Mid-fourteenth Century Research Articles

Doorways to the Divine: Vijayanagara Reservoirs and Rural Devotional Landscapes

The area around the city of Vijayanagara saw a large-scale expansion in irrigation works between the mid-fourteenth and late sixteenth centuries. Of these, reservoirs or ‘tanks’ played an important role in extending farming into areas beyond the reach of perennial irrigation. Reservoirs were linked to Hindu temples, not only through networks of patronage, but also physically, in aspects of form and decoration. Indeed, reservoirs can be thought of as temples themselves, as well as statements of power and authority, functional objects, and tangible connections to larger social and conceptual worlds. This paper presents reservoirs in four ways: as agricultural features, as (political) monuments, as oceans, and as temples. This juxtaposition is made possible only because of the intersection of textual representation and material form, different modes of representation which may be critically evaluated and compared. Reservoirs formed one part of a complex rural landscape of devotion that included field shrines, hero stones, and even archaeological sites of earlier eras. Through the long-term use-lives of reservoirs, we can see the ways in which rural devotion and practice both responded to the specifics of local histories and, over time, reshaped regional landscapes.

Boccaccio's Poetic Anthropology: Allegories of History in theGenealogie deorum gentilium libri

When Giovanni Boccaccio undertook to compile the myths of Greco-Roman antiquity in the mid-fourteenth century, he was working within a long tradition of medieval commentaries on Ovid's mythological works (principally the Metamorphoses and the Fasti) and mythographical compendia, such as Alberic of London's De deis gentium. His Genealogie deorum gentilium libri, on which he worked until the final years of his life, also falls within the traditions of biblical exegesis and of philosophical commentary on texts, such as Boethius's De consolatione philosophiae and Virgil's Aeneid. The complex and eclectic nature of Boccaccio's learning, however, along with the antimodern organizational structure of the treatise, has led to the underestimation of its importance in the history of medieval and Renaissance approaches to ancient myth. As Charles Osgood's partial translation of the work demonstrates, the focus of critics has been limited to the final two books of the treatise, in which Boccaccio defends both poetry and his work from detractors. The fourteenth and fifteenth books of the Genealogie have been by far the most long-lived sections of the work. The straightforward defense of poetry through recourse to the topos of the poeta theologus places the work in a historical continuum that leads from Albertino Mussato and Francesco Petrarca to Coluccio Salutati, Marsilio Ficino, and Angelo Poliziano, not to mention the poetic theorists of the English Renaissance, such as Sir Philip Sidney.

The Poetics of Waste: Medieval English Ecocriticism

Waste has been a recognizable socioeconomic problem since at least the late Middle Ages. In England, because of land and labor shortages, wars, famines, and especially changes in legal and penitential discourses, waste became, by the mid–fourteenth century, a critical concept. But a fully fleshed-out vocabulary for thinking through the meaning and consequences of the practice of committing waste does not yet exist. This essay argues that two fourteenth-century poems,Wynnere and WastoureandPiers Plowman, address the lack of such a thinking through, tackling the problem of waste in all its vicissitudes. They deploy the formal resources of poetic language—from personification to episodic structure—to draw together the various ideas of waste from other discourses and to raise medieval readers' consciousnesses about the seriousness of waste's consequences. The essay calls their use of formal resources in creating this critical discourse a “poetics of waste.”

Insights into the Production of Opus Anglicanum: An Object Analysis of Two Panels from the Pillar Orphreys on the Whalley Abbey Altar Frontal

It has long been noted that there was a decline in the standards of English embroidery from the mid-fourteenth century onwards. A combination of the Black Death, wars, overseas competition and economic stresses have all been recognised as possible reasons for the loss in quality of these embroideries. This article analyses the production techniques employed by artists/designers and embroiderers during the declining period of Opus Anglicanum, a style of embroidery typical of the late medieval period, which was almost always professional work. The discussion focuses on two lower panels of the pillar orphreys on the Whalley Abbey altar frontal, which date from around 1400 and belong to Towneley Hall Museum and Art Gallery, Burnley, UK. The article suggests that similarities in the design of the two panels provide a glimpse into the time-saving solutions developed by embroiderers to produce Opus Anglicanum as its manufacturing quality deteriorated.

