So far I have argued that a byproduct of the now-lost Latin history of the world which Sæmundr composed in Iceland was the Langfeðgatal. This was a genealogy brought out to vindicate his son Loptr's marriage to a daughter of King Magnús Barefoot in 1120. This genealogy, the Langfeðgatal, was unknown to the Chronicon Lethrense in the third quarter of the twelfth century, but from the 1180s onwards it became essential for the historians of Lund, Sven Aggesen and Saxo Grammaticus. Their priority was then to expand the meagre number of known Danish kings and stories, Sven with reluctance and Saxo beyond all previous limits. As we have seen, it is likely that Saxo got his stories, those that were both from and connected to Skjǫldunga saga, largely from Páll Jónsson when he visited Lund to be consecrated bishop in April 1195. Páll is held to have compiled this work, and in the previous chapter I have argued that he reinforced Skjǫldunga saga with details from a text of Beowulf. As a history of Danish kings copied in English prose, Beowulf would have assisted Páll's growing genealogy in Langfeðgatal. The present chapter will speculate that he got this text from his uncle, Þorlákr Þórhallsson, who would have brought it back from Lincoln for Sæmundr's family, together with the following Latin works of British and English history.

This article examines hagiographical evidence for medieval Brittany's rich culture, in particular its traditions about Arthur: legends that attest to the region's connections with Tatlock's ‘great world’ and yet are distinctively Breton. The Arthurian Latin-Breton Saints’ Lives considered here are rarely discussed in medieval scholarship, and the larger argument that they support – that they testify to a vibrant medieval Breton culture – is seldom advanced. Indeed, the disparaging remark in the epigraph to this article still represents widespread attitudes towards medieval Brittany, which both British and French historians have characterised as ‘peripheral, backward, and, because of its Celtic history, different and atypical’. This stance towards modern Brittany appears to exist even at a national level. The French state's aggressive attempts to promote (French) linguistic uniformity in previously predominantly Breton-speaking areas, thus promoting ‘an internalised sense of inferiority and shame’, may be viewed as just one example. The history of such perceptions of Brittany as far-flung and rustic goes back much further. It is telling that the region's westernmost department is called in French ‘Finistère’, derived from the Latin finis terræ, meaning ‘the end of the earth/land’. However, historian Caroline Brett's recent work indirectly challenges conceptions of medieval Brittany as a cultural backwater through demonstrating heavy Breton involvement in English and French political and dynastic affairs between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, and close cultural ties between Brittany and Wales. The present examination of Arthur's hagiographical characterisation reinforces the case for medieval western Brittany's cultural sophistication.

The appendices may be found online at https://tinyurl.com/palatinelists.

Appendix A: Conforming Irish Palatines.

Appendix B: Young Single Men.

Appendix C: SPG/SPCK/Commissioners for Palatines.

Appendix D: Shipping Lists.

Appendix E: Churchmen’s Lists.

Appendix F: Main Database.

Book VI is most usefully perceived as a discussion of government considered in its three functions: judicial, legislative, and executive. It is further testimony to Gower's growing sense of the inadequacy of the three estates as a device for a socio-political analysis of England in the late fourteenth century. The book begins with a scathing account of legal practitioners, starting with the pleaders, the experts of the common law consulted by individuals involved in suits brought before the royal courts. Supposedly guarantors of the king's justice which his judges are obligated to deliver, corrupt lawyers are driven by avarice and concerned primarily with the acquisition of property, twisting the law through sophistry and trickery. The judges, sheriffs, bailiffs, and witnesses, who likewise share responsibility for the failure of justice in the realm, are attacked in their turn for their own avaricious misconduct. Although Gower's major judicial concern is the common law, he also evidences knowledge of the other legal codes – customary, civil and canon – present in fourteenthcentury England.

The legislative branch is assailed in its expression as king's councils, in which his counsellors presumably advise the monarch of the best courses of action. Although parliament was becoming increasingly important, Gower does not include it in his discussion. Legislatures were not seen in his day as the inevitable outcome of a government's perceived need for guidance from constituent assemblies. The history of the papacy, which mirrors imperial and regal courts, offers a fruitful comparison.

The rise of the court as the most important stage for politics was a major trend in the nineteenth century. Here the political infighting between different factions took place, here the victories over rival factions had to be won. Successful political careers were made at the court and nowhere else. The capital thus was also the place where a new elite emerged. The emerging political centres tried to push through a growing bureaucratisation, best visible in an array of new offices and titles among the king's entourage. Nonetheless, the number of new offices does not inevitably indicate a growing bureaucratisation. Offices were often awarded to loyal clients as were slaves, estates and the spoils of war. More important, however, was the marginalisation of power loci outside the court as the centre tried to grab the political and economic decision-making from the local authorities. This, however, was a fragile and often incomplete process, where established patterns of power-broking mingled with the new models enforced by the political centre. For the expanding states like Buganda and Rwanda, the logistical and infrastructural challenges were enormous. Military expeditions had to be organised and supported with food and labour; newly acquired territories had to be incorporated and administered. War, however, was only one dimension of this expansion. Interlacustrine states intensified their diplomacy with each other and with other powers outside the region. Trade brought an influx of new goods and of new actors. To manage these contacts, the interlacustrine powers needed skilful diplomats and administrators. New offices developed from the households of the ruler, while others were created from scratch, based on new understandings of territorial administration and state power. Some societies adopted successful models from their neighbours, other were forcefully pushed to do so by the hegemonic powers of the region.

