In 1493 Johann Trechsel published in Lyons a Latin edition of Terence's six comedies, generally known today as the "Lyons Terence." The volume is illustrated with 160 woodcuts. The first woodcut, on the title page, shows the author in his library; the second, a full-page frontispiece titled Theatrum, pictures a building with a stage and audience; the remaining woodcuts, half-page illustrations distributed throughout the text, depict figures on stages, a different stage for each of the six comedies. Chapter 1 introduces the woodcuts both as book illustrations and theatre documents. As book illustrations, the woodcuts are striking partly because of their size, their quantity, and their artistic merit and partly because they comprise the earliest series and narrative illustrations to accompany a printed Latin text. Commissioned for this particular edition to Terence's comedies, the woodcuts suggest a pedagogical concern with illustrations that provide a running commentary on the text. As theatre documents, the woodcuts are significant because they represent the first instance in which an editor has illustrated a dramatic text by depicting characters on stages. Chapter 2 analyzes the composition and distribution of the woodcuts by comparing each illustration with the text it introduces. Marking each traditional scene division, the woodcuts depict the characters who participate in the dialogue to follow. By manipulating the characters' placement on the stage, their use of curtains, and the number of times they are depicted in a single picture, the artist establishes conventions to identify (1) the major character group comprising a scene, (2) characters who speak apart before joining in conversation with those already on-stage, (3) characters who remain apart throughout a scene and speak only asides, and (4) characters whose voices are heard but who never appear on the stage. The artist does not portray nonverbal stage business. Chapter 3 investigates the possible influence of narrative art on the conventions identified in Chapter 2. First, I argue that the woodcuts were directly influenced by the miniatures in the Terence manuscripts; this influence accounts for errors and idiosyncracies in representing characters and the priority of character depiction over stage action. Second, I show that the woodcuts adopted conventions for representing narrative action, especially transitional links, from narrative art in general. Chapter 4 distinguishes between staging and the stage. Although the woodcuts do not represent characters so as to suggest the staging of Terence's plays, they do depict those characters upon stages. The Andria stage, moreover, appears to be indebted to the contemporary booth stage. The compartment labels I take to be a literary rather than a staging feature. Chapter 5 summarizes the findings of the dissertation. It concludes that the woodcuts, innovative illustrations which supplement a classical text, function primarily as a pedagogical aid to help the reader follow the Latin dialogue of the comedies.

It is common but too simplistic to say that Old English literature shows the unconscious blending of the traditional Germanic heroic ethos and the early Christian aversion to war. The matter is more complex. Throughout the Latin West, Christian perceptions of a tension between sanctity and warfare changed over the period from the arrival of Roman Christianity in England (AD 597) to the period following the Norman Conquest of 1066. Christian disdain for and rejection of warfare (at times no more than nominal) gave way eventually to active participation in wars considered "just" or "holy." Anglo-Saxon literature, in both Latin and Old English, documented this changing ethos and also played a significant role in its development. The earliest extant Anglo-Saxon hagiographic texts featured a new type of holy man, the martyred warrior king, whose role in spreading Christianity in England culminated in a dramatic death in battle fighting enemies portrayed by hagiographers as bloodthirsty pagans. During the same period, other Anglo-Saxon writers depicted warriors who transformed themselves into soldiers of Christ, armed only with the weapons of faith. These and later Anglo-Saxon literary works explored the intersection of violence and the sacred in often conflicting ways, in some instances helping to lead Christian spirituality toward the more martial spirit that would eventually culminate in Pope Urban II's preaching of the First Crusade in 1095, but in other cases preserving intact many early Christians' radical opposition to war. Aspects of crusading ideology existed alongside Christian opposition to war throughout the Anglo-Saxon period. This study examines hagiographers' changing literary tropes as subtle but important reflections of medieval Christianity's evolution from rejecting the sword to tolerating and even wielding it. Hagiographers used various narrative topoi to recount the lives of warrior saints, and, as the ambient Christian ethos changed, so did their employment of these themes. The tension between forbearance and militancy, even in the earliest English lives of saints, is more profound and more culturally complex than what is generally understood as merely the Germanic heroic trappings of Anglo-Saxon Christian literature.

This study investigates the medieval Chinese formation of the cult of Dizang (Skt. Kṣitigarbha; Jpn. Jizō), a Buddhist divinity especially popular in connection with East Asian beliefs about the afterlife. It explores why and how Dizang, an obscure figure from the pre-Chinese Buddhist pantheon, became in medieval China an important object of cult worship. A tendency to focus on the popularized characterization of Dizang as " the savior of the damned" has distorted scholarly understanding of this Bodhisattva, obscuring other developments of his personality, including afterlife trends other than the underworld function. To arrive at a more accurate re-construction of the medieval Chinese Dizang cult, this study examines a diverse range of evidences (canonical and non-canonical, textual and visual, as well as Buddhist and non-Buddhist) so as to ferret out threads of Dizang belief not documented in standard sources. Non-canonical sources are particularly highlighted since they frequently capture largely neglected aspects of religious development which must be studied in order to uncover the full complexity of medieval Chinese Buddhism. In particular the formation of the Dizang cult supplies a crucial key to unlocking the larger cross-cultural patterns of religious assimilation operating in medieval Chinese society, which have wider implications for the study of Chinese religion. Previous studies on sinification in Chinese Buddhist history have focused on a particular thinker, a specific text, a single doctrinal concept, or one ritual practice, thus demonstrating the development of only one pattern of assimilation and reducing the complexity of the cross-cultural dynamic in which assimilation really took place. The Dizang cult instead allows one to better contextualize the patterns of cross-cultural assimilation in medieval Chinese religion. What distinguishes the Dizang cult from other examples of sinification is the manner in which the figure of Dizang functions as a religious symbol that integrates diverse religious planes, doctrine, mythology, ritual, and soteriology. The Dizang cult, in short, offers a single but kaleidoscopic lens that encompasses a multivalent religio-cultural assimilation, thus resisting usual bifurcations between doctrine and ritual, as well as between so-called "elite" and "popular" religion.

During the early 1570s, a dispute over the theological definition of original sin rent the central German county of Mansfeld, homeland of Martin Luther. The controversy, initiated by Matthias Flacius Illyricus, divided the conservative Gnesio-Lutheran clergy into two hostile camps. One, led by the Superintendent Hieronymus Mencel, was centered in the city of Eisleben and rejected Flacius's definition of original sin. The other, centered in the city of Tal Mansfeld, was led by the powerful deacon, historian, and polemicist Cyriacus Spangenberg, and accepted Flacius's definition. This dissertation examines the central doctrinal premises over which these clerics fought, as well as their broader implications for Lutheran theology, before turning to other social, political, and economic factors that influenced the clerics' decisions to side with one group or the other. But the controversy was not limited to the clergy. The counts of Mansfeld, numbering between seven and ten during the period and stemming from three dynastic lines, also split over the issue of original sin. One line sided with the group of clerics centered in Eisleben, two with the pastors headquartered in Tal Mansfeld. This study explores the involvement of the counts in the debate over doctrine, but also addresses the various political and other non-religious forces that caused them to split over the issue. With the pastors preaching and pamphleteering and the counts battling among themselves, it did not take long for the laity to become deeply involved and divided over the issue of original sin. Contemporary sources suggest that the miners of Mansfeld fought in the streets and taverns over the issue. This study explores how the clerics articulated the debate to the laity, and the degree to which these commoners understood it. Furthermore, it explores social and other non-religious reasons why the laity took sides in this doctrinal debate. This dissertation argues that although a variety of forces were at play pushing members of these three groups--the clerics, counts, and commoners--in one direction or another, an interest in the doctrinal issue and its implications for wider theology was a motivating theme central to each group.

This dissertation explores the fluid relationship between monastic women and religious orders. I examine the roles of popes and their representatives, governing bodies of religious orders, and the nunneries themselves in outlining the contours of those relationships. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, many emerging religious communities belonged to small, local groups with loose ties to other nearby houses. While independent houses or regional congregations were acceptable at the time of the formation of these convents, after the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, monastic houses were required to follow one of three monastic rules and to belong to a recognized order with a well-defined administrative structure and mechanisms for enforcing uniformity of practice. This program of monastic reform had mixed success. Though some nunneries attained official incorporation into monastic or mendicant orders due to papal intervention, the governing bodies of these orders were reluctant to take on the responsibility of providing temporal and spiritual guidance to nuns, and for most nunneries the relationship to an order remained unofficial and loosely defined. The continuing instability of order affiliation and identity becomes especially clear in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when war-related destruction forced many nunneries to move into the walled area of the city, often resulting in unions of houses that did not share a rule and order affiliation. Moreover, some individual houses changed rules and orders several times. Though a few local houses of religious women had a strong and durable identification with their order, for many nunneries, the boundaries between orders remained porous and their organizational affiliations were pragmatic and mutable.

Erchempert, a ninth-century Lombard monk attached to the monastery of Monte Cassino in Southern Italy, wrote the History of the Lombards of Benevento around 889, a history intended to contrast with Paul the Deacon's earlier History of the Lombards by including the Carolingian conquest of the Lombard kingdom in 774 and by showing Lombard failings rather than achievements through narrating the decline of Lombard rulership in the South, which had flourished for three centuries in the Lombard duchy (later principality) of Benevento. Three known aspects of Erchempert himself--as Lombard, monk, and chronicler--connect him to his society and provide a basis for examining his History. As a Lombard, his primary concern is loss of unified rule at Benevento following civil war and splitting of the principality into three more or less autonomous rulerships at Benevento, Salerno, and Capua, a division which weakens the Lombards' ability to resist the competing claims of Carolingian and Byzantine rulers and the attacks of Islamic invaders. As a monk, Erchempert is present during events which occur following Monte Cassino's destruction by Muslims in 883, when the monks are exiled to Teano and Capua and the abbey suffers loss of its property. As a chronicler and known grammaticus, Erchempert is an evident participant in the widespread system of monastic education; he later applies elements of this education to the writing of his History, which falls within the Christian chronicle tradition. A translation of Erchempert's History from Latin into English is included in this study.

<p> The purpose of this paper is to explore medieval gender roles through the discourse and conduct of warfare. Some modern historians such as John Keegan have maintained that medieval warfare was a masculine activity that precluded female participation in all but the most exceptional cases. Megan McLaughlin asserted that the change from a domestic to public model of warfare resulted in a disenfranchisement of women after the eleventh century. This paper shows that medieval warfare was not male exclusive, and women's active participation throughout the period was often integral to a combat's outcome. By analyzing both the military activities of female combatants and changes in academic dialogues over war in the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, an ongoing disparity unfolds between the ideological gendering of warfare and its actual practice. </p><p> This disparity informed an accepted norm in which women were seen as inherently weak and unfit for combat, requiring a "masculinization" of women who successfully engaged in battle. This in turn led to the establishment of the <i>virago</i> image of female warriors; paradoxically, women who therefore defied the normative expectation of feminine behavior could be held in high regard for their masculine virtues. At the same time, the contributions of individual women to warfare are often left with minimal mention or treated as anomalous by some later chroniclers. </p><p> The paper is divided into seven sections. Part I explores the eleventh century military career of Matilda of Canossa, and subsequent treatment of her activities by apologists and canonical reformers. Part II discusses the means by which women had access to military activity in a changing climate of gendered social roles, through marriage, inheritance, and the influence of the <i>Pax Dei</i> movement. Part III discusses the military activity of women during the Crusades, and the differences in how that activity was noted in Western versus Islamic sources. </p><p> Parts IV - VI discuss the thirteenth century academic dialogues over women's participation in combat in the wake of the Crusades, through the work of Giles of Rome and Ptolemy of Lucca. As well, it analyzes the enfolding of knighthood as a construct of feudal vassalage into the noble class, and the changing access to military orders granted to women as armies became professionalized. Part VII looks at the formation of a new kind of war rhetoric and an attempt to resolve the disparity between the theory and practice of warfare in regards to women through the fifteenth century work of Christine de Pizan. </p><p> The conclusions of this work are that war may be understood to be a masculine activity, yet is not male exclusive. Writers and war chroniclers were forced to complicate gendered social norms in order to justify or refute women engaging in combat. This only resulted in a continued re-evaluation of the proper ideological place of women in war, and was not necessarily reflective of a change in the actual circumstances or frequency with which women took part.</p>

A multidisciplinary approach is utilized to assess the organization and use of ancient and medieval Near Eastern textual deposits. An elaborate survey of the published material in ancient Near Eastern studies and library and archival studies indicates a general and pervasive insensitivity to and misuse of key terminological constructs. The indistinct portrayal of the nature of ancient libraries and archives is identified as of particular concern; as well as a widespread disregard for the recognition of textual collections older than the famed Library of Alexandria. This dissertation endeavours to indicate the presence of distinct textual collective units in the ancient Near Eastern context on equal footing with their much later counterparts and more broadly defined than the traditional library and archive, to include entities such as the geniza, building and foundation deposits, and so forth. Furthermore, the ancient temple library, as a restricted and well-regulated collective entity, is suggested as representative of literary standardization in the Near East, and the canonization process of the Hebrew Bible, in particular. Ancient archives are attested as equally prevalent textual units, clearly distinguishable from adjunct textual deposits, often loosely, but incorrectly, termed "archives" in modern scholarly discourse. In conclusion, this dissertation reconsiders the status of the two traditionally most valued ancient textual entities, the Library of Assurbanipal and the Library of Alexandria, and concludes that these entities are atypical examples of ancient textual collections. As closest claimants to the improbable and often religiously imbued ideal of universal collection of information, these libraries erroneously became the impossible standards by which all ancient collections were measured and found wanting. As alternate, the applicability of the theoretical constructs proposed in the earlier part of this dissertation, such as the introduction of an in

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-06, Section: A, page: 2211. Adviser: Anne D. Hedeman. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 267-284) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (doctoral)--Facultad de Derecho de Valladolid, 1979. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [281]-290).