Late Tenth Research Articles

Recovering the histories of women religious in England in the central Middle Ages: Wilton Abbey and Goscelin of Saint-Bertin

ABSTRACTBuilding upon the efforts made by scholars over the past 20 years to enrich our understanding of the vibrancy and sophistication of the literary cultures fostered within English communities of women religious during the central Middle Ages, this article shows that these women kept their communities' histories and preserved their saints' cults through their own writing. The evidence for this is uncovered through comparative analysis of the two extant versions of the post-mortem miracles of the late Anglo-Saxon saint Edith of Wilton (c.961–c.984): the Vita et translatio Edithe, composed c.1080 by the Flemish hagiographer Goscelin of Saint-Bertin (c.1040–d. after 1107), and the early fifteenth-century Middle English Wilton Chronicle. This analysis reveals that the writer of the Chronicle depended on a collection of Edith's and other Wilton saints' miracles that was maintained by their consorors throughout the late tenth and eleventh centuries, independently of Goscelin's account.

The Earliest Ecclesiastical Connections of the Territory Between the Vistula and Wieprz Rivers (Poland)

The purpose of this study is to find the answer to the question of ecclesiastical administrative affiliation regarding the area between the Vistula and Wieprz Rivers. This relatively narrow aspect of the research was the subject of academic controversy over the possible influence of the organization of Methodian Christianity, not only on the designated area, but in general on Polish soil. The vast majority of authors – even if some of them allow for a wide geographic range of Methodian influence – firmly opposes the idea of the presence of any structure of the Methodian rite in the lands north of the Carpathian Mountains, regarding this idea as unsubstantiated. The form of territorial organization of the Church involving the land between the Vistula and Wieprz Rivers could only be in the Latin bishopric of Poznan, which was undoubtedly a permanent diocesan structure that depended directly on the Holy See from its earliest period. Theoretically, if the area between the Vistula and the Wieprz Rivers had been included in the territory that on the Czechs in the second half of the tenth century, it would have also belonged to the Diocese of Prague and the Metropolis of Mainz, or, a bit later, to the Diocese of Olomouc. The formal nature of that membership would have probably involved a lack of durable local structures of Christianity, which also had to be a characteristic of the first decades of their dependence on the Diocese of Poznan. It seems that it was only the entrance of the lands between the Vistula and Wieprz Rivers into an administrative relationship to the Bishops of Cracow and the Metropolitans of Gniezno in the late tenth and eleventh centuries, which proved to be a stable association that would be strengthened in material and spiritual significance in the coming decades and centuries.

The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity by Peter Brown (review)

