The Medieval History Journal, Ahead of Print.
The murder of Priscus the Jew seems to be one of the earliest documented episodes of murder involving Jews in the European Middle Ages. The incident, described by Gregory of Tours (Gregorius Turonensis) in his great work, Decem Libri Historiarum (Ten Books of Histories) involves the murder of the Jew Priscus at the hands of Phatir, his former coreligionist and new convert to Christianity, which occurred in the Frankish Kingdom of Neustria in 581 or 582, during the reign of King Chilperic I. In this study, based on a close reading of the relevant texts I attempt to illuminate what this incident may teach us about Jewish social and political life in the Merovingian kingdoms. I suggest, contrary to previous scholarship that saw the theological aspects of the conversion as paramount, that the murder was the result of a competition among the elite in the court of the king and highlight what we may learn from this case about the sources of Jewish religious law and what Jews and Christians living in this time knew about them. Thus, after a careful reading of the primary source, I propose an interpretation of the circumstances that precipitated the violent act, as well as the manner in which it was recorded in the writings of Gregory of Tours.
Category Archives: The Medieval History Journal
Introduction: Materiality and Methodology: Ways of Knowing and Narrating
The Medieval History Journal, Volume 26, Issue 2, Page 183-208, November 2023.
Over the past 20 years, a renewed interest in material culture, materialism and materiality has shaped the practice of history in new ways moving the discipline ‘beyond words’ to consider the worlds within things. Attention to the dynamics of materials and production has expanded ways of knowing the past and begun to reshape the kinds of narratives that historians craft. Objects and things can be said to constitute an additional archival repertoire, but objects also require their own ways of reading, methods of analysis and theoretical orientations, especially as we integrate materiality into the robust ways of writing history that have traditionally relied upon the written record alone. Most historians agree that it is not possible to offer a materialist reading in the absence of written sources. Yet, how do the two work together? This special issue is dedicated to exploring the following related questions: What does materiality’s methodology entail? What modes of investigation and narration are deployed in a material analysis? How does a material focus shape and change the historian’s possibilities for narrative and argument? How does the study of objects and things in the medieval and the early modern periods open new ways of writing about and conceptualising a broader and more connected world? The essays gathered in this Special Issue contribute to an understanding of materiality that seeks to facilitate a more convergent understanding of our medieval and early modern pasts.
Over the past 20 years, a renewed interest in material culture, materialism and materiality has shaped the practice of history in new ways moving the discipline ‘beyond words’ to consider the worlds within things. Attention to the dynamics of materials and production has expanded ways of knowing the past and begun to reshape the kinds of narratives that historians craft. Objects and things can be said to constitute an additional archival repertoire, but objects also require their own ways of reading, methods of analysis and theoretical orientations, especially as we integrate materiality into the robust ways of writing history that have traditionally relied upon the written record alone. Most historians agree that it is not possible to offer a materialist reading in the absence of written sources. Yet, how do the two work together? This special issue is dedicated to exploring the following related questions: What does materiality’s methodology entail? What modes of investigation and narration are deployed in a material analysis? How does a material focus shape and change the historian’s possibilities for narrative and argument? How does the study of objects and things in the medieval and the early modern periods open new ways of writing about and conceptualising a broader and more connected world? The essays gathered in this Special Issue contribute to an understanding of materiality that seeks to facilitate a more convergent understanding of our medieval and early modern pasts.
Indo-Islamicate Perfumes in Early Modern India: Textualisation, Transmissions and Assimilations
The Medieval History Journal, Volume 26, Issue 2, Page 314-352, November 2023.
