The Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham, UK, is one of the finest small picture galleries... more The Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham, UK, is one of the finest small picture galleries in the world. It is home to a magnificent collection of paintings, drawings, sculptures, objets d'art and coins, and may justly claim to be the most representative collection of Western artwork formed in Britain over the past 100 years. Fully revised and updated, this catalog presents 120 of the finest works in the collection, with extended captions alongside glorious full-color illustrations. Bellini, Rubens, Gainsborough and all the major Impressionist painters are represented. The story of each work is described in detail, placing it in a wider art-historical context.
Look at one of the coins you’re carrying today: you’ll see the Queen’s portrait facing right and ... more Look at one of the coins you’re carrying today: you’ll see the Queen’s portrait facing right and Latin script around the royal head.
It seems our coins have looked this way forever - and that’s nearly true. But why? This exhibition uses money to explore and question our deep-seated familiarity with the Roman Empire’s imagery. Britain is not the only nation, empire or state to channel ancient Rome in this way: the Barber’s excellent collection of coins from the Byzantine Empire – as well as examples from Hungary, Georgia and Armenia – illustrate both the problems and possibilities of being genuine heirs of Rome.
Attempting to uncover the political uses of Rome’s legacy, this exhibition encourages the visitor to ponder why we are so often told of the empire’s importance – and whose interests such imagery serves.
Although historical work on the early Middle Ages relies to an enormous extent on the evidence pr... more Although historical work on the early Middle Ages relies to an enormous extent on the evidence provided by charters and other such documents, the paradigms within which such documents are interpreted have changed relatively slowly and unevenly. The critical turn, the increasing availability of digital tools and corpora for study, and the acceptance among charter specialists that their discipline can inform a wider field all encourage rethinking. From 2006 to 2011 a series of sessions at the Leeds International Medieval Congress addressed this by applying new critiques and technologies to early medieval diplomatic material from all over Europe. This volume collects some of the best of these papers by new and young scholars and adds related work from another session. The subjects range from reinterpretations of Carolingian or Anglo-Saxon political history, through the production and use of charters by all ranks of society and their subsequent preservation from Spain to Germany and England to Italy, to explorations of new media leading to new kinds of results from such evidence. The result is an array of new perspectives which makes an important contribution to recent reconsiderations of charter studies. It will inform a wide audience from all walks of medieval historical studies.
Publisher's blurb:
Pathways of Power takes a new approach to the sources for medieval social his... more Publisher's blurb:
Pathways of Power takes a new approach to the sources for medieval social history. Examining charters in order to establish social networks and connections between persons and groups, Jonathan Jarrett builds up a picture of how power was mediated from ruler to subject in what was to become Catalonia between the late ninth and the early eleventh centuries. A frontier between Christianity and Islam and between developing French and Spanish polities, this edge of the Carolingian Empire was at the forefront of Christian Europe's demographic and cultural expansion, and those in power there had to maintain their position in a situation of continual change. Jonathan Jarrett shows how they laid down pathways of power by making personal connections and recruiting intermediaries, thus circumventing their opponents and securing networks of friendship and clientage. Webs of association encompassed counts, ecclesiastics, and even distant kings as well as the ambitious, the locally-powerful, the humble and pioneering, and the standing populations in areas newly brought under government.
Jarrett's interest throughout is in the small histories of ordinary medieval men and women as much as those of the powerful. Pathways of Power brings dozens such people to life within the limits of surviving evidence. In doing so, Jarrett opens up an under-studied area and period for English-language readers by synthesising a lively local scholarship and by offering a nuanced model for others interested in frontier societies to follow.
The past few decades have witnessed great change in the study of the early Middle Ages in the Nor... more The past few decades have witnessed great change in the study of the early Middle Ages in the Northern Iberian Peninsula. Spanish and Portuguese historiographies have moved away from older grand narratives such as ‘Reconquest and Repopulation’, which traced a centuries-long process encompassing the ultimate victory of Christianity over Islam and the construction of distinct nations or national societies. The basic tenets of these and other essentialist approaches to a period traditionally seen as the cradle of Spain and Portugal have been questioned and now superseded by a clearer awareness of the territorial diversity characterising the 8th to 11th centuries. Yet the ballast of both nationalism and regionalism has obstructed meaningful comparison amongst the Iberian regions to date. Drawing on the work of the research group EarlyMedIberia, this article argues for a new trans-regional approach to Northern Iberia, looking beyond political and geographical boundaries to consider the whole in a comparative light, and stressing the commonalities between regional and local societies. It does so by providing an overview of the extant charter material from before 1100 (indicating the principal editions) and by reviewing the major historiography. The conclusion proposes a closer assessment of the differences and similarities amongst regional historiographies, based on a more nuanced understanding of how they have been moulded by the specificities of the charter corpus in each region, as the first step towards a more integrated, contextualised, and rigorously comparative approach to the early Middle Ages in Northern Iberia.
The standard term for a Byzantine base-metal coin is follis, but this word is older than the coin... more The standard term for a Byzantine base-metal coin is follis, but this word is older than the coins that numismatists so name, meaning especially a bagged amount of currency, a usage which overlapped with the coins. This article shows that when the first such coins were introduced, in the reform of Anastasius I in 498 CE, contemporaries in fact called them follares, not folleis. The article sets out the evidence for this, and disarms apparent evidence for the term follis as meaning coins. It concludes that numismatists and curators should probably abandon the term follis for coins before at least the reign of Justin II (565-85 CE).
The history of the Benedictine monastery of Sant Pere de Casserres, in modern-day Catalonia, is r... more The history of the Benedictine monastery of Sant Pere de Casserres, in modern-day Catalonia, is relatively well-studied, but includes an acceptance that it became a monastery in around 1005 by the agency of Viscountess Ermetruit of Osona. Before that, however, the site had been home to a church, whose congregation and priests are partly recorded in inscriptions preserved on an ancient altar-slab from the site. A critical re-examination of the monastery's supposed foundational documents, and their comparison with the slab and other surviving charters from the church's and monastery's archive, established that the conversion from church to monastery was neither quick nor simple, and probably contested by the church's old congregation. This article performs that re-examination and suggests that what the power dynamics and solidarities in the area may have been that could explain the record as we now have it. In so doing, as well as questioning both Ermetruit's role in and the traditional 1005 date for the monastic conversion of the site, it suggests that recognition by the would-be founders of the congregation's investment in their traditional place of worship was crucial to the eventual success of the foundation, a situation perhaps repeated in other times and places.
