Late Thirteenth Century Research Articles

Why Chinese Painting is History

In a postmodern world, the most important task in the study of Chinese painting history is the description of a different visual language and its special meaning. This cannot be accomplished without a means of dating early Chinese paintings, which demands knowledge of a history of mimetic representations in Chinese art. Only then can changes in visual language be traced and their meaning understood. The author suggests that through the late thirteenth century, human genius was the agency that brought creativity into a universe lacking a monotheistic Creator, but subsequently, individuality or selfhood was considered the agent of change.

The Late Medieval Pope Prophecies: The Genus nequam Group (review)

The Late Medieval Pope Prophecies focuses on nine manuscripts of the so-called Genus nequam group, the earliest of the post eventum fourteenth-century Vaticinia de summis pontificibus that ostensibly prophesied the [End Page 295] fortunes of the Church from the papacy of Nicholas III (1277-1280), through the brief pontificate of the much-admired Celestine V (1294) and the longer pontificate of the much-hated Boniface VIII (1294-1303), and into the rule of Benedict XI (1303-1304). Here edited for the first time, these texts are identified by the first words, "Genus nequam," of the first prophecy. They culminated in the "prophetic future," with the expectation of a final "angelic pope" to appear in the last days, reform the Church, and prepare it for the onslaught of Antichrist. Although in the past repeatedly associated with Joachim of Fiore—the great twelfth-century exegete whose fame attracted numerous spurious prophecies and much continuing scholarly interest—these texts probably originated in Italy, possibly in a Spiritual Franciscan milieu, in the late thirteenth century and may have been circulating as a group by 1304.

How to Recover the Holy Land: The Crusade Proposals of the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries

How to Recover the Holy Land: The Crusade Proposals of the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries

Architects, Advisers and Design at Edward I's Castles in Wales

The concentration of military architecture in north Wales from Flint in the east to Anglesey in the west is unsurpassed anywhere in Great Britain. Some of the castles are attributable to the wars fought between the princes of Wales and Edward I of England in 1277, 1282 and 1294/5. Others were built several decades earlier, by both the Welsh and the English. Of these, some were slighted and left in disrepair after Edward’s conquest, but the English took over and modified some others, notably Castell-y-Bere, Criccieth and Dolwyddelan. This article is primarily concerned not with them, but with the castles built de novo around Snowdonia by Edward after his various campaigns: Flint and Rhuddlan founded from 1277, Conway, Caernarfon and Harlech from 1283, and Beaumaris from 1295. Their location reflects the outcome of the wars, with Flint and Rhuddlan founded in the east after Llywelyn ap Gruffudd had retreated into Snowdonia; Conwy, Caernarfon and Harlech closer to Snowdon after Llywelyn’s defeat and death; and Beaumaris on Anglesey after the Welsh uprising of 1294/5. These castles are judged to be the apogee of military architecture in the late thirteenth century. Imposing and stylish, they represent all that was required in a fortified castle at that time: a visible, formidable presence that dominated its surroundings; defensive strength in walls, mural towers, and gatehouses equipped with multiple portcullises and murder holes; and domestic apartments suited to the administrative and judicial duties that the constable would dispense in peacetime.

Land Administration in Medieval Japan: Ito no shô in Chikuzen Province, 1131–1336

AbstractThe topic of land administration is central in historical studies of medieval Japan, since it provides insight into the social and economic development during the medieval period and highlights the lives of various social groups, courtiers, clerics, warriors and peasants. Based on the case of Ito no shô, an estate in northern Kyushu, this article analyses the establishment of a wide system of land administration under courtiers and central religious institutions during the twelfth century and its decline during the thirteenth century. The concurrent rise of local land managers and their social and economic activities during the thirteenth century are also explored. Finally, an assessment is made of the impact of the Mongol invasions of 1274 and 1281 on economic and social development during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, in particular the loss of influence of central authorities in regions remote from the capital and the formation of rural communities under the leadership of local warriors.

