Early Fourteenth Century Research Articles

The secret history of Germiyan, or a reassessment of the debates on the origins of the Germiyanids

Abstract In the early fourteenth century, decades before the Ottomans became the sole rulers of Anatolia, the Germiyanid beylik stood as a dominant force among the principalities that had emerged in western Anatolia following the demise of the Seljuks (1307). Nonetheless, to date, the exact origins and ethno-cultural background of the Germiyanids remain unclear. This article re-evaluates previous theories and posits that the embryo of what eventually became the Germiyanids formed between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries in the lowlands between Malatya and Lake Van, and that the name “Germiyan” was of Kurdish origin. It also suggests that an intense proto-Yedizi proselytism took place in eastern Anatolia before the Germiyanids migrated to western Anatolia. Beyond its significance to the history of the Seljuks, the Ottomans, the Mongols, and Byzantium, this paper challenges the prevailing narrative that views the emergence of the beyliks as an exclusively Turkic phenomenon and sheds light on the role played by non-Turkic people, including Kurds and Arabs, in their formation.

Remaking the Late Holocene Environment of Western Uganda: Archaeological Perspectives on Kansyore and Later Settlers

AbstractArchaeological and environmental research by an international and interdisciplinary team opens new perspectives into the settlement histories of Kansyore, Early Iron Age, and Bigo period peoples in the once forested regions of the Ndali Crater Lakes Region (NCLR) of western Uganda. The research examines the role of Kansyore agropastoralists and their Early Iron Age and Bantu-speaking contemporaries in remaking a once forested environment into a forest-savannah mosaic from circa 500 BC to the end of the first millennium AD. Archaeological settlement and subsistence evidence is examined within a framework of social interaction of Sudanic speakers with Bantu speakers, drawing on historical linguistics and environmental studies to arrive at a new synthesis of late Holocene history in western Uganda. This perspective also unveils the significance and chronology of Boudiné ware, a long enigmatic ceramic tradition that we identify as contemporary to Transitional Urewe and deeply influenced through social interactions with those making Kansyore ceramics and inhabiting the same landscape. Using archaeological evidence from fifteen sites and multiple burials spanning from 400 to 1650 calAD, new views of ceramic histories, lifeways, and symbolic values are revealed, including Bigo period settlements that arose in what was an environmental refugium beginning in the early fourteenth century AD. This research also shows that the Kansyore of the forested region east of the Rwenzori Mountains had greater affinities to late Holocene archaeological evidence from western Equatoria, in the southern South Sudan, and Kansyore Island, Uganda, than it does to the Kansyore in eastern Kenya.

Splitting up the funduq: the selective emulation of an Andalusi institution in the Kingdom of Valencia

ABSTRACT Prior to the Christian conquest of Valencia (1233–1245), the hostelries for merchants (fanādiq) were numerous in the cities and also widely present in rural areas, where local communities seemed to have controlled them. Most urban fanādiq were privately owned, although some were likely held by the government (makhzan) or pious endowments (ḥubūs). After the conquest, the fanādiq were distributed among settlers who converted them into dwellings, warehouses, or workshops. By the early fourteenth century, most of the fanādiq had disappeared, and their original functions were split into new types of facilities. Accommodation was moved to ordinary inns known as hostals, while government interventions occurred in the almodí, or public granary. However, the king and other lords maintained some alfòndecs (the Catalan name for funduq), while also building new ones. The new alfòndecs were mainly used to provide compulsory segregated accommodation for Muslim traders and muleteers.

Edenic Children and Unripened Fruit

In the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, scribes around Lake Tana in northwestern Ethiopia translated and disseminated an Arabic apocryphal dialogue between Jesus and Peter. Recording exhortations and revelations meant to be passed on to Clement of Rome and other apostolic figures, the Mystery of the Judgment of Sinners (Myst. Sinners) contains a little-explored retelling of Genesis 2–3. In its rendition of the Adam and Eve’s time in the Garden of Eden, Jesus explains to Peter how commandment not to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a test of their patience. In particular, Adam and Eve are marked as “children” and the fruit in terms of its “ripeness” or lack thereof. Here, I want to contextualize this claim of a dual immaturity between both the humans and plants in the Garden of Eden in terms of early Christian theological claims about the youth and imperfection of Adam and Eve.

