Medieval Rulers Research Articles

The image of Tygyn in Yakut culture: problems of preservation and maintenance

The object of this research is the image of Tygyn in Yakut culture. The subject of this research is the factors of preservation and maintenance of the image of the medieval ruler of Yakut people – Tygyn in modern culture of Yakutia. The authors examine the characteristic of the folklore and historical image of Tygyn. It is underlined that certain archetypes continue to play an important role in Yakut culture, for example, in folklore, literature, musical art, theater it is the archetype of the ruler reelected in the image of Tygyn. The article analyzes reference to this image in modern culture on the example of Yakut cinematography. The following conclusions were made: the authors believe, that modern Yakut culture still preserves archetype of the ruler reflected in the image of Tygyn, as it forms collective spirit of solidarity of Yakut people united around the image of a powerful forefather, prominent ruler and consolidator of Yakut nation. Its active manifestation in different forms of art, for example, in recently released film “Tygyn Darkhan”, alongside its stability, is based on the fact that people of art of Yakutia often reconstruct the archetypal forms of culture in their works, believing that the preserved ethnic traditions is the immense resource for further development of art.

BANARAS: A PARALLEL SPACE OF THE COSMIC UNIVERSE AND ITS CONTRIBUTION TO ARCHITECTURE

From its prominent position on the river Ganges , Banaras has borne testimony to a flourishing civilization and the many socio-political turmoil associated with a thriving territory from the ancient kingdoms of Aryans with its mention in Ramayana to the combats of medieval rulers of Mauryan and Gupta dynasty and the never ceasing instability during the dominance of Muslim and British regime.[1] The historical unrest has vanished and the city with its inhabitants of “grin-and-bear-it” attitude endured every phase of this turmoil and adapted to it and commemorated every such change in their stories and culture. Every paradigm shift gave Banaras its own unique Art and Culture which it (Banaras) has assimilated and made it its very own signature be it Food, Fabric, Jewellery, Lifestyle, Mode of communication, Weapons, Architecture, Mythology, Tales, Culture, Cult , Art and much more The citys divine image , its elaborate traditional rituals , its prodigious display of the hand-in-hand existence of art and the mundane activities of life. All give it a peculiar feel, though the city has tried to keep pace with time, it has modernized or commercialised but what has stayed with time is what satiates the quench of a mystic or an explorer of Art and Culture . This write up here is an attempt to bring to words the connection between what the oldest civilizations or cults have left to enrich the Art & culture or other-way-round , how by exploring the existing we are able to get a glimpse into the glorious past that has passed and enriched India .This manuscript is a study and construal of Varanasi from the perspective of one who is close enough to the hindu tradition to see its religious significance and also close enough to art , design and academics to know the understanding that Arts and Varanasi might pose. The journey towards the finalization of this script started with mapping the city and searching for the temples mentioned in various texts and my work is based on two primary sources : the city itself with its multitude of temples , its seasons of pilgrimage , the Akharas , voluminous literature on Banaras and its pandas and lay interpreters.

The House of the Dusper Family in the Kraljeva Sutjeska near Kakanj (Bosnia and Herzegovina)

Bosnia and Herzegovina is in many ways a special, complex and controversial geographical, geopolitical and social space. As a state, it is home to „three constituent peoples“ and „other“ citizens. As such, it had a tumultuous history, with magnificent examples of coexistence, humanity and respect for its peoples, cultures and religions, as well as examples of expressing cruelty to one another.
 Kraljeva Sutjeska is a relatively small town near Kakanj whose historical importance for the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Its location in central Bosnia, in the gentle plain that emerges from the rocky strait („sutjeska“) of the Trstivnica river, was the ideal natural place for the development of the city („suburb“) of the medieval rulers of Bosnia, that is, the royal residence (Banski dvor-Curia bani) of bans/kings from the Kotromanić house. In addition, Bobovac is located northeast (3.5 km by air), as a fortified royal city.
 Franciscan monastery in Kraljeva Sutjeska with the church of st. John the Baptist (erected in the early 14th century) and the mosque of Sultan Mehmed II El Fatih (erected in 1463) are the two most significant public sites and cultural-historical monuments that, in architectural terms, follow the patterns of two great civilizations - Christianity and Islam.
 The house of the croatian Dusper family in Kraljeva Sutjeska is a private residential building which, as such, is not the result of religious-cultural canons but an example of the genesis of architectural content, which at the same time, in its development, receives many different influences: building-architectural, religious, cultural, artistic ... The observer from the side (and especially by getting acquainted with the development of her spatial plan, interior decoration and individual elements of the equipment), depending on his culture, religious affiliation (...), will see a croatian-catholic house in the Dusper family house, and others - bosnian house-chardaklia or oriental type town house in Bosnia and Herzegovina. For this reason, the Dusper family house in Kraljeva Sutjeska is an invaluable architectural and cultural content, both for bosnian croats and for Bosnia and Herzegovina (which best represents its cultural complexity) and for architecture and culture on a global scale.

Medieval violence, the making of law and the historical present

This article considers how 12th- and 13th-century law codes constructed their relationship to the justice of the past. These codes did not copy past laws unthinkingly, but evaluated them, engaging in a discussion about the appropriate measure of punishment and violence. Medieval legal writing (from Frederick II’s Constitutions of Melfi to Andrew Horne’s Mirror of Justices, across both Roman law and canon law compilations) recognised the duty of the present to weigh up the utility of old laws. Contrary to common historiographical assumptions, medieval jurists had a subtle sense of the history and development of law, going as far as to suggest that history could be understood as defined by distinct periods of punishment; different levels of violence were appropriate to different eras. The article concludes by using Walter Benjamin’s Zur Kritik der Gewalt to evaluate how critiques of past legal violence could be used by medieval rulers as a means of demonstrating the righteousness of their own regime.

Tretman duševno poremećenih osoba u srednjovekovnoj Srbiji

The treatment of mental health patients in Serbia in the Middle ages was the same as in other European countries. Medicine of that time was based on science, the use of magic rituals and witchcraft was banned. Doctors from Serbia, Byzantium and the national doctors had been educated in Salerno and Montpellier, the most developed centers of medicine. They took the exam in front of the government Medical testimony. The development of medicine was followed in the Hodoloski code which was considered the oldest record of folk medicine and the Hilandar medical code which represented a collection of medieval scientific European medicine and Serbian medicine culture (XII-XV). The first Serbian hospital was established in Hilandar in 1199. The founder was Saint Sava who wrote the rules about the work of the hospital. Actually, it was the practice for all medical facilities that were opened later. We know about mental diseases and healing in Serbia from Lives of Saints in monasteries Zica (from 1207) and Decani (1327) and from the biography of Medieval ruler (king) Stephen of Decani. The illustrations of healing some patients with mental diseases were shown on frescoes and in the lives of saints. In Medieval Serbia, there were 49 foreign doctors working (15 in XIV, 30 in XV and 4 in XVI century) and until Turkish conquest Serbia took a very important place in Medieval Europe. Objective of this paper is to show where psychiatric patients were treated in Medieval Serbia, the way they were treated, who treated them, where the hospitals were and what kind of treatment wereapplied.

Virgins on the Throne: The Chaste Marriage of Emperor Henry II and Empress Cunigunde in Medieval Narrative Traditions

Individual cases of sexual abstinence ascribed to medieval rulers have been discussed by scholars from various standpoints and understood as a peculiar dynastic policy, a deliberate “monastification” of rulership, or as the result of problems with an individual’s reproductive system. This article carries forward the research on the interrelation between regality and sexual abstinence through the example of Henry II (973-1024), emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and his spouse Cunigunde (c.980-1033), both canonised saints, who were believed to live in an innocent matrimony. The development of the image of the royal marriage is traced first in their contemporary self-representations, then in post-mortem historiographic and polemical narratives, and finally in their hagiographical traditions until c.1250, revealing multiple, often contradictory, understandings of the royal sexual abstinence: as the sign of a succession crisis, as moral impurity, or as the highest saintly virtue. Contrary to the idea that Henry II was imagined as a “virgin king” from his canonisation in 1146 onwards, this article suggests that until the beginning of the thirteenth century the sexual abstinence of Henry II was speculated about though never explicitly stated, even in his hagiographic tradition. Only with the papal acknowledgment of Cunigunde as a holy virgin in 1200 did an image of the perpetually chaste marriage gradually come into being, in which Cunigunde was given equal agency and her husband Henry was defined as a male virgin. The analysis of elaborated hagiographic programs, devised by members of the Bamberg ecclesiastical community to praise Henry and Cunigunde, reveals the forms in which the sanctity, regality, and sexual behaviour of Henry and Cunigunde were conceptualized, negotiated, and represented, while at the same time the hagiographic traditions were adapted to contemporary concepts of chastity and abstinence.

