The genealogy of the king of Scots as charter and panegyric

When we think of genealogies in medieval Scotland our minds might turn at once to Gaelic, the Celtic language that was spoken in the Middle Ages from the southern tip of Ireland to the northernmost coast of Scotland. This is not unnatural. Texts that trace the ancestry of a notable individual generation by generation survive in their hundreds from the medieval Gaelic world. They are found today almost exclusively in late-medieval Irish manuscripts. Some genealogies originated in collections made as early as the tenth century. Presumably there were once many Scottish manuscripts containing genealogies, too. A reason why they would not have survived is that, in the Scottish kingdom during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Gaelic learned orders who would have had a primary interest in writing and copying this material declined in significance and ceased to participate in Gaelic literate culture. This chapter will open with a brief survey of medieval genealogical texts relating to the Scottish kingdom, followed by a closer discussion of the limited number that are known to have existed between about 995 and 1250. Thanks to some recent insights about the physicality of texts, and the example of Bengali copper charters, a new approach to this material will be developed that offers a fresh perspective on the role of genealogy as a written expression of kingship and lordship

Latin charters and the use of Gaelic in Scotland in the twelfth century

No abstract available

The Models of Authority Project: Extending the DigiPal Framework for Script and Decoration

The DigiPal project for palaeography has featured in previous DH conferences. It includes a generalised framework for the description and analysis of handwriting, initially applied to Old English of the eleventh century but subsequently extended to Latin, Hebrew, and decoration; it incorporates a novel model for describing handwriting; and a recent addition allows the embedding of linked palaeographical images into prose description. The purpose of this poster is to present new developments which form part of two further major grants, one of which is the Models of Authority project. Specifically, the focus here is on the incorporation of textual content into the model for handwriting

Exploring a Model for the Semantics of Medieval Legal Charters

This paper describes several aspects of a formal digital semantic model that expresses some issues presented by medieval charters. Surprisingly, perhaps, this model does not deal directly with a charter’s text and is not mark-up based. Instead, it draws on the authors’ experience with the construction of three highly structured factoid-oriented prosopographical databases that drew heavily on charter sources, and that also did not explicitly contain a digital representation of the charter texts. The paper explains the way in which the structured data model thus derived differs from text-oriented approaches such as TEI/CEI work that has been done so far on charters. It presents a view on why this factoid-based model seems to capture more readily some of the complexity in the apparent meanings of the charters, and suggests that this is because it is also more likely to relate to a richer conception of the broader medieval world in which these charters were created than text-oriented work does. Finally, drawing on recent work on the ChartEx project, it explores how a combined approach, that takes the best of both text-markup and structured data modelling techniques, could evolve in the future

Our friend in the north: the origins, evolution and appeal of the cult of St Duthac of Tain in later Middle Ages

St Duthac of Tain was one of the most popular Scottish saints of the later middle ages. From the late fourteenth century until the reformation devotion to Duthac outstripped that of Andrew, Columba, Margaret and Mungo, and Duthac's shrine in Easter Ross became a regular haunt of James IV (1488-1513) and James V (1513-42). Hitherto historians have tacitly accepted the view of David McRoberts that Duthac was one of several local saints whose emergence and popularity in the fifteenth century was part of a wider self-consciously nationalist trend in Scottish religious practice. This study looks beyond the paradigm of nationalism to trace and explain the popularity of St Duthac from the shadowy origins of the cult to its heyday in the early sixteenth century

The Campbells: lordship, literature and liminality

The Campbells have the potential to offer much to the theme of literature and borders, given that the kindred’s astonishing political success in the late medieval and early modern period depended heavily upon the ability to negotiate multiple frontiers: between Highlands and Lowlands; between Gaelic Scotland and Ireland, and, especially after the Reformation, with England and the matter of Britain. This paper will explore the literary dimension to Campbell expansionism, from the Book of the Dean of Lismore in the earlier sixteenth century, to poetry addressed to dukes of Argyll in the earlier eighteenth century. Particular attention will be paid to the literary proclivities of the household of the Campbells of Glenorchy on either side of what appears to be a major watershed in 1550; and to the agenda of the Campbell protégé John Carswell, first post-Reformation bishop of the Isles, and author of the first printed book in Gaelic in either Scotland or Ireland, Foirm na n-Urrnuidheadh (‘The Form of Prayers’), published at Edinburgh in 1567