The Mediaeval Journal

The article discusses Suetonius and the Stoics as two independent yet converging paradigms which shaped notions of morality and vice in late antiquity and influenced Augustine and his understanding of the vitium sodomiticum as luxury. Aquinas followed his definition with the implication that on this occasion he parted ways with his usual Aristotelian model, which appears much more lenient in discussing the vice of homosexuality.

The story by Jordanes about the migration of Goths from Scandza is a matter of a vivid and long standing discussion between historians. Most scholars argue that it is a part of the Gothic tribal tradition. There is, however, another interpretation according to which it is a part of a debate between Jordanes and Procopius of Caesarea on the future of Barbarians. In this respect, the story seems to be nothing but a narrative strategy whose only purpose was to persuade the reader to share Jordanes’s point of view. In this study I try to show that the story about the migration of Goths was a sophisticated argument which gave a clear message to the Constantinopolitan audience that Goths were no longer Barbarians and they belonged to the civilized world.

This article explores the idea of therapeutic reading during the later Middle Ages in relation to Richard Rolle’s Meditation on the Passion. Focusing on Rolle and his therapeutic conception of reading as a medicine of words, the article begins by noting the great frequency with which medical terms, images, and phrases occur in his vernacular writings. It highlights how sin is understood by Rolle as an affective poison, one that must be removed from the soul through intense affective states that are held to be purgative. The article then moves to consider how exactly medieval texts evoke affective states. It notes the importance of vivid images and their ability to elicit emotive responses, but then turns to medieval texts on grammar and the art of poetry for new ways of understanding precisely how words can evoke the passions of the soul. The article then offers a close reading of Rolle’s Meditation on the Passion in light of these grammatical texts, and demonstrates how it functions as a medicine of words - as a texts that works to purge the soul of sin through intense affect states.

The modern and medieval meanings of words reporting ill health often bear little resemblance to one another. This article compares the use of ‘diseased’ and ‘sick’ in the fifteenth-century Stonor family letters. It examines the word ‘crased’, which implies physical ill health most directly, but also suggests emotional, psychological, or spiritual distress in female family members especially. The article then turns to the practical implications of poor health, asking how and why it affected the day-to-day concerns of the Stonors and their associates. It uncovers compelling evidence for resilience in the face of many and competing calls of duty. Finally, the article presents unique palaeographical evidence for the impact of illness, where a correspondent is so ‘seke’ that he can scarcely hold his pen.

Of the six surviving pageants and plays that dramatize Massacre of the Innocents, four expand on the biblical spectacle of cruelty by adding a scene in which the mothers of the Innocents confront Herod’s soldiers verbally, and to varying degrees, physically. This article explores these confrontations as scripted in the Pageant of the Shearmen and Taylors in Coventry and the Digby Candlemes Day and þe Kyllyng of the Children of Israelle play through medieval discussions of anger. It examines the representations of anger in both plays and argues that the cultural work of the added altercations between the mothers and Herod’s knights lies in portraying righteous anger as a socially positive force.