From Constantinople to Chang'an: Byzantine Gold Coins in the World of Late Antiquity, ed. by Sven Günther, Li Qiang, Lin Ying and Claudia Sode (Changchun: Institute for the History of Ancient Civilizations), 2021
By 400 AD, almost all money circulating in the provinces of the Roman Empire was just that, Roman... more By 400 AD, almost all money circulating in the provinces of the Roman Empire was just that, Roman; all provincial coinages and the money which had run in some of these areas before the rule of Rome was long gone, doubtless occasionally discovered in hoards but not any part of circulation. But the Roman system was on the point of break-up; by 500, all the provinces of the imperial West would be under the rule of kings whose rule owed only a grudging recognition to the imperial will. Meanwhile, in the East the Empire continued as that polity that scholars now call Byzantium, although of course the Romans of the East still considered it the Empire of the Romans.
The Empire had however been ruled in two parts (and sometimes more) since 395, and its money too was beginning to become distinctive. Paradoxically, this was more by its conservatism than any kind of deviation: solidi in the West held closely to older standards of portraiture while in the East the rarely-struck three-quarter face helmeted portrait became the norm, for example. This trend is only more marked after the end of direct imperial rule in the West, when although changes were forced upon the so-called successor kingdoms by metal shortage and factors of their much-shrunken monetary economies, these changes were reflected in the most minimal changes in iconography. Even the supposedly barbarous style of many coins by the sixth century can be partly explained by the imitation of an existing coin stock already much supplemented by imitations. The difference between East and West is even more sharply visible in copper-alloy coinage, which where it was struck at all in the West went back even to pre-imperial models, but in the East, from the reign of Anastasius I, adopted entirely new patterns.
This paper thus sets out these differences and the basics of their development, compares Eastern and Western pictures and finally argues that it is a measure of the security of the Byzantine empire that, unlike its western successors, it could risk innovation in its coinage.
Vides catalanes que han fet història, ed. by Borja de Riquer, 2020
"Borrell Ii va governar sobre la meitat de Catalunya Vella al llarge de mig segle, durant el qual... more "Borrell Ii va governar sobre la meitat de Catalunya Vella al llarge de mig segle, durant el qual es va extingir a França el govern de la dinastia reial carolíngia que havia ungit la seva família amb la dignitat comtal. Alhora, el califat musulmà d'al-Àndalus es va convertir en una amenaça greu i el seu or, que circulava per Catalunya, va conduir l'economia barcelonina a la inflació. Com a governant, Borrell va fer front a aquestes adversitats i als seus principals rivals: els seus cosins de Besalú i Cerdanya. Es va esforçar per millorarla senyoria, el govern i la justícia i, per tant, la seva pròpia posició als comtats, que va deixar preparats per a un future imprevisible.
El monestir de Sant Joan: Primer cenobi femení dels comtats catalans (887-1017), ed. by Irene Brugués, Coloma Boada and Xavier Costa (Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadía de Montserrat), 2019
It is somewhat rare to be able to analyze the membership of an early medieval women's religious c... more It is somewhat rare to be able to analyze the membership of an early medieval women's religious community in any detail. Sant Joan de Ripoll, which operated from the late ninth century until 1017 at modern-day Sant Joan de les Abadesses in Catalonia, provides not just this opportunity but the even rarer chance to evaluate the nuns’ command of writing, by means of a single original charter of 949 that several of them signed autograph. This article argues that the signatures of these nuns indicate that they had in fact been taught to write before joining the nunnery. They are thus a source for female lay, rather than religious, literacy in this time and area. Consolidating this, the article provides a prosopography of the known nuns derived from the other charters of the nunnery's part-surviving archive, including tracing some of their careers beyond the 1017 dissolution of the house. This shows that the members of the comital family who had founded the house and provided several of its abbesses were not otherwise frequent among the nuns; rather, the nunnery recruited from the local notables in its neighborhoods, to whose interest in female literacy these signatures therefore testify. Such support could not prevent the closure of the house, however, and the article closes with a reflection on the agency available to the nuns in a political sphere dominated by male, secular interests.
Work on the use of documents in the Middle Ages has now accepted that written record-keeping in E... more Work on the use of documents in the Middle Ages has now accepted that written record-keeping in Europe did not collapse with Roman rule, to be replaced only by orality and memory, but continued throughout the period, albeit to greater or lesser extents from place to place. Nonetheless, much remains unclear about how documents were actually used and understood following the Roman collapse, and how far that reflected continuity with the past. Using the numerous early medieval charters from modern Catalonia, this article argues that, instead of registration in public archives as under Rome, documents here were validated by social consensus about their contents, created by repeated recitation of the texts. This could even be used to create new documents. The article argues that this was an innovative replacement of older institutions of record intended to enable continuing document use, but that it blurs categories both of literacy and orality and of continuity and change; continuity of the land charter was here maintained despite the discontinuity and irrelevance of many other practices. Both documents and their users were agents in these processes, in ways that can instruct us about institutional survival and replacement in times of social change.
The “World of Medieval Islands” project invites the questioning of the category of island from me... more The “World of Medieval Islands” project invites the questioning of the category of island from medieval evidence, and coincided with another project of the author’s that was undertaking a similar exercise with medieval frontiers. Combining these two research areas, this article investigates two island, or island-like, zones that were situated at the edges of early medieval polities, primarily (though variably) of Umayyad al-Andalus, and compares their situation so as to elucidate what about their geopolitical situation made them island-like and how steady that likeness was. Working through the historiographies of the Balearic Islands, which shifted from Byzantine to Islamic control through a variably evaluated transition period, and of the Muslim settlement at La Garde-Freinet, Provence, from inception to extermination, the article concludes that what was island-like or indeed frontier-like about both areas was not continuous, and that the category “island” is historically contingent and subjective, despite its apparent geographic concreteness.
Despite numerous studies that stand against it, there remains a textbook consensus that agricultu... more Despite numerous studies that stand against it, there remains a textbook consensus that agriculture in the early Middle Ages was unusually low in productive capacity compared to the Roman and high medieval periods. The persistence of this view of early medieval agriculture can in part be explained by the requirement of a progress narrative in medieval economic history but is also attributable to the continuing influence of the work of Georges Duby. Duby’s view rested on repeated incorrect or inadequate readings of his source materials, which this article deconstructs. Better figures for early medieval crop yields are available which remove any evidential basis for a belief that early medieval agriculture was poorer in yield than that of later eras. The cliché of low early medieval yields must therefore be abandoned and a different basis for economic development be sought.
[Prompted by the invitation to think in terms of Bourdieu's theories of cultural capital, this ar... more [Prompted by the invitation to think in terms of Bourdieu's theories of cultural capital, this article applies that framework to the question of the engagement of local frontier communities in the expansive Christian polities of the Iberian Peninsula during the 9th and 10th centuries. Rather than assuming a teleological recreation of any earlier kingdom (as implied by the word 'Reconquista'), it asks why such groups should have sacrificed autonomy in favour of becoming part of these polities, and having examined a variety of answers and found them inadequate, suggests that rulers of expanding polities (here especially Catalonia, but with continual comparison to Castile-León) needed to offer both material and cultural capital to allow their jurisdiction to be enduringly recognised by such groups. Such 'combination capital' therefore deserves to be considered as an important motor of the eventual Christian domination of the peninsula, and may be a model that can be applied to other frontier situations.]
Franz Füeg, Corpus of the Nomismata from Anastasius II to John I in Constantinople 713–976: Struc... more Franz Füeg, Corpus of the Nomismata from Anastasius II to John I in Constantinople 713–976: Structure of the Issues; Corpus of Coin Finds; Contribution to the Iconographic and Monetary History, trans. H. Thomas Hofmänner, ed. Italo Vecchi (Lancaster, PA, 2007). Franz Füeg, Corpus of the Nomismata from Basil II to Eudocia 976–1067: Corpus from Anastasius II to John I 713–976 with Addenda; Structure of the Issues 976–1067; The Concave/ Convex Histamena; Contribution to the Iconographic and Monetary History, trans. H. Thomas Hofmänner, ed. Italo Vecchi (Lancaster, PA, 2014).
The Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham, UK, is one of the finest small picture galleries... more The Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham, UK, is one of the finest small picture galleries in the world. It is home to a magnificent collection of paintings, drawings, sculptures, objets d'art and coins, and may justly claim to be the most representative collection of Western artwork formed in Britain over the past 100 years. Fully revised and updated, this catalog presents 120 of the finest works in the collection, with extended captions alongside glorious full-color illustrations. Bellini, Rubens, Gainsborough and all the major Impressionist painters are represented. The story of each work is described in detail, placing it in a wider art-historical context.
Look at one of the coins you’re carrying today: you’ll see the Queen’s portrait facing right and ... more Look at one of the coins you’re carrying today: you’ll see the Queen’s portrait facing right and Latin script around the royal head.
It seems our coins have looked this way forever - and that’s nearly true. But why? This exhibition uses money to explore and question our deep-seated familiarity with the Roman Empire’s imagery. Britain is not the only nation, empire or state to channel ancient Rome in this way: the Barber’s excellent collection of coins from the Byzantine Empire – as well as examples from Hungary, Georgia and Armenia – illustrate both the problems and possibilities of being genuine heirs of Rome.
Attempting to uncover the political uses of Rome’s legacy, this exhibition encourages the visitor to ponder why we are so often told of the empire’s importance – and whose interests such imagery serves.
Although historical work on the early Middle Ages relies to an enormous extent on the evidence pr... more Although historical work on the early Middle Ages relies to an enormous extent on the evidence provided by charters and other such documents, the paradigms within which such documents are interpreted have changed relatively slowly and unevenly. The critical turn, the increasing availability of digital tools and corpora for study, and the acceptance among charter specialists that their discipline can inform a wider field all encourage rethinking. From 2006 to 2011 a series of sessions at the Leeds International Medieval Congress addressed this by applying new critiques and technologies to early medieval diplomatic material from all over Europe. This volume collects some of the best of these papers by new and young scholars and adds related work from another session. The subjects range from reinterpretations of Carolingian or Anglo-Saxon political history, through the production and use of charters by all ranks of society and their subsequent preservation from Spain to Germany and England to Italy, to explorations of new media leading to new kinds of results from such evidence. The result is an array of new perspectives which makes an important contribution to recent reconsiderations of charter studies. It will inform a wide audience from all walks of medieval historical studies.
Publisher's blurb:
Pathways of Power takes a new approach to the sources for medieval social his... more Publisher's blurb:
Pathways of Power takes a new approach to the sources for medieval social history. Examining charters in order to establish social networks and connections between persons and groups, Jonathan Jarrett builds up a picture of how power was mediated from ruler to subject in what was to become Catalonia between the late ninth and the early eleventh centuries. A frontier between Christianity and Islam and between developing French and Spanish polities, this edge of the Carolingian Empire was at the forefront of Christian Europe's demographic and cultural expansion, and those in power there had to maintain their position in a situation of continual change. Jonathan Jarrett shows how they laid down pathways of power by making personal connections and recruiting intermediaries, thus circumventing their opponents and securing networks of friendship and clientage. Webs of association encompassed counts, ecclesiastics, and even distant kings as well as the ambitious, the locally-powerful, the humble and pioneering, and the standing populations in areas newly brought under government.
Jarrett's interest throughout is in the small histories of ordinary medieval men and women as much as those of the powerful. Pathways of Power brings dozens such people to life within the limits of surviving evidence. In doing so, Jarrett opens up an under-studied area and period for English-language readers by synthesising a lively local scholarship and by offering a nuanced model for others interested in frontier societies to follow.
The past few decades have witnessed great change in the study of the early Middle Ages in the Nor... more The past few decades have witnessed great change in the study of the early Middle Ages in the Northern Iberian Peninsula. Spanish and Portuguese historiographies have moved away from older grand narratives such as ‘Reconquest and Repopulation’, which traced a centuries-long process encompassing the ultimate victory of Christianity over Islam and the construction of distinct nations or national societies. The basic tenets of these and other essentialist approaches to a period traditionally seen as the cradle of Spain and Portugal have been questioned and now superseded by a clearer awareness of the territorial diversity characterising the 8th to 11th centuries. Yet the ballast of both nationalism and regionalism has obstructed meaningful comparison amongst the Iberian regions to date. Drawing on the work of the research group EarlyMedIberia, this article argues for a new trans-regional approach to Northern Iberia, looking beyond political and geographical boundaries to consider the whole in a comparative light, and stressing the commonalities between regional and local societies. It does so by providing an overview of the extant charter material from before 1100 (indicating the principal editions) and by reviewing the major historiography. The conclusion proposes a closer assessment of the differences and similarities amongst regional historiographies, based on a more nuanced understanding of how they have been moulded by the specificities of the charter corpus in each region, as the first step towards a more integrated, contextualised, and rigorously comparative approach to the early Middle Ages in Northern Iberia.