Contestazione e pietà. Per una stratigrafia di un monumento della diaspora beghina (Assisi, Chiesa Nuova, 9)

The essay offers an analysis of the manuscript Assisi, Biblioteca della Chiesa Nuova, 9, which transmits a rich collection of normative and devotional Franciscan texts, all written in Provençal. Evidence from the material analysis of the volume combined with that of the texts in the anthology suggests a localization of the manuscript in a community of Beguines in Languedoc, in the region of Narbonne and Beziers. Their presence is attested in Italy at that time (mid fourteenth century). The book appears to be a model-exemplar of the «pauperista» codex, reflecting the thought of Pierre de Jean Olivi. The article sketches the history of the community of friars in the Carceri above Assisi, where the manuscript was probably produced.

La fittizia associazione del Liber Razielis in sette libri ad Alfonso X il Saggio e una nuova determinazione delle fasi redazionali del trattato, della loro datazione e dell’identità dei compilatori coinvolti

This article revisits the question of the compilation date of the Liber Razielis in seven books. Until now, research has dated the compilation using evidence contained within the appendix in which an author, who identifies himself as Johannes Clericus, maintains that the work had been assembled under the patronage of Alphonso X, king of Castile (1221-1284). Through analysis of the manuscripts and secondary sources, it has been possible to demonstrate that the rôle attributed to Alphonso X in the creation of the Liber Razielis is historically untenable and a fabrication. The same analysis has established that, by the mid-fourteenth century, the Liber Razielis in seven books had probably not yet been compiled or, at any rate, was just beginning to circulate. In addition, the article proposes that the appendix composed by Johannes Clericus can, in fact, be dated roughly between 1350 and 1376.

Newly discovered portraits of rulers and the dating of the oldest frescoes in Lipljan

On the fa?ade of the church of the Presentation of the Virgin, in Lipljan, the damaged depictions of two rulers were discovered under a more recent layer of fresco mortar. The depictions can be identified as portraits of the Serbian king and the emperor Stefan Dusan (1331-1355) and his wife Jelena. That provides the basis for the more reliable dating of the original wall painting in the interior of the church. For their part, the stylistic characteristics of that expressionistic painting suggest that the original Lipljan frescoes came into being around the mid-fourteenth century. Probably, they were executed by the same workshop that did the frescoes in the Church of St. Peter near Unjemir in Metohia, not very far from Lipljan.

Kaštel Sv. Mihovila na otoku Ugljanu

The fort of St Michael is situated on the prominent hill of the island of Ugljan off the coast of Zadar. This position is strategically important because it enables control of navigation in the entire Zadar archipelago, and this was the fort’s main role throughout history, especially during the period of conflict between Zadar and Venice. The fort owes its name to the Benedictine monastery which stood within the fort until the fifteenth century. The exact time of the founding of the monastery, or the construction of the fort, are not known. The fort is first mentioned in the Venetian chronicles of 1345 and 1346, when it was conquered during the siege of Zadar. After partial destruction, the fort underwent an intense renovation campaign in the second half of the fourteenth century. Late fourteenthcentury documents provide evidence about the building works on the main tower and houses for the crew which were carried out by the local builders: the Bilšić brothers and Nikola Arbusjanić. Fortification walls with five regularly-spaced towers form an irregular polygonal ground plan which was adapted to the terrain of the hill. The fort walls have been preserved to the height of the walkway with partially preserved castellations. The best-preserved parts are two south-western square towers with Gothic vaults composed of pointed arches, and the south-eastern portion of the walls with a walled-up entrance, defended by a massive main tower. The church of St Michael which stood at the centre of the fort was completely destroyed in bombing raids during the Second World War. Its modest remains, together with extant drawings and descriptions, show a small single-cell structure with a semicircular apse and indications of Gothic style evident in the pointed arches of the portal and windows. Its construction has been dated to the mid-fourteenth century. The fort has been well-preserved to date and represents the largest medieval fort on the Zadar islands.

