Mid-twelfth Century Research Articles

Geoffrey of Monmouth and the translation of female kingship

Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Translation of Female Kingship Fiona Tolhurst, Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Translation of Female Kingship. Arthurian and Courtly Cultures. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Pp. x, 347. isbn: 978-1-137-27784-8. $90.Fiona Tolhurst's Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Translation of Female Kingship, a companion piece to her Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Feminist Origins of the Arthurian Legend (Palgrave, 2012), is an ambitious book. As its title states, her subject is the role of women in the non-Arthurian sections of Geoffrey's Historia Regum Brittaniae as female kings-women rulers whom Geoffrey distinguishes from queen-consorts or women serving as regents. Tolhurst's argument is twofold: first, that Geoffrey, whom Tolhurst characterizes as a 'feminist' historian in a twelfth-century context, fashioned female rulers in the Historia both in imitation of and as inspiration for Empress Matilda; second, that Geoffrey's major redactors, Wace, Laaeamon, Henry of Huntingdon, and Matthew Paris, increasingly degrade, undermine, and erase the Galfridian concept of female kingship by substituting stereotypical and conventional characterizations of women for Geoffrey's strong female characters; in so doing, Tolhurst points out how Geoffrey stands apart from both his predecessors and followers in his preference for female rule. Tangentially, Tolhurst reconsiders Matilda's significance as rightful heir of Henry I and as a female king. Tolhurst offers an original approach to her subject that promises to reinvigorate debate about the nature of female rulers in Galfridan historiography and Matilda's place in the roll of medieval English rulers.Tolhurst's introductory chapter, 'Re-reading Empress Matilda,' surveys historical texts of the period to characterize Matilda as an able, experienced, and respected ruler, providing context for an examination of Geoffrey. In the process, Tolhurst takes to task dominant scholarship that tends either to downplay Matilda's role in the succession crisis of the mid-twelfth century or to demonize her as the catalyst for unrest. This chapter offers valuable information to readers unfamiliar with the character of Empress Matilda and her struggle with her cousin Stephen for control of the realm, specifically about Matilda's training, her role in continental politics prior to her return to England, the prestige she enjoyed in both England and Europe, and her training for the kingship. Although these points are well taken, Tolhurst could have qualified and nuanced her discussion by addressing in more detail evidence of Matilda's shortcomings, such as her alienation of the citizens of London (precipitating an uprising) and her failure to consolidate power after Stephen's imprisonment. Nonetheless, she succeeds in demonstrating Matilda's preparation for kingship and her legitimacy, making the case that the Empress deserves official historical recognition alongside-if not instead of-Stephen as a rightful monarch.In the ensuing chapter, 'Geoffrey of Monmouth as Preparation for a Female King,' Tolhurst analyzes female figures of the non-Arthurian segments of the Historia. Directing attention to implicit connections between Empress Matilda's preparation to serve as king and Geoffrey's favorable depiction of female rule, a concept she sees beginning in the Prophecies of Merlin, Tolhurst argues that Geoffrey holds up female kingship as a possible corrective to the violent infighting by Norman kings. She sees the Historia largely as 'an account of the British past [that] offers a potential solution to the problems of male kings' immorality and incompetence: female rule' (p. 82). Tolhurst further examines the 'problematic or disastrous (p. 83)' consequences of opposition to female rule, an implicit warning to Stephen's adherents. In the process, Tolhurst challenges the bulk of scholarly opinion that has characterized Geoffrey's depictions of women as conventional and marginal. She convincingly analyzes the language Geoffrey uses to stress the status of ruling women such as the vindictive militant Guendolena, the scholar Marcie, and Leir's loyal daughter Cordeilla (Cordelia) as female kings rather than as simply regents or consorts. …

Western Converts to Islam (Later Eleventh to Later Fifteenth Centuries)

