Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 10 - 2024 i Medieval World Culture & Conflict Magazine

Editorial The Benedictines were the most influential and widespread monastic religious order in the Middle Ages. They followed the rules set out by Saint Benedict of Nursia (ca. 480–547), who was a Christian monk and theologian regarded as the founder of the Benedictine Order of monasticism. His seventy-three-chapter rulebook set out the requirements and routines for monastic communal life, including aspects of daily worship, work, and interactions. In addition to the rule – as the pages that follow explain – other sources of early Benedictine spirituality have survived, including monastic compounds, exquisite manuscripts, icons, metalwork, and textiles, as well as the famous and mysterious plan of Saint Gall, which details how monasteries should be designed and organized. The Benedictine form of monasticism became so popular and widespread throughout Europe that…

THEME: The Benedictines THE RISE OF MONASTIC RELIGION Of all those in the Latin Middle Ages who adopted the life of the monastic, making vows to commit to a religious rule, the largest number were associated with the Benedictine tradition. Wellpopulated and wealthy regions of England and France, Flanders, Central and North Italy, and Denmark were densely planted with Benedictine monasteries. At their peak (up to 1250), many communities of men may have numbered up to 100; some may have seen twice as many at this time. Monastic life for women was most common in the mould of the Benedictines. In England, Scotland, and Wales there were more than 100 houses (counting those identified as Benedictine with Cistercians who followed the same rule). In France, the number was half as…

MEDIEVAL COOKING MAKING YOUR OWN MEDIEVAL SAUSAGE There are several theories about the origin of the name mortadella. The locals in Bologna are convinced it originates from mortarium, Latin for mortar. Reference is made to two Roman gravestones in the city, one showing a mortar, the other one pigs. Far-fetched perhaps, but it is known that Romans already made plenty of sausages and pounded the meat in a mortar. Medieval mortadella The name mortadella appears in the oldest medieval cookbook from Italy, the Liber de coquina (circa 1300). In it, however, mortadelli are balls of minced fish that are cooked in an herbal broth. The author indicates that they can also be made with pork loin. Many medieval cookbooks that follow have a recipe for mortadella, but the preparations vary widely.…

Beowulf: A Poem ISBN: 978-1641893916 ARC Humanities Press | Past Imperfect, 2022 $17.95 (paperback) www.arc-humanities.org Andrew Schell's Beowulf: A Poem is the kind of book that fans of the poem have long needed. Beyond the other specialties and disciplines that inevitably enter and overwhelm its orbit—the Vikings, linguistics, archaeology, Tolkien—Schell wants us to value Beowulf as poetry first and foremost. Schell reminds us that if the poem is off-putting to many of us now, it was probably seen as strange even in its own time. Quoting another scholar, he highlights that “there is no satisfactory model in antecedent western literature… no medieval poem— in Latin or the vernacular—composed before ca. 1100 that bears any resemblance to Beowulf either in its structure or in its narrative discourse.” At the same time,…

The Battle of Salado in 1340 was the penultimate major battle of the reconquest of Spain. The King of Castile, Alfonso XI, leading a crusade in which Portugal also took part, destroyed the armies of the King of Granada and the Marinids of Fez. The battle has not been fully understood, but there is a strange and anecdotal mention by the chroniclers. It offers a key to what happened in the battle: the literary and Machiavellian Infante Don Juan Manuel, in command of the vanguard, suddenly knocked down his own ensign when he tried to charge the Moors… Treason, or something different? Since the Muslim invasion of Spain, successive waves of North African peoples helped the Hispano-Arabs in their struggle against the Christians. After successive battles and sieges, the fiery…

Benedictine monasteries made some of the most beautiful books of the Middle Ages. In their early centuries, their communities held a virtual monopoly on the collection and circulation of books, which brought into their precincts scribes, artists, and binders. The foundations of the Frankish reform were a focal point for the formation of a fine Latin script, which aimed to imitate the lettering of classical Rome. When patronage and wealth reached their peak in the century after 1050, some abbeys in England, France, and Germany were able to establish nothing less than a production line of finely scripted and painted books. Much of the craftwork was done by skilled professionals, such as Master Hugo, painter of the Bury Bible, but monastic men and women also contributed. A homiliary made in…

St. Benedict's Rule for Monasteries By Saint Benedict, Abbot of Monte Cassino Translated by Leonard J. Doyle The Liturgical Press, 1948 https://bit.ly/41GMsy4 The Care of Nuns: The Ministries of Benedictine Women in England During the Central Middle Ages By Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis Oxford University Press, 2019 ISBN: 978-0190851286 The Benedictines in the Middle Ages By James G. Clark Boydell Press, 2011 ISBN: 978-18438362309 The Plan of St. Gall: A Study of the Architecture and Economy of, and Life in a Paradigmatic Carolingian Monastery By Walter Horn and Ernest Born University of California Press, 1979 ISBN: 978-0520017245 The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West Edited by Alison Beach and Isabelle Cochelin Cambridge University Press, 2020 ISBN: 978-1107042117 The Age of the Cloister: The Story of Monastic Life in…

SPECIAL In the Middle Ages, beer was for everyone. A century ago, beer historian John Arnold memorably dubbed beer “the people's beverage.” He was not wrong, particularly when it comes to the history of beer and brewing in Europe's Middle Ages. Medieval beer was a drink for every man – and every woman. And every child, for that matter. Regardless of social class, everyone drank beer. It was far more accessible and affordable than its more prestigious medieval cousin, wine. But how did beer become the “democratic” drink of the Middle Ages? Rome falls; beer (or ale?) is brewed The Romans loved their wine. When they colonized large swaths of what is now Europe and Africa, they followed the ancient Greeks in disparaging beer as the “barbarian's beverage” (to borrow…

For quite some time, the St. Gall monks did not really understand the drawing they possessed. Before the renowned Benedictine scholar, Jean Mabillon (1632–1707), visited St. Gallen and described the Plan as a document directly related to their own monastery, they took it for a sketch of St. Martin's Abbey in Tours/France, illustrating the text on the other side. Authorship There is an inscribed dedication in the upper margin of the drawing: “For thee, my sweetest son Gozbertus, have I drawn this briefly annotated sketch of the layout of the monastic buildings […]”. A a certain Gozbert was abbot of St. Gall from 816 to 837. He is often thought to have been the addressee of the dedication. However, another prominent monk and scholar at that time, Gozbert, was living…