La unción real en el Sacramentario de Ratoldus : cooperación y significado en la liturgia medieval

El propósito de este trabajo es sondear las coincidencias y, por tanto, la cooperación que es posible encontrar entre textos de diversas procedencias y dataciones, acerca de los aspectos más representativos de la figura y de la función real. En primer lugar, se describe el proceso por el cual la inauguración del poder real es rodeado progresivamente de ritos litúrgicos. Luego, se señalan los elementos más significativos que contribuyeron a la construcción del ritual de la unción real. Finalmente, se analiza la oración de consagración real del Sacramentario de Ratoldus (s. X), rastreándose en ella los elementos que permiten reconstruir algunos aspectos centrales de la teoría política que alimentó a la sociedad altomedieval. Si tenemos en cuenta de que, en ese periodo histórico, no se produjeron tratados específicos sobre el tema, el recurso a los textos litúrgicos posibilita el acceso a una fuente de documentación válida y de particular interés para los estudios del pensamiento medieval.

Early al-Andalus: an Archaeological Approach to the Process of Islamization in the Iberian Peninsula (7th to 10th centuries)

This paper is part of the research project HAR2012–34035 (Lectura arqueológica del uso social del espacio. Espacios domésticos y vida social entre la Antigüedad y el Medievo, funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness).

¿Fue la crisis política del Occidente musulmán del siglo XIII debida a un cambio climático? Una aproximación histórica al fin del Periodo Cálido Medieval

Durante el siglo XIII se produjo una sucesión de revueltas que supuso la desaparición del Imperio almohade y su sustitución por poderes regionales en al-Andalus, el Magreb y el Magreb al-Aqsà. La historiografía ha presentado el surgimiento y pugna entre estos poderes como un fenómeno social, político e, incluso, cultural y religioso, con el que se ha podido explicar su aniquilación o marginalización. Este trabajo pretende contextualizar los hechos desde una perspectiva medioambiental, de forma que la desintegración del califato almohade, el surgimiento de aquellos poderes y la progresión de los reinos cristianos en la península ibérica puedan entenderse desde una visión global de cambio climático y una posible crisis agrícola.

Renaissance Humanism and Ethnicity before Race:The Irish and the English in the Seventeenth Century

Inspired both by debates about the origins of the modern ideology of race and also by controversy over the place of Ireland and the Irish in theories of empire in the early modern Atlantic world, Renaissance Humanism and Ethnicity before Race argues that ethnic discourse among the elite in early modern Ireland was grounded firmly in the Renaissance Humanism and Aristotelianism which dominated all the European universities before the Enlightenment. Irish and English, Catholic and Protestant, all employed theories of human society based on Aristotle’s Politics and the natural law of the medieval universities to construct or dismantle the categories of civility and barbarism. The elites operating in Ireland also shared common resources, taught in the universities, for arguing about the human body and its ability to transmit hereditary characteristics. Both in Ireland and elsewhere in Europe, these theories of human society and the human body underwent violent changes in the late seventeenth century under the impact of the early Enlightenment. These changes were vital to the development of race as we know it.

Living the indie life : mapping creative teams in a 48 hour game jam and playing with data

In contemporary game development circles the ‘game making jam’ has become an important rite of passage and baptism event, an exploration space and a central indie lifestyle affirmation and community event. Game jams have recently become a focus for design researchers interested in the creative process. In this paper we tell the story of an established local game jam and our various documentation and data collection methods. We present the beginnings of the current project, which seeks to map the creative teams and their process in the space of the challenge, and which aims to enable participants to be more than the objects of the data collection. A perceived issue is that typical documentation approaches are ‘about’ the event as opposed to ‘made by’ the participants and are thus both at odds with the spirit of the jam as a phenomenon and do not really access the rich playful potential of participant experience. In the data collection and visualisation projects described here, we focus on using collected data to re-include the participants in telling stories about their experiences of the event as a place-based experience. Our goal is to find a means to encourage production of ‘anecdata’ - data based on individual story telling that is subjective, malleable, and resists collection via formal mechanisms - and to enable mimesis, or active narrating, on the part of the participants. We present a concept design for data as game based on the logic of early medieval maps and we reflect on how we could enable participation in the data collection itself.