Western Converts to Islam (Later Eleventh to Later Fifteenth Centuries) A. J. Forey The early expansion of Islam led in time to widespread conversions of Christians in conquered territories. In the later eleventh century, however, western Christendom was in turn launching offensives against Islam on several fronts. Territorial gains were made in various Mediterranean regions and, although by the end of the thirteenth century the Holy Land had been lost again, Sicily remained in Christian hands, and in the second half of the thirteenth century in the Iberian peninsula only Granada remained under Muslim control: the whole peninsula was under Christian rule before the end of the fifteenth century. This expansion was accompanied, especially in the thirteenth century, by attempts to convert Muslims and other non-Christians. Yet in the period from the late eleventh until the later fifteenth century some western Christians converted to Islam. The purpose of the present paper is to consider the situations that prompted the adoption of Islam, and the reasons for such conversions, although the evidence is usually insufficient to indicate exactly why a particular Christian became a Muslim: the preconceived ideas voiced in western sources about forced conversions can be misleading and, although a crude distinction might be made between conversions from conviction and those based on worldly considerations, motives did not necessarily always fit neatly into just one of these two categories. But obviously not all converts would have had an equal understanding of the nature of Islamic beliefs and practices. The response of western ecclesiastical and secular authorities to renegades will also be considered. Further conversions of Christian peoples who had already for centuries been living under Muslim rule will not be examined, but only the adoption of Islam by those whose origins lay in western Christian countries or who were normally resident in these, and by westerners whose lands were newly conquered by Muslim powers after the eleventh century; and the focus will be mainly, though not exclusively, on the crusader states and the Iberian peninsula. The Perceived Attractions of Islam Western commentators — most, though not all, were clerics — usually had difficulty in accepting that Christians could be won over by any perception [End Page 153] of true merit in the Islamic faith’s teachings and practices, since they themselves were convinced that there was none. In the early fourteenth century the anonymous author of the Memoria Terre Sancte wrote of apostates that “everyone should understand that their renouncing of the Christian faith was not because they believed or thought that the law of Muhammad was better than the Christian one,”1 and Symon Semeonis stated of renegades in Egypt that although many had adopted the Islamic religion, at heart they still embraced the Christian faith.2 John Manuel, the nephew of the Castilian King Alfonso X, claimed that the Islamic faith was in many ways so nonsensical and unreasonable that no one of any understanding would consider that it could lead to salvation.3 It was usually the weak and simple-minded who were thought to be vulnerable. Peter the Venerable, when asking St. Bernard in the mid-twelfth century to compose a refutation of Islam, wrote that, although Muslims might not be converted, it was necessary “to consider and provide for weak members of the Church, who are commonly led astray or even unthinkingly won over by trivial arguments.”4 In 1322 a provincial council at Valladolid expressed the fear that the simple-minded might be attracted to Islam, and Oldradus of Ponte also alluded to the possibility of the conversion of “simple” (simplices) Christians.5 [End Page 154] It was thought that such people might be influenced by the superficial attractions of what was seen to be a lax religion. James of Vitry thus maintained in the early thirteenth century that some Christians went over to Islam to indulge in gluttony, dissipation, and obscene pleasures, and towards the end of that century the Franciscan Fidentius of Padua claimed that some were attracted by a desire for carnal pleasure, while Humbert of Romans, at one time head of the Dominican order, had a few years earlier sought to contrast the austere demands of his own faith with the...

Coins, Trade, and the State: Economic Growth in Early Medieval Japan by Ethan Isaac Segal (review)

