Norman Period Research Articles

Cultural Heritage at Conisbrough Castle: Expanding Resident Narratives, Public Education, and Aspects of Medieval Domestic Life for a Diverse Audience

English Heritage Trust (EH) prides itself on communicating the histories of its sites through playful forms of engagement. In the recent scholarship of EH heritage managers David Sheldon (2011), Joe Savage, and William Wyeth (2020), new forms of creating play and providing site histories are considered alongside the challenges of updating signage and activities to meet visitor expectations. Expanding castle narratives beyond the Norman origins, increasing representations of women and lesser-known historic figures, and addressing the domestic function of castles are a priority for Sheldon, Wyeth, and Savage as they create case-by-case programs for their many properties. This paper considers what pedagogical methodologies are utilized at EH’s Conisbrough Castle, the selected story for presentation and why, and what display methods can be expanded to add to the visitor understanding of Conisbrough’s longer story through the Middle Ages. Using a mix of display boards, video, and text-based signage, managers at Conisbrough recall the de Warenne family narrative and recognize the Conisbrough keep’s domestic function. This is a successful recollection of this one resident’s story, however, only featuring this narrative limits Consibrough’s history to the Norman period. As EH seeks to grow their castle histories, I propose creating new engagements through the current display media that emphasize the importance of multiple tenant stories across time in castle spaces. Increased opportunities to relate to the past and retain information through play will assist visitors as they come to recognize the home as witness to both domestic activity and those events that occurred on the world stage.

Dei monasteri e di altre chiese

Abstract This paper stems from the research for my PhD thesis to identify, survey and classify the surviving documentary sources, published and unpublished, on Irpinia and the Sannio Beneventano: almost 1600 documents, both public and private, produced in the Lombard and Norman period. More specifically, this study investigates the conservation methods adopted within the archives of religious institutions whose existence and functioning depended on their titula and munimina. While the sources are very reluctant to provide information on the archival practices adopted in major churches and monasteries, the analysis of the diplomatic-archival notes affixed to the verso of the charters nevertheless provides some additional information. Adopting an approach combining palaeography, diplomatics and archive science thus allows us to paint a less generic picture than that hitherto known. The survey and examination of the verso annotations, usually given little attention in editions of the documents, proved highly significant for the identification of historic ecclesiastical archives, for the practices of archiving and preserving the papers, as well as for the identification of specific and recurrent methods of managing and conserving the documentary heritage of the old churches and monasteries, urban or rural, which represented significant gathering and reference places for the territory under their control. For some of these foundations, moreover, the study of unpublished documents has made it possible to add new evidence to what is already historically known.

Contradictions of Saint Paul’s Cathedral

Saint Paul’s Cathedral is a contradiction. Beautiful and majestic, it combines an almost Catholic shape with a Protestant soul. It is one of the most powerful symbols of England, and a reason for pride for any Londoner. This paper wants to explore the architectural variations of Saint Paul’s, especially before and after the Great Fire in 1666, to unveil the peculiar relationship between the cathedral and the people of London. Although St Paul’s has been a constant for the Londoners, its role in their lives has not always been the same. The progressive change in people’s attitude towards the cathedral went at the same pace as the alteration of the architecture of the building, which mirrored the social, political, and religious changes of the country. From being a central point of commerce and medieval social life during its Norman period and its Gothic style, the cathedral evolved into the highest symbol of religion and power and reached its peak with the design provided by Wren. Looking at the different models of Saint Paul’s, from its first consecration in 604 until today, it is evident that the building has been an active player in English history, adapting itself to necessity. It witnessed the Norman Conquest, the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII, and the Great Fire, and it was the symbol of the English strength and resistance in World War II. Therefore, the study of the architectural changes of Saint Paul’s is the study of the city of London, its people, and some of the most significant historical events that shaped England.

GENRE PECULIARITIES OF THE LITERATURE OF THE NORMAN PERIOD (12TH 13TH CENTURIES)

The period of French domination left an important mark on the later history of English literature, which, in some cases, is more common with the artistic devices and style of French literature of the Norman period than with the study of Anglo-Saxon literature, from which it was artificially divorced. The Norman conquest conditioned certain specific features of language development. The main one was the spread of three languages in the Kingdom of England – French among the ruling class, English among the broad masses of the population, and Latin in church affairs and administration. This affected the linguistic and genre character of English medieval literature.Methods used in the study: general scientific (analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction), methods of theoretical research (from abstract to concrete), historical method Among the feudal lords, the most popular genre was chivalric poetry, which was brought from France by trouver singer-poets. The most common manifestation of chivalric poetry was the rhyming chivalric novel, which reflected the customs of the upper feudal class, promoted heroic deeds, the code of chivalric morality, and examples of human virtues. The novels about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table became the most popular.

