12th century England

Презентация доклада на 24-й международной научной конференцим студентов, аспирантов и молодых учёных «Ломоносов-2017».
В докладе рассматриваются историографический поиск и выделение высшего слоя нетитулованной англо-саксонской светской элиты накануне Нормандского Завоевания (1066 г.) по материалам XII века. Последовательно разбираются и критикуются попытки в рамках конституционной истории (Р. Рид и Д. Рофф) и аграрной истории (У. Стаббс и П. Кларк). Докладчик приходит к выводу, что данные гипотезы не подтверждаются известными источниками (Книга Страшного Суда и нормандские переводы англо-саксонского права XII в.) при непредвзятом анализе и требуют насильного прочтения известных текстов. В заключении делается предположение, что подобные построения – это отражение современных представлений об устройстве общества (в том числе и английского), где относительно чётко выделяются имущественные классы.

A PowerPoint presentation at the 24th international academic student and young researcher's conference "Lomonosov-2017".
The presentation analyses the historiographical search for an upper layer of the titleless Anglo-Saxon lay elite on the eve of the Norman Conquest (1066). The presentation's consecutive study reveals the flaws in the constitutional (by R. Reid and D. Roffe) and agrarian (W. Stubbs and P. Clarke) approaches to the problem. The author finds that such hypotheses do not find support from the extant sources (the Domesday Book and Norman translation of the Anglo-Saxon law) when reading without any preconceived notions. The conclusion supposes that this kind of search might be a reflection of the modern-day view of the society (including the English one) as composed of more or less clearly defined classes.

The authorship of the Life of the twelfth-century English holy woman, Christina of Markyate (c. 1096–after 1155), has inspired considerable scholarly speculation. Though the writer never once positively identifies himself in extant versions of the text, oblique references locate his activity at the Benedictine monastery of St Albans in Hertfordshire during the 1130s under the patronage of the reigning abbot, Geoffrey de Gorron (1119–46), and intimate the close connections he enjoyed with his narrative’s subjects. Building off of these references, and incorporating clues from related sources from St Albans and Markyate, this article reconstructs the likeliest candidate for the writer—Robert de Gorron (d. 1166), Geoffrey’s nephew, appointed sacristan and later abbatial successor—and assesses his eligibility.

Showcased here is the introduction to the article. For the complete article, follow the link provided.

This paper analyzes secondary and primary source literature written about William Marshal - a comparatively famous 12th century knight - in order to determine what influences his reputation has had on authors, as well as what consequential perceptions there are of him due to that distortion.

PLEASE DO NOT ASK FOR COPIES OF THIS PAPER. This paper has been withdrawn from academia.edu in anticipation of the publication of a revised, updated and much expanded version, forthcoming from University of Exeter Press in August 2024:
See https://www.exeterpress.co.uk/products/the-green-children-of-woolpit

Aubrey II de Vere, eldest surviving son and heir of Domesday lord Aubrey I, became a royal chamberlain, sheriff, and justiciar under King Henry I of England.  In 1133, the king made him hereditary master (later lord) chamberlain of England, an office held by his descendants until the early 18th century.  Under King Stephen he served as a justiciar as well as master chamberlain, and he delivered the king's response to a summons by the bishop of Winchester after the arrest of the bishops in 1139.  He was killed by a mob in London in 1141. His son and heir became the first earl of Oxford.  (Watch for his  installment of my "Brief History of the Veres in England", to be posted on this site in Feb. or March, 2016.)

Articles on the Green Children of Woolpit on the Web usually contain information such as: '… at some point the girl took the name of Agnes Barre. In one account … she was alleged to have married a diplomat, Richard Barre' or 'Some sources say that the girl became known as Agnes Barre'. Neither of the two medieval authors who describe the coming of the Green Children mentions the girl’s name, or her husband's name, or suggests she was ever called Agnes Barre. So – who was Agnes Barre? What are these sources, or other accounts?