Reviewed by: Coins, Trade, and the State: Economic Growth in Early Medieval Japan by Ethan Isaac Segal Michael Laver Coins, Trade, and the State: Economic Growth in Early Medieval Japan. By Ethan Isaac Segal. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2011. 258 pp. $39.95 (cloth). In Coins, Trade, and the State: Economic Growth in Early Medieval Japan, Ethan Segal traces the use of imported Chinese coins from the mid twelfth century, when these coins first started to make an appearance, to the later thirteenth century, when imported coinage infused even rural areas of Japan and became the primary medium of exchange in a variety of economic dealings both local and nonlocal, replacing other forms of “money” such as cloth or rice. This process, especially involving as it did the use of a coinage that was largely imported, is interesting in and of itself, but Segal’s purpose holds to examine the role that an increasingly cash-based economy had on medieval Japanese society. His two major contentions in this regard are that the coins that spread across all spectrums of the Japanese economy did so without the backing of the traditional elites, especially the court nobles of Heian, and indeed in the face of their overt hostility to imported coinage. It would not be until the Muromachi period that the bakufu would take a leading role in the monetization of the country. Second, and perhaps more important for Segal, the use of coins in the medieval economy facilitated a relationship between elite and non-elite as merchants, nobles, and warriors came into contact through the increasing use of moneylenders and a process through which peripheral actors began to ignore the court’s request for goods and instead forwarded their taxes in coins after selling their products in vibrant and ever more frequent rural markets. In short, Segal’s study “is expressly designed to call attention to the economic roles of non-elites at the periphery” (p. 184). After tracing the general trajectory of the rise of a cash-based economy that was in full swing by the late thirteenth century, Segal tries to explain why such an economy took hold in a country in which domestic coinage was not only a relic of the past, but the court actively tried to forbid the use of imported Chinese coins. He comes up with several factors, most of them having to do not with the center, but rather with the periphery. For example, it was not estate proprietors who facilitated the use of cash in economic dealings, but rather “middle-level figures such as estate managers” (p. 68). An increase in agricultural productivity led to double cropping, allowing local producers to sell their surplus in rural markets, which became increasingly common in the countryside. Local warriors began to tap into the newly monetized economy as they levied taxes on villages to support their feudal obligations [End Page 968] to the bakufu in the form mainly of guard duty in Kamakura. Temples, shrines, and merchants all harnessed the ease of transport of cash over long distances, a phenomenon that taken even farther led to the invention of such economic innovations as bills of exchange. And finally, Segal identifies the international situation as facilitating the import of coins into Japan: the Mongols overran the Northern Song dynasty, and so large amounts of its coinage were available for export. This process continued when the Muromachi bakufu in the fifteenth century began to cultivate relationships with the new Ming dynasty for political and economic reasons, and in the process became the primary importer of Chinese coins. One indication of the often-dramatic effects that the new cash-based economy could have on society was the “virtuous government edicts” of the Kamakura period onward. Segal identifies the edicts as a “corrective measure” (p. 124) to try to preserve the traditional relationship between bakufu and its vassals that began to break down in the new economic conditions of the thirteenth century. The edicts, which periodically restored land to its original owner and forgave outstanding debt, were an attempt to rescue warriors who had fallen into poverty at the expense of moneylenders. The thirteenth century saw a rash...

Monastic Recruitment in an Age of Reform : New Evidence for the Flemish Abbey of Saint-Bertin (10th-12th centuries)

This paper looks at some possible interpretations of the Catalogus Bertinianorum religiosorum, a document originating from the Flemish monastery of Saint-Bertin and purporting to record the names of its professed monks from the middle decades of the tenth century until the 1780s. A first section investigates the literate practices involved in the recording of monastic personnel at tenth-century Saint-Bertin, comparing the Catalogus to contemporary evidence from the same institution and framing it in the monks’ ecclesiastical networks. The second part looks at some of the information provided by the Catalogus regarding the composition of the monastic community of Saint-Bertin in the later tenth to mid-twelfth centuries. Although little can be said with certainty about this fascinating document and the information it purports to contain, the Catalogus raises enough questions to warrant a first exploration of its contents.

The Old English Apollonius of Tyre in the Light of Early Romance Tradition: An Assessment of its Plot and Characterization in Relation to Marie de France's Eliduc

Although it is usually assumed that the Old English Apollonius of Tyre is the first illustration of the romance genre in English that has survived to our days, the work is still perceived in some scholarly circles as belonging to a hybrid category or as a sort of “proto-romance”.Apollonius is preserved in a miscellany—Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 201 (mid-eleventh century)—containing legal, religious and poetic materials, a circumstance that has continued to intrigue scholars, especially given the work's preoccupation with the theme of incest. Its presence in this manuscript has traditionally been explained on the basis of its affinities with hagiography and with other textual materials found in the miscellany. However, the incest topic is not normally dealt with in hagiography whereas in romance literature it is famously illustrated with Arthur's son Mordred. This raises the hypothesis that the Anglo-Saxon compiler(s)/scribe were probably conscious of the fact that they were handling something other than a hagiography. If this supposition is correct, the study of Apollonius may benefit greatly from the consideration of its thematic peculiarities as recognizable features of the romance genre. Interestingly, Apollonius shares some elements as regards plot and characterization with Marie de France's Eliduc (mid-twelfth century) that seem to have passed unnoticed by scholarship. By means of an analysis of the story's two main characters—Apollonius and Arcestrate, who will be compared with Eliduc and Guilliadun in Marie's lai— I intend to offer evidence of the ways in which the Old English Apollonius is tightly connected to early romance tradition. I will also try to show that even if the story in Apollonius occurs in a non-Christian milieu, there are some details in the characterization of both Apollonius and Arcestrate that suggest that the translator was consciously adapting the romance format to eleventh-century moral standards, since the work, as has been inferred by other scholars before, was targeting an ecclesiastical audience.

The Domestication of Personhood: a View from the Northern Iroquoian Longhouse

This article examines how personhood was shaped in the routine dispositional relations of longhouse life among the Iroquoian societies of eastern North America. Drawing on scholarship that situates the emergence of culturally-specific modes of personhood within relational networks of people and things, I present evidence that over seven centuries, a deep resonance developed between the ‘polyvalence’ of Iroquoian domestic spaces and a broadly ‘fractal’ (sensu Fowler 2004) or ‘part-in-whole’ sense of personhood in Iroquoian societies. An ethnohistoric review of seventeenth-century Ontario Iroquoian concepts of personhood is followed by an archaeological analysis of the development of longhouses between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. I report the results of a kernel density estimation (KDE) analysis of the spatial distribution of post and pit features across longhouse living floors in a diachronic study of 45 hearth areas. The results indicate that everyday practices within the longhouse came to follow several characteristic patterns by the mid-twelfth century ad. These patterns served to define ‘polyvalent’ relationships in which resident persons and nuclear families were at once identifiable as distinct social atoms and as inextricable components of larger hypostatic wholes — most especially house and lineage. A fundamental coherence was thereby established between the embodied experience of domestic taskscapes and a mode of personhood in which any social whole was understood as a dynamic and partible alliance of elements.

The face of Jizo: image and cult in medieval Japanese Buddhism

This is about the role of images in the development of the cult of Jizo Bodhisattva in Japan from the mid-twelfth century to the mid-seventeenth. It places emphasis on the narrative aspects of visual culture, demonstrating that the synergy and negotiation between Buddhist and native traditions was central to the creation and dissemination of the cult in Japan.

THE RELICS OF THE LATERAN ACCORDING TO "LEIÐARVÍSIR", THE "DESCRIPTIO LATERANENSIS ECCLESIAE", AND THE INSCRIPTION OUTSIDE THE "SANCTA SANCTORUM"