Reviewed by: The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity by Peter Brown Robin Darling Young, Ian Wood, Susan Wessel, Bernard McGinn, J. Patout Burns, and Peter Brown The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity. By Peter Brown. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). Pp. xix, 262. $24.95. ISBN 978-0-674-96758-8. Introduction by Robin Darling Young (The Catholic University of America) The writings of the earliest followers of Jesus contain vivid, if terse, descriptions of an as-yet unseen world to come; their successors in the still-small Christian movement of the early-second century, spreading westward through the Roman world, treasured earlier, Jewish descriptions of the afterlife and continued to elaborate new ideas that were often received through dreams and visions. They frequently held strict views about divine rewards (for the righteous, especially martyrs) and punishments (for the great many wicked). Here Peter Brown shows, in five chapters, how Christian teachings in the Latin-speaking West changed over the course of the centuries—from the mid-second to the late tenth; from Hermas and Tertullian to Julian, bishop of Toledo. Writing in 688, Julian compiled a Prognosticon Futuri Saeculi as a florilegium (Brown calls it a “manual,” p. 4) of earlier teachers’ apparently concordant opinions about the soul’s future after death. But although Julian thought that Christian teachers of his day agreed with the patristic authors, his book inadvertently preserves evidence of deep change—from the early opinion that only some would be saved to the contemporary view that many could be saved with the help of prayers and offerings. This shift in authoritative opinion resulted, Brown wants to argue, from the early idea that the souls of the dead benefited from the prayers of Christians (as did Dinocrates, the brother of St. Perpetua). Yet as the Church grew, it included more and more Christians who were neither thoroughly holy nor completely wicked: the ordinary. Surely the prayers of [End Page 879] righteous Christians would avail for them? Almsgiving began to be directed their way. Increasingly, some of the massive amounts of wealth that came to the Church as it grew and became a licit religion, both as a result of imperial largesse and the donations of wealthy Christians, could be put to use supporting and encouraging prayers for the dead. Purging the sin that impeded a happy afterlife became easier, too, once the practice of confession had begun to spread outside the Irish-influenced monasteries of Gaul, and sins could be ameliorated in advance of death. Thus from the first chapter, in which Brown discusses the solidarity of early Roman Christians and their intercession for their dead such as in the San Sebastiano catacomb, the book proceeds to describe the adoption of an increasingly detailed idea that the imperiled soul could be ransomed. In the second and third chapters, Brown returns to his persistent object of study, St. Augustine, to watch how Hippo’s bishop—pastor of souls as well as controversialist—judiciously treats questions of the future of the dead, including his strongly Christian, but not perfect, mother. He also contrasts Augustine’s conviction that the Church was a corpus permixtum and his related appreciation of almsgiving with Pelagius’s strict view and consequent insistence on the obligation to Christian perfection, through ascetic renunciation. Chapter 4 turns to Gaul, where in the growing monastic influence of the fifth century Christians both gained a more detailed view of the afterlife and benefited from an increased use of penance. Finally, in the fifth chapter, Brown reaches the hortatory preaching of Gregory, bishop of Tours (d. 594), and his detection of the signs of God’s immanent judgment in the state of the poor. But as the epilogue describes, the future of the Christian view of the soul’s ransom developed significantly in the next century—from the influence of Columbanus and the Celts in France that fostered numerous monastic foundations as a place of intercession for their wealthy founders to the numerous visions of heaven and hell as told by pious monks or nuns—visions that confirmed...

Rune Carvers and Local Mobility

This article examines the local travels of some late Viking period rune carvers in Sweden. The local mobility of rune carvers known by name is analysed on the basis of the distribution of their runic monuments. In order to distinguish between rune carvers of the unornamented and unsigned rune-stones of the late tenth / early eleventh century, the carving technique has been analysed by 3D-scanning and statistical analysis. When compared to earlier studies of mobility in low-technological societies, results indicate that most rune carvers could reach most of their rune-stones within 1-2 days of fast travel or within 3-4 days at a more leisurely speed. It is discussed whether this also may be indicative of the range of the households and their alliances. There may be an indication that carvers travel longer distances in the early phase of the period in question.

Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein. The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70–1492.

The exhaustive research of S. D. Goitein, which eventuated in his remarkable five-volume A Mediterranean Society (1967–1993), has proven conclusively that during the first half of the Middle Ages Jews in the sphere of Islam, who constituted the overwhelming majority of worldwide Jewry, were thoroughly diversified in their economic pursuits, with the sole exception of involvement in agriculture. As the vitalization of northern Europe began during the late tenth and eleventh centuries, Jews made their way into this rapidly developing region. There they encountered considerable resistance, which resulted in constriction of their economic outlets. As a result, northern European Jews became heavily concentrated in business and banking, and this early concentration continued to a significant extent in European Jewish life down into modernity, thus creating the misleading imagery of Jews as exclusively business people over the ages. For the Jews of the medieval and modern Christian West, the concentration in business has raised an intriguing question. Was it the result—at least in part—of the emphasis on literacy in Jewish religious tradition? Since the centerpiece of Jewish liturgy involves the regular public reading of the Bible, which listeners were expected to follow closely, and since Jewish oral law is supposed to be studied as well, literacy was an important value in medieval and modern Jewish religious life. Researchers have recently suggested that this religious valorization of literacy may have played a role in Jewish business success during the medieval and modern centuries in addition to fitting Jews for achievement in modern higher education.

