Author: yasmedievalweb

January 2017 Lecture

St William window procession

Our speaker at the first Medieval Section lecture of the new calendar year on 14th January will be Dr Elisa Foster, and she will be talking about ‘Investigating the Head Reliquary of St William of York: Processions, Piety and Place.’ Dr Foster has kindly sent an abstract of her presentation:

From its foundation in 1408, the Corpus Christi Guild in York was responsible for organising a city-wide procession of the Eucharist. Although the shrine used during this procession was destroyed in 1546, inventory records and account rolls reveal that guild members donated luxury items and devotional objects to attach to its surface. Such offerings were quite unusual for Eucharistic shrines, but were more commonly found on the shrines of saints, like those that could have been seen in York Minster. Although the majority of these shrines were located at fixed sites in the cathedral, the head reliquary shrine of St William was borne in procession around the city on the feast of the saint’s translation, and inventory records indicate that it was also adorned with luxury objects. These shrines are not often examined together, but both objects were deeply connected to the civic identity of late medieval York. This paper will argue that that the processional shrines of the Head of St William and Corpus Christi encouraged emulation and rivalry, both spiritually and civically. A comparative analysis of these shrines and their processions thus aims to reveal new insights into the complex nature of medieval civic identity in the City of York.

Elisa Foster a Henry Moore Foundation Post-Doctoral Research Fellow based at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds. She received her PhD from Brown University in the United States, where she wrote her thesis on sculptures of the black Madonna in European art from c. 1200-1700. Her research on this topic has been recently published in Studies in Iconography, Peregrinations: A Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture and the edited volume, Envisioning Others: Race, Color and the Visual in Iberia and Latin America. In addition to her research on Black Madonnas, Elisa is co-editor a collection of essays titled Devotional Interaction in Medieval England and Its Afterlives, forthcoming in 2017. Her research in Yorkshire expands her interest in destroyed objects and iconoclasm, focusing specifically on the shrine of Corpus Christi in York, from which her talk on Saturday 14th January is derived.

As usual the lecture will be held at Swarthmore, 2-3pm. We look forward to seeing you there and have a Happy New Year.

IMS Open Lecture Series The Present Mirrored in the Past: Why Interpreting Medieval Monasticism Matters

Tuesday 6 December 2016 – 17.30

Emilia Jamroziak (Professor of Medieval Religious History, School of History, and Director, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds) Inaugural Lecture: The Present Mirrored in the Past: Why Interpreting Medieval Monasticism Matters

Nathan Bodington Council Chamber, Parkinson Building, University of Leeds.

Audrey Thorstad: Interaction, Daily Life, and Socialising Spaces in Early Tudor Castles (10th December 2016)

 

Cowdray Castle
Cowdrey Castle (c.) Dr Audrey Thorstad

The next lecture in the programme will be by Dr Audrey Thorstad talking about Interaction, daily life, and socialising spaces in early Tudor castles on 10th December. This will be held in the Swarthmore Institute.

Dr Thorstad kindly sent the following abstract and the photograph of Cowdray Castle:-

‘Castles have long been understood as elite military structures. However, recent approaches to castle studies have demonstrated that historical documents and archaeological remains depict a much more complex narrative for those living, working, and visiting a castle site during the Middle Ages and early modern periods. This paper will explore how people – from the lord and his family to members of the household and guests – moved around and used space in English castles of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. My approach takes into account sources that have not previously been used together in order to explore the layout and chamber arrangements in an age when castles were supposedly in decline. By dismantling the idea of the decline paradigm often used to describe castles after the fourteenth century, this paper will argue that castles were in fact still heavily used by the nobility well into the sixteenth century.’

Reminder about YAHS Trip to Richmond 13th October

Details for the Richmond visit on Thursday 13 October: in the morning at 11.00 meet at the The Georgian Theatre Royal, Victoria Road, Richmond, DL10 4DW. Tel 01748-823710. Cost to participants £6.00 – this can be paid on the day. Tea/coffee will be provided on our arrival.