How to Recover the Holy Land: The Crusade Proposals of the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries. Antony Leopold

<i>How to Recover the Holy Land: The Crusade Proposals of the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries</i>. Antony Leopold

Mogli non ufficiali e figlie illegittime a Venezia nella prima eta moderna

Early modern Venice was ruled by an exclusive group of noble families, the patricians, most of which could trace their status back to the late thirteenth century. They seemed to be affected by a sort of collective paranoia about anything which might stain the purity of their collective heritage. It is no surprise, then, that their concubines, though often living with them in fairly stable relationships and bearing their illegitimate children, remained on the edge of patrician circles. They had no legal rights to their partner's property, could not bear the title of Nobil Donna, were not part of their partners' extended family, and might even be abandoned or married off to a non-noble husband. Why, then, were patricians so keen on promoting their illegitimate daughters, making sure they could pass all the tests set by the Avogaria de Comun and marry a patrician, thus becoming potential mothers of future members of the ruling elite? The sources for this investigation, the Prove di Nobilta, the requests on behalf of or by patricians' natural daughters to be allowed to marry patrician husbands and the testimonies given by witnesses called before the magistrates of the Avogaria di Comun provide the basis for this work, which is an attempt to explore social boundaries as they were expressed in terms of ambiguities as well as certainties.

How to recover the Holy Land. The crusade proposals of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. By Antony Leopold. Pp. x+231. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. £45. 0 7546 0120 X

<i>How to recover the Holy Land. The crusade proposals of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.</i> By Antony Leopold. Pp. x+231. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. £45. 0 7546 0120 X

The Heads of Religious Houses: England and Wales, II. 1216–1377 (review)

The Heads of Religious Houses-England and Wales, II. 1216-1377. Edited by David M. Smith and Vera C. M. London. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2001. Pp. lxviii, 730. $120.00.) The prosopography of the religious has been a key concern of English medieval historians during the last forty years. We now have biographical registers of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and of the members of the English cathedral priories in the southern province.1 Furthermore, detailed lists of the higher clergy of both the secular and monastic cathedrals in England and Wales have been published covering the period 1066 to 1541, in two series, the first from 1066 to 1300, and the second from 1300 to 1541. The latter period has been concluded; for the earlier period only Exeter, Coventry and Lichfield, and the Welsh dioceses, remain to be completed, and they will come out within the next two to three years.2 For the heads of religious houses a volume covering the early period, in this case defined as 940-1216, came out exactly thirty years ago, and a corrected edition in 2000.(3) These volumes all have some common ground. The present volume is a continuation to complete the project of the heads of religious houses up to 1377. It is the work mainly of David Smith with the assistance of Vera London, one of the editors of the first volume of The Heads, who now a nonagenarian-surpassing, incidentally, the years of Prior Henry of Eastry of Canterbury-continued work on the printed sources for a second volume as time allowed. The new lists had to take account of the numerous medieval titles that were coming out with further information on monks and particularly on nuns who were rapidly becoming a major area of research interest. There were the general works, such as Sally Thompson on women religious and Donald Logan on apostates, and studies of individual houses and editions of cartularies and so forth that included actual lists or materials for such lists. Furthermore, vast new original sources by no means all in print had to be searched. The sources for the period before the thirteenth century, mainly charters and chronicles, are less extensive and much more difficult and intractable to use and interpret as they were not primarily concerned with giving dates; this is especially the case with charters, which were not dated in England until the late thirteenth century. The new sources commencing in the thirteenth century, on the other hand, are official records of Crown and Church concerned with recording in detail the operations of the administration. Joining the early records of royal finance are royal administrative rolls and rolls of the courts: the patent and close rolls and the plea rolls. Special sources for ecclesiastical prosopography within the Chancery records are ecclesiastical petitions and significations of excommunication. Among the Exchequer records (the financial series), clerical subsidies are another useful source. These are the most relevant classes, but almost every class of record at this time is likely to reveal some prosopographical material for the clergy. The registers of the English bishops begin in the thirteenth century: they are an invaluable source at a time when reforming bishops were eager to supervise elections to abbeys and priories-the election being the key point for chronology. The earliest episcopal registers are those of Lincoln-an enormous diocese covering most of central England and seven counties between the Humber and the Thames. The registers of most of the other dioceses are from the fourteenth century. Until they become formalized, the information recorded can be very diverse. The bishop of Worcester wrote to the bishop of Exeter of the prior of Warwick as going from bad to worse, [he] has troubled us in many ways in the Court of Arches and elsewhere, about which more when we meet, and this letter is recorded in the episcopal register. Registers, too, came to include, besides general letters of this kind, details of visitations, ordinations and blessings, and wills, that provide information on abbots, abbesses, priors, and prioresses. …

Tradition and transformation: the pleasure garden in Piero de' Crescenzi's

Anyone who has taken even the most rudimentary survey course in the history of Western garden art will have been exposed to the medieval treatise on gardens and agriculture written by the landed Italian nobleman Piero de' Crescenzi in the late thirteenth century. Translated from the Latin into French, Italian and German by the fifteenth century, the Liber ruralium commodorum — which can be roughly translated as ‘The Book of Rural Benefits’ — consists of twelve books that encompass everything from soils and sowing to animal husbandry, and, most famously, a book on pleasure gardens.1 Book Eight, whose full title is ‘On making gardens and delightful things skillfully from trees, plants, and their fruits’, contains descriptions of three types of gardens — small herb gardens, gardens for people of moderate means, and gardens for kings and lords. It also has chapters devoted to the elements of which gardens were composed, the field, the grove, the orchard, the vineyard and the herb garden, as well as advice on how to create marvelous graftings and raise plants with unusual properties. Although the early manuscripts of Crescenzi's work were not illustrated, later editions were often adorned with rich illustrations depicting various aspects of rural life and, after the invention of the printing press, with sometimes crude and often comical woodcuts.2 These images, along with the descriptions of pleasure gardens, have formed the basis for the appeal of the work for garden historians, forever in search of representations of lost gardens, be they visual or verbal.

A Thousand and More Women: The Register of Women for the Confraternity of Misericordia Maggiore in Bergamo, 1265–1339

In the last forty years, interest in the social composition of confraternities, their welfare activities, and their place in politics and life has produced numerous books and articles dealing with confraternities throughout northern and central Italy.1 One important body of sources is found in matriculation lists, which, even if difficult to analyze, are essential for a better understanding of the development of confraternities as well as for the study of population. These lists throw light on the still not wellstudied role of women in confraternities, the subject of the present article. Giles Gerard Meersseman and Cinzio Violante debated the importance of women in confraternities in 1960.1 More recent research has shown that women were enrolled in confraternities in Umbria and in Bergamo.3 But the register of women members of the confraternity of Misericordia Maggiore in Bergamo provides an opportunity to study a substantial number of women participants in confraternity life over a period from 1265 to 1339, when sources of this kind are rare. The Misericordia Maggiore was founded in Bergamo in 1265 under the auspices of the bishop, by the Dominican Pinamonte da Brembate, who composed its rule.4 From its beginning, it admitted women on the same basis as men. Men and women participated equally in all the activities of the confraternity both spiritual and temporal.5 But, at some point in the fourteenth century, there seems to have been a change in policy forbidding visitation by women of those imprisoned.6 Men were required to undergo a one-year period of probation, but this was not the case for women.7 While there is ample evidence that women played a significant role in both and welfare activities-witness such a figure as St. Elizabeth-this source provides an unparalleled opportunity for study of their social position as well as their influence. The Misericordia was by no means alone among confraternities in Bergamo at this time, but it was the largest. Its size-there were more than seventeen hundred women members-was a reflection of its role in affairs. It was born out of the strife between the popolo and the milites8 These factions, led by important families, the Rivola and Bonghi (popolo) and the Suardi and Colleoni (milites), dominated the political and life of the city in the second half of the century. Each furnished a bishop in the late thirteenth century?9 The pars populi dominated municipal government and, after 1289, was supported by the Societa delle armi di S. Maria Maggiore.' The Suardi were allied to the Visconti Lords of Milan, who succeeded in subjecting Bergamo to their rule in 1315. Female Membership in the Period 1265-1339 In the register of women in the Misericordia, members are listed by neighborhoods. There are twenty-one urban and two rural lists. Within each list, names are inscribed chronologically by different copyists in three separate periods: hands A and B and related writers for the period 1265-1274; hand C for 1274-1296; hand D and related writers, 1297-1339. The evidence in the accompanying table shows that the confraternity grew rapidly in its first thirty years. (See Appendix 1.) There are about one thousand entries for this period. The notary, Bergamino de Marchisis, who was the principal scribe during the second period, 1272-1296, wrote almost five hundred names, but the number of entries fell sharply in the fourteenth century. Among the reasons for this decline was a political crisis that broke out in 1296 and undermined the civic religious identity that had led to the founding of the Misericordia.11 The confraternity changed, gradually moving away from its role as a neighborhood welfare group to more centralized institutional organization.12 Moreover, after 1339 there no longer seems to have been a need for a register. This change led to the preservation of this list of women members without change. The registration of men followed a different and probably more meticulous approach. …

Reviews of Books:How to Recover the Holy Land: The Crusade Proposals of the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries Antony Leopold

Reviews of Books:How to Recover the Holy Land: The Crusade Proposals of the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries Antony Leopold

Translations and Transformations: Thai Texts for Children in the USA

Very few Thai-language works have been published in the US. While English-language works by Thai American authors are limited to cookbooks of Thai cuisine and the occasional book on Thai kick-boxing, Thai-language works are limited for the most part to newspapers (for example, the Los Angeles-based Saereechai and Madhichon), magazines (including Siam Media and Inter Thai), and newsletters produced by religious or social organizations (including Wat Thai in Los Angeles). A few texts on Buddhism include Pra Prayudh Payutto's Buddhadhamma: Natural Laws and Values for Life by G.A. Olson and published by the State University of New York as part of its series in Buddhist Studies, and A. Sujata's Beginning to See. Yet very few Thai books have been published in the US because of the technological difficulties presented by a non-Roman alphabet and by the limitations of a small, widely-dispersed immigrant group. Adapted in the late thirteenth century from a Khmer script derived from the Indian Devanagari script, Thai uses an alphabet of 44 consonants, 32 vowels, four tone marks, and various other symbols for punctuation and numbers. Even with widespread personal computing technology, Thai remains a difficult script to render, and software packages designed for the Thai language, although produced in the United States, are typically available only in Thailand. Indeed, software packages alone are insufficient without a Thai-character keyboard. The technological obstacles to printing Thai, however, do not provide a sufficient explanation for the small number of Thai-language works produced in the US. Ideographic languages such as Chinese, for example, are potentially more difficult to produce than a phonetic language such as Thai, and Chinese-language texts were produced in the United States as early as the 1870s. An obvious explanation for the relative abundance of Chinese-language texts as compared to Thai-language texts is the smaller number of Thai-speakers in the United States. The 1990 census counted about 90,000 Thai immigrants in the US, 1.3% of the Asian American population, or .05% of the total population. In contrast, the 1990 census found 1.6 million Chinese-speaking immigrants, almost twenty times larger than the Thai group. Spanish-speaking immigrants comprise an even greater portion of the US population at 11.1%, or 29.7 million people (1990 Census, US Census Bureau). German Americans represented a similarly large immigrant group, with over five million German Americans in the US in 1914. Moreover, Thai immigrants are not concentrated in one central geographic location, but are spread throughout the US. The Thai-American population is also very small compared to the population of Thailand, estimated at 53 million. Although books such as Loy Kratong (1981) and I am a Thai (1983) that describe different Thai cultural traditions are published in Thailand, they are written to be easily accessible to both Thai-and American-born children. Works of American origin, like A Guide to Learning the Thai Language (1988), (1) tend to focus more on language instruction but also include cultural elements. Yet regardless of their Asian or American origins, Thai children's texts offer evidence for an alternative theory explaining the small size of the body of Thai American literature. What becomes apparent in these texts is an ambivalent relationship to language, one in which language can and does exist independently of social identity or culture. Unlike early German American works, which insisted upon a learning of the German language, and unlike Spanish-language works, which explicitly state their goals of teaching Spanish, Thai-language works lack a clear conviction that teaching Thai is essential to maintaining a Thai identity. Instead, Thai-language children's literature exhibits a strikingly unusual resignation to the difficulties of teaching Thai, and also a tacit understanding that teaching the Thai language is subordinate to a larger goal of preserving Thai culture. …

Time and the Testator, 1370–1540

There were many ways in which the late medieval testator could acknowledge time. Behind each testator lay a lifetime of memories and experiences on which he or she drew, recalling the names of those ‘they had fared the better for’, those they wished to remember and by whom they wished to be remembered. Their present time was of limited duration, for at will making they had to assemble their thoughts and their intentions, make decisions and appoint stewards, as they prepared for their time ahead; but as they spent present time arranging the past, so they spent present time laying plans for the future. Some testators had more to bequeath, more time to spare: others had less to leave, less time to plan. Were they aware of time? How did they control the future? In an intriguing essay, A. G. Rigg asserts that ‘one of the greatest revolutions in man’s perception of the world around him was caused by the invention, sometime in the late thirteenth century, of the mechanical weight-driven clock.’ It is the intention of this paper to see how men’s (and women’s) perception of time in the late Middle Ages was reflected in their wills, the most personal papers left by ordinary men and women of the period.

Saint AEpelberht of East Anglia in the South English Legendary

Saint Æþelberht of East Anglia in the South English Legendary Michael S. Nagy The compendious and rather eclectic collection of versified medieval saints' lives commonly known as the South English Legendary provides the modern scholar with a wide range of difficulties. The most obvious of these difficulties resides in the fact that the collection as a whole remains partially unedited. This state of editorial incompletion is particularly conspicuous in the largely ignored lives of Anglo-Saxon saints located in what Manfred Görlach calls the "E" redaction of the SEL manuscripts,1 for having been considered as later additional legends, these lives have until very recently been excluded from membership in the core of the South English Legendary. As Paul Acker asserts, however, because the SEL originated in Worcester and the "E" redaction manuscripts come from that area, the Anglo-Saxon saints' lives "may well have been part of the original SEL from its inception," and not later appendages or afterthoughts.2 A related problem that one encounters in approaching the SEL is that there is no "reliable indication as to . . . the author's intention, or [to] the use these texts actually served when they were current in the 14th Century."3 This lack of knowledge is, it seems, an effect of the difficulty outlined above, for in the absence of a completely edited body of work, one can barely perceive an individual life or group of lives within the whole of the SEL with any accuracy. It is for this reason that the current study, which focuses upon the Life of Saint Æþelberht of East Anglia, seeks not to make generalizations about the South English Legendary as a whole, but to add another edited text to its catalogue and to discuss the social, political, and religious contexts in which this particular life was likely used.4 That the previously unedited texts of the South English Legendary should indeed be edited is not an issue with which many medieval scholars have concerned themselves. Regrettably, this lack of interest is not surprising, for despite the fact that the SEL was one of the most popular vernacular texts in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (if the number of its manuscripts and its wide geographic distribution are any indication), we [End Page 159] know very little about it. The author "(or the different contributors) did not name his sources, nor did he explicitly refer to the scope of his collection."5 In addition, with the exception of the Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, no other medieval text quotes or refers to the SEL. Nevertheless, it can hardly be denied that vernacular saints' lives were an influential part of the medieval literary landscape. Caxton's Golden Legend, a translation of the Legenda aurea, was a bestseller from its initial publication in 1483 through the mid-1520s. Similarly, Chaucer's Second Nun's Tale is a translation of the life of Saint Cecelia, and Gower's Confessio Amantis retells the legend of Pope Sylvester's conversion of Constantine. Given the culturally prominent position that hagiography held in the Middle Ages, each augmentation of our limited knowledge is useful. The edition accompanying this essay will add another published text to the record. A logical place to begin one's treatment of a saint's life is to examine its likely sources. Discussing the existing earlier Latin versions from which the SEL Life of Saint Æþelberht might have been derived poses no small problem, for, as Görlach maintains, although "[t]he SEL text keeps to the main tradition [of the legend as] . . . represented by the three major Latin Lives"-that of Osbert of Stoke by Clare in Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina 2627;6 that of Giraldus Cambrensis in London, British Library MS Cotton Vitellius E.vii, Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina 2626; and the anonymous one in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 3087-"it cannot be affiliated with any particular Latin source."8 This is not a particularly profound revelation, however, for the oldest of the three Latin Lives, the Corpus Christi, is the source for Osbert's version, which is, in turn, the source for Giraldus's.9 Thus, in failing to correspond with one of...

Institutions and Impersonal Exchange: From Communal to Individual Responsibility

This paper utilizes historical evidence and game theory to examine institutions that fostered intercommunity impersonal exchange during the late medieval period. It presents the community responsibility system that functioned throughout Europe and supported impersonal exchange despite the lack of impartial legal enforcement provided by a third party. At its center was the use of intracommunity contract enforcement institutions to provide the enforcement required for inter-community impersonal exchange. Atransition toward individual legal responsibility during the late thirteenth century reflects the system's contributions to its own decline. The processes that it fostered reduced its economic efficiency and (intra-community) political viability.