Anglo-Norman Studies XLIII: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2020 ed. by S. D. Church

Reviewed by: Anglo-Norman Studies XLIII: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2020 ed. by S. D. Church Lindsay Diggelmann Church, S. D., ed., Anglo-Norman Studies XLIII: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2020, Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 2021; hardback; pp. 216; 6 line, 10 colour illustrations; R.R.P. £50.00; ISBN 9781783276059. The latest volume of Anglo-Norman Studies continues the tradition, dating back to 1978, of publishing the proceedings of the annual Battle Conference in a series that has long since become indispensable for scholars of the Norman period. Now under the editorship of Stephen Church, the 2021 edition—based on the 2020 conference held online—contains a fascinating array of essays on Norman affairs. As is customary, the opening chapter is based on the Allen Brown memorial lecture, given by an invited eminent scholar. Martin Aurell examines the possibilities for mixed marriages between members of the Christian and Moslem nobilities during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. He takes as his starting point the proposed union between Joan of England, sister of Richard the Lionheart, and Al-ʿÂdil, brother of Saladin, as part of the negotiations to bring an end to the Third Crusade in 1191. Joan refused to take part in the deal, which anyway would have been impossible under canon law. Aurell asks whether any similar marriages did in fact occur, and what conditions would have allowed them to proceed. Using imaginative literature as well as chronicle sources, he offers some limited but intriguing evidence to suggest that diplomatic marriages could, on occasion, occur across religious boundaries. Perhaps the most significant contribution for scholars of the Normans is Christopher Norton’s essay on the Bayeux Tapestry. It makes a compelling argument that the famous artefact (actually an embroidery) was intended for display at Bayeux Cathedral, and was created under the patronage of Odo, Bishop [End Page 231] of Bayeux, and perhaps of William the Conqueror himself. Odo has been the traditional consensus candidate, but his role in the Tapestry’s creation has been challenged in recent years, as has the object’s likely location. Using architectural and archaeological evidence, Norton shows how the Tapestry could have been displayed in a way that fit perfectly with the contours of Bayeux Cathedral, as it existed in the eleventh century before later reconstruction. Other studies span the range of the period associated with the Normans, from Charles Insley’s examination of Lancashire in the early tenth century to Richard Barton’s scrutiny of judicial and ecclesiastical inquests (enquêtes) in western France during the thirteenth century. Insley argues that pre-Domesday Lancashire, an area relatively neglected in scholarship, is best understood as part of an ‘Irish Sea cultural zone’ (p. 122). Barton is concerned to rescue records of inquests from the theoretical approach of legal scholars and to find instead the basis for a rich social history, while also using them to question the longstanding ‘progressive scholarly narrative of administrative kingship and state formation’ (p. 196). A strength of the volume is that emerging scholars are recognized alongside their established peers. Hannah Boston and Gabriele Passabì, winner and runner-up of the Marjorie Chibnall Essay Prize (Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies), contribute essays on topics with a long tradition in Norman historiography: post-Conquest lordship and chronicle writing. Boston argues for the possibility of multiple tenancies in the Norman feudal model, boldly challenging both the received wisdom on the ‘tenurial revolution’ dating back at least to F. M. Stenton, and the more recent rejection of feudalism itself as a useful term. Passabì examines a little-known text, the Continuatio Ursicampina, to show how Geoffrey of Monmouth’s pseudo-historical but highly influential Historia regum Britanniae, with its appealing Arthurian core, could be both questioned by and integrated within later historical writing. Remaining essays deal with connections between forests and the siting of elite residences, using Cheshire as a case study (Rachel Swallow); Harold II’s coinage, reappraised in light of a substantial hoard unearthed as recently as 2019 in the Chew Valley near Bath (Gareth Williams); the coronation of the Conqueror’s wife, Mathilda of Flanders, as the first Anglo-Norman queen at Pentecost in 1068 (Laura Gathagan...