Park in the Market Square and walk northwards up King Street (at the side of The King’s Head Hotel); turn left onto Victoria Road and the theatre is on your left. Disc parking is available for 2 hours in the Market Square, following which we suggest moving cars to the former Richmond Station which is adjacent to the swimming pool, just across the river, off the A6136 Catterick Garrison road, postcode DL10 4LD. Parking here is currently 50p for 2 hours or £1 for 4 hours. Lunch will be in this beautiful building, now restored – numbers are needed in advance for reserved tables.

“The Station is a stunning riverside Victorian railway building; brought back to life as an art gallery and exhibition space, community venue for groups, meetings and classes, and home to a variety of independent businesses.”

If you wish to join the Richmond visit please let Jane Ellis know as soon as possible, preferably by e-mail  janerway@gmail.com  or telephone 07787-311913.

The organiser needs to know a.s.a.p. the numbers who will be going.

Riches Revealed: introducing the medieval archives in the collections of the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society

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The Whixley cartulary, showing pages from the extent of Whixley manor, early 15th century.

Sylvia Thomas, our speaker for the October lecture, kindly sent the following notes about her talk at Swarthmore Education Centre this Saturday:

Since its foundation in 1863 the Society has accumulated significant archive collections from all over Yorkshire, many of them records of major families, some of which date back as far as the thirteenth century. Highlights are the enormous series of surviving court rolls of the manor of Wakefield (1274 – 1925), the fifteenth-century stock book and sixteenth-century lease book of Fountains Abbey, the secular cartulary of Whixley, North Yorkshire (1430), numerous early Yorkshire charters, and much more.

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Initial from the Fountains Abbey stock book (late 15th century).

In 2015 all these collections were deposited by the Society for safe-keeping in the University of Leeds, Brotherton Library Special Collections, where they are again available for use by the public.

Sylvia Thomas is the former archivist and a past president of the YAHS, and a retired County Archivist of West Yorkshire. She is Joint Editor of the West Riding and Derbyshire volumes of Records of Early English Drama.

IMS Open Lecture Series. Legendary History and the Land: Vernacular Chronicles in 15th-Century England

Prof. Raluca Radulescu (Professor of Medieval Literature and Co-Director of the Institute for Medieval & Early Modern Studies, Bangor University)

Date : 4th October 2016
Time : 6pm
Location : Parkinson Building: Room 1.08.

The historical and cultural context in which vernacular chronicles were written at the end of the Middle Ages in England and the Continent was complex. Among the numerous types of extant chronicles, the Middle English Brut chronicle tradition, with more than 180 extant manuscripts, predominantly from the fifteenth century, stands out as a ‘best seller’. The Brut chronicle inherits the narrative of Britain’s origins from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae, and establishes, through its continuations up to fifteenth century, a seemingly uninterrupted line of succession for the kings of England from the foundation of the ‘nation’ by Brut, the great-grandson of Eneas. Versions of the Brut chronicle are found in abridged format, be they in Latin, French or English, in other types of chronicle, such as the genealogies. Through their diagrammatic design the genealogical chronicles provided their first audiences with powerful reminders of a particular interpretation of history, especially during the Wars of the Roses, when this type of chronicle was used, it is now believed, for political propaganda purposes.

However, the use of fifteenth-century genealogical chronicles, surviving in large numbers and in both roll and codex format, extended beyond immediate political aims. The genealogical chronicles, I argue, contributed to the creation of gentry, noble and royal family history, and shaped the imaginary of the ‘English nation’. Image-making and identity-making are thus crucial to our understanding of the cultural framework in which historical writing was produced in fifteenth-century England. My talk will address, among other, the following questions: How was the land perceived and presented in the late medieval English vernacular chronicles, particularly in the Brut and genealogies? How did the audiences of these chronicles interact with the codices and/or rolls containing these historical narratives – if at all? What gaps are there in our understanding of the function of these chronicles, and what work is still needed to fill them?