О некоторых особенностях конструкции и покроя хулагуидских, чагатайских и тимуридских пластинчато-нашивных и пластинчато-клепанных доспехов XIV–XV вв.

Introduction. The paper considers body armor patterns with hidden plates worn by warriors of Hulaguid Iran, Chagatai Ulus, and the Timurid Empire. In contemporary weapon studies, such armor is known as ‘kuyak’ or ‘brigandine’. Goals. The study aims at identifying features of design and cut inherent to some types of Hulaguid, Chagatai and Timurid ‘kuyaks’ from the fourteenth–fifteenth centuries. Results. Comparative insights into archaeological and graphic materials yield a hypothesis there may have existed a special variety of combined ‘kuyaks’ with some plates riveted and some sewn to an organic backing on the inside. Such armor garments could have been used by warriors of Hulaguid Iran in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth centuries. From a historical perspective, such armors could be a variation between thirteenth-century armor garments with sewn-in plates and — ‘brigandines’ with riveted-in plates of the subsequent era. Our comprehensive analysis of written and graphic data also concludes that the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Transoxiana, Khorasan and adjacent territories were characterized by a widespread occurrence of special plated-and-riveted armors combining an armored torso part and a long unarmored skirt. The unusual design resulted from the appearance and spread of a new mail-and-plate hip defense element referred to as ‘dyzlyq-butluq’, which made the heavy armored Central Asian skirts not that relevant. In view of the armors’ distribution area, they can be labeled as ‘Timurid-type kuyaks’. Conclusions. The replacement of ‘Timurid-type’ armors (with riveted-in plates) from combat practices of Central Asian peoples was caused by a change in the local military-cultural tradition in the aftermath of collapses of the Timurid states throughout the early sixteenth century.

“Donasdogama Micma”

To this day, Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, written in the early fourteenth century, remains one of the most significant literary works of Western culture. It has not only been adapted in music, film, and art, but also in the world of video games. Since the early 1980s, video games have chosen the poetry as a basis for their plots, and various approaches to musical interpretation have emerged. With the release of Dante’s Inferno (2010), for the first time an approach was demonstrably chosen that resulted from an intensive examination of the Divine Comedy. This article explores the thesis that using literary works as a basis for video games not only affects the plot, gameplay, and character design, but also significantly influences the musical concept. Thus, it is evident that the literary source and its interpretation should be incorporated into the analysis of video game music. Thanks to Garry Schyman, who made the original scores available for analysis, the resulting musical concept will be examined more closely and compared with the previous Dante games.

Ars Antiqua motets in fourteenth-century Italy: liturgical priorities, style and notation in Bodleian, lat. liturg. e. 42

ABSTRACTThe motets in the fourteenth-century liturgical manuscript Oxford, Bodleian, lat. liturg. e. 42 have, despite some sidelong glances, not been the subject of any concentrated study since F. Alberto Gallo introduced them in 1970. This article proposes a date for the copying of these motets in the first few decades of the fourteenth century and demonstrates that they have much to add to ongoing debates about stylistic and notational change between the Ars Antiqua and Ars Nova styles. First, they underline the importance of considering polyphony within the context of the whole book that transmits it: e. 42's motets work together with its monophonic chant to emphasise a set of feasts which were particularly important for the compilers of this manuscript within their institutional context. Second, these motets act as an important reminder that narratives of fourteenth-century stylistic change must be heterogeneous: the wide-ranging mix of musical styles found in the motets of e. 42 add to an emerging picture of early fourteenth-century Ars Antiqua collections in which such stylistic eclecticism is a common feature. Third, e. 42's notation and its connections to that of other manuscripts enrich and complicate narratives of notational change in this period. Parallels for e. 42's ligature use can be found in a temporally and geographically diverse set of manuscripts. Its notation of semibreves, however, resembles that of a smaller group of manuscripts from the early fourteenth century and provides an important witness for the changes to semibreve rhythm at that time.

