pre-Conquest England Research Articles

The study of history: a bibliographical guide

Part 1 General works: bibliographies and reference works philosophy of purpose and methods in quantification historiographical surveys particular countries - Africa, Australia, Canada, China, eastern Europe, France, Germany, Iberian Peninsula, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jewish studies, Latin America, Middle East, Scandinavia, south east Asia, Turkey, former USSR, USA. Part 2 Ancient history: general Greece Rome. Part 3 Medieval history: general preconquest England postconquest England late middle ages Europe. Part 4 The Renaissance. Part 5 16th century: England and Scotland Europe. Part 6 17th century: England Europe colonies. Part 7 18th century: Britain Europe colonies. Part 9 19th century: Britain - trends and tendencies, individual historians Europe -general, France, Germany USA other countries. Part 9 20th century: general and other disciplines annals school Marxist political economic business local church and religion urban social history from below gender studies black oral psychohistory historians and film individual British and European historians individual American historians.

:Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Acknowledgements. Abbreviations. Part One: Defining Widowhood. 1. Introduction - Sandra Cavallo/Lyndan Warner. 2. Men, women, and widows: some implications of the terminology of widowhood in pre-Conquest England - Julia Crick. 3. Finding widowers: men without women in English towns before 1700 - Margaret Pelling. Part Two: Models and Paradoxes. 4. The widow's options in medieval southern Italy Patricia Skinner 5. The virtuous widow in Protestant England - Barbara Todd. 6. Widows, widowers and the problem of 'second marriages' in sixteenth-century France - Lyndan Warner. 7. Marrying the experienced widow in early modern England: the male perspective - Elizabeth Foyster. Part Three: Marital and Family Constraints. 8. Lineage strategies and the control of widows in Renaissance Florence - Isabelle Chabot. 9. Property and widowhood in England 1660-1840 - Amy Louise Erickson. 10. Religious difference and the experience of widowhood in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Germany - Dagmar Freist. Part Four: Self-constructions in Legal, Religious and Institutional Narratives. 11. Widowhood and religious expression in early modern Spain: the view from Avila - Jodi Bilinkoff. 12. Widows at law in Tudor and Stuart England - Tim Stretton. 13. Widows, the state and the custody of children in early modern Tuscany - Giulia Calvi. 14. Survival strategies and stories: poor widows and widowers in early industrial England - Pam Sharpe. Suggestions for reading on widowhood. Notes on contibutors. Index.

Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (review)

Reviews 143 for those starting out as readers of Jonson, Donne, Marvell and Milton or the Renaissance Book ofC o m m o n Prayer. Yet there does not seem to be anything original in the authors' claims or readings. Connecting their annotations with their o w n claims, it is difficult to see places where the book advances debates beyond the other authors they cite. The book does not include any new archival research, nor does itframeoriginal readings of the chosen authors. Their next Shakespeare book may of course depart from this: i t seems more likely that, as here, it will simply confirm the authors in the power oftheir governing tropes rather than showing us a new Shakespeare. Likewise in the present book, I had no sense of having to reconsider Renaissance writers from a new perspective. Moreover, the authors frequently seek to bury their case by writing with excessive obscurity, which rather than making their arguments more complex simply makes them more difficult to discern. Thus some will findAge ofIron a useful book, but given the decline ofboth the Australian and New Zealand dollars, and restrictions on library purchases many readers of this journal have to live with, it should on no account be considered essential reading. Mark Houlahan University of Waikato Cavallo, Sandra and Lyndan Warner, eds, Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Men and W o m e n in History), Harlow, Longman, 1999; cloth; pp. xiii, 272; 2 b/w illustrations, 3 tables; R R P £55 (board), £17.99 (paper); ISBN 0582317479 (board), 0582317487 (paper). As the editors of this collection argue, widowhood and widowerhood are terms and states that are receiving increasing attention in historical studies. This collection is an excellent survey of our current understanding of the widowed condition in the European past and bears witness to the many new approaches and historical records being used to explore the lives of men and w o m e n in widowhood. In Part One, papers focus on defining widowhood and, more recently, 'widowerhood'. The introduction is thefirstchapter in this section, and provides a comprehensive summary of the major points, approaches, tensions, and questions raised in the papers that follow as historians increasingly examine the state as an ideological construction. Julia Crick contributes a thorough survey of the terminology of widowhood in pre-conquest England, revealing a lack of 144 Reviews clear definition to describe the marriage state. Margaret Pelting investigates the representation of widowers in the Norwich Poor Relief of 1570, which suggests that few elderly men in the poor population were without wives, as a springboard to examine male experiences of widowhood. In the second section, studies examine models and paradoxes. Patricia Skinner explores ideals and realities of the widow's situation in southern Italy to 1100CE, focussing on the intersections between her economic and physical maintenance. She also highlights the alternative paths by which a wife might become a widow, for example, if her husband entered the church. Barbara J. Todd analyses the impact ofmale-authored Catholic and Protestant prescriptive writings on widowhood, particularly those of Vives and William Page. She explores their influence in relation to the experiences of widowhood as shown in women's writings. Lyndan Warner provides a thought-provoking study of the legal ramifications of the 1560 Edict of Remarriages in France restricting widow's rights to distribute family inheritance to new husbands. Warner examines the landmark court case between a widow and her step-children that led to the extension of the law from widows to widowers. Elizabeth Foyster's examination of men remarrying 'the experienced widow' employs statements ofhusbands and wives in marriage separation cases to expose contemporary understandings of the causes ofre-marriage breakdown in Early M o d e m England. Foyster's research suggests that as well as the threat of sexual experience, finances were a central issue since many widows had economic experience and knowledge of managing property and capital, and had a vested and personal interest in protecting it. In Part Three, papers address marital and family constraints in widowhood. Isabelle Chabot's research is devoted to difficulties of the place of residence of young widows in Renaissance...