There is in fact only one such source - the work of Scottish astronomer Duncan Lunan. Lunan undertook a painstaking study of medieval documents, first summarised in an article in the science fiction magazine Analog, and later published as a book, to interpret the family history and connections of Richard de Calne of Wykes (who took the Green Children in), the political activities of kings and royal servants, and the significance of various signs and wonders reported by medieval writers. He combined his historical study with speculations about humans abducted by aliens and established as a colony on a distant planet, a ‘matter transmitter’ linking that planet to earth, and the involvement of King Henry II and the Templar knights in dealings with extraterrestrial entities, to create what he advisedly calls ‘A Speculative Treatment of a Medieval Mystery’. In the course of this he claimed that the green girl was christened 'Agnes' and later married the royal justice and ecclesiastic Richard Barre.

The following essay does not attempt to fault Lunan’s astronomical knowledge, his scientific expertise or his speculative enthusiasm. It draws attention to failings in his historical research and the conclusions he draws about the fate of the green girl, whom he identifies – on evidence that is very questionable, and vanishes as soon as it is considered critically – as ‘Agnes Barre’.

This essay is an addition to the unpublished paper The Green Children of Woolpit – see https://www.academia.edu/10089626/The_Green_Children_of_Woolpit, where it is incorporated as pp 74-8.

The use of animal-human metamorphosis in the Lais of Anglo-Norman 12th century writer Marie de France springs from a tradition in oral storytelling in which animals were directly associated with specific human characteristics or behaviors. These animals then served as allegorical tools in popular tales. In the stories Yonec and Bisclavret, Marie de France adapts this symbolism and applies the burgeoning medieval philosophy of humanism. In this way she is able to use commonly known tropes to prove that while humans pride themselves on being masters of the earth, the “human nature” that so many philosophers sought to define was one infinitely connected to the animalistic instincts that all men and women carry within them. No human is ever rid of his or her inner animal, no matter how much the individual or society may try to domesticate it.

Local and imperial, insular and expansive, both English yet British: geographically and culturally, the sea continues to shape changing models of Englishness. This volume traces the many literary origins of insular identity from local communities to the entire archipelago, laying open the continuities and disruptions in the sea's relationship with English identity in a British context. Ranging from the beginnings of insular literature to Victorian medievalisms, the subjects treated include King Arthur's struggle with muddy banks, the afterlife of Edgar's forged charters, Old English homilies and narratives of migration, Welsh and English ideas about Chester, Anglo-Norman views of the sea in the Vie de St Edmund and Waldef, post-Conquest cartography, The Book of Margery Kempe, the works of the Irish Stopford Brooke, and the making of an Anglo-British identity in Victorian Britain.

Details: http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=13713

Matilda, "Lady of the English", Henry I's sole heir to whom his barons had, on three separate occasions, swore an oath, never became the first ruling Queen of England. Despite the strength of her claim, her throne went first to her cousin, Stephen of Blois, then to her son, Henry II.
Rather than depicting her actions and acknowledging her agency in the decades-long struggle that opposed her to Stephen, this study will show that most of her contemporaries will choose to focus on the men surrounding her, to the point that she is sometimes barely mentioned at all. That her role was reduced to such an extent in the chronicles is suspicious. Charters testify to her political power, in granting lands or titles, so writing Matilda out of her own history highlights contemporary concerns about the inheritance of lands and titles, in a changing Anglo-Norman society. In her biography of the empress, Marjorie Chibnall concludes by saying: "The real difficulty preventing her final triumph was that in twelfth-century England there was virtually no place for female succession".

This essay will, therefore, aim at analysing if we can objectively state that Matilda was unfit to rule, or to what extent she was not, and through what means her contemporaries undermined her claim, and ultimately her. In the end, a careful study of the chronicles and their language will show that what most chroniclers aimed at doing was defining her by comparison to her male relatives, and therefore in traditional terms of masculinity or femininity.

This study aims at being a part of a recent historiographical trend dedicated to analysing women’s role and power in medieval societies.