Rome was one of the three most important destinations for pilgrims from medieval Europe, along with Jerusalem and Santiago de Compostela. The faithful came in crowds not only to pray at the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul, but also to revere the multitude of relics that were preserved in the churches of the city. From the fourth century on, the liturgical and political significance of the cult of relics grew steadily within the Christian world. The Eastern custom of obtaining a multitude of relics by dividing the saints' bodies into different parts, however, was not usual in Rome until the eighth century, when the norm of the Roman law sanctioning the inviolability of tombs and bodies fell into disuse. After that, the number of relics preserved in the Roman churches began to multiply. The bodies, or parts of bodies, of martyrs buried outside Rome were brought into churches and basilicas intra muros in order to be better guarded, but also to be a tangible sign of the city's power and superiority.1 Some of the most revered relics, including those of New Testament figures and other saints, were gathered, especially in the course of the eighth and ninth centuries, in the Basilica of St John Lateran and in the small Chapel of St Lawrence in palano, also known as the Sancta Sanctorum. This chapel was constructed inside the Palatium Lateranense, which was the residence of the popes throughout almost all the Middle Ages, at least until the Pope returned from Avignon in 1377.2Besides the numerous Latin sources mentioning the relics preserved in the Basilica of the Lateran and in the Sancta Sanctorum, a list of these relics is also included in the description of Rome in LeiOarvisir, an Old Icelandic itinerary describing a route to the Holy Land and traditionally dated around the midtwelfth century. This article will analyse the list of Lateran relics in Leioarvisir and compare it to Latin sources, in particular to the Descriptio Lateranensis ecclesiae by John the Deacon (written in its final version 11 59- 81) and to an inscription that was placed outside the Chapel of St Lawrence in palano at the end of the twelfth century. It will be shown that the list of Leidarvisir must have been composed later than the Descriptio Lateranensis ecclesiae, because the Icelandic itinerary includes two Marian relics (the garment and the milk of the Virgin) that are not enumerated in this Latin source. On the other hand, the two Marian relics are mentioned in the inscription outside the Sancta Sanctorum, which also shows significant correspondences with leidarvisir. A closer consideration of this inscription will show that it was probably placed there before the papacy of Innocent III (i 198- 1 216), thus giving useful information regarding both the dating of this source and that of the Icelandic list. In the process, the analysis will shed light on the date of composition of this passage of Leioarvisir, demonstrating that it is incompatible with the traditional dating of the itinerary. It appears that the description of the Lateran could not have been written by Abbot Nikulas of Munkabvera on the basis of first-hand information he collected during a journey - as has been argued hitherto - but that it is probably the work of a later scribe who made use of written sources.'Leiðarvisir' and its datingThe complete text of Leiðarvisir is preserved only at fols 11^sup r^- 16^sup v^ in manuscript AM 194 8^sup vo^ of the Arnamagnoean Collection in Copenhagen, an important miscellany composed in Iceland in 1387.3 The text describes an itinerary from Iceland to the Holy Land, and is commonly known as Leiðarvisir, 'guide, itinerary', a denomination derived from the explicit (p. 23(17-18).4 Leiðarvisir records stops and distances, but is also rich in significant information about places along the route.5 In the explicit, an Abbot Nikulas is mentioned as the author of the text (p. 231718). The absence of a patronymic has made his identification controversial, but it is now generally agreed that the author of Leiðarvisir is Nikulas Bergsson, first abbot of the Benedictine abbey of Munkabvera, founded in 1155. …

Monastic Reform, Abbatial Leadership and the Instrumentation of Cluniac Discipline in the Early Twelfth-Century Low Countries

In this paper, I argue that scholarly discussions on the chronology, methodology and outcomes of the « Cluniac reforms » in the late eleventh and early twelfth century Low Countries have been based on the notion that the « Clunisation » of Benedictine monasticism was a « spontaneous » phenomenon, deriving from the desire of monastic leaders and their patrons to make life in these institutions conform to Cluniac customs and spirituality. In the first section, I show how the notion of a progressive Clunisation derives from the apologetic discourse of reformist commentators from the early to mid-twelfth century, and from that of modern scholars seeking to explain the reform movement by referring, on the one hand, to the powerful attraction of Cluniac monasticism and, on the other, to instances of disciplinary laxity prior to the reforms. In the second, I discuss how, from ca 1100 onwards, the Cluniac customary was instrumentalized by monastic leaders and their patrons in the pursuit of strong internal hierarchies and the socio-political interests of the higher ecclesiastical and secular elites. In the third and final section, I look at the evidence relating to the dissemination of the Cluniac customs, their impact on life within the monasteries, and finally how the Cluniac customary was instrumentalized once again in the anti-Cluniac campaign of a second generation of reformers during the 1120s to 1140s.

