{"title":"Poor commons and kings’ propines: food and status in later medieval Aberdeen","authors":"Elizabeth Gemmill","doi":"10.1080/03044181.2023.2253674","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2023.2253674","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Assuring the supply of food and drink in the medieval Scottish town, and safeguarding the town’s reputation in relation to this, were at the heart of the burgh government’s duties. Some foods were specially associated with the poor; conversely, provision and consumption of high-status comestibles was at the core of guild ceremonial, civic pageantry and celebration, and hospitality offered to important visitors. There was a recognised ranking of crafts engaged in food and drink production, and those who failed to meet expectations were threatened with loss of equipment or status – although burgh officers risked their own reputation when they failed to carry out the prescribed penalties. Employers were expected to give meals to their servants and townspeople had a mutual responsibility to provide sustenance for those engaged in public service. Status and reputation, individual and collective, and social relationships, depended on the successful provision of food and drink.","PeriodicalId":45579,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48232889","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A simple food with many meanings: bread in late medieval England","authors":"Christopher Dyer","doi":"10.1080/03044181.2023.2250947","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2023.2250947","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Bread was the most important item of diet in medieval England. Cereals were consumed in boiled form, but bread was preferred. Bread was not just convenient, but was also symbolic of well-being. Although breads were made from other cereals and legumes, wheat bread occupied a prime position, and in particular white wheat bread was regarded highly by consumers. Reasons are given for these attitudes, including the practical advantage that white bread was an efficient source of energy and was cost-effective. The political management of the corn trade and bread baking through such regulations as the assize of bread was intended to prevent unrest, but occasionally consumers organised ‘food riots’.","PeriodicalId":45579,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44999787","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The ‘Lamb of God’ in the early Middle Ages: a zooarchaeological perspective","authors":"Matilda Holmes","doi":"10.1080/03044181.2023.2253678","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2023.2253678","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Medieval ecclesiastical estates have long been linked to vast flocks of wool-producing sheep that underpinned the wealth of the nation well into the sixteenth century. Recent surveys of English medieval animal remains have found evidence for an exceptionally high quantity of sheep at some of the earliest monastic communities established in England from the seventh century AD. The association between religious ideology and sheep is integral to teachings from the Bible, but sheep were also of economic value, and these ideas are considered alongside the changing meaning and value of flocks, and the increase in wool production in medieval England.","PeriodicalId":45579,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41431784","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The earliest English culinary recipes: dietary advice in Old English medical texts","authors":"D. Banham","doi":"10.1080/03044181.2023.2250943","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2023.2250943","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The earliest culinary recipes written in the English language, or in England, are contained in the three main Old English medical collections, now known as Bald’s Leechbook, Leechbook III and the Lacnunga, dating from the tenth, or possibly late ninth, to eleventh centuries. These recipes reveal contemporary ideas about the suitability of various foods for people experiencing various conditions, but not for a generalised ‘healthy diet’, nor indeed for the diet of the population at large in England at the time. They form part of a fairly substantial body of dietary advice, drawing quite heavily on a Latin tradition that was common to most of Western Europe, which betrays clear traces of humoral theory.","PeriodicalId":45579,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45497206","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Food security and insecurity in medieval Irish towns","authors":"J. A. Galloway, Margaret Murphy","doi":"10.1080/03044181.2023.2250951","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2023.2250951","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The degree to which the townspeople of medieval Ireland enjoyed food security or experienced food insecurity forms the subject of this paper. Having outlined the context within which Irish medieval towns started to experience food insecurity, the paper then proceeds to examine responses to this situation. These include protection of the urban area, strategies for improved storage and transport of foodstuffs, the production of food within and immediately adjacent to urban space, the regulation of the food trades, the operation of food markets, inter-regional and international trade, and the engagement with sometimes hostile rural hinterlands.","PeriodicalId":45579,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46126438","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Peasants and food security in England and Wales c.1300","authors":"P. Schofield","doi":"10.1080/03044181.2023.2250952","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2023.2250952","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Food security is discussed with a particular focus on the decades either side of 1300, years characterised by poor weather and significant fluctuations in food availability, evident especially in the varied performance of grain harvests. Examining