The North in the Old English Orosius : A Geographical Narrative in Context

This doctoral dissertation examines the description of the North as it appears in the Old English Orosius (OE Or.) in the form of the travel accounts by Ohthere and Wulfstan and a catalogue of peoples of Germania. The description is discussed in the context of ancient and early medieval textual and cartographic descriptions of the North, with a special emphasis on Anglo-Saxon sources and the intellectual context of the reign of King Alfred (871-899). This is the first time that these sources, a multidisciplinary approach and secondary literature, also from Scandinavia and Finland, have been brought together. The discussion is source-based, and archaeological theories and geographical ideas are used to support the primary evidence. This study belongs to the disciplines of early medieval literature and (cultural) history, Anglo-Saxon studies, English philology, and historical geography. The OE Or. was probably part of Alfred s educational campaign, which conveyed royal ideology to the contemporary elite. The accounts and catalogue are original interpolations which represent a unique historical source for the Viking Age. They contain unparalleled information about peoples and places in Fennoscandia and the southern Baltic and sailing voyages to the White Sea, the Danish lands, and the Lower Vistula. The historical-philological analysis reveals an emphasis on wealth and property, rank, luxury goods, settlement patterns, and territorial divisions. Trade is strongly implied by the mentions of central places and northern products, such as walrus ivory. The references to such peoples as the Finnas, the Cwenas, and the Beormas appear in connection with information about geography and subsistence in the far North. Many of the topics in the accounts relate to Anglo-Saxon aristocratic culture and interests. The accounts focus on the areas associated with the Northmen, the Danes and the Este. These areas resonated in the Anglo-Saxon geographical imagination: they were curious about the northern margin of the world, their own continental ancestry and the geography of their homeland of Angeln, and they had an interest in the Goths and their connection with the southern Baltic in mythogeography. The non-judgemental representation of the North as generally peaceful and relatively normal place is related to Alfredian and Orosian ideas about the unity and spreading of Christendom, and to desires for unity among the Germani and for peace with the Vikings, who were settling in England. These intellectual contexts reflect the innovative and organizational forces of Alfred s reign. The description of the North in the OE Or. can be located in the context of the Anglo-Saxon worldview and geographical mindset. It mirrors the geographical curiosity expressed in other Anglo-Saxon sources, such as the poem Widsith and the Anglo-Saxon mappa mundi. The northern section of this early eleventh-century world map is analyzed in detail here for the first time. It is suggested that the section depicts the North Atlantic and the Scandinavian Peninsula. The survey of ancient and early medieval sources provides a comparative context for the OE Or. In this material, produced by such authors as Strabo, Pliny, Tacitus, Jordanes, and Rimbert, the significance of the North was related to the search for and definition of the northern edge of the world, universal accounts of the world, the northern homeland in the origin stories of the gentes, and Carolingian expansion and missionary activity. These frameworks were transmitted to Anglo-Saxon literary culture, where the North occurs in the context of the definition of Britain s place in the world.

Approaching Sacred Pregnancy : The Cult of the Visitation and Narrative Altarpieces in Late Fifteenth-Century Florence

The study focuses on the Visitation as a narrative subject of altarpieces in late fifteenth-century Florence. Although the Visitation was a well-known story in both verbal and visual representations since the early medieval period, it became a popular subject of altarpieces only towards the end of the fifteenth century. In this study, the first part provides an overview of the complex religious and historical background to an emerging cult of the Visitation. Devotional practices focusing on the Visitation belong in a context of late medieval Marian devotion and in 1389 a new feast of the Visitation was introduced into the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church. Because of the ongoing schism within the Catholic Church, the feast was not unanimously accepted across Western Europe until the later part of the fifteenth century. Contrary to a widely disseminated view, the feast of the Visitation cannot be associated with Franciscan spirituality, but was rather a clearly defined Dominican project that primarily emphasised the importance of peace and unity within the Christian Church. Simultaneously with the gradual acceptance of the new feast, visual representations of the Visitation began to appear at the centre of altarpieces. The Visitation exemplifies an increasing preference for narrative subjects within the genre of the altarpiece. The second part of the study presents an analysis of the concept of the narrative altarpiece and highlights the complexities involved in combining a narrative content with the traditional devotional function of the altarpiece. In detailed case studies some prominent art works produced in Florence between 1490 and 1503 are discussed within a framework of contextual analysis, narrative theory and iconography. Altarpieces by Domenico Ghirlandaio, Piero di Cosimo and Mariotto Albertinelli represent visual manifestations of a cult of the Visitation with roots in late medieval devotional practices. At the same time, the altarpieces highlight the multiple functions of altarpieces in a culture where art works responded to a variety of social and religious needs. Building on earlier studies, each case study presents new insights and evidence not considered in previous art historical research.

Las ocupaciones rupestres en el fin de la Antigüedad. Los materiales cerámicos de Los Husos (Laguardia, Alava)

Homenaje a Ignacio Barandiarán Maestu / coord. por Javier Fernández Eraso, Juan Santos Yanguas.

