A Common Clerk as Courtholder: Geoffrey Spirleng in Late Medieval Norwich

Florilegium ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. e34.003
Author(s):  
Ruth H. Frost
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Judicial Efficiency ◽  
Legal Professional

Courtholders presided over a variety of late medieval English courts. Like most courtholders before 1500, Geoffrey Spirleng, common clerk of Norwich, did not attend an inn of court or chancery. Nevertheless, his experiences as a courtholder and as common clerk qualified him as a legal professional. Because of the frequency of lawsuits, people of all backgrounds were impacted by courtholders’ actions. This article argues that courtholders played a crucial role in ensuring judicial efficiency and consistency.

Envisioning an Order

The Lay Saint ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 242-282
Author(s):  
Mary Harvey Doyno
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Gender And Power ◽  
Religious Ideals ◽  
The Church

This chapter offers a new explanation for why and how the contemporary lay civic saint seemingly disappeared over the fourteenth century. Instead of seeing mendicant spirituality as inherently oriented toward “mystical and paramystical phenomena,” and thus as pushing lay sanctity in that direction, it argues that the stress placed on medieval gender and power norms by women's participation in the lay penitential movement as well as the cults they earned for their efforts ultimately led to the end of the contemporary lay civic saint. From the second half of the thirteenth century, hagiographers—who were increasingly mendicant friars—responded to the female lay penitents garnering saintly reputations by advocating for an ideal lay life in which visions trumped a commitment to civic issues and charitable works. This new conception of an ideal lay life was not simply an indication of the spiritual point of view of the mendicant hagiographers, but rather a means the church had adopted to solve the longstanding problem of the female lay penitent. At the heart of this chapter's argument then is the contention that gender played a crucial role in the development of new lay religious ideals in the late medieval Italian communes.

scholarly journals Bürgerliche Revolution, Staatsbildung und die Abwesenheit des Internationalen

2005 ◽  
Vol 35 (141) ◽  
pp. 575-600 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benno Teschke
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
Early Modern History ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
American Tradition ◽  
The Face ◽  
Anglo American

This article traces the Marxist debate on the concept of ‘bourgeois revolution’ and criticises attempts within orthodox Marxism to salvage the concept in the face of the historiographical revisionist critique. It then introduces into the Anglo-American tradition of Political Marxism and argues that while scholars of this orientation have presented a powerful renewal of Marxism and re-interpretation of late medieval and early modern history, they have failed to systematically incorporate international relations into their reconstructions of early modern revolutions and state-formations. The article demonstrates how the international played a crucial role in shaping the respective trajectories of national developments, exemplified with reference to England and France, and concludes by arguing the case for a theoretical re-integration of the role of international relations into Marxist Historical Sociology.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document