Religious Patronage in Anglo-Norman England 1066-1135

Although the Norman Conquest of 1066 swept away most of the secular and ecclesiastical leaders of pre-Conquest England, it held some positive aspects for English society, such as its effects on Anglo-Saxon monastic foundations, which this study explores. The first part deals in depth with five individual case studies (Abingdon, Gloucester, Bury St Edmunds, St Albans and St Augustine's, Canterbury) as well as Fenland and other houses, showing how despite mixed fortunes the major houses survived to become the richest in England. The second part places the experiences of the houses in the context of structural changes in religious patronage as well as within the social and political nexus of the Anglo-Norman realm. Dr Cownie analyses the pattern of gifts to religious houses on both sides of the Channel, looking at the reasons why they were made. EMMA COWNIE gained her Ph.D. from the University of Wales at Cardiff; she currently holds a research fellowship at King's College, London.

Shorter notice. Kingship and Government in Pre-conquest England, c. 500-1066. A Williams

Shorter notice. Kingship and Government in Pre-conquest England, c. 500-1066. A Williams

Shorter notice. Kingship and Government in Pre-conquest England, c. 500-1066. A Williams

Shorter notice. Kingship and Government in Pre-conquest England, c. 500-1066. A Williams

Ann Williams. Kingship and Government in Pre-Conquest England, c.500-1066. (British History in Perspective.) New York: St. Martin’s Press. 1999. Pp. xxviii, 243. $55.00. ISBN 0-312-22090-1

Ann Williams. Kingship and Government in Pre-Conquest England, c.500-1066. (British History in Perspective.) New York: St. Martin’s Press. 1999. Pp. xxviii, 243. $55.00. ISBN 0-312-22090-1 - Volume 32 Issue 3

Women, Posthumous Benefaction, and Family Strategy in Pre-Conquest England

In the early Middle Ages it was men who, with their resort to armed might, were the plunderers of church property, though some among them did contribute to its increase.Women, and especially widows, were more positively involved with the church, as givers rather than as receivers.When Jack Goody put more than a thousand years into the few hundred pages of hisDevelopment of the Family and Marriage in Europe, he could be allowed a little judgmental rhetoric. The documentation from early medieval Europe, unevenly distributed across very diverse situations, may indeed yield fewer examples of female than male predation, and perhaps more examples of female than male benefaction. But, since Goody wrote, historians have been increasingly alerted to complex relationships among individuals, property, and the church, which may extend far beyond the scope of individual documents, across several generations. Goody's female “givers” take on a new complexion in an environment in which donations can be more apparent than real, where a land transfer may prove no more than a social gesture. In such circumstances, identifying the originators of grants, let alone separating male and female action, becomes a delicate process. In the following article, female involvement is considered in the context of pre-Conquest wills, a body of documents that could be interpreted as classic evidence that female “givers” literally as well as morally stood in credit with the church.The prominence of women in pre-Conquest wills has long been noted.