• Illo Humphrey, PhD (2004) | HDR (2014) : Université Paris X-Nanterre •
• Mediaevalist | Musicologist | Proto-Philologist | Concert-Baritone | Trilingual simultaneous Interpreter •
• Élève diplômé de l'École Pratique des Hautes Études IVe Section-Sorbonne •
• Associate Researcher | UR 24142 Plurielles – LaPRIL | Université  Bordeaux Montaigne | 33607 Pessac | France •
• https://u-bordeaux3.academia.edu/IlloHumphrey •

• Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Oxford | UK | Faculty of Music | 1998 •

•  [1] In May 1998, Illo was privileged to be invited to the University of Oxford as Visiting Research Fellow without salary by two Oxford professors, namely: Dr. Margaret Bent (All Souls College: margaret.bent@all-souls.ox.ac.uk | http://www.music.ox.ac.uk/index.php?id=844) and Dr. Reinhard Strohm (Faculty of Music: reinhard.strohm@music.ox.ac.uk | http://www.music.ox.ac.uk/people/staff-listings/academics/r_strohm.html) both of whom are mediæval musicologists. This research visit was also made possible in part by the very kind intervention of Dr. Nicola McDonald (nfm2@york.ac.uk | http://www.york.ac.uk/english/our-staff/nicola-mcdonald/), at the time Tutor of English Literature at Oxford (Saint John's College), presently Lecturer at the University of York (UK) in the Department of English and related Literature •

•  [2] At Oxford, Illo conducted his research in the Balliol College Library, where he consulted the manuscript 306 (containing, among other works, the Boethius treatises De institutione arithmetica libri duo and De institutione musica libri quinque, respectively of the 10th  and 12th  centuries), and the manuscript 317 (containing the Boethius treatise De institutione musica, of the 12th century), then, in the Bodleian Library, where he consulted the manuscript Selden supra 25 (containing, among other works, the Boethius treatises De institutione arithmetica and De institutione musica, respectively of the 12th and 13th centuries). In these manuscripts, he not only studied the abundant glosses (marginal and interlinear commentaries and annotations), but did as well a partial codicological and palæographical survey •

• IH | ih | PhD-HDR | Explicit •

The article contributes to the ongoing discussion about the Dialogue of the Exchequer. For quite a long time researchers have been puzzled by the treatise written by the royal treasurer Richard of Ely around the year 1180. It has been regarded as a manual for Exchequer clerks, describing in great detail the workings of Henry II's financial administration. Several of these details, however, have been proven to be wrong or not relevant for the clerks' work. By comparing the Dialogue with the actual records written during the accounting procedures of the twelfth century – the pipe rolls – and by analysing the Dialogue, I come to the conclusion that the Dialogue did not serve as a guidebook on how to write a pipe roll, but as a guidebook on how to be, and how to think, as an Exchequer clerk.

Henry of Blois (d. 1171) was a towering figure in twelfth-century England. Grandson of William the Conqueror and brother to King Stephen, he played a central role in shaping the course of the civil war that characterized his brother's reign. Bishop of Winchester and abbot of Glastonbury for more than four decades, Henry was one of the richest men in the kingdom, and effectively governed the English Church for a time as Papal Legate. Raised and tonsured at Cluny, he was an intimate friend of Peter the Venerable and later saved the great abbey from financial ruin. Towards the end of his life he presided, albeit reluctantly, over the trial of Thomas Becket. Henry was a remarkable man: an administrator of exceptional talent, a formidable ecclesiastical statesman, a bold and eloquent diplomat, and twelfth-century England's most prolific patron of the arts.

In the first major book-length study of Henry to be published since 1932, nine scholars explore new perspectives on the most crucial aspects of his life and legacy. By bringing ecclesiastical and documentary historians together with archaeologists and historians of art, architecture, literature and ideas, this interdisciplinary collection will serve as a catalyst for renewed study of this fascinating man and the world in which he operated.

Contributors: Martin Biddle, Barbara Bombi, John Crook, Claire Donovan, M.J. Franklin, Edmund King, William Kynan-Wilson, Matthew M. Mesley, John Munns

"Coins minted in Santiago with the bust of St. James Apostle on the obverse give witness to
the influential nature of coinage as a form of artistic expression as well as a reflection of
current artistic styles even in seemingly independent forms such as sculpture. In this case we
can detect that influence of Master Mateo and his workshop, contributing a style and level of
artistry superior to that found on other coins of the same period. This coin bears the imprint
of the stylistic advances reflected in the Pórtico de la Gloria of the catedral in Compostela.
The frame of references and influences embraces Compostela and the Anglo-Normand sphere
of the twelfth century with Limoges as a possible point of convergence and the practice of
pilgrimage as the lively channel that facilitated the traffic in coinage and metals between the
Islamic world and northern Europe as the economic backdrop of these relationships."

