Devotional Culture in Late Medieval England and Europe: Diverse Imaginations of Christ’s Life

Christ’s life, as related through the Gospel narratives and early Apocrypha, was subject to a riot of literary-devotional adaptation in the medieval period. This collection provides a series of groundbreaking studies centring on the devotional and cultural significance of Christianity’s pivotal story during the Middle Ages.

The collection represents an important milestone in terms of mapping the meditative modes of piety that characterize a number of Christological traditions, including the Meditationes vitae Christi and the numerous versions it spawned in both Latin and the vernacular. A number of chapters in the volume track how and why meditative piety grew in popularity to become a mode of spiritual activity advised not only to recluses and cenobites as in the writings of Aelred of Rievaulx, but also reached out to diverse lay audiences through the pastoral regimens prescribed by devotional authors such as the Carthusian prior Nicholas Love in England and the Parisian theologian and chancellor of the University of Paris, Jean Gerson.

Through exploring these texts from a variety of perspectives — theoretical, codicological, theological — and through tracing their complex lines of dissemination in ideological and material terms, this collection promises to be invaluable to students and scholars of medieval religious and literary culture.

Late Holocene linkages between decade-century scale climate variability and productivity at Lake Tanganyika, Africa

Microlaminated sediment cores from the Kalya slope region of Lake Tanganyika provide a near-annually resolved paleoclimate record between similar to 2,840 and 1,420 cal. yr B.P. demonstrating strong linkages between climate variability and lacustrine productivity. Laminae couplets comprise dark, terrigenous-dominated half couplets, interpreted as low density underflows deposited from riverine sources during the rainy season, alternating with light, planktonic diatomaceous ooze, with little terrigenous component, interpreted as windy/dry season deposits. Laminated portions of the studied cores consist of conspicuous dark and light colored bundles of laminae couplets. Light and dark bundles alternate at decadal time scales. Within dark bundles, both light and dark half couplets are significantly thinner than within light bundles, implying slower sediment accumulation rates during both seasons over those intervals.

Constraining the age of Lateglacial and early Holocene pollen zones and tephra horizons in southern Sweden with Bayesian probability methods

The sediment sequence from Hasseldala port in southeastern Sweden provides a unique Lateglacial/early Holocene record that contains five different tephra layers. Three of these have been geochemically identified as the Borrobol Tephra, the Hasseldalen Tephra and the 10-ka Askja Tephra. Twenty-eight high-resolution C-14 measurements have been obtained and three different age models based on Bayesian statistics are employed to provide age estimates for the five different tephra layers. The chrono- and pollen stratigraphic framework supports the stratigraphic position of the Borrobol Tephra as found in Sweden at the very end of the Older Dryas pollen zone and provides the first age estimates for the Askja and Hasseldalen tephras. Our results, however, highlight the limitations that arise in attempting to establish a robust, chronologically independent lacustrine sequence that can be correlated in great detail to ice core or marine records. Radiocarbon samples are prone to error and sedimentation rates in lake basins may vary considerably due to a number of factors. Any type of valid and 'realistic' age model, therefore, has to take these limitations into account and needs to include this information in its prior assumptions. As a result, the age ranges for the specific horizons at Hasseldala port are large and calendar year estimates differ according to the assumptions of the age-model. Not only do these results provide a cautionary note for overdependence on one age-model for the derivation of age estimates for specific horizons, but they also demonstrate that precise correlations to other palaeoarchives to detect leads or lags is problematic. Given the uncertainties associated with establishing age-depth models for sedimentary sequences spanning the Lateglacial period, however, this exercise employing Bayesian probability methods represents the best possible approach and provides the most statistically significant age estimates for the pollen zone boundaries and tephra horizons. Copyright (C) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Late Holocene climatic changes in Tierra del Fuego based on multiproxy analyses of peat deposits

A ca. 1400-yr record from a raised bog in Isla Grande, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, registers climate fluctuations, including a Medieval Warm Period, although evidence for the 'Little Ice Age' is less clear. Changes in temperature and/or precipitation were inferred from plant macrofossils, pollen, fungal spores, testate amebae, and peat humification. The chronology was established using a C-14 wiggle-matching technique that provides improved age control for at least part of the record compared to other sites. These new data are presented and compared with other lines of evidence from the Southern and Northern Hemispheres. A period of low local water tables occurred in the bog between A.D. 960-1020, which may correspond to the Medieval Warm Period date range of A.D. 950-1045 generated from Northern Hemisphere tree-ring data. A period of cooler and/or wetter conditions was detected between ca. A.D. 1030 and I 100 and a later period of cooler/wetter conditions estimated at ca. cal A.D. 1800-1930, which may correspond to a cooling episode inferred from Law Dome, Antarctica. (C) 2004 University of Washington. All rights reserved.

Nationalist Multiculturalism in Late Imperial Austria as a Critique of Contemporary Liberalism: The Case of Bauer and Renner,

This article evaluates Bauer's theory of the nation and the debateon national-cultural autonomy in late imperial Austria. It finds important similarities with contemporary liberal debates on multiculturalism and the rights of ethnic and national minorities. It argues that the debate on national-cultural autonomy went in some respects beyond the contemporary debate on multiculturalism. National-cultural autonomy rejects the idea of the nation-state and proposes instead a multi-nation-state that recognises differential rights for ethnic and national minorities. It seeks to break the limitations of liberal democracy and the territorial principle of the nation-state by organising national communities as deterritorialised national corporations, and multination-states as territorialised non-national identities.

Marketing secondhand goods in late medieval England

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify the main practitioners, goods, customers and locations of secondhand marketing activities in late medieval England. It questions how important was the economic role played by such markets and what was the interaction with more formal market structures?

Design/methodology/approach – A broad range of evidence was examined, covering the period from 1200 to 1500: regulations, court rolls, wills, manorial accounts, literature, and even archaeology. Such material often provided mere scraps of information about marginal marketing activity and it was important to recognise the severe limitations of the evidence. Nevertheless, a wide survey of the available sources can give us an insight into medieval attitudes towards such trade, as well as reminding us that much marketing activity occurred beyond the reach of the surviving documentation.

Findings – Late medieval England had numerous outlets for secondhand items, from sellers of used clothes and furs who wandered the marketplaces to craftsmen who recycled and mended old materials. Secondhand marketing was an important part of the medieval makeshift economy, serving not only the needs of the lower sectors of society but also those aspiring to a higher status. However, it is unlikely that such trade generated much profit and the traders were often viewed as marginal, suspicious and even fraudulent.

Originality/value – There is a distinct lack of research into the extent of and significance of medieval secondhand marketing, which existed in the shadowy margins of formal markets and is thus poorly represented in the primary sources. A broad-based approach to the evidence can highlight a variety of important issues, which impact upon the understanding of the medieval English economy.

WASP-24 b: A New Transiting Close-in Hot Jupiter Orbiting a Late F-star

We report the discovery of a new transiting close-in giant planet, WASP-24 b, in a 2.341 day orbit, 0.037 AU from its F8-9 type host star. By matching the star's spectrum with theoretical models, we infer an effective temperature T eff = 6075 ± 100 K and a surface gravity of log g = 4.15 ± 0.10. A comparison of these parameters with theoretical isochrones and evolutionary mass tracks places only weak constraints on the age of the host star, which we estimate to be 3.8+1.3 –1.2 Gyr. The planetary nature of the companion was confirmed by radial velocity measurements and additional photometric observations. These data were fit simultaneously in order to determine the most probable parameter set for the system, from which we infer a planetary mass of 1.071+0.036 –0.038 M Jup and radius 1.3+0.039 –0.037 R Jup.