Late antique & medieval history: subperiods

While the role of the city in Late Antiquity has often been discussed by archaeologists and historians alike it is only in recent years that scholarship has begun to offer a more nuanced approach in our understanding to how such cities functioned stepping away from the traditional paradigm of their decline and fall with the collapse of the Roman Empire. In line with this approach this deliberately interdisciplinary volume seeks to provide a more multifaceted understanding of urban history by drawing together scholars of literary and material culture to discuss the concepts of imagery and aesthetics of late antique cities.

Gathering together contributions by historians philologists archaeologists literature specialists and art historians the volume aims to explore the imagery and aesthetics of cities in Late Antiquity within a strong theoretical framework. The different chapters explore the aesthetics of cityscape representations in literature and art asking in particular whether literary representations of late antique urban landscapes mirror the urban reality of eclectic ensembles of pre-existing architecture and new buildings as well as questioning both how the ideal of the city evolved in the imagination of the period and if imperial ideology was reflected in literary depictions of cities.

Between the years 1000 and 1300 the two developing polities of Norway and Poland often followed similar trends. Both realms were located on what was considered the periphery of Europe both joined Latin Christendom — and with it the wider sphere of European cultural influence — at the turn of the first millennium and both by the end of the thirteenth century had largely coalesced as stable kingdoms. Yet while the histories of these two countries have long been studied along national lines it remains rarer for them to be considered outside of their traditional geographical context and studied via comparison with events elsewhere.

This innovative volume seeks to explore the means and uses of symbolic power that were employed by religiopolitical elites in order to assert their legitimacy and dominance by taking an explicitly comparative approach and dual perspective on these two polities. What stories did elites tell themselves and others about their deservedness to rule what spaces and objects did they utilize in order to project their elevated status and how did struggle and rivalry form part of their societal dominance? Formed from chapters co-written by experts in Polish and Norwegian history this unique volume not only reflects on the similarities and differences between events in these two polities but also more broadly offers conceptual tools and comparative frameworks that can enhance our wider understanding of the conditions and factors that shaped religiopolitical behaviour on the peripheries.

Many excellent studies have been published on the phenomenon of holy (wo)men and saints. As a rule however they focus on successful candidates for holiness who played the roles of charismatic leaders and patrons of social and religious life.

This volume offers a new perspective on ancient and medieval holiness — its main focus is holiness as defined by its peripheries and not by its conceptual centre. The contributors explore stories of men and women whose way to sainthood did not follow typical ‘models’ but who engaged with it from its outskirts. Several essays examine the strategies employed by hagiographical authors to tailor the images of candidates for holiness whose lives provided less obvious examples of moral and/or religious ideals. These include attempts to make saints out of emperors heretics and other unlikely or obscure figures. Other case studies focus on concerns with false holiness or unusual cases of holiness being ascribed prior to a saint’s death. Another concept explored in the volume is space. The spatial boundaries of holiness are discussed in relation to the transmission of relics to the opposition between urban and rural spaces holy sites and even imagined space.

Holiness and sainthood have been crucial concepts for Christianity from its inception. By exploring their ‘marginal’ and ‘peripheral’ aspects the essays in this book offer vital new perspectives on the religious world of Late Antiquity.

Cet ouvrage vise à explorer les modalités d’exploitation des ressources naturelles dans la Maremme siennoise – autour de la ville de Massa Marittima – à la fin du Moyen Âge. La séquence chronologique resserrée permet d’embrasser une ample documentation (urbaine notariée) provenant de différents fonds archivistiques ou des données archéologiques et d’étudier ensemble un large panel d’activités rurales artisanales et industrielles qui jusqu’alors n’avaient pas toutes été analysées ensemble. La période retenue (1470-1500) correspond à un moment de basculement marqué notamment par la reprise de la production métallurgique par l’essor de la production d’alun et par des bouleversements politiques majeurs qui affectent l’État siennois (avec notamment la mise en place à partir de 1487 d’un régime oligarchique). Les ressources sont au coeur des relations nouvelles qui se nouent entre les Massétans et désormais les élites siennoises qui entendent tirer profit de nouvelles richesses. L’ouvrage entend proposer un aperçu des modifications sociales politiques et environnementales qui confèrent un destin singulier à la Maremme.

In recent years archaeologists working at Norse sites across the North Atlantic have excavated a number of very small churches with cemeteries often associated with individual farms. Such sites seem to be a characteristic feature of early ecclesiastical establishments in Norse settlements around the North Atlantic and they stand in marked contrast to church sites elsewhere in Europe. But what was the reason behind this phenomenon?

From Greenland to Denmark and from Ireland to the Hebrides Iceland and Norway this volume presents a much-needed overview of small church studies from around the North Atlantic. The chapters gathered here discuss the different types of evidence for small churches and early ecclesiastical landscapes review existing debates and develop a synthesis that places the small churches in a broader context. Ultimately despite the varied types of data at play the contributions to this volume combine to offer a more coherent picture of the small church phenomenon pointing to a church that was able to answer the needs of a newly converted population despite the lack of an established infrastructure and throwing new light on how people lived and worshipped in an environment of dispersed settlements.

How did food impact social relationships in early medieval England? What cultivation practices were followed to produce the best possible food supplies? What was the cultural significance of bread? How was the human body nourished? When sickness inevitably occurred where did one go and who was consulted for healing? And how was spiritual health also protected? The essays gathered together in this exciting volume draw on a range of different disciplines from early medieval economic and social history to experimental archaeology and medieval medicine to offer a unique overview into day-to-day life in England nearly two millennia ago.Taking as their starting point the broad research interests of the volume’s honorand Dr Debby Banham contributors here offer new insights into the reproduction and ritual use of vernacular charms examine the collation and translation of medieval medicine elucidate monastic economies and production and uncover the circumstances behind the production and transmission of medical manuscripts in early medieval England. Presenting new insights into agricultural practices and animal husbandry monastic sign language and materia medica plant knowledge and medical practices the chapters within this volume not only offer a fitting tribute to Banham’s own groundbreaking work but also shed new light on what it meant to nurture both body and soul in early medieval England.

This volume brings together studies of late medieval accountability in both the domestic and the public realms. It traces practices of accountability across the social spectrum from households to small businesses to communal and regnal administrations highlighting the intersections between competing conceptions of personal and institutional responsibility. Focusing on France and Italy from the thirteenth to the early sixteenth centuries the case studies follow territorial officers consular agents and town notables co-opted into local governance from Avignon and Marseille to Tuscany and the Venetian and Genoese overseas territories. The studies explore both personal and institutional accounting registers as well as records of a textual nature such as rulebooks and inquests in an effort to reflect the range of records and procedures relied on to achieve a measure of accountability in late medieval Europe.