The Community of St. Cuthbert in the Late Tenth Century: The Chester-le-Street Additions to Durham Cathedral Library A.IV.19 by Karen Louise Jolly (review)

The Community of St. Cuthbert in the Late Tenth Century: The Chester-le-Street Additions to Durham Cathedral Library A.IV.19 by Karen Louise Jolly (review)

The Community of St. Cuthbert in the Late Tenth Century: The Chester-le-Street Additions to Durham Cathedral Library A.IV.19 by Karen Louise Jolly (review)

The Community of St. Cuthbert in the Late Tenth Century: The Chester-le-Street Additions to Durham Cathedral Library A.IV.19 by Karen Louise Jolly (review)

The Ordinance concerning the Dunsæte and the Anglo-Welsh frontier in the late tenth and eleventh centuries

AbstractThe Ordinance concerning the Dunsæte sets out regulations for dealings between the English and Welsh in some part of the frontier between these two peoples. The text is widely assumed to be from the second quarter of the tenth century, but this article argues for a late-tenth- or eleventh-century date. The Ordinance envisages trade and prescribes procedures to settle disputes: it thus reveals cordial contacts between those dwelling along the frontier. This offers an alternative perspective to the focus on kings and conflicts found in many modern accounts of relations between the English and Welsh in the early medieval period.

From the Near East to the Far West: An Oriental Ceramic Fragment Discovered in a Residence of the Counts of Angoulême (Charente, France), Late Tenth–Early Eleventh Century

A fritware fragment with a celadon bluish-green was found in western France in a late tenth–early eleventh century context during excavations of the castle at Andone. This object is obviously an imitation of the celadon wares imported into the Near East at this time from China. The fritware method of ceramic production was a recent invention in the Near East in the eleventh century and represented a technique very different from that used to produce the high temperature, long firing porcelains and stoneware of China. The surface glaze made from lead-based glass opacified with tin shows an early mastery of this glazing technique used in glass making of the period. However, this technique is employed here in a non-conventional manner, compared to the normal Near Eastern glazed fritware production of the period. The fritware compositions of the Andone sample can be compared most closely to those of Qal’at Ja’bar (Syria). Other objects found at the site, as well as documented travels, indicate the Count of Angoulême's relationship with the Near East.

Inside and Outside the Pleasure Scene In Poetry about Locations by al-Sarī al-Raffā' al-Mawsilī

AbstractAl-Sarī al-Raffā' al-Mawsilī was an Arabic poet known for his descriptive poetry who lived and worked in the tenth century in Iraq and Syria. Al-Sarī al-Raffā' played an important role in the expansion and development of short descriptive poetry in Arabic in the late ninth and tenth centuries. This genre of poetry uses elaborate rhetoric to provide a nuanced commentary on the role of material things, bodies (both human and non-human), and locations in social life. Short descriptive poetry is part of an expansion of the cultural sphere, which includes yet extends beyond the political sphere at this time. An important feature of short descriptive poetry is an interest in the bodily pleasures enjoyed in the context of informal sociability. Descriptions of locations in which pleasure gatherings take place situate the interiority of the pleasure scene in counterpoint to the world beyond the pleasure scene, which includes politics, the military, morality, social hierarchy, and religion. In addition, nature serves as a transition space between the interiority of the pleasure scene and the cultural sphere of the outside world. Al-Sarī's descriptions of mills, bath houses, and rooms in which birds have nested illustrate this counterpoint between the drinking party and the outside world, and between the time out for pleasure and the flow of time and events in the outside world.

