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.
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.
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.
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.
Book review: Noëlle-Laetitia Perret and Stéphane Péquignot, eds., A Critical Companion to the ‘Mirrors for Princes’
The Medieval History Journal, Ahead of Print.
Noëlle-Laetitia Perret and Stéphane Péquignot, eds., A Critical Companion to the ‘Mirrors for Princes’. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2023, 568 pp. ISBN: 9789004518759.
Noëlle-Laetitia Perret and Stéphane Péquignot, eds., A Critical Companion to the ‘Mirrors for Princes’. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2023, 568 pp. ISBN: 9789004518759.
A New Focus on Cityscapes in Late Medieval German Literature: Rudolf von Ems and Heinrich Kaufringer
The Medieval History Journal, Volume 26, Issue 1, Page 113-136, May 2023.
Historians have studied the medieval city from many different perspectives already, and even literary historians have endeavoured to identify the evidence in fictional texts pertaining to urban spaces and figures. In many cases, however, the cities as they emerge before our eyes are rather imaginary or dream-like, and lack in historical specificity. This situation changed, as this article demonstrates, with the case of Rudolf von Ems’s Der guote Gêrhart (ca. 1220) and the verse narratives by Heinrich Kaufringer (ca. 1400). This study examines the data we can cull from both sides and presents it as the crucial indicator for the emergence of a new literary discourse dedicated to the world of late medieval cities. We begin to discover, though not yet in any consistent way, the formation of urban protagonists and of narrative contexts that are predicated on urban settings.
Historians have studied the medieval city from many different perspectives already, and even literary historians have endeavoured to identify the evidence in fictional texts pertaining to urban spaces and figures. In many cases, however, the cities as they emerge before our eyes are rather imaginary or dream-like, and lack in historical specificity. This situation changed, as this article demonstrates, with the case of Rudolf von Ems’s Der guote Gêrhart (ca. 1220) and the verse narratives by Heinrich Kaufringer (ca. 1400). This study examines the data we can cull from both sides and presents it as the crucial indicator for the emergence of a new literary discourse dedicated to the world of late medieval cities. We begin to discover, though not yet in any consistent way, the formation of urban protagonists and of narrative contexts that are predicated on urban settings.
Revisiting the Mirzanama: Class Consciousness and the Mughal Middle Classes
The Medieval History Journal, Volume 26, Issue 1, Page 137-160, May 2023.
Drawing on earlier scholarship that argues for the existence of the middle classes in the Mughal Indian society, this article aims to render their sociocultural history more visible through a re-examination of the Mirzanama. The text, often associated with the elite, on the contrary, addresses the middling petty officialdom, advising them on micro-aspects of their sociocultural lives such as the etiquette of dining. Read imaginatively, the advisory reveals class consciousness—in terms of being distinct from both the nobility and the common populace—to be an important factor defining the middle-class way of life. Significantly, a micro-historical reflection, macro-historically helps us challenge the recently created dichotomy, in historical scholarship, between the elite and the non-elite, by reasserting the presence of sufficiently conscious middle strata.
Drawing on earlier scholarship that argues for the existence of the middle classes in the Mughal Indian society, this article aims to render their sociocultural history more visible through a re-examination of the Mirzanama. The text, often associated with the elite, on the contrary, addresses the middling petty officialdom, advising them on micro-aspects of their sociocultural lives such as the etiquette of dining. Read imaginatively, the advisory reveals class consciousness—in terms of being distinct from both the nobility and the common populace—to be an important factor defining the middle-class way of life. Significantly, a micro-historical reflection, macro-historically helps us challenge the recently created dichotomy, in historical scholarship, between the elite and the non-elite, by reasserting the presence of sufficiently conscious middle strata.
Depreciation of Military Service Costs in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries in Central-Eastern Europe
The Medieval History Journal, Volume 26, Issue 1, Page 84-112, May 2023.
The article presents the depreciation of soldiers’ equipment in the fifteenth–sixteenth centuries in Central-Eastern Europe based on the data from a dedicated financial institution existing in the Polish Kingdom until the 1560s. Soldiers received their pay, and the king additionally paid them compensation for any war damage. Owing to meticulous records, data were collected on 9,371 individuals. Based on the collected data, it has been established that the average losses in cavalry were equivalent to 40% of the pay and in infantry, the corresponding ratio was 13.7%. This formation was not only cheaper to equip, it was also less cost-intensive.The article elaborates on the background of the liquidation of this institution in the Polish Crown, combined with an increase in soldiers’ pay, who gained only seemingly. It was mainly a profitable operation for the state. It improved the budgeting process, increased the combat value of the soldiers, facilitated military bureaucratisation and prevented extorted compensation. After the reform, the depreciation in the cost of the soldier’s pay is estimated to have been about 1/3. The percentage chance of losing a horse, arms and armour was also calculated, demonstrating a huge equine mortality rate of 48.2% over three months of fighting.
The article presents the depreciation of soldiers’ equipment in the fifteenth–sixteenth centuries in Central-Eastern Europe based on the data from a dedicated financial institution existing in the Polish Kingdom until the 1560s. Soldiers received their pay, and the king additionally paid them compensation for any war damage. Owing to meticulous records, data were collected on 9,371 individuals. Based on the collected data, it has been established that the average losses in cavalry were equivalent to 40% of the pay and in infantry, the corresponding ratio was 13.7%. This formation was not only cheaper to equip, it was also less cost-intensive.The article elaborates on the background of the liquidation of this institution in the Polish Crown, combined with an increase in soldiers’ pay, who gained only seemingly. It was mainly a profitable operation for the state. It improved the budgeting process, increased the combat value of the soldiers, facilitated military bureaucratisation and prevented extorted compensation. After the reform, the depreciation in the cost of the soldier’s pay is estimated to have been about 1/3. The percentage chance of losing a horse, arms and armour was also calculated, demonstrating a huge equine mortality rate of 48.2% over three months of fighting.