The standard term for a Byzantine base-metal coin is follis, but this word is older than the coin... more The standard term for a Byzantine base-metal coin is follis, but this word is older than the coins that numismatists so name, meaning especially a bagged amount of currency, a usage which overlapped with the coins. This article shows that when the first such coins were introduced, in the reform of Anastasius I in 498 CE, contemporaries in fact called them follares, not folleis. The article sets out the evidence for this, and disarms apparent evidence for the term follis as meaning coins. It concludes that numismatists and curators should probably abandon the term follis for coins before at least the reign of Justin II (565-85 CE).
The history of the Benedictine monastery of Sant Pere de Casserres, in modern-day Catalonia, is r... more The history of the Benedictine monastery of Sant Pere de Casserres, in modern-day Catalonia, is relatively well-studied, but includes an acceptance that it became a monastery in around 1005 by the agency of Viscountess Ermetruit of Osona. Before that, however, the site had been home to a church, whose congregation and priests are partly recorded in inscriptions preserved on an ancient altar-slab from the site. A critical re-examination of the monastery's supposed foundational documents, and their comparison with the slab and other surviving charters from the church's and monastery's archive, established that the conversion from church to monastery was neither quick nor simple, and probably contested by the church's old congregation. This article performs that re-examination and suggests that what the power dynamics and solidarities in the area may have been that could explain the record as we now have it. In so doing, as well as questioning both Ermetruit's role in and the traditional 1005 date for the monastic conversion of the site, it suggests that recognition by the would-be founders of the congregation's investment in their traditional place of worship was crucial to the eventual success of the foundation, a situation perhaps repeated in other times and places.
From Constantinople to Chang'an: Byzantine Gold Coins in the World of Late Antiquity, ed. by Sven Günther, Li Qiang, Lin Ying and Claudia Sode (Changchun: Institute for the History of Ancient Civilizations), 2021
By 400 AD, almost all money circulating in the provinces of the Roman Empire was just that, Roman... more By 400 AD, almost all money circulating in the provinces of the Roman Empire was just that, Roman; all provincial coinages and the money which had run in some of these areas before the rule of Rome was long gone, doubtless occasionally discovered in hoards but not any part of circulation. But the Roman system was on the point of break-up; by 500, all the provinces of the imperial West would be under the rule of kings whose rule owed only a grudging recognition to the imperial will. Meanwhile, in the East the Empire continued as that polity that scholars now call Byzantium, although of course the Romans of the East still considered it the Empire of the Romans.
The Empire had however been ruled in two parts (and sometimes more) since 395, and its money too was beginning to become distinctive. Paradoxically, this was more by its conservatism than any kind of deviation: solidi in the West held closely to older standards of portraiture while in the East the rarely-struck three-quarter face helmeted portrait became the norm, for example. This trend is only more marked after the end of direct imperial rule in the West, when although changes were forced upon the so-called successor kingdoms by metal shortage and factors of their much-shrunken monetary economies, these changes were reflected in the most minimal changes in iconography. Even the supposedly barbarous style of many coins by the sixth century can be partly explained by the imitation of an existing coin stock already much supplemented by imitations. The difference between East and West is even more sharply visible in copper-alloy coinage, which where it was struck at all in the West went back even to pre-imperial models, but in the East, from the reign of Anastasius I, adopted entirely new patterns.
This paper thus sets out these differences and the basics of their development, compares Eastern and Western pictures and finally argues that it is a measure of the security of the Byzantine empire that, unlike its western successors, it could risk innovation in its coinage.
Vides catalanes que han fet història, ed. by Borja de Riquer, 2020
"Borrell Ii va governar sobre la meitat de Catalunya Vella al llarge de mig segle, durant el qual... more "Borrell Ii va governar sobre la meitat de Catalunya Vella al llarge de mig segle, durant el qual es va extingir a França el govern de la dinastia reial carolíngia que havia ungit la seva família amb la dignitat comtal. Alhora, el califat musulmà d'al-Àndalus es va convertir en una amenaça greu i el seu or, que circulava per Catalunya, va conduir l'economia barcelonina a la inflació. Com a governant, Borrell va fer front a aquestes adversitats i als seus principals rivals: els seus cosins de Besalú i Cerdanya. Es va esforçar per millorarla senyoria, el govern i la justícia i, per tant, la seva pròpia posició als comtats, que va deixar preparats per a un future imprevisible.
El monestir de Sant Joan: Primer cenobi femení dels comtats catalans (887-1017), ed. by Irene Brugués, Coloma Boada and Xavier Costa (Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadía de Montserrat), 2019
It is somewhat rare to be able to analyze the membership of an early medieval women's religious c... more It is somewhat rare to be able to analyze the membership of an early medieval women's religious community in any detail. Sant Joan de Ripoll, which operated from the late ninth century until 1017 at modern-day Sant Joan de les Abadesses in Catalonia, provides not just this opportunity but the even rarer chance to evaluate the nuns’ command of writing, by means of a single original charter of 949 that several of them signed autograph. This article argues that the signatures of these nuns indicate that they had in fact been taught to write before joining the nunnery. They are thus a source for female lay, rather than religious, literacy in this time and area. Consolidating this, the article provides a prosopography of the known nuns derived from the other charters of the nunnery's part-surviving archive, including tracing some of their careers beyond the 1017 dissolution of the house. This shows that the members of the comital family who had founded the house and provided several of its abbesses were not otherwise frequent among the nuns; rather, the nunnery recruited from the local notables in its neighborhoods, to whose interest in female literacy these signatures therefore testify. Such support could not prevent the closure of the house, however, and the article closes with a reflection on the agency available to the nuns in a political sphere dominated by male, secular interests.
Work on the use of documents in the Middle Ages has now accepted that written record-keeping in E... more Work on the use of documents in the Middle Ages has now accepted that written record-keeping in Europe did not collapse with Roman rule, to be replaced only by orality and memory, but continued throughout the period, albeit to greater or lesser extents from place to place. Nonetheless, much remains unclear about how documents were actually used and understood following the Roman collapse, and how far that reflected continuity with the past. Using the numerous early medieval charters from modern Catalonia, this article argues that, instead of registration in public archives as under Rome, documents here were validated by social consensus about their contents, created by repeated recitation of the texts. This could even be used to create new documents. The article argues that this was an innovative replacement of older institutions of record intended to enable continuing document use, but that it blurs categories both of literacy and orality and of continuity and change; continuity of the land charter was here maintained despite the discontinuity and irrelevance of many other practices. Both documents and their users were agents in these processes, in ways that can instruct us about institutional survival and replacement in times of social change.
