Late Ninth Century Research Articles

The Byzantine Insular Countryside in the Early Middle Ages (ca. 600-ca.900): The Cases of Sicily, Cyprus, and Crete in (partial) Light of Environmental Archaeology

ABSTRACT This paper provides an overview of rural surveys and environmental archaeology studies on Sicily, Cyprus and Crete during the Byzantine Empire. It re-evaluates traditional interpretations of agricultural settlement patterns, ecosystems and populations from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages (late sixth to late ninth century). The prevailing narrative that these islands were devastated by Arab incursions, leading to widespread depopulation, economic collapse and abandonment of rural sites in favour of fortified hilltop settlements, is questioned. Instead, the study employs a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, combining environmental and climatic data with historical and archaeological evidence. This method offers a more nuanced understanding of how insular rural societies adapted to changing environmental and human conditions during the Byzantine Empire's transition from an economically unified region to a fragmented Medieval Mediterranean. The findings highlight the resilient nature of land use and rural settlement patterns amidst the transformation of the empire's political, military and administrative structures.

“This Is Called Ḥaliq”

Abstract Descriptions of the Passover evening service in Gaonic writings of the late ninth and early tenth centuries include the word ḥaliq as an alternative term for ḥaroset, a sweet and sour dipping sauce made from fruit and nuts. Through a diachronic view of ḥaroset in both the Greco-Roman context of the rabbinic Passover meal and the ʿAbbasid context of Gaonic Judeo-Arabic writing, I argue that the etymology of ḥaliq should be derived ultimately from the Latin allec, referring to a fermented fish sauce that was an essential ingredient of the dipping sauces from which ḥaroset evolved. I conclude with a survey of how ḥaliq (and words derived from it) was maintained as a term for ḥaroset in Jewish languages around the world from the Middle Ages until the present day.

Death – (Re)Birth, Image – Setting: Symbiotic Relationships in a Byzantine Rock-Cut Church

Dated to the late ninth century, scholars position the rock-cut church Yılanlı Kilise as an idiosyncratic outlier, representative of non-Byzantine influence, within Byzantine Cappadocia. I suggest scholars overemphasize Yılanlı’s oddities and underemphasize the complex programmatic and liturgical conception behind Yılanlı and its relation to eleventh-century, Constantinopolitan-influenced Cappadocian churches. I present a case study centered on the interaction between the Koimesis of the Theotokos and a carved water basin that demonstrates that the church’s furniture and images constitute a symbiotic relationship that amplifies and extends their function and meaning. The Yılanlı Koimesis notably includes the Jew Jephonias. Located below the Theotokos’s bed, Jephonias raises arms with severed hands in an orant-like gesture while his body breaches the image border to touch the water basin below. By representing Jephonias without hands, the Yılanlı program purposefully displays the moment after Jephonias is punished for attempting to upset the bier of the Theotokos but before the subsequent recovery of his hands and “rebirth” as a Christian. The presence of Jephonias both creates a narrative image with a supersessionist conversion message and identifies the basin’s baptismal function; simultaneously, the completion of the Jephonias episode is only activated due to his proximity to the baptismal basin.

The Renunciants and Early Sufis of Iṣfahān

Abstract: This paper investigates the relationship between renunciant piety ( zuhd ) and early Sufism in the city of Iṣfahān, a pivotal city along the Silk Road, from the late ninth to early eleventh-century CE. It focuses on the multifunctional nature of khāneqāhs (hostels) in facilitating the dynamic interplay between these two pietistic movements in early Islam. The study underscores the transformation of Iṣfahān into a significant regional center of Islamic piety by examining the gradual conversion to Islam, with particular emphasis on the inspiring role of renunciants ( zuhhād ) in catalyzing conversions and propagating Islamic ideals. To illustrate this transition, this article focuses on literary accounts concerning three major pious figures from Iṣfahān in this period, namely Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Bannāʼ (d. 899 CE), 'Alī ibn Sahl al-Iṣfahānī (d. 919 CE), and Abū Manṣūr al-Iṣfahānī (d. 1027 CE). In its discussion of these pious personalities, this article emphasizes their interconnectivity and engagement with other notable Sufis, including al-Junayd al-Baghdādī (d. 910 CE) and Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj (d. 922 CE), as well as their contributions to Sufi scholarship, including the compatibility of Sufism with Ḥanbalī jurisprudence as presented in Abū Manṣūr al-Iṣfahānī's surviving works. Altogether, this article provides a comprehensive survey of the historical and spiritual context of Iṣfahān in this period, shedding light on the interplay between renunciant piety and early Sufism in the region.

