The following study is divided into two parts. The first is a socio-cultural analysis of a poem by Gonzalo de Berceo (late 12th-early 13th century) entitled Sacrificio de la Misa. The second is a study of the typological structure of Berceo's poem. Critics have generally advanced the idea that Berceo was a poet with little academic formation, and that he composed his poetry for the delight of a lay audience. This study of the Sacrificio de la Misa suggests that the opposite is true; that is, that Berceo could well have received academic training, even though it may not have been what was available to monks who, at that time, received the highest level of education. The Sacrificio de la Misa also shows that the audience to whom it was aimed was not an unlettered one; rather, it was directed to students, specifically those who were preparing for the priesthood in the monastery of San Millan. We reach these conclusions after a study of the academic world of Berceo's time. We also examine the likelihood that Berceo attended a studium generate, specifically the University of Palencia. The thesis also questions the purpose of the poem, and the reason why Berceo composes a doctrinal work in which he describes in detail the canon of the Mass according to the Roman Rite. We conclude that the Sacrificio de la Misa was composed in order to establish this rite in a territory where previously the Mozarabic Rite had predominated. The poet takes the opportunity of teaching the structure of the Roman Rite to the students to whom he addresses the poem. The second part of the thesis consists of an analysis of the typological structure of the poem, a subject about which little has been written. Berceo adds nothing new to the use of typology in a Christian context, since he has acquired this method from the Bible itself, from which St. Paul already took events in the Old Testament as prophetic prefigurations of the New. Berceo's novelty lies in his adaptation of this literary technique to Castilian poetry. / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate

Not available / text

Historians of political development in the High Middle Ages often focus on the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries as the generations in which monarchy finally triumphed over aristocracy to create a monopoly on governing institutions in western Europe. However, it was precisely in this period that Simon of Montfort emerged from his modest forest lordship in France to conquer a principality stretching from the Pyrenees to the Rhône. A remarkable ascendancy in any period, it is perhaps especially so in its contrast with the accepted historiographical narrative. Nonetheless, Simon has been largely overlooked on his own terms, especially by English historiography. Despite the numerous works over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries devoted to the Albigensian Crusade, only a handful of biographies of Simon have been published, none of which are in English. Furthermore, those French works dedicated to his life have been little more than narrative retellings of the Albigensian Crusade from Simon's perspective, with an introductory chapter or two about his family background, participation in the Fourth Crusade, and life in France. French domination of the historiography has also prevented any deep exploration of Simon's English connexions, chiefly his inheritance of the earldom of Leicester in 1206. The substantial inquest regulating this inheritance awaits publication by David Crouch, but at least forty other acts from Simon's life remain unedited, despite increased interest in the Albigensian Crusade and several having been catalogued for over a century. Though one of the aims of this thesis is to correct the lack of Anglophone attention paid to this seminal figure of the early thirteenth century, a biographical study of Simon has consequences beyond the man himself. The inheritance of his claims to the Midi by the French Crown after his death means that his documents survive in a volume uncharacteristic of a baron of his station. The dedicated narrative history of his career provided by Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay's Hystoria albigensis is likewise the most intimate prose portrait of a comital figure available from the period. Thus Simon's life is perhaps the best recorded of his contemporary peers, offering a rare insight into the priorities and means of a baron's administration of his lands and leadership of a crusade. Moreover, despite the supposed triumph of monarchy during his lifetime, Simon's meteoric career took place largely outside of royal auspices and sought crowned approval for its gains only after the fact. Simon's experience was certainly exceptional, both in itself and in the volume of its narrative and documentary records, but it nevertheless provides a challenge to an uncomplicated or teleological understanding of contemporary politics as effectively national affairs directed by kings. Rather than spend his life in the train of one particular king, as did his contemporaries William the Marshal or William of Barres, Simon's career, in its various geographical manifestations, saw him in the lordship of three different Crowns: France, England, and Aragon. Though his relations with the first of these were almost entirely amicable - if not always harmonious - he was more often in open conflict with the latter two. As a crusader, Simon was also subject to a fourth lord, the pope, for the major events of his career. But even while executing papal mandates, Simon at times came into conflict with the distant will of Rome. However, none of these lords successfully prevented Simon's ascendancy. Angevin and Barcan influence in the Midi was drastically handicapped by the Albigensian Crusade, in the latter case, definitively. And while popes may have disagreed with some particulars of Simon's prosecution of the crusade, he remained their best hope for curbing the threat of heresy. One reason for Simon's success in the face of opposition was his ability to exploit the margins of monarchical authority, retreating from his obligations of fidelity to lord in favour of another, thus presenting himself as a legitimate actor while interfering with the designs of a nominal superior. Such independence, however, required alternative bases for his own power that could not be found in the largely rhetorical refuge offered by a distant overlord. In the absence of support from above, Simon worked to cultivate relationships with his social peers and the lesser French nobility. Notably, however, outside of his immediate family, adherence to his cause more often came from his socially inferior neighbours and those with common spiritual devotions than from his wider kinship network. His extended family, of roughly equivalent social standing to himself, were more interested in following the French king in his campaigns to consolidate royal power than investing deeply in Simon's crusade. However, those with similar ideological concerns or dependent on his success saw in Simon a charismatic and effective leader worthy of their allegiance. For Simon himself, the crusade was animated by the programme of reform advocated by the Cistercians and certain Parisian theologians. His context was permeated by the reformers, especially in his close connexions with the abbey of Vaux-de-Cernay. Concerns about just war, the liberation of the Holy Land, ecclesiastical liberty, sexual morality, and the purgation of heresy espoused by Cistercians and schoolmen were reflected in Simon's career. He was more than a simple cipher for ecclesiastical priorities: his campaigns and government were ambiguous in their attitude toward mercenaries and complicit in the problem of usury. Nevertheless, Simon's crusades to both Syria and the Midi demonstrated a remarkable dedication to building a Christian republic according to the vision of the reformers. But Simon was not always a crusader, and the majority of his career - though not the majority of its records - took place in his ancestral lands in France. Though his time in the shadow of Paris does not offer the same salient examples of baronial independence as his conquest of the Midi, it does provide a crucial glimpse at the ordinary exercise of aristocratic government on a more intimate scale. His forest lordship furnished lessons of administration that would prove relevant to his rule in the Midi, such as the diplomatic projection of authority, the value of seigneurial continuity, the economic benefit of thriving towns, the necessity of an intensively participating chivalric following, and the advantage of wide ecclesiastical patronage. Similarly, Simon's brief seisin and subsequent disseisin of the honor of Leicester demonstrated the fragility of his power when many of these elements were lacking. In addition to abstract lessons of governance, his northern lands also provided the financial backing necessary for at least the initial phases of his crusading career. Thus Simon's lordship in France and England, though not nearly as autonomous as in the Midi, is far from irrelevant to his later manifestations of independence: it rather informs his later government and even made it possible.

