What’s in a name? : some reflections on naming and identity in prosopography

A prosopography will start from the identification of different individual persons among a mass of name records drawn from the primary sources. Individuals can be discerned even where all or part of the name is missing: for example, “the poor man”, is a person who has been distinguished from others by the description “poor”. But names are normally present in our records, because all human beings have them. They are easy to take for granted, and all too often they are taken for granted even by prosopographers. This paper reflects on the meaning and function of names, and explores their use as descriptions intended to designate and to categorize a single specific individual, even though there may be other persons with the same name. Name evidence is a peculiarly rich resource for the historian, but it cannot be used uncritically but has to be assessed in relation to who recorded the name as we have it – very rarely the name-bearer him/herself –, and how and why.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologi

A critical edition of John of Salisbury's Policraticus Books I-IV

This thesis is part of a commitment to re-edit all eight books of John of Salisbury's great treatise on politics for the Oxford University Press. The last edition, and the first critical edition, was that of C C J Webb (Oxford, 1909), which has since been accepted as the definitive text. My own examination of the manuscripts (which has been palaeographical and codicological as well as critical) has totally controverted that view and has enabled me to establish a text that, although still not perfect, represents the text as the author himself wrote it more exactly than any of the ten editions published to date. John's Policraticus, Metalogicon, Letters, and unfinished Historia Pontificalis, are used by historians as primary sources for the politics and education of the day, so that this thesis is the first stage of an enterprise that will greatly benefit the many mediaevalists and their students to whose work the Policraticus is of central or major concern. <p

The textual tradition of John of Salisbury's Metalogicon

This paper is a description and discussion of the extant MSS of John of Salisbury's Metalogicon, and a survey of the transmission of the text thereafter as exemplified by the four editions of the work, the whole beeing introductory to a new critical edition to appear shortly. Tables of variant readings from both the MSS and the editions illustrate the nature of the complete textual tradition of Metalogicon, from which the author's approach to his text is hypothetically adduced.Cet article — qui constitue une introduction à une nouvelle édition critique de parution prochaine — décrit et étudie les manuscrits subsistants du Metalogicon de Jean de Salisbury, et examine la transmission du texte à partir des quatre éditions de l'œuvre. Des tables de variantes, tirées des manuscrits et des éditions, illustrent la tradition textuelle du Metalogicon. De cette analyse découle la reconstitution de la façon dont Jean de Salisbury a abordé son texte.Keats-Rohan Katharine Stephanie Benedicta. The textual tradition of John of Salisbury's Metalogicon. In: Revue d'histoire des textes, bulletin n°16 (1986), 1988. pp. 229-282

The Identification of Abbots in the Necrologies of Mont-Saint-Michel

Cette étude se donne le modeste but de réviser les identifications des abbés figurant, parmi les morts, dans les nécrologes du Mont-Saint-Michel et proposées, en 1966, par dom Jean Laporte. Parmi les hypothèses avancées se trouvent des identifications sans doute surprenantes mais révélatrices. Ce bref travail est un avant-goût d’un ouvrage à paraître qui précisera le culte de la memoria au Mont

Database of Charters from the Liber de Melros

The database is based on the Bannatyne Club edition of Melrose Abbey charters (Liber de Melros, ed. C. Innes, vol 1-2, 1837). It is a part of the AHRC funded project 'Survival and Success on Medieval Borders: Cistercian Houses in Medieval Scotland and Pomerania' for the AHRC/ESRC programme Religion and Society from September 2007 to October 2008. The grant holder was Dr Emilia Jamroziak (University of Leeds) and the database was created by the research assistant Dr Katharine Keats-Rohan (University of Oxford)