Raluca Radulescu is Professor of Medieval literature and co-director of the Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Bangor University, Wales. She is also general editor of the Journal of the International Arthurian Society and President of the British Branch of the same society. She has published widely on Arthurian and non-Arthurian romance, gentry culture, fifteenth-century political culture, Brut and genealogical chronicles, and the medieval miscellany. Her most recent books are Romance and Its Contexts in Fifteenth-Century England: Politics, Piety and Penitence (Cambridge: D.S.Brewer, 2013) and, co-edited with Margaret Connolly, Insular Books: Vernacular Manuscript Miscellanies in Late Medieval Britain, British Academy vol. 201 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2015).

Fulford Battlefield

The latest analysis from the Fulford Battlefield dig:-

After sorting the Fulford finds, a clear picture emerged of iron items: they are in the flow of what we can now identify as the ancient course of Germany Beck. With a few exceptions  the iron was found in this restricted location and is focused in one layer. (There are some images of finds in the dig 2016 folder on the Fulford Battlefield website)

The ‘anvils’ are the exception to this rule. Wooden models of three of the items were identified by Scandinavian experts recently as likely tools used by metal-workers to planish the surface of sheet metal; so they could have been employed to remove dents from shield bosses and helmets. These items lie just above the stream bed.

The suggestion is that they arrived here attached to a block of wood into which they were driven in order to be used by the ancient armourers. This prevented their easy recovery and the rising tides in the days following the battle (all the recycling sites identified were beside the beck) floated away. The ‘anvils’ would have acted as a keel causing them to remain submerged and when found, the items all have their pointed end above the head, suggesting some buoyancy at the tip. The first two finds of the season were two further ‘anvils’ making a collection of 5. We also know these, and the finds from 2013-2015, were all along the ancient line of the beck which would account for the deposition of these finds.

The survival of metal within the stream is taken as support for the recycling hypothesis which suggests that the battlefield was thoroughly cleared of metal debris and only items that were submerged in the beck avoided the clearup. The identification in 2004 of so many metal working tools and now the identification of the ‘anvils’  leave little doubt that something dramatic happened to interrupt the work and the suggestion is that this was the destruction of the Norse army at Stamford Bridge.

With the exception of a few pieces of lead all the other items were iron and this itself is noteworthy since normal metal surveys produce a greater number of non-ferrous items. So the domination of iron in the sample is interesting but just what one might expect in a battle area.

Among the finds are an unusual number of intriguing objects that are currently awaiting xray. During the initial cleaning and find sorting, three tubular objects were found the likes of which have not been seen before and we also have what has been catalogued as a ‘long flat object’.

The work has also allowed us to refine the dating model for the layers:  The stone layer was stable from  pre-historic, through Roman times and ends about the time of the battle. It was only in the century after the battle that sediments began to accumulate, probably caused by the influx of alluvium from the Ings.  We then have a deep layer of sand and alluvium which rapidly accumulated possibly associated with the construction of the bridge. This restricted the ebbing of the water allowing more material to be deposited. This buildup also caused the course of the beck to move a little to the north.

The road which we have variously described as a causeway, mediaeval track is looking increasingly as if it is a Roman military road. The width and construction are consistent with that interpretation but we need to do a little more work. The surface layers show many signs of repair which continued into Tudor times.
We will be extending this trench to the east to see what lies beyond the edge of the road. If any members are available this weekend, their help would be appreciated to carry out this work.

The final headline is the remains of what appears to be a small horse. It will be worth investigating if the pieces of horse vertebrae recovered at a slightly higher context in previous digs are ‘related’ to this horse because only skeletal elements that would have been close to the ground have been recovered this year. It is not easy to imagine why a horse wold have been left to rot near the crossing but that is what appears to have happened.

There is lots more analysis to do but the model of the battlesite is even clearer after all your hard work.
Thanks very very much.