Armenian Canon Lists VII: The Poetic List of Aṙak‘el of Siwnik‘ (d. 1409)

The present study constitutes the seventh member of a series of articles1 in which I publish Armenian lists of biblical books. This article contains, principally, the poetic list attributed to Aṙak‘el of Siwnik‘, a well-known medieval Armenian poet, savant, and scholar who lived from the mid-fourteenth century until 1409. Aṙak‘el was the nephew of the famed theologian and systematician Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i (1344?–1409), whose own canon list was published earlier in this series.2 I am basing my text of Aṙak‘el's list on that published in the work of Ter-Movsesian on the Armenian Bible, which I present in a somewhat emended form and with an English translation below. Ter-Movsesian apparently published Aṙak‘el's text from a manuscript that in his day was in the possession of the distinguished scholar Grigor Xalat‘eanc‘.3 The fate of this manuscript is unknown; it is not to be identified with any of the copies published here. Ter-Movsesian was also aware of another copy then in Eǰmiacin bearing the number 599. This Miscellany, copied in 1660 in an unknown place, is now preserved as number 702 in the Maštoc‘ Matenadaran in Erevan. The text appears on 186r–189v.4

The role of interpreters in the conquest and acculturation of the Canary Archipelago

From the mid-fourteenth century to the end of the fifteenth, the kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula used the Canary Archipelago as a testing ground for their later conquests and colonization in the Americas. Numerous interpreters, among them many women, enabled communication between Europeans, indigenous islanders, and groups on the North African coast. The paper describes the linguistic context of their work and how it related to the successive stages of conquest and acculturation. Attempts are made to identify the interpreters, to explain how they learned their languages, to analyze the situations in which they participated and to assess the philosophical precepts that may initially have guided their training. These factors are used to group the interpreters into various categories.

Comparison of Perspectives on the Body and Dress in Korean and Western Traditional Costumes

This study investigates the concept of the body in Korean traditional costume by comparing the traditional costumes of the west and those of Korea while focusing on the relationship between the body and dress. In order to make a comparison of the traditional perspectives on the body in western and Korean costumes, this study examines the literature of history, art, medicine, philosophy as well as dress from the mid-fourteenth century to the nineteenth century pertaining to the west and those of the Joseon Dynasty Korea. Western dress assumes apparent formal structures and pursues overall harmony via the completeness of its entities, while traditional Korean dress subordinates the parts to the whole, emphasizing the organic total. Whereas the proportion of bodily structure is stressed in western traditional costume, in Korean costume the body is perceived as a whole. By revealing the body through the three dimensionalities of dress, the focus on the erogenous body parts is shifting in conventional western dress according to changes in aesthetic consciousness, which reflects the western ideas of objectiveness and self-centeredness. In traditional Korean dress, in the space between the body and dress, the emphasis is on planarization of the dress, which assumes the oriental relationship-centeredness concept.

Figuring the Feminine: The Rhetoric of Female Embodiment in Medieval Hispanic Literature (review)

