Early Medieval EuropePub Date : 2026-10-12Epub Date: 2026-08-05DOI: 10.1111/emed.70055
E.T. Dailey, Justin Pigott
{"title":"Ascetics, slaves, and necessity in Late Antiquity: renouncing all wealth, but for a single slave","authors":"E.T. Dailey, Justin Pigott","doi":"10.1111/emed.70055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/emed.70055","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Slave owners in Late Antiquity viewed the possession of at least one slave to be a necessity and a defining mark that distinguished the dignified social classes from the poor. Ascetics who shared this perspective faced a choice when renouncing all worldly possessions in pursuit of spiritual perfection, one not merely about luxury, but also about status and perhaps even survival. Hagiographic literature and monastic rules reveal that the embrace of the ascetic life, in eremitic and coenobitic contexts alike, was often assumed to accommodate the retention of a single slave as a personal attendant.</p>","PeriodicalId":44508,"journal":{"name":"Early Medieval Europe","volume":"34 4","pages":"601-622"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/emed.70055","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149177263","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Early Medieval EuropePub Date : 2026-10-12Epub Date: 2026-08-09DOI: 10.1111/emed.70050
Ana de Oliveira Dias
{"title":"Relics, writing, and devotion in early medieval Chelles","authors":"Ana de Oliveira Dias","doi":"10.1111/emed.70050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/emed.70050","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The discovery in 1983 of a collection of relics with their medieval identificatory tags in the parish church of Chelles opened new avenues for research on devotional and writing practices in this Frankish royal foundation. This is the first systematic study of the corpus of relic labels that accompanied these sacred objects, particularly of the subset of tags generally regarded as produced by Chelles scribes in the second half of the eighth century. By analysing the tags’ methods of production and handwriting, in comparison with contemporary Chelles book production, this article explores attitudes to writing in this centre and assesses how it was harnessed for both practical and devotional purposes. Its importance within the framework of early medieval relic cults is also explored.</p>","PeriodicalId":44508,"journal":{"name":"Early Medieval Europe","volume":"34 4","pages":"623-661"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/emed.70050","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149177355","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Early Medieval EuropePub Date : 2026-10-12Epub Date: 2026-07-06DOI: 10.1111/emed.70047
Marcelo Candido da Silva
{"title":"Accounting for crises in Carolingian annals","authors":"Marcelo Candido da Silva","doi":"10.1111/emed.70047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/emed.70047","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article examines the ways in which crises were recorded and conceptualized in Carolingian annals, with particular attention to the selective use of numerical information. Rather than treating references to famine, mortality, extreme weather events, or prices as transparent data points, it approaches annalistic quantification as a historiographical practice embedded in specific political and ideological frameworks. By analysing a series of case studies drawn primarily from the Annales Bertiniani, Annales Fuldenses, and related annalistic traditions, the article explores when, how, and why unusually precise numbers appear in narratives otherwise characterized by quantitative vagueness. It situates these practices within broader developments in Carolingian historical writing, biblical exegesis, and political culture, paying particular attention to the moral and providential interpretations attached to crisis events. In doing so, the study contributes to current debates on the use of narrative sources in environmental and economic history, and calls for a more critical engagement with numbers in early medieval texts, understood not merely as records of events but as instruments of meaning-making and historical explanation.</p>","PeriodicalId":44508,"journal":{"name":"Early Medieval Europe","volume":"34 4","pages":"535-554"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149177348","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Early Medieval EuropePub Date : 2026-10-12Epub Date: 2026-07-21DOI: 10.1111/emed.70054
Paolo Tedesco
{"title":"Small Change in the Early Middle Ages: New Perspectives on Coined Money, c. 400–1100. Edited by Rory Naismith. Studies in the Early Middle Ages. Turnhout: Brepols. 2025. 265 pp. ISBN 978 2 503 61537 0.","authors":"Paolo Tedesco","doi":"10.1111/emed.70054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/emed.70054","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44508,"journal":{"name":"Early Medieval Europe","volume":"34 4","pages":"697-699"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149177078","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Early Medieval EuropePub Date : 2026-10-12Epub Date: 2026-07-23DOI: 10.1111/emed.70058