‘Lesyng of Tyme’: Perceptions of Idleness and Usury in Late Medieval England

Then came Sloth, all be-slobbered, with two slimy eyes.‘I must sit down to be shriven,’ quoth he, ‘or else I shall fall asleep.I can’t stand or prop myself up, or kneel without a hassock.If I were put to bed, no amount of bell-ringing would get me upuntil I was ready for dinner – well, not unless I had to relieve myselfThis is Langland’s description of Sloth in Piers Plowman. Originally a monastic vice, meaning boredom with the cell, sloth, or accidia, came to be applied to spiritual duties generally. By the time Langland wrote, it had also come to mean physical laziness or idleness, that is ‘lesyng’ or misspending of time. This paper investigates some ideas about idleness and its consequences as they emerge from the spiritual and didactic literature of late medieval England. They are linked with ideas about the most detested idlers, the usurers, the money-lenders. Usurers violated time in a double sense, for not only did they misspend it, but they also made a profit from selling it. Equally vilified as idle were the clergy. The poet John Gower sourly observed that ‘Slouthe kepeth the librarie’ of the corrupt English clergy. They will feature here only incidentally, although it is perhaps worth pointing out that some ecclesiastics profited from lending money. In the late thirteenth century a council held at Exeter had to decree the suspension from both office and benefice of usurious clergy. In the mid-fourteenth century no less a person than Archbishop Melton of York profited from lending money.

In Pursuit of the Just Wage: A Comparison of Reformation and Counter-Reformation Economic Thought

Students of economic thought have long associated with the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the spread of attitudes in Europe more tolerant of market processes. New economic attitudes appear in a variety of literary forms during the fifteenth century (McGovern 1970). As compared to the pronouncements of a number of Patristic figures, relatively greater tolerance of commerce is expressed by medieval theologians. In fact, recent scholarly efforts suggest that by the late thirteenth century, suspicions of economic activity remained, but Scholastic thinkers increasingly recognized the importance of an impersonal market process in everyday life and sought to find ways to understand it in light of their concern with natural order (Kaye 1998a). While condemning avarice, Scholastic writers such as San Antonino of Florence and San Bernadino of Sienna explicitly endorsed trade as legitimate when practiced for the common good and when associated with modest profit (Origo 1962; De Roover 1967). Recognition of this movement in thought, especially as it applied the concerns of economic justice to trade in commodities, is explicit in the literature of preclassical economics. But until recently, less attention has been paid to more specific developments in scholastic thinking on justice in the labor market.

How to Recover the Holy Land: The Crusade Proposals of the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries (review)

By the third quarter of the thirteenth century it was becoming increasingly apparent that Jerusalem, lost by the crusaders in 1187 and reoccupied for just a few years after 1229, was not going to be won back easily. Indeed, the continued threat to the Christian presence in the Levant and the loss of territory, especially after 1260, convinced most western observers that only a major military effort could re-establish Christian rule in the Holy Land. It was against this background that a number of authors drew up proposals for how this might be done. Many of these texts have long been in print and have been considered by previous writers such as Atiya and Schein. Dr. Leopold's study, however, makes a significant advance. He rightly stresses that these texts do not form a homogeneous genre but vary considerably depending on the circumstances in which they were written. Several authors were responding to requests for advice from the popes, notably Nicholas IV and Clement V; others were writing unsolicited advice for particular rulers who were known to have been interested in planning a crusade. Only rarely were the treatises themselves written as crusade propaganda. The authors were men of differing backgrounds and had contrasting degrees of information and experience of conditions in the East. Accordingly some were more practical than others. Opinions varied on preparations and strategy, with some writers more attuned to the problems to finance and recruitment, while comparatively few seem to have given much thought to how their conquests should be governed and defended following a successful campaign. After the 1330's and the outbreak of the Hundred Years' War, the prospects for a major expedition receded and the proposals dwindled correspondingly, although it appears that the view of the late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century writers were still of interest to the fifteenth-century dukes of Burgundy.

The struggle over Canterbury sede vacante jurisdiction in the late thirteenth century

The struggle over Canterbury sede vacante jurisdiction in the late thirteenth century