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Wilfrid’s network bishopric and the primacy of York: writing episcopacy in Stephen’s Life of Wilfrid Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2024-03-04 Miriam Adan Jones
Stephen’s Life of Wilfrid offers valuable insights into the early Northumbrian church, but scholars have disagreed on its aims. This article argues that an important aspect of Stephen’s agenda was to support the episcopal primacy of York among the churches of northern Britain. An examination of Stephen’s terminology and narrative shows that Stephen stresses the importance of York as Wilfrid’s episcopal
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Adalbero of Laon's Poem to King Robert (1023–1025/7): a discourse against Cluniac reform or a commentary on monastic hypocrisy? Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2024-02-07 Steven Vanderputten
The purpose of this paper is to nuance the traditional interpretation of Bishop Adalbero of Laon's satirical Carmen ad Rotbertum regem as a rebuttal of Cluniac reform and its disruptive effect on early eleventh-century society. Study of the text's literary antecedents reveals that its criticism was rooted in a tradition of commentaries on the conduct and attitudes of a much larger monastic cohort.
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Human–animal entanglements in the early medieval European slave trade: re-reading the Raffelstetten customs regulations Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2024-02-07 Sarah Christensen
Frankish customs regulations recorded in the tenth-century ‘Inquest on the tolls of Raffelstetten’ have long formed a cornerstone of traditional arguments about slavery's role in the early medieval European economic revival. This paper experiments with the application of a more-than-human lens to the Raffelstetten record and other evidence to generate new insights into the intimate experience of enslavement
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Issue Information Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2024-01-18
No abstract is available for this article.
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The alleged preaching ban in southern Gaul, 431–529: a reassessment of the arguments and evidence Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2024-01-18 Michael A. Lovell
For over one hundred years, scholars have argued that there was a ban on presbyterial preaching in southern Gaul throughout the fifth century. This ban was purportedly lifted at the Council of Vaison (529) at the behest of Caesarius of Arles in order to preach the gospel in the countryside. While scholars have called the effectiveness of the ban into question, this article makes a stronger critique
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Why the Turks? On the etymological method in Fredegar's account of the Trojan Franks Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-11-13 Julia Verkholantsev
This article is part of a larger project that seeks to understand the role of the etymological method in historical writings. I analyse the account of the Trojan origin of the Franks in the Chronicle of Fredegar and demonstrate that Fredegar uses the etymological method as an epistemological resource and a catalyst to the narrative, and that taking this into account sheds light on some of Fredegar's
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The Carolingian cocio: on the vocabulary of the early medieval petty merchant Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-10-31 Shane Bobrycki
The word cocio (i.e. petty merchant or broker in classical Latin) was a rare term that after a long absence in written Latin reappeared in several Carolingian texts. Scholars have posited a medieval semantic shift from ‘merchant’ to ‘vagabond’. But this article argues that this consensus is erroneous. The Carolingian cocio continued to refer to petty commercial agents, that is, to small merchants.
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A collection of no authority: canon law and the Collectio 91 capitulorum Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-10-20 Sven Meeder
Normative texts need to be authoritative to be effective in communicating norms and rules. Recent scholarship has shown a renewed interest in the authoritative status of the texts within early medieval works of canon law and the ways in which authority is reflected in the practice of attribution, promulgation, or organization. A small canonical collection known as the Collectio 91 capitulorum appears
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Issue Information Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-10-13
No abstract is available for this article.
