The legal treatises of the Kingdom of Jerusalem were written in the thirteenth century, when most of the kingdom had been re-conquered by the Muslims. There are no treatises from the twelfth century, when the kingdom was at its height. The thirteenth-century jurists claimed that the kingdom had always had written laws, but they may have been making this up for political purposes. The treatises also discuss issues important to the noble class of which the jurists were a part: property rights and the feudal services owed to the king, as well as the proper way to plead their cases in court. But what do they say about criminal law, and laws for the lower classes? How were crimes tried and punished in the twelfth century, and did this differ from the laws recorded in the thirteenth century? Chapter one deals with the different treatises, and their claim that there was a set of laws called “Letres dou Sepulcre” in the twelfth century. The most important of the treatises for criminal law, the assizes of the burgess court, is examined in detail. Chapter two looks at the small number of laws that survive from the twelfth century, in charters, the canons of the Council of Nablus, and the chronicle of William of Tyre. Chapter three is a study of other descriptions of crusader law in the twelfth century, including those by Christian and Muslim pilgrims, and especially the observations of Usama ibn Munqidh. These accounts are tied together by the common theme of theft and the ways that thieves could be punished. Chapter four deals with cases mentioned by thirteenth-century sources, including theft, assault, and prostitution, but especially cases that led to trials by battle. The usefulness of such trials for dating some of the laws is also examined. The conclusion demonstrates that certain parts of the assizes relating to criminal law must have already existed in the twelfth century, and offers some tentative ideas about the specific origin of the laws. Avenues for future research are also introduced.

This dissertation explores Christian-Jewish relations in the decades prior to the watershed of 1391, when Christian mobs throughout Castile and the Crown of Aragon killed or, more often, forcibly converted many Jews. My research indicates that the explosive violence of 1391 was not the predictable, inevitable result of growing interfaith animosity in the Crown of Aragon but was sparked by developments in Castile. Because of the resultant converso problem many historians consider 1391 to be a turning point in Iberian history. Yet historians have not closely explored Jewish-Christian interaction in the crucial later fourteenth century, particularly not in the Crown of Aragon, and have assumed, wrongly I believe, that the period following the Black Death (1348) saw a steady deterioration in the Jews’ relations with Christians. The first three chapters of the dissertation deal with the “crises” that marked late fourteenth-century Catalonia and Aragon. In the first chapter I outline the long-term precedents - the Black Death and successive wars – of the economic crisis that would follow. The second chapter focuses on economic matters – the Jewish contribution to the economy as well as the impact of growing debt and the development of new credit mechanisms. Chapter three, in turn, focuses on the impact of increasing taxation on Jewish communities. The final three chapters explore ways in which Jews and Christians coped with crises: chapter four deals with sources of conflict within Jewish communities, chapter five with conflict between Jews and Christians, while the last chapter looks at conversion as a way of coping with the crises of the fourteenth century. Throughout, my research shows how Jews and their Christian neighbours and rulers developed strategies and means of coping with the effects of epidemic disease, famine, and frequent warfare. I pay particular attention at how the law became a mechanism for coping with the worsening of economic conditions.

This dissertation explores Christian-Jewish relations in the decades prior to the watershed of 1391, when Christian mobs throughout Castile and the Crown of Aragon killed or, more often, forcibly converted many Jews. My research indicates that the explosive violence of 1391 was not the predictable, inevitable result of growing interfaith animosity in the Crown of Aragon but was sparked by developments in Castile. Because of the resultant converso problem many historians consider 1391 to be a turning point in Iberian history. Yet historians have not closely explored Jewish-Christian interaction in the crucial later fourteenth century, particularly not in the Crown of Aragon, and have assumed, wrongly I believe, that the period following the Black Death (1348) saw a steady deterioration in the Jews’ relations with Christians. The first three chapters of the dissertation deal with the “crises” that marked late fourteenth-century Catalonia and Aragon. In the first chapter I outline the long-term precedents - the Black Death and successive wars – of the economic crisis that would follow. The second chapter focuses on economic matters – the Jewish contribution to the economy as well as the impact of growing debt and the development of new credit mechanisms. Chapter three, in turn, focuses on the impact of increasing taxation on Jewish communities. The final three chapters explore ways in which Jews and Christians coped with crises: chapter four deals with sources of conflict within Jewish communities, chapter five with conflict between Jews and Christians, while the last chapter looks at conversion as a way of coping with the crises of the fourteenth century. Throughout, my research shows how Jews and their Christian neighbours and rulers developed strategies and means of coping with the effects of epidemic disease, famine, and frequent warfare. I pay particular attention at how the law became a mechanism for coping with the worsening of economic conditions.

Agobard of Lyon has usually been studied because of his writings about Jews. This dissertation likewise began from a desire to understand Agobard’s anti-Jewish writings, their content, motives, and impact. Approaching that topic from the basis of Agobard’s whole corpus of writings, however, forces an acknowledgment that Agobard cannot be reduced to simply “Agobard and the Jews,” although the subject clearly created a great amount of anxiety for him. Also, by beginning with Agobard’s own works, this dissertation discusses him on his own terms first, without relying on the historiographical tradition which defines him as a Visigoth, a tradition ultimately found wanting. This dissertation effectively dismantles the model of Agobard as a Visigoth working in the Carolingian world, and replaces it with a model of Agobard as a Carolingian. As such, this study explores his anti-Judaism in terms of his immediate historical context and links it with his other anxieties and the Carolingian desire for a perfect, Christian, society. Doing so also opens the door for a re-evaluation of the traditional interpretation of the Carolingian period as the last “golden age” of European Jews outside of Muslim Spain. At its conclusion, this study argues that the Carolingians, by deliberately attempting to create a Christian society, however “well” they treated Jews in their own time, laid some of the ideological groundwork for the later isolation and persecution of Jews in Europe. The introduction begins the exploration of Agobard’s historical context by discussing the history of both Louis’s empire and Agobard’s Lyon. The first chapter provides a quick summary of his life and works. From there, the dissertation turns to its in-depth study of Agobard in the second through fourth chapters. An analysis of his main anti-Jewish work, De iudaicis superstitionibus et erroribus in Chapter 3 is prefaced by a study of the character and possible roots of his anti-Judaism in Chapter 2. The last chapter looks at Agobard’s other concerns, how they relate to his writings on Judaism, and finally how his great amount of worry around Judaism can help shape our understanding of medieval Jewish-Christian relations.

National historical memory in France has often given rise to violent polemic. Controversial episodes of national history, such as the Second World War and Algerian conflict, have attracted considerable attention. Yet despite its obvious importance as a particularly violent war of decolonization and precursor to the Vietnam War, the First Indochina War (1946-54) has largely been ignored. In the context of decolonization and the beginning of the Cold War, however, Indochina offers a unique example of the complex relationship between event, commemoration, and memory. This dissertation examines state commemorations, official and unofficial sites of memory, film and other media representations of the war, and several “flashpoint” events that have elicited particularly heated debates over the legacies of the war. The thematic structure allows me to bring together various vehicles and artefacts of memory, from monuments to commemorative ceremonies to veterans’ associations, along with less tangible expressions of memory expressed through public debates and film. I also analyze the tangible legacy of colonialism in the metropole: the ‘repatriate’ camps that housed primarily French citizens of Vietnamese, Lao and Cambodian origin after 1956. This chapter makes an important contribution to the history of immigration to France, which is critical to understanding issues currently facing this multicultural society. Two dominant narratives emerge from my analysis. The first is maintained by a majority of veterans and elements of the political right and extreme right, and is characterized by themes of heroic soldiers combating communism and a belief in their abandonment by the metropolitan government and public. In some cases, a sense of duty to protect ‘Greater France’ is invoked, and in others, the duty to fight with the independent Vietnamese against their communist oppressors. The second narrative casts the conflict as a ‘dirty’ war of colonial reconquest. Though the primary goal of the dissertation is to elucidate the construction of particular narratives of war, I argue that this memorial process is inherently intertwined with the re-evaluation of the colonial project. The fundamental disagreement over the nature of the war, as either a battle against communism or a war of colonial reconquest, has prompted extensive debates over the relative merits of the colonial project and its putative resurrection in 1945.

Abstract The research presented in this dissertation is an examination of the manuscript tradition of John Scottus Eriugena’s Latin translation (the Versio Dionysii) of the Greek works of Dionysius the pseudo-Areopagite. The goal of this project is fourfold: first, to establish the relationship between the extant families of the manuscripts; second, to re-examine the state of Greek studies in the 9th century based on the relationship between the manuscript families; third, to trace the continued use of these recensions through the 12th century; and, finally, to examine Eriugena’s interpretation of the writings of the pseudo-Areopagite based on the Irishman’s translations of certain philosophic ideas. The First chapter establishes the existence of three distinct recensions, rather than two, as previously thought. Two of these recensions represent attempted corrections of the third. All three recensions (together with their corrections) are attributable to Eriugena (whether directly or indirectly). The second chapter examines the level of Eriugena’s understanding of Greek, especially within the context of the state of Greek studies in the 9th century. Special attention is given to the corrections of the later recensions, which suggest an improvement in Eriugena’s Hellenism. The third chapter examines the continued use of the Versio’s during the Middle Ages through the 12th century, with special care to clarify which recensions were known to which readers. The fourth and final chapter presents the originality of Eriugena’s interpretation of the pseudo-Areopagite’s thought. This originality stems in part from his understanding of the Greek text, and in part from his attempts to harmonize his sources.

This dissertation investigates how two fifth-century bishops of Rome, Leo I (440-461) and Gelasius (492-496) understood and opposed heresy. More specifically, by stressing the contested character of heresy and the at times optative nature of the bishop of Rome’s opposition to it, this dissertation hopes to provide a new perspective on how Leo and Gelasius imagined and justified the authority of the Apostolic See in an uncertain world. To accomplish this task, this dissertation considers Leo and Gelasius’ opposition to various different heresies and details the methods by which they were opposed. This will be done through an examination of the records of synods, Roman law, other contemporary narrative sources, but especially through the letters and tractates of Leo and Gelasius themselves, carefully read and considered in their fifth-century context. Furthermore, it is argued that the history of the development of the ideas of heresy and orthodoxy were profoundly connected with Rome’s emerging importance as a locus of authentic Christian teachings; the history of the bishops of Rome cannot be told without examining the history of heresy and orthodoxy and vice versa. Because orthodoxy and heresy were not tangible historical phenomena but rather were malleable categories that emerged as part of a wider discourse of Christian identity construction, the bishops of Rome were not in every case the unqualified enemies of heresy. Instead, their definition of heterodox belief and their opposition to religious deviance were complex, often qualified and always historically contingent. This study seeks to investigate the way in which Leo and Gelasius mobilized the language of heresiology in order to convince Christians in the Latin west and the Greek east, as well as the imperial authorities, that Rome’s interpretations were legitimate and binding.

This is a study of a Roman legal document of unknown date and debated origin conventionally known as the Edictum Theoderici (ET). Comprised of 154 edicta, or provisions, in addition to a prologue and epilogue, the ET is a significant but largely overlooked document for understanding the institutions of Roman law, legal administration and society in the West from the fourth to early sixth century. The purpose is to situate the text within its proper historical and legal context, to understand better the processes involved in the creation of new law in the post-Roman world, as well as to appreciate how the various social, political and cultural changes associated with the end of the classical world and the beginning of the Middle Ages manifested themselves in the domain of Roman law. It is argued here that the ET was produced by a group of unknown Roman jurisprudents working under the instructions of the Ostrogothic king Theoderic the Great (493-526), and was intended as a guide for settling disputes between the Roman and Ostrogothic inhabitants of Italy. A study of its contents in relation to earlier Roman law and legal custom preserved in imperial decrees and juristic commentaries offers a revealing glimpse into how, and to what extent, Roman law survived and evolved in Italy following the decline and eventual collapse of imperial authority in the region. Such an examination also challenges long-held assumptions as to just how peaceful, prosperous and Roman-like Theoderic’s Italy really was.

