scholarly journals Early mediaeval hoard of iron objects from Rujkovac and similar finds from the central Balkans

Starinar ◽  
2013 ◽  
pp. 131-152
Author(s):  
Ivan Bugarski ◽  
Vujadin Ivanisevic
Keyword(s):  
Population Growth ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Village ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Metallurgical Activities

By the village of Rujkovac in southern Serbia, one of the numerous local hillforts is situated. Since it has not been systematically explored, our knowledge of its history leans on an insight into the chance finds. On this occasion, we have opted to depict eight iron objects, probably coming from a damaged hoard. Thanks to four Hungarian-type stirrups which have already been published, the hoard from Rujkovac was dated to the second half of the tenth and the first half of the eleventh century. Similar finds from outside the Central Balkans are well studied, but there have been misinterpretations of their occurrence in this territory. The findings of tools from the Rujkovac hoard may be widely dated. The pickaxe belongs to Henning's class L1 the mattock to the class K8, the scythe to the I5 class, and the plowshare to the A3 class of the same typology. Both typologically and territorially, the closest finds come from a hoard of iron objects found at Strezevo by Bitola, Macedonia, but the presented estimations of its date have caused some confusion. It was Valery Jotov who rightly dated it to the second half of tenth and the first half of the eleventh century. Some other similar finds come from the Central Balkans, present-day Serbia and Macedonia, most of which were not sufficiently studied and were incorporated neither in Henning's 1987 corpus nor in Florin Curta's papers that followed (1997, 2011). It is hard to judge the date of some of the hoards. For instance, the Gamzigrad III hoard has been dated to the Late Antiquity, and the Jelica hoard perhaps to the early seventh century. We are open to the possibility that these hoards in fact come from the Early Middle Ages. The other hoards, found at Ada Ciganlija (Belgrade), Pontes, and in Macedonia are chiefly dated to the tenth and eleventh centuries. The Rujkovac and Strezevo hoards are ascribed to the military, the Gamzigrad II to the local smithy, and the rest of the hoards may have belonged to individuals rather than to communities. The prevailing agricultural character of these hoards is closely related to population growth in Byzantium at that time. The hoards testify to the renewal of life and metallurgical activities in the tenth and eleventh centuries in the southern part of the Central Balkans. The increase in money hoards speaks in favour of some economic renewal too. Our earlier conclusion, though with some reservations, was that both the Rujkovac and Strezevo finds came from a Byzantine context. We would suggest that the same could be stated for the rest of the hoards depicted in this paper.

The Stigmata in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Muessig
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Introductory Overview ◽  
Devotional Practices ◽  
The Face ◽  
Biblical Commentaries

Francis of Assisi’s reported reception of the stigmata on Mount La Verna in 1224 is often considered to be the first account of an individual receiving the five wounds of Christ. The thirteenth-century appearance of this miracle, however, is not as unexpected as it first seems. Interpretations of Galatians 6:17—I bear the stigmata of the Lord Jesus Christ in my body—had been circulating in biblical commentaries since late antiquity. These works explained stigmata as wounds that martyrs received, like the apostle Paul, in their attempt to spread Christianity in the face of resistance. By the seventh century, stigmata were described as marks of Christ that priests received invisibly at their ordination. In the eleventh century, monks and nuns were perceived as bearing the stigmata in so far as they lived a life of renunciation out of love for Christ. By the later Middle Ages holy women like Catherine of Siena (d. 1380) were more frequently described as having stigmata than their male counterparts. With the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century, the way stigmata were defined reflected the diverse perceptions of Christianity held by Catholics and Protestants. This study traces the birth and evolution of religious stigmata as expressed in theological discussions and devotional practices in Western Europe from the early Middle Ages to the early seventeenth century. It also contains an introductory overview of the historiography of religious stigmata beginning in the second half of the seventeenth century to its treatment and assessment in the twenty-first century.

