Late Eleventh Century Research Articles

Resonet Vox Fidelis: Scribal Colophons and Ecclesiastical Reform in Medieval Iberia

ABSTRACT A remarkable number of early medieval manuscripts produced in the Iberian Peninsula preserve scribal colophons recounting the circumstances of their production and naming their makers. Because of their highly unusual level of detail, these statements offer invaluable evidence to understand the individuals and communities who produced them, as well as the broader religious and cultural environment in which they originated. Focusing on the corpora of the Beatus manuscripts and Iberian Latin Bibles, this article considers patterns of colophon use amongst Christian monastic communities in the north-central and western regions of Iberia between the tenth and the mid-thirteenth century. This article argues that significant changes to colophon composition and use coincide with, and were related to, wider ecclesiastical reform and political transformations in the Peninsula in the late eleventh century, which promoted the abandonment of native ecclesiastical practices and critical shifts in monastic culture.

Carolingian After-Images: Hariulf’s History of St Riquier and Its Context

ABSTRACT Hariulf’s History of St Riquier is usually consulted for detail on liturgical, architectural and political history, but is rarely considered in its entirety. It was written in the changing and competitive world of the late eleventh century, when there were challenges for established communities, both in terms of innovative approaches to monasticism and the emergence of new political entities and potential patrons. In the past that Hariulf creates St Riquier had been the focal point of Ponthieu for generations and had stood the test of time as the conduit of royal patronage and liberality, symbolised by its great Carolingian church built by Abbot Angilbert. It remained, in Hariulf’s view, a centre of monastic excellence, whose abbots responded to and practised contemporary spirituality, and it had adopted strategies to strengthen its position, including care for its patrimony, securing new relics and memorialising its past.

The hidation of the Hwicce: investigating its halving between the eighth century and 1086

ABSTRACT The total hidage of land in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the Hwicce at its greatest extent appears to have been halved at an unknown date between the eighth century and the late eleventh. The article examines the relatively small number of surviving original texts of charters and leases which relate to land both in that kingdom and in all other parts of the kingdom of the Mercians into which it was at length subsumed. With other apparent instances of major hidage reductions having been found thereby elsewhere in the latter area, the article then argues that they were all effected either by the West Saxon kings of England in the course of the tenth century or, arguably more likely (even though the evidence is meagre), at a much earlier date by Mercian kings following the piecemeal enlargement of their kingdom by the absorption of formerly independent neighbouring polities.

The Bonito Paleochannel in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico: Recent Research and Implications for Causality and Effects

During the late eleventh century AD, a episode of erosion in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, threatened to destroy portions of the Pueblo Bonito great house and possibly other large buildings. Known as the Bonito Paleochannel, this large arroyo meant the loss of significant amounts of surface water from valley-wide flooding originating in upstream and tributary sources. We believe that erosion was probably the result of an increasing size and frequency of floods. There is no compelling evidence that agriculture was affected by the paleochannel but we hypothesize that great house construction became extremely difficult. Consequently, the impact of the Bonito Paleochannel cycle may have been felt most in the political economy.

From Canonry to Monastery: Changing Observances and the Agency of the Foundation’s Community at Eleventh-Century Hasungen

Abstract Interreligious endowments in the strict sense were beyond the imagination of medieval founders and churchmen alike. Among similar phenomena, however, Latin Christendom did experience changes of monastic observances, which were often shaped as refoundations. In the late eleventh century, when monastic reform movements became increasingly important, a number of canonries (communities of secular clerics) were reorganized as monasteries. Hasungen in Hesse is an interesting case, founded and refounded by the same bishop for spiritual, political and personal reasons. This paper looks at the reaction of the former canons. By analysing charters and narrative evidence, it asks about their agency in adapting to the change of observance. Although monastic “reform” had the potential to marginalize the former canons, they not only accepted the refoundation: during the eventful first decades of the new monastery, they managed to keep alive the memory of, and connections to, the social environment which their pre-monastic community had been rooted in.