Killing the Messenger in Richard Coer de Lyon

Abstract Reading the ars dictaminis as a medieval media theory that carefully accounts for the relationships the epistle generates between the text object and its users, this article examines the human body of the epistolary messenger as a locus of anxiety in both medieval rhetoricians’ theorizations of epistolarity and literary depictions of epistolarity. Letter-writing manuals—such as Guido Faba’s Summa dictaminis (ca. 1228–29), Thomas of Capua’s Ars dictandi (1216–20), and Conrad von Mure’s Summa de arte prosandi (1275–76)—emphasize the status of the letter as a material object, operating among and across human and nonhuman bodies in what is termed here the epistolary circuit. The messenger’s human body is a site of vulnerability to violence, particularly in romances, which often depict the subsumption of individual bodies into the machineries of statecraft. The titular hero of Richard Coer de Lyon (early fourteenth century) kills hostages and turns their bodies into pseudoepistles, parodying the complementary relationship between textual “body” and human body inherent in the epistolary circuit, as established in the reading offered here of the dictaminal treatises.

The Jeweled Castle of the Dragon

ABSTRACT Five analog narratives—from Apuleius’s Metamorphoses (“Cupid and Psyche,” second century AD), Philostratus’s Apollonius (ca. AD 220), Callimachus and Chrysorrhoe (early fourteenth century AD), Konrad’s Saga (fourteenth century AD) and The Theodore Tiron Miracle Story (fourteenth century AD)—prove to be underpinned by an ideal story type along the following lines. A dragon lives in a golden, jeweled castle, almost impossible of access. It is surrounded by and infested by lesser serpents. Within it he has a special raised platform, and he is served in it by automatic air-powered trays, tables, and vessels. He conceives a desire for a human girl, steals her and keeps her captive. The castle is penetrated by her lover-to-be, who kills the dragon and saves her, whereupon the marvelous castle melts away. The theme of erotic desire travels with the story type. Further support is provided for the long-held suspicion that the Cupid and Psyche tale builds upon a preexisting traditional dragon narrative.

The Impact of the Anglo-Scottish Wars (1286–1347) upon Institutional Memories in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Century Monastic Chronicles and Cartularies of Furness and Byland

The Anglo-Scottish Wars (1286–1347) had a significant impact on lay and monastic communities across the North of England physically and psychologically, as the pressures of war between England and Scotland divided people along increasingly hostile and “national” lines. Monastic chronicles, such as that of Lanercost, have often been used to make sense of the material effect of Scottish raids, and how identities came to possess an increasingly “national” sense. However, less attention has been paid to how the cartularies of Northern English monasteries contributed to how monastic communities affected by the Anglo-Scottish Wars came to make sense of them. This article will analyse and compare the Furness Chronicle and Anonimalle Chronicle, produced in the fourteenth century, with the early-fifteenth century cartularies produced by Furness Abbey and Byland Abbey. It will contribute towards recent scholarly assessments of how these sources, and the events they recounted, were selectively edited to inform how the monastic communities who engaged with them remembered the impact of the Anglo-Scottish Wars upon them. Chronicles and cartularies were used together to reinforce an institutional memory, or a collective sense of connection with the history of an institution that Furness and Byland were creating in the early fourteenth century.

From writing to record-keeping: a study of York’s civic administrative literacy, 1272–1307

Abstract Using York during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries as a case-study, this article discusses a pivotal aspect of the development of civic administrative literacy: the inception of record-keeping. Previous historians have failed to note the evident advancement in York’s civic administrative literacy during the late thirteenth century, and they have usually dated the earliest surviving urban records to the mid-fourteenth century. By comparing different classes of civic and ecclesiastical records, this article reveals that York’s civic administration was in fact engaged in archival preservation from the late thirteenth century. In addition, by examining evidence that appears sporadically in royal archives, this article argues that the commencement of York’s urban archive was significantly influenced by the policies and archival activities of the royal government. Overall, this article aims to contribute to the literature on the early history of civic administrative literacy.

