What circumstantial details do we need to take into account when examining the two petitions of Margery Tawney?
Why might women be underrepresented in the archival records of the revolt?
What can this petition tell us about the role of law and justice in the rebellion of 1381?
Further Reading
A. Prescott, ‘‘Great and Horrible Rumour’’: Shaping the English Revolt of 1381’, The Routledge History Handbook of Medieval Revolt, ed. J. Firnhaber-Baker and D. Schoenaers (2016), p. 84.
S. Federico, ‘The Imaginary Society: Women in 1381’, Journal of British Studies, vol. 40, no. 2 (2001), pp. 159-183.
J. Barker, England AriseThe People, the King and the Great Revolt of 1381 (2014)
What perception of death and dead bodies is suggested by this poem?
What kind of reading practices are suggested by the addition of the final three lines of the poem? Why would a reader add these lines?
Why would a poem like this be added to a manuscript that otherwise contains no poetry, and is primarily a collection of homilies?
Further Reading
Kitson, Peter R. “Old English Dialects and the Stages of the Transition to Middle English.” Folia Linguistica Historica: Acta Societatis Linguisticae Europaeae, vol. 11, no. 1–2, 1992, pp. 27–87.
Siebert, Eve. “A Possible Source for the Addition to The Grave.” ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, vol. 19, no. 4, Sept. 2006, pp. 8–16.
Thompson, Victoria. Dying and Death in Late Anglo-Saxon England. The Boydell Press, 2004.
Treharne, Elaine M. Living through Conquest: The Politics of Early English, 1020–1220. Oxford University Press, 2012.
Pound, Ezra. “The Seafarer.” Poetry Foundation. Accessed 26 May 2020.
Further Reading
Bergvall, Caroline. Drift. Nightboat Books, 2014.
Greenfield, Stanley B. “Sylf, Seasons, Structure, and Genre in The Seafarer.” Anglo-Saxon England, vol. 9, 1981, pp. 199-211.
Lees, Clare A., and Gillian R. Overing. The Contemporary Medieval in Practice. UCL Press, 2019.
The Lighthouse. Directed by Robert Eggers, performances by Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe, and Valeriia Kalaman, A24, 2019.
Matto, Michael. “True Confessions: ‘The Seafarer’ and Technologies of the ‘Sylf.’” The Journal of Germanic and English Philology, vol. 103, no.2, 2004, pp. 156-79.
Olsen, Alexandra, and Burton Raffel, eds. “The Seafarer.” Poems and Prose from the Old English. Yale UP, 1998. P. 10.
Treharne, Elaine, ed. “The Seafarer.” Old and Middle English c. 890-c. 1450: An Anthology. Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. pp. 48-53.
Erin T. Dailey, ‘Misremembering St. Radegund’s Foundation of Sainte-Croix in Poitiers’, in Erfahren, Erzählen, Erinnern: Narrativ Konstruktionen von Gedächtnis und Generation in Antike und Mittelalter, ed. Benjamin Pohl et al. (Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press, 2012), pp. 117–40.
Discussion Questions
What were the possibilities and limitations of monastic life for early medieval women?
What might this letter tell us about Merovingian women’s literacy?
What is asceticism? How is it depicted in this letter?
Bibliography (available as e-books through library subscriptions)
Angelo Di Berardino, ed. Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity (Downers’ Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1994-2013), pp. 1:407 (biography of Caesaria) and 3:374 (biography of Radegund).
Jo Ann McNarama and John E. Halborg, with E. Gordon Whately, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages (Durham: Duke University Press, 1992), pp. 112-8.
Further Reading (available online through library subscriptions)
Magdalena Elizabeth Carrasco, “Spirituality in Context: The Romanesque Illustrated Life of St. Radegund of Poitiers (Poitiers, Bibl. Mun., MS 250).” The Art Bulletin 72: 3 (1990), pp. 414–435.
Jennifer C. Edwards, Superior Women: Medieval Female Authority in Poiters’ Abbey of Sainte-Croix (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 25-59.
Mussis, Gabriele de’. “The Arrival of the Plague.” In The Black Death, ed. Rosemary Horrox, 14-26. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994.
Muisis, Gilles. “The Plague Seen from Tournai.” In The Black Death, ed. Rosemary Horrox, 45-47. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994.
Villani, Giovanni. “Chronicle.” In John Aberth, The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348-1350: A Brief History with Documents, 19-20. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Discussion Questions
In this petition, the inhabitants of Caffa ask for money, soldiers, and a bishop. Why do they need each of those things? Why do they turn to the doge of Genoa for help?
At the time when this petition was written, had anyone in Caffa shown symptoms of plague? If so, which symptoms? If not, why did the petition mention “an endless plague of death”?
Compare what this source says about the early transmission of the Black Death with the account of Gabriele de’ Mussis. Based on what you know about modern medical research on plague transmission, which version makes more sense? Based on what you know about medieval ideas about disease and contagion, which version would make more sense to medieval readers?
Compare what this source says about the early transmission of the Black Death with another source from the list of Further Reading – Primary Sources. How are the two accounts similar? How are they different? What do you think the differences imply?
English translation of Picatrix: A Medieval Treatise on Astral Magic. Trans. Dan Attrell and David Porecca, Pennsylvania State UP, 2019. Google Books snippet view, p. 146-7 and 193-4
What comparisons can be made with earlier Iberian texts featuring older women go-betweens? Consider Trotaconventos with Don Melon y Doña Endrina in Juan Ruiz’s 14c Libro de bueno amor, and Celestina with Calisto and Melibea in Fernando de Rojas’s 16c La Celestina/La Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea. Consider strategies used by the go-betweens, the linguistic or material tools used, the punishments that occurred, and possible motivations.
Why is the necromancer portrayed as Moorish in the historical context of the Morisco expulsion (1609-1614)? What does distancing of magical practice do?
Compare this novela and earlier or contemporaneous Iberian Arabic grimoires. Consider love spells in texts like the Picatrix (13c translation of 10c Arabic Ghāyat al-Hakīm) or the 16/17c Aljamiado Libro de dichos maravillosos. What items were necessary for the spells—both in the novela and the grimoires—and what were the intended results? Are such comparisons fruitful?
Consider the novelas in the context of contemporary movements like #metoo. Are these stories similar? How is the complexity of gender relations nuanced as both men and women contributed to doña Inés’s unjust suffering?
*Warning:* This video contains some graphic and disturbing descriptions which may not be suitable for all viewers.
Primary Source Document
A translation of the remission letter granted to Antonie van Claerhout in 1455 can be found in Peter Arnade and Walter Prevenier, Honor, Vengeance, and Social Trouble. Pardon Letters in the Burgundian Low Countries, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2015, p. 116–18.
Discussion questions
1. Read a pardon letter or a petition for pardon. What do you notice about the rhetorical techniques and legal arguments used by the petitioner to support their demand for pardon?
2. How is violence described in pardon letters? What does that tell us about the medieval attitudes to violence?
3. Why could it be in the interest of a king or a prince to grant pardons? Does the late medieval use of pardoning threaten to deteriorate public order?
4. To what extent was royal pardon connected to the Christian notions of justice and mercy? Check the related vocabulary used in a pardon letter to elaborate on this question.
Online Resources
The Himanis Project website, transcribing and indexing some of the French Trésor des chartes that recorded remission letters.
The Calendars of the patent rolls preserved in the Public record office, available on the HathiTrust website, describe royal pardons granted by the English Crown.