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The consul vanishes? On using and not using Gregory the Great's Register in early medieval England Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-09-28 Benjamin Savill
This article builds upon recent scholarship emphasizing the importance of Gregory the Great's Register as a key text of the Carolingian and post-Carolingian library, exploring by contrast its peculiarly limited reception in England. It first surveys what little evidence we have for its citation by English ecclesiastics (post-c.1000, mostly via Wulfstan); it then examines the single text in a pre-Conquest
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Archbishop Wulfstan’s criticism of King Edgar in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-09-28 Nicholas Peter Schwartz
Archbishop Wulfstan of York’s interpolation in the DE version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for the year 959 is out of character for both the churchman himself and for the pre-Conquest period as a whole, as it is the only text from early England critical of King Edgar. This article shows that Wulfstan’s complaints about Edgar, which focus on the king’s policies related to Scandinavians in England
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Changing queenships in tenth-century England: rhetoric and (self-)representation in the case of Eadgifu of Kent at Cooling Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-09-21 Jonathan Tickle
The charter now known as Sawyer 1211 contains a detailed account of an intergenerational property dispute between Queen Eadgifu and her rival Goda, concerning the possession of two Kentish estates. Typically, the charter has either been understood as evidence of dispute settlement or to establish facts about Eadgifu that are otherwise unattested. This article argues that Sawyer 1211 has further value
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Teaching monastic masculinity with the Colloquy of Ælfric of Eynsham Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-08-28 Maroula Perisanidi
I focus on the Colloquy of Ælfric of Eynsham to show how it contributed to gender formation by teaching boys not only Latin, but also what it meant to be a man of the monastery. I discuss how the professions the boys role-played encouraged them to think of the monk as the most masculine option, and how verbal experimentation allowed their violent impulses to be redirected from physical towards intellectual
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Bede, Æthelberht, and the ‘examples of the Romans’ in early medieval England Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-08-24 Andrew Rabin
In Book II, Chapter 5 of the Historia ecclesiastica, Bede writes that the Kentish king Æthelberht had, ‘with the advice of his counsellors, established legal enactments according to the examples of the Romans.’ This article argues that Bede’s formulation serves as a means of characterizing the increasingly interventionist role played by early Kentish kings in making the laws issued in their names.
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The fall of Merovingian Italy, 561–5 Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-08-10 Sihong Lin
After the end of the Gothic War in the mid-sixth century, northern Italy remained divided between the Merovingian Franks and the eastern Roman Empire. In the 560s the Frankish territories were finally taken by imperial armies, but the end of Merovingian Italy is variably dated between 561 and 565. Drawing on the eastern evidence provided by the panegyrist Corippus, this article argues that there is
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Issue Information Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-07-17
No abstract is available for this article.
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Qualifying Mediterranean connectivity: Byzantium and the Franks during the seventh century Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-06-22 Mischa Meier, Steffen Patzold
In the last two decades, historians researching the seventh century ce have increasingly emphasized mobility, communications and connectivity across the Mediterranean world that supposedly included close contacts between the Franks and Byzantium. These studies, however, rely often on optimistic, maximum interpretations of the comparatively sparse source base, and have not always precisely distinguished
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Introduction Mobility and migration in the early medieval Mediterranean Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-06-22 Claudia Rapp
Historians have long acknowledged that mobility is a structuring feature of all societies, quite independent of large-scale migrations. In recent decades, increased attention to global and transcultural history has resulted in a greater interest in the history of networks and entanglements that hold regions and people together, whether across large distances or on a smaller scale. It is the mobility
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Mobility and migration in Byzantium: who gets to tell the story? Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-06-22 Claudia Rapp
This article underlines the importance of approaching written sources for what they are: authorial constructs. This is true also for depictions of mobility and migration. Byzantine authors instrumentalized these for their own purposes beyond the event at hand. Authorial focus, along with the requirements of the chosen literary genre, is also the reason for the different scales of actors that appear
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Mobility in seventh-century Byzantium: analysing Emperor Heraclius’ political ideology and propaganda Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-06-22 Paraskevi Sykopetritou
This paper aims to shed light on the mobility of people and relics in the seventh century. It will show that Emperor Heraclius strategically designed his movements and those of his household, citizens, and officials, as well as those of relics within and beyond the borders of Byzantium, in order to consolidate the empire and his position in it. These movements also allowed Heraclius to associate himself
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Saints’ mobility and confinement: deconstructing Byzantine stories of (fe)male ascetics and monastics Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-06-22 Christodoulos Papavarnavas
This article investigates stories of holiness which have ascetics or monastics as their hero(in)es and which develop based on a careful interlocking of two concepts: wanderings in urban or desert environments and self-confinement in enclosed or secluded spaces. Through a close reading of two saints’ Lives (i.e., the Life of Mary of Egypt and the Life of Matrona of Perge) dating to the early and middle
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In enemy hands: the Byzantine experience of captivity between the seventh and tenth centuries Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-06-22 Grigori Simeonov
The present paper deals with forced migration experienced by subjects of the Byzantine Empire captured by foreign enemies in the context of warfare between the seventh and the tenth centuries. The focus of the first part is on the scenarios faced by individuals and groups when an enemy had taken control of a settlement or a larger territory. The second part discusses aspects of the role social status
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A coin of Queen Fastrada and Charlemagne Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-05-03 Simon Coupland
A Carolingian coin has recently been acquired by the Centre Charlemagne in Aachen which represents an entirely unexpected and truly historic addition to our knowledge of the reign of Charlemagne, as it bears the name of his wife Fastrada. It is the first known example of a queen being named on a Carolingian coin, and because the coin type was only introduced in 793 and Fastrada died in August 794,
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Issue Information Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-04-23
No abstract is available for this article.