Byzantine Influence before Byzantinisation: The Tropologion Sinai Greek NE ΜΓ 56+5 Compared with the Georgian and Syriac Melkite Versions

The article examines a selection of hymns of potentially Byzantine origin in the eighth-to-tenth-century manuscripts of the New Tropologion, which was the hymnal of the Anastasis cathedral of Jerusalem and in churches that followed its rite. Such adoption in the rite of Jerusalem represented a Byzantine influence before the wave of liturgical Byzantinisation that started in the late ninth and tenth centuries. For the first time, three versions of the New Tropologion are studied together: the Greek original and the Syriac and Georgian translations. The Greek Tropologion Sinai MS NE MΓ 56+5 is the primary material, compared with Sinai MS Syriac 48 and several Georgian New Iadgari manuscripts from Sinai. The study identifies one certain Byzantine element in the New Tropologion: parts of the feast of St. John Chrysostom, archbishop of Constantinople, and several probable Byzantine elements: the interpolation of the second ode in three canons by Kosmas of Jerusalem and one by John, and parts of the stichera series Aἱ ἀγγελικαὶ προπορεύεσθε δυνάμεις attributed to Romanos the Melodist. By contrast, the interpolated ode 1 in Kosmas’ canon for Great Saturday seems to be of Palestinian origin, and therefore not a Byzantine loan, contrary to traditional views. The article shows that there is considerable variation between the different versions of the New Tropologion.

The earliest English culinary recipes: dietary advice in Old English medical texts

ABSTRACT The earliest culinary recipes written in the English language, or in England, are contained in the three main Old English medical collections, now known as Bald’s Leechbook, Leechbook III and the Lacnunga, dating from the tenth, or possibly late ninth, to eleventh centuries. These recipes reveal contemporary ideas about the suitability of various foods for people experiencing various conditions, but not for a generalised ‘healthy diet’, nor indeed for the diet of the population at large in England at the time. They form part of a fairly substantial body of dietary advice, drawing quite heavily on a Latin tradition that was common to most of Western Europe, which betrays clear traces of humoral theory.

Crafting the image of Pelayo: identity and state-building in early medieval Asturian chronicles

ABSTRACT In the late ninth century, a series of chronicles from the Christian kingdom of Asturias staked a claim on Visigothic identity, and thus ancestral legitimacy to rule in Iberia, for Asturias and its kings. Connecting Pelayo, the first king of the Asturian kingdom, to the last Visigothic kings and crafting his image as an ideal Goth and Christian was essential to this process. Informed by scholarship on “borderlands” and boundary-making, this article demonstrates how the chroniclers renegotiated the parameters of Gothic identity to impose the idea of a strict border between legitimate and illegitimate, good Catholic and heretic, and loyalty and disloyalty. In doing so, they provided Pelayo with a layered and flexible Gothic-Christian-Asturian identity.

An Arabic-Greek Codex of Ptolemy’s Handy Tables from the Eighth Century

Abstract A Greek copy of Ptolemy’s Handy Tables and an Arabic translation of Theon’s Short Commentary on them survive as undertexts in the palimpsest manuscript Vat. sir. 623. pt. 2. The parchment leaves containing these texts were recycled into a new codex at the Monastery of St. Catherine on Sinai in the late ninth century, but they belonged to the same original manuscript and are considered the only surviving witnesses to the project of translating Greek thought into Arabic at the so-called “House of Wisdom” in Baghdad during the second half of the eighth century. In order to show the importance of this startling discovery made in the Vatican Library, the article not only includes an historical, codicological, and paleographical examination of the erased texts and repurposed folios, but also presents an astronomical explanation of the theories and calculations they contain. The article highlights the list of Greek-Arabic winds and its link to Ptolemy’s Horizon Diagram, as well as stresses the continued applicability of Ptolemy and Theon’s presentations. It further argues for a reconsideration of the meaning of an ancient theory of the “inclinations” that the Sun and the Moon (or the Moon and the Earth’s shadow) create during eclipses, the phenomenon which is called prosneusis.

