Marc Bompaire and Françoise Dumas, Numismatique médiévale: Monnaies et documents d'origine française. (L'Atelier du Médiéviste, 7.) Turnhout: Brepols, 2000. Paper. Pp. 687; 143 black-and-white figures and tables (original) (raw)
In 1998 Peter Ilisch published a group of Christiana religio coins of Louis the Pious (814–840) discovered near Paderborn in Saxony. This is the most common Carolingian coinage type, partly because it circulated for over forty years, partly because it was minted during an economic boom, and partly because the same type was struck at every mint across the empire. Although the coins are all of the same design, however, they are not identical: some, including Ilisch’s group, bear privy marks: additional pellets or other symbols. This article examines the use of privy marks on this coinage and considers their significance, in particular the extent to which they can help to attribute the coins. The groups discussed include those with a letter S beneath the temple; coins like Ilisch's attributable to a German mint, some incorporating a crescent below the temple; and Group X, with a remarkable variety of additional points and other marks, almost certainly expressing the die-cutter's sense of fun rather than any deeper meaning.
Review of Naismith et al., Early Medieval Monetary History
Medieval Review, 2015
The essays in this volume are dedicated to Mark Blackburn and seek to celebrate his scholarly legacy. As such, the contributions, while focused on medieval coinage and centered on the British Isles, are as much about the impact numismatics makes on wider issues in history and archaeology as well as the diverse geographies in which Blackburn researched. The editors have divided the collection into four main parts, corresponding to the honoree's primary areas of research. Parts 1-3 offer synthetic studies, integrating monetary history into broader debates about politics, economics, art, culture and daily life. Part 4, by contrast, concentrates on particular coin finds and demonstrates a variety of interpretive methods for this evidence.
The Authoritative Text: Raymond of Penyafort's Editing of the 'Decretals of Gregory IX' (1234)
2011
promulgated in 1234, was the first collection of canon law for the Catholic Church invested with universal and exclusive authority, and was the culmination of a century and a half process by which the a now papal-led Church came to be the leading institution within medieval European society. The Decretals, also known as the Liber extra-a compilation of 1971 papal letters, constitutions and conciliar canons drawn principally from the century prior to its issuance-has long been understood as a key text for the study of the medieval papacy, the rise of scholasticism within the universities, and the extension of the Church's jurisdiction into almost every area of medieval life. The degree to which the man commissioned to edit the collection, the Dominican Raymond of Penyafort (1175-1275), actively shaped the legal content of the Decretals through eliminating, rewording, or supplementing the individual texts has remained elusive, in part because of the complicated manuscript tradition and in part because of our ignorance of all his sources. This dissertation examines Raymond's editing of the most recent material within the collection, the 195 capitula attributed to the commissioning pope Gregory IX (1227-1241), which in many cases provide definitive statements of the law. This study has determined that Raymond used Gregory IX's papal registers-the official record of papal correspondence and administration-as a source for roughly half of the capitula attributed to this pope in the Decretals.
Creative Selection between Emending and Forming Medieval Memory
* The paper originallydeliveredb yS tefan Esders at the Zurich conference,beingm orei ntroductory in character,u nderwent significant changesa nd considerable extension, as the project appliedf or fundingt ogether with Eef Overgaauw(Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) was fortunatelyg rantedb yt he Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in 2017.F or this reason, what had been am ereo utline of further research presented at the Zurich conference in 2016,became substantiallyaugmented in the course of the project by Michael Eber and Till Stüber,both research associates within the project,and by David Ganz, whoa saMercatorf ellow joined the group in 2018. Although this article is ar esulto fajoint collaboration and of intense communication within the project,the readerw ill hardlyescape to notice that individualp arts were for al arge part written by individual authors, such as chapter 1b y David Ganz, chapter4b yT illS tüber and chapter 6b yM ichael Eber.H owever,t he resulti sm uch morethan the sum of its individual parts.-We would very much like to thank Albert Fenton for correcting and improvingt he languageo ft his article. On the methodsand aims of late antique legal compilations,see especiallyJohn F. Matthews,Laying Down the Law: AStudyofthe Theodosian Code, New Haven2001 and some of the essays collected in Jill Harries and Ian. N. Wood (eds.), The Theodosian Code. Studies in the Imperial LawofL ate Antiquity,L ondon 1993.
