An Environmental History of Medieval Europe by Richard C. Hoffman

Review of Richard C. Hoffman\u27s An Environmental History of Medieval Europe

The origins of intensive marine fishing in medieval Europe: the English evidence

The catastrophic impact of fishing pressure on species such as cod and herring is well documented. However, the antiquity of their intensive exploitation has not been established. Systematic catch statistics are only available for ca. 100 years, but large-scale fishing industries existed in medieval Europe and the expansion of cod fishing from the fourteenth century (first in Iceland, then in Newfoundland) played an important role in the European colonization of the Northwest Atlantic. History has demonstrated the scale of these late medieval and post-medieval fisheries, but only archaeology can illuminate earlier practices. Zooarchaeological evidence shows that the clearest changes in marine fishing in England between AD 600 and 1600 occurred rapidly around AD 1000 and involved large increases in catches of herring and cod. Surprisingly, this revolution predated the documented post-medieval expansion of England's sea fisheries and coincided with the Medieval Warm Period-when natural herring and cod productivity was probably low in the North Sea. This counterintuitive discovery can be explained by the concurrent rise of urbanism and human impacts on freshwater ecosystems. The search for 'pristine' baselines regarding marine ecosystems will thus need to employ medieval palaeoecological proxies in addition to recent fisheries data and early modern historical records

The Dies Irae ( Day of Wrath ) and Totentanz ( Dance of Death ): Medieval Themes Revisited in 19th Century Music and Culture

During the pivotal November 2002 football game of Arkansas vs. Georgia in the SEC conference championship, the Georgia marching band struck up their defensive rallying song. Instead of a typical defense song, the band played an excerpt of the Gregorian Sequence Dies Irae ( Day of Wrath\u27\u27) from the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass. Drastically dissociated from its original medieval milieu, this musical Sequence still manages to elicit the same effect of fear and foreboding nearly a thousand years later. Precisely because of its deep musical and cultural roots, the Dies Irae occupies a significant place in history, closely intertwined from early on with the medieval folk motif Totentanz ( Dance of Death ), widely depicted in medieval art, and dramatically revived in 19th century music, art, and literature. This multi-disciplinary study focuses on the history of art and music of these two medieval themes during their development, and then moves on to study them in 19th century culture. Specifically, the manipulation of the original Gregorian chant and the incorporation of the idea of a medieval dance are analyzed in the music of Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, and Camille Saint-Saens. Numerous other contextual links are explored as well, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Victor Hugo, Henri Cazalis, William Blake, and Alfred Rethel, all of whom created 19th century artistic or literary masterpieces derived from the thematic seeds of the Dies Irae and the Totentanz. Although neither of these ideas endured in their original form during the Romantic era, the inherently compelling nature of these themes that center on the macabre but inevitable end of life captivated the Romantic geniuses and continue to intrigue us to this day

Medieval Christian Dualist Perceptions and Conceptions of Biblical Paradise

The article intends to draw attention to some of the most significant and telling appropriations of traditional themes of Biblical paradise in medieval Christian dualism (namely, Paulicianism, Bogomilism and related groups in Eastern Christendom and Catharism in Western Christendom) and initiate discussion on the important but presently not always explicable problem of their theological and literary provenance. The significance of this problematic is highlighted by the increasing amount of direct and indirect evidence of the role played by a number of early Jewish and Christian pseudepigraphic works in the formation of medieval Christian dualist cosmogonic, cosmological, satanological, Christological and biblical history traditions. The preliminary survey of medieval dualist conceptions of biblical Paradise shows also once more that the doctrinal evidence for Bogomilism and Catharism is too complex and polyvalent to be defined or ignored apriori as representing medieval heresiological constructs drawing on earlier heresiological texts and stereotypes. The material examined in the article shows that the text-critical treatment of the primary sources to first establish the most plausible literary and theological provenance of the respective teachings attributed to medieval Christian dualist groups or individuals still remains indispensable to the study of medieval heresy and needs to precede the application of models and approaches drawn from contemporary anthropological and sociological theory to the source material