Voluntary enslavement in an Abbasid-era papyrus letter

AbstractCentral to this article is an Arabic letter written on papyrus in an Egyptian prison in the late ninth or early tenth centuryce. The author complains that he and his companions are being kept in terrible conditions and that they have received insufficient support from outside prison. Interestingly, he indicates that there is a strong inclination among the group to offer themselves as slaves in order to find relief from their crushing living conditions. By doing so, they would have transgressed Islamic law of that time, which forbade the enslavement of free inhabitants of the Realm of Islam. The letter is a unique source for the social history of slavery, especially self-enslavement, in Abbasid society. This article presents, translates, and annotates this letter and offers a detailed study of its contents.

The Potential of Quantified Surface Data in Understanding the Rural Landscapes of Middle Byzantine Komana

ABSTRACTThe Middle Byzantine period in Anatolia is considered a recovery period after two centuries of instability at the end of the Early Byzantine period. From the late ninth through the twelfth centuries, building small churches became a trend as rural settlements and monastic communities expanded across the countryside. During extensive surveys at Komana, near Tokat in Turkey, a number of churches were identified in rural contexts through scattered architectural fragments, especially brickwork typical of the Middle Byzantine period. These sites were later revisited for intensive collection in an attempt, firstly, to test whether identification of Middle Byzantine churches through qualitative data could be verified and, secondly, to improve our understanding of site types and their extent in the rural landscapes of Middle Byzantine Komana. In this article, the results of the intensive surveys will be discussed in the context of the new trends of the Middle Byzantine period.

Sr analyses from only known Scandinavian cremation cemetery in Britain illuminate early Viking journey with horse and dog across the North Sea.

The barrow cemetery at Heath Wood, Derbyshire, is the only known Viking cremation cemetery in the British Isles. It dates to the late ninth century and is associated with the over-wintering of the Viking Great Army at nearby Repton in AD 873-4. Only the cremated remains of three humans and of a few animals are still available for research. Using strontium content and isotope ratios of these three people and three animals-a horse, a dog and a possible pig-this paper investigates the individuals' residential origins. The results demonstrate that strontium isotope ratios of one of the adults and the non-adult are compatible with a local origin, while the other adult and all three animals are not. In conjunction with the archaeological context, the strontium isotope ratios indicate that these individuals most likely originated from the area of the Baltic Shield-and that they died soon after arrival in Britain. This discovery constitutes the first solid scientific evidence that Scandinavians crossed the North Sea with horses, dogs and other animals as early as the ninth century AD.

The Eucharist in Eleventh-Century Jerusalem: New Evidence on the Hagiopolite Communion Rite from Arabic Christian Sources

The article focuses on eucharistic practices in the Patriarchate of Jerusalem prior to Byzantinization. An analysis of a crucial testimony from Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida’s Adversus graecorum calumnias and a variety of Arabic Christian sources—the Martyrdom of Anthony Rawḥ, Ṣāliḥ ibn Saʿīd’s Marginal Notes, and Elias of Nisibis’s Book of Demonstration— confirm that by the eleventh century, the Melkite Church in Jerusalem had abandoned the ancient practice of receiving communion separately in two kinds (the consecrated Host in the hand and the Blood from the chalice) in favour of receiving communion simultaneously in both kinds. Yet, in contradistinction to the Constantinopolitan practice of mixing both in the chalice, in Jerusalem the pre-intincted consecrated Host was taken by the celebrant from the paten and placed directly into the communicant’s mouth. The evidence of the Martyrdom of Anthony Rawḥ further suggests that this practice arose in the late ninth or early tenth centuries.

ՀԱՏՎԵԼ Է ԻՐԱՆԻ ՀՅՈՒՍԻՍՈՒՄ. «ՄՈՒՀՐ» ՄԱԿԱԴՐՈՇՄՆԵՐ ԱՐԾԱԹԵ ԴՐԱՄՆԵՐԻ ՎՐԱ (ԱՆԳԼ.) / STRUCK IN THE NORTH OF IRAN: “MUHR” COUNTERMARKS ON SILVER COINS

This article introduced 15 variations of countermarks that followed the “muhr + mint name” formula. The meaning and history behind this formula were discussed, and it was shown that these countermarks indicate the city in which they were struck. So, muhr is equivalent to a countermark here, and “muhr-i x” is interpreted to mean “this is the countermark of the city of x (and this mint validates and recognizes this coin).” Interestingly, these countermarks show that the word muhr / مهر was still used in northern parts of Iran until the early tenth century AH to refer to coin minting. Muhr countermarks have been found on silver coins dating back to the time of Qara Qoyunlu Jahanshah, Aq Qoyunlu Yaʻqub and Rustam, and Safavid Ismaʻil I, and were produced in at least seven mints, including Daylamistan, Fuman, Gurjiyan, Lahijan, Qazwin, Rasht, and Tonekabon. All Muhr countermarks were struck in northern cities of Iran in the modern Gilan province and the west of the Mazandaran province. Through a study of Muhr countermarks, this work has identified the Gurjiyan mint. This finding challenges the belief held by Diler and Aghili that the Gurjiyan mint was located in Georgia. By combining numismatic and historical data, our work provided a more accurate estimation of the location of the Gurjiyan mint, which is believed to be in the vicinity of the border between Gilan and Mazandaran provinces. Lastly, Muhr countermarks were struck sometime in the late ninth or early tenth century AH, and it is known that Kiya’ids played a significant role in the east of Gilan during that time, actively engaging in local conflicts and various wars. Also, their footprints can be traced to all the seven mints discussed in this article. As Mirza ʻAli was a powerful local ruler of the Kar-Kiya dynasty who was able to conquer many important cities in the north of Iran and extend his rule to various regions, it is safe to assume that Muhr countermarks were struck during his reign, the time of which corresponds well with when the countermarks were stamped.

Nepantla in The Ninth Century: The Monastery of Redon and The Frankish-Breton Borderlands

Medieval scholars write often about frontiers, but infrequently about borderlands. In this essay I bring together medieval studies and borderland studies, specifically the work of Gloria Anzaldúa, to read anew the Gesta Sanctorum Rotonensium (Deeds of the Holy Men of Redon). This late ninth century text describes the establishment (in 832) and early history of the monastery of Redon, which took place within multiple, overlapping, and contested borders. By translating Anzaldúa’s nepantla into a ninth-century idiom, I read the Gesta as a borderlands text, written by and for residents of the Frankish-Breton borderlands. The fluidity of this borderlands region, I argue, fostered the conflict and becoming essential to nepantla. This enabled the monks to formulate a transgressive identity, and community, that worked around and between and sometimes against both secular and ecclesiastical power.

Religious Horror and Holy War in Viking Age Francia by Matthew Bryan Gillis

Reviewed by: Religious Horror and Holy War in Viking Age Francia by Matthew Bryan Gillis Simon Coupland Religious Horror and Holy War in Viking Age Francia. By Matthew Bryan Gillis. (Budapest: Trivent Publishing. 2021. Pp. 158. €37,00. ISBN: 9786156405197.) This short book analyzes a series of texts from the period 880–920 against the backdrop of the Viking invasions of Continental Europe. It is based on “horror theory,” the notion that some writers use exaggerated rhetoric to elicit horror in their audience in order to provoke a response from them. The author contends that this was a new development in the late ninth century whereby various Carolingian authors used monstrous imagery to intensify dramatically the negative portrayal of Scandinavians, and particularly wayward Franks, found in earlier texts. Gillis takes as his starting point a capitulary of Carloman II from 884, in which Frankish soldiers and magnates are denounced as “flesh-eating, blood-drinking robbers” (p. 35). He goes on to discuss contemporary hymns, sermons, and the poem The Wars of The City of Paris by Abbo of Saint-Germain and highlights similarly graphic imagery within them. This is not therefore a study of events but of the response to them. The book is not interested in establishing what the Frankish nobility or their troops were guilty of, or whether their behavior was any worse than that of their predecessors. Its focus is the way in which they were described. It is an interesting and thought-provoking claim, and although the Annals of St. Vaast are not one of the texts under discussion and are therefore only cited in passing, there is undoubtedly a greater horror rhetoric in them than in the parallel Annals of Fulda, St. Bertin, or Xanten. Sometimes the approach can lead to the unquestioning repetition of contemporary claims: that during the siege of Paris Abbot Ebolus “could skewer seven Danes with a single arrowshaft,” for instance (pp. 79–80). In particular, no consideration is given to the fact that poems (which many of the texts are) do not have the same aims as chronicles, so that the “sword and cudgels” said in a poem to have killed Fulco of Rheims in 900 almost certainly differ from the lances described by Flodoard because of the influence of Matt. 26:47 and 55 (pp. 50, 54). The book performs a valuable service by focusing on a series of texts which are by no means unknown but not often analyzed to this degree (with the possible exception of Abbo’s long poem). Lengthy quotations are helpfully reproduced, translated, and then rephrased, though it would have been good to see a greater critical engagement with both the texts themselves and the secondary literature relating to them. There is no shortage of this, as the extensive footnotes make plain: these alone make the book a very useful resource for those who would take further the ideas set out within its four chapters. In this context it is important not to misunderstand the book’s claims. Contrary to the blurb on the back cover, the author is careful not to claim that the religious horror imagery in these Carolingian texts definitely influenced, still less directly led to, the theology of the Crusades. There is for one thing little evidence that they were widely read: a complete text of Abbo’s poem survives in only one [End Page 795] manuscript, for example. Rather, Gillis shows how these texts foreshadow later medieval developments, and are worth studying in their own right. Moreover, they offer a valuable insight into the mentality of a Frankish populace and especially clergy traumatized by internal strife and Viking invasions. Simon Coupland Fryske Akademy, Leeuwarden Copyright © 2022 The Catholic University of America Press

Casting Cultural Identity in Early Viking-Age Northumbria

This paper discusses several categories of dress accessory which we suggest are linked to the arrival of the so-called Viking Great Army in Northumbria in the late ninth century. In particular, we argue that double-sided strap-ends and buckles arrived from Dublin as sword-belt fittings, alongside five-lobed hollow and cast sword pommels, and that this was closely followed by the introduction of new strap-end and pin types. Unlike the preceding Anglo-Saxon chip-carved strap-ends which were frequently fashioned by hand, the new Viking forms were cast, and the Northumbrian focus of their distribution reflects their production at Aldwark and York. This evidence reflects important changes in metalwork production as a result of the arrival of the Great Army, leading to long-lasting impact.

Last Meal for the Monks. Human Ecology, Food Prescriptions and Manipulation from a Sealed Archaeological Context. Case Study of San Vincenzo al Volturno Abbey, Molise, Southern Italy, Late Ninth Centuryad

Human communities belonging to different times and places often adopt a set of ideal rules, sometimes related to alimentary prescriptions. For different reasons, foods and/or specific resources are, in fact, prohibited to some social or religious groups, but sometimes these can elaborate special strategies to find a compromise between a high social status and the access to ‘prohibited’ resources. For past societies, a careful archaeological study, crossing data emerging from a multidisciplinary approach, written contemporary sources and the rules the community must follow, can depict what was an interplay of ideal rules and actual practice. The paper aims to study a significant population of the past, namely an early medieval monastic community, from a human ecology perspective, but also investigating food storage and preparation at the time, along with the practical respect of the Benedictine Rule about foods with its social implications. The site under study is San Vincenzo Abbey, one of the most important monastic power centres in Italy, which was destroyed in 881adby a Saracen raid followed by a destructive fire. This caused the collapse of some structures sealing the contexts of the kitchen's complex, thereby preserving many bioarchaelogical remains related to daily monastic life.