This paper examines William of Malmesbury's  (c.1090—c.1142) detailed description of ancient Roman remains at Carlisle in northern England. This remarkable passage features in his 'Gesta pontificum Anglorum' (Book III ch. 99) and has been much commented upon by previous scholars as an instance of personal observation.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to indicate the pervasive influence of textual sources that mediated William’s description of these Roman ruins. Second, to demonstrate how William carefully projects his own 'romanitas' (Romanness) onto his description of these archaeological remains. Through close textual reading and literary analysis it is shown that this scene is not a straightforward example of antiquarianism based upon personal observation, but instead a complex passage of literary inclination which indicates the wider cultural associations of Rome and 'romanitas' within William of Malmesbury's historical writings.

This article examines textual descriptions of smiling, laughing and joking with the pope in thirteenth-century Rome. It focuses on two Anglo-Norman accounts of conducting litigation at the papal curia: Thomas of Marlborough's (d.1236) Chronicon abbatiae de Evesham and Gerald of Wales's (c. 1146–1220×23) De jure et statu Menevensis ecclesiae. Both authors include several careful and prominent references to smiling, laughing and joking, and specifically in relation to Pope Innocent III. These passages have previously been read as straightforward examples of wit and friendship, but this study shows that the authors use these physiological expressions to convey complex and subtly different pictures of the papal curia. Above all, this article demonstrates how Thomas and Gerald's descriptions of humorous interactions with the pope play crucial narrative and mnemonic roles within their work.

Il presente articolo esamina le descrizioni testuali del sorridere, del ridere e dello scherzare con il Papa nella Roma del XIII secolo. Si focalizza in particolare su due resoconti anglo-normanni di controversie nella curia papale: il 'Chronicon abbatiae de Evesham' di Thomas of Marlborough (data di morte 1236) e il 'De jure et statu Menevensis ecclesiae' di Gerald of Wales (c. 1146–1220×23). In entrambi i testi sono presenti molti riferimenti attenti agli atti di sorridere, di ridere e di scherzare, in particolar modo in relazione a Papa Innocenzo III. Questi passaggi sono stati in precedenza interpretati come inequivocabili esempi di umorismo e amicizia, ma questo studio dimostra come gli autori usino queste ‘espressioni fisiologiche’ per descrivere immagini leggermente differenti della curia papale. Soprattutto questo articolo mostra come le descrizioni di interazione umoristica con il papa di Thomas of Marlborough e di Gerald of Wales giochino ruoli narrativi e mnemonici cruciali all'interno dei loro lavori.

Through an examination of the writings of Thomas Becket and a number of his contemporaries (Walter Map, Gerald of Wales, Peter de Blois, Arnulf of Lisieux, Empress Matilda, Roger of Pontigny and William FitzStephen), this paper examines the nature of political intrigue and authority at the court of Henry II. I show that the relationship between the king and his chancellor was rife with manipulation, contention and power struggles, and that Becket's "miraculous conversion" upon becoming Archbishop of Canterbury was merely a continuation of these themes. I focus on four noteworthy examples: the tactical disagreement between Henry and Becket during the disastrous campaign in Toulouse, William FitzStephens's story of the beggar and the new cloak, the disagreement over the betrothal of Mary of Blois, and Becket's reluctant appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury.

From my original proposal to the conference organiser: 'I have done quite a bit of work on the Green Children story and, as you probably know, I’ve published two or three articles. It would be fun to say something more about their long journey through an underground cavern (which is only in Ralph of Coggeshall’s version) as a reflex of Gervase of Tilbury’s tale of William Peveril’s swineherd in the Peak Cavern. (After all, Ralph and Gervase were well acquainted!) But as Charles Oman put it in an article in Folklore in 1944: ‘Tales of mysterious lands reached through caverns seem to have been particularly rife in England [in the late twelfth century].’

Dans son Policraticus (achevé en 1159), Jean de Salisbury décrit les Brahmanes comme une population si innocente qu’Alexandre le Grand n’aurait pas été capable de les vaincre. Cette description est la première version connue de l’Epistula Bragmanorum ad Alexandrum. La comparaison entre juifs et Brahmanes permet de comprendre comment, dans la pensée politique de Jean de Salisbury, le meilleur royaume possible est un royaume où le roi n’a jamais gouverné et le peuple a toujours vécu en accord avec la loi de Dieu. Cet article se propose de retracer les sources des Brahmanes de l’Antiquité jusqu’à l’époque de Jean de Salisbury, afin d’éclaircir leur rôle dans le Policraticus et de comprendre si les conclusions de Jean découlent de la lecture des auteurs qui l’ont précédé.

Lien : https://journals.openedition.org/ccm/5014?lang=fr

In his Policraticus (finished in 1159), John of Salisbury describes the Brahmans, a people so innocent that Alexander the Great would not have been able to defeat them in battle. This description is the first known version of the Epistula Bragmanorum ad Alexandrum. The comparison between Jews and Brahmans make clear that, in the political thought of John of Salisbury, the best kingdom is one where kings never ruled and people always lived following God’s law. Herewith, an attempt is made to retrace the sources of the Brahmans from Antiquity up to John of Salisbury's time, to clarify their role in the political theory outlined in Policraticus, and to understand to which extent John’s conclusions come from his reading of previous authors.

Link: https://journals.openedition.org/ccm/5014?lang=en

Conférence de clôture de

« France-Angleterre 700-1200 : manuscrits médiévaux de la Bibliothèque nationale de France et de la British Library, un programme de la Fondation Polonsky ».

21-23 novembre 2018
Auditorium Colbert (2 rue Vivienne, 75002 Paris)

Organisation scientifique : Charlotte Denoël et Francesco Siri

Inscription gratuite mais obligatoire / Free but mandatory registration https://polonsky.sciencesconf.org/

This seminar presentation draws on material from the final chapter of my forthcoming book, _In Christ’s Stead: Benedictine Women’s Ministries in England, 900–1225_. It analyzes the portraits of women religious as exemplary intercessors rendered in saints’ lives, miracle collections, manuscript illuminations, and seal images produced in the late Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman periods. All of the portraits examined were ultimately fashioned by male writers, painters, and engravers, but many still bear the marks of the women who inspired, commissioned, and shaped their fashioning. This presentation highlights the collaborations between artists and patrons and interrogates the internal motivations and external contingencies directing their efforts: memorializing the past, modeling prescribed practices, promoting the cults of saintly foremothers and the intercessory powers of the present community, and soliciting donors and new members. The very survival of a monastic house depended on the spiritual prestige it could claim over neighboring religious communities. Claims to prayers answered and miracles performed could persuade donors of means to grant gifts of land, money, and other material resources, but these claims had to be proven and publicized by oral and written testimonies and physical evidence in order to attract sufficient attention and patronage. And so captivating portraits of intercessors had to be fashioned.

Norman or Breton, that is the question.  At least that has been a recent question regarding Aubrey I de Vere, a baron in 1086, ancestor of the Vere earls of Oxford.  In my attempt to determine his ethnic roots, I established that Aubrey de Vere was an administrator, both as a royal household office and as a local official.  The paper combines the approaches of prosopography and microhistory.  What has emerged is a picture of a man who, through quiet but able service to the royal family, amassed lands, position, and status in England and Normandy, providing the basis for his descendants to rise into the titled nobility.  The clues point to Normandy rather than Brittany as his place of origin, but what his story and those of many like him reveal is that England under the Norman kings was a land of opportunity for men of many backgrounds.