Allochthonous and autochthonous mire deposits, slope instability and palaeoenvironmental investigations in the Borve Valley, Barra, Outer Hebrides, Scotland

Ashmore, P. Brayshay, B.A Edwards, K.J Gilbertson, D. Grattan, J. Kent, M. Pratt, K. Weaver, R. 'Allochthonous and autochthonous mire deposits, slope instability and palaeoenvironmental investigations in the Borve Valley, Barra, Outer Hebrides, Scotland' The Holocene 2000 10, 1 pp.97-108

Społeczna interpretacja wybranych wczesnośredniowiecznych cmentarzysk rzędowych w perspektywie gender studies i lifecycle analysis

Wydział Historyczny: Instytut Prahistorii

Podstawy ekonomiczne powstawania średniowiecznych ośrodków miejskich na Pomorzu w świetle badań archeologicznych

Wydział Historyczny: Instytut Prahistorii

Performance, transmission and devotion: understanding the Anglo-Saxon prayer books, c.800-1050

Through an investigation of the Anglo-Saxon prayer books and selected psalters, this thesis corrects standard histories of medieval devotion that circumvent the Anglo-Saxon contribution to medieval piety. In the first half of the thesis, I establish a theoretical framework for Anglo-Saxon piety in which to explore the prayers. Current theoretical frameworks dealing with the medieval devotional material are flawed as scholars use terms such as ‘affective piety’, ‘private’ and even ‘devotion’ vaguely. After an introduction which defines some of the core terminology, Chapter 2 introduces the principal witnesses to the Anglo-Saxon prayer tradition. These include the prodigal eighth- and early ninth- century Mercian Group, comprising the Book of Nunnaminster (London, British Library, Harley 2965, s. viii ex/ix1), the Harleian Prayer Book (London, British Library, Harley 7653, s. viii ex/ix1), the Royal Prayer Book (London, British Library, Royal 2 A. xx, s. viii2/ix1/4), and the Book of Cerne (Cambridge, University Library, Ll. 1. 10). These prayer books are the earliest of their kind in Europe. This chapter challenges some established views concerning the prayer books, including purported Irish influence on their composition and the probability of female ownership. Chapter 3 explores the performance of prayer. The chapter demonstrates that Anglo-Saxon prayers, for example, the Royal Abecedarian Prayer, were transmitted fluidly. The complex relationship between this abecedarian prayer and its reflex in the Book of Nunnaminster reveals the complexity of prayer composition and transmission in the early medieval world but more importantly, it helps scholars theorise how the prayers may have been used, whether recited verbatim or used for extemporalisation. Changes made by later readers to earlier texts are also vital to this study, since they help answer questions of usage and show the evolution and subsequent influence of Anglo-Saxon religiosity. The second half of the thesis makes a special study of prayers to the Cross, the wounded Christ, and the Virgin, three important themes in later medieval spirituality. These focus on the Royal Abecedarian Prayer, which explores Christ’s life (Chapter 5), especially his Passion; the ‘Domine Ihesu Christe, adoro te cruce’ which celebrates the Cross (Chapter 4); and the Oratio Alchfriðo ad sanctam Mariam, which invokes the Virgin Mary (Chapter 6). These prayers occur in multiple, temporally-diverse witnesses and have complex transmission histories, involving both oral and written dissemination. The concluding chapter (7) highlights some of the avenues for future research opened by the thesis.

Manifestations of heavenly light and fire and the construction of a saint: sanctity, mission and salvation in Adomnán's Vita Columbae

This thesis examines the late seventh-century Latin Life of Columba (Vita Columbae) in a context sympathetic to the spiritual aims and formative intellectual background of its author, Adomnán of Iona. It argues that the Vita Columbae is a sophisticated work, shaped by Adomnán’s spiritual and theological concerns. This sophistication is revealed by a forensic examination of Adomnán’s representation of Columba’s sanctity through a series of miracles, in particular, miracle stories depicting divine manifestations of fire and light. This thesis considers the form and function of these miracle stories in the context of biblical, patristic and medieval interpretations of their archetypes, towards revealing the underlying influence of scriptural, hagiographical and monastic models of sanctity. Chapter one evaluates the function of the Vita Columbae, and outlines the core themes of sanctity which pervade the work, by considering the technical terminology and literary devices found in the opening prefaces in the context of the wider monastic tradition. Chapter two examines Adomnán’s use of biblical models of sanctity to establish Columba’s sanctity, and their relationship between these models and certain miraculous episodes in the Vita Columbae. Chapter three investigates Adomnán’s description of the Holy Spirit as an illuminating fire, and its significance for his portrayal of the saint, by means of a forensic examination of biblical, exegetical and hagiographical treatments of the image. Chapter four examines the missiological, soteriological and providential elements contributing to Adomnán’s portrayal of Columba’s sanctity, as conveyed through the presence of biblical models, particularly the image of the column of fire. Chapter five establishes the influence of monastic examinations of the contemplative life on Adomnán’s portrayal of Columba’s sanctity, and shows how that sanctity is confirmed in terms of his ability to contemplate divine light.