The Book of Leviticus Interpreted as Jewish Community

This article addresses an essay, published in 2001 by John Van Engen, entitled "Ralph of Flaix: The Book of Leviticus Interpreted as Christian Community.” Ralph’s voluminous commentary, composed and published in the mid-twelfth century, aimed, in Van Engen’s words, at “refuting Jewish arguments” about the biblical book and the nature of the levitical law, particularly as these arguments might influence young Christian clerics who were “fascinated and troubled by a close reading of the biblical text.”The present article examines three rabbinic commentaries on Leviticus roughly contemporary with Ralph, those of Rashi, Rashbam and R. Joseph Bekhor Shor. Through examining the “close reading” through which these three exegetes interpreted specific biblical texts, the article considers whether or not they presented what might be considered as “the Book of Leviticus Interpreted as Jewish Community” and as such conveyed what may have been the types of arguments with which Ralph was in conversation.The article does not attempt to provide a direct correspondence between specific Jewish and Christian exegetes. Rather, the article suggests that the content and form of 12th century Jewish and Christian biblical exegesis bespeak a type of conversation among those using the literary genre of “commentary writing,” and that it is possible to gain an understanding of the contours of that conversation through analysis of the commentaries they wrote. Additionally, the article examines ways in which medieval Jewish exegetes may have advanced arguments in their commentaries that were intended to sustain the Jewish community in their observances and belief structures in the presence of Christian hegemony.

The Pilsgate Manor of the Sacrist of Peterborough Abbey, ed. and tr. Margaret E. Briston and Timothy M. Halliday

This volume is the latest in a series of medieval Peterborough abbey manuscripts that have been edited for the Northamptonshire Record Society, of which the best known is C.N.L. Brooke and M.M. Postan's edition of the Carte Nativorum (1960; rev. ante, lxxvii [1962], 323–6). The present volume similarly includes a large collection of charters, some of them describing the transfer of land between the abbey's unfree tenants, which was the distinguishing and highly unusual characteristic of Brooke and Postan's edition. The Pilsgate register, however, is largely conventional, and similar to many other medieval cartularies which record the acquisition and exploitation of property by religious houses. Compiled in the early fifteenth century for George Fraunceys, sacrist of Peterborough abbey, the manuscript was acquired after the Dissolution by Sir Robert Cotton and is now kept at the British Library (Cotton MS Faustina B.iii). The focus of the sacrist's endowment was the manor of Pilsgate in Barnack parish, on the edge of the Northamptonshire fens, about 2½ miles south-east of Stamford and 9 miles north-west of Peterborough. Pilsgate had belonged to the abbey since pre-Conquest times and was appropriated to the office of sacrist in the mid-twelfth century. The register includes copies of nearly 300 charters, most dating from the thirteenth century, which describe the transfer of property in Pilsgate and several neighbouring villages. The charters reveal a predominantly open-field landscape in which tenants held arable strips interspersed with those of their neighbours. Numerous roads and tracks crossed the fields, many having names ending in ‘gate’, an Old Norse word for street. Also scattered across the landscape were several windmills, watercourses, and standing crosses, and the ragstone quarries for which medieval Barnack was renowned.

Medical Magic and the Church in Thirteenth-Century England.

Medical Magic and the Church in Thirteenth-Century England.

Ealde æ, niwæ laȝe: Two words for ‘Law’ in the Twelfth Century

This article investigates the competition between the two main words for ‘law’, oe and lagu, at the ‘transition’ between Old English and Middle English. Its focus is on five important manuscripts copied from the mid-twelfth century to the turn of the thirteenth: London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian D xiv, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Bodley 343 and Junius 1 (The Orrmulum), London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian A xxii, and London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 487. The study explores the contexts of all the occurrences of oe and lagu in these manuscripts, and asks whether their attestation can be accounted for in terms of processes of textual transmission and/or preferences for particular collocations or stylistic effects, sense, metre, etc.