Reviewed by: Figuring the Feminine: The Rhetoric of Female Embodiment in Medieval Hispanic Literature Núria Silleras-Fernández Ross, Jill . Figuring the Feminine: The Rhetoric of Female Embodiment in Medieval Hispanic Literature. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2008. 305 pp. ISBN: 978-0-8020-9098-0 Figuring the Feminine uses five medieval Iberian literary texts to examine "the implications of the conjoining of body and language especially when the body is figured as feminine" (8). The author situates the feminine body at the center of medieval hermeneutics and writing, searching "to contribute to the ongoing exploration of a medieval poetics that uses the body as the primary vehicle for 'thinking through' questions of critical cultural importance" (9). Ross's selection of texts for "figuring the feminine" is particularly interesting. Three of the works analyzed are among the most canonical of Castilian literature: the Poema de mio Cid, Gonzalo de Berceo's Milagros de Nuestra Señora and Juan Ruiz's Libro de buen amor. But the other two are less conventional; they frame the canonical readings chronologically, giving an interesting and comparative twist to the project. They situate the book in a more complex, multicultural and exciting medieval Iberian space, with its rich diversity [End Page 212] of language and ethno-religious traditions and interactions. The inclusion of the Peristephanon by Aurelius Prudentius, a late antique Hispano-Roman poet (c. 348-413) from the Tarraconensis, pushes the chronological limits of what is traditionally considered medieval. The other noncanonical author included is Rabbi Shem Tov ben Isaac Ardutiel of Carrión, better known in Spanish as "Santob." He was a contemporary of Juan Ruiz, the Archpriest of Hita, and was, like him, from northern Castile. Thus, the book covers a selection of Iberian texts written in Latin, Castilian/Spanish and Hebrew that span ten centuries, from the end of the fourth to the mid-fourteenth century — an exercise of reading in the longue durée. Readers will appreciate that Ross provides translations into English alongside excerpts given in the original languages. Together, the introduction and ch. 1, "Carnal Knowledge: Metaphor, Allegory, and the Embodiment of Truth", provide a theoretical framework for the study. Ross acknowledges her debt to Carolyn Dinshaw's Chaucer's Sexual Poetics and E. Jane Burns's Bodytalk among others works that have explored the possibilities of an embodied medieval poetics, and builds her argument through a discussion of key figures, including Plato, Augustine, Friedrich Nietzsche and Jacques Derrida, as well as feminists scholars such as Luce Irigaray, Judith Butler, Toril Moi, Carolyn Dinshaw, and Jane Burns. She discusses male writers' attitudes toward the female body and uses the concept of kairos, "the 'right or opportune moment' that governs all human communicative situations and informs the production of belief" (11), to break the binary associated with Plato's epistemology as employed by the fifth-century sophist, Gorgias of Leontini. Ross aims through a series of close readings of the texts, or episodes within them, to bring out this kairos in order to contribute to our understanding of how male authors manipulate a text embodied as feminine, and to reflect on the implications that this gendered textuality entails regarding the processes of both writing and reading. Each of the remaining chapters center on a specific work; these are treated in chronological progression. Ch. 2, "Dynamic Writing and Martyrs' Bodies in Prudentius's Peristephanon", studies this early-fifth-century collection of fourteen poems about Spanish and Roman martyrs (six from Hispania), regarded as the founding work of Hispanic hagiography. Ross analyzes the metaphor of the text as body and the connection between martyrdom and writing. She sees Prudentius's poems as transforming tortured bodies into salvational texts with the aim of earning the author "a hearing with the holy martyrs who then will plead his case with Christ" (77). These poems resonate in the following two chapters. [End Page 213] The third chapter, "Macho Words: Writing, Violence, and Gender in the Poema de mio Cid", examines a concrete episode of the anonymous epic poem: the so-called Afrenta de Corpes in which Dona Elvira and Doña Sol, the daughters of the Castilian hero par excellence, the Cid, are...

The Lyric Encyclopedia: Citation and Innovation in Matfre Ermengaud's Breviari d'amor

The Lyric Encyclopedia:Citation and Innovation in Matfre Ermengaud's Breviari d'amor Mary Franklin-Brown Matfre Ermengaud began his Breviari d'amor ca. 1288, towards the end of two significant literary movements of the later Middle Ages. One was led by the troubadours, who had begun composing their lyric at the end of the eleventh century and would continue to do so through the mid thirteenth, when, for reasons that are still debated, the number of troubadours waned. Paradoxically, this decline occurred at the same time that the great chansonniers (large lyric anthologies) began to be compiled, as if the mise par écrit were a response to the loss of vitality in the movement. The other, scholastic encyclopedism, was not yet in such dire straits.1 Supported by strong twelfth-century precedents, it produced over the course of the thirteenth century four major Latin encyclopedias and a few in the vernacular. By the mid fourteenth century, however, most encyclopedic work would involve copying, revising, or translating existing texts, rather than drafting new ones. The creation of a new encyclopedia was a daunting task, and most readers seem to have judged the earlier texts sufficient to their needs. Matfre clearly did not take such a view; his Breviari constituted an unprecedented attempt to wed the highly allusive and formally complex love poetry of the troubadours to the exhaustive but prosaic erudition of the encyclopedists, partly through direct quotations of the lyric.2 [End Page 389] It must have been difficult to harmonize two such different genres, so the strangeness of the Breviari should not surprise us. Perhaps because of it, the text has not appealed to a great many modern scholars, as a comparison of the bibliography on the Breviari to that on any one of the major troubadours attests.3 Nonetheless, Matfre's text had a modest success just after its publication: it is the only Occitan text treating courtly subjects to have been copied in numbers approaching those of the chansonniers and in volumes of comparable dimensions.4 The text's manuscript history thus indicates its importance to the literary circles of its time. The Breviari d'amor is indispensable if we are to understand the paradigms that shaped late medieval reading. In the present article, I should like to consider one such paradigm, citation, for Matfre could only weave the lyric into his text through a peculiar, hybrid form of this practice.5 The encyclopedia was always a bookish genre, well adapted to the visual strategies of scholastic reading. Vincent of Beauvais (d. 1264), for example, details in the prologue to his Speculum maius the difficulties posed by the placement of attributions on the page (ch. 3). On the other hand, prior to the creation of the chansonniers and the Breviari, troubadour lyric had been experienced aurally, and so it lacked the determinate visual components of the written text.6 Even the makers of the chansonniers failed to visually represent the lyric form, for they set out the strophes as paragraphs in which each metrical line follows the last without a return to the left margin. This mise en page suggests that readers such as Matfre were still pronouncing the lyric aloud as their eyes scanned the page. Accordingly, the troubadours practiced a different kind of citation. Yet broad theoretical [End Page 390] investigations of citation and intertextuality have tended to approach these phenomena as beginning and ending with written text, on the page.7 I should like to suggest here that a fuller understanding of acoustic citation makes it possible not only to (partially) demarcate the quotations in the Breviari, which are visually obscured by this text's own mise en page, but also, and especially, to discern the degree to which lyricism permeates this most erudite of texts. Scholars of Occitan lyric have shown that the troubadours developed exquisitely subtle forms of citation, particularly in the genre of the sirventes, which came to maturity in the work of Bertran de Born (ca. 1150-1215) and was practiced in the thirteenth century by such notable troubadours as Peire Cardenal. Sirventes were frequently based upon the rime or metrical structure or melody of a pre-existing song...

The Mohun Chronicle: An Introduction, Edition, and Translation

This article provides the first full published edition and translation of the surviving portions of the Mohun Chronicle, a universal history in Anglo-Norman prose. A full introduction to the text examines the evidence for the date, authorship, and patronage of the chronicle, concluding that it was written in the mid-fourteenth century for the Mohuns, lords of Dunster in Somerset, probably by the Cistercian Abbot Walter de la Hove from Newenham Abbey in Devon. The introduction surveys the sources of the chronicle, which include Wace’s Roman de Rou, the Johannes translation of the Pseudo-Turpin, Martinus Polonus’s (Martin of Troppau’s) Chronicon Pontificum et Imperatorum, and a version of the story of Albine (also known as Albina). A full description of the unique medieval manuscript, London, British Library, MS Additional 62929, which preserves the beginning of the work, is provided alongside a survey of the postmedieval transcripts of fragments from the Mohun Chronicle which recount episodes from the Mohun family’s history. The edition provides the entire text of the unique medieval manuscript, and gathers together the extracts that survive in early modern transcripts. A modern English translation of the Mohun Chronicle is also provided, along with textual and explanatory notes.