The “World of Medieval Islands” project invites the questioning of the category of island from me... more The “World of Medieval Islands” project invites the questioning of the category of island from medieval evidence, and coincided with another project of the author’s that was undertaking a similar exercise with medieval frontiers. Combining these two research areas, this article investigates two island, or island-like, zones that were situated at the edges of early medieval polities, primarily (though variably) of Umayyad al-Andalus, and compares their situation so as to elucidate what about their geopolitical situation made them island-like and how steady that likeness was. Working through the historiographies of the Balearic Islands, which shifted from Byzantine to Islamic control through a variably evaluated transition period, and of the Muslim settlement at La Garde-Freinet, Provence, from inception to extermination, the article concludes that what was island-like or indeed frontier-like about both areas was not continuous, and that the category “island” is historically contingent and subjective, despite its apparent geographic concreteness.
Despite numerous studies that stand against it, there remains a textbook consensus that agricultu... more Despite numerous studies that stand against it, there remains a textbook consensus that agriculture in the early Middle Ages was unusually low in productive capacity compared to the Roman and high medieval periods. The persistence of this view of early medieval agriculture can in part be explained by the requirement of a progress narrative in medieval economic history but is also attributable to the continuing influence of the work of Georges Duby. Duby’s view rested on repeated incorrect or inadequate readings of his source materials, which this article deconstructs. Better figures for early medieval crop yields are available which remove any evidential basis for a belief that early medieval agriculture was poorer in yield than that of later eras. The cliché of low early medieval yields must therefore be abandoned and a different basis for economic development be sought.
[Prompted by the invitation to think in terms of Bourdieu's theories of cultural capital, this ar... more [Prompted by the invitation to think in terms of Bourdieu's theories of cultural capital, this article applies that framework to the question of the engagement of local frontier communities in the expansive Christian polities of the Iberian Peninsula during the 9th and 10th centuries. Rather than assuming a teleological recreation of any earlier kingdom (as implied by the word 'Reconquista'), it asks why such groups should have sacrificed autonomy in favour of becoming part of these polities, and having examined a variety of answers and found them inadequate, suggests that rulers of expanding polities (here especially Catalonia, but with continual comparison to Castile-León) needed to offer both material and cultural capital to allow their jurisdiction to be enduringly recognised by such groups. Such 'combination capital' therefore deserves to be considered as an important motor of the eventual Christian domination of the peninsula, and may be a model that can be applied to other frontier situations.]
Franz Füeg, Corpus of the Nomismata from Anastasius II to John I in Constantinople 713–976: Struc... more Franz Füeg, Corpus of the Nomismata from Anastasius II to John I in Constantinople 713–976: Structure of the Issues; Corpus of Coin Finds; Contribution to the Iconographic and Monetary History, trans. H. Thomas Hofmänner, ed. Italo Vecchi (Lancaster, PA, 2007). Franz Füeg, Corpus of the Nomismata from Basil II to Eudocia 976–1067: Corpus from Anastasius II to John I 713–976 with Addenda; Structure of the Issues 976–1067; The Concave/ Convex Histamena; Contribution to the Iconographic and Monetary History, trans. H. Thomas Hofmänner, ed. Italo Vecchi (Lancaster, PA, 2014).
XV International Numismatic Congress Taormina 2015: Proceedings, Dec 13, 2017
The concave shape of some Middle Byzantine coinage is one of its most striking features to the un... more The concave shape of some Middle Byzantine coinage is one of its most striking features to the uninitiated, but not all scholars have been equally intrigued by the phenomenon. Many have dealt with the subject in only a few lines. More work has focused on the technical question of how the coins were struck this way than on that of why, and none of the reasons proposed have been wholly free of difficulties. This paper briefly reviews those explanations and their problems and then offers a further possibility which may avoid most of the difficulties.
The Routledge Companion to Iberian Studies, ed. by Javier Muñoz-Bassols, Laura Lonsdale and Manuel Delgado, Apr 3, 2017
That the fall of most of the Iberian peninsula to Islamic control between 711 and 718 set up a di... more That the fall of most of the Iberian peninsula to Islamic control between 711 and 718 set up a division between Christian and Muslim is a truism, and that by the end of the Middle Ages the Christian powers had ended this situation equally so, but the roots of the process by which this came about have been cut increasingly short by the scholarship of the last fifty years. Where the constant and burning intent of the rulers of eighth- to tenth-century Galicia, Asturias, León, Castile, Navarre and what would become Catalonia to rebuild the erstwhile kingdom of the Goths for Christianity was axiomatic for scholars of the early twentieth century and the Franco era, more modern work has tended to stress rivalry between Christian powers, cultural mixing across the frontiers and emergent independent local identities in the zones between powers. Using textual, archaeological and architectural evidence to texture its account, this chapter endeavours to summarise these changes in thinking by providing a brief account of the major political developments at the frontier from 718 to the collapse of the Caliphate of Córdoba in 1031 and a critical examination of the writings that these areas produced, their agendas and the identities which they reveal. These findings are evaluated against the shifting trends of modern scholarship both Spanish and foreign, illustrating a move from the writing of national origin legends to a developing picture of proto-states expanding through their connections into their own frontiers.
Rory Naismith, Martin Allen & Elina Screen (edd.), Early Medieval Monetary History: studies in memory of Mark Blackburn, Nov 2014
The bovo soldare is an entity that appears, in both masculine and feminine genders and a variety ... more The bovo soldare is an entity that appears, in both masculine and feminine genders and a variety of spellings characteristic of the time, in transactional documents of
northern Christian Spain from Galicia to Castile in the ninth and tenth centuries. It almost invariably appears as a price: that is, it was given in exchange for goods of some other kind. In the records that survive, which ineluctably deal with durable property or they would hardly have been kept, these goods were almost always land. The term appears, simply enough, to mean an ox, or a cow, worth a solidus. The complication immediately arises, however, that this was not an area and period where coinage is known to have been struck: none had been struck since at latest the early eighth
century, in fact, and neither would it be again until, at earliest, the mid-eleventh. In any case, the usage, while persistent (attested from 796 to 1010 at least), is nonetheless extremely rare. This chapter takes new stock of this apparent monetary referent and suggests some implications of the system it supposedly demonstrates.
Antonella Ambrosio, Sébastien Barret & Georg Vogeler (edd.), Digital Diplomatics 2011: the computer as a tool for the diplomatist?, Sep 2014
The speed of change encapsulated in Moore’s Law and its consequences dictate that it is very easy... more The speed of change encapsulated in Moore’s Law and its consequences dictate that it is very easy for those who took the time to educate themselves in computing for the humanities to find that it has now moved far beyond them. Projects with cutting-edge methodologies blunt quickly at this pace. Nonetheless, it would seem that in some areas progress is being made more slowly, these being those where the techniques required are more those of cognition than of data management. This paper uses the example of the speaker’s own doctoral project, a ‘straight’ socio-political historical enquiry that happened to employ electronic means of an untheorised kind to manage the diplomatic data on which it was founded, to explore the line between these zones. By taking an early adopter’s position it uses the speaker’s primitive approaches for the storing and sorting of diplomatic data to ask, among other things: what judgements do we ask computers to make? can human judgements in diplomatics be trusted to a computer, and if not can we change that? Where is human input still required in digital diplomatics? And, can the advantages of human and computerised judgement be enjoyed at the same time without diminishment of either?
Problems and Possibilities of Early Medieval Charters, edited by Jonathan Jarrett & Allan Scott McKinley, pp. 1-19, Nov 2013
The introduction to the new volume Problems and Possibilities of Early Medieval Charters takes an... more The introduction to the new volume Problems and Possibilities of Early Medieval Charters takes an invigorating run around the field of early medieval diplomatic and its recent developments, before placing the book and its contributions within them.
Mr Lester Watson, who was an investment banker in Boston, Mass., seems to have started collecting... more Mr Lester Watson, who was an investment banker in Boston, Mass., seems to have started collecting medals while he was still at College – the earliest recorded provenance is a medal given to him by his uncle Charles Pfaff in 1904. He subsequently acquired most of the medals during the 1920s, some from US dealers, but mainly bought from the London firms Baldwins, Spink and Seaby during his visits to Britain. The collection is remarkable for its systematic representation of gallantry and campaign medals awarded to British servicemen during the period 1791-c. 1930. It has many rarities, including no fewer than two VCs and its New Zealand equivalent, of which only twenty-three have been awarded. Most of the medals had been acquired by 1928/29, and only a few more were added in the 1930s. The last pieces to be bought were in 1937.
At Lester Watson's death in 1959, the collection was inherited by his children, first of whom is Mr L. Hoyt Watson. It was by the gift of Hoyt Watson and his wife Anne that the collection became the property of Cambridge in America, who have loaned it to the Museum, and it is by their kindness and that of the Watson family that the Museum has been able to display the medals, both in the Imagery of War exhibition of 2006 and in this virtual display of the collection.
Victories celebrated, heroes honoured, the fallen remembered, the nation rallied – the portrayal ... more Victories celebrated, heroes honoured, the fallen remembered, the nation rallied – the portrayal of warfare in its different facets has challenged artists over many generations. This exhibition explores the depiction of war in medallic art. Official gallantry and campaign medals from the Lester Watson collection are juxtaposed with commemorative medals and other material.
Encounters with otherness in the Middle Ages could take place as a result of long and short journ... more Encounters with otherness in the Middle Ages could take place as a result of long and short journeys, from northern Europe to the Middle or Far East for trade or crusade or from one side of a mountain frontier to the other, taking the traveller from a Christian to a Muslim space. In every case travellers confronted existing ideas of the Other with direct experience to create new syntheses of knowledge or rejections of it. These three papers will examine the ways in which ideas about Others shaped accounts of meetings with them in a range of different narrative sources.
The frontier is the archetypal location of the independent warlord, the bandits who cannot be cau... more The frontier is the archetypal location of the independent warlord, the bandits who cannot be caught and the fugitive from authority. But over the tenth and eleventh centuries in the Iberian peninsula the great no-man's-land between Christian and Muslim authorities was slowly being reduced, and the space for such independents limited and contested. The role of these leaders is obviously crucial in the transition of such areas from no man's land to some man's land, yet we know very little about them or how they were induced to cooperate. This paper takes two fairly well-known cases and reevaluates them to ask whose interests were really being served when such a lord chose a side.
The judges of comital Barcelona have a long and respectable historiographical pedigree which has ... more The judges of comital Barcelona have a long and respectable historiographical pedigree which has lauded them as perhaps the most educated and impartial judiciary of the early Middle Ages. The learned clerical and professional judges visible in the Catalan charter evidence have also been compared to lay, unlearned, temporary judges elsewhere in the Carolingian and contemporary world. Beginning with the conviction that these latter judges also existed in the evidence from pre-1000 Catalonia, this study undertook a collection of as many published references to judges ('iudices') in this area, expecting to find a reform of the judiciary in Barcelobna around 970 that could be linked to other reforms I have attributed to Count-Marquis Borrell II of Barcelona (945–93). In fact, the picture is more complex, and suggests a different and less intentional origin of the learned cadre of judges, as well as an increasing professionalisation of what had until as late as the 940s been a largely communal, temporary and unofficial status. Future work will have to explain this governmentalisation of justice in the counties of the future Catalonia.
A new appraisal of the Ibero-Muslim frontier magnate family known as the Banū Qasī has become ve... more A new appraisal of the Ibero-Muslim frontier magnate family known as the Banū Qasī has become very apposite thanks to new work by Jesús Lorenzo Jiménez to cut the somewhat grandiose picture of the family's power in the historiography to date down to size. In this paper, therefore, I use the Banū Qasī as a test case for some of the methodological questions that I think we as historians need to ask when we use the word ‘frontier’, as part of the process of beginning to rethink it and its various meanings. I do this by taking three short periods of Banū Qasī history, interrogating them to get at the conditions of politics in the area and period, and then asking what about these made this family frontier lords, as opposed to any other kind, and how that situation changed over time.
This guest lecture reports on the project All That Glitters: the Byzantine solidus 307-1092, whic... more This guest lecture reports on the project All That Glitters: the Byzantine solidus 307-1092, which was carried out using coins from the collection of the Barber Institute between 2014 and 2016. It explains what was done, why it was necessary, and what the project's findings were, all within the wider context of the history and economy of the early and late Byzantine world from which the coins came.
The Roman Empire's cash economy failed in the west as the empire did, leaving in use rare gold co... more The Roman Empire's cash economy failed in the west as the empire did, leaving in use rare gold coins of steadily worsening quality. In the Byzantine East, however, money remained a plentiful everyday phenomenon. Returning to the Barber to open this series of lectures for Inheriting Rome: the imperial legacy in coinage and culture, the exhibition's curator Dr Jarrett explains how money could and could no longer be used across the post-Roman world.
The world of academic publishing can seem daunting to scholars at the start of their career. The ... more The world of academic publishing can seem daunting to scholars at the start of their career. The academic publishers Brill, partner of the EU-funded Power and Institutions in Medieval Islam and Christendom Initial Training Network (PIMIC-ITN), will offer a morning workshop giving postgraduate students and early career scholars a valuable insight into academic publishing, from both sides of the table.
Three sessions will look at three different formats of academic publishing. We will consider the all-important book proposal, with a focus on converting the PhD thesis into a monograph; the process of writing a journal article; and producing an edited volume of conference proceedings. A medievalist well-versed in academic publishing will kick off each session with a talk based on their own experiences, and the participants will then have the opportunity to consider matters from the other side of the table, as they conduct their own editorial board meetings discussing and assessing a book proposal / journal article / volume of conference proceedings. The workshop leaders, as well as academic publishers, will be on hand to guide and advise the participants in their discussions; there will also be opportunity for a questions and answer session.
In the 950s and 960s Borrell II, Count of Barcelona and several other territories, faced the forc... more In the 950s and 960s Borrell II, Count of Barcelona and several other territories, faced the forces of Islam across an open frontier to his south and west, which he spent most of his long rule (945-93) attempting to manage. During that time Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitos was also seeking, with episodic success, to manage another long frontier with Islam. More than contemporaneity and Muslim enemies makes these rulers comparable, despite their very different standings: both their fathers retired to monastic life, they both had to share initial power with siblings and both sent embassies to the same rulers of Córdoba and Rome. More importantly, while some of their approaches to their problems were extremely different, particularly in the military sphere, they both made extensive use of carefully-engineered versions of the past to justify, legitimate and build upon their status and power. This paper will use Constantine's De Administrando Imperio and De Ceremoniis, with a suitably critical eye, in comparison with Borrell's equally but differently complex charter corpus, to deepen these comparisons and ask what we can say about their management and description of their frontiers that brings us closer to what the tenth-century frontier was for its contemporaries.
The area of the modern Catalonia as composed in the tenth century is caught between two models fo... more The area of the modern Catalonia as composed in the tenth century is caught between two models for its government and, especially, the organisation of military service: on the one hand, the fully-developed (if disputed) Carolingian apparatus of state, which even seems to be attested from local documentation, and on the other, the later arrangement of service for homage that many would call feudal, of which eleventh-century Catalonia has become an archetype. This paper argues that the limited evidence for military service from the tenth century, in the form of charter texts and the limited military archaeology so far available fits neither of these models. While it may be that relevant evidence does not survive, it seems more rigorous to admit that we cannot prove either model here and that what we actually have evidence for is a much-reduced sub-Carolingian system in which military service was effectively confined to major landowners and their retinues. It is suggested that this model may apply more widely in the period.
A roundtable discussion with Amber Handy, Mississippi Univ. for Women; Julie A. Hofmann, Shenando... more A roundtable discussion with Amber Handy, Mississippi Univ. for Women; Julie A. Hofmann, Shenandoah Univ.; Jonathan Jarrett, Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Univ. of Birmingham; Phyllis G. Jestice, College of Charleston; and Martha Rampton,
Pacific Univ.
Perhaps no area in the Central Middle Ages had so famously worldly an episcopate as that which is... more Perhaps no area in the Central Middle Ages had so famously worldly an episcopate as that which is now Catalonia. While the underage simoniac warrior Archbishop Guifré of Narbonne is an extreme example, he was far from alone: two bishops died raiding Córdoba in 1010, one of their colleagues, Sal·la of Urgell, died that year after buying the succession to his bishopric for his nephew, and his earlier colleague Miró of
Girona was simultaneously a count. Yet Sal·la excommunicated laymen for appropriating tithes and Pope Benedict VII charged Miró with the combat of simony in his homeland; these men were not deaf to the reform movement. This paper will show how these two were exemplars of a wider use of political opportunity and the reform movement which established a
new profile for bishops as leaders of the future territory of Catalonia and even the architects of its unity.
Although most surviving early medieval charters granting land to the Church threaten spiritual pe... more Although most surviving early medieval charters granting land to the Church threaten spiritual penalties for infringement, from the anger of God to eternal crucifixion in the Inferno, it has become a commonplace among scholars that these sanctions were ineffective, the resort of a Church without other means of defence after the decay of a public judiciary in the West. Are we then to assume that those threatened doubted the efficacy of such sanctions? Did they not believe that the Church could engage God and the saints to enact such consequences? And if so, why did the use of these clauses persist? Were they merely formulaic, thus implying that the Church too doubted their active import? This communication will test such ideas with two different institutional corpora, those of the cathedral of Sant Pere de Vic in what is now Catalonia and the monastery of St-Pierre de Beaulieu in the Limousin, and argue that while the general aim of such clauses was the appropriate representation of the Church’s other-worldly backing, variations in their usage must be explained in other terms which let historians get closer to individual pieties and preoccupations, and potentially also individual doubts and disbeliefs.
This paper continues an earlier project attempting to make a demographic study of the ecclesiasti... more This paper continues an earlier project attempting to make a demographic study of the ecclesiastical structures of tenth-century Manresa, a town in then-frontier Catalonia. Study of this area is complicated by the fact that almost all relevant documents come not from the town itself but the monastery of Sant Benet de Bages outside, and have been accessible to most historians for some years. `Big data' techniques allow us to deal with some of these limitations and offer a preliminary assessment of the amount that these documents have to tell us about non-monastic priestly presence in the area. It is argued that they show that pastoral organisation was ongoing, and for much of the area coordinated directly from the city by presumably-itinerant clergy, while local churches and their staff were established more slowly behind the frontier.
The very last years of Carolingian rule in the West have been seen as decisive for the separation... more The very last years of Carolingian rule in the West have been seen as decisive for the separation of the area that is now Catalonia from the larger West Frankish kingdom whence it had its origins as a political entity: between the sack of Barcelona 985 and the succession of King Hugh Capet in 987, the counties of the future Catalonia are held to have come to a collective realisation that they stood alone against the times in which they found themselves. Such a date is very late for the allegiance of any Carolingian periphery to the core, however: of what could such loyalties really consist? This paper explores the various forms of evidence that can be brought to bear on this question and concludes firstly that loyalty was strong enough that it could be exploited politically by counts and kings and their followers, but that its strength was too limited to assist in real crisis, and secondly that it was those crises, in 957 and in 985, that therefore broke the last ties to the Carolingians in Catalonia.
Uploads
It seems our coins have looked this way forever - and that’s nearly true. But why? This exhibition uses money to explore and question our deep-seated familiarity with the Roman Empire’s imagery. Britain is not the only nation, empire or state to channel ancient Rome in this way: the Barber’s excellent collection of coins from the Byzantine Empire – as well as examples from Hungary, Georgia and Armenia – illustrate both the problems and possibilities of being genuine heirs of Rome.
