The Athelstan Gift Story: Its Influence on English Chronicles and Carolingian Romances

PMLA ◽  
1952 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-537
Author(s):  
Laura Hibbard Loomis
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Chanson De Roland ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
William Of Malmesbury

To saints and their relics in the Middle Ages great men did great reverence. The mighty Charlemagne zealously collected and distributed relics of Christ and the saints; so, too, did the noble King Athelstan of England, who was, to his own contemporaries, something of “an English Charlemagne.” Certain tales relating to these two famous rulers and the holy relics acquired by them, are full of interest in themselves and in the relationship, at special stages, of the stories to each other. The Continental Carolingian narratives—the Pèlerinage de Charlemagne, the Descriptio qualiter Karolus Magnus clavum et coronam Domini a Constantino poli Aquis Grani detulerit, the Fierabras tell how Charlemagne, either on a fabulous journey to the East, or by warfare in Spain, got a hoard of precious relics which included some from the Crucifixion but never, in the oldest versions of these stories, any part of the Passion Lance. An ancient story, of English origin, tells how Athelstan received, as a gift from France, a hoard which likewise included some Passion relics. Among the gifts was the Passion Lance which was said to have belonged to Charlemagne; there was also the vexillum of St. Mauricius. For the Carolingian stories named above there is no extant text that antedates the latter half of the twelfth century, no conjectured source that antedates the latter half of the eleventh century. The Athelstan Gift Story, as we shall call it, was first set forth in an Anglo-Latin poem eulogizing the English king (d. 939). This panegyric was quoted and summarized by William of Malmesbury (1125) and is now accepted, though it was long ignored, as an authentic tenth century source. It may have been this almost unknown poem which inspired in the Chanson de Roland, in that earliest Anglo-Norman copy known as the Oxford Roland, four concepts connected with Charlemagne's reported possession of a bit of the Passion Lance. Our concern here, however, is not with the ancient Latin poem, but with the version of its Gift Story by William of Malmesbury. To it he gave new life, new currency; its influence can be traced in various chronicles and in certain English Carolingian romances. It throws new light on their development and relationships. Strangely enough, it was in these English Carolingian stories and not in their Continental sources and analogues that the idea that Charlemagne had once possessed the Passion Lance took root and flourished.

scholarly journals Las técnicas constructivas en las murallas medievales de Almería

X ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro Gurriarán Daza
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Rammed Earth ◽  
Construction Techniques ◽  
Typical Scheme ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Middle Ages

Building techniques in the medieval walls of AlmeríaAlmería was one of the most important cities in al-Andalus, a circumstance that was possible thanks to the strength of its port. Its foundation as an urban entity during the Caliphate of Córdoba originated a typical scheme of an Islamic city organized by a medina and a citadel, both walled. Subsequent city’s growths, due to the creation of two large suburbs commencing in the eleventh century, also received defensive works, creating a system of fortifications that was destined to defend the place during the rest of the Middle Ages. In this work we will analyse the construction techniques used in these military works, which cover a wide period from the beginning of the tenth century until the end of the fifteenth century. Although ashlar stone was used in the Caliphate fortification, in most of these constructions bricklayer techniques were used, more modest but very useful. In this way, the masonry and rammed earth technique were predominant, giving rise to innumerable constructive phases that in recent times are being studied with archaeological methodology, thus to know better their evolution and main characteristics. 

Scriptoria and Libraries

2020 ◽  
pp. 736-768
Author(s):  
Donatella Nebbiai
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Reading Habits ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Book Collections ◽  
Book Collectors ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Mendicant Orders ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter explores the relationship between scriptoria and libraries during the Middle Ages, from the monastic houses of the early Middle Ages through the changes wrought by the universities and schools after the eleventh century. The author discusses the location of libraries and book collections within monasteries, private libraries and book collectors of the Carolingian period, the role of changing reading habits on the housing of books, the production of library booklists, the function of books withing the Mendicant orders.