The Fate of Small Towns, Hilltop Settlements, and Elite Residences in Merovingian-Period Gaul

2020 ◽  
pp. 610-640
Author(s):  
Luc Bourgeois
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Power Networks ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The Many

The study of places of power in the Merovingian realm has long been focused on cities, monasteries, and royal palaces. Recent archaeological research has led to the emergence of other categories. Four of them are addressed in this chapter. These include the capitals of fallen cities, which continue to mark the landscape in one way or another. Similarly, the fate of small Roman towns during the early Middle Ages shows that most of them continued to host a variety of secular and ecclesiastical powers. In addition, from the fourth century onward, large hilltop fortified settlements multiplied anew. They complemented earlier networks of authority, whether elite residences, artisan communities, or real towns. Finally, from the seventh century onward, the great aristocratic villas of late antiquity were transformed into settlements organized around one or more courtyards and supplemented by funerary and religious structures. The evolution of political spaces and lifestyles explains both the ruptures in power networks that occurred during the Merovingian epoch and the many continuities that can be seen in the four kinds of places studied in this chapter that were marked by these developments.

The Triumph of the Mule

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
Symbolic Value ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter starts as the Roman Empire fragmented, encompasses the emergence of Christianity and Islam, and explores the donkey’s place in the history of the Middle Ages, as well as what Fernand Braudel termed ‘the triumph of the mule’ in the ensuing early modern period from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Being closer in time to the present, historical documents are generally richer and more plentiful than for earlier periods, but archaeological excavations and surveys—especially of post-medieval sites and landscapes—are still undeveloped in many regions. Inevitably, therefore, what I present draws as much on textual sources as it does on them. I look first at the symbolic value of donkeys and mules in Christianity and Islam. Next, I consider their disappearance from some parts of Europe in the aftermath of Rome’s collapse and their re-expansion and persistence elsewhere. One aspect of this concerns their continuing contribution to agricultural production, another their consumption as food, a very un-Roman practice. A second theme showing continuities from previous centuries is their significance in facilitating trade and communication over both short and long distances. Tackling this requires inserting donkeys and mules into debates about how far pack animals replaced wheeled forms of transport as Late Antiquity gave way to the Middle Ages. Wide-ranging in time and space, this discussion also provides opportunities for exploring their role in human history in areas beyond those on which I have concentrated thus far. West Africa is one, the Silk Road networks linking China to Central Asia a second, and China’s southward connections into Southeast Asia a third. According to the New Testament Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday seated on a donkey (Plate 20). The seventh-century apocryphal Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew also envisages donkeys carrying His mother to Bethlehem, being present at the Nativity, and conveying the Holy Family into temporary exile in Egypt. Donkeys thus framed both ends of Jesus’ life and, given their importance in moving people and goods in first-century Palestine, must have been a familiar sight. But the implications of their place in Christianity’s narrative were originally quite different from those that are generally understood today.

The Relation of the Slave and the Client to the Master or Patron in Medieval Islam

1971 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul G. Forand
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Near East ◽  
The Other ◽  
Islamic History ◽  
The One ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Middle Ages

In antiquity and in the Middle Ages slavery played a significant role in the military, economic, political and social life of the Near East. Many studies have been made of these aspects of life, but little has been said in the context of Islam about the psychological bonds which, at least to some extent, characterize the relationship between slave or freedman and master. The institution of ‘mutual alliance’ also played an important part in Islamic history, and there were certain similarities between the relation of the ‘ally’ to the patron on the one hand, and of the freedman to the former master on the other. But it is the purpose of this discussion, in part, to point out some basic differences between the two relationships.

An unknown English Benedictine gradual of the eleventh century

1975 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 131-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. D. Hartzell
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval Music ◽  
Early English ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Polyphonic Music

The most famous manuscripts with music of the early Middle Ages in England are the Winchester ‘Tropers’ at Oxford and Cambridge. More has been written about them than about all the lesser known sources put together, and it is right that this should have been so, for the troper at Cambridge preserves one of the oldest repertories of polyphonic music while the other, the so-called ‘Æthelred troper’, has provided generations of scholars with the task of establishing its relationship to the other manuscript. This activity has resulted in a high degree of clarification, but the Winchester ‘Tropers’ are not the whole of early English medieval music – even though a study of their combined trope repertories would be a welcome contribution – and we must begin to turn our attention to other sources of the period.