Angles on a Kingdom: East Anglian Identities from Bede to Ælfric by Joseph Grossi

Reviewed by: Angles on a Kingdom: East Anglian Identities from Bede to Ælfric by Joseph Grossi Timothy Graham Angles on a Kingdom: East Anglian Identities from Bede to Ælfric. By Joseph Grossi. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021. East Anglia—on a map of Britain, the prominent bulge to the northeast of London—has often defined itself as geographically and culturally distinct from the rest of England. Largely flat, it is in part cut off from the Midland region to its west by fenland. Bounded on the north and east by the Wash and the North Sea, it naturally looks to the European Continent, whence many influences have flowed into it. A kingdom of the East Angles, with its capital at Rendlesham (Suffolk), emerged in the course of the sixth century. In the late ninth, the kingdom was overthrown and the region settled and ruled by Danish Vikings. In the tenth, East Anglia was incorporated, though not without resistance, into the single kingdom of England that resulted from aggressive West Saxon political and military initiatives. Joseph Grossi's book examines the treatment of the region in texts produced between the 730s and the late tenth century by authors who, for the most part, did not hail from East Anglia. The book is formidably researched, engaging, and thoughtprovoking, though, in the end, some of its arguments fail to convince. The core of the book comprises five chapters that offer in-depth critical evaluations of key passages in some half-dozen texts. Chapters 1 and 2 ("Rædwald's Unhappy Realm: Bede's Mixed Views of East Anglian Imperium" and "Æthelthryth in a Virgin Wilderness") discuss the presentation of specific episodes of East Anglia's early history in the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Grossi argues that the kingdom was an outlier to Bede's largely triumphal narrative of England's Christian conversion: notoriously, East Anglia experimented with syncretism after its ruler Rædwald (d. ca. 625; the likely occupant of the Sutton Hoo ship burial) received baptism in Kent. Grossi's analysis focuses on Ecclesiastical History II.5, II.12, and II.15, where Rædwald is first named by Bede within the list of those rulers who held imperium over other English kings, then shamed by his wife into lending military support to King Edwin of Northumbria, and then persuaded by her to maintain Christian and pagan altars side by side in a shrine probably located at Rendlesham. Grossi argues persuasively that Rædwald's religious ambivalence reflects tensions between the new and the old religions that were ongoing under his Christian son and [End Page 224] successor Eorpwald (d. 627/8), Eorpwald's killer the pagan Ricberht (r. 627/8–630/1), and the Christian Sigeberht (acc. 630/1), who was forced out of monastic retirement to die defending his kingdom against the pagan Penda of Mercia. For Bede, Grossi contends, East Anglia's flirtation with syncretism was finally redeemed only several decades later, when Æthelthryth, herself the daughter of the East Anglian King Anna (d. 654), founded a house of nuns at Ely and, sixteen years after her death in 679, was discovered to be incorrupt when translated to a new tomb. Æthelthryth had maintained her chastity through two marriages, of which the second was to the Northumbrian King Ecgfrith, the founding patron of Bede's own monastery. In Grossi's interpretation, Bede's underlying goal in the two chapters that he dedicates to Ætheltryth (Ecclesiastical History IV. 19–20)—of which the second includes his remarkable abecedarian poem in her honor—is to make the case that only through her virginal and royal sanctity could East Anglia rescue itself from the religious equivocation into which Rædwald had plunged it. This is an arresting literary interpretation, though it risks underplaying Bede's dependence upon sources and his incorporation of Æthelthryth's story within the broader narrative of his fourth book, which seeks to highlight Christian accomplishment throughout England during the archiepiscopate of Theodore (669–90). Chapter 3, "Solace for a Client-King: Felix's Vita sancti Guthlaci," addresses the seeming anomaly that circa 740, an East Anglian king, Ælfwald, commissioned from an otherwise...

Ohthere’s Northern Voyage: A Close Reading and Practical Interpretation

This paper argues that several hitherto unexplained problems in Ohthere’s Old English account of his sailing voyage from northern Norway to the White Sea in the late ninth century can be solved by applying nautical experience, by critical reading based on philological considerations, and also by common sense. Answers are presented to the questions why Ohthere twice had to wait so that he could sail downwind, why he did not dare to sail beyond the settlements of the Beormas, how he got into contact with them, and how he could detect that the Beormas and the Terfinnas nearly spoke the same language. The most important point is a simple emendation of the reading order of clauses in a complex passage, which not only removes the impossible concept of Ohthere and his crew killing sixty big whales in two days: but it also leads to the conclusion that he was in the White Sea with a small crew on a vessel that could only be sailed, not rowed. The 1997 detection of rock carvings near the southern coast of the Kola Peninsula underpins Ohthere’s statement that he sailed there ‘for the walruses’; these petroglyphs thus also provide support for the emendation of the text. The old theory that Ohthere was actually an exile from Norway is revived by new linguistic arguments and leads to a reasoned proposal for the Northman’s meeting place with King Alfred.