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Constructing clandestine communities: oaths of collective secrecy and conceptual boundaries in the late antique Mediterranean Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-04-23 Michael Wuk
This article explores fourth- to seventh-century narratives about oaths of collective secrecy, which our sources typically frame negatively. By examining the terminology used in reference to these promises, the dynamics inherent in the practice and its relationship to oath-taking customs in other contexts, and the influence of Christianity on the discourses around such pledges, we can see that late
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Spelling correctness as a witness of changing documentary culture in Tuscia (eighth–ninth centuries) Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-04-23 Timo Korkiakangas
This paper discusses the evolution of documentary culture in early medieval Tuscia by quantitatively examining the Latin spelling of charter scribes in relation to the following factors: time, the distinction between the formulaic and non-formulaic parts of the document, the scribe’s domicile, the scribe’s professional status, and the document type. The paper asks what the spelling of charters tells
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Guthlac at Medeshamstede? Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-03-30 Paul Everson, David Stocker
This paper proposes that the early monastery at Medeshamstede (later Peterborough) was the sponsor and supporter of the hermit saint, Guthlac, on the fenland island of Crowland. It locates that initiative in the early Benedictine practice in England. It is argued that Medeshamstede subsequently sustained the saint’s pre-Viking cult, and is the best candidate for the location where Felix produced the
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Landholding in the Loire valley and the late Carolingian economy (c.840–c.1000) Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-03-30 Niall Ó Súilleabháin
This article builds on recent work on the Carolingian economy by giving an overview of landholding patterns and associated economic activity in the Loire valley in the ninth and tenth centuries. It demonstrates that only individuals and institutions with access to patronage from the royal fisc possessed large, unified estates; the majority of land was held as small, fragmented farmsteads. Moreover
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Re-examining Hrabanus Maurus’ letter on incest and magic Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-03-24 Matthew B. Edholm
This article offers a reanalysis of Hrabanus’ mid-ninth-century text De magicis artibus. Often read and studied as a complete work, the De magicis artibus is in fact one portion of a longer text that also discusses incest and marriage practices. Furthermore, the single surviving copy of the text is deliberately attached to another work by Hrabanus, his Poenitentiale ad Otgarium. This article argues
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Issue Information Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-02-17
No abstract is available for this article.
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The West Saxon boundary clause in context: Celtic and Continental connections Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-02-17 Amy W. Clark
The perambulatory boundary clause in England originated as a West Saxon phenomenon in the eighth century, most likely through connections with the early Celtic church, and spread with the rise of the West Saxon kings. Vernacular perambulatory charter bounds occur throughout England after the tenth century – but before 800, they appear only in Wessex, and on the Continent where West Saxons were initially
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Assessing place-based identities in the early Middle Ages: a proposal for post-Roman Iberia Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-01-12 Javier Martínez Jiménez, Carlos Tejerizo-García
Sociological models of place-based identity can be used to better understand the social dynamics of local communities and how they interact with their surroundings. This paper explores how these theoretical models of belonging to a place, in tandem with communal cognitive maps, can be applied to post-Roman contexts, taking the Iberian Peninsula in the Visigothic period (sixth–eighth centuries) as a
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Before the canon houses. A reform at the domus episcopi of Lucca in the Lombard period Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2023-01-09 Marco Stoffella
The essay investigates the repercussions of mid-eighth-century reforms on the urban clergy of northern Italy. A detailed study reveals that a hitherto unknown reform project was undertaken in Lucca. The evidence comes from the analysis of numerous surviving manuscripts: these yielded some interesting findings that, after an introduction to the state of the field, are discussed in the central part of
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Of reaflac and rapina: accusations of violence in two Old English lawsuits and the Libellus Æthelwoldi Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2022-12-26 Brittany Hanlon
This article examines the meaning and function of the Old English noun reaflac in two tenth-century lawsuit documents, Sawyer 877 and Sawyer 1211. It suggests that reaflac was the vernacular counterpart to the Latin terms violentia and rapina. Such connected terminology suggests that a collection of now lost tenth-century Old English charters, like S 877 and S 1211 in form, was the original source
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‘When God sees us in the circuses’: Salvian of Marseille’s De gubernatione Dei and the critique of Roman society Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2022-12-21 Jonathan Stutz