The Art of Dying Well

The scenario is all too common: the elderly woman with end-stage dementia readmitted to the hospital for the fourth time in three months for anorexia, now with a feeding tube, or the late middle-aged man with metastatic cancer progressing despite all proven chemotherapy now pursuing a toxic experimental treatment, or the patient with a rampant infection leading to multiple organ failure who requires machines, medications, and devices to filter the blood, pump the heart, exchange oxygen, facilitate clotting, and provide nutrition. Modern medical science is adept at sustaining life. The field of bioethics has, since its earliest days, debated end-of-life issues; yet American society more broadly remains ill equipped for the experience of dying. This can be attributed in large part to four factors. First, dramatic technological advance has obscured the distinction between death and life and has confounded the layperson's ability to know whether death is imminent. Even when medical professionals agree that a patient is dying (as above), the patient and family often remain unaware. Second, our unwavering faith in technology's abilities has prevented us from wrestling with the reality of death. Third, the secularization of Western culture has marginalized the role of religion in preparing individuals for death. Fourth, physicians--as the new intermediaries between life and death--are notoriously inadequate at discussing end-of-life issues with their patients. When death arrives, seemingly unannounced, patients and family members are shocked and confused, and they struggle to cope. Given these factors, one of the pressing bioethical concerns for the coming generation is the formulation and dissemination of a framework for dying well. We need a modern version of the Ars moriendi, or Art of Dying, which expressed the societal and ecclesiastical response in the Middle Ages to the widespread death caused by the plague. It is no secret that the population of the United States is graying. The Administration on Aging, the federal agency responsible for serving the needs of older Americans, reports that in 2009 (the last year for which statistics are available), 39.6 million Americans--12.9 percent of the population--were over sixty-five years of age. Average life expectancy for those who reach sixty-five is an additional 18.6 years. The Administration projects that by 2030, 19 percent of the population will be over sixty-five. So within twenty years, twenty percent of Americans will be elderly, and for this population, death is imminent. These statistics can be reassessed in the light of history. The midfourteenth century bubonic plague, or Black Death, is considered to have been among the deadliest pandemics of human history. It has traditionally been attributed to infection by Yersiniapestis, a bacterium spread by fleas and rats. Historians generally agree that between one-third and two-thirds of Europe's population succumbed to the plague. Death came rapidly; typically less than a week separated the first sign of illness from the grave. According to historical accounts, the number of dead increased so swiftly that those spared could scarcely keep up with proper burials. The fourteenth-century Italian humanist Giovanni Boccaccio described the chaos of the period: Few also there were whose bodies were attended to the church by more than ten or twelve of their neighbours, and those not the honourable and respected citizens; but a sort of corpse-carriers drawn from the baser ranks, who called hemselves becchini and performed such offices for hire, would shoulder the bier, and with hurried steps carry it, not to the church of the dead man's choice, but to that which was nearest at hand, with four or six priests in front and a candle or two, or, perhaps, none; nor did the priests distress themselves with too long and solemn an office, but with the aid of the becchini hastily consigned the corpse to the first tomb which they found untenanted. …

Enunciating authority: exonarrative inscriptions on or near miniatures of the Divine Comedy

Enunciating authority: exonarrative inscriptions on or near miniatures of the Divine Comedy

The Prior of the Knights Hospitaller in Late Medieval England by Simon Phillips (review)

