Vengeance in the Middle Ages

Vengeance in the Middle Ages PDF

Author: Paul R. Hyams

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-03

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1317002474

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This volume aims to balance the traditional literature available on medieval feuding with an exploration of other aspects of vengeance and culture in the Middle Ages. A diverse assortment of interdisciplinary essays from scholars in Europe and North America contest or enlarge traditional approaches to and interpretations of vengeance in the Middle Ages. Each essay attempts to clarify the multifaceted experience of vengeance within a specific medieval context”a particular region, a particular text, a particular social movement. By asking what relationship a distinct factor like authorship or religion has with the concept of vengeance, each author points towards the breadth of meanings of medieval vengeance, and to the heart of the deeper and broader questions that spur scholarly interest in the subject. Geographically, the essays in the volume highlight Western Europe (particularly the Anglo-Norman world), Scotland, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal. Thematically, the essays are concerned with heroic cultures of vengeance, vengeance as a legal and political tool, Christian justification and expression of vengeance, literature and the distinction between discourse and reality, and the emotions of vengeance. Methodologically, these interdisciplinary studies incorporate tools borrowed from anthropology, the study of emotion, and modern social and literary theories. This volume is aimed at professional scholars and graduate students within the broad field of medieval studies, including the subfields of history, literature, and religious studies, and is intended to inspire further research on medieval vengeance. However, this collection will also prove interesting to non-medievalists interested in the history of emotion, the justification of human conflict, and the concept of feud and its applicability to specific historical periods.

Vengeance in Medieval Europe

Vengeance in Medieval Europe PDF

Author: Daniel Lord Smail

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2009-01-01

Total Pages: 497

ISBN-13: 1442601264

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How did medieval society deal with private justice, with grudges, and with violent emotions? This ground-breaking reader collects for the first time a number of unpublished or difficult-to-find texts that address violence and emotion in the Middle Ages. The sources collected here illustrate the power and reach of the language of vengeance in medieval European society. They span the early, high, and later middle ages, and capture a range of perspectives including legal sources, learned commentaries, narratives, and documents of practice. Though social elites necessarily figure prominently in all medieval sources, sources concerning relatively low-status individuals and sources pertaining to women are included. The sources range from saints' lives that illustrate the idea of vengeance to later medieval court records concerning vengeful practices. A secondary goal of the collection is to illustrate the prominence of mechanisms for peacemaking in medieval European society. The introduction traces recent scholarly developments in the study of vengeance and discusses the significance of these concepts for medieval political and social history.

Crusading as an Act of Vengeance, 1095–1216

Crusading as an Act of Vengeance, 1095–1216 PDF

Author: Susanna A. Throop

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-22

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1317156730

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Only recently have historians of the crusades begun to seriously investigate the presence of the idea of crusading as an act of vengeance, despite its frequent appearance in crusading sources. Understandably, many historians have primarily concentrated on non-ecclesiastical phenomena such as feuding, purportedly a component of "secular" culture and the interpersonal obligations inherent in medieval society. This has led scholars to several assumptions regarding the nature of medieval vengeance and the role that various cultures of vengeance played in the crusading movement. This monograph revises those assumptions and posits a new understanding of how crusading was conceived as an act of vengeance in the context of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Through textual analysis of specific medieval vocabulary it has been possible to clarify the changing course of the concept of vengeance in general as well as the more specific idea of crusading as an act of vengeance. The concept of vengeance was intimately connected with the ideas of justice and punishment. It was perceived as an expression of power, embedded in a series of commonly understood emotional responses, and also as an expression of orthodox Christian values. There was furthermore a strong link between religious zeal, righteous anger, and the vocabulary of vengeance. By looking at these concepts in detail, and in the context of current crusading methodologies, fresh vistas are revealed that allow for a better understanding of the crusading movement and those who "took the cross," with broader implications for the study of crusading ideology and twelfth-century spirituality in general.

Treason

Treason PDF

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-05-06

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 9004400699

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Set against the framework of modern political concerns, Treason: Medieval and Early Modern Adultery, Betrayal, and Shame considers the various forms of treachery in a variety of sources, including literature, historical chronicles, and material culture creating a complex portrait of the development of this high crime.

Violence in Medieval Europe

Violence in Medieval Europe PDF

Author: Warren C. Brown

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-06-11

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 1317866215

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The European Middle Ages have long attracted popular interest as an era characterised by violence, whether a reflection of societal brutality and lawlessness or part of a romantic vision of chivalry. Violence in Medieval Europe engages with current scholarly debate about the degree to which medieval European society was in fact shaped by such forces. Drawing on a wide variety of primary sources, Warren Brown examines the norms governing violence within medieval societies from the sixth to the fourteenth century, over an area covering the Romance and the Germanic-speaking regions of the continent as well as England. Scholars have often told the story of violence and power in the Middle Ages as one in which 'private' violence threatened and sometimes destroyed 'public' order. Yet academics are now asking to what degree violence that we might call private, in contrast to the violence wielded by a central authority, might have been an effective social tool. Here, Brown looks at how private individuals exercised violence in defence of their rights or in vengeance for wrongs within a set of clearly understood social rules, and how over the course of this period, kings began to claim the exclusive right to regulate the violence of their subjects as part of their duty to uphold God's order on earth. Violence in Medieval Europe provides both an original take on the subject and an illuminating synthesis of recent and classic scholarship. It will be invaluable to students and scholars of history, medieval studies and related areas, for the light it casts not just on violence, but on the evolution of the medieval political order.

The Vengeance of Our Lord

The Vengeance of Our Lord PDF

Author: Stephen K. Wright

Publisher: PIMS

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 9780888440891

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Analyzes the medieval dramatic tradition of history plays (Vengeance of Our Lord) on the siege and destruction of Jerusalem, 70 CE, which enjoyed widespread popularity in the 14th-16th centuries in Germany, France, England, Spain, and Italy. Describes the development of the tradition, and shows how medieval dramatists made use of antisemitic stereotypes and transformed the distant non-Christian past to address contemporary Christian audiences. Traces the sources of this dramatic tradition to Hesegippus's translation of Josephus Flavius in which the fall of Jerusalem is interpreted by Hesegippus as God's punishment of the Jews for deicide, to Church sermons on the Gospels, and to the Vindicta Salvatoris genre describing Titus as a recent convert leading a Christian crusade against deicide Jews who reject the true faith. Includes microfiche reproductions of "Ludus de assumptione beatae Mariae virginis, " "Gothaer Botenrolle, " and Eustache Marcade's "La vengance Jhesucrist."