Lords, settlers and shifting frontiers in medieval Catalonia

This article examines how settler conditions on formerly Muslim-ruled land in the area known as New Catalonia (in north-eastern Iberia) changed as the territory was consolidated by Christian landlords and migrants from the north, and increasingly buffered from the border with Islam by conquests against Muslim Valencia over several generations following its conquest in the mid-twelfth century. Most landlords responded to the conditions of the local land market, but there is little evidence that the region as a whole, or even favourable sub-markets, experienced a straightforward trajectory from liberal to heavier tenant obligations. While lords in Old Catalonia are known to have limited peasant mobility from the later twelfth century in order to diminish an exodus to territory with more franchises in New Catalonia, lords in New Catalonia from the early thirteenth century were not able to respond to a similar extent to the territorial offerings in northern Valencia. Their overall ability to erode or reformulate exemptions and other privileges was checked by customary practice, insufficient settlement density and increased regulation which accompanied a rise in royal administrative capacity.

Epitome of National Disgrace: A Painting Illuminating Song-Jin Diplomatic Relations

Previous articleNext article No AccessEpitome of National Disgrace: A Painting Illuminating Song-Jin Diplomatic RelationsSHI-YEE LIUSHI-YEE LIU Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Metropolitan Museum Journal Volume 452010 Sponsored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/met.45.41558052 Views: 41Total views on this site Copyright © 2010 The Metropolitan Museum of ArtPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Is biotechnology the new alchemy?

In this article I examine similarities between the science and ethics of biotechnology on the one hand, and those of alchemy on the other, and show that the understanding of nature and naturalness upon which many contemporary ethical responses to biotechnology are predicated is, in fact, significantly similar to the understanding of nature that was the foundation of the practice of alchemy. In doing so I demonstrate that the ethical issues and social responses that are currently arising from advances in the field of biotechnology are interestingly similar to those that arose in reaction to the practice and prevalence of alchemy from its inception in Europe in the mid-twelfth century until at least the early modern period. I argue that a proper conception of the ethical issues and a sensible interpretation of the power and the promise of the science of biotechnology are most likely if we understand such attitudes to nature, and to the ethical issues surrounding technological and scientific developments, in terms of an historical and cultural continuum. That is, we should regard biotechnology as merely the latest in a string of technological and scientific developments rather than, as is often alleged, as something entirely new, requiring its own special ethical response. Finally, I suggest that examining the parallels between the ethical issues generated by alchemy and by biotechnology show us that such issues are best situated and discussed within a framework of virtue ethics, as it allows us to think seriously about the relationship between art and nature and the proper role of humans in relation to their technology.

Poetry on Christian Subjects. Part 1: The Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. Part 2: The Fourteenth Century (review)

Reviewed by: Poetry on Christian Subjects. Part 1: The Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. Part 2: The Fourteenth Century John Kennedy Clunies Ross, Margaret, ed., Poetry on Christian Subjects. Part 1: The Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. Part 2: The Fourteenth Century (Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, 7), Turnhout, Brepols, 2007; cloth; pp. lxix, 1040; R.R.P. €120.00; ISBN 9782503518930 (in 2 vols.). Poetry on Christian Subjects is the first publication of a planned nine volumes which will present most of the surviving Old Norse poetry from before about 1400. Only the poems of the Poetic Edda and some closely associated texts fall outside the scope of the project ‘Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages’, a major international initiative with its administrative headquarters in the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Sydney. It is intended that electronic as well as print editions will appear. This volume, designated Number 7, presents twenty-eight items edited by fifteen contributing editors, including many of the most distinguished figures in the field of skaldic studies. These poems of Christian piety, composed between the mid-twelfth century and the early 1400s, vary in length from 1 to 149 stanzas. Most are substantial works, although almost all are, in the general editor’s words, ‘relatively neglected and unappreciated’ (p. liii). The best known are probably the justly celebrated Lilja, Einar Skulason’s Geisli, and the powerful but notoriously difficult Sólarljóð. After the general introduction and other preliminary matter, each item has its own brief introduction. The normalized text of each stanza is followed by an arrangement in prose order of the Norse text (or in the case of two curious stanzas a Latin text in skaldic metre), a clear English translation which explains the poetic kennings (periphrases), detailed information about manuscripts and their readings, details about the appearance of the stanza in previous editions, notably the hitherto standard Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning of Finnur Jónsson (1912–15), notes where relevant on the prose context of the poem, and notes designed primarily to elucidate the meaning. A reviewer, inevitably, can note minor blemishes, such as the use of the obsolete íslenzkum on page xi instead of the correct íslenskum (see p. xv); the omission from their proper alphabetical places of the sigla ‘Anon. Gyð’, ‘Anon. Heil’, and ‘Anon. Hsv’ in the list ‘Sigla used in this volume’; and the unhelpfulness of some of the bibliography entries, such as the one reading simply ‘GBpB = Guðmundar saga biskups (‘B’). In Bskp, 559–60426, 60822– [End Page 206] 136’, with no explanation of Bskp. But such flaws are a very minor element in what gives abundant evidence of being a tour de force of meticulous scholarship. Unlike most publications which might merit that description, Poetry on Christian Subjects is also an exceptionally clear and attractive work, which makes available to specialists and non-specialists a variety of poems that cast an intriguing light on intellectual currents in medieval Iceland and on Iceland’s relationships with other medieval societies and literatures. John Kennedy School of Information Studies Charles Sturt University Copyright © 2009 John Kennedy