No description available.

No description available.

The thesis presents the results of a study of 1005 graffiti on 13th century Byzantine amphorae from a shipwreck in the Bay of Sudak near Novy Svet, Crimea, Ukraine. The primary goals of this thesis are 1) to provide an overview of the excavation and shipwreck, 2) to examine the importance of the Novy Svet wreck in terms of Black Sea maritime trade in the Late Byzantine period, 3) to present the data collected at the Center for Underwater Archaeology at the Taras Shevchenko National University in Kiev, Ukraine (CUA) about the graffiti inscribed on the Günsenin IV amphorae raised from the Novy Svet wreck and 4) to discuss the meaning and importance of the graffiti, both aboard the ship itself and in a more general context. The thesis introduces the results of the 2002-2008 underwater excavation seasons at Novy Svet. Excavators have identified a 13th century shipwreck filled with glazed ceramics and amphorae as a Pisan vessel sunk on August 14, 1277. The majority of the amphorae are Günsenin IV jars and have graffiti inscribed on them. Analysis of the graffiti focuses on the division of the marks into morphological categories, and identifying parallels for the specific forms at other archaeological sites. The graffiti are divided into 5 types; Greek/Cyrillic letters, Turkic runes, geometric or pictorial symbols, numerical designations, and Arabic letters. Their parallels speak to a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic trade network in the Black Sea that included Byzantine Greeks, Hellenized Bulgarians, and Arabs.

Texte remanié de : Dissertation : Germanistik : Berlin, Freie Universität : 1984. / Bibliogr. p. 174-189. Index.

No description available.

Albertano da Brescia's three treatises are compilations, and therefore form a part of an enormous mass of mediaeval literature. This thesis performs two principal tasks as a step towards an assessment of the importance of Albertano as a compilist, and of his works as repositories of classical knowledge and therefore as source-material for the writings of many mediaeval and Renaissance authors. First, text-critical editions of two different translations into fifteenth-century German of Albertano's Liber consolationis et consilii (Melibeus) are given. An examination of the interrelationship and transmission of manuscripts and early prints reveals the great popularity of just one of these translations on the eve of the Renaissance. Second, a further indication of the popularity of Albertano's works throughout mediaeval Western Europe is given by the provision of details of all hitherto known manuscripts and early prints containing translations or workings of the treatises in the vernacular. Many of these are recent discoveries. In order to provide the reader with a wherever possible. Finally, an overview of works known to contain specific borrowings from Albertano is given, together with further literature, where this exists. The extent of the influence that Albertano's compilations exerted is indicated by the familiarity of the names of authors borrowing from him: Geoffrey Chaucer, Dante Alighieri, Christine de Pisan and Erhart Gross, to name just four.

No description available.