Reasoning from the impossible: early medieval views on conditionals and counterpossibles

ABSTRACT Impossible antecedents entered the scene of medieval logic around the 1120s and soon started to dominate this scene, becoming one of the most debated issues from the second half of the twelfth century onwards. This article focuses on theories of counterpossibles from this period and aims to offer an overview of the different responses offered by twelfth-century logicians on whether everything, something, or nothing follows from an impossible statement. Rather than trying to historically reconstruct the positions of the different authors – an operation that may be premature given the insufficient notions we still have of the authorship and dating of sources – I aim to provide a provisional map of the main arguments that were advanced in favour of or against the ex impossibili quodlibet principle. The article also aims to show that the strategies developed by twelfth-century logical schools in their approach to counterpossibles survive in logical discussions of the same topic during the thirteenth and the early fourteenth century, especially in the syncategoremata and sophistaria traditions.

Οff the Page and Beyond Middle-Byzantine Constantinople: An Epigram by Theodore Prodromos οn a Fresco of the Deposition in Latin-Ruled Naxos (Early Fourteenth Century)

Οff the Page and Beyond Middle-Byzantine Constantinople: An Epigram by Theodore Prodromos οn a Fresco of the Deposition in Latin-Ruled Naxos (Early Fourteenth Century)

“In Love and War”: The Question of Halakhic Controversy in the Tikune Zohar Literature

Abstract: Jewish thinkers in the Middle Ages have developed various approaches to account for the existence of unresolved controversies in the Mishnah and Talmud: a question that touches on fundamental issues, from the nature of truth to the ways to deal with religious and political dissent within Jewish societies. This article presents a seldom-studied approach to controversy that appears in the Tikune Zohar literature, a collection of kabbalistic compositions dated to the early fourteenth century. The product of a secondary elite, and connected with the influential zoharic movement in kabbalah, these texts present a unique approach to the question of halakhic controversy. The Tikunim ’s approach distinguishes three types of controversy: “lower,” evil controversies that are driven by pride and resentment; “middle” controversies that adorn and protect the divine; and “higher” controversies, where the disputants participate in the sexual dynamic of the sefirot, the divine emanations. These types of controversy are arranged metaphysically and are distinguished not by content but by the disposition of the disputants. The higher type of controversy is depicted as existing even in the ideal, messianic state of the Torah and must remain unresolved, for to resolve it would mean to collapse the godhead itself. The Tikunim ’s unique model of halakhic controversy can also be viewed as part of a larger trend in kabbalah at the turn of the thirteenth century to organize and harmonize various Jewish approaches according to a new (kabbalistic) key.

The Practice of Debate in French Literature before Machaut

Abstract This article considers debates in French literature before Guillaume de Machaut, with some references to Occitan and Latin. It demonstrates that debates were a widespread practice of the period, one which was frequently represented in texts and manuscripts. The first part of the article describes the practice of debate in terms of approaches that debaters can take: an intrinsic approach whereby the terms of the debate dictate the debaters’ strategy, and a contextual approach whereby debaters let their own particulars weigh in on the conversation. It shows how, far from imposing rigid modes of participation, these two complementary approaches gave debaters the opportunity to exploit the debate form for argumentative purposes. The second part discusses two manuscripts to show how the material presentation of texts could bring about debates in literary texts and compilations. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 308 presents demandes d’amour as debates through illumination. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 2609 exemplifies how the juxtaposition of texts creates a debate that runs across them. This article contributes to scholarship on debate literature on two different levels: it proposes that we consider the corpus of debate literature in French in terms of practice rather than genre; and it also makes the case for a thriving literary tradition of debate in the twelfth to early fourteenth century, a period often considered only as a prequel to a more robust late medieval tradition.

Driven by crises: Price integration on the grain market in late medieval Flanders

AbstractAt the centre of the debate on pre‐industrial economic growth is the study of market integration, a topic that has increasingly been the focus of intense scientific interest in recent decades. However, this has remained limited to the early modern and modern periods, mainly due to the availability of relevant data. New grain price series have been constructed for several Flemish cities dating back to the early fourteenth century. As one of the most populated regions in the late Middle Ages, the case of Flanders shows that the extraordinary sequence of price shocks in the mid‐fourteenth century had a positive impact on the degree of price integration in the grain market. The Flemish grain market functioned better in times of crisis, but caused prices to rise steadily across the entire integrated system during the prolonged crisis period. Whereas many studies have labelled the late Middle Ages – particularly the fifteenth century – as an age of economic contraction with more isolated trade networks, this study shows that Flanders remained a highly economically integrated region.

Veiled Reading, Reading Veils: Textile Curtains and the Experiences of Medieval French Manuscripts, 1200–1325

Abstract: Building on groundbreaking studies by Christine Sciacca and Morgan Simms Adams, this article addresses an understudied phenomenon of medieval French manuscript culture: the sewing of textile curtains—fabric pieces made of silk, linen, or cotton gauze—above or beside illuminations to protect and veil them. Presenting a corpus of forty-six manuscripts of medieval French texts that once contained curtains, I demonstrate how this practice extended beyond the realm of Latin and devotional books to some of the most popular vernacular illuminated book traditions of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Through a series of examples, the different performative potentialities of the veil—its affordances—are shown to far exceed its presumed protective function. Indeed, I argue that the textile curtain, operating at the intersection of touch and sight, should be considered an important part of how certain French books were experienced in the Middle Ages.

Architectural-archaeological research and the hypothesis of the development of pre-local Drohobych in the XII-XIII centuries

Architectural and archaeological studies of preserved architectural monuments emphasise the continuity of development, succession, and originality of the culture of each nation. The research aims to highlight the results of architectural and archaeological surveys at the foundations of the wooden architectural monument - the Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Drohobych, as well as to develop the hypothesis of the city's urban genesis. According to the analysis of literary sources, seven construction periods have been identified since the church was built in 1613. The sounding method showed that the first foundations were standards, which were installed in pits on the cut surface of the continent, often with stone slabs, and covered with soil. The system of double slabs fixed under the altar crown of the log house is considered archaic. During the third and fourth construction periods, some of the stands were replaced, and a stone foundation supported by a wide base of slabs was built under the northwestern corner of the main log cabin. In 1823, the altar log cabin and the southern façade of the building were supported by a ribbon structure of stone foundations. No banded foundations were found under the western base of the chancel and the northern base of the nave. The lower gallery of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is supported by a system of foundations and smaller stands. Within the fourth probe, a deep archaeological site was localised with a ceramic sherd in the fill dating to the princely period. The analysis of several features and stratigraphic features of the fill gives grounds to interpret the object as the remains of a semi-hut of this period. Based on the location of the first immovable object, an attempt is made to clarify one of the hypotheses of the urban development of Drohobych from the unfortified initial settlement of salt workers on the right bank of the Pobuk in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, through its gradual development into a proto-city settlement of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries in the present Zvarytske suburb to the foundation of a new locational centre in the fourteenth/fifteenth centuries on the free adjacent territory

Land, Ceramics and Seigniorial Rents in the Late Middle Ages: the Manor of Manises in the Kingdom of Valencia, c. 1400-1575

During the last two centuries of the Late Middle Ages lords experienced a substantial fall in rents, which was exacerbated in the case of Valencia due to the small size of local manors. The will to keep their levels of incomes brought lords to demand higher burdens from their vassals, especially Muslims, while some nobles, in addition, invested in the productive structures of their estates. Such was the case in the manor of Manises, where since the early fourteenth century an important ceramic manufacturing had developed, which attracted the interest of buyers from all over Europe. This production took place in a medium-sized manorial village, inhabited by a mixed population of Muslims and Christians, which maintained its engagement with agricultural labour. The aim of this article is to analyse the rents of the manor of Manises through two unpublished and exceptional manorial sources, namely, two registries datable from the early fifteenth century and the early sixteenth century respectively, although the latter continued to be used until the end of the century. These allow the exploration of the structure of seigniorial revenues, showing the incidence that agrarian rents and those coming from ceramic production represented over the total. The tendency followed by the manorial rents in the long run is addressed and compared to those of other contemporary locations of the Kingdom of Valencia. Finally, the involvement of vassals in agriculture and ceramic manufacturing is also explored.

Beards and Texts. Images of Masculinity in Medieval German Literature

Beards and Texts. Images of Masculinity in Medieval German Literature