PARERGONPub Date : 2023-12-18DOI: 10.1353/pgn.2023.a914785
Chris Higgins
{"title":"'Wide wandring Weemen': The Nature and Variety of Female Travel, 1558–1630","authors":"Chris Higgins","doi":"10.1353/pgn.2023.a914785","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pgn.2023.a914785","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>Female overseas travel has long been viewed as a niche activity involving only a handful of privileged elites. In his book ‘The Traveiler’ (1575), Jerome Turler cast moral aspersions on female travellers, describing them as ‘wide wandring Weemen’. However, an extensive review of the surviving evidence, drawing on underused sources, including the King’s Remembrancer records and diplomatic correspondence, suggests that European travel by English women was far more widespread than previously acknowledged. This article surveys the findings of a new database of over 2100 journeys made by English women to Europe between 1558 and 1630. From this information, it is now possible to construct a more complex understanding of both the extent and nature of female mobility than was previously supposed both by modern historians of travel and earlier commentators such as Jerome Turler.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":43576,"journal":{"name":"PARERGON","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138716289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PARERGONPub Date : 2023-12-18DOI: 10.1353/pgn.2023.a914795
Patrick Ball
{"title":"Augustine and the Humanists: Reading the 'City of God' from Petrarch to Poliziano ed. by Guy Claessens and Fabio Della Schiava (review)","authors":"Patrick Ball","doi":"10.1353/pgn.2023.a914795","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pgn.2023.a914795","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Augustine and the Humanists: Reading the ‘City of God’ from Petrarch to Poliziano</em> ed. by Guy Claessens and Fabio Della Schiava <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Patrick Ball </li> </ul> Claessens, Guy, and Fabio Della Schiava, eds, <em>Augustine and the Humanists: Reading the ‘City of God’ from Petrarch to Poliziano</em> (Colibri. Collected Studies in History and Literature, 2), Gent, LYSA Publishers, 2021; hardback; pp. 480; 21 colour plates; R.R.P. €75.00; ISBN 9789464447620. <p>Augustine called <em>De civitate Dei</em> his ‘magnum opus’; it is a leading source of theological thinking about the history, destiny, and politics of Christianity. It also yields abundant information about its period, the tipping point between pagan antiquity and the Christian Middle Ages: facts about Rome’s pre-Christian religion, extensive citation of lost classical sources, and miscellaneous detail (such as that it was customary to scatter powdered charcoal under boundary markers, so nobody could get away with shifting the stones afterwards). As the Middle Ages’ Godcentred mentality gave way to Renaissance humanism, there was the potential for new uses of <em>City of God</em> to emerge—for it to evolve from a theological authority into a repository of antiquarian knowledge. To date, though, there has been little interest in exploring humanists’ engagement with it. This volume attempts to address that oversight. An introductory chapter by Eric Saak precedes fifteen contributions, each detailing one scholar’s engagement with the work (or, in the case of Antonio Manfredi’s chapter, two scholars: Tommaso Parentucelli and Giovanni Tortelli). Elisa Brilli concludes the volume with an interesting study of manuscript illuminations of <em>De civitate Dei</em> and what these imply about changing understandings of Augustine’s ‘City’ over the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.</p> <p>The contributors address the topic from varied angles. A uniform approach is not authorised or necessarily possible given the available evidence. One common, basal mode of investigation assesses Augustine’s influence by estimating the number of his works the humanist in question possessed or had read and the frequency of references to him in that individual’s writings. More is not always feasible. The most rewarding chapters succeed in providing further context. For instance, Fabio Forner describes how Enea Silvio Piccolomini, the future Pius II, deployed Augustine’s other writings, during the standoff between the papacy and <strong>[End Page 221]</strong> the Council of Cardinals, in defence of the cardinals before switching sides to the papal camp. Then, once the Turks captured Constantinople, he began citing and modelling his own writings on <em>City of God</em>, itself inspired by the Visigoths’ sack of Rome. Sometimes there is enough evide","PeriodicalId":43576,"journal":{"name":"PARERGON","volume":"57 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138716405","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PARERGONPub Date : 2023-12-18DOI: 10.1353/pgn.2023.a914800
Nicholas D. Brodie
{"title":"Agricultural Landscapes of Al-Andalus, and the Aftermath of Feudal Conquest ed. by Helena Kirchner and Flocel Sabaté (review)","authors":"Nicholas D. Brodie","doi":"10.1353/pgn.2023.a914800","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pgn.2023.a914800","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Agricultural Landscapes of Al-Andalus, and the Aftermath of Feudal Conquest</em> ed. by Helena Kirchner and Flocel Sabaté <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Nicholas D. Brodie </li> </ul> Kirchner, Helena, and Flocel Sabaté, eds, <em>Agricultural Landscapes of Al-Andalus, and the Aftermath of Feudal Conquest</em> (The Medieval Countryside, 22), Turnhout, Brepols, 2021; hardback; pp. 277; 22 b/w illustrations, 40 maps (36 b/w, 4 colour), 8 b/w tables, 1 b/w line art; R.R.P. €80.00; ISBN 9782503593975. <p>This volume brings together considerable research experience and expertise, pooling common interests in the archaeology of water control systems both to explore such systems and to investigate connections between documentary records and landscape archaeology. It offers interesting insights that will help scholars better understand both the agricultural and pastoral histories of Al-Andalus and the potential and limitations of hydraulic archaeology as an investigative mechanism.