Chronica Hispana saeculi VIII et IX ed. by Juan Gil

Reviewed by: Chronica Hispana saeculi VIII et IX ed. by Juan Gil Hélène Sirantoine Gil, Juan, ed., Chronica Hispana saeculi viii et ix (Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 65), Turnhout, Brepols, 2018; hardback; pp. 563; 4 colour illustrations; R.R.P. €340.00; ISBN 9782503574813. None of the texts gathered in this volume of the prestigious Brepols series ‘Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis’ needed a new edition. And with good reason, since the editor Juan Gil, a member of the Real Academia Española since 2011, is the same scholar to whom we already owe the excellent editions, published decades ago, of the four Latin narratives included in this issue dedicated to Hispanic chronicles of the eighth and ninth centuries. However, eadem sed aliter (as Gil notes in his prologue, p. 7), they now find themselves for the first time presented together, allowing readers to contrast two very distinct moments that punctuated what is otherwise regarded as a historiographical desert for the early Latino-Iberian Middle Ages. The mid-eighth century saw the composition in al-Andalus of two texts that Gil included in Volume i of his Corpus scriptorum Muzarabicorum (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1973). The Chronica Byzantia-Arabica [End Page 239] was crafted around 741–44 by an anonymous author (Christian or recently converted to Islam) on the basis of an oriental, probably Greek, text. It presents in parallel the history of Byzantium since the reign of Phocas (602–10) and that of the growing Islamic Empire up to the year 741. To this core were interpolated notices about the Hispanic Visigothic kingdom up to its conquest by Muslims, narrated in quite a detached manner. In that sense, the neutrality of this early chronicle strongly differs from the lamentations found in the Chronica Muzarabica, which a Christian dhimmi, probably a cleric, crafted soon after. This second composition also chronicles concomitantly the history of Byzantium, Islam, and Iberia since the early seventh century up to 754, the date of its completion. Its author, however, contemplated the settlement of Muslims in the peninsula with much more bitterness. Thus, the Chronica Muzarabica constitutes the first chronicle in which the idea of the ruin and loss of Christian Iberia, promised to a great future, emerged as a historiographical theme. This theme would be elaborated upon in the next two chronicles, which Gil had previously edited as Crónicas asturianas (Universidad de Oviedo, 1985), along with a Spanish translation by José Moralejo and an introductory essay by Juan Ruiz de la Peña. Crafted in the curial milieu of the expanding Asturian kingdom of the late ninth century, this historiographical revival must be linked to the propagandistic agenda surrounding the figure of Alfonso III (866–910), and marked the emergence of two intertwined ideological stances: that of ‘Reconquest’—an interpretation of the historical interaction between Asturias and al-Andalus as the progressive recovery by the Christians of a territory conceived as theirs—and neo-gothicism—a political project glorifying Asturian kings as the regenerated successors of their Visigothic ancestors. Conserved in two versions, both dependent on an archetype no longer extant, the Chronicle of Alfonso III offers biographies of the Visigothic, then Asturian kings, from Wamba (r. 672–80) to the end of the reign of Ordoño I, Alfonso III’s father, in 866. As for the Chronicle of Albelda, completed in 883, it compiles brief Hispanic geographical and chronographic miscellanies, followed by longer historiographical ordines dedicated to Roman, Visigothic, and finally Asturian rulers up to the ongoing reign of Alfonso III. It incorporates in its final paragraphs the Prophetic Chronicle, predicting the collapse of al-Andalus and restoration of the Visigothic kingdom by November 884. Novelties in the edition of the four chronicles are limited, although Gil notes that new readings resulted from the discoveries in their manuscript transmission made by Francisco Bautista. The three-hundred-page introduction, however, offers introductory chapters for each chronicle, scrupulously updated in light of the studies they have been the object of since Gil first edited them, including by himself. The choice of an uneven structure of presentation makes it perhaps the most challenging part of the book for the neophyte who, without...