This dissertation is a cultural and social history of healing in Japan from the tenth to the thirteenth century. In particular, in this work I examine the connection between Buddhism and healing, and the interactions between Buddhist healers and other technicians involved in the treatment of illness, such as onmyōji and court physicians. This direction of research is informed by historical anthropology and microhistory, and constitutes and attempt towards an ethnography of early medieval Japan, an era in which Buddhism constituted the most pervasive cultural force. The study of Buddhism in its therapeutic dimension among the court elites thus doubles as a study of Buddhism in its everyday dimensions, and of its contributions to the understanding of the forces that shaped everyday life, with an emphasis on facets that are often overlooked in Japanese and western Buddhology, including the interpretation and treatment of illness, discourses on etiology, spirit possession and iatromancy (divination on disease).While generally treated as discrete entities, Buddhism, onmyōdō, kami cults, and court physicians and their therapeutic technologies existed side by side and intersected in complicated ways when seen in the daily life of court aristocrats. Through an analysis of the journals that these figures have left behind, I aim to complicate the boundaries separating these cultic realms by arguing that while distinct at the level of professional practitioners, Buddhism, onmyōdō and other spheres of specialized knowledge all functionally contributed to the culture of everyday life of court aristocracy. Focusing on practices and discourses that blur the boundaries between ritual and physical endeavors, and dealing with themes that range from spirit possession and its political implications to the relationship between kami and buddhas, from the ritual implications of an expanded access to the levers of power to the transformation of a foundational Buddhist ritual into a therapeutic practice, I criticize the tendency displayed by scholars to partition the activities of Buddhist monks, onmyōji and court physicians in epistemic terms, so that while court physicians would be concerned with the physical body, the others — and Buddhist monks in particular — would not. This distinction, which clearly echoes the modern differentiation between “medicine” and “religion,” is however inadequate to account for the complexity of the therapeutic arena of early medieval Japan. Through an examination of various practitioners of healing from the tenth to the thirteenth century, I will argue for the need to rethink neat taxonomies and sanitized epistemological spaces; rediscover the centrality of practice and redefine its relationship with normative texts and theorizations; and explore, on the ground, the complexity of daily life and its processes.

Les études consacrées à l’enregistrement des actes privés à l’époque médiévale portent généralement sur la France méridionale. Sa partie nord n’a à l’inverse fait l’objet que de rares travaux. Le système y repose sur la juridiction gracieuse, c’est-à-dire la validation des actes par l’apposition du sceau d’une autorité ecclésiastique ou laïque.La figure du tabellion, apparue dans la « France du Nord » au dernier quart du XIIIe siècle,incarne cet exercice de la validation. L’étude se concentre sur une période où son activité est la plus florissante, de la toute fin du XIVe au milieu du XVIe siècle.Le corpus documentaire est constitué pour l’essentiel de minutes produites par les tabellions de Villepreux, de Chartres, et de Châteaudun, dont on a étudié à la fois l’aspect matériel et le contenu. On a aussi analysé et cherché à définir le statut et les fonctions du tabellion dans son office. On a enfin tenté de décrire son travail concret au quotidien, notamment dans le contact avec sa clientèle. / Studies of privately drawn-up agreements in the mediaeval period have generally coveredsouthern France. Little work has been done on the other hand regarding the north of the country.Here the system depended on non-contentious jurisdiction, in other words, authentification of actsby the apposition of the seal of an ecclesiastical or secular authority.The person whose job it was to authenticate these deeds, the tabellion, appears in the north ofFrance during the last quarter of the thirteenth century. Our study will concentrate on a periodwhen his activity was at its most flourishing, from the latter years of the fourteenth to the middle ofthe sixteenth century.The corpus of material available consists essentially of minutes written by the tabellions ofVillepreux, Chartres and Châteaudun, for which we have studied both their material aspect andtheir content. We have also analysed and sought to define the status and functions of the tabellionin the exercise of his duties. Lastly, we have attempted to describe his work on a daily basis, inparticular, his contact with clients.

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The overall purpose of this study is to try gather more understanding about the concept and term chapel in Värmland during the middle ages. According to the perspective of landscapes and the chapels surroundings this study tries to reach the overall purpuse through archaeological investigations, reported findings and sites, old map material, geology characteristics and names of places and sites compared to Mats Anglerts division of independet chapels in three groups. First, the non serviced chapels called Capelle non curare. Second, colonisation chapels, located in border areas maintained from an adjacent parish. And third, parish chapels reduced to an annex parish when two parishes merged. The conclusion of this study is that most of the investigated chapels probably at some point worked as a colonisation chapel or a parish church, often located in border areas. But also that the chronological aspect is crucial and that the chapels might have had several functions simultaniously.

