Browsing by Subject "Medieval"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Bridging the Strait: The Shared History of Iberia and North Africa in Medieval Muslim and Christian Chronicles
    (2021-06) Snowden, Emma
    This dissertation examines Arabic, Latin, and Ibero-Romance historical chronicles written by Muslims and Christians from the eighth through the fourteenth centuries to investigate connections between Iberia and North Africa on two levels. The first is the historical, considering the extent to which Muslim and Christian chroniclers across the Strait depicted their histories as related, writing about the same people and events. The second is the historiographical, exploring the extent to which chroniclers borrowed from one another directly, and wrote within a common cultural and intellectual framework. I argue that chroniclers on opposite shores of the Strait saw their histories as intrinsically connected, but did not always view all the individuals and populations in the region as participants in a larger community. Perceived differences were frequently rooted in religious identities, but also in ethnic and geopolitical ones. Despite these differences, I present evidence that chroniclers drew upon and elaborated a co-produced and mutually colonizing historical framework, employing similar narrative strategies and invoking a common past in an effort to resolve the ideological problem of competing North African and Iberian claims to power over the same territory. Individual chapters detail how historians across the Strait employed ethnonyms for one another that undermined claims to regional belonging, constructed a shared cultural archive of legendary, apocalyptic, and gendered elements to stake territorial claims, and invoked a rhetoric of emptying and elimination that I read through a settler colonial lens.
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    Final Preparations: The Emergence of Human Agency in Christian Apocalyptic Speculation in the 10th and 11th Centuries
    (2020-11) Poletti, Bailey
    When people today think of the end of the world, whether from a secular or religions, serious or fictional perspective, the role of human agency and responsibility in how apocalyptic events occur is often of central concern. In many cases, humans believe that we have some control over if, when, or how we meet our collective end, being able to cause, prevent, delay, accelerate, or alter the course of the End Times. In the early Christian Church, however, this was not a common assumption. Instead, Christians believed they were passive witnesses to God’s unfolding plan. There was nothing humans could do to change this divine plan in one way or the other. All that humans were capable of was preparing themselves and their neighbors for the common Last Judgment that everyone would face, whether or not they ever experienced the apocalyptic drama. If one were to find themselves living in the last days, Christian advice to that person was the same as if they lived under normal times. No special actions were necessary regarding the apocalypse. This “tradition” lasted for hundreds of years into the Middle Ages. In the 10th and 11th centuries, however, a new tradition emerged in the Latin West. This traditional, inspired by seventh-century Byzantine politics and Irish penitential missionary work, coalesced in the Ottonian and Capetian remnants of the Carolingian empire. Through a combination of political and religious concerns, especially involving preaching throughout the extended Gorze monastic network within and beyond Lotharingia, a new apocalyptic tradition emerged alongside the old, one that both assumed and argued for the necessity of human participation in the divine plan in order for the apocalyptic drama to begin. This tradition was involved in many large-scale social movements throughout the 10th and 11th centuries, culminating in the start of the First Crusade in 1095. From that point onward, though the old tradition never vanished, this new tradition of humans believing they could be responsible for causing, preventing, or otherwise altering the timing and course of apocalyptic events became endemic in European Christianity. This study demonstrates when, how, and why this tradition emerged.
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    Old Norse nicknames
    (2015-04) Peterson, Paul R.
    Nicknames, which occur in all cultures and time periods, play an important role in highlighting identity and provide a window into popular culture. The function of nicknames in the Middle Ages is peculiar, however, when men (as in medieval Iceland) would kill for a carelessly dropped word if it was considered to be detrimental to their honor, yet often tolerated the most demeaning nicknames. The quantity of nicknames in Old Norse literature is incomparably rich, and recurring nicknames provide a tool for understanding saga transmission, cultural history, slang, and etymology. The pool of first names was limited in Old Norse society; thus, many people were identified by not only their first names but also their nicknames. Narrative explanations of nicknames in the literature are numerous, and, although most come in the form of a brief anecdote, several examples expand on a character's biography and play a role in the shaping the plot. Such explanations of nickname origins are often also found in other sagas and medieval Scandinavian literature. Several categories of nicknames are found in Old Norse literature, such as those describing physical features, mental characteristics, and one's deeds or habits (good or bad). An alphabetic list of the nicknames from the compendium of settlers in Iceland called Landnámabók (The Book of Settlements) provides examples of the many types of nicknames and describes them in light of their linguistic origin.
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    Providers and Educators: The Theory and Practice of Fatherhood in Late Medieval Basel, 1475-1529.
    (2010-05) Grace, Philip David
    The dissertation uses sources from fifteenth-century Basel, including municipal court records, personal letters, and pedagogical treatises, to examine the ways that humanists and other late medieval people thought about and practiced fatherhood. Using Basel as a case-study reveals important connections between the various roles that fathers played. Two roles stand out: father as provider and father as educator. Provision of food and clothing in the present was the foundational experience of fatherhood; surrogate caregivers connected their care of children in the present with providing for their future through inheritance. Furthermore, fathers used provision as an incentive to encourage morality and obedience in their children, and the food and clothing that fathers provided were focused sites for instruction in and demonstration of one's social virtues. Providing for the future was influenced by the sex of the child; inheritance and marriage arrangements could apply to both sons and daughters, entry into a cloister was primarily for daughters, and vocational training and formal education were almost entirely for sons. Even provision for the future was rooted in practical considerations. Fathers had a primary responsibility to see to the moral and academic education of their children. Formal education was closely associated with moral education, as bad behavior could damage one's material fortunes as well as one's reputation. Fathers were thought to combine the authority necessary to enforce discipline in their children with the affection necessary to discipline them for their benefit. Moreover, fathers were thought to provide an example which their children would imitate, whether for good or for ill. The importance of fathers as a symbol of instruction and advice caused other educators to borrow fatherly status for themselves, making the alliance between fathers and teachers fraught with tension. The unique significance of fathers to medieval people derived from their location at the intersection of education and provision. There were many affectionate comrades and many forms of authority in medieval society, but only fathers were both.
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    Waking the Dead: The Human Remains from Mainistir Chiaráin, Inis Mór, Ireland.
    (2010-06) Lerwick, Danika Ceilidh
    For the last several decades there has been a growing increse in the archaeological research in Ireland. Much of this new research has been focused on the Gaelic western half of the country which had been mainly neglected in previous research. Researchers in Ireland are now making an attempt to understand what was happening in the Gaelic portion of the country during the medieval period. In the late 1990s, an excavation at Mainistir Chiaráin, a medieval monestary site on the island of Inis Mór, was undertaken in the hopes of shedding more light on this topic. Revealed in the excavation was an assemblage of disarticulated human remains, later understood to be a minimum of 12 people. A systematic study of this osteology was undertaken in the hopes of learning more about the lives of people living on Inis Mór. A date of the late 13th century CE was determined from a tooth by AMS dating. The bones were curated and assessed for age, sex, stature, health, work load and pathologies. Several unexpected findings came to light during the analysis, including a potential case of tuberculosis and another potential case of scurvy, as well as premolar and molar hypoplasia, mandibular torus, and shovel-shaped incisors. Speculation was made as to whether the nature of the assemblage was indiciative of the population as a whole, or if it was representitive of some sort of liminal burial of outsiders to the community. Future research is needed to answer this question.