Early Fourteenth Century Research Articles

Two Tales of Song-Dynasty Painted Fans

AbstractChinese painted fans from the Song dynasty survive in relatively large numbers owing to the protective brocade mounts in which later collectors placed them. At the time of their initial production, however, fan paintings were meant to be held in the hand and worn on the body. This two-part article first considers the contexts of production, consumption, and signification of painted fans in twelfth- and thirteenth-century China, particularly in the urban setting of the capital city at Hangzhou. It then turns to the painted fans' transformation into collectibles in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, with attention given to the aesthetic, political, and social nostalgia of the Song-Yuan transition, which continues to flavor the reception of these images down to the present day.

“He Who Sees Does Not Desire to Imagine”: The Shifting Role of Art and Aesthetic Observation in Medieval Franciscan Theological Discourse in the Fourteenth Century

In the thirteenth century, following Neoplatonic and Patristic trends, art and aesthetic experience were still treated as symbolic, as “vestiges” or “echoes” of the divine that lead us to it. However, in the early fourteenth century, attitudes to concrete sensory/aesthetic experience begin to shift and theologians adopted the model of concrete phenomenal observation of sensory experience. Concrete sensory-aesthetic experience is endowed with a much higher value: seeing something is not the same as imagining it, recalling it, or thinking about it. This new approach results in some heterodox views about our phenomenal experience and debates about the exact status of “intentional” (phenomenal) appearance. These debates lead to profound observations about the nature of aesthetic-sensory experience of art objects and a re-evaluation of the status of the artistic image, which is now seen as much more than the platonic “copy of a copy”. In other words, starting with the fourteenth century, theologians start to pay attention to concrete aesthetic (sensory) experience and use their observations to make conclusions about various cognitive and perceptual issues that could be relevant to a discussion of the divine. That is, quite separately from theoretical theological observations, art and aesthetic experience now provide independent approaches to the divine or spiritual via the experience of aesthetic wonder as a starting point. It is now our concrete experience of sensory and aesthetic objects that starts the train of thought, at times leading to some unorthodox conclusions that contradict the doctrine (such as the skeptical point of view). The intellectual shift in treating sensory and artistic objects in the fourteenth century invites some parallels with the current discussions of the experience of aesthetic wonder in “post-secular” thought.

The Master and the Disciple: The Almanac of John of Lignères and the Ephemerides of John of Saxony

In this paper, we analyse and compare two sets of tables in the framework of Alfonsine astronomy composed by John of Lignères and his disciple, John of Saxony, respectively, both belonging to the first generation of scholars using the Alfonsine tables in Paris in the early fourteenth century. John of Lignères’s almanac is limited to the five planets, whereas the similar work by John of Saxony deals with the two luminaries as well. Moreover, there are other differences between these sets of tables concerning their principle of organization, precision, and accuracy.

Blind as a Bat: [Un]seeing the Visio Dei in the Granum Sinapis Diagrams

ABSTRACTThe Granum Sinapis – the ‘Mustard Seed’ – an early fourteenth century German poem, is a concise expression of the mystical and paradoxical precepts of Meister Eckhart. To find the way into the nothingness of God’s mystery, one must pursue the path into the desert– a path without a route leading into a space with no boundaries. The composition was given its title by a Latin scholar whose scholastic commentary was transmitted along with the poem. Appended to the commentary are two crude diagrams, one, an empty circle, the other a set of concentric circles, that in their simplicity both mirror the poem as well as provide a final, eloquent gloss on the interaction between the apophatic theologies of Dionysius the Areopagite and Meister Eckhart. Like the vision of the bat looking into the sun, so does human understanding fail when contemplating God. Yet it is precisely through the medium of blindness that man comes closest to union with the divine.