Special Operations in the Age of Chivalry, 1100-1550

There was no medieval SAS, and no concept of ‘special forces’ existed in the medieval period. Yet there were many actions that can, with no more than a degree of anachronism, be described as ‘special operations’. The selection and use of a hit-squad at the battle of Evesham in 1265 to kill Simon de Montfort is one. The many successes of the Scots against English-held castles in the early fourteenth century can also be seen in this light. Surprise attacks by small numbers proved astonishingly successful, even if the authenticity of the tale of the Scots crawling on hands and knees, making the English think they were a herd of cattle, may be doubted. Edward III's dramatic dash to the north of Scotland to rescue the countess of Atholl at Lochindorb resembles a later commando raid. Many individual feats can be counted, such as the way in which the small Welshman, Ifor, succeeded in entering Cardiff Castle to kidnap the earl of Gloucester in the mid-twelfth century. These are not examples cited by Yuval Noah Harari, but this is an acknowledgement rather than a criticism of his argument that, even in the absence of true special forces, special operations took place.

The Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam: Negotiating Ideology and Religious Inquiry. By Omid Safi

The title of this book by Omid Safi does a thorough job of obscuring its actual subject and contents; the work in fact addresses important aspects of the political, social, religious, and intellectual history of the Saljūqs from their arrival in Baghdād down to the reign of Sanjar (i.e., from the mid-eleventh to the mid-twelfth century CE). It explores the interrelatedness of Saljūq historiography, Saljūq state institutions, and the administrators, scholars, and holy men who served to implement and/or legitimize the rule of the Saljūq sulṭāns, and in the process it seeks to undermine a number of assumptions and stock narratives about Saljūq history that Safi regards as erroneous, unwarranted, or simply in need of problematization and investigation. Religious issues are front and center in the work, much of which examines, from multiple perspectives, the carefully—and, according to Safi, mendaciously—cultivated image of the Saljūqs as upholders of an “orthodox” Islam; more specifically, it considers the use of this image to legitimize the Saljūqs, the religious underpinnings of the ideological systematization of Saljūq rule (as articulated by such seminal figures in Islamic history as the vizier Niẓām al–Mulk and al–Ghazālī;), the role of holy men in sanctioning the founders or leaders of the Saljūq state, and the religious idiom of opposition to Saljūq rule. The book thus is not by any means a straightforward political or social history; rather, it seeks to understand, most broadly (and here the title begins to make sense), how Saljūq political culture shaped the framework of intellectual and religious life, and how elements of that intellectual and religious expression were in turn used to articulate a legitimizing ideology that sanctioned Saljūq rule (xxiv).

Ornata Decenter: Perceptions of 'Fitting Decoration' Amongst Augustinian Canons of Sant'Orso in Aosta in the Mid-Twelfth Century

<i>Ornata Decenter</i>: Perceptions of 'Fitting Decoration' Amongst Augustinian Canons of Sant'Orso in Aosta in the Mid-Twelfth Century