The botanical lexicon of the Old EnglishHerbarium

Recent research has established beyond question that, in the study of medicine at least, Anglo-Saxon England was far from being ‘a backwater in which superstition flourished until the mainstream of more rational and advanced Salernitan practices flowed into the country in late medieval times’. On the contrary, Anglo-Saxon medicine was at least at the same level as that of contemporary European schools. In ninth-century England the medical works inherited by ‘post-classical Latin medical literature (which included translations and epitomes of Greek and Byzantine medical authorities)’ were not only well known, but served as the basis for original reworking and compilation, as the example of theLæcebocshows. More important, it was in pre-Conquest England that, for the first time in Europe, medical treatises were either compiled in or translated into a vernacular language rather than being composed in Latin or Greek. Ancient medicine made substantial use of drugs obtained from plants; and therefore, since the sources of Anglo-Saxon medical lore were in Latin (or in Greek: but invariably known through the medium of Latin), it is not surprising that most medicinal herbs used in the preparation of Old English prescriptions were not indigenous to England or even to continental Germany. And since such medicinal herbs were not indigenous to northern Europe, it is evident that, in using them, speakers of vernacular languages were obliged to create a vocabulary appropriate to denote them.

The cults of murdered royal saints in Anglo-Saxon England

Murder by fellow Christians for secular motives may seem to us an improbable qualification for sanctity. To the Anglo-Saxons, however, the matter evidently appeared differently, for several members of pre-Conquest royal families seem to have been regarded as saints chiefly because of their violent ends at the hands of Christian assassins. The lives and cults of some of these murdered royal saints are well attested in pre-Conquest sources. Others, however, are known chiefly from post-Conquest texts which are mainly hagiographical in character and which were written considerably later than the events which they describe. For these reasons these latter texts have not generally been taken seriously as historical sources and the saints who figure in them have been largely neglected by historians. The hagiographical character of these texts, however, should not exclude them from historical consideration. They may preserve details of the saints’ careers which can be accepted as fact, and the accounts of miracles and wonders which they contain, although not to be treated as factual narratives, provide evidence bearing on the veneration of these saints. As for the date of composition, there is always a possibility that late medieval hagiographical texts represent stylistic and literary modifications of much more ancient versions, the former existence of which may in some cases be revealed by close analysis of the extant texts. The evidence relating to the whole group of murdered royal saints said to have been venerated in pre-Conquest England must therefore be evaluated before conclusions about the significance of this type of sanctity can be drawn. In what follows the saints in question will be considered in order of the apparent validity of the evidence pertaining to them, so that those whose existence and veneration are less certain can be examined in comparison with more firmly documented examples.

TheModus Medendiand the Benedictine Order in Anglo-Norman England

The Benedictines played an important part in the development of medicine in England between 1066 and 1215. In pre-conquest England, the care of the sick had been based upon little more than the practices of Anglo-Saxon leeches which were largely founded upon superstition. Botany had become a drug list and medicine had deteriorated into little more than a collection of formulae. After the Norman conquest, chiefly through the influence of Benedictine scholars from the continent, medical learning in England began to be based upon the writings of the ancient world. These included not only the works of Galen and Hippocrates but also anonymous medical treatises in Latin such as theDe Modo Medendi.

Origins of English Feudalism

Originally published in 1973, Origins of English Feudalism suggests that English feudalism has, for a long time, been the most controversial and thereby the most highly technical aspect of English medieval history. The book contains relevant sources that will be of use to readers and will allow them to study documentary, literary and archaeological sources from the medieval period. The debate over the establishment of feudalism in pre-Conquest England involves not only the question of the presence or absence of fief, but also of knights and cavalry, castles and vassilic commendation. This book will be of interest to academics and the ease of use and careful division of sources, will be of interest to students.