Medieval Exegesis and Religious Difference: Commentary, Conflict and Community in the Premodern Mediterranean ed. by Ryan Szpiech

Reviewed by: Medieval Exegesis and Religious Difference: Commentary, Conflict and Community in the Premodern Mediterraneaned. by Ryan Szpiech John Tolan Medieval Exegesis and Religious Difference: Commentary, Conflict and Community in the Premodern Mediterranean. Edited by Ryan Szpiech. [ Bordering Religions: Concepts, Conflicts, Conversations.] (New York: Fordham University Press. 2015. Pp. xvi, 329. $55.00. ISBN 978-0-8232-6462-9.) This volume brings together thirteen essays originating in a conference held at the University of Michigan in 2011. The contributions range from the tenth century to the sixteenth and from Baghdad to Paris. The common goal is to examine how Jews, Christians, and Muslims used exegesis—learned interpretation of their own scriptures and of the scriptures of the rival monotheistic religions—as vehicles for apologetics (defining and justifying their own religious communities) and polemics (attempting to undermine the legitimacy of those outside their communities). It is common to class the three faiths as "Abrahamic," emphasizing common ground symbolized by the patriarch revealed in all three traditions. Yet understanding of Abraham/Ibrahim could vary greatly within and between exegetical traditions, as Sarah Stroumsa shows in her study of how the patriarch is understood by two Andalusian exegetes, the Muslim Ibn Masara (d. 931) and the Jew Maimonides (d. 1204). Walid Saleh compares the approaches to the Hebrew bible of the Catholic Humanist Johannes Reuchlin (d. 1522) and the Mamluk scholar al-Biqā'ī (d. 1480). Saleh highlights the different kinds of interest in Judaism of the two intellectuals and their religious and cultural milieus. The keen interest in Judaism in sixteenth-century Christian Europe was accompanied by increasing persecution of Jews, whereas the relative lack of interest among contemporary Muslim intellectuals helped permit a relative tolerance of Jews in Mamluk society. [End Page 575] These intellectuals were often quite aware of rival exegetical traditions, and at times exploited them deftly. Various Christian writers highlighted Qur'anic praise of Jesus and Mary in their writings against Judaism; others used the Qur'an's commendation of Torah and Gospel as an argument against the notion of tahrif(corruption of scripture by Jews and Christians). Sidney Griffith presents the work of Ibn al-Mahrūma, a fourteenth-century Syrian Miaphysite who uses Muslim exegetical arguments about the abrogation of the sharī'ato affirm Christian supersession of Jewish law. A number of the articles deal with Dominican exegesis of Bible, Talmud, and Qur'an, often in the contexts of disputations and anti-Muslim or anti-Jewish polemics. Thomas Burman, through a close study of a Parisian manuscript, looks at the intellectual baggage of Ricoldo da Montecroce, who wrote an influential anti-Qur'anic polemic in the early fourteenth century. The Dominicans' penchant for finding apologetical arguments for Christianity in the writings of Jews and Muslims became compelling enough that at least one fourteenth-century Dominican, Alfonso de Buenhombre, forged text by purportedly "Jewish" and "Muslim" authors which vindicated the superiority of Christianity. Alfonso affirms that he "found" these texts in the Maghreb and "translated" them into Latin (as we see in the article by Antoni Biosca i Bas). Harvey Hames and Ursula Ragacs examine the 1240 Paris trial of the Talmud and the 1263 Barcelona disputation, showing how Dominican and Jewish writers mobilized exegesis to present their divergent takes on the meaning and outcome of those events. Several articles show how Jewish exegetes used figures in Hebrew scripture to represent and denigrate rival traditions. Esperanza Alfonso looks at how various Sephardic exegetes understood the "strange woman" of Proverbs, who was seen as representing sexual impurity, the uncircumcised, the study of gentile philosophy, or of heresy and apostasy—particularly to Christianity. The dangerous and enticing nature of this strange woman reveals the writers' unease concerning the attractions and dangers of relations between Jews and the majority Christian society. Alexandra Cuffel examines the rich and complex traditions of the Toledot Yeshu, oral and written, from the Middle East and Europe, that make Jesus into a charlatan and magician in efforts to parry Christian and Muslim traditions about him. It is impossible in a brief review to do justice to a rich and fascinating collection of essays by top scholars in the field, which together provide an important...

Sean L. Field, Courting Sanctity: Holy Women and the Capetians. Ithaca, NY, and London Cornell University Press, 2019, pp. 266

In Courting Sanctity, Sean Field delivers a comprehensible, and at times, remarkably complex portrait of the relationship between the French dynasty of the Capetians and female prophets and mystics of the mid-thirteenth to early fourteenth centuries. His argument and thus the purpose of the investigation are clearly established from the beginning: starting with King Louis IX (1214–1270), holy women were integral in establishing the sanctification of the crown, but as the monarchy grew in secular power or entered into periods of crisis, court officials started to target and to condemn these spiritual females as sorceresses or demonic threats.