AVERHAM, ST MICHAEL, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE: A NEWLY IDENTIFIED PRE-CONQUEST CHURCH

The church of St Michael and All Angels, Averham, is largely constructed of counter-pitched rubble and has long been interpreted as being of the early Norman period. Recent archaeological investigations by the authors have revealed conclusive evidence that the date of part of the fabric is pre-Conquest and that the west tower was originally a possible two-storey porch. Ground-based remote sensing has further revealed complex anomalies in the south and east walls of the tower.

THE CARISBROOKE HAND: ANGLO-SAXON SCULPTURE AND THE HAND OF GOD?

This paper discusses the significance of a fragment of stone sculpture built into the north wall of the churchyard at Carisbrooke, Isle of Wight. The sculpture depicts an open right hand that is larger than life-sized and is probably of late Anglo-Saxon date. The size and character of the sculpture favours a manus dei (hand of God), forming the upper element of a large rood assemblage. The authors consider allied sculpture in which such a hand appears on Anglo-Saxon grave markers and in similar low relief depictions where Christ is figured on the Cross. At Carisbrooke, this architectural sculpture would have formed a significant feature of an Anglo-Saxon minster church that was rebuilt in the early Norman period. The siting of this building and the extent of its parochia is briefly considered. Supplementary material reviews the probable significance of the sculptural use of Quarr stone at Carisbrooke and elsewhere.

Olive growing in Puglia (southeastern Italy): a review of the evidence from the Mesolithic to the Middle Ages

This paper presents a comprehensive review of the history of the olive in Puglia, southern Italy, from prehistory to the Middle Ages, including evidence from various sources. The primary source of information is from archaeological sites, where the remains have been found of olive pollen, stones and wood charcoal, olive presses and pottery kilns for making amphorae for transporting olives or their oil. The survey also includes data from pollen sequences from natural sites and from written documents referring to olive groves. Our study shows that olives have been cultivated since the Early Neolithic, but it is only during the Middle Bronze Age that the domestic type appeared in the region, a consequence of selective cultivation of the wild type. The domestication of the olive had been completed by the first half of the 1st millennium bc, during the Iron Age–Archaic period, when remains of olives appear outside their area of natural distribution. The increasing exchanges with the Greeks during the Hellenistic period favoured the spread of olive cultivation and led to the construction of olive presses for oil extraction. The Roman conquest promoted the production of olive oil, which was successfully traded during the Republican and Early Imperial periods. After the Roman period ended, economic developments and political turmoil led to a decrease in olive growing, which did not fully recover until the Norman period in the 12th century ad. Later, under the Swabians, olives became a key crop and a major asset for the economy of Puglia.

The Norman Sicily Project: A Digital Portal to Sicily’s Norman Past

The cultural heritage of medieval Sicily faces enormous challenges. Rich and diverse as it is, it is beset by numerous problems that have rendered it fragile and often inaccessible. The situation is such that many sites are unsigned. Others are very difficult to get to. And even others – ones that are more easily located – have erratic hours, essentially locking out the average visitor to Sicily unless s/he is willing to invest the time and have the language skills necessary to persuade residents in the surrounding area to get the access keys. Given these challenges, we are developing The Norman Sicily Project to document the cultural heritage of medieval Sicily during its Norman period (in other words, c. 1061–1194) so that a wide audience can learn about what was once there and what still remains. The site attempts to reconstruct what we know about the society by bringing together images, basic identifying information, geolocation data and, in some cases, videos, using modern web development techniques. It also offers genealogical information and visualization tools that can help visitors understand the data in new ways as well as sustainability data related to the monuments’ physical states. The intention is that the project will offer scholars, students and the general public who are interested in Norman Sicily the opportunity to learn from and collaborate with each other while suggesting a web-based model for other medieval communities.