</p> <p>The opening chapter by Eugènia Sitjes, on the Andalusi settlements of Manacor, is indicative of the sort of methodological richness that follows, with a multifaceted approach that integrates toponymic analysis and documentary evidence, all supplemented by the use of digital data management tools. Describing the settlements, the author points to their interconnectedness, and a ‘corridor’ effect’ (p. 50). This is part of the volume’s first section, which addresses peasant irrigation systems. The second contribution to this section is Antoni Ferrer and Helena Kirchner’s study of Ibizan watermills, which similarly blends documentary and archaeological analysis to undertake the difficult task of understanding the sequence of construction in long-used structures. The authors suggest there are four major construction phases but also conclude that ‘hydraulic elements are significantly resilient to change’ (p. 88). Nonetheless, they also note that there remains evidence of the impact of the feudal rent system on windmill-equipped hydraulic systems. Signs of transition resulting from the Christian conquest are squarely in the sights of Enric Guinot Rodríguez, whose chapter offers a case study of an unusual system where the marker between periods is not so much abrupt technological change but rather periodic signs of growth. This is important <strong>[End Page 230]</strong> for highlighting that despite its relatively obscure origins, the technological system seemed to evidence little disruption either from the thirteenth-century conquest or the 1609 expulsions, meaning that the site can work as a window into ‘the organization of agricultural spaces in the Andalusi period’ (p. 119).</p> <p>Urban irrigation is the focus of the volume’s second section, wherein Ferran Esquilache investigates the origins of Valencia’s major irrigation s","PeriodicalId":43576,"journal":{"name":"PARERGON","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138716562","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PARERGONPub Date : 2023-08-29DOI: 10.1353/pgn.2023.a905444
Z. Rohr
{"title":"Learning to be Noble in the Middle Ages: Moral Education in North-Western Europe by Claudia Wittig (review)","authors":"Z. Rohr","doi":"10.1353/pgn.2023.a905444","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pgn.2023.a905444","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43576,"journal":{"name":"PARERGON","volume":"28 1","pages":"277 - 278"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88742345","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PARERGONPub Date : 2023-08-29DOI: 10.1353/pgn.2023.a905440
A. Bubenik
{"title":"The Nibelungenlied: with the Klage ed. by William Whobrey (review)","authors":"A. Bubenik","doi":"10.1353/pgn.2023.a905440","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pgn.2023.a905440","url":null,"abstract":"the Passion [not ‘Hail Mother’ but ‘Hail Crown’]. [...] If Mary is the intercessor between the praying community and Christ, it is the Crown which serves that role in Verbum bonum et iocundum, mediating between Christ, the Franks, and the Kingdom of France along with its kings and queens’ (pp. 74–76). The Marian sequence in question was ubiquitous, belonging to a complex of popular, widely disseminated sequences. Any listener attentive to the Crown sequence would have experienced recollection of the original Marian text simultaneously with its reinterpretation, the Crown text. As Maurey puts it: ‘The sequences, then, are rife with hidden polyphonies harmonizing more than their apparent constituent parts in ways that bring to the fore the confluence of melodies, allusions, allegories, and meanings’ (p. 17). It is indeed remarkable that given all the feasts added to the Church calendar during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, none, not even Corpus Christi, made a greater contribution to the repertoire of sequences than did these two feast days, as celebrated at Sainte-Chapelle. Remarkable though they are as a group, they were but part of a number of Mass and Office complexes, and they are therefore related to other poetic and narrative texts specially composed at Saint-Chapelle, for example, the readings at Matins. Maurey provides examples of these texts in two of his book’s eight appendices, namely, a critical edition and translation of the Historia susceptionis coronae spinae (Appendix 7) and the Lessons for the Reception of Relics (Appendix 8). By tackling a manageable number of liturgically delimited sequences Maurey has succeeded in providing an excellent introduction and fascinating insight into a musical genre which, for all its undoubted aesthetic appeal, is by no means easy to take the full measure of. In so doing he has shown just how persuasive a tool in prosecuting political objectives could be the artistic fusion of liturgy and music. Robert Curry, The University of Sydney","PeriodicalId":43576,"journal":{"name":"PARERGON","volume":"19 1","pages":"270 - 272"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85551678","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PARERGONPub Date : 2023-08-29DOI: 10.1353/pgn.2023.a905433
G. Pitt