TheRituale:the Evolution of a New Liturgical Book

Odo of Sully, Bishop of Paris (1200-8), decreed in his statutes that each parish priest within his diocese should have a book called amanuale, which should contain theordoof service for extreme unction, the catechism, baptism, and everyday things. His prescription is the earliest mention in the episcopal legislation that a parish priest should have one particular book dedicated to the liturgy for all the services associated with pastoral care. But codices concerned with the sacerdotal rites for thecura anitnarumhave a history which goes back to the late ninth and tenth centuries. These earlyritualiawere often combined with the monastic collectar, as in the mid-tenth-centuryDurham Collectar. There are also some examples from the late tenth and eleventh centuries ofritualiamade for the secular clergy. Odo of Sully was thus providing his powerful support to an existing practice rather than instituting a new form of service book. This paper investigates further the context in which these early examples of ‘parish’ rituals were compiled, beginning with the Carolingian background.

A Possible Mention of David in the Late Tenth Century Bce, and Deity Dod as Dead as the Dodo?

Following the recent controversies over the Tel Dan Stela, this paper presents a minimal interpretation of the main part of its text with resulting implications, and like wise of relevant passages on the Moabite Stone. A much earlier attestation of the name of David may very likely be found in a place name in the topographical list of Shoshenq I of Egypt, c. 925 BCE, carved only half a century after David's death. The supposed deity Dod appears to be a wholly specious modem invention.

A Development in Nomenclature on the Seals of the Byzantine Provincial Aristocracy in the Late Tenth Century

REB 52 1994 France p. 187-211 P. Stephenson, A Development in Nomenclature on the Seals of the Byzantine Provincial Aristocracy in the Late Tenth Century. — The article examines the appearance and sudden proliferation of family names on Byzantine lead seals and places this innovation in a political context. It traces the delayed adoption of the practice on seals of the civilian bureaucracy and the imperial seal. It suggests that this is illustrative of attitudes prevailing among provincial aristocrats and at the imperial court. It emphasises the benefits of closer identification and therefore security accorded by the innovation.

The Idea of Innocent Martyrdom in Late Tenth- and Eleventh-century English Hagiology

Kings and princes who were classed as ‘innocent martyrs’ or ‘passion-sufferers’ because they were thought to have been murdered in Christlike circumstances were known in many parts of Europe in the Middle Ages. This paper is about six Anglo-Saxon saints of this type, who are also distinguished by their youth. All of them were thought to have been boys or teenage males when they were martyred. To date, work on these saints has concentrated on questions concerning the origins of their cults, and their relationship to the institution of kingship. The purpose of this paper, however, is to draw attention to the ways in which certain religious communities redefined their sanctity in the late tenth and eleventh century, and to make some tentative suggestions about the possible uses to which these cults were put in this milieu.

Chronicles and Coins as Evidence for Levels of Tribute and Taxation in Late Tenth- and Early Eleventh-Century England

Chronicles and Coins as Evidence for Levels of Tribute and Taxation in Late Tenth- and Early Eleventh-Century England

The building of the church of St Sophia in Kiev

The subject of this study is the much-debated question of when and under what circumstances the cathedral of St Sophia in Kiev was built. After an analysis of the primary sources and a critical review of the arguments in favour of a date of construction between 1017 and 1031, the author substantiates the view that the entire church, including towers and external ambulatories, was built and decorated between 1037 and 1046, and not, as some think, over a period of nearly a century. Because of the complexity of the sources, the construction of St Sophia is seen against the background of the cultural, political and ecclesiastical history of Kievan Rus' in the late tenth and eleventh centuries, including the building of the cathedrals of Cernigov and Novgorod, and the church of the Tithe and the katholikon of the Caves monastery in Kiev. The study sheds new light on the early history of Kievan stone architecture which, as some reasonably assert, was closely linked with the architectural school of Constantinople. The construction of the capella regia, known as the church of the Tithe in the 990s, by Greek masters, who followed the Porphyrogenite princess Anna to Kiev, was an isolated episode which was followed by a hiatus of forty years. The extensive building programme begun by Jaroslav the Wise after 1036, which continued after his death in 1054, was completed by Byzantine masters with local help, permitting the formation of native cadres of masons, artists and other specialists. It was the project of Faroslav which laid the groundwork for an indigenous stone architecture in Rus'.