access to food and the vulnerability of the food supply in a period of particular pressure on food resources allows reflection on stresses on food availability in these decades as well as the range of approaches that individuals and institutions could employ in seeking to respond to them. The article discusses relative entitlement and contemporary perceptions of the same. While its focus is upon rural society and the experience of the peasantry, there will necessarily be some reference to the urban context, which cannot be separated from the experience of the countryside, and the attempts of institutions such as government to respond to issues relevant to food security in this period.","PeriodicalId":45579,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46590313","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Self-presentation and geographical origin at the fifteenth-century University of Paris: an analysis of manuscript decoration","authors":"Teresa Barucci","doi":"10.1080/03044181.2023.2235367","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2023.2235367","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article analyses the decorated prefatory statements in two fifteenth-century books of the proctors of the German natio at the University of Paris as part of the discussion on the relationship between academic mobility and identity construction in medieval Europe. The article argues that the decorated statements – a virtually unexplored source – functioned as acts of self-presentation and ‘public identities’ for the proctors. Then, it discusses the complex role of geographical origins and related political, linguistic and cultural factors in the articulation of identity in the Parisian scholarly community. The relevance of the analysis for the debates surrounding the idea of ‘national identity’ in medieval Europe is also addressed.","PeriodicalId":45579,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY","volume":"49 1","pages":"558 - 582"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47120035","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"To receive ‘the best form and example of living’: ascetic instruction in the Life of John of Gorze","authors":"Catherine Rosbrook","doi":"10.1080/03044181.2023.2235355","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2023.2235355","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT While studies of knowledge transmission in the central Middle Ages are abundant, much remains to be discovered about learning practices in an extra-institutional context. An exceptionally detailed example comes from the first portion of the Life of John of Gorze. It recounts John’s earliest encounters with asceticism, as he endeavoured to carve out a life pleasing to God. John learned to live ascetically through one-to-one interactions with a range of experienced individuals, many of them hermits, who comprised a ‘community of practice’. One community member observed the ascetic example of another and imitated it in their presence, through the process of active participation. This method of learning, which fostered experimentation and the exercise of reflection, belongs to a broader cultural preference within tenth-century Lotharingia for presence-based forms of knowledge transmission.","PeriodicalId":45579,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY","volume":"49 1","pages":"447 - 466"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43535481","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A medieval effort toward unity: Latins, Greeks, Russians and the Mongol Khan","authors":"A. Maiorov","doi":"10.1080/03044181.2023.2232377","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2023.2232377","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article explores the little studied role of the Rus princes and the Rus prelates of the Byzantine Church in the establishment of immediate contacts between the papal court and the rulers of the Nicene Empire in the mid thirteenth century. These resulted in a new round of negotiations for the union of the Roman Church and the Byzantine Church. At the heart of these contacts was not only the mutual desire of the Latins and Greeks to restore church unity, but also the action of a third force, namely the political ambitions of the Mongol khan toward Christian rulers of the West and, above all, the pope. These rulers took the initiative to turn to him with a proposal for peace in the aftermath of the devastating Mongol invasion that reached Central Europe in 1241–2.","PeriodicalId":45579,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY","volume":"49 1","pages":"495 - 515"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46481708","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A monastic angelology in stone: the sculpted angels at Conques","authors":"Kristine Tanton","doi":"10.1080/03044181.2023.2230581","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2023.2230581","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the Middle Ages, angels were a constant presence and participated with the faithful in praising God. Due to the manifold roles played by angels in Christian theology, it is not surprising that they were a popular subject for church decoration. At the abbey church of Sainte-Foy at Conques, the attention paid to and regard for angels was expressed to an exceptional degree and therefore provide an excellent case study through which to understand how monumental sculpture communicated monastic identity and exegesis. This article considers the formal attributes and spatial arrangement of the sculpted angels at Conques as they relate to early medieval monastic conceptions of angels’ function and role within the heavenly community, providing the monks with a celestial model to negotiate the boundaries between the active and contemplative life as articulated by Gregory the Great and the Venerable Bede.","PeriodicalId":45579,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY","volume":"49 1","pages":"467 - 494"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48666796","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}