Rape and its impact on medieval women, as conceived by society and the law, have yet to receive extensive treatment. By analyzing not only rape cases, but evolving laws and the impact of the Church on views of sexuality and marriage and thus its influence on attitudes towards rape, this study shows that women were much more than victims and society, or the courts, reacted accordingly. Covering the years 1200 to 1250, this thesis examines secular court cases taken from the general eyre records of Yorkshire, Gloucestershire, Lincolnshire, Warwickshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Worcestershire and Staffordshire. Cases taken from the King's Bench and canon courts, including Canterbury, also provide an illustration of the process of rape litigation. Legal treatises, both canon and secular, serve as the foundation for the procedures required in either court system and show that rape was a punishable offense. However, society had difficulty viewing rape as a personal crime against a woman as opposed to a crime against her family and that is when it actually thought that sexual violence occurred. While still available to them, women used the rape laws to push their agendas and concerns onto the court - revenge, choice of marriage, justice. In court records, the heavy burden of proof and the high rate of dismissals support this conclusion. Women persevered through the inherent disadvantages presented by a patriarchal system and achieved a measure of control over their lives. This is evidenced by the nearly equal success and failure rates in the records examined; 33 percent ended in acquittal or dismissal, while 31 percent provided women with some closure. The passage of the Statutes of Westminster, by removing a woman's right to prosecute rape and marry the accused, also convincingly illustrated that women held a degree of power that was unacceptable to society.

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Yes / Santiago de Compostela is, together with Rome and Jerusalem, one of the three main pilgrimage and religious centres for Catholicism. The belief that the remains of St James the Great, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ, is buried there has stimulated, since their reported discovery in the 9th century AD, a significant flow of people from across the European continent and beyond. Little is known about the practical experiences of people living within the city during its rise to prominence, however. Here, for the first time, we combine multi-isotope analysis (δ13C, δ15N, δ18Oap, δ13Cap, and 87Sr/86Sr) and radiocarbon dating (14C) of human remains discovered at the crypt of the Cathedral of Santiago to directly study changes in diet and mobility during the first three centuries of Santiago’s emergence as an urban centre (9th-12th centuries AD). Together with assessment of the existing archaeological data, our radiocarbon chronology broadly confirms historical tradition regarding the first occupation of the site. Isotopic analyses reveal that the foundation of the religious site attracted migrants from the wider region of the northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula, and possibly from further afield. Stable isotope analysis of collagen, together with information on tomb typology and location, indicates that the inhabitants of the city experienced increasing socioeconomic diversity as it became wealthier as the hub of a wide network of pilgrimage. Our research represents the potential of multidisciplinary analyses to reveal insights into the origins and impacts of the emergence of early pilgrimage centres on the diets and status of communities within Christian medieval Europe and beyond. / This project has been supported by a grant from the ‘la Caixa’ Banking Foundation (ID 100010434; Code: LCF/BQ/ES16/11570006). Patxi Pérez-Ramallo and Patrick Roberts would also like to thank the Max Planck Society for funding for this project. Patxi Pérez-Ramallo, Hannah Koon and Julia Beaumont would like to thank the University of Bradford for funding a support the first osteological and stable isotope analysis conducted in 2015. Two of the isotopic analyses and 14C dates have been carried out with funding from the Xunta de Galicia to the CulXeo Group (ED431B 2018/47) and to the research network ‘Cultural Heritage, archaeological and technical services’ (R2016/023). Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.

This thesis is an exercise in the archaeology of memory. It investigates the reuse and ‘reinvention’ of late antique sarcophagi during the Middle Ages in the southern part of Gaul, with a particular emphasis on their reinvention for saints. The region of Provence has a large number of sarcophagi reused for the burial of saints (at least 20), including many of its most important holy figures such as Mary Magdalene, Cassian and Honorat. I shall analyse three groups of sites: the Alyscamps in Arles, Saint-Maximin and Tarascon (the sites connected with Mary Magdalene and her companions) and the monastery of Saint Victor in Marseille. In each case, the sarcophagi became part of an invented narrative created around the imagined antiquity of the site. These narratives varied significantly: some were monastic, others episcopal or biblical, still others heroic: but all were created around antique sarcophagi. Antiquities thus became monumental realms of memory for individuals and events that were thought to have been of significant historical importance in Provence. They formed part of the popular history and collective identity of the region. I will show that their association with saints changed the very function of these objects, as many were no longer seen simply as tombs but also as relics in their own right. I use a variety of sources to help reconstruct this imagined history, particularly saints’ vitae that often provide information about cults, particularly regarding the location of sarcophagi and sometimes even details of miracles that they produced, but also medieval chartae, sermons, and pilgrims’ descriptions of sites and rituals. The results of this study show that sarcophagi were of major importance in the religious history of Provence during the Middle Ages, as they became "proof" of the antiquity of local cults and of the histories based on these legends that the region created for itself. My work contributes to our knowledge of medieval Provence and the history of its collections of sarcophagi.