REVIEWS 295 connection between past and present. “Given the intrinsic nature of jihad to Islam it will never disappear, yet crusading has ended … for centuries we have actually seen just shadows of the crusades, not true shapes” (350–351). Whatever the contemporary intellectual and political interests may be, the continuity of crusading is principally emotional rather than chronological (310). Other scholars have been making this point for many years now, especially since September 11th , but their voices are often drowned out. Hopefully Holy Warriors , with its many strengths, will succeed in educating a wide audience. SAM ZENO CONEDERA, S.J. Simon Phillips, The Prior of the Knights Hospitaller in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press 2009) 224 pp. According to Simon Phillips, the Prior of the English Hospitallers in the Late Middle Ages ought to be viewed “as an Englishman first … with his first loyalty to the crown, and a Hospitaller second” (18). This is the fundamental argument of The Prior of the Knights Hospitaller in Late Medieval England, which seeks to overcome the excessive reliance of previous historians upon Maltese sources. Making extensive use of English materials, including crown archives, privy seal and council records, and treaty rolls, Phillips offers a revised understanding of the office of Prior during the Late Middle Ages, arguing that “the Prior was never as independent or active a crusader as is normally supposed, but neither did his office quite become a royal sinecure” (2). Prior of the Knights gives an account that is multi-faceted, synthetic, and supported by copious references; there remain, however, a few unanswered questions about the Prior’s role as a national statesman. The book also raises issues for further research, such as the role of “national” interests in the life of an international military order, and the need to reassess the English Hospitallers in light of local sources. Prior of the Knights Hospitaller is divided into five main chapters, each addressing a different aspect of the Prior’s activities: financier and treasurer, defender of the realm, international ambassador, national statesman, and role in the secularization of the order. The Prior had two major financial roles in England : as a provider and collector of funds, and, in three cases, as royal treasurer (25). Like the Templars before them, the Hospitallers had the responsibility of collecting and storing tax revenues, and their headquarters of Clerckenwell served as “a convenient local storage center for the crown to dip into” (31). The Priors’ effectiveness as providers and collectors of funds, as well as their personal honesty, probably contributed to the appointment of three of them as treasurers. Phillips speculates that Priors did not serve in this capacity more frequently because of their regular travels outside the country, and because the job entailed various hazards; Prior Hales was murdered while in office (43). Although the Hospitallers were theoretically exempt from military service to lay rulers, in practice things sometimes worked out otherwise: “[t]he Prior was expected to take up arms against other Christians for his king, but only on the grounds of the defense of the realm” (46). Phillips sees a trajectory in the Prior’s military role over the course of the Late Middle Ages: from traditional feudal service, to appointment to defensive military positions, to active participation in offensive campaigns (47). This change was tied to a broader shift in REVIEWS 296 military service towards a contractual model. From the mid-fourteenth century, the Prior was appointed to offices, such as admiral, normally reserved for the high nobility. This military service, says Phillips, seems to have led to the Prior’s political role at home and abroad (58). The Prior’s activities as international ambassador and national statesman are crucial for supporting the book’s claim that the Hospitallers “may have considered that their loyalty was due to their king first and their Order second” (91). The Prior exercised a diplomatic role for the crown from the late fourteenth century, but around the middle of the fifteenth it intensified, such that Phillips is inclined to place Prior Botyll (1440–1468) among the king’s core of diplomats (74). The timing of this change was crucial, for the increase of diplomatic...