The palaeography of the Parker manuscript of theChronicle, laws and Sedulius, and historiography at Winchester in the late ninth and tenth centuries

The Parker manuscript, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 173, is generally recognized to be the earliest surviving copy of the compilation known as theAnglo-Saxon Chronicle. It cannot be the original since it contains various scribal errors including dislocation in the chronology, yet its physical characteristics reflect all the major divisions in the text recognized by modern scholars: it seems to reflect the nature and sometimes even the format of the various exemplars from which it was copied. The purpose of this article is to draw attention to these and other palaeographical features and to survey some of the questions arising from them.

Anglo-Saxon Art after Alfred

The study of Anglo-Saxon painting usually focuses upon its two greatest periods: the late seventh and eighth centuries when monastic culture first took root and blossomed in England, and the late tenth and eleventh centuries when the so-called Winchester style flourished in a climate of renewed political stability and monastic reform. Much less attention has been devoted to the intervening period. No doubt this is partially due to the scarcity of extant illuminated manuscripts made during the ninth century. This lack of surviving material probably reflects the impoverishment of artistic production in the difficult times of the Scandinavian attacks. But illuminated manuscripts do begin to appear from the end of the century when King Alfred (871–899) re-established a measure of security, and a steady trickle of manuscript production continued until the great renewal of the second half of the tenth century. The position of these late ninth- and early tenth-century works,1 falling between two major periods of Anglo-Saxon art, raises a number of interesting questions concerning their iconographic and stylistic sources, their patronage, and their place in the broader English development. These questions are the subject of this paper.

Anglo-Saxon Art after Alfred

The study of Anglo-Saxon painting usually focuses upon its two greatest periods: the late seventh and eighth centuries when monastic culture first took root and blossomed in England, and the late tenth and eleventh centuries when the so-called Winchester style flourished in a climate of renewed political stability and monastic reform. Much less attention has been devoted to the intervening period. No doubt this is partially due to the scarcity of extant illuminated manuscripts made during the ninth century. This lack of surviving material probably reflects the impoverishment of artistic production in the difficult times of the Scandinavian attacks. But illuminated manuscripts do begin to appear from the end of the century when King Alfred (871–899) re-established a measure of security, and a steady trickle of manuscript production continued until the great renewal of the second half of the tenth century. The position of these late ninth- and early tenth-century works,1 falling between two major periods of Anglo-Saxon art, raises a number of interesting questions concerning their iconographic and stylistic sources, their patronage, and their place in the broader English development. These questions are the subject of this paper.

How Large was the Anglo-Saxon Currency?

A ny attempt to assess, for the purposes of economic history, the English coinage of the eighth to eleventh centuries quickly runs into the difficulty of knowing how large a volume of currency was in use. Was the phase ofprosperity and growth in the time of Offa followed by a set-back under Ecgbeorht? Under Aethelred I of Wessex, was most of the coinage struck in the name of Burgred, and if so, why? Was the institution of mints by Edward the Elder in his new burks accompanied by an increase in the total output of currency? On what scale was coinage issued by the Vikings at York? by the Danes in East Anglia? Were there any significant changes in the volume of the currency from one to the next of the sexennial, later triennial, renovationes monetae in the late tenth and eleventh centuries, and, in particular, were there changes that could be correlated with the adjustments in the weight-standard of the penny that were made either upwards or downwards at almost each of the renovationes, or with changes in policy such as the decision in 99i to pay Danegeld on a national scale? What proportion of the country's stock of bullion was involved in warding off the threats of the Northmen? The possibility of an exact attribution, as to date and mint-place, of almost any Anglo-Saxon coin 1 makes these and many similar questions tantalizing; but no effort has yet been made to establish, even in the broadest possible terms, the scale of the currency, and no answer can be given even to the general question whether there was a secular tendency for the stock of silver in southern England to increase during the ninth to eleventh centuries because of a favourable balance of trade.2 Coins of Aethelred II are, of course, very much more plentiful today than