|
Books > Humanities > History > World history > 500 to 1500
The Drosten stone - one of Scotland's premier monuments - came to
light during restoration work at St Vigeans church, near Arbroath,
in the 1870s. A rare example of Pictish writing, the Drosten stone
is just one in an astounding collection of exquisitely preserved
Pictish sculptures discovered in and around the church. The
carvings on these stones revel in Pictish inventiveness, teeming
with lively naturalistic animals and innovative compositions of
monsters and people, as well as both Pictish symbols and everyday
objects. The sculptures' iconography also draws on a deep knowledge
of Christian and classical literature, witness to a highly literate
and cosmopolitan society. This definitive study of St Vigeans'
Pictish stones, generously illustrated with plates of the full
collection, begins in the recent past, when the sculptures began to
emerge as a remarkable historic entity. It then explores the
history of the sculptures, including an analysis of the carvings,
the geology of the stones and attempts to extract meaning and
context for this unique stone collection as part of a powerful
ecclesiastical landscape.
Although seemingly bizarre and barbaric in modern times, trial
by ordeal-the subjection of the accused to undergo harsh tests such
as walking over hot irons or being bound and cast into water-played
an integral, and often staggeringly effective, role in justice
systems for centuries.
In "Trial by Fire and Water," Robert Bartlett examines the
workings of trial by ordeal from the time of its first appearance
in the barbarian law codes, tracing its use by Christian societies
down to its last days as a test for witchcraft in modern Europe and
America. Bartlett presents a critique of recent theories about the
operation and the decline of the practice, and he attempts to make
sense of the ordeal as a working institution and to explain its
disappearance. Finally, he considers some of the general historical
problems of understanding a society in which religious beliefs were
so fundamental.
Robert Bartlett is Wardlaw Professor of Medieval History at the
University of St. Andrews.
This volume presents contributions to the conference Old English
Runes Workshop, organised by the Eichstatt-Munchen Research Unit of
the Academy project Runic Writing in the Germanic Languages (RuneS)
and held at the Catholic University of Eichstatt-Ingolstadt in
March 2012. The conference brought together experts working in an
area broadly referred to as Runology. Scholars working with runic
objects come from several different fields of specialisation, and
the aim was to provide more mutual insight into the various
methodologies and theoretical paradigms used in these different
approaches to the study of runes or, in the present instance more
specifically, runic inscriptions generally assigned to the English
and/or the Frisian runic corpora. Success in that aim should
automatically bring with it the reciprocal benefit of improving
access to and understanding of the runic evidence, expanding and
enhancing insights gained within such closely connected areas of
study of the Early-Mediaeval past.
In Salvation and Sin, David Aers continues his study of Christian
theology in the later Middle Ages. Working at the nexus of theology
and literature, he combines formidable theological learning with
finely detailed and insightful close readings to explore a cluster
of central issues in Christianity as addressed by Saint Augustine
and by four fourteenth-century writers of exceptional power.
Salvation and Sin explores various modes of displaying the
mysterious relations between divine and human agency, together with
different accounts of sin and its consequences. Theologies of grace
and versions of Christian identity and community are its pervasive
concerns. Augustine becomes a major interlocutor in this book: his
vocabulary and grammar of divine and human agency are central to
Aers' exploration of later writers and their works. After the
opening chapter on Augustine, Aers turns to the exploration of
these concerns in the work of two major theologians of
fourteenth-century England, William of Ockham and Thomas
Bradwardine. From their work, Aers moves to his central text,
William Langland's Piers Plowman, a long multigeneric poem
contributing profoundly to late medieval conversations concerning
theology and ecclesiology. In Langland's poem, Aers finds a
theology and ethics shaped by Christology where the poem's modes of
writing are intrinsic to its doctrine. His thesis will revise the
way in which this canonical text is read. Salvation and Sin
concludes with a reading of Julian of Norwich's profound,
compassionate, and widely admired theology, a reading which brings
her Showings into conversation both with Langland and Augustine.
In this volume, we approach the phenomenon of slavery and other
types of strong asymmetrical dependencies from two methodologically
and theoretically distinct perspectives: semantics and lexical
fields. Detailed analyses of key terms that are associated with the
conceptualization of strong asymmetrical dependencies promise to
provide new insights into the self-concept and knowledge of
pre-modern societies. The majority of these key terms have not been
studied from a semantic or terminological perspective so far. Our
understanding of lexical fields is based on an onomasiological
approach - which linguistic items are used to refer to a concept?
Which words are used to express a concept? This means that the
concept is a semantic unit which is not directly accessible but may
be manifested in different ways on the linguistic level. We are
interested in single concepts such as 'wisdom' or 'fear', but also
in more complex semantic units like 'strong asymmetrical
dependencies'. In our volume, we bring together and compare case
studies from very different social orders and normative
perspectives. Our examples range from Ancient China and Egypt over
Greek and Maya societies to Early Modern Russia, the Ottoman Empire
and Islamic and Roman law.
WINNER YOUNG QUILLS AWARD BEST HISTORICAL FICTION 2021 12-year-old
Ada is a laundress of little consequence but the new castle
commander Brian de Berclay has his evil eye on her. Perhaps she
shouldn't have secretly fed the young prisoner in the tower. But
when the King of England crosses the border with an army of over
3000 strong, Ada, her friend Godfrey and all at Caerlaverock
suddenly find themselves under attack, with only 60 men for
protection. Soon, rocks and flaming arrows rain from the sky over
Castle Caerlaverock - and Ada has a dangerous choice to make.
A full colour map showing London about 1270 to 1300 - its walls and
gates, parish churches, early monasteries and hospitals, and a
growing number of private houses. The city's streets and alleyways
had been established. Dominating London are the Tower of London in
the east, the old St Paul's Cathedral in the west and London Bridge
in the south. Up-river in Westminster, the abbey and the royal
palace had been well established, and the great Westminster Hall is
very evident. London's playground in Southwark was beginning to
grow.
In an era when women were supposed to be disciplined and obedient, Anna proved to be neither. Defying 16th-century social mores, she was the frequent subject of gossip because of her immodest dress and flirtatious behavior. When her wealthy father discovered that she was having secret, simultaneous affairs with a young nobleman and a cavalryman, he turned her out of the house in rage, but when she sued him for financial support, he had her captured, returned home and chained to a table as punishment. Anna eventually escaped and continued her suit against her father, her siblings and her home town in a bitter legal battle that was to last 30 years and end only upon her death. Drawn from her surviving love letters and court records, The Burgermeister's Daughter is a fascinating examination of the politics of sexuality, gender and family in the 16th century, and a powerful testament to the courage and tenacity of a woman who defied the inequalities of this distant age.
|
|