This article addresses Salvian of Marseille’s treatise on God’s governance (De gubernatione Dei), one of the most important sources for the Germanic peoples’ period of migration at the beginning of the fifth century. It focuses in particular on Salvian’s critique of public entertainment, in the middle of Book VI. As I would like to show, his invective against this aspect of Roman life is closely connected
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Violence and Risk in Medieval Iceland. This Spattered Isle. By Oren Falk. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2021. xiii + 358 pp. £75. ISBN 978 0 19 886604 6. Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2022-12-14 Chris Callow
This is a sophisticated and thought-provoking book. It uses the representation of physical violence in Icelandic sagas to reflect on why violence was used and how it is represented in those sagas that portray events set in medieval Iceland. Falk is juggling with a series of familiar issues for anyone interested in the vexed question of the historical value of the sagas, but he uses vocabulary rarely
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After Charlemagne: Carolingian Italy and Its Rulers. Edited by Clemens Gantner and Walter Pohl. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2021. viii + 337 pp., maps. £75. ISBN 9781108840774. Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2022-12-05 Maya Maskarinec
Historians of ninth-century Italy are at a disadvantage. Although it is tenth-century Italy that was traditionally characterized as a saeculum obscurum, historians of the previous period likewise confront a relative paucity of many genres of sources. Moreover, although tenth-century Italy – and the ninth-century Carolingian world north of the Alps – have received more sustained attention, the historiography
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Issue Information Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2022-10-19
No abstract is available for this article.
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Western Europe in the age of Abbot-Bishop Oliba: persistence and transformation after the Carolingians Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2022-10-19 Patrick Geary
This essay situates Count-Bishop Oliba of Vic in post-Carolingian western Europe by comparing his spiritual and political roles to those of contemporary bishops beyond the Pyrenees: Fulbert of Chartres, Gerard of Cambrai, Burchard of Worms, and Aribert of Milan. Although not in direct communication with each other, these men faced similar challenges. Each bishop concentrated on securing the regional
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Documentary culture in Catalonia and England, c.975–1050 Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2022-10-19 Adam J. Kosto
The records connected to Oliba (d. 1046) and Wulfstan (d. 1023) offer a compelling method for comparing documentary cultures in Catalonia and England. This article examines documents preserved in each region to guide research into analogous documents in the other. From the Oliba diplomatari, the most suggestive are the most unusual items: inventories, ritual texts, records of oblation, and letters
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Law-books, concomitant texts and ethnically framed legal pluralism on the fringes of post-Carolingian Europe: northern Italy and Catalonia around 1000 Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2022-10-19 Stefan Esders
Around 1000, a new type of law-book emerged in Catalonia and northern Italy that attests to new ways of handling legal material. Incorporating in full the Visigothic and Lombard law codes, respectively, these law-books provided a base for studying and interpreting old law through comments, glosses etc., addressing new users such as lay judges. By looking at the Catalonian Liber iudicum popularis and
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From Rome to Ripoll, Rioja, and beyond: the Iberian transmission of the Latin Tiburtine Sibyl and Oliba of Ripoll and Vic’s Europe-wide network of knowledge transfer and learning Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2022-10-19 Matthias M. Tischler
In memory of Ernst Sackur (1862–1901)
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The art of the biblical prologue in medieval Catalonia: visual connections and interpretation in the Ripoll Bibles Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2022-10-19 Erika Loic
The Ripoll Bibles, eleventh-century manuscripts produced at the Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria de Ripoll (Catalonia), are notable for their monumental size and extensive illustration. Their art reflects monastic attitudes towards compiling extra-biblical materials – prologues, prooemia (prefaces), and capitula (summaries) – and the roles of commentary, both written and visual. The present article
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Faith and society on the border: reinterpreting the Roda d’Isàvena Passio Imaginis Domini in an Iberian context Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2022-10-19 Ekaterina Novokhatko
The late tenth/early eleventh century saw several Muslim attacks in Catalan lands, including one in 1006 that destroyed the episcopal see of Roda d’Isàvena in Ribagorça. It took the canons over two decades to restore the pillaged see and in 1030 the new cathedral was dedicated to St Vincent. The restoration also saw the compilation of a lectionary for the canonical library which contains the earliest
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Issue Information Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2022-07-20
No abstract is available for this article.