Fantasy, Imagination, and Wonder

Among several detailed, step-by-step medieval guides to contemplative technique that were composed within the century between about 1165 and 1270, two stand out as particularly influential: Richard of St. Victor's De contemplatione maior (alternatively called “The Mystical Ark” or “Benjamin Major” in English) and greatly influenced by it, composed around one hundred years later, Bonaventure's Itinerarium mentis in Deum (“The mind's journey into God”). In this chapter, I focus on the central importance of “envisioning,” a particular kind of mental visio, as the primary engine of meditation for theological contemplation. In medieval monastic life envisioning was a learned craft practice, not reserved only to momentary rapture (though for a very few, it might include such a rare, divine gift), nor was it a medical or drug-induced condition (though my own students have sometimes assumed it must have been). Indeed, the craft of mental envisioning was not thought to be different from reasoning, but the first essential step in every sort of rationally imagined composing.

Rhetoric is a profoundly social art, directed primarily to composition with the goal not of “self-expression” nor of communicating over a distance to some statistically constructed market of consumers, but of publicly persuading a particular audience of various people who are physically present with you in a particular place and time to do something, such as to believe you because they have enough trust (fides) in what you say to be willing to believe and act as you have convinced them to do.

Oxford's colleges are home to one of the richest concentrations of medieval charters anywhere in Britain and Ireland. If this fact has not exactly gone unnoticed, it is not since the days of Herbert Salter (1863–1951), whose knowledge of Oxford and its history made him the undisputed heir to Anthony Wood (1632–1695), that they have been worked on systematically as a collective whole. This article focuses on what is easily the largest single collection of charters within Oxford, which is today housed at Magdalen College, where Salter himself held a research fellowship from 1918 to 1939. It does so within the context of scribal identification – and self-identification – in the period before c. 1300. As any undergraduate student of medieval history soon learns, this was a crucial period for the development of the written word in northern Europe, the mechanics of which, in England, have been traced most memorably – and most influentially – by Michael Clanchy. It is nevertheless one in which most scholarly attention has focused on the literary and documentary cultures found in medieval England's most celebrated abbeys, cathedrals, and major urban centres, of which Oxford itself was one.

This article takes a different approach by exploring the activities of those working as charter scribes in what might be considered somewhat more ‘ordinary’ – although no less important – settings, specifically those found in medieval England's small towns, villages, and hamlets (what might otherwise be referred to as its ‘hinterlands’).

5.1 Introduction: Viking Raids on Churches and the Political Imperative

As was shown in Chapter 4, after 850, Viking theft of church metalwork is unheard of, and church burning – perhaps to extort protection payments, if English and Frankish evidence be a guide – is rare. Since they run counter to the tendency to report some raids in greater detail after c. 850, there seems little doubt that both of these were real developments. Such modified behaviour must be linked with Viking aims and strategies, perhaps with settlement at Dublin and elsewhere. This would also explain sparing churches within a radius of thirty-five kilometres of Dublin, noted in Chapter 3. A further significant development was alliance with Gaelic Irish leaders to raid churches, first noticed in 842 and again in 850. At this level at least, political considerations began to play a part. A direct link between Viking raiding and involvement in Irish dynastic politics is studied closely in the chapters that follow this. Alfred Smyth long ago proposed that Viking politico-military alignments determined the choice of some churches raided in the first half of the tenth century. Poul Holm made a similar point about several later ninth-century raids.

These are valid insights, and in an earlier publication I detected such a dimension to many Viking church raids in the second half of the ninth century. After 850 up to 900, some three quarters of Viking raids on churches may be linked with various degrees of confidence to documented relations between Vikings and Gaelic Irish dynasts.

The 47th Battle Conference took place in Durham between 19 and 22 July 2024. Proceedings began with short visits to look at some of the manuscripts from the cathedral library, now housed on Palace Green. I am very grateful to Professor Richard Gameson both for selecting the manuscripts and for talking around them so enthusiastically, entertainingly, and informatively to each of the four groups in turn. I would also like formally to thank Judy Burg and Richard Higgins for allowing us into the library, with the associated disruption to the normal Friday afternoon schedule – with additional thanks to the latter for joining in with the visits, too. The Allen Brown Memorial Lecture, delivered by Professor Graham Loud, took place in the Pemberton Building, just across Palace Green from the library. The lecture was followed by drinks and dinner in the castle – which also allowed some of the delegates to seize the opportunity to look around the Norman chapel and at the Le Puiset doorway outside the usual castle opening hours.