“The Most Blessed Hilary Held an Estate”: Property, Reform, and the Canonical Life in Tenth-Century Aquitaine

2016 ◽  
Vol 85 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-39
Author(s):  
Anna Trumbore Jones
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Common Life ◽  
Estate Property ◽  
Property Reform

This article explores thinking and practice regarding property at houses of canons from the mid-ninth to mid-eleventh centuries, through a case study of the charters of Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand in Poitiers. Since Late Antiquity, Christian orders debated the legitimacy of private property, with most rejecting it in favor of exclusively common holdings. For houses of canons, property became a defining issue in the Central Middle Ages: Carolingian legislation in 816 asserted that canons (unlike monks) could hold private property, while the order of regular canons, which emerged in the eleventh century, rejected it as corrupt. The role of property at houses of canons in the interim period, meanwhile, has been largely neglected by scholars. This essay argues that Saint-Hilaire embraced Carolingian acceptance of private property among canons, but that that stance did not preclude protection of joint property and interest in the common life. The resulting detailed understanding of both the quotidian functioning of property at a tenth-century house and the ideals that drove its regulation inform my concluding comments on two broader topics: the role of wealth and property in a dedicated religious life, and the nature of reform movements in the church of the Central Middle Ages.

scholarly journals V.—Records of the Manor of Durrington, Wilts

Archaeologia ◽  
1904 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-82
Author(s):  
T.F. Kirby
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
The West ◽  
Military Camp ◽  
East End ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Village

The village of Durrington is situate on the right bank of the river Avon, about three miles north of Amesbury; the village of Bulford, where the military camp is, being on the other side of the river.There are two manors in the parish, which contains only 2,702 acres, the east end manor and the west end manor. It is to the east end manor that I am about to refer. In the thirteenth century it belonged to a family of the name of Nevill. I exhibit the counterpart of a grant of the manor by Hervey de Nevill to the nuns of Amesbury for the term of three years in consideration of forty marks down and twenty more in expectancy.

The Julian Calendar and the Problem of the Equinoxes in the Early Middle Ages

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Philipp E. Nothaft
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Medieval Literature ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Observational Methods ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Julian Calendar ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Solar Astronomy

This chapter familiarizes readers with the ancient back-story of the Julian calendar and describes how one of the central problems inherent in this calendar—the drift of the equinoxes and solstices caused by an overestimation of the length of the tropical year—manifested itself in medieval literature until the end of the eleventh century. It also explores how the development of the computus genre in seventh-century Ireland was instrumental in preserving knowledge of the Western calendar’s Roman-pagan roots. The final two sections show how the existence of diverging traditions for the dates of the equinoxes and solstices in the Julian calendar created an important context for the practice of solar astronomy in early medieval Europe, which included the use of observational methods.

The Military Orders

2020 ◽  
pp. 247-263
Author(s):  
Jochen Burgtorf
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Church Reform ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
Military Orders ◽  
The Military ◽  
Order State

The chapter discusses the two major international military orders of the high Middle Ages, the Templars and the Hospitallers. It outlines their origins in the twelfth-century Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem, as well as the factors that contributed to their emergence, such as pilgrimage, the eleventh-century Church reform, knighthood and chivalry, the Crusades, and the role of the papacy. It then considers the comparative historiography of Templars and Hospitallers, including the scholarly debate on the Templars’ suppression and the Hospitallers’ survival. The chapter goes on to address the question of the military orders’ identity by examining the extent of the Templars’ charity and hospitality, the question of the Hospitallers’ militarization, and the genesis of the concept of an ‘order state’. It concludes with suggestions for future research.

The conquest of Antioch by the Persians and the beginning of the geopolitical catastrophe of Byzantium in the East

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 627-633
Author(s):  
Yu.V. Buzanakov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Military History ◽  
Persian Wars ◽  
Coordination Center ◽  
History Of ◽  
Regional Centers ◽  
The Military ◽  
The City

The article discusses the military history of Antioch, one of the regional centers of the Byzantine state from the 4th to 7th centuries. The author analyse the role of the city in the Byzantine-Persian wars. The characteristic of the history of the conquest of the Byzantine East is given. Being the capital of the province of Syria, Antioch was a major economic, political and religious center. In addition, Antioch has a rich military history. From the 4th century until the beginning of the Arab conquests, the Syrian Province was one of the centers of the Byzantine-Persian wars. As a rule, the city, in this war, played the role of a supply and coordination center for troops, but history knows examples when Antioch went on to experience direct enemy attacks. With the beginning of the era of Arab conquest, neither Byzantium nor Persia, exhausted by the war with each other, were unable to withstand the new threat. As a result of this, the Persian power ceased to exist, and Byzantium lost its vast territories in the East, including Antioch. It is worth noting that Antoch did not suffer a single major siege, neither in the period of Late Antiquity nor in the Middle Ages.

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