On What Were Oaths Taken in Christian Latin Europe in the High Middle Ages (12th-Early 14th Centuries)?

It is not surprising that oaths were used in all legal systems and in very broadly understood public and social relationships in Christian Latin Europe in the Middle Ages. The oath was commonly presented in various aspects of community life, that is, in political, constitutional, legal, economic, commercial, private, corporation, and religious matters.1 The oath as such and its use can be examined in a great number of contexts. But, in this paper we will solely focus on one of these. The topic discussed here are objects (paraments) on which oaths were taken. Lots of information about this issue is provided by iconography and written sources. These objects were subject to notable changes depending on the time and territory. This article focuses on such territories as England, France, the Holy Roman Empire, Italy, Sweden, Bohemia, Poland, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the period of more than two centuries of the High Middle Ages, from the twelfth to the early fourteenth century.

The Birth of Printed Drama from Medieval Manuscript: A New Discovery in the Case of a Polish Dialogue Between Master Polycarpus and Death

The fifteenth-century Polish dramatic dialogue between Death and a church teacher Polycarpus was one of several vernacular versions of a short Latin prose dialogue of the early fourteenth century. There are further translations of the text from Polish into Russian and Ukrainian. Now a Krakow print dated 1542 has been discovered, that contains that very dialogue, extended by new motifs, and developing the structure into a more advanced theatrical play. The paper examines the relation between the old manuscript (1463) and the printed version.

Templar provincial chapters in the later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries

By the later thirteenth century Templar provincial chapters in the West were being held annually, usually in the spring or early summer. In the French province they were always convened in Paris, but in some other provinces meetings took place in various convents. Those who attended were mostly heads of convents, and it seems that those present usually totalled some forty to fifty brothers: in many provinces the majority were sergeants. Provincial masters normally presided, but occasionally the grand master or visitor had charge. Heads of convents were expected to pay their responsions at the chapter and present a statement about the condition of their houses. There seems, however, to have been no general review of appointments. Moreover, the chapter also acted as a chapter of faults. Yet any current business could also be raised at a meeting, although little is known about the process of decision-making. Provincial chapters appear to have lasted for only a few days, whereas at other Times in the year provincial masters tended to seek counsel from smaller groups of commanders.

Wales and the Great Famine of the Early Fourteenth Century

Wales and the Great Famine of the Early Fourteenth Century

The World in a Book: Al-Nuwayri an the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition

The World in a Book: Al-Nuwayri an the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition

The World in a Book: Al-Nuwayri an the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition

The World in a Book: Al-Nuwayri an the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition

Questions of Identity: The Structure of the Cohen Family in Puigcerdá in the Early Fourteenth Century

Dos testamentos de judíos de Puigcerdá del siglo XIV nos permiten reconstruir las familias de los testadores. Los datos son tan semejantes entre sí que parece tratarse de una misma familia; sin embargo plantean dificultades ciertas divergencias, de cuya explicación nos ocupamos en este artículo. Además, desde el punto de vista estadístico parece muy probable la identidad de los dos grupos familiares: hay que tener en cuenta que en la Puigcerdá del momento no vivían más que unos centenares de familias, de las cuales sólo unas cincuenta eran judías.

Read Yourself!

AbstractCentered on the opening scene of reading staged by Giorgio Agamben in his study of reading machines, The Open: Man and Animal, this article considers how Agamben’s own messianic reading of an illuminated page from a medieval Ashkenazi Bible (Biblioteca Ambrosiana MSS B 30–32) erases the entangled biopolitical histories of medieval Ashkenazi Jews and their Christian sovereigns. What happens if we read the distinctive animal-headed Jews peopling medieval Ashkenazi manuscripts of Bibles and Haggadot dated to the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, not in a messianic mode but in the temporal mode of biopolitical bare life? What is the temporal structure of precarious life? Furthermore, how does this Ashkenazi figural tradition of animal-headed Jews point to forms of resistance to the biopolitics of medieval Christendom? How is messianic theory now unconsciously entangled in modes of temporality of precarious life, then?