{"title":"‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages ed. by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian N. Wood (review)","authors":"G. Pitt","doi":"10.1353/pgn.2023.a905433","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pgn.2023.a905433","url":null,"abstract":"Both Shiloh Carroll and Karen A. Winstead offer critiques of toxic masculinity, the representation of trauma resulting from sexual violence, and the ‘muscular medievalism’ that the series relies on. Carroll offers a detailed analysis of the emasculation of the character Theon Greyjoy, a tool used to explain his trauma resulting from sexual violence, while Winstead draws on the parallels between medieval virgin-martyr legends and the women in George R. R. Martin’s series who are pawns in the game of brutal sexualised violence that the men play. S. C. Thompson offers a detailed analysis of Maria Dahvana Headley’s The Mere Wife (2018), which retells Beowulf for a twentieth-century readership. Thompson shows how Headley subtly draws on the medieval (see, for example, p. 221), including how Headley’s work relies on networks of relationships as well as a sense of duality amongst its characters. The contrasting matriarchal figures of Dana and Willa each has their own different maternal styles and relationships with their sons, and this is mirrored by Headley’s decision to split Beowulf’s Grendel into two characters, namely Dana’s and Willa’s sons Gren and Dylan. Scott Manning’s fascinating essay on the Ringling Bros. Circus’s spectacle about Joan of Arc’s life concludes the collection. The anachronistic spectacles, a mix of medieval, Renaissance, and Victorian medievalism, were intended to entertain with their lavish display of pomp and ceremony, as well as convey piety and patriotism to the early twentieth-century American audiences. The collection should be commended for its focus on global medievalism and for highlighting medievalism in lesser-known adaptations and texts, both literary and cultural. Overall, this timely collection will be of interest to those interested in how the medieval is invoked by and invokes the political (especially the focus on nationalism and extremism), medievalism in performance and popular culture (particularly in Game of Thrones, which is the focus of several of the essays), and medievalism in general. Marina Gerzić, The University of Western Australia","PeriodicalId":43576,"journal":{"name":"PARERGON","volume":"23 1","pages":"257 - 259"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83672995","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PARERGONPub Date : 2023-08-29DOI: 10.1353/pgn.2023.a905437
S. Randles
{"title":"The Lost Art of the Anglo-Saxon World: The Sacred and Secular Power of Embroidery by Alexandra Lester-Makin (review)","authors":"S. Randles","doi":"10.1353/pgn.2023.a905437","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pgn.2023.a905437","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43576,"journal":{"name":"PARERGON","volume":"8 1","pages":"265 - 266"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79376725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PARERGONPub Date : 2023-08-29DOI: 10.1353/pgn.2023.a905413
Peter D. McDonald
{"title":"The Papacy and the English Religious, 1305–52","authors":"Peter D. McDonald","doi":"10.1353/pgn.2023.a905413","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pgn.2023.a905413","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article examines the local effects of papal centralisation of ecclesiastical administration in the first half of the fourteenth century. It traces as a case study the impact on English monastic communities of papal privileges and exemptions, papal attempts to regulate religious observance, the expansion of the papal judicial system, and the growth of papal appointments of heads of houses. It concludes that the reality differed from the high theory of papalist claims to immediate and universal jurisdiction. Papal power ultimately depended on the consent of local actors and an increasingly assertive Crown, and burgeoning administrative activity at the papal curia did not translate into increased power and influence.","PeriodicalId":43576,"journal":{"name":"PARERGON","volume":"7 1","pages":"19 - 49"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85617498","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PARERGONPub Date : 2023-08-29DOI: 10.1353/pgn.2023.a905422
Cassandra Schilling
{"title":"Gender and Status in Competition in Pre-Modern Societies ed. by Martha Bayless, Jonas Lilequist and Lewis Webb (review)","authors":"Cassandra Schilling","doi":"10.1353/pgn.2023.a905422","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pgn.2023.a905422","url":null,"abstract":"Gender and Status in Competition in Pre-Modern Societies is a volume of essays investigating how gendered practices, performances and (re)presentations have been used for status competition in the premodern world. It aims to impress the omnipresence of status competition throughout history and across cultures, while contributing new research on the intersections between gender and status competition. A key feature, and perhaps the greatest strength of the volume in terms of sparking interest, is that the contributions span a vast temporal and geographical scope and are drawn from various research disciplines. Temporally, the studies span from, at the earliest, the fourth millennium bce in Marta Ameri’s essay ‘Women, Seals, and Power in Prehistoric Iran and Central Asia’, to, at the latest, the seventeenth century ce in Martin W. Huang’s ‘Status Competition, Mourning and Gender in Seventeenth Century China’. The geographical scope of the volume encompasses China, Iran, Arabia, Italy, France, Scandinavia, and Sweden. And they draw on archaeology, various forms of literature, iconography and art history, and legislation. This quality speaks to efforts to decolonise the field of medieval and early modern studies and, with several of the essays drawing on numerous evidence types, it also demonstrates an awareness of the benefits of cross-disciplinary research.","PeriodicalId":43576,"journal":{"name":"PARERGON","volume":"59 1","pages":"237 - 238"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80516721","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}