Cathedral of Anagni, Oratory of San Thomas Becket, 2008. The restorations give readability to about 180 square meters of paintings that represent one of the most original copies of the decoration of St. Peter's in the Vatican in the Middle Ages. Here is preserved the oldest representation of the last moments of the life of St. Thomas Becket.
What links the story of this English saint to the city of Anagni? Who wanted this artistic job? Why have episodes related to St. Thomas Becket been included in a "Vatican Imitation" cycle?
This book is the first complete study of the Oratory of San Thomas Becket, understanding its aspect of material, artistic and historical testimony.

Significant efforts have been undertaken in the past twenty years to recover the literacies of medieval women religious—from hearing, reading, and comprehending texts, to copying and composing them in Latin and other European vernaculars. Efforts like the Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe Dialogues in Hull, Antwerp, and Kansas City have radically revised received narratives about the intellectual capacities and creative productions of medieval nuns, but more work still needs to be done to challenge the claim that medieval women religious were incapable of composing their own texts, keeping their communities’ histories, writing their own letters, copying their own books, maintaining their own household accounts, reading the books, letters, charters, and other documents that came into their communities’ possession, or even understanding their own liturgical services because they lacked the requisite literacies. This paper makes a case for the female authorship of two prayers that were composed for an abbess and added in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century to a Psalter owned by Matilda de Bailleul (d. 1212), the abbess of Wherwell Abbey, a Benedictine community in Hampshire, England.

. In un dibattito dedicato alle culture della guerra era quasi d’obbligo un intervento sulla rappresentazione della guerra nel mondo germanico, aggettivo che verrà però usato per indicare unicamente la fase più antica e, almeno inizialmente, comune, della compagine culturale germanica.

1. Nella ricerca di opere che offrissero delle rappresentazioni della guerra, l’indagine è stata ulteriormente limitata all’Inghilterra dell’Alto Medioevo. La letteratura anglosassone, sia quella composta in volgare che quella, altrettanto vasta, scritta in latino, offre una serie di testimonianze di guerre di vasto raggio, di battaglie e di scontri minuti, così come dell’esistenza di una classe di guerrieri o meglio di una classe i cui membri svolgevano questo ruolo nella società germanica. Le persone cui era demandata l’attività militare facevano parte della classe aristocratica e rappresentavano i diretti continuatori del comitatus, un’istituzione di cui parlava già Tacito nei capitoli XIII e XIV della Germania. L’aggregazione di una banda di guerrieri (comites) intorno ad un capo (princeps) nasce da una libera scelta: i seguaci stipulano con il capo una sorta di patto, per cui questi protegge e mantiene il comes guerriero, dispensandogli doni di varia natura; da parte sua il comes combatte per accrescere la fama e, sul piano concreto, la potenza e la ricchezza del suo capo. Va anche sottolineato - perché questi caratteri ritorneranno puntualmente nei testi che verranno presi in esame più avanti - la natura della relazione fortemente gerarchica tra i membri del comitatus e l’indipendenza di questo organismo dai legami di sangue, a vantaggio invece di un rapporto intertribale, per cui un capo aggregava intorno a se guerrieri di etnie diverse e che provenivano anche da paesi lontani.
Nonostante il lasso di tempo che intercorre tra l’opera di Tacito, nella quale un’istituzione, non strettamente germanica, come quella del comitatus si presenta all’inizio della sua evoluzione e le prime notizie storiche sui germani dislocati nelle loro sedi, alla fine delle Völkerwanderungen, è possibile seguire lo sviluppo di tale organismo militare nell’età delle migrazioni (quando costituisce la base del tipo di sovranità che in tale periodo si afferma) e quindi nell’organizzazione sociale della classe aristocratica guerriera (di cui rappresenta l’elemento centrale) dei nuovi regni barbarici. Il comitatus svolge un ruolo fondamentale nell’affermazione di un potere politico individuale e autoritario: il capo del comitatus, che in genere viene da una famiglia nobile e illustre, riesce ad affermare il prestigio personale mediante azioni di guerra.
Wormald  ha dimostrato come la società anglosassone, nei secoli VI - VIII, offra prove dell’esistenza di una classe di guerrieri, molto prima che tale categoria trovi una sua legittimazione nella società feudale del continente. La figura del guerriero ha un rilievo e un ruolo nella società anglosassone.  Esempi in questo senso ci vengono forniti da opere di carattere storico come la Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum di Beda dove si narra come Re Oswine di Deira (642/4  -  651), grazie alla sua munificenza, attirasse al suo servizio nobili da ogni parte del paese (HE III, cap. XIV) o da agiografie come la Vita di Wilfrid di Eddi Stefano, dove si dice delle scorrerie di un nobile in esilio che capitanava una banda armata (‘nobiles quidam exules cum exercitu’ cap. LXVII).

