Thirteenth Fourteenth Centuries Research Articles

When the Papal Legate Is Not Well Received

The Papacy became the supreme authority of the Latin Christianity at least at the turn of the twelfth–thirteenth centuries. Papal delegates, especially legati a latere were the “long arm” of the popes to settle and negotiate both ecclesiastical and political issues. In theory, papal representatives should have been given a warm welcome in the places where they were sent, however, as the examples in the paper show, this was by no means always the case. The paper aims to discuss this process by analysing the activities of the papal legates in the Kingdom if Hungary, the form of representation and the procedures of the negotiation (cooperation, contestation, refusal) of this authority in the context of the Hungarian Kingdom in thirteenth-fourteenth centuries.

Some Important Topics of Maktubat-i-Sadi and Their Philosophico-Spiritual Significance

Hazrat Sharafuddin bin Yahyah Maneri was a scholar and Sufi of the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries. He was a prolific writer. One of his important books is a collection of letters titled Maktubat-i-Sadi. The article focuses to bring out the main themes of the book and identified ten topics to discussed. They are: 1. Concept and love of God; 2. Deceiving nature of the world; 3. Sin and repentance; 4. Necessity of a qualified spiritual guide and obedience to his guidance; 5. Origin and need of Sufism; 6. Poverty and its role in the purification of evil soul; 7. Rendering selfless service to others; 8. Fate and predestination; 9. Observance of the Shariah; and 10. Acquisition of good qualities and shunning of the evil ones. The philosophical and spiritual significance of these teachings have been pointed out in this article. Philosophy and Progress, Vol#71-72; No#1-2; Jan-Dec 2022 P 79-96

Survival in Mudejar Spain in the Middle Ages (thirteenth-fourteenth centuries): Ancient Rare Diseases-an uncommon diagnosis in archaeological human remains.

The finding of severe skeletal alterations in ancient remains could give us useful information not only about the pathologies of the individual per se, as it could infer the state of health of a population. From the findings of the Mudéjar Cemetery of Uceda (Guadalajara, Central Spain) where a total of 116 burials with almost complete skeleton were recovered, an interesting individual is presented (palaeopathological perspective). The individual 114UC corresponds to a male of 20-25years old and its age goes back to the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries. The first inspection showed the presence of serious alterations especially in the lumbar spine and pelvic girdle. Seven vertebrae (from T11 to L5) showed an unusual posterior fusion only in the postzygapophyseal joints. The pelvis, after being accurately assembled and congruence verified by X-ray and CT scan, showed a noticeable asymmetry of both iliac wings together with a coxa magna protusa (Otto's pelvis), severe anteversion of both cup hips and osteochondritis of the right femoral head. The posterior-slope of both tibias reached about 10°. The differential diagnoses lead us to think of Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita as the most probable diagnosis. We analyzed the same biomechanical aspects after taking into account some patterns that give us information about a possible mobility in the first stage of life. We discuss the very few other cases described both from artworks and in the palaeopathological record. To our knowledge, this case could be the oldest published case of AMC worldwide.

Female diaconate in medieval Nubia: evidence from a wall inscription from Faras

AbstractThis paper offers a re-edition and reinterpretation of a Greek inscription painted on a wall at the Rivergate Church at Faras in medieval Nubia and dated to the thirteenth–fourteenth centuries. This dedicatory prayer is the first evidence for the existence of the female diaconate in the entire Nile Valley. While the close reading of the text in its architectural and art-historical settings allows us to formulate some hypotheses about the functions of Nubian deaconesses, in a broader perspective, the inscription is also a valuable piece of evidence for the high position of Nubian women on the one hand and the “Byzantineness” of Christian Nubian culture on the other.

Scour ponds from unusually large tsunamis on a beach-ridge plain in eastern Hokkaido, Japan

Scour ponds from unusually large tsunamis cut across the crest of a beach ridge in Kiritappu marsh, eastern Hokkaido. No fewer than ten of these ponds were imaged by photogrammetry as elongate topographic depressions as large as 5 m by 30 m. Sediments in these ponds are underlain by unconformities that were detected with ground-penetrating radar and observed directly in cores and a slice sample. Sediment deposits in the ponds contain peat and volcanic ash layers, the ages of which suggest that the scouring occurred during tsunamis generated by spatially extensive thrust ruptures along the southern Kuril trench, most recently during the early seventeenth century and its predecessor during the thirteenth–fourteenth century. Some of the ponds appear to have been formed during one tsunami and refreshed during later successors. This evidence of recurrent erosion suggests that the shoreline may retreat as part of earthquake-related cycles of coastal uplift and subsidence.

The genomic analysis of current-day North African populations reveals the existence of trans-Saharan migrations with different origins and dates

The Sahara Desert has acted as a barrier to human gene-flow between the northern and central parts of Africa since its aridification. Nonetheless, some contacts between both sides of the desert have occurred throughout history, mainly driven by commercial activity. Part of this was the infamous trans-Saharan slave trade, which forcedly brought peoples from south of the Sahara to North Africa from Roman times until the nineteenth century. Although historical records exist, the genetic aspects of these trans-Saharan migrations have not been deeply studied. In the present study, we assess the genetic influence of trans-Saharan migrations in current-day North Africa and characterize its amount, geographical origin, and dates. We confirm the heterogeneous and generally low-frequency presence of genomic segments of sub-Saharan origin in present-day North Africans acquired in recent historical times, and we show evidence of at least two admixture events: one dated around the thirteenth–fourteenth centuries CE between North Africans and a Western-sub-Saharan-like source similar to current-day Senegambian populations, and another one dated around the seventeenth century CE involving Tunisians and an Eastern-sub-Saharan-like source related to current-day south-Sudan and Kenyan populations. Time and location coincide with the peak of trans-Saharan slave-trade activity between Western African empires and North African powers, and are also concordant with the possibility of continuous recent south-to-north gene-flow. These findings confirm the trans-Saharan human genetic contacts, providing new and precise evidence about its possible dates and geographical origins, which are pivotal to understanding the genomic composition of an underrepresented region such as North Africa.

Апокалипсис XIII в.: первое столкновение русских с монголами сквозь призму средневекового миропонимания

Research objective: The idea has already been expressed that the eschatological image of the Mongols of Russian annalists, recorded in the Tale of the Battle on the Kalka River of 1223, after some time, through the reports of Dominican Julian and testimony of Archbishop Peter at the Council of Lyons in 1245, influenced the apocalyptic character of the Mongols’ Great Western Campaign in Latin Europe. However, it remains unstu­died why the Russians turned to the terrifying eschatological apocrypha. In the presented study we are going to deal with this question. Research materials: The research is based on a wide range of published original and translated sources of the thirteenth–fourteenth centuries, written in Russian, Latin, French, Arabic, Persian, Syriac and Armenian, as well as the opinions of scholars expressed in literature on related fields. Results and the novelty of research: The appeal of Russian chroniclers to eschatological apocrypha is extremely rare. Before the Tale of the Battle on Kalka, the chronicler refers to the Revelations of Pseudo-Methodius only once, in a chronicle entry about the plundering of Kiev monasteries by the Cumans in 1096. Comparison of these messages, the historical background of the described events, evidence of literary texts, travel reports, chronicles and diplomatic material shows that the Russian writers took upon themselves the responsibility to make a comparison with the Last Times only when a complex of causes formed such a mosaic that it left no other explanation. At the same time, the most important role in the eschatological character of the Tale of the Battle on Kalka was not only caused by the bitterness of the defeat, the demise of many princes and warriors and the desolation of Novgorod Svyatopolchich, but also by the diplomatic rhetoric carried by the Mongol conquerors “from sea to sea”, the warlords of the khan and the people who came from the deep depths of Inner Asia to rule the whole world.

Медресе «Киже»: об имени основательницы медресе в Старом Крыму

Objective: to compare preserved epigraphic monuments from Staryi Krym with the “Travel book” by Evliya Çelebi and clarify the name of the founder of the madrasah. Research materials: The article is based on the study of the “Travel Book” by Evliya Çelebi published in the Ottoman language in 1928, particularly his visit to Staryi Krym; translation of the “Travel Book” into Russian by E.V. Bakharevsky; modern transliteration into Latin by a group of researchers in Turkey; Russian publications of epigraphic monuments of Staryi Krym starting from the mid-nineteenth century and up to the present. These materials have been compared with the tombstone and inscription above the entrance to the so-called “Uzbek Mosque”. The manuscript “Muizz al-ansab” and various dictionaries from the Turkic languages were used as additional materials. Results and novelty of the research: A comparison of previously published sources and researches helped to consider various options for reading the name, acceptable for the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries, and the drawing of the inscription of the tombstone confirmed that O. Akchokrakly’s reading of the name was correct. In addition, on the basis of the new material, it has been confirmed that the Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi during his journeys wrote down the inscriptions he saw with minor errors and that these inscriptions can be considered trustworthy, with some caution. According to the inscription on the tombstone found in 1925, the name of the founder of the madrasah should be read as Ilchi Khatun.

The Simiots of Catalan Folklore: Neither Are Reminiscences So Old, Nor Are They So Strange Beings

The simiot is a creature in the Catalan Pyrenean mythology. The term can be translated as “a kind of ape” or “similar to an ape”. According to a medieval legend, around the tenth century, these wild beasts terrorized Arles, a Catalan village in the Vallespir region. Up until now, the number of scholarly studies dealing in depth with these beings is very small. Books and papers by several twentieth-century folklorists, such as Joan Amades, have not contributed to clarifying their origin. By and large, authors propose that simiots are remnants of an ancient and pagan religion, perhaps linked to canid cults or forest deities. However, considering their probable etymology, their origin can be traced to the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries.

The Dissemination and Practice of Primary Care Medicine by the Scholar-Gentry: A Study of Prescriptions of Local Botanicals for Emergency Use, a Medical Text of Koryŏ from the Thirteenth-Fourteenth Centuries

Abstract Prescriptions of Local Botanicals for Emergency Use (K. Hyang’yak Kugŭppang 鄕藥救急方) is the oldest medical text extant on the Korean Peninsula and known to have been compiled during the latter half of the Koryŏ 高麗 dynasty (918–1392 ce). The key value of this work lies in the dissemination and praxis of medical knowledge. First, the author used annotations in order to record Koryŏ people’s pronunciations of the names of medicinal ingredients and symptoms introduced in the main body of the text. In addition, he made use of actual empirical cases to enhance the persuasiveness of treatment methods and integrated medicine newly introduced from Song 宋 China (960–1279) into medicine familiarly used from before. Finally, he edited this text with a focus on important and simple yet efficacious treatment methods. The book continued to be used steadily following publication. It was additionally printed no fewer than twice by the government of the Chosŏn 朝鮮 dynasty (1392–1910), which ousted Koryŏ, with its clinical usefulness heightened through the supplementation of explanations on medicinal ingredients use in these processes. In particular, the quotation of sentences from Prescriptions for Emergency Use in medical texts published by the Chosŏn government implies that the utility of the medical knowledge in this work was amply acknowledged. The intended readership of the medical information in Prescriptions for Emergency Use was the not the general populace who lived in the Korean Peninsula in the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries. They not only lacked the financial means to pay physicians but also were illiterate, so that they could not even read medical texts. In order for this work to be effective, it was necessary for it to address those who could read medical texts and put their contents into practice. In the end, the author of this book assumed scholar-gentry equipped with academic knowledge as its readers and sought to provide medical information tailored to their level and to realize medical service through them. Through this work, it is possible to see in a very concrete and vivid manner how medical knowledge was disseminated and, furthermore, how medical knowledge thus disseminated was put to use in an era when medical resources were insufficient.

Credit and investment between town and countryside: the market in grain annuities in Normandy (thirteenth-fourteenth centuries)

AbstractThe replacement of rents in kind by payments in money is considered by many historians as a marker of the commercialization of the economy and thus of its modernization. The case of medieval Normandy does not confirm this development, however: the sources testify to a common use of money since the end of the eleventh century, but also to the persistence until the fifteenth century of payment in kind, including in the field of credit. The article examines the case of the Caen region, for which there is abundant evidence from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries of annuities purchased with money from peasants in exchange for annual repayments in grain. This system allowed a significant transfer of monetary value to the countryside, while guaranteeing the supply of urban markets and welfare institutions. Although these contracts were usually secured by pledges on plots of land, they did not lead to the expropriation of peasants, but rather promoted the growth of credit markets in the countryside.

Byzantine Elements of the Material Culture of the Thirteenth-Fourteenth Century Bosporos (On the Example of 2018 Excavation Trench)

This paper is the first to address the problem of the presence of Byzantine imports in the material culture of Bosporos from the second half of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. So far the degree of “Byzantinization” of the coastal towns in the eastern Taurica, which were finally absorbed by the Golden Horde in the third quarter of the thirteenth century and remained in its structure to the mid-fifteenth century, is a topical issue in the mediaeval Crimean studies. Although the greatest part of the artefacts made in Byzantium, represented mostly by ceramic ware and discovered in the thirteenth-fourteenth century horizons and buildings of Sougdaia, has already been introduced into the scholarship, parallel finds from Bosporos never became the subject of analysis. The reason is the poor studying of the latter and almost complete absence of published materials. The materials of large-scale protective excavations conducted in Kerch in 2018 certainly deserve attention. The vast majority of these finds date from the seventh to twelfth centuries. However, the materials from the second half of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries stand out to become the subject of this paper. Unfortunately, they are highly fragmented, but allowing the one to determine Byzantine imports and to compare their composition and quantity with similar products of Sougdaia.

Certifying inequalities in the communal world (thirteenth-fourteenth centuries)

Certifying inequalities in the communal world (thirteenth-fourteenth centuries)

Raman and XRF classification of Asian and European glass beads recovered at Mutamba, a southern African Middle Iron Age site

Twenty-eight representative beads found at the thirteenth-fourteenth century AD site of Mutamba in southern Africa were classified morphologically and then analysed with pXRF. Eighteen beads were selected from four identified series of K2-IP, EC-IP, Mapungubwe Oblate and European for Raman spectroscopy. The results show corrosion has a great effect on the composition and nanostructure of Mapungubwe series with lixiviation of alkalis. In corroded K2-IP beads elevated amounts of potassium recorded on the surface layer compared to less corroded IP beads. Despite these changes pXRF and Raman spectroscopy were successful in discriminating of the bead series by considering the concentration of trace elements (Zr, U), detected pigments (lead tin yellow (II), red lead), opacifiers (SnO2, calcium antimoniate) and colorants (Fe, Cu, Co) and their concentrations in the beads.

Nowhere in the Middle Ages by Karma Lochrie

Reviewed by: Nowhere in the Middle Ages by Karma Lochrie Kate M. Craig Nowhere in the Middle Ages By Karma Lochrie. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. <http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15510.html> In Nowhere in the Middle Ages, Karma Lochrie proposes a provocative question: was there such a thing as utopianism before Utopia, the eponymous island created by Thomas More in 1516? For Lochrie, More's work has long been viewed incorrectly as an ex nihilo creation linked tightly to the nascent concerns of the early modern world; thus, identifications of "utopian" literature have been based on their similarity to More's idealized and isolated island commonwealth, involving "…travel to an unknown place, encounter with alternative social, political, economic, and religious structures, and an implicit comparison and/or critique of contemporary society" (16). Moving away from this narrow, Utopia-based definition of a utopia, Lochrie argues, opens the discussion to a wealth of medieval texts that contain aspects of "utopian imagination" and gives a more nuanced past both to the concept and to More's text itself. She stresses that the crux of this book lies in the fact that she ends, rather than begins, by discussing More, thus "productively scrambling the inaugural narrative currently telling utopia's story…" (7). This stylistic choice frames Utopia as one of many possible outcomes of the medieval utopian traditions she identifies in the previous chapters, taking up some narrative threads and breaking with others. In examining medieval utopianism, then, Lochrie is not searching for the "roots" of More's work, but exploring the different forms of utopias that existed in the Middle Ages with the goal of expanding not only our understanding of the period's imaginative life, but also the characteristics by which we define utopian thought. She achieves this "scrambling" by discussing four pairings of core medieval texts with later, mostly early modern texts. While not necessarily related to one another textually (though some are), she uses these pairings to demonstrate four different flavors of "utopian optics." Lochrie makes it clear that her purpose is not to show consistency or even connection between these models of medieval utopianism, but rather to map out a range of utopian possibilities and hint at their [End Page 330] afterlives. This choice privileges thematic cohesion over chronological progression, which might be disorienting for historically-minded readers seeking a more linear narrative. Lochrie's four pairings are: first, Macrobius' Commentary on the Dream of Scipio (early fifth century) with Johannes Kepler's Somnium (1634); second, the English and French Cokaygne traditions (thirteenth–fourteenth centuries) with Protestant satires and twentieth-century hobo and African-American songs; third, Mandeville's Travels with Richard Brome's The Antipodes (1636); and finally, William Langland's Piers Plowman (fourteenth century) with William Morris' A Dream of John Ball (1886-7). The Macrobius-Kepler pairing demonstrates what Lochrie terms a "cosmological utopianism"; that is, texts that use imaginary extraterrestrial travel to provoke reflection. The Dream of Scipio, included in Cicero's De republica and transmitted through Macrobius's Commentary, imagines Scipio Africanus's reaction as he is taken by his grandfather in a dream-vision to the heavens, prompting a realization of the cosmic triviality of the Roman Empire and indeed Earth itself: a "global vision of reduced significance" (31). This framing calls up a host of modern parallels in the reader's mind (Carl Sagan's pale blue dot, or the overview effect experienced by astronauts), but Lochrie productively compares it with Kepler's slightly bizarre dream-within-a-dream text relating how his mother, depicted as a sorceress (a portrayal which got her arrested), calls up a demon who has visited "Levania" (the moon). According to Lochrie, the lunar-centered perspective of Kepler's text is what makes it utopian, despite the lack of explicit political or social critique: it invites readers to see the earth (called "Volva" by the moon's inhabitants) as the alternative "other." If we consider "seeing the world with different eyes" the defining trait of utopianism, Lochrie argues, no there-but-unreachable place of "Utopia" is needed; our world, seen from the moon, can be its own mirror. In the Cokaygne traditions...

Syro-mongolian for the King of France. A note about the letter of Hulegu to King Louis IX (1262)

The Ilkhan Hulegu, Mongol ruler of Iran, sent from Maragha a letter in Latin (10 April 1262) to the King of France, Louis IX, proposing a military alliance against the Mamluk sultanate. The Latin text was most probably written by «Richardus notarius ac interpres latinorum [to Hulegu]». In the salutation to the addressee, an exotic word is found: «Barachmar», which scholars considered a mistakenly written, shortened form of some Perso-Arabic expression. Here we suggest instead that it originates from the Syriac greeting formula barrek mār! (brk mry), «O Lord, bless me» (lit. «Bless, my Lord!»), which according to Bar ‘Ebroyo (1225/6-1286) had been borrowed by the Mongols already at the time of Guyuk Khan reign (1246-1248). It is noteworthy that comparative evidence is lacking, greetings being usually absent from the letters (in Mongolian and in Persian language) sent by Mongol rulers in the thirteenth-fourteenth century. pier.giorgio.borbone@unipi.it

Labour Time, Guild Time? Working Hours in the Cloth Industry of Medieval Flanders and Artois (Thirteenth-Fourteenth Centuries)

Labour Time, Guild Time? Working Hours in the Cloth Industry of Medieval Flanders and Artois (Thirteenth-Fourteenth Centuries)

Subpolar settlement in South Polynesia

Archaeological research in the Auckland Islands, south of New Zealand, has disclosed earth ovens, middens and flaked stone tools dating to the thirteenth–fourteenth centuries AD. This is the first site of prehistoric settlement in the outlying islands of the Subantarctic. Polynesians and their dogs survived on seals and seabirds for at least one summer. The new data complete a survey of colonisation in the outlying archipelagos of South Polynesia and show that it occurred contemporaneously, rapidly and in all directions from mainland New Zealand.

Bronze Age farms and Iron Age farm mounds of the Outer Hebrides

Hebridean sites of the coastal sand cliffs and associated machair, or sandy plain have been known for many years. Artefacts and ecofacts of various types have long been collected from archaeological sites in the eroding sand-cliffs of the machairs of the Outer Hebrides. Early in 1983, personnel of the then Central Excavation Unit of Historic Scotland's predecessor revisited very nearly all of the coastal archaeological sites then known in the Long Isle, with the specific task of identifying those at immediate threat from coastal erosion and of assessing the feasibility of their excavation or preservation. Some 32 sites were seen to be undergoing active erosion; at nine of them preservation was not being pursued and excavation was feasible. These sites were of two morphotypes: sites exposed in roughly vertical sand-cliffs and sites exposed over relatively large horzontal areas of sand deflation. It was decided to examine one sand-cliff site along its exposed face. The site selected was Balelone in North Uist, its excavation designed to explore both the problems associated with the excavation of deep midden sites with complex stratigraphy and the not-inconsiderable problems of excavation in sand. In the light of the Balelone trial excavation, a new approach was called for. A structured approach aimed firstly at establishing the three-dimensional extent of the sites to be examined. Four sites were then sampled (the sand-cliff sites of Baleshare, on the island of the same name off the west coast of North Uist and Hornish Point, South Uist and the deflation sites of South Glendale, South Uist and Newtonferry, North Uist) within a rigorously-defined research framework.The machair sites were formed by sand accretion, facilitated by human activities ranging from construction to refuse disposal and cultivation. Their formation was intermittent and they underwent episodes of major erosion, isolating the sites from the landscape mass of the machair sands. Despite their apparent wealth of suitable material, the dating of Hebridean coastal sites presents special problems. The strategy here was to provide a dating framework for the sequences on each site, from which the dates of archaeological significant structures and events could then be arrived at by extrapolation. Preliminary dates from the earliest and latest strata at Balelone spanned such a small period that a First Millennium BC date-range could be assigned. At Baleshare, the deposits investigated were chiefly later Bronze Age; following abandonment (roughly 200 radiocarbon years) of the Period I cultivated soil Period II represented extensive, manured, cultivated fields in the vicinity of a settlement now lost to the sea. As Period II went on. the settlement seems to have moved closer to the excavated area. After another hiatus of a minimum of 350 radiocarbon years, there were further cultivated plots and associated settlement of Iron Age date (Period III). By contrast, the site at Hornish Point (including successive wheelhouses and associated cultivation areas) is considered to be all of one - dynamic, Iron Age - period, lasting some 300 radiocarbon years (with potentially earlier structures unexcavated). A post-medieval blackhouse of characteristic Lewisian form had been cut into the settlement mound. The three dates from Newtonferry suggest that some Early Medieval activity took place at the site, while the bulk of the deposits date from the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries AD. At South Glendale, the radiocarbon dates indicate occupation sometime between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries AD; stratigraphically lower, fragmented and truncated remains were prehistoric, probably early Bronze Age.

Neoglaciation and an early 'Little Ice Age' in western Norway: lichenometric evidence from the Sandane area

Moraine sequences, protalus ramparts, rock glaciers and various slope deposits in seven separate glacier basins provide lichenometric ages for glacier retreat in an upland area of Sogn-og- Fjordane, southern Norway. Geomorphological mapping, relative dating based on section Rhizocarpon size-frequency distributions, observations on vegetation cover, and numeric dating based on a regional lichen dating curve for section Rhizocarpon, place moraines into three groups: Stage 1 moraines of likely Preboreal or Younger Dryas age; Stage 2 moraines of pre- or early 'Little Ice Age' but post-Preboreal age (thirteenth-fourteenth centuries); and Stage 3 moraines of fifteenth-century age and younger. The occurrence of thirteenth-sixteenth century (pre- or early 'Little Ice Age') moraines at low altitudes in the Sandane area is thought to relate to greater availability of moisture and to the capture of wind- drifted snow. These moraines are some of the oldest 'Little Ice Age' moraines dated by lichenometry in southern Norway. In some cirques, glaciers retreated from their fifteenth-century positions allowing protalus rampart development, scree accumulation and debris-flow activity to continue until the present.