bersuire deserves special consideration as a source for Langland because Bersuire specifically interprets Erysichthon’s hunger as avarice (wanting more than one needs), a sin Erisychthon shares with the wasters who will not help Piers plant his half-acre and demand more than they need.

This article re-examines a description of two ‘religious spectacles’ seen by Bishop Abraham of Suzdal during his visit to Florence in spring 1439, ‘a source without parallel in the history of medieval theatre’, according to one theatre historian. The article suggests that instead of an ‘itinerary’, a term commonly applied to the account, it should be read as a staging manual. The article is accompanied by a stemma of the extant manuscripts of the text and a new translation into modern English.