Norman Rule in Normandy, 911–1144 by Mark Hagger

Reviewed by: Norman Rule in Normandy, 911–1144 by Mark Hagger Lindsay Diggelmann Hagger, Mark, Norman Rule in Normandy, 911–1144, Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 2017; hardback; pp. 824; 8 b/w, 6 line illustrations; R.R.P. £60.00; ISBN 9781783272143. Scholarship on the Norman period has been expanding rapidly in recent years. As well as increasing our knowledge of Norman activities in England, southern Italy, and elsewhere, the nature of Norman lordship and society within Normandy itself, both before and after 1066, has come under scrutiny. Mark Hagger's new study makes a significant and welcome contribution to our understanding of the development of ducal rule and is likely to become an authoritative statement on the topic. With its narrower but highly detailed focus on the duchy itself, it complements other recent volumes with a wider perspective, such as David Bates's The Normans and Empire (Oxford University Press, 2013) and the essays in Stringer and Jotischky (eds), Norman Expansion (Ashgate, 2013), or Bates's biography of William the Conqueror in the Yale English Monarchs series (Yale University Press, 2016). The introduction offers an extended overview of the sources on which Hagger bases his study. The four major narrative sources (by Dudo of Saint Quentin, William of Jumièges, William of Poitiers, and Orderic Vitalis) are all familiar to scholars of the period. But in surveying recent historiography on these authors, Hagger offers new interpretations. For example, he hypothesizes that William of Jumièges composed the Gesta Normannorum ducum in part to reconcile rebellious nobles to their duke's rule (pp. 14–18). Indeed, one of the book's major themes [End Page 176] concerns the way in which both narrative and administrative sources (especially the latter) are better understood as part of a dialogue between the dukes and their subjects. Since many of the surviving acta were produced not by ducal officials, but by those making requests of their ruler, they can tell us just as much about the 'reception of ducal power by the dukes' subjects and beneficiaries' (pp. 30–31) as they can about the motivations of the rulers themselves. For Hagger, charters and related documents 'provide views from the bottom up rather than the top down' (p. 37). The book contains two large sections. The first offers three chronological chapters following the development of ducal authority from its origins in the early tenth century to the conquest of Normandy from King Stephen by his Angevin rivals in 1144, as well as chapters on ducal relations with the Church and with the neighbouring kings of France. The focus stays tightly on the expansion and expression of power within the duchy, as exercised through grants of land, military activity, marriage alliances, and the management of relationships with family members and aristocratic rivals. Consequently, Hagger deliberately avoids extensive coverage of better-known external events, including the campaign of 1066. By emphasizing local developments in the regions of Normandy and showing how individuals and families asserted their autonomy or benefited from ducal patronage at different times and in different ways, the author builds a careful and thorough argument suggesting that the establishment of full ducal control was a slower and more piecemeal process than has previously been thought. Normandy may have become a 'viable political entity' by the late tenth century but it was not until c. 1120, Hagger argues, that Henry I was able to gain full control over all parts of the duchy (p. 184). The second section presents six thematic chapters on topics including justice, finance, and the military household. Each of these forms a substantial study in its own right. The chapter on courtly ritual and the performance of ducal authority is representative in the way it presents an eclectic mix of evidence. Hagger reexamines witness and signatory lists to show how petitioners at court were part of an elaborate system of ritual through which the dukes could 'broadcast and maintain their authority' (p. 364), even while attendees asserted their own claims to power, property, and recognition. A section on the 'political theatre of landscapes and buildings' (p. 381–94) draws on recent work on castles, architecture, and medieval urban spaces to argue that ducal...

Évêchés et monastères « grecs » en Italie méridionale au Moyen Âge (VIIe-XIIIe siècle)

The existence of Greek churches and monasteries in southern Italy is the result of several factors : the arrival of eastern monks in the 7th and 8th centuries ; the attachment of Sicily and Calabre to the patriarchate of Constantinople around 730 ; but most important is the arrival in the 8th-9th centuries of a Greek population in Sicily. So long as that population remained Greek-speaking, it maintained a Greek clergy and an eastern liturgy. Afterwards, it was Latinized. The Greek population is a majority in Calabria, in southern Salento and in the south of the Basilicate. In the neighboring zones, it constitutes a minority. Only a few bishoprics in the north of Calabria are claimed by one or the other observance, and in any case, the bishops do not impose a uniform rite or discipline on the clergy. In the Norman period, the episcopal network, reconstituted and improvised from the 10th century onward, is partially rationalized. The revenues of the cathedrals (which had few seigniorial rights) depended on public powers. The Greek rite and clergy were accepted and great Greek monasteries created.