This thesis presents a series of case studies of early medieval narratives about the non-Roman, non-biblical distant past. After an introduction that briefly outlines the context of Christian traditions of historiography in the same period, in chapter two, I examine the Gothic histories of Jordanes and Isidore, and show how they present different methods of reconciling notions of Gothic independence with the heritage of Rome. Chapter three looks at the Trojan origin narratives of the Franks in the Fredegar chronicle and the 'Liber historiae Francorum', and argues that this origin story, based on the model of the Roman foundation myth, was a means of making the Franks separate from Rome, but nevertheless comparable in the distinction of their origins. Chapter four studies Paul the Deacon’s 'Historia Langobardorum', and argues that although Paul drew more on oral sources than did the other histories examined, his text is equally not a record of ancient oral tradition, but presents a synthesis of a Roman, Christian, and of non-Roman and pagan or Arian heritages, and shows that there was actually little differentiation between them. Chapter five is an examination of 'Waltharius', a Latin epic drawing on Christian verse traditions, but also on oral vernacular traditions about the distant past; I suggest that it is evidence of the interpenetration between secular, oral, vernacular culture and ecclesiastical, written and Latin learning. 'Beowulf', the subject of chapter six, is similar evidence for such intercourse, though in this case to some extent in the other direction: while in 'Waltharius' Christian morality appears to have little of a role to play, in 'Beowulf' the distant past is explicitly problematised because it was pagan. In the final chapter, I examine the further evidence for oral vernacular secular historical traditions in the ninth and tenth centuries, and argue that the reason so little survives is because, when the distant past had no immediate political function—as origin narratives might—it was normally seen as suspect by the Church, which largely controlled the medium of writing.

This study examines how English laypeople and clergy of lower ranks were taught the basic principles of Christian doctrine as articulated in the Apostles’ Creed and Articles of Faith. Chapter one addresses the theological and historical background. Over the course of the twelfth century, school-based theologians came to place an increasing emphasis on faith as a cognitive state while at the same time moral theologians sought to make sure that all Christians had a basic participation in the life of the Church. These trends led to an effort by the Church as an institution to make sure that all Christians had at least a basic understanding of the Christian religion. Chapter two examines how the episcopate carried out a drive to ensure this basic level of understanding through the venues of councils, synods, and deanery and archdeaconry meetings. In all three of these venues, the requirements of making sure the laity know the Creed and Articles of Faith were passed on to parochial clergy, and through these clergy to the laity. Chapter three concerns one particular aspect of presenting the basics of doctrine to the laity, viz., preaching. An examination of a sample of three works of religious instruction for clergy and three sets of model sermons shows how parochial clergy, Franciscans, and Dominicans preached the basics of Christian doctrine. The distribution of the manuscripts of these works shows a broad distribution among parochial clergy, Augustinian canons, and Franciscan and Dominican friars. Such a broad distribution suggests that the Augustinian canons may have been carrying out a good deal of pastoral care and catechetical instruction and that the ready access of preaching aids to clergy indicates that those with responsibility of preaching Christian doctrine to laypeople would have had resources available to do so. Chapter four concerns vernacular literature as a means of religious instruction. Most thirteenth-century literature of religious instruction was in Anglo-Norman, a language spoken and read by aristocrats, clergy, and the upwardly mobile. Three Anglo-Norman works, the Château d’amour by Robert Grosseteste, the Mirour de Seinte Eglyse by Edmund of Abingdon, and the Manuel des pechez by William of Waddington all contain the foundational Christian doctrines contained in the Articles of Faith. The manuscript distribution of all three show that they were owned by both clergy and laity, indicating that they served as teaching aids for clergy, and also that they served to provide laypeople who could afford copies of them with unmediated religious instruction. The broad conclusion of this thesis is that the available evidence shows that the basic principles of Christian doctrine were available both to the lower clergy who would preach and teach the Creed and Articles of Faith and also to the laity who would receive this preaching and instruction.