Medieval Literature and History

We still lack a systematic or complete theory of tradition. By referring to the works of many major figures of the last century – Arendt, Boyer, Eisenstadt, Eliot, Gadamer, Goody, Hobsbawm, Kermode, Leavis, MacIntyre, Oakeshott, Pieper, Pocock, Popper, Prickett, Shils and others – I show that a theory of tradition mus…

• JOHN JAMES ALEXANDER

This paper traces the history of the Benedictine community of St Mary’s Cathedral Priory, Worcester, from 1534 until its surrender in 1540, with the aim of determining the number and identity of the monks of Worcester at the time of the dissolution. No deed of surrender survives for the priory that would record the na…

• DAVID EWAN THORNTON

This article examines the apparent practice among monks and regular canons in England before the Dissolution of dropping their family surnames on admission/profession, and adopting instead a new ‘monastic byname’, derived from a place name (toponym) or, by the late fifteenth century onwards, from a saint’s name (hagio…

• DAVID EWAN THORNTON

The purpose of the paper is to examine in detail the alleged submission by Welsh, Scottish and Scandinavian rulers to the English king Edgar at Chester in 973, and particularly the claim made in a number of Anglo‐Norman chronicles that these rulers rowed Edgar up and down the River Dee as part of this submission. All…

• DAVID EWAN THORNTON

Abstract If we define tradition too hastily we leave to one side the question of what the relevance of tradition is for us. Here the concept of tradition is opened up by considering the different views of it taken by Hannah Arendt, Michael Oakeshott and Alasdair MacIntyre. We see that each has put tradition into a ful…

• JOHN JAMES ALEXANDER

The Crusades shaped world history by changing the relations between Muslims and Christians. They targeted the Muslim World in the Mediterranean basin and lasted approximately two hundred years. The ways the Crusaders perceived themselves had a great influence on the start of their expedition to the East. This article…

Dionysian Music, Patriotic Sentiment, and Tennyson's Idylls of the King Ayşe Çelikkol (bio) In The Coming of Arthur, the first idyll in the narrative sequence of Idylls of the King,1 the youthful Gawain, who is not yet a knight, wanders a terrain that is not yet Arthur's: And Gawain went, and breaking into song Sprang…

Crewyd a chyhoeddwyd y fersiwn digidol hwn o'r cylchgrawn yn unol â thrwydded a roddwyd gan y cyhoeddwr. Gellir defynddio'r deunydd ynddo ar gyfer unrhyw bwrpas gan barchu hawliau moesol y crewyr. The National Library of Wales has created and published this digital version of the journal under a licence granted by the…

This article evaluates ordination lists preserved in bishops’ registers from late medieval England as evidence for the monastic orders, with special reference to religious houses in the diocese of Worcester, from 1300 to 1540. By comparing almost 7,000 ordination records collected from registers from Worcester and nei…

• DAVID EWAN THORNTON

Presented here is the first complete, all Latin index to the Domesday Book, comprising two 'Indices Personarum' and one 'Index Locorum'. The main 'Index Personarum' contains all references to people: named individuals, title-holders, and 'institutions' (collections of persons functioning as individual landholders in t…

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Lady Mary Wroth is an innovative and unconventional figure both in terms of her personal background and herliterary production within the sixteenth century social and political context. She is the author of the first sonnetsequence written by a woman, the producer of the first prose romance by a female pen, and one of…