Sons, apprentices and successors in late medieval and early modern London: the transmission of skills and work opportunities

Book synopsis: The existence and changing of generations in family life, business and politics was a central feature of towns as well as rural societies in earlier times. Even so, it remains understudied by urban historians of the pre-modern period. This book aims to fill some of this gap, containing twelve studies of generations in late medieval and early modern European towns, ranging from the Mediterranean to the Nordic countries, with a time-span from the fourteenth to the early nineteenth century. Dealing with topics like succession and inheritance, family consciousness, as well as relations and conflicts within and between generations, the articles demonstrate the importance and potential of generational studies on pre-modern towns. The book will appeal to anyone who takes an interest in urban social and cultural history, legal and family history in medieval and early modern times

The fortunes of Arthur: Malory to Milton

This chapter follows the fortunes of Arthur as a figure contested and celebrated in equal measure between Malory's Morte Darthur (1485), and Milton's History of Britain (1670). Malory depicted the French wars under the guise of Arthur's sixth-century campaign against Rome, and Arthur was key to medieval and Renaissance representations of sovereignty and resistance. One critical view suggests that by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Arthur became an inconvenient myth, retaining poetic and propagandistic potential but scoffed at by serious scholars. The Reformation and the rise of antiquarianism engendered suspicion of medieval sources, and Arthur and Brutus were undone by the rise of Anglo-Saxon studies. Yet Arthur maintained momentum even as myth morphed from history to poetry, and writers such as Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare still found purchase in the legend. Looked at closely, Milton's disparaging of Arthur appears less absolute, refashioning as it does Malory's Arthurian political allegory

“Of the Ruin and Conquest of Britain”: The Anglo-Saxon Transformation of the British Isles

The history of Britain after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire has traditionally been perceived as one of invasion and domination at the hands of Germanic peoples most commonly known as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. Though this is the narrative presented by medieval authors, current archaeology suggests that the settlement of Germanic peoples in Britain was peaceful and characterized by cohabitation and acculturation. Further examination and contextualization of the most nearly-contemporary sources reveal discrepancies of chronology and causation which indicate that medieval authors constructed their accounts based not upon an understanding of any Anglo-Saxon invasion but rather upon a narrative constructed from their contemporary cultural landscape

Reformist hagiography : the life of St Roding of Beaulieu and the struggle for power in early eleventh-Century Lotharingia

This paper explores an example of ‘reformist’ hagiographic production in early eleventh-century Lotharingia by focusing on the Life of St Roding of Beaulieu, a small monastery in the diocese of Verdun. Until recently, this text was interpreted exclusively in terms of the scant information it provides on this institution’s early medieval history and in terms of its ideological message regarding monastic discipline and leadership. By integrating the redaction of this text into the then-current regional geography and political context, this paper proposes a new approach to its interpretation and to the understanding of Beaulieu’s ‘monastic reform’ in general. Close analysis of the narrative reveals that its redaction was inspired by specific issues relating to local and regional politics in the mid-1010s, and that parts of the institution’s recent history were allegorically veiled behind the portrayal of Roding. However, rapid changes in power relationships rendered those aspects of the text outdated within a few years. This raises significant questions regarding the long-term relevance of such hidden stories and the degree to which their various ideological, political and other messages remained accessible to medieval audiences

Review of periodical articles

One of the attractions of medieval urban history is the fact that major conceptual problems in the field continue to be debated. In a stimulating review article by J.H. Mundy, ’Philip Jones and the medieval Italian city-state‘, J. of European Economic History, 28 (1999), 185–200, one distinguished scholar is taxed for holding views now dismissed by some, but of which he is by no means a unique surviving representative. One of these views assumes a clear distinction between the antique city, supposedly a bureaucratic centre with limited economic functions, and the medieval city, as the home of industrious artisans and nascent capitalism. The image of the non-profit-making ancient town may be overly indebted to the nature of the literary sources and to the prevalent interests of classicists; but, although many would now agree that both the elements in the above equation need qualifying, a more focused comparison is presently lacking, and a fine book is still waiting to be written on the transition from the ancient world to the middle ages in urban history