Integration of constrained electrical and seismic tomographies to study the landslide affecting the cathedral of Agrigento

The Cathedral of Saint Gerland, located on the top of the hill of Agrigento, is an important historical church, which dates back to the Arab–Norman period (XI century). Unfortunately throughout its history the Cathedral and the adjacent famous Archaeological Park of the ‘Valley of the Temples’ have been affected by landslides. In this area the interleaving of calcarenites, silt, sand and clay is complicated by the presence of dislocated rock blocks and cavities and by a system of fractures partly filled with clay or water. Integrated geophysical surveys were carried out on the north side of the hill, on which the Cathedral of Agrigento is founded, to define lithological structures involved in the failure process. Because of the landslide, the cathedral has been affected by fractures, which resulted in the overall instability of the structure. Along each of four footpaths a combination of 2D electrical resistivity tomographies (ERT) and 2D seismic refraction tomographies (SRT) was performed. Moreover, along two of these footpaths microtremor (HVSR) and surface wave soundings (MASW) were carried out to reconstruct 2D sections of shear waves velocity. Furthermore a 3D electrical resistivity tomography was carried out in a limited area characterized by gentle slopes. After a preliminary phase, in which the data were processed independently, a subsequent inversion of seismic and electrical data was constrained with stratigraphic information obtained from geognostic continuous core boreholes located along the geophysical lines. This process allowed us to significantly increase the robustness of the geophysical models. The acquired data were interpolated to construct 3D geophysical models of the electrical resistivity and of the P-wave velocity. The interpolation algorithm took into account the average direction and immersion of geological strata. Results led to a better understanding of the complexity of the subsoil in the investigated area. The use of integrated geophysical techniques allowed us to understand the sliding processes that affect the slope delimiting the possible rock volume affected by the sliding. These results should be useful to define the works to consolidate the landslides affecting the slope on which the Cathedral is founded and the hill inside the Archaeological Park.

Edward Wheatley Stumbling Blocks before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a DisabilityStumbling Blocks before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability. Edward Wheatley. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010. Pp. xiii+284.

<i>Edward Wheatley</i> Stumbling Blocks before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability<i>Stumbling Blocks before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability</i>. Edward Wheatley. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010. Pp. xiii+284.

TheCatalogus Baronumand the recruitment and administration of the armies of the Norman kingdom of Sicily: a re-examination

The Catalogus Baronum has long been overlooked in the corpus of texts relating to the Norman period of south Italy due to its chaotic nature and the difficulties of obtaining information from it. Seeking to rectify this situation, this article re-evaluates the current conclusions drawn from the Catalogus by academics such as Jamison using data derived from a statistical analysis of the document. By abandoning a rigidly ‘feudal’ interpretation of the document new areas of research are opened up. Additionally, it offers new theories on the use and nature of the Catalogus, informed by this research and approach.

Stuccoes from the Early Norman Period in Sicily: Figuration, Fabrication and Integration

This study examines fragments of stucco reliefs from three churches located in Sicily and southern Italy, Santi Pietro e Paolo at Itala, San Giuliano at Caltagirone, and Santa Maria de Terreti near Reggio Calabria. The churches and stuccoes date from the late eleventh century and reveal unexpected connections and conflicts among cultures, artists and patrons during the first years of Norman rule. Stucco, a material that is rarely included in discussions of European art of the Middle Ages, merits serious consideration; in this article, it helps illuminate such major art historical questions as the status of “Islamic” Sicily and the genesis of the polyvalent art forms associated with the later Norman kings.

The Lichfield Angel: A Spectacular Anglo-Saxon Painted Sculpture

Excavation within the Gothic nave of Lichfield Cathedral in 2003 revealed three phases of masonry building ante-dating the Norman period. These are likely to relate to the church of St Peter, which Bede described in 731 as housing the timber shrine to St Chad, fifth bishop of Mercia (d 672). A rectangular, timber-lined pit found on the central axis of the building might represent a crypt or burial chamber beneath the shrine. Buried in a small pit alongside this were three fragments of a bas-relief panel of Ancaster limestone, carved with the figure of an angel. They comprise half of the left-hand end of a hollow, box-like structure that had a low-coped lid. This is interpreted as a shrine chest associated with the cult of St Chad. The sculpture, which was broken and buried in, or before, the tenth century, is in remarkably fresh condition, allowing for an in-depth analysis of its original painted embellishment and for an assessment of the monument in terms of its iconography and stylistic affinities, and thus the possible conditions of its production. It is argued that the surviving portion of the panel represents the archangel Gabriel, and that it is one half of an Annunciation scene.