At the Crossroads of Competing Confessions and Politics: al-Turtūshī’s Experience in the Fātimid Alexandria

The tenth and eleventh centuries witnessed significant social and political transformations in the Islamic World. While the Buwayhid Dynasty began to control Iraq in 945, the Fātimid Dynasty started to dominate Egypt in 969. Besides, Christian Europeans set up crusades and managed to capture important Muslim cities in al-Andalus and the Middle East during the late eleventh century. These transformations had certain impacts on the Sunnī Muslim scholars. Through examination of an Andalusian scholar, Abū Bakr al-Turtūshī's life and works, I will analyze how al-Turtūshī as a Sunnī Muslim scholar encountered different confessional groups (Shi‘īs, Jews, Christians, and Sūfīs) and how he made an effort to shape the Shi'ī Fātimid politics in harmony with the Sunnī Islam. In addition, I will explore how he aimed to draw strict religious boundaries between Muslims and non-Muslims in Fātimid Egypt. Furthermore, I will examine how he attempted to reconstruct the Sunnī identity and reform social life in Medieval Egypt.

“Madhyamakanising” Tantric Yogācāra: The Reuse of Ratnākaraśānti’s Explanation of maṇḍala Visualisation in the Works of Śūnyasamādhivajra, Abhayākaragupta and Tsong Kha Pa

The eleventh-century Indian Buddhist master Ratnākaraśānti presents a unique Yogācāra interpretation of tantric maṇḍala visualisation in the *Guhyasamājamaṇḍalavidhiṭīkā. In this text, he employs the neither-one-nor-many argument to assert that the qualities of the mind represented by the deities in the maṇḍala are neither the same nor different from the mind itself. He also provides five scenarios of meditation to explain the necessity of practising both the perfection method (pāramitānaya) and the mantra method (mantranaya) together in Mahāyāna. Ratnākaraśānti’s explanation exerts a significant influence on the works of later Buddhist masters in India and Tibet, with parts of it being reused in the *Śrīherukopadeśanāmasvādhiṣṭhānakrama by Śūnyasamādhivajra (c. the eleventh century), the eighteenth chapter of the Āmnāyamañjarī by Abhayākaragupta (from the late eleventh to the twelfth century) and the tantric compendium sNgags rim chen mo by the Tibetan master Tsong kha pa Blo bzang grags pa (1357–1419). This paper explores how Ratnākaraśānti’s explanation has been reused and modified in these subsequent works. While Śūnyasamādhivajra faithfully reproduced Ratnākaraśānti’s Yogācāra explanation, Abhayākaragupta modified it to align with his Madhyamaka view. Abhayākaragupta in turn influenced Tsong kha pa, who accepted Abhayākaragupta’s Madhyamaka modification in his works. This paper also engages with current scholarly discussions on textual reuse and the underlying reasons behind it. While Śūnyasamādhivajra and Abhayākaragupta assimilated Ratnākaraśānti’s explanation without acknowledgement, Tsong kha pa quoted the text by name and acknowledged Abhayākaragupta’s reuse of Ratnākaraśānti’s explanation. This paper concludes by discussing the factors that determine whether the reused text is acknowledged or not, and the possible reasons behind textual reuse.

Old English Transciption of the Latin Hagiography of Saint Aegidius: Language and Rhetoric

The article analyzes the methods of transcribing an anonymous Latin hagiography of St. Aegidius (British Library manuscript Tiberius Div, volume 2, 84v-87r, late eleventh century) by an anonymous author of an Old English hagiography of the same saint (mid-twelfth-century manuscript, Corpus Christi College Cambridge C 303). Errors in manuscript CCCS 303 show that the scribe copied an earlier Old English text of the eleventh century, not always understanding it well. But overall, the twelfth-century manuscript retains most of the features consistent with the norm of the eleventh-century Wessex dialect. The lexicon of the Old English text includes a number of Latin loanwords, as well as one word of Scandinavian origin. Some deviations from the written norm in phonetics and morphology show the influence of colloquial speech. The emphasis on the omnipotence of God and on the saint’s close personal contacts with God, not so noticeable in the Latin version, leads to an expansion of St. Aegidius’ epithets compared to the Latin source. The changes in the method of narration concern the rejection of ancient rhetorical techniques, primarily rhetorical questions; the replacement of historical details; and the expansion of Gospel allusions. At the same time, the Old English narrative is characterized by an increase in the emotional mood and dramatization of the story, including through the introduction of monologues and dialogues.

The Historical Significance of Cultural Exchanges of Qara Khitai (1124-1218) Interpreted Through Chinese-style Bronze Mirrors Excavated from Kyrgyzstan

Chinese-style bronze mirrors in the style of the Liao and Jin Dynasties excavated in Novopokrovka, Kyrgyzstan, display similarities to those found in southeastern Kazakhstan and northern Kyrgyzstan. As Chinese-style bronze mirrors of Central Asia rarely date later than the period of the Five Dynasties, the Novopokrovka mirrors are remarkable as being from the medieval period. They were mostly excavated in the Chuy Valley, the border area between Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. In the early twelfth century, the Khitans lost the central China to the Jurchens and migrated to the west to establish the Qara Khitai (Western Liao). The new dynasty was centered around the Chuy Valley, including the capital city of Balasaghun. The Novopokrovka mirrors are mostly in the style of the Liao and Jin Dynasties from the late eleventh to the early thirteenth century, and closely resemble the Jin-style mirrors, mainly found in the three northeastern provinces of China—Jilin, Liaoning, Heilongjian—, and Koryŏ sites in Korea, implying the production and distribution of the Jin-style mirrors as an international style in the large areas of Eurasia. There are fewer examples of Chinese bronze mirrors made after the early thirteenth century, when the Western Liao collapsed . After the Mongolian invasion, the cities in the oasis region met sudden decline by no later than the thirteenth century and did not recover for a considerable amount of time. Furthermore, the preference for various types of Islamic-style mirrors, brought on by the expansion of Islamic influence may have also contributed to the decline of the Chinese-style mirrors.

History in liturgy: negotiating merit in Ely’s virgin mothers

ABSTRACT As the custodians of a particularly diverse cult of saints, the monks of Ely faced a commemorative dilemma in the in late eleventh century. The abbey’s cult centred around the virgin queen St Æthelthryth, whose incorruptible body exemplified the integrity of the monastic community. Ely’s reverence for Æthelthryth extended to her female kindred, as the monks also venerated her sisters Wihtburh and Seaxburh, alongside her niece Eormenhild. Unlike Æthelthryth, Seaxburh and Eormenhild had historical traditions of motherhood and bodily corruptibility, impelling the monks to balance their saints’ conflicting virtues in commemorative literature. This article explores the shifting merits of the Ely mothers as represented in eleventh-century liturgy and hagiography. The study begins by examining the mothers’ pre-Conquest liturgical commemoration, with a focus on their appearance in litanies and proper mass sets. It then analyses the Ely hagiography of Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, arguing that he worked to reconcile the kindreds’ virtues.

Urban Life in the Liao on the Eve of the Jurchen Conquests

The simultaneous existence of five urban centres labelled as ‘capitals’ in the Liao dynasty by the late eleventh century has perplexed scholars who presume that the Liao court must have resided in one of these capitals as the courts of most conventional ‘Chinese’ empires did. However, the Liao court never permanently resided in any one of these capitals; the court practised ‘imperial itinerance’, wherein they moved around according to an often loosely seasonal pattern but primarily from political expedience. This paper argues that the primary-auxiliary model of capitals does not apply to the Liao and therefore that neither Shangjing, the Upper Capital, nor Zhongjing, the Central Capital, can be considered to have been primary capitals. Rather, the Liao court exercised ‘urban ambivalence’, defined here as a selective attitude to the role of capitals in statecraft. This is done by first examining the frequency and purpose of imperial visits to the capitals, and then exploring the semantics of the capital names Upper and Central. This reassessment of Liao capitals invites us to eschew normative frameworks concerning capitals derived from Chinese empires, and highlights the explanatory potential of agency over adherence to ideological models to understand the Liao court attitude to capitals.