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The lost Missal of Alcuin and the Carolingian sacramentaries of Tours Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2022-07-20 Arthur Westwell
Letters of Alcuin of York attest that he composed a liturgical book he called a ‘missal’ while he was abbot of St Martin's basilica in Tours. No manuscripts of this missal survive. It has to be recovered from much later sacramentaries copied in Tours, which have been subject to significant subsequent reworking. This article makes a new attempt to draw out the contents of the missal from these later
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Atmospheric architecture: Gregory of Tours’s use of the fear of God in Tours Cathedral and the Basilica of St Martin Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2022-07-03 Catherine-Rose Hailstone
This article explores how and why Gregory of Tours encoded the fear of God into the architecture of Tours cathedral and the Basilica of St Martin. Using Gregory’s writings, in combination with the poetry of Venantius Fortunatus and the inscriptions that adorned the interior walls of the basilica, this paper argues that Gregory followed the church-building practices of Namatius of Clermont and Perpetuus
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The importance of coinage in the Carolingian world Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2022-07-03 Simon Coupland
The dramatic recent increase in the number of Carolingian coin finds offers significant new insights into the political, social and economic history of the period. Coins were produced in larger numbers, circulated more widely, and were used more commonly than has been assumed, though not in all regions. There was thus a range of regional economies which themselves changed over time. Many finds can
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Bonding over a death: signalling in the funeral episode of Ibn Faḍlān’s Risala Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2022-06-22 Declan Taggart
Many of the rites described by Ibn Faḍlān in his account of a Rūs funeral remain obscure. Rather than attempting to further puzzle out the symbolic content of these funerary practices, this article uses signalling theory to examine their role in group dynamics. Signalling theory examines the honesty of communications between individuals, focusing especially on how costly acts can represent the fitness
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Alfredian military reform: the materialization of ideology and the social practice of garrisoning Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2022-06-17 Georgina Pitt
King Alfred could not coerce his elites into implementing his ambitious military reforms. Instead, he had to persuade them to participate. Ideology can induce action, but how did an ideology focused on Christian wisdom motivate military reform? Different theoretical frameworks can help to identify promising new lines of enquiry. Assemblage theory illuminates the materialization of ideology in the burhs
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Issue Information Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2022-05-18
No abstract is available for this article.
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Teudefred and the king. On the manuscript Carcassonne G 6 and the intertwining of localities and centre in the Carolingian world Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2022-05-18 Christoph Haack, Thomas Kohl
Carcassonne G 6, preserving a judicial oath from 833, is an exceptional source for the history of the Spanish March and more generally the workings of power in the Carolingian world. The oath, concerning at first glance a very local dispute, links a body of royal charters with the precepts for the hispani issued by Charlemagne, Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald. This link reveals the close entanglement
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Corpus of Anglo‐Saxon Stone Sculpture, Volume XIII: Derbyshire and Staffordshire. By JaneHawkes and PhilipSidebottom with MartinBiddle. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press for the British Academy. 2018. xii + 365 pp. + 665 b/w plates + 50 b/w and colour figures. £100. ISBN 9780197266212. Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2022-04-05 Victoria Thompson Whitworth
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Social Inequality in Early Medieval Europe: Local Societies and Beyond. Edited by Juan Antonio QuirósCastillo. Collection Haut Moyen Âge 39. Turnhout: Brepols. 2020. 360 pp. + 97 b/w figures. €80. ISBN 978 2 503 58565 9; ISBN 978 2 503 58566 6 (e‐book). Early Medieval Europe Pub Date : 2022-04-05 Wendy Davies