Joanna H. Drell, Kinship and Conquest: Family Strategies in the Principality of Salerno during the Norman Period, 1077-1194. Cornell University Press, 2002

Joanna H. Drell, Kinship and Conquest: Family Strategies in the Principality of Salerno during the Norman Period, 1077-1194. Cornell University Press, 2002

Kinship and Conquest: Family Strategies in the Principality of Salerno during the Norman Period, 1077-1194. Joanna H. Drell

<i>Kinship and Conquest: Family Strategies in the Principality of Salerno during the Norman Period, 1077-1194</i>. Joanna H. Drell

Buried Treasue or Fairy-Tale Verismo ? Framing Sicilian Women's Stories

Fairy-tale studies are made especially interesting by the controversies that inevitably accompany them. Accordingly, Marvels & Tales will publish critical exchanges between readers and authors. Concise, professional responses that augment, develop, or constructively challenge the substance of essays published in the journal may be submitted to the editor. Responses should be submitted as an e-mail attachment or on diskette. They should be limited to one thousand words or less and should contain no footnotes or other apparatus unless approved in advance by the editor. The author whose work is the subject of the response will be given the opportunity to reply. The editor maintains the right to reject or edit any response. From time to time, exchanges about specific topics may be invited. Buried Treasure or Fairy-Tale Verismo? Framing Sicilian Women's Stories Beautiful Angiola: The Great Treasury of Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales Collected by Laura Gonzenbach. Translated and edited by jack Zipes. Illustrations by Joellyn Rock. New York: Routledge, 2004. xxxii + 364 pp. Jack Zipes has found buried treasure. After a career spent detailing the sanitizing of the fairy tale by bourgeois literati, he has discovered a nineteenthcentury collection that preserves, with considerable fidelity, the voices of an indisputably subaltern population: Sicilian peasant women. On this ground, Zipes characterizes Laura Gonzenbachs Sizilianische Marchen as the most important collection of fairy tales, legends, and anecdotes in the nineteenth century, more important perhaps than the Brothers Grimm (xii). When the leading authority in the field puts forward so radical an assertion in so halting a fashion, his unease is evident. The peasant women who speak through the Gonzenbach collection, a remarkable work with a troubled history, outZipe Zipes in their denunciation of economic and gender violence, and Zipes is both greatly enthusiastic and a little disconcerted as he presents the stories for a general readership. When buried treasure is resurrected and rehoused as a great treasury, the lingering smell of the soil can be unsettling. There were good reasons to bury the Gonzenbach collection not long after its 1870 publication. It was unearthed-along with the complex history of its production and reception-by Rudolf Schenda and especially Luisa Rubini, whose magisterial contribution is properly and generously acknowledged by Zipes.1 The collection belongs to the much larger body of Mediterranean folktales collected and published in translation by nineteenth-century northern European scholars, with the original texts lost. Laura Gonzenbach was the daughter of the Swiss consul at Messina and younger sister of Magdalena Gonzenbach, a pioneer of feminism and women's education in Italy. Growing up in the German-speaking colony of textile manufacturers and merchants, she was cared for by Sicilian servants and spent her summers in the countryside playing among the peasants. At the behest of historian Otto Hartwig, who met her in 1860 when he came to serve for five years as chaplain to the Lutheran community in Messina, she began in 1868, at the age of twenty-six, to collect fairy tales. Hartwig was writing a history and expected the tales to provide evidence for his theories of the mixed cultural influences that shaped the Sicilian dialect and character in the Middle Ages. Working among the peasant women in the eastern provinces of Messina and Catania, Gonzenbach found the field so rich that within a year she provided Hartwig with a collection of a hundred stories, sufficient for an autonomous publication. Gonzenbach translated the tales into literary German and provided occasional footnotes with cultural, linguistic, and performance commentary. Hartwig arranged for the Leipzig publication of a two-volume edition of ninety-two of the tales (with two more still in dialect from an as-yet-unidentified Sicilian collaborator, Salvatore Morganti) and wrote a historical preface on the formation of the Sicilian language during the Norman period, recruiting the folklorist Reinhold Kohler to provide comparative notes. …

The Great Tower, Chepstow Castle, Wales

The Great Tower of Chepstow Castle is probably the most important surviving domestic medieval building in Wales. In the Norman period it consisted of a single large room partly surrounded by niches built over a vast undercroft. In the second quarter of the thirteenth century, the first floor was dramatically converted into a more conventional great hall and chamber, through the insertion of new windows and the construction of a pair of sumptuously decorated arches across the building in the most refined Early English style. These alterations also provided a single second-floor chamber, which was extended across the whole building in the 1290s. This article gathers together the documentary, architectural and art historical evidence in an attempt to identify who was the patron of each phase of this remarkable building and what they were hoping it would provide.