How the Welsh caught the Yellow Plague

The ‘Yellow Plague’ (pestis flava, buidechair, ball felen, etc.) is a term used by Irish and Welsh authors working in the tenth century and later to describe several epidemics of the sixth and seventh centuries. This paper examines one particular set of stories about this illness found in Welsh sources written between 1100 and 1223, in which the Yellow Plague is responsible for a mass migration from Wales to Brittany. This legend, I argue, was likely created at Llancarfan in the late eleventh century from various older sources, including annals and saints’ Lives from Ireland and Brittany; I also provide an account of how this legend may have been transmitted to other Welsh centers, and suggest connections to other contem- porary works of pseudo-history, such as Geoffrey of Monmouth’s De gestis Britonum.

Joachim J. Krause, Omer Sergi, and Kristin Weingart, eds. Saul, Benjamin, and the Emergence of Monarchy in Israel: Biblical and Archaeological Perspectives

Joachim J. Krause, Omer Sergi, and Kristin Weingart, eds. <i>Saul, Benjamin, and the Emergence of Monarchy in Israel: Biblical and Archaeological Perspectives</i>

Комплексные археологические и геофизические исследования в портовой части Херсонеса Таврического

The best results of researching archaeological sites in the coastal zone come from integrated interdisciplinary approach involving modern geophysical methods. The analysis of the archaeological material obtained during excavations of the “diamond-shaped tower” in the water area near the port quarters of Chersonese suggests that the structure was constructed in the ninth and tenth centuries AD. The results of research on this site show that from the ninth and tenth to the period from the late eleventh to the first half of the thirteenth centuries the sea level in Karantinnaia Bay rose by ca 1 meter. The data obtained by continuous seismoacoustic profiling were used to identify continuous changes of the coastline in result of transgression and accumulation of the bottom sediments in the section of the water area near the port district of Chersonese. The analysis of the built-up seismogeological sections and isobath map enabled the research group to identify 3 terraces and associated morphological elements indicating the location of ancient coastlines in different historical periods. A spatial relationship has been established between the archaeological objects found at the sea bottom and the position of the underwater terraces. A reconstruction of the ninth- and tenth-century coastline has been suggested according to the archaeological data. The location of the “diamond-shaped tower” and the construction remains discovered in 2019 on the same terrace suggests that the structures existed approximately at the same time. Electrical prospecting research using bottom electrotomography explored the sediment structure of marine terraces to a depth of 10 m. The research results have determined bottom anomalies corresponding to various stages of development of the coast of Karantinnaia Bay. An extended linear anomaly, located 40–50 m from the modern coast and hidden by a layer of bottom soil up to 3 m thick, most likely corresponds to the early period of the ancient city. The sea in this area is ca 2–3 m deep.

Reception of Scripture in Rashi’s Torah Commentary

AbstractThe most influential biblical commentary in Jewish history is that of the late eleventh century scholar, Rabbi Shlomo Yitzḥaki (“Rashi”) of northern France. This essay examines Rashi’s Torah Commentary as a midrashic anthology and examines Rashi’s reception of the Bible through the lens of his use of midrash. After highlighting shared traits of first-millennium midrashic corpora and Rashi’s Torah Commentary, I offer a new reading of Rashi’s “methodological statement.” I then turn to Rashi’s historical context to suggest that the Commentary’s lemmatized form demonstrates that Scripture cannot be properly understood without its rabbinic accompaniment, the midrash of the rabbis’ Oral Torah. Finally, I offer examples of the range of ways Rashi employed midrash in his Commentary, the primary lens through which traditional Jews have received Scripture for a millennium.