This article brings to focus the material life of early modern perfumes in the Indian subcontinent. It offers a ‘documentary archaeology’ by foregrounding texts that recorded perfumes in their stage of production and preparation. By studying this corpus, it presents perfumes as a locale where craft, technology and labour interacted with each other in blending scientific knowledge with the natural landscape. With a focus on textualised perfume recipes, listed aromatic ingredients and distillation methods, it examines the various shifts, transitions, cross-cultural material borrowings and finally the assimilations that occurred in the olfactory landscape of an Indo-Islamicate political empire, especially during the Mughal rule in India. A rich perfume-repository, where divergences and acculturations took place could be best understood by identifying the various methods and processes in which material practices and literary traditions were shaping each other. In understanding this, it goes beyond the ephemerality of perfumes and argues in favour of a craft that was labour-intensive, skill-based, technologically innovative and culturally adaptive. Finally, it explores the diversification of its forms, significance of receptacles and amplification of its production, both in texts and in practice, to highlight the pervasive materiality of Indo-Islamicate perfumes in early modern India.
This article brings to focus the material life of early modern perfumes in the Indian subcontinent. It offers a ‘documentary archaeology’ by foregrounding texts that recorded perfumes in their stage of production and preparation. By studying this corpus, it presents perfumes as a locale where craft, technology and labour interacted with each other in blending scientific knowledge with the natural landscape. With a focus on textualised perfume recipes, listed aromatic ingredients and distillation methods, it examines the various shifts, transitions, cross-cultural material borrowings and finally the assimilations that occurred in the olfactory landscape of an Indo-Islamicate political empire, especially during the Mughal rule in India. A rich perfume-repository, where divergences and acculturations took place could be best understood by identifying the various methods and processes in which material practices and literary traditions were shaping each other. In understanding this, it goes beyond the ephemerality of perfumes and argues in favour of a craft that was labour-intensive, skill-based, technologically innovative and culturally adaptive. Finally, it explores the diversification of its forms, significance of receptacles and amplification of its production, both in texts and in practice, to highlight the pervasive materiality of Indo-Islamicate perfumes in early modern India.
What’s in a Name? Reflections on the Tibetan Yatse Dynasty and Nepal’s Role in Its Transition to the Indic (‘Khas’) Malla Dynasty
The Medieval History Journal, Ahead of Print.
This paper examines three allegedly Sanskrit names that appear on a fourteenth-century kīrtistambha inscription at Dullu in the Jumlā region of west Nepal. The inscription records the matrilineage and patrilineage of the king Pṛthivīmalla. These three names, all with the dynastic name calla attached, are Krāśicalla, Krādhicalla and Krācalla. A fourth calla name that also appears in the regnal list, Aśokacalla, is plainly Sanskritic. These figures feature in several Tibetan annals, but they are given Tibetan names, rather than phonetic renderings or Tibetan translation of these ‘Sanskrit’ names, with the exception of Aśokacalla (Tib. a sog lde). I consider the possibility that the three linguistically obscure names appearing on the Dullu inscription are actually Indic renderings of Tibetan names and that the calla dynasty members themselves were Tibetan stranger kings, with Aśokacalla representing a shift towards a more Indic representation of their dynasty. Furthermore, I argue that this dynasty adopted the dynastic names of the contemporaneous kings of Nepal, Malla, in an effort to further situate themselves in the Indosphere. This effort was most vigorously pursued by Ripumalla, whom I argue made a pilgrimage in Nepal during the same legitimacy campaign that involved similar pilgrimages to Kapilavastu and Lumbinī.
This paper examines three allegedly Sanskrit names that appear on a fourteenth-century kīrtistambha inscription at Dullu in the Jumlā region of west Nepal. The inscription records the matrilineage and patrilineage of the king Pṛthivīmalla. These three names, all with the dynastic name calla attached, are Krāśicalla, Krādhicalla and Krācalla. A fourth calla name that also appears in the regnal list, Aśokacalla, is plainly Sanskritic. These figures feature in several Tibetan annals, but they are given Tibetan names, rather than phonetic renderings or Tibetan translation of these ‘Sanskrit’ names, with the exception of Aśokacalla (Tib. a sog lde). I consider the possibility that the three linguistically obscure names appearing on the Dullu inscription are actually Indic renderings of Tibetan names and that the calla dynasty members themselves were Tibetan stranger kings, with Aśokacalla representing a shift towards a more Indic representation of their dynasty. Furthermore, I argue that this dynasty adopted the dynastic names of the contemporaneous kings of Nepal, Malla, in an effort to further situate themselves in the Indosphere. This effort was most vigorously pursued by Ripumalla, whom I argue made a pilgrimage in Nepal during the same legitimacy campaign that involved similar pilgrimages to Kapilavastu and Lumbinī.