The Kitāb al-Taswi'a or Book of Reprobation by Jonah ibn Janāḥ. A revision of J. and H. Derenbourg's edition

2000 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
María A. Gallego
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Biblical Hebrew ◽  
Important Development ◽  
The Middle Ages

Abū I-Walīd Jonah ibn Janāḥ is undoubtedly one of the greatest Hebrew grammarians. Born in Al-Andalus at the end of the tenth century he was active during the eleventh century, but his exact dates are not known. His best known works, a grammar, Kitāb al-Lumaՙ (The book of variegated flowerbeds) and a dictionary of biblical Hebrew, Kitāb al-'Uṣūl (The book of roots), represented the most important development in the knowledge of Hebrew of the Middle Ages. Other important works on grammar include Kitāb al-Taswi'a (The book of annexation), a short grammatical treatise which he composed as a response to critics of a previous work entitled Kitāb al-Mustalḥaq (The book of annexation).

Learned Discussions of Indulgences for the Dead in the Middle Ages

1992 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 367-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert W. Shaffern
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Holy Places ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Middle Ages

By the thirteenth century, Latin Christians had been dispensing and collecting indulgences for two centuries. Though indulgentia was a relatively late term, and first the favorite of thirteenth-century Dominican theologians, remissions of temporal penalty for sin had been granted since the eleventh century, whether they were known as remissiones or relaxationes, the two most popular terms of eleventh- and twelfth-century ecclesiastics. Bishops granted partial indulgences for visitations of holy places. Partial indulgences remitted a fraction of all penalty incurred through sin. Contributions to pious works, such as church, hospital, or bridge constructions, were also rewarded with indulgences. Other prelates granted indulgences until Lateran IV. The popes granted both partial and plenary indulgences (those which remitted all penalty for having sinned). They granted partial indulgences for much the same reasons as other bishops. Plenary indulgences were almost exclusively granted to crusaders or contributors to crusades.

scholarly journals 2. Note. On the Use of the Scholastic Terms Vetus Logica and Nova Logica, with a Remark upon the corresponding Terms Antiqui and Moderni

1872 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 441-449
Author(s):  
Thomas M. Lindsay
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Incomplete Knowledge ◽  
Diffusion Of Knowledge ◽  
Old Greek ◽  
The Middle Ages

During the earlier part of the middle ages, or until the middle of the eleventh century, students of logic had a very incomplete knowledge of the logical works of Aristotle. They knew the translations which Boethius had made of Porphyry's Εἰσαγωγὴ of Aristotle's περὶ κατεγορίων, and of his περὶ ἑρμηνείας, and they knew little else. Their labours did not go beyond the reproduction of, and commenting on, these old Greek writings.Towards the beginning of the twelfth century, however, the gradual diffusion of knowledge had brought with it acquaintance with the remaining treatises of Aristotle's Organon. The old translations of Boethius were recovered, and new translations were made. We are told that “Jacobus Clericus of Venetia translated from Greek into Latin certain books of Aristotle, and commented on them, namely, the Topica, the Analytics Prior and Posterior, and the Elenchi, although,” adds the chronicler, “an earlier translation of these same books may be had.”

The Realm of the Imām the Faṭīmids in the tenth century

1996 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 431-449
Author(s):  
Michael Brett
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Modern History ◽  
The Third ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Middle Ages

Despite their period from the tenth to the twelfth century, at the height of the Middle Ages; despite their position in Egypt, at the centre of the civilization of the Near and Middle East; and despite their prominence as the third Caliphate of Islam, the Fāṭimids lack a satisfactory modern history of their dynasty. This is partly because of the length of their life, which covers the histories of so many hundreds of years; partly because of the span of their empire from North Africa to Egypt and Syria, stretching across the histories of so many regions; and finally because, at the level of Islam itself, their empire was divided between their dawla or state and their daՙwa or doctrine. The doctrine, which focused on the Fāṭimid Imām as the quṭb or pole of faith, gave the dynasty its peculiar strength and endurance. The failure of that doctrine to supersede the Islam of the schools, however, left the Fāṭimids increasingly isolated and ultimately vulnerable. Standing outside the mainstream of Islamic tradition, the dynasty's own version of its history was disregarded. Instead, its components passed out of their original context to be incorporated into the regional or universal histories of subsequent authors. Maqrīzī was alone in compiling his Ittiՙāẓ al-ḥunafā' as a history of the dynasty in Egypt, introduced by a miscellany of information on its origins and previous career.

Early Medieval Poetry

2019 ◽  
pp. 147-176
Author(s):  
Derek Attridge
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old English ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Oral Poetry ◽  
Old High German ◽  
Medieval Poetry ◽  
The Middle Ages

This, the first of four chapters on the Middle Ages, explores the rise of vernacular verse from the fifth to eleventh centuries. There is a little surviving evidence for oral poetry in the vernacular languages prior to the fifth century, and the first written example comes from the beginning of that century. The story of Caedmon’s inspired poetry is examined, as is Bede’s ‘death song’ and other evidence for poetic activity in England in the seventh and eighth centuries. Several Old High German poems of the ninth century are considered, as well as Alfred the Great’s interest in poetry. Beowulf, dated somewhere between the late seventh and the eleventh century, includes scenes of poetic performance and may be itself an example of the kind of poem it depicts in performance. Also discussed are the Old English poems Deor and Widsith and the Viking and Viking-influenced poems of the tenth century.

Trees, Intestines and William The Conqueror

Belleten ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 81 (292) ◽  
pp. 767-786
Author(s):  
İslam Kavas
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Dream Interpretation ◽  
Common Man ◽  
William The Conqueror ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
William Of Malmesbury

Although founding dreams are a worldwide tradition in the chronicles of the Middle Ages, they have not taken attention enough. This article shows that, as a founding dream, the dream of William the Conqueror's mother is fi rstly crated by William of Malmesbury infl uenced by Classics and the dream interpretation tradition coming through Greeks. Later, Wace and Benoit, by preserving its frame, rewrite the dream in a way of which is more understandable to the twelfth century European common man. This article will uncover evidences through dream interpretation sources, mainly Artemidorus, and medieval European cultural fi gures, mainly Tree of Jesse. This is a possible scenario for how the dream of Herleva was created and developed.

“The Truth of Reliable Tradition”: Saadya Gaon, Arabic Rhetoric, and the Challenge to Rhetorical Historiography

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-188
Author(s):  
Brandon Katzir
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Arabic Language ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Medieval Rhetoric ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Latin Language ◽  
Arabic Rhetoric ◽  
Rhetorical Traditions ◽  
The Middle Ages

This article explores the rhetoric of medieval rabbi and philosopher Saadya Gaon, arguing that Saadya typifies what LuMing Mao calls the “interconnectivity” of rhetorical cultures (Mao 46). Suggesting that Saadya makes use of argumentative techniques from Greek-inspired, rationalist Islamic theologians, I show how his rhetoric challenges dominant works of rhetorical historiography by participating in three interconnected cultures: Greek, Jewish, and Islamic. Taking into account recent scholarship on Jewish rhetoric, I argue that Saadya's amalgamation of Jewish rhetorical genres alongside Greco-Islamic genres demonstrates how Jewish and Islamic rhetoric were closely connected in the Middle Ages. Specifically, the article analyzes the rhetorical significance of Saadya's most famous treatise on Jewish philosophy, The Book of Doctrines and Beliefs, which I argue utilizes Greco-Islamic rhetorical strategies in a polemical defense of rabbinical authority. As a tenth-century writer who worked across multiple rhetorical traditions and genres, Saadya challenges the monocultural, Latin-language histories of medieval rhetoric, demonstrating the importance of investigating Arabic-language and Jewish rhetorics of the Middle Ages.

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