Monks and the Muslim Enemy: Conversion, Polemic and Resistance in Monastic Hagiography in the Age of the Crusades, c. 1000–1250

AbstractAlthough most accounts of Christian encounters with Muslims in the period between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries pay particular attention to conflict and violence, a body of hagiographical texts emanating from monastic circles points to a different kind of approach. In this article I foreground three examples of Italo-Greek saints’ lives from the tenth and early eleventh centuries in which the saints in question treat Muslims whom they encounter as potential converts, and explain to them the tenets of Christian theology. These texts are examined as precursors of the Cluniac ‘dossier’ compiled about Abbot Maiolus's encounter with Muslims in the 990s. Two of the three saints’ lives were translated from Greek into Latin, one in the late eleventh, the other in the late twelfth century. The motives for and circumstances of these translations are discussed in light of growing hostility towards the Islamic world during the period of the crusades.

Evaluating the dating and context of long-nosed god maskettes and iconography in the American midcontinent

ABSTRACT Long-nosed god (LNG) maskettes and iconography have traditionally been seen as a pre-Southern Cult phenomena, placed variously in the tenth to thirteenth centuries. Researchers have suggested they were employed in political and religious interactions or to facilitate trade, but few have looked in detail at their chronology, context, and distribution. Here, an in-depth review of radiocarbon dates and context raises questions about the place of LNGs in midcontinental Native societies. This reassessment illustrates that LNG images do not predate the appearance of Caddo and Cahokian symbolic emergence and can be first securely documented in the late eleventh century. They clearly are objects that signify personal endowments and are inalienable, following that individual to the grave. Their context and distribution indicate that LNG icons are an integral part of the Caddo religious and political networks but are tangential at Cahokia and take on totally different contextual meanings to the north of Cahokia. This study demonstrates that proposing uniform explanations for LNG ideology and implementation does not correlate with the archaeological evidence. Future studies that account for regional variations in LNG chronology, context, and spatial distribution are needed to begin addressing the roles of these unique objects in Native societies.

A Critical Companion to English Mappae Mundi of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

A Critical Companion to English Mappae Mundi of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

Inscriptional Practices of the Song Literati

Abstract After decades of being hidden from public view, the recent emergence of Su Shi's (1037–1101) Old Tree, Rock, and Bamboo has led to a long overdue reexamination of this famous scroll that many scholars regard as the single credible extant painting by the artist. Questions concerning authenticity have been at the forefront, and this has led to a focus on the scroll's impressive documentation, which begins with two poetic inscriptions contemporary to Su Shi, including one by the famed calligrapher Mi Fu (1052–1107). Yet, while scrutiny of the painting and its documentation has made a strong case for authenticity, it has largely avoided two seals on the painting that claim the actual authorial presence of Su and Mi. It is argued in this article that those two seals, which some have attributed to the later collector Yang Zun (ca. 1320–after 1368), should in fact belong to Su Shi and Mi Fu. Acknowledging their true provenance consequently provides an extraordinary entrée to reconstructing the dates and circumstances of both the painting and Mi's poetic inscription. Beyond this, we gain a glimpse of how the literati creatively employed inscriptional practices to enhance the communicative function of painting and calligraphy in the late eleventh century.

Ritual Officials and the Rise of Confucian Ritualism in the Eleventh Century

Abstract By tracing the vicissitudes of court ritual officials and related ritual institutions in the eleventh century, this article argues that the rise of Confucian ritualism was accompanied by the marginalization of ritual officials and institutions in the central government of the Northern Song (960–1127). After the mid-eleventh century, “learning-oriented ritualists,” who acquired their knowledge of court rituals mostly through Confucian ritual Classics, succeeded the fallen ritual officials to offer new insights and perspectives on court ritual reforms. During the late eleventh century, some ritualists, most of whom were associated with the intellectual circle of the celebrated reformer Wang Anshi 王安石 (1027–1086), gradually dominated the interpretation of court rituals. Their endeavors in redefining court rituals led to Zhu Xi’s 朱熹 (1130–1200) experimental reforms of both court and social rituals in the Southern Song (1127–1279), which profoundly shaped the society and culture of late imperial China.