Political Thought in Iberian Educational Centres: An Excursus Through the Circulation of Books and Ideas (Thirteenth to Fifteenth Centuries)
The Medieval History Journal, Ahead of Print.
This paper aims to analyse the circulation of political ideas within the context of Iberian educational centres with a special focus on their contribution to the settlement of new dynasties—like the Avis in Portugal, Trastámaras in Castile, Aragon and Navarre—or the annexation of other kingdoms—like Mallorca—and the relationship with Muslim territories—Granada and the Merinid Empire. To achieve this goal, we undertake a twofold study: (i) the writings and ideas on political theory that have been read and copied in Iberian educational centres; (ii) the books of some relevant thinkers in each kingdom, looking at who, where and when their works have been used.
This paper aims to analyse the circulation of political ideas within the context of Iberian educational centres with a special focus on their contribution to the settlement of new dynasties—like the Avis in Portugal, Trastámaras in Castile, Aragon and Navarre—or the annexation of other kingdoms—like Mallorca—and the relationship with Muslim territories—Granada and the Merinid Empire. To achieve this goal, we undertake a twofold study: (i) the writings and ideas on political theory that have been read and copied in Iberian educational centres; (ii) the books of some relevant thinkers in each kingdom, looking at who, where and when their works have been used.
Materiality and Marginalia across the World: The Role of Things in Christopher Columbus’s Annotations on Marco Polo
The Medieval History Journal, Volume 26, Issue 2, Page 376-424, November 2023.
The recension of Marco Polo’s Devisament dou monde—an incunable of Francesco Pipino’s Latin translation titled De consuetudinibus et conditionibus orientalium regionum—used by Christopher Columbus is one of five annotated books known to have survived from the explorer’s library. The exemplar contains in its margins copious notes and drawings attributable to Columbus himself and other members of his immediate circle. These marginalia reveal that Columbus was a highly distinctive reader of content transmitted in the Poline textual tradition. He rarely dwelt on topographic, ethnographic or historical information. Rather, he was almost exclusively concerned with material things. His notes consist of brief references either to single objects or to lists of multiple objects associated with specific places. Cross-referencing allowed him to highlight similarities and differences between the regions of the known world, as well as to organise these regions hierarchically depending on the potential value of their manufactured and natural resources to himself and his fellow Europeans. He placed particular emphasis on mineral deposits and other substances such as gold, pearls and spices that he apparently considered to have an especially elevated intrinsic value. This article examines the revision, dissemination and especially interpretation of Polo’s late thirteenth-century work at a particular historical moment in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. In so doing, it draws attention to Columbus’s contribution to a shift in the relationship between materiality and cosmography that would prove to be of key importance to modern colonialism.
The recension of Marco Polo’s Devisament dou monde—an incunable of Francesco Pipino’s Latin translation titled De consuetudinibus et conditionibus orientalium regionum—used by Christopher Columbus is one of five annotated books known to have survived from the explorer’s library. The exemplar contains in its margins copious notes and drawings attributable to Columbus himself and other members of his immediate circle. These marginalia reveal that Columbus was a highly distinctive reader of content transmitted in the Poline textual tradition. He rarely dwelt on topographic, ethnographic or historical information. Rather, he was almost exclusively concerned with material things. His notes consist of brief references either to single objects or to lists of multiple objects associated with specific places. Cross-referencing allowed him to highlight similarities and differences between the regions of the known world, as well as to organise these regions hierarchically depending on the potential value of their manufactured and natural resources to himself and his fellow Europeans. He placed particular emphasis on mineral deposits and other substances such as gold, pearls and spices that he apparently considered to have an especially elevated intrinsic value. This article examines the revision, dissemination and especially interpretation of Polo’s late thirteenth-century work at a particular historical moment in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. In so doing, it draws attention to Columbus’s contribution to a shift in the relationship between materiality and cosmography that would prove to be of key importance to modern colonialism.