Jonathan Tickle
{"title":"The First King of England: Æthelstan and the Birth of a Kingdom. By David Woodman. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. 2025. xviii +307 pp. £30. ISBN 9780691249490.","authors":"Jonathan Tickle","doi":"10.1111/emed.70058","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/emed.70058","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44508,"journal":{"name":"Early Medieval Europe","volume":"34 4","pages":"706-708"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149177139","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Early Medieval EuropePub Date : 2026-07-05Epub Date: 2026-04-29DOI: 10.1111/emed.70041
Michael Edward Stewart
{"title":"Ritual and Earthquakes in Constantinople. Liturgy, Ecology, and Empire. By Mark Roosien. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2024. XI + 204 pp., 1 ill., 1 map, 8 tables. £ 85/$110. ISBN 978 1 009 42728 9.","authors":"Michael Edward Stewart","doi":"10.1111/emed.70041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/emed.70041","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44508,"journal":{"name":"Early Medieval Europe","volume":"34 3","pages":"508-512"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148389154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Early Medieval EuropePub Date : 2026-07-05Epub Date: 2026-04-26DOI: 10.1111/emed.70038
Lek Hang Chan
{"title":"Aristocratic identification in Felix’s Life of Guthlac","authors":"Lek Hang Chan","doi":"10.1111/emed.70038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/emed.70038","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Recent scholarship often sees high-born monastics and clerics in early Christian England as part of the aristocratic class. Modern identity theories, however, suggest that social identity could be dynamic, situational, processual and discursive. In light of this concept, the present article reads Felix’s Life of Guthlac as a text that constructs an aristocratic identity for Guthlac, a high-born hermit, and explores the social contexts of this identification. This case study demonstrates how the concept of social identification could help to deepen our understanding of the dynamic and complex relationships between aristocracy and the church during this period.</p>","PeriodicalId":44508,"journal":{"name":"Early Medieval Europe","volume":"34 3","pages":"435-457"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/emed.70038","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148389124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Early Medieval EuropePub Date : 2026-07-05Epub Date: 2026-05-03DOI: 10.1111/emed.70044
Matthew Bryan Gillis
{"title":"Eschatologisches Denken und politisches Handeln in der Karolingerzeit. By Johanna Reitmeier-Filax. Contexts of Ancient and Medieval Anthropology 11. Paderborn: Brill/Schöningh. 2025. xii + 275 pp. €110. ISBN 9783506796868.","authors":"Matthew Bryan Gillis","doi":"10.1111/emed.70044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/emed.70044","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44508,"journal":{"name":"Early Medieval Europe","volume":"34 3","pages":"520-522"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148389109","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Early Medieval EuropePub Date : 2026-07-05Epub Date: 2026-04-26DOI: 10.1111/emed.70034
Paul Everson, David Stocker
{"title":"Iuxta morem Romanorum: the role of the cementarii in an architecture of spolia","authors":"Paul Everson, David Stocker","doi":"10.1111/emed.70034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/emed.70034","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Benedict Biscop imported specialist workmen, cementarii, from Gaul for his monastery at Wearmouth, who built ‘in the Roman manner’ (iuxta morem Romanorum). Biscop's specialists have been previously understood as ‘stonemasons’, and their arrival seen as the introduction of sophisticated masonry construction techniques into Insular architecture. Our exploration of the meaning of the word cementarii suggests, however, that the skill of these workmen lay in rendering and plastering masonry walls built of scavenged and reused stone. We suggest that these cementarii were, in fact, masters of an ‘architecture of spolia’, for which archaeological evidence has been found across the former western Empire; their skill lay in the creation of an architectural style, in which imaginatively reused Roman architectural detail stood out against broad panels of rendered and plastered rough masonry.</p>","PeriodicalId":44508,"journal":{"name":"Early Medieval Europe","volume":"34 3","pages":"379-410"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148389122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}