Rereading Clement in Thomas Chestre’s Octavian and in BL Cotton Caligula A.II

Rereading Clement in Thomas Chestre’s Octavian and in BL Cotton Caligula A.II William Fahrenbach The Middle English romance Octavian survives in two versions. An anonymous northern version, composed in the mid-fourteenth century, appears in two fifteenth-century manuscripts, Lincoln, Dean and Chapter Library, MS 91 (ca. 1430–1440) and Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff.2.38 (late fifteenth or early sixteenth century), and in an early sixteenth-century edition printed by Wynkyn de Worde (San Marino, Huntington Library 14615). A southern version of Octavian, composed in the second half of the fourteenth century, appears in a single manuscript, London, BL MS Cotton Caligula A.II (ca. 1446–1460), where it is followed by Sir Launfal and Lybeaus Desconus, all three of which have been attributed to Thomas Chestre. Chestre’s southern version has been edited only once in the twentieth century, by Frances McSparran in 1979,1 and compared to the northern version,2 it has not fared very well with modern scholars, not even in the estimation of its editors. McSparran dismissed Chestre as a writer “with no respect either for the integrity of his source or of his own composition”; and then, again, “he was not concerned with giving a faithful version of his source, nor is he reshaping the story with any specific themes or perspectives in mind.”3 Throughout her commentary, McSparran echoes, with some reservations, Maldwyn Mills’s even more disparaging assessment of Chestre. Mills argues that the three romances in the Cotton manuscript can be attributed to Chestre because they are “consistently inept and careless,” so uniformly incompetent that for once we have to ascribe faults not to scribal errors but to Chestre’s “failures of memory and lack of artistic conscience.”4 For Mills, Chestre remained throughout his career “a literary hack who made uncritical use of any material that presented itself to him.”5 More recently, scholarship on Middle English romances has turned attention to them as popular literature and their audiences.6 Basic to this shift is Stephen Knight’s often cited article “The Social Function of the Middle English Romances” [End Page 85] (1986). Knight reads Middle English romances as reinforcing an essentialist ideology of aristocracy for two audiences: “those who actually controlled the economic and social relations of the feudal mode of production” and those “who were not in positions of power but accepted the values of those who were,” including individuals engaged in manufacturing and trade as well as urban craftsmen.7 Similarly, John Simons reads the northern Octavian as an expression of social anxieties in post-plague England, represented especially in the figure of Clement, a bourgeois merchant of Paris whose pretentious behavior makes him into “a figure of fun striking attitudes which contrast very poorly with the grandeur and splendour of the court.” For Simons, this dismissive representation of Clement provided the romance’s economically and socially established audience “a clear opportunity to identify with their peers and to share their belonging to a privileged group.”8 Martha Fessler Krieg considers a broader audience of established as well as less secure gentry, merchants, and tradesmen who might “aspire to marrying or buying their way into the minor nobility” and would dismiss Clement with laughter “twinged with the condescending thought that of course they themselves would have known how to behave better than Clement.”9 So too, in astute readings of the French and Middle English versions of Octavian, Nola Jean Bamberry and Glenn Wright agree with Knight in different ways10 that these romances constitute affirmations of a chivalric, aristocratic social order for a mixed audience, that is, to paraphrase Knight, an economically and socially dominant audience made up of landlords, their families, and a less prominent audience of minor gentry, such as tradesmen and other aspiring individuals who accepted the values of the more powerful. Two basic questions emerge from these discussions. One has to do with Chestre’s treatment of his sources, that he had no sense of “reshaping the story with any specific themes or perspectives in mind,” as McSparran put it. On the contrary, I will argue, Chestre deliberately reworks the Octavian narrative to appeal to the growing audience...

Out of the Wilderness: A Fourteenth-Century English Drawing of John the Baptist

London, British Library, MS Royal 10 B XIV contains a large drawing of St. John the Baptist that is both exceptional for its quality and icono graphically unique. Not previously noticed by art historians, it constitutes an important addition to English art of the early to mid-fourteenth century. This paper explores the physical nature of the drawing, its bibliographical context (in a book of natural philosophy), the nature and meaning of its imagery, and its artistic context and associations, within the broader framework of its ownership and use by Benedictine monks of Saint Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury. The drawing is considered a symptom of a wider interest in the acquisition of manuscript illumination at the abbey during the first half of the fourteenth century. It can be dated to about 1335-40 and is thought to have been executed in southeast England or EastAnglia, where the works of art to whichnt is closest in stylistic and iconographie terms were produced. The iconography includes a number of motifs rare or unparalleled in images of John the Baptist, including a figure of Salome beneath the saint's feet and, most remarkably, a monumental Gothic arch composed of living oak trees, which frames the saint. The detail and semantic richness of this imagery make it practically certain that the drawing was made as a focus of devotion, probably for the manuscript's first recorded owner, the Oxford scholar-monk John of Lingfield.

Rival bishops, rival cathedrals: the election of Cormac, archdeacon of Sodor, as bishop in 1331

On 6 July 1331, two procurators arrived in Bergen claiming that Cormac son of Cormac had been elected bishop of Sodor by the clergy of Skye and the canons of Snizort. Their arrival is recorded in a letter sent by Eiliv, archbishop of Nidaros, to two canons of the church of Bergen ordering that there be an examination of the election in the cathedral of Bergen on 12 July 1331. Cormac's election was contentious for three main reasons: firstly, there was already a new bishop of Sodor; secondly the right to elect a bishop of Sodor seems to have lain with the clergy of Man; and thirdly the king of Scots had the right to present the candidate to the archbishop of Nidaros. This paper examines the identities and careers of both Cormac and his successful rival, Thomas de Rossy, and the potential reasons for Cormac's claim and its ultimate failure. Therefore, this study reveals some of the underlying geopolitical realities of the diocese of Sodor in the mid-fourteenth century.