Le deux Becket / The two Becket, p.1

Thomas Becket devant la critique moderne / Thomas Becket before modern criticism, p.12

Terminologie et méthodologie / Terminology and methodology, p. 51
(The constituants of the notion of myth : theme, history, narrative, legend, hagiography, rite)
Structure, p.84

I prepare high-quality illustrations of art objects or historical buildings for museums and academics to use in publications and related work. You can appreciate a small selection of my works at: https://sites.google.com/site/matildegrimaldi/
Please do take the time to look at my works, and do not hesitate to contact me for any enquiry!
matilde.grimaldi@gmail.com

This article reassesses pilgrimage practices in eleventh- and twelfth-century England and questions the assumption that pilgrims had relatively unrestricted access to saints’ shrines and relics in this period.
Drawing on hagiographical evidence, and focusing on six case studies, the article finds that remarkably few pilgrims are depicted in close proximity to a saint’s shrine in these narrative sources, and are instead shown venerating at alternative places of devotion such as holy wells, empty graves and extra-mural chapels. It proposes that policies of restricted access were operated by many English cult centres earlier than is often imagined, and in discussing why ecclesiastical institutions may have distanced the laity from their principle shrines the article sets its conclusions within the wider religious developments of the time.

The Peterborough Chronicle is a much-used source of material for research into twelfth-century English, including lexical borrowing. Its significance lies in the considerable variety of borrowings it contains for such an early text. A fair amount of attention has been paid in the past to the first attestations of loanwords in the Chronicle, but this paper focuses on the frequency and distribution of Latin, Scandinavian and French loans in the different parts of the text. Throughout, Scandinavian loanwords are more frequent than French ones. A discussion of the First Continuation, poised between the late OE Copied Annals and the early ME Final Continuation, shows that with reference to the loanwords it contains it is not simply intermediate between the other two parts but resembles the Copied Annals more than the Final Continuation.

This essay traces the evolution of Kent’s coastal and maritime defences from the Loss of Normandy until the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War. For almost 140 years after the Battle of Hastings, the English Channel had formed the backbone of a great transmarine empire that eventually stretched from the Cheviots to the Pyrénées. But the strategic situation in the Channel was transformed, however, with the Capetian Conquest of Normandy in 1204. Kent itself was no longer secure as cross-Channel raiding and invasion attempts both emerged as real threats whilst commerce and communications were now rendered highly susceptible to interdiction.

This article begins by analysing how the transformative events of 1204 impacted upon the strategic importance of Kent and its maritime defences. Exploring the crown’s subsequent efforts to maintain and enhance the county’s physical security and logistical resources, it demonstrates how the levels of interest and investment devoted to them by individual monarchs fluctuated according to the prevailing state of Anglo-French relations. Finally, this essay emphasises the important role played by Kent’s coastal defences during the civil wars of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries and how the need both to secure and retain control over them directly influenced the conduct of land-based military operations elsewhere in England

This chapter explores the relationship between demons and mental illness in twelfth-century miracle collections, a hagiographical genre which describes the illnesses and disabilities of pilgrims seeking cures at local healing shrines. Focusing on case studies in which mental disorders are ascribed to supernatural agency, it examines the interweaving of pathology and demonology in these texts, and assesses the role of demons within this medico-religious context. Although evil spirits apparently haunt many twelfth-century madness tales, the study reveals that madness-causing demons are not always quite as pervasive – nor, indeed, as real – as they at first appear. The chapter also contributes to the on-going debate about the reception of miracle narratives by arguing that a hidden medical subtext points to a culturally diverse audience for these hagiographical narratives.