The remainder of the conference took place at Collingwood College. Thanks are due to Jessica Stott and Elaine Halliday of Event Durham for their help with the booking. I am even more grateful to the staff who looked after us while we were there, with particular thanks to Kate (surname, alas, unknown) and her colleagues who opened the bar for us before dinner – and for some hours afterwards – on the Saturday and Sunday. The terrace outside the bar was the setting for an intense Jenga competition (one of the conference traditions), which provided entertainment for all concerned on the two nights we spent at Collingwood – and which really helped to bring the conference (including the Collingwood bar staff) together.

The author of this book is neither Romani nor Hungarian, or Austrian, nor do I have ties of family or heritage with any of these peoples. I come to this subject, however, as a lifelong professional musician who has made most of my living for decades as a player in small bands on the fringes of mainstream classical music, though I would be the first to admit that none of them are as successful as most of those in this book, nor have I had to overcome anything like the same obstacles of class and prejudice. The word “band” is often used ironically in the classical world, in deference to its associations with what is often perceived as the antithetical popular end of the music spectrum, but it is still the word that best captures the professional milieu of the musicians in this book. Although they played traditional orchestral instruments (though with a particular emphasis on the cimbalom), their trademark reinvention and improvisation made them a liminal enigma outside the paradigms of “great composers” and “great works”; after-hours denizens of an urban demimonde who were viewed as charlatans and tricksters by many and later disowned by the non-Romani Hungarian musical establishment. At the same time, though, they were standard-bearers for an intense Hungarian musical patriotism, intrepid travelers over remote continents, and venerated by musicians of the caliber of Liszt and Brahms.

The period chosen for this book begins in the second half of the nineteenth century, when Hungarian bands were still only occasional visitors to Vienna, and is extended forwards to 1914 to encompass the first flourishing of commercial recordings.

INTRODUCTION

This composite publication mainly narrates the events that transpired during and after the demonic possession of Christian Shaw, daughter of John Shaw of Bargarran. Shaw's tower-house of Bargarran was in the parish of Erskine, presbytery of Paisley and county of Renfrewshire. Christian Shaw, who was approaching the age of 11 when the events began, behaved in various bizarre ways between the autumn of 1696 and spring of 1697, and accused several people of causing her ‘fits’. The ‘Narrative’ itself, at the heart of the tract, relates the story of Christian's behaviour.

The publication also contains further material. It goes on to discuss the trial, in Paisley in April and May 1697, of seven accused witches who were said to have bewitched Christian: Katherine Campbell, Margaret Fulton, Margaret Laing, James Lindsay alias Curate, John Lindsay alias Bishop, John Lindsay in Barloch, and Agnes Nasmith. All of these were convicted on 19 May, and executed in Paisley on 10 June. An eighth suspect, John Reid, hanged himself in prison on 21 May. Numerous further suspects had initial proceedings brought against them, and some of the promoters of the prosecutions sought to continue the trials for some time afterwards. The trial records themselves have been published in the companion volume to the present one. During the trial, the prosecution produced detailed, learned and wide-ranging arguments combining demonology and law – arguments that the tract expounds and links to the case.

These events occurred during the later and declining stages of the Scottish witch-hunt. Executions on this scale attracted attention at the time, and the Bargarran case has often been discussed since. It was the last local panic to result in significant numbers of executions in Scotland.

When giving a library tour, former Cathedral Librarian Nicholas Bennett would begin by saying, ‘In terms of its buildings and collections, Lincoln Cathedral Library ranks among the top five cathedral libraries in the country’. These buildings are the Medieval Library of c. 1422 and the Wren Library of 1676. It is remarkable that both are still in use, that the building of the more modern library did not replace the old one, and that they both retain original fittings that were purpose-made for them. Of outstanding importance is the fact that Dean Michael Honywood's collection of books is still kept in the library he asked Sir Christopher Wren to design. These two buildings, which take up the north side of the cloister, have the appearance of a unified, classical design when viewed from the cloister garth. Most of this expanse is the Wren Library; behind the two cross windows on the north is the Medieval Library. When its length was truncated in 1789, its façade facing the cloister was made to look as if it was part of the classical Wren Library.

Before Building a Library

The first library catalogue was compiled by Chancellor Hamo in the mid-twelfth century, naming donors and the books they gave or bequeathed to the cathedral. It is bound in Volume I of the Lincoln Chapter Bible (MS1), which was given by Archdeacon Nicholas of Huntingdon for use in the new cathedral. Additions to this page continued until the early thirteenth century, including three books given by St Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln.