<p> For more than fifty years, the <i>Meditationes Vitae Christi (MVC) </i> and the most famous of its illustrated manuscripts (Paris, Biblioth&egrave;que nationale, Ms. ital. 115) have been employed by scholars to exemplify late medieval female spirituality. The mid-fourteenth century ilhuminated manuscript of the <i>Meditationes</i> in the Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame that is the subject of this dissertation provides valuable evidence of the popularity of the famous text originally written for a woman religious and its appropriation by urban laity. As an example of the shorter text, in Italian, with 43 chapters plus prologue, its 48 large colored miniatures and the decorated initials that begin each chapter, point to a wealthy patron quite unlike the Poor Clare to whom the <i>MVC</i> text was initially directed. The style of the miniatures indicates that the manuscript was illuminated ca. 1350 in Bologna, site of the pre-eminent European university for the study of law.</p><p> The dissertation explores how the <i>Meditationes Vitae Christi </i> was adapted for an educated and prosperous husband and wife. While written in the vernacular, the Snite <i>MVC</i> illuminations bear a strong resemblance to the illustrations in fourteenth-century Bolognese legal manuscripts. Despite the vivid and often unconventional imagery of the text that is designed to stimulate the reader's affective response to its re-telling of the story of the life of Christ, the miniatures tend to preserve traditional iconographies. The superficially conventional Snite miniatures, which often seem indifferent to the visual specifics of the text, serve to align it with orthodox doctrine and underscore the veracity of its contents. </p><p> An analysis of the illuminations of the Snite <i>MVC</i> reveals a particular attentiveness by the illuminator to the representation of male exemplars that would appeal to an elite educated patron, who might have been a judge or lawyer, or law professor. The Infancy miniatures in particular depict St. Joseph in a prominent role and dressed as a late medieval professional man The dignified representation of St. Joseph is consistent with his scriptural appellation as a "just man " By attending to the themes of justice and wisdom in both the <i>MVC</i> text and in its scriptural sources, the Snite miniatures prove to be much richer in meaning than first glance would suggest, and their affinity with legal manuscript illumination hardly accidental.</p><p> The iconographic analysis of the Snite miniatures is complemented by the study of the social and intellectual context in which the manuscript was produced. Despite the seeming simplicity of the miniatures, the illuminator and his advisor prove to be theologically sophisticated and scripturally literate. By means of the illuminations, the <i>MVC</i> is made compatible with the religious and professional concerns of the elite laity, providing access for men wielding worldly authority into the life of Christ in which powerful and learned men play largely negative roles. The Snite manuscript responds to the lay patron's desire to see in the example of Christ and the events of his life confirmation of late medieval social, juridical, and political structures. In its miniatures, it provides saintly models for the educated laity desirous of reconciling their Christian commitments with the demands of an active, urban, professional life.</p>

<p> Chaucer bases the marriage in the Shipman&rsquo;s Tale on the ethical and social systems of the medieval merchant class, yet criticism of the marriage and the wife&rsquo;s extra-marital transaction especially, often falls squarely in the realm of ecclesiastical, moral ideology. A moral reading of the mercantile-based Shipman&rsquo;s Tale presupposes that an accommodation can be negotiated between the mercantile and the ecclesiastical. I argue that Chaucer&rsquo;s construction of marriage in the Shipman&rsquo;s Tale allows for no accommodation. Chaucer creates a purely mercantile marriage that relies upon the ethical standards of business to determine its strength. This thesis examines the intersecting ecclesiastical and mercantile terms within the Shipman&rsquo;s Tale. Chapter one examines the assertion that money perverts the marriage of the wife and the merchant. To refute these claims I examine the medieval church&rsquo;s views on marriage, the Pauline &ldquo;marriage debt,&rdquo; adultery, and the conflicts within this ideal as they relate to and inform the marriage of the wife and merchant. The marriage between the merchant husband and his wife in the Shipman&rsquo;s Tale is strengthened by its adherence to mercantile ethics, and stands as a legitimate partnership, not as a perversion. In Chapter two I focus on the determination that the wife in the Shipman&rsquo;s Tale is &ldquo;unfaithful, aggressively self-centered, and mercenary.&rdquo; The particular assertion of &ldquo;mercenary&rdquo; interests me, since it is based on attempts to calculate a financial exchange rate in order to accuse the wife of over-selling herself to the monk. If the wife over-sells her body then she reaps a usurious profit, a practice condemned by both ecclesiastical and secular fourteenth-century courts. I analyze terms and financial transactions specific to usury and find that the wife conducts an ethical trade based on fourteenth-century mercantile law. She trades her body for the amount of currency the market will bear, therefore she is free from the charges of mercenary over-selling and moves out of the shadow of her merchant husband and into the role of independent merchant. In Chapter three I confront the &ldquo;redemptive innocence&rdquo; extended to the merchant husband and the refusal to extend such redemption to the wife. I investigate the specific mercantile terms related to the bill of exchange model used by both the husband and wife in the Shipman&rsquo;s Tale, in order to show that the wife in the Shipman&rsquo;s Tale is an ethical merchant in her own right and therefore worthy of the same &ldquo;redemptive innocence&rdquo; offered to her husband. I conclude that the merchant&rsquo;s marriage typifies the medieval mercantile business model, that ecclesiastical marriage ideology is incongruent to this business model, and that the wife&rsquo;s movements must be evaluated under the terms of mercantile ethics. I find the wife in the Shipman&rsquo;s Tale to be an ethical merchant and an exemplary participant in the mercantile marriage provided by the text.</p>

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No description available.

The success of the First Crusade by the Christian armies caught the interest and arrested the imagination of contemporaries, stimulating the production of a large number of historical narratives. Four eyewitness accounts, as well as letters written by the crusaders to the West, were taken up by later authors, re-worked and re-fashioned into new narratives; a process which continued throughout the twelfth century and beyond. This thesis sets out to explore why contemporaries continued to write about the First Crusade in light of medieval attitudes towards the past, how authors constructed their narratives and how the crusade and the crusaders were remembered throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It will analyse the development in the way the First Crusade was recorded and investigate the social, religious, intellectual and political influences dictating change: How, why and under what circumstances was the story re- told? What changed in the re-telling? What ideas and concepts were the authors trying to communicate and what was their meaning for contemporaries? The thesis will also aim to place these texts not only in their historical but also in their literary contexts, analyse the literary traditions from which authors were writing, and consider the impact the crusade had on medieval literature. The focus will be on Latin histories of the First Crusade, especially those written in England and France, which produced the greatest number of narratives. Those written in the Levant, the subject of these histories, will also be discussed, as well as texts written in the Empire and in Italy.

<p>Abstract This dissertation is a project that examines the way Middle English romances explore and build a sense of national English/Christian identity, both in opposition to and in incorporation of the Saracen Other. The major primary texts used in this project are Richard Coer de Lion, Firumbras, Bevis of Hampton, The King of Tars, and Thomas Malory?s Morte Darthur. I examine the way crusade romances grapple with the threat of the Middle East and the contention over the Holy Land and treat these romances, in part, as medieval meditations on how the Holy Land (lost during a string of failed or stalemated Crusades) could be won permanently, through war, consumption, or conversion. The literary cannibalism of Saracens in Richard Coer de Lion, the singular or wholesale religious conversions facilitated by female characters, and the figure of Malory?s Palomides all shed light on the medieval English politics of identity: specifically, what it means to be a good Englishman, a good knight, and a good Christian. Drawing on the works of Homi Bhabha, Geraldine Heng, Suzanne Conklin Akbari, and Siobhain Bly Calkin, this project fits into the overall conversation that contemplates medieval texts through the lens of postcolonial theory to locate early ideas of empire.

This dissertation explores various characteristics that define the monstrous and the heroic — both on their own and in conjunction with each other — in three representative texts of the Middle Ages, the Old English 'Beowulf' (manuscript c.1000), the Persian epic, 'The Shahnameh' (c.1010) and Gottfried von Strassburg’s Middle-High German poem, 'Tristan' (c.1210), as it delves into the cataclysmic aftermath of their corporeal confrontation. At the core of this study of three linguistically and geographically different, yet thematically contiguous texts, lies the significance of corporeality in terms of its articulation of the heroic self and identification of the monstrous other. Far from being diametrically opposed, the heroic and monstrous bodies bear enough resemblance to justify René Girard’s use of the phrase ‘monstrous doubles’ in reference to the host of similarities they manifest in the course of their confrontations. However, as shall be demonstrated, heroic and monstrous bodies need not be engaged in a single battle to manifest signs of similitude. Particular properties, such as ‘gigantism’, could be read as tokens of heroism and monstrosity, depending on the context. In 'Beowulf', for example, both Beowulf and Grendel stand out on account of their massive bulk, yet the former is marked as heroic; the latter, as monstrous. Significantly, the hero’s monstrosity not only endows him with an advantage over his fellow-humans, but also facilitates his mastery of monstrous bodies. The conquest of monstrous bodies overlaps with other paradigms of power including mastery over land and women. Gigantomachia and dragon-slaying tend to be coterminous with territorial claims. It is no coincidence that colonized lands are marked by their so-called ‘monstrous’ inhabitants, for as such, their conquest is rendered as both an act of heroism and a means of purification. Indeed, the purging of lands is a primordial priority of the heroic mission. Paradoxically, however, the hero has to be stained by elements of monstrosity in the first place to succeed at monstrous confrontations and goes on to acquire even more monstrous characteristics in a process which leads to ‘sublation’, the incorporation of a concept by a subsequent one in a way that leads to the formation of a new concept manifesting features of both. A third zone of possibilities comes to the fore in the midst of the entanglement of heroic and monstrous bodies. The clash between the heroic and the monstrous bodies could be read as a fusion, a marriage, which gives birth to a third party, in this case, a ‘Third Space’, a zone of discursivity and hybridity arising from the confrontation of an ‘I’ and a ‘Thou’. Significantly, the ‘Third Space’, in being unstable and fluid, is both susceptible to and a harbinger of change. In light of the fluidity of this space, the dismemberment and incorporation of bodies marking monstrous encounters take on added significance. One of the primary consequences of monstrous conflicts is ‘incorporation’, a freighted term, as shall be argued in the final chapter. While ‘incorporation’ can take place at a simple corporeal level, including the acts of cannibalism interspersed in 'Beowulf' and 'The Shahnameh', it can also constitute a mental challenge, a fusion of two different horizons of understanding. After all, in being both 'mixta' and 'mira', monsters not only serve as obstacles to the heroic body, but also to the intellectual mind. Although reflective of the mutability of times and the incertitude of man’s life during what has come to be known as the monstrous Middle Ages, monsters continue to charm us with their composite and enigmatic essence up to this day.

The late eleventh and early twelfth centuries saw a revival in the study of Ovid in the literary circles of the Loire Valley region of France. The poetry of Baudri, abbot of Bourgueil from approximately 1078-1107 and archbishop of Dol from 1107 until his death in 1130, exemplifies this trend. Baudri’s determinedly Ovidian collection contains 256 poems, several of which are addressed to nuns and to boys subject to his authority as abbot. Baudri’s use of Ovid displays an intricate understanding of the issues of gender and power at play in Ovid’s works, in particular the Ars Amatoria and Amores. Baudri uses his position of authority to manipulate his inferiors into behaving in ways that are pleasing to him, crafting an unflattering persona that shares many characteristics with the unsympathetic Ovidian amator and praeceptor amoris. Baudri’s letters to boys problematically evoke the tradition of monastic friendship letters, using classical allusion to represent an inappropriately sexualized and manipulative discourse. His letter to the nun Constance and her reply depict a struggle for control of discourse. Constance, by following Ovid’s instructions to the elegiac puella in her reply to Baudri, demonstrates that she is circumscribed by Baudri’s dominant male discourse, which she nonetheless manages to undermine from within. Baudri’s depiction of the power relationships between himself and his social inferiors mirrors the relationship between the Ovidian praeceptor amoris and the elegiac puella, and consequently engages with the plight of his inferiors in the same way that Ovid’s poetry draws attention to the dangerous lives of the courtesans in his elegy. Furthermore, his Ovidianism can be situated within the context of the contemporary Gregorian Reforms. In the same way that the puella can be seen as a projection of elite Roman males’ experience of disenfranchisement amidst the rise of the Principate, Baudri’s problematic correspondence with his social inferiors reflects social anxieties in the face of the Church’s assertion of centralized power and curtailment of clerical freedoms.

This dissertation explores various characteristics that define the monstrous and the heroic — both on their own and in conjunction with each other — in three representative texts of the Middle Ages, the Old English 'Beowulf' (manuscript c.1000), the Persian epic, 'The Shahnameh' (c.1010) and Gottfried von Strassburg’s Middle-High German poem, 'Tristan' (c.1210), as it delves into the cataclysmic aftermath of their corporeal confrontation. At the core of this study of three linguistically and geographically different, yet thematically contiguous texts, lies the significance of corporeality in terms of its articulation of the heroic self and identification of the monstrous other. Far from being diametrically opposed, the heroic and monstrous bodies bear enough resemblance to justify René Girard’s use of the phrase ‘monstrous doubles’ in reference to the host of similarities they manifest in the course of their confrontations. However, as shall be demonstrated, heroic and monstrous bodies need not be engaged in a single battle to manifest signs of similitude. Particular properties, such as ‘gigantism’, could be read as tokens of heroism and monstrosity, depending on the context. In 'Beowulf', for example, both Beowulf and Grendel stand out on account of their massive bulk, yet the former is marked as heroic; the latter, as monstrous. Significantly, the hero’s monstrosity not only endows him with an advantage over his fellow-humans, but also facilitates his mastery of monstrous bodies. The conquest of monstrous bodies overlaps with other paradigms of power including mastery over land and women. Gigantomachia and dragon-slaying tend to be coterminous with territorial claims. It is no coincidence that colonized lands are marked by their so-called ‘monstrous’ inhabitants, for as such, their conquest is rendered as both an act of heroism and a means of purification. Indeed, the purging of lands is a primordial priority of the heroic mission. Paradoxically, however, the hero has to be stained by elements of monstrosity in the first place to succeed at monstrous confrontations and goes on to acquire even more monstrous characteristics in a process which leads to ‘sublation’, the incorporation of a concept by a subsequent one in a way that leads to the formation of a new concept manifesting features of both. A third zone of possibilities comes to the fore in the midst of the entanglement of heroic and monstrous bodies. The clash between the heroic and the monstrous bodies could be read as a fusion, a marriage, which gives birth to a third party, in this case, a ‘Third Space’, a zone of discursivity and hybridity arising from the confrontation of an ‘I’ and a ‘Thou’. Significantly, the ‘Third Space’, in being unstable and fluid, is both susceptible to and a harbinger of change. In light of the fluidity of this space, the dismemberment and incorporation of bodies marking monstrous encounters take on added significance. One of the primary consequences of monstrous conflicts is ‘incorporation’, a freighted term, as shall be argued in the final chapter. While ‘incorporation’ can take place at a simple corporeal level, including the acts of cannibalism interspersed in 'Beowulf' and 'The Shahnameh', it can also constitute a mental challenge, a fusion of two different horizons of understanding. After all, in being both 'mixta' and 'mira', monsters not only serve as obstacles to the heroic body, but also to the intellectual mind. Although reflective of the mutability of times and the incertitude of man’s life during what has come to be known as the monstrous Middle Ages, monsters continue to charm us with their composite and enigmatic essence up to this day.

The late eleventh and early twelfth centuries saw a revival in the study of Ovid in the literary circles of the Loire Valley region of France. The poetry of Baudri, abbot of Bourgueil from approximately 1078-1107 and archbishop of Dol from 1107 until his death in 1130, exemplifies this trend. Baudri’s determinedly Ovidian collection contains 256 poems, several of which are addressed to nuns and to boys subject to his authority as abbot. Baudri’s use of Ovid displays an intricate understanding of the issues of gender and power at play in Ovid’s works, in particular the Ars Amatoria and Amores. Baudri uses his position of authority to manipulate his inferiors into behaving in ways that are pleasing to him, crafting an unflattering persona that shares many characteristics with the unsympathetic Ovidian amator and praeceptor amoris. Baudri’s letters to boys problematically evoke the tradition of monastic friendship letters, using classical allusion to represent an inappropriately sexualized and manipulative discourse. His letter to the nun Constance and her reply depict a struggle for control of discourse. Constance, by following Ovid’s instructions to the elegiac puella in her reply to Baudri, demonstrates that she is circumscribed by Baudri’s dominant male discourse, which she nonetheless manages to undermine from within. Baudri’s depiction of the power relationships between himself and his social inferiors mirrors the relationship between the Ovidian praeceptor amoris and the elegiac puella, and consequently engages with the plight of his inferiors in the same way that Ovid’s poetry draws attention to the dangerous lives of the courtesans in his elegy. Furthermore, his Ovidianism can be situated within the context of the contemporary Gregorian Reforms. In the same way that the puella can be seen as a projection of elite Roman males’ experience of disenfranchisement amidst the rise of the Principate, Baudri’s problematic correspondence with his social inferiors reflects social anxieties in the face of the Church’s assertion of centralized power and curtailment of clerical freedoms.