Charlemagne's peaches: a case of early medieval European ecological adaptation

What happened to the many ‘Mediterranean’ fruits the Romans brought to north‐west Europe when the empire that supported their dissemination ended? Charlemagne's capitulary De villis called for the cultivation of various fruit trees, including peach (Prunus persica). That fruit hits the sweet spot between plants that were rare in early medieval northern Francia, like date palm, and those that were commonplace, like plum. Thus, the peach is an excellent proxy for Charlemagne's imperial and ecological aspirations. Using both written and archaeobotanical evidence for peaches in Francia, this article analyses how adapting exotic plants to northern climates served the purposes of early medieval rulers.

Rolf Grosse & Michel Sot, eds. Charlemagne: les temps, les espaces, les hommes: construction et déconstruction d’un règne. Collection Haut Moyen Âge 34. Turnhout: Brepols, 2018, 605 pp., b/w + color illus.

Charlemagne remains a dominant figure in European historiography and memory, one of the few early medieval rulers whose name is known outside academic circles. In March of 2014 the German Historical Institute in Paris held a colloquium to mark the 1,200th anniversary of his death, and the colloquium’s proceedings have now been published. The volume contains 27 essays (twelve in French, nine in English, and six in German, with summaries in English for each essay at the end of the book) distributed across six parts. After giving brief summaries of each essay, I will provide an overall assessment of the book.

Medieval Rulers as Reflection of the Biblical Kings in Abraham Ibn Ezra's Commentaries on the Bible

This article deals with the influence of the Islamic culture in medieval times on the Biblical commentaries of Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra. According to Ibn Ezra the reality in the Muslim region, which includes the Bible lands preserves the ancient ways of life. The current study focuses his comparison between Arabs rulers and ancient kings' customs.

Concerning the acts of bequeathing in Serbian medieval law

In this article we aimed to present the idea of bequeathing in the old Serbian law. Serbs, just as the other Slavic tribes, had a particular way of life, and customs that included the phenomenon of zadruga, extended family which was formed by several families who shared property. In that reality, it was not possible to divide estate, nor to dispose it individually. Therefore, writing a will or establishing some likewise division by the words of last will orally, probably was something that was not done, or at least was limited only to chattel. However, researching on the oldest mentions of Serbs, one can notice that its medieval rulers, and sometimes noblemen, had the right to determine their successors and to bequeath to them a certain part of their estate. That was usually done by a father - a king, to his sons. That is the model that is present in the history of early medieval era in various Slavic tribes. On the other side, will as a private legal deed is for the first time mentioned in the legal code of XIII century, Zakonopravilo of Saint Sabba, following the Byzantine legal provisions. Wills must have been used if not earlier than the XIII century, then certainly in this time, around the second decade of the XIII century. Nevertheless, nature of the Serbian Medieval wills (or the other acts of bequeathing, such as gifts ad pias causas) might be a subject of deeper analysis where they could be compared to the other medieval Slavic wills, originated from the scope of medieval Croatia, Russia, Great Moravia, Bohemia, and Poland. We tried to list the oldest known Serbian wills and make some remarks in relation to their common characteristics.

Paul Webster. King John and Religion .

If one were asked to compile a list of religiously active medieval rulers, King John of England would probably be one of the last monarchs to come to mind. Both medieval chroniclers such as Matthew Paris and modern historians such as William Stubbs have attacked John for being irreligious. Yet the plentiful records of John’s reign provide copious evidence for the king’s participation in religious activities, as Paul Webster amply demonstrates in his narrowly focused but important book King John and Religion. Earlier scholars, particularly those with a relatively favorable view of King John, have noted this evidence in passing and have tended to speak in terms of conventional piety. This is a useful phrase if one means to imply that the evidence neither supports claims that John was entirely irreligious nor indicates the kind of deep religiosity that John’s son, Henry III, appears to have embraced. Webster, however, prefers the phrase “personal religion” since, as he rightly argues, the kind of evidence that survives reveals John’s actions, not his inner thoughts (1–2). Instead of arguing that John was a pious king, Webster maintains that John carried out the religious activities medieval people expected kings to perform. He also contends that John was aware of the need for kings to create an aura of religiousness and took steps to do so. Webster then asks why John failed so dismally in this crucial task.