The Proof Is in the Diagram: Liu Yi and the Graphical Writing of Algebraic Equations in Eleventh-Century China

In a specific tradition of dealing with algebraic equations in China, eleventh to thirteenth century writings on the topic combine problems, algorithms, and diagrams of several types. This article focuses on the geometrical diagrams that some of them contain. The argument holds that the captions in these diagrams establish a specific connection with the algorithms in relation to which they are given. Accordingly, I claim that these diagrams constitute the proof of the correctness of the algorithms. Reading the diagrams as assertions is thus in my view essential to capture what is at stake in them. These diagrams disappear from another tradition of dealing with algebraic equations in China, to which writings from the second half of the thirteenth century and the early fourteenth century attest. I suggest that these diagrams are replaced by a form of algebraic proof in an algorithmic context, which is also expressed in specific ways.

Medieval Lowestoft: The Origins and Growth of a Suffolk Coastal Community, by David Butcher

David Butcher’s book on medieval Lowestoft and its environs charts the development of a medieval town which both changed its location and aspects of its economy during the Middle Ages. The work combines minute attention to detail with some national and European contextualisation and thus represents a good example of a local history. In 2008, the author published a study of the Lowestoft area in the early modern period, also with Boydell. His present book traces the town’s history from its Anglo-Saxon origins until it became unmistakably urban by the first half of the sixteenth century. The first three chapters discuss the town’s medieval development chronologically. The first chapter deals with the pre-Conquest period, the second moves from Domesday Book to the early fourteenth century and the third examines the period in which the town was moved to a coastal location, and its later developments. The three chapters that follow are thematic. Two examine the town’s principal commercial activities of fishing and maritime trade and the third discusses the parish church and its guilds in the medieval period. Finally, Butcher provides a sketch of the town in the early sixteenth century.

Calendar tables in manuscript and printed Arbaʿah Ṭurim: Ṭur Oraḥ Ḥayyim , chapter 428

This article is a case study in the creation, transmission and evolution of calendar tables in medieval and early modern Jewish sources. It looks at calendar tables in Arbaʿah Ṭurim by Jacob ben Asher (early fourteenth century), one of the most influential rabbinic codes of law. Calendar tables in printed editions of Arbaʿah Ṭurim ( Ṭur Oraḥ Ḥayyim , chapter 428) deviate from the normative rabbinic calendar and can lead to celebrating religious holidays at the wrong times. The inclusion of non-standard tables in an authoritative code of law has long raised questions about their authenticity. This article examines the history of calendar tables in Ṭur Oraḥ Ḥayyim by investigating all extant manuscripts and fifteenth- to sixteenth-century printed editions of the code. The article highlights the unstable connection of calendar tables with authorial compositions and the lack of calendar expertise among copyists and users of calendar tables.

Composing St Columba, Hope of the Scots

ABSTRACTThe singular Office of St Columba in the Inchcolm Antiphoner, a unique relic celebrated for its distinct Scottish chant, was composed in the late thirteenth century amidst a battle for the claim of Scotland's patron saint. Previous studies of the office have suggested that unique chants reflect a pre-Norman tradition of Celtic chant. This article demonstrates that the office was not only composed much later, and severely edited in the fifteenth century, but also almost entirely composed of contrafacta. Some of these engage directly with the cult of St Andrew, the other saint with a major claim to the patronage of Scottish royalty. Three chants in the office connect the celebration of St Columba at Inchcolm Abbey to music from St Andrews Cathedral as recorded in a St Andrews antiphoner and W1. The office thus bears witness to the authority of music for St Andrew and the association of W1 with his cathedral in the early fourteenth century. The music of the office is not distinctly Scottish, but the office constructed for St Columba reflects the competition between the cults of St Andrew and St Columba in the construction of Scottish identity.