Cistercian Decoration: Twelfth-Century Legislation on IIIumination and its Interpretation in England
The study of Cistercian manuscripts is still a relatively new field. A series of detailed examinations of the manuscripts of individual monasteries or regions has now been produced, but one central issue remains problematic, and that is the question of the Cistercian 'legislation ' on books and their decoration , and the extent to which it was put into practice. ! Related to this is the question of whether the relevant Statutes represented ideas which were widely held within the Order, or whether they should be seen as the result of the influence wielded by one dominant personality, St Bernard of Clairvaux. This paper will attempt to address both these questions, through an analysis of the surviving twelfth-century manuscripts from the Cistercian houses of northern England. These manuscripts are particularly helpful for such an enquiry, since the houses to which they belonged formed a close network , which was itself a part of the affiliation of Clairvaux. They may have been still more closely linked in the 1140s, when Henry Murdac, abbot of Fountains, was given the position of senior abbot of the group , acting for St Bernard. 2 Moreover, while the survival rate of Cistercian manuscripts from northern Eng land is rather low, as it is from all of England, a group of ten monasteries, dominated by Rievaulx, Fountains and Byland , are represented by a totaI of some 70 manuscripts datable to the· middle or second half of the twelfth century. This is a total small enough to be examined in some detail. but large enough to form a basis for conclusions. The examination of the surviving manuscripts from this network of monasteries therefore makes it possible to discover the extent to which they followed the relevant legislation and , more interestingly , how they interpreted it.
Speculum, 2012
better-known Vita S. Waldevi. This is quite a different text to the previous three, principally because it deals with a man who had died only fifty years prior to the composition of the vita and who was, like Jocelin himself, a member of the Cistercian order. Oral tradition (the "testimony of trustworthy men," as the vita describes) provided most of the source material for this vita, although Birkett is at pains to track evidence of the use of written sources as well. Together, the first four chapters establish evidence for Jocelin's hagiographical and textual decision making. The second part of the book, containing five chapters, builds on this specific material to make some broader claims about the various contexts in which Jocelin worked. Again, each chapter focuses on one of the vitae. Chapter 5 returns to the Vita S. Patricii to explore Irish ecclesiastical politics and Anglo-Norman sponsorship. Birkett argues that the production of the vita was part of a bigger effort to establish a new monastic community, to rededicate Down Cathedral after the 1177 invasion, and to affirm the alliance between John de Courcy, the new ruler of Ulaid, Bishop Malacy of Down and Archbishop Tomaltach of Armagh. Chapter 6 situates the production of the Vita S. Kentigerni within the context of a "wider programme of regeneration being undertaken at Glasgow Cathedral" (171). The claims of Glasgow diocese for independence were well established by the 1170s, and Birkett makes a case that the composition of the cathedral's patron saint reflects the corporate interests of Glasgow more generally. The function of the Vita S. Waldevi as a means of raising the profile of this Cistercian saint's cult is the context of chapter 7. Specifically Birkett suggests that the vita was intended to support the canonization of abbot Waltheof, while also acting as a commemorative document in the tradition of other Cistercian textual attempts "to construct the Order's 'golden age'" (225). Chapter 9 argues that the Vita S. Helenae was probably composed for a female religious community, probably either the Benedictine abbey of Elstow or the community at St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, both of which were dedicated to St. Helena. Birkett also suggests that this text reflects Cistercian frustration with the circumstances of the Interdict and may be read as a "potentially subversive document" (257). The final chapter collects the vitae as a group in order to discuss their common aspiration to affirm orthodoxy. A general conclusion reiterates the main findings. This is a most thorough study of a neglected English writer. Birkett has undertaken painstaking and meticulous textual research to support a broader argument about Cistercian monastic writing. In so doing she has added much to what we know about Cistercian life within and without the cloister.