Heirs and Spares: Elite Fathers and Their Sons in the Literary Sources of Umayyad Iberia

ABSTRACTIn the medieval Islamic world, elite men were the benchmark of hegemonic masculinity and social power. A presumption of masculine authority within the household shaped the way early medieval rulers were described by chroniclers, and how medieval fathers related to their sons. The formal and informal ways in which they interacted with lower status men – whether their clients, their courtiers, or their sons – were hedged about with the symbolic language of gender. The article focuses on the ways in which certain Andalusī literary sources talk about relations of fathers and their sons with the ruling Umayyad family, to offer an additional dimension to our picture of how the dynasty conceptualised and legitimised its power.

Review: Saint Louis

Saint Louis Conciergerie, Paris (organized by the Centre des Monuments Nationaux) 8 October 2014–11 January, 2015 Even among the colorful panoply of great medieval rulers, very few can match the legacy and regal charisma of Louis IX (1226–70). Admired and imitated by his contemporaries and successors in France and the courts of Europe, Louis seemed to epitomize the quintessential but often unattainable qualities of a Christian monarch in the High Middle Ages: he was a courtly and just ruler who consolidated his kingdom, a chivalric crusader, a devout and sophisticated patron, and, ultimately, a saint. The irresistible glamour of Louis IX’s reign not only attached itself to the king but also permeated the entire court and especially its seat, the city of Paris and the Ile-de-France. The dazzling quality of art produced in France in this period and the shift in architectural tastes to a particularly refined Gothic style known as Rayonnant inspired Robert Branner (editor of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians from 1964 to 1966) to introduce the term “court style” as a way of linking artistic innovations to royal projects, thereby unleashing decades of art historical debate.1 In Louis IX, art history has found an enlightened patron who not only defined thirteenth-century France but, through the dissemination of the Rayonnant style, also determined the course of European medieval architecture in the following century. It is thus fitting that the …

Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England, by Katherine J. Lewis

Whereas English political life in the later middle ages was once mainly interpreted in terms of the pursuit of patronage and self-interest, a number of historians, including Christine Carpenter, Michael Hicks, Edward Powell and John F. Watts, have more recently emphasised the importance of values and principles in motivating political involvement and alignment. Yet, despite this revival of interest in the role of ideas in medieval political life, there has been relatively little discussion of either kingship as an office or the lives of individual kings in terms of contemporary ideas about gender. The fact that men are often seen as the unmarked case, as an ‘unexamined default’, means that while gender issues have loomed large in the study of medieval queenship, only now are historians beginning to respond to Mark Ormrod’s 2004 call for a ‘gendered reading’ of kings and kingship. Christopher Fletcher’s study of Richard II was pioneering in this regard (rev. ante, cxxv [2010], 686–8) and it is now followed by Katherine J. Lewis’s important account of the reigns of Henry V and Henry VI, which looks at the kings’ success or failure in terms of their ability to perform and project the mature masculinity expected of medieval rulers.

Religious and moral context of social protection of medieval space

People have preserved and respected space since ancient times. The reasons were manifold: socio- economic, legal, religious and moral. Serbian medieval rulers tended to largely provide with riches, but also to protect estates of monasteries, as evidenced by surviving charters or their parts called appeal and anathema. When resolving property disputes (including the boundaries of a certain area), in addition to the representatives of state authorities, the witnesses who took the most frightful oaths went out in the field in order to determine the accurate boundaries. In order not to disturb the economic life, throughout the Middle Ages Serbian rulers used to issue charters to people of Dubrovnik (and to the other foreign merchants) that ensured undisturbed transit across Serbian territory. Serbian medieval rulers usually invoked: God, Virgin Mary, a patron saint of a monastery, Last Judgment, the Cross, First Council of Nicaea and Judah. They inspired awe in people and contributed to the protection of the space.

Medieval rulers in their own right: case studies of Eleanor of Scotland and Mary of Gueldres

Scotland is usually portrayed as being a country that had weak and terrible queens, like Margaret Tudor and Mary Queen of Scots. Saint Margaret is the only queen who is constantly portrayed positively. However, that is not because of her actions as queen consort, but because she was a devote Christian. Scotland is also portrayed for not producing well known or strong female rulers. This essay will examine two contemporary female rulers from the mid-fifteenth century, one from Scotland, Eleanor of Scotland, and one imported to Scotland, Mary of Gueldres. Using these case studies it will be demonstrated that Scotland did produce strong female rulers along with acquiring them.

Herrscherbeinamen in der mittelalterlichen Geschichtsschreibung

Surnames of rulers in medieval historiography. Attempt to classify on the basis of name-giving and use. – Historical surnames and nicknames of medieval rulers are very popular due to their ability to distinguish individuals, and their awareness pointedly. However, the historical research criticized their lack of explanatory power for the actual personality of the signified. The paper, therefore, proposes to turn our gaze away from the conformity of the epithets with the character and deeds of historical figures on the surnamegiving and -using practices including the motives of the authors and users. To this end, a typology is created.

Crops of Medieval India- innovations in Economic Area

The medieval Indian period , the phase of Indian rule is known for its economic infrastructure and innovations in the area of agricultural produce. The crops of medieval India formed the major part of the economic setup of the India in those times. The crops included the food crops, nonfood crops, fruits, etc. The crops production formed the basis of the export of India and also the increase in the financial assessment. India being an agricultural country since time immemorial the economy naturally depended on the crop production. The medieval rulers in india tried to improve the quality of the crops produce and for this the rulers improved the irrigation facilities. Indian soil in those times were rich in manures and little bit of manuring and tilling enhanced the crop produce. The Mughal rulers tried to improve the means of irrigation, supplying of improved seeds, solving cattle problems, and facilities of transport to increase the crop productivity. The crop production led to the strong establishment of sound land revenue system and thus made the medieval rulers established a strong army and large empires. During the medieval rule in India , our country was introduced to new crops which led to the enhancement of exports and thus it affected the medieval exchequer.

Peaceful Kings: Peace, Power, and the Early Medieval Political Imagination, by Paul J. E. Kershaw

Peaceful Kings: Peace, Power, and the Early Medieval Political Imagination, by Paul J. E. Kershaw. Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press, 2011. xviii, 313 pp. $120.00 US (cloth). In Wim Wenders' haunting film, Der Himmel uber Berlin (1987), an old man who personifies the ancient Greek poet Homer ruminates on the topic of peace in human history, while leafing through a copy of August Sander's book of photographs, Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts, in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. He laments that no poet has ever succeeded in singing an epic of peace: Was ist denn am Frieden dass es nicht auf die Dauer begeistert und dass sich von ihm kaum zu erzahlen lasst? [What is wrong with peace that its inspiration does not endure and that it is almost untellable?] This sentiment is particularly appropriate for the early Middle Ages. Paul Kershaw's book is the first comprehensive study of the theme of peace in the imagination of the court advisors, imperial biographers, and royal panegyrists who formulated and promoted the ideals of Christian rulership in the period between the end of the western Roman Empire in the late fifth century and the waning of Carolingian authority at the close of the ninth century. This study argues forcefully that the theme of peaceful kingship was pervasive in political discourse throughout the early Middle Ages. Moreover, it demonstrates clearly that this discourse drew upon a centuries-old lexicon of literary models from Roman antiquity and from the Hebrew scriptures, most notably the examples provided by King David and his son Solomon. But political ideals do not always translate into political practice. In this respect, Kershaw's well-researched book falls short of the mark that it sets for itself. This study catalogues many references to peace as res regia business of the king) in this period, but there is no attempt to reconcile this prevalent political ideal with the equally abundant evidence that the primary political activity of most early medieval rulers was warfare. Looming behind this study is a larger, unanswered question: given the persistence of peace as an attribute of idealized kingship in the early Middle Ages, why did its inspiration not endure as a tenable political reality? The scope of Kershaw's study is admirably broad. The introduction lays out the premise that many early medieval thinkers linked peace with power and explored this connection in many different genres, from epic poetry to historical annals to peace treaties, for a wide range of personal and political purposes. Chapter One looks for definitions of peace in early medieval sources (the Latin pax and its many vernacular equivalents) and ranges widely from Northumbria, where Bede defined the peace of Edwin's reign in terms of freedom from robbery, rape, or violence [and] security to travel at will (p. 31), to Rome and Constantinople, where the notion of the pax Romana endured in monuments like the Ara Pacis and the Church of Hagia Eirene, and in the prayers preserved in the Old Gelasian Mass. Ultimately, it was biblical models like Hezekiah, Solomon, and Christ to whom early medieval authors would turn when they described the peaceful qualities of their kings. Chapter Two surveys the use of peace in the political vocabularies of the barbarian rulers of Vandal North Africa, Gibichung Burgundy, Ostrogothic Italy, Visigothic Spain, and Merovingian Francia, with a digression on the notions of peace found in the works of Pope Gregory the Great. …

Studying Medieval Rulers and their Subjects: Central Europe and Beyond, by János M. Bak, ed. Balázs Nagy and Gábor Klaniczay

Studying Medieval Rulers and their Subjects: Central Europe and Beyond, by János M. Bak, ed. Balázs Nagy and Gábor Klaniczay