From Military Leaders to Administrative Experts: The Biography of the “Treacherous Minister” Temüder and his Ancestors

Abstract Temüder (d. 1322) was an influential Mongol official of the Yuan dynasty in the early fourteenth century. The compilers of the Yuanshi listed him as one of the six “treacherous ministers,” and it is easy to simply dismiss him accordingly. However, a closer examination of the life of Temüder himself and his ancestors reveals how the Mongol elites adapted and changed throughout time, and specifically how the earlier generation of military leaders transformed into administrative experts in civil administration and fiscal reform. Based on his biography in the Yuanshi, supplemented with a few scattered records from literary collections of Han-Chinese contemporaries and Persian-language sources, this article reconstructs the lives of Temüder, his ancestors, and his sons. In addition to balancing Temüder’s overwhelmingly negative image, this article ultimately shows how the ruling outsiders – here, the Mongol elites exemplified by the case of Temüder – also gained new expertise to further consolidate their rule over China, and provides a more complex and nuanced perspective for understanding the mid- to late-Yuan period.

Magic as a Political Crime in Medieval and Early Modern England: A History of Sorcery and Treason by Francis Young

Reviewed by: Magic as a Political Crime in Medieval and Early Modern England: A History of Sorcery and Treason by Francis Young Joanne Edge KEY WORDS Joanne Edge, Francis Young, late medieval England, early modern England, everyday life, Elizabeth I, John Dee, political crimes, Edward II, Henry VI, Eleanor Cobham, Wars of the Roses, Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, Stuart England, William Shakespeare francis young. Magic as a Political Crime in Medieval and Early Modern England: A History of Sorcery and Treason. London: I. B. Tauris, 2017. Pp. 256. In this timely and well-researched book, Francis Young weaves together the histories of magic, politics, law, and religion to demonstrate the realities of the political crime of magic in late medieval and early modern England. It is worth stating here that this reviewer has long been frustrated at the notion that magic and the occult were fringe practices in premodern Europe: in fact, such activities were central to the everyday life of both high-and low-status people alike. This monograph is therefore extremely welcome: especially as it is skilfully written for the general reader while being a valuable addition to the scholarship of the period—as evidenced by the inclusion of detailed footnotes and an extensive bibliography. Defining “magic” is not straightforward, and a working definition will never satisfy everyone. Young wisely dedicates four pages in his introduction to grappling with this problem, providing a whistle-stop tour of the historiography of magic definitions, but without actually providing a clear definition of his own (8–12). Ultimately, his definition of “magic” is a learned art that was practised by literate men, as opposed to “witchcraft,” which consists [End Page 505] of non-literate activities mainly carried out by low-status women. But witchcraft is not the focus of this monograph; Young focuses on magical activity (either real or imagined) aimed at the various monarchs of England during this time. A question that is usually raised by historians of magic and the occult is did the practices condemned by the authorities and of which people were accused have any basis in the surviving evidence from the period? Young sets out his stall early, stating in the introduction that: It is crucial . . . for the historian to engage with the history of magic, since even if the truth of magical practices of particular accused traitors is lost to us in official accounts, we can study comparable magical practices preserved in other texts. A significant gap often existed between official fears of what magicians might do and what magicians themselves tried to do (3). So, throughout this volume, Young takes the practices that people were accused of and looks for similar activities in extant manuscripts from the period. For example, in 1578, three wax effigies were found in a barn in Islington. According to one account, the centre figure had the name “Elizabeth” written on the forehead, and the two figures either side were dressed as her councillors. This was seen as an attack on Elizabeth I, and the magician John Dee was even consulted to provide a counter-magical defence. Young takes the reader through examples of effigy magic in contemporary manuscripts, and in the condemnations of e.g. Reginald Scot, to show that this accusation was absolutely plausible (119–29). Every example of magical treason introduced by Young throughout this monograph involves a link to manuscript evidence. This synthesis of “theory” and “practice” is long overdue in the historiography of premodern magic. Chapter 1 provides the medieval background to magic as a political crime, starting with the plot against Edward II in the early fourteenth century, through the well-known case of Eleanor Cobham against Henry VI in the 1440s, the Wars of the Roses, and Henry VII; Chapter 2 encompasses the period of the early Reformation—from 1534 through the late years of Henry VIII, and the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I; Chapter 3 focuses on the early part of Elizabeth’s reign and several serious magical plots against her; Chapter 4 tackles the second half of the reign, including her dealings with John Dee, effigy magic, and a delightfully-titled section on “Anabaptistical Wizards...