The Hide and Related Land-Tenure Concepts in Anglo-Saxon England, A.D. 700 - 1100

The hide was a common form of land tenure in pre-Conquest England. Scanty documentation and ambiguous statements in the sources have made it difficult, however, for economic and social historians to understand the evolving meaning of hide in the period from Bede to 1100. The present study attempts to clarify some of the problems surrounding this word by a re-examination of the sources and by an analysis of terminology in land-tenure institutions related to it. The results of the investigation show that revisions in land tenure during the later Anglo-Saxon era prepared the way for the introduction of Norman methods for governing the English countryside.

Eschatology in the Anonymous Old English Homilies

The vernacular homilies of pre-conquest England fall into two clear groups: homilies whose authorship is unknown and which are generally considered to have been written by the middle of the tenth century and the sermon collections of Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham and Archbishop Wulfstan II of York which were written,ca.990–1020, under the influence of the Benedictine reform.

The Free Anglo-Saxons: A Historical Myth

Historians have been reluctant to give obsolete historical theories much attention, except those of their colleagues. Live historiographical issues call up the resources of pugnacity which distinguish the tribe; but the interpretive conflicts of the past have until quite lately been passed over in silence. Thus philosophers, devoid of such inhibitions, have made everyone familiar with the philosophic background of Leveller thought, while its historical trappings have scarcely achieved that decent burial which is too often the function of the doctoral thesis. This examination, or inhumation, will be concerned with these Leveller views of English history, and particularly of the Norman Conquest. That event early in the Civil War Richard Baxter found being canvassed by a few hot-headed, conceited sectaries in the regiments of horse, whose conclusion was that the Conquest had in fact imposed the social system of early Stuart England upon the Anglo-Saxons. Few of the Leveller writers demonstrated more than the haziest notions of pre-Conquest England; but few of them seemed to care. It was enough to damn Charles and his colonels as the descendants of William and his lords of the manors. But how the Norman Conquerors were elected charter members of a historical Gehenna makes an intricate puzzle. The most obvious clues to the sources of the Conquest myth may be found in the crowded margins of the Leveller pamphlets. There we find Coke and Samuel Daniel, John Speed and the shadowy figure of Andrew Horn. But all of these drew in turn on the works of medieval legists and chroniclers; and the systematic utilization of lawbook and chronicle arose from the complex stimulus of the Reformation. Again, the obvious: medieval libraries were dispersed, their treasures indifferently available to scholars and soap-sellers. Yet the survival of medieval manuscripts and books was not wholly subject to the chances of pillaging. The tastes of the acquirers of monastic property, and the convictions of those attempting to stanch the flow of manuscripts to ignoble uses, dictated what was willingly sacrificed and what was likely to be preserved. A survey of the survival of manuscripts in the library of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, suggests a pattern of preservation. On an average, one out of eleven items in the fifteenth-century catalogue of the library has survived. Of sententiae, however, the ratio is only one in nineteen; of collections of sermons, one in twenty; of law books, one in 22. There is no Aristotelean or scholastic philosophy at all. On the other hand, one-sixth of the works of Augustine, Jerome, Gregory, and Ambrose, and nearly one-half of the monastic histories and chronicles have survived.1 The men whose mission was to salvage the wheat from monkish chaff made no secret of their preference for histories and chronicles. England might well be content, thought John Bale, if the byshop of Romes lawes,

Neanderthal Remains from Hither Asia

THE current number of Antiquity as usual contains several important papers. These include among others an article on “The Viking Taste in Pre–Conquest England” with excellent illustrations, and an account of “A Datable Ritual Barrow in Glamorganshire” by Sir Cyril Fox. But perhaps the most important information appears under the “Notes and News” and concerns a prehistoric find in Uzbekistan of flake tool industries associated with the remains of a Neanderthal child. Those who would like more details than this excellent précis can give should consult Asia (July and August, 1940) where A. P. Okladnikov has published two interim reports. The discovery itself was made in an immense rock–shelter called Teshik–Tash high up in the side of the Zautolosh Darya gorge not far from Tashkent and the Soviet–Afghan frontier. The rock–shelter is 61 ft. wide and 64 ft. deep; it is above the contour–levels frequented by shepherds and herds, and so has remained undisturbed by modern intruders. On the other hand, the plentiful remains of wild mountain goats found in the deposits evoke no surprise. There were four black archæological levels separated by clay–like sterile ones, but the industries from bottom to top showed no great culture–change.

The Viking Taste in Pre-Conquest England

The Viking Taste in Pre-Conquest England