Attempting to uncover the political uses of Rome’s legacy, this exhibition encourages the visitor to ponder why we are so often told of the empire’s importance – and whose interests such imagery serves.
Pathways of Power takes a new approach to the sources for medieval social history. Examining charters in order to establish social networks and connections between persons and groups, Jonathan Jarrett builds up a picture of how power was mediated from ruler to subject in what was to become Catalonia between the late ninth and the early eleventh centuries. A frontier between Christianity and Islam and between developing French and Spanish polities, this edge of the Carolingian Empire was at the forefront of Christian Europe's demographic and cultural expansion, and those in power there had to maintain their position in a situation of continual change. Jonathan Jarrett shows how they laid down pathways of power by making personal connections and recruiting intermediaries, thus circumventing their opponents and securing networks of friendship and clientage. Webs of association encompassed counts, ecclesiastics, and even distant kings as well as the ambitious, the locally-powerful, the humble and pioneering, and the standing populations in areas newly brought under government.
Jarrett's interest throughout is in the small histories of ordinary medieval men and women as much as those of the powerful. Pathways of Power brings dozens such people to life within the limits of surviving evidence. In doing so, Jarrett opens up an under-studied area and period for English-language readers by synthesising a lively local scholarship and by offering a nuanced model for others interested in frontier societies to follow.
本文认为,事实上,改革在当时并不受欢迎,这是因为阿纳斯塔修斯试图将罗马钱币的使用规则从 钱币的自身价值转变为信用价值,但这一点并没有得到足够的重视."
The Empire had however been ruled in two parts (and sometimes more) since 395, and its money too was beginning to become distinctive. Paradoxically, this was more by its conservatism than any kind of deviation: solidi in the West held closely to older standards of portraiture while in the East the rarely-struck three-quarter face helmeted portrait became the norm, for example. This trend is only more marked after the end of direct imperial rule in the West, when although changes were forced upon the so-called successor kingdoms by metal shortage and factors of their much-shrunken monetary economies, these changes were reflected in the most minimal changes in iconography. Even the supposedly barbarous style of many coins by the sixth century can be partly explained by the imitation of an existing coin stock already much supplemented by imitations. The difference between East and West is even more sharply visible in copper-alloy coinage, which where it was struck at all in the West went back even to pre-imperial models, but in the East, from the reign of Anastasius I, adopted entirely new patterns.
This paper thus sets out these differences and the basics of their development, compares Eastern and Western pictures and finally argues that it is a measure of the security of the Byzantine empire that, unlike its western successors, it could risk innovation in its coinage.
It seems our coins have looked this way forever - and that’s nearly true. But why? This exhibition uses money to explore and question our deep-seated familiarity with the Roman Empire’s imagery. Britain is not the only nation, empire or state to channel ancient Rome in this way: the Barber’s excellent collection of coins from the Byzantine Empire – as well as examples from Hungary, Georgia and Armenia – illustrate both the problems and possibilities of being genuine heirs of Rome.
Attempting to uncover the political uses of Rome’s legacy, this exhibition encourages the visitor to ponder why we are so often told of the empire’s importance – and whose interests such imagery serves.
Pathways of Power takes a new approach to the sources for medieval social history. Examining charters in order to establish social networks and connections between persons and groups, Jonathan Jarrett builds up a picture of how power was mediated from ruler to subject in what was to become Catalonia between the late ninth and the early eleventh centuries. A frontier between Christianity and Islam and between developing French and Spanish polities, this edge of the Carolingian Empire was at the forefront of Christian Europe's demographic and cultural expansion, and those in power there had to maintain their position in a situation of continual change. Jonathan Jarrett shows how they laid down pathways of power by making personal connections and recruiting intermediaries, thus circumventing their opponents and securing networks of friendship and clientage. Webs of association encompassed counts, ecclesiastics, and even distant kings as well as the ambitious, the locally-powerful, the humble and pioneering, and the standing populations in areas newly brought under government.
Jarrett's interest throughout is in the small histories of ordinary medieval men and women as much as those of the powerful. Pathways of Power brings dozens such people to life within the limits of surviving evidence. In doing so, Jarrett opens up an under-studied area and period for English-language readers by synthesising a lively local scholarship and by offering a nuanced model for others interested in frontier societies to follow.
本文认为,事实上,改革在当时并不受欢迎,这是因为阿纳斯塔修斯试图将罗马钱币的使用规则从 钱币的自身价值转变为信用价值,但这一点并没有得到足够的重视."
The Empire had however been ruled in two parts (and sometimes more) since 395, and its money too was beginning to become distinctive. Paradoxically, this was more by its conservatism than any kind of deviation: solidi in the West held closely to older standards of portraiture while in the East the rarely-struck three-quarter face helmeted portrait became the norm, for example. This trend is only more marked after the end of direct imperial rule in the West, when although changes were forced upon the so-called successor kingdoms by metal shortage and factors of their much-shrunken monetary economies, these changes were reflected in the most minimal changes in iconography. Even the supposedly barbarous style of many coins by the sixth century can be partly explained by the imitation of an existing coin stock already much supplemented by imitations. The difference between East and West is even more sharply visible in copper-alloy coinage, which where it was struck at all in the West went back even to pre-imperial models, but in the East, from the reign of Anastasius I, adopted entirely new patterns.
This paper thus sets out these differences and the basics of their development, compares Eastern and Western pictures and finally argues that it is a measure of the security of the Byzantine empire that, unlike its western successors, it could risk innovation in its coinage.
northern Christian Spain from Galicia to Castile in the ninth and tenth centuries. It almost invariably appears as a price: that is, it was given in exchange for goods of some other kind. In the records that survive, which ineluctably deal with durable property or they would hardly have been kept, these goods were almost always land. The term appears, simply enough, to mean an ox, or a cow, worth a solidus. The complication immediately arises, however, that this was not an area and period where coinage is known to have been struck: none had been struck since at latest the early eighth
century, in fact, and neither would it be again until, at earliest, the mid-eleventh. In any case, the usage, while persistent (attested from 796 to 1010 at least), is nonetheless extremely rare. This chapter takes new stock of this apparent monetary referent and suggests some implications of the system it supposedly demonstrates.
At Lester Watson's death in 1959, the collection was inherited by his children, first of whom is Mr L. Hoyt Watson. It was by the gift of Hoyt Watson and his wife Anne that the collection became the property of Cambridge in America, who have loaned it to the Museum, and it is by their kindness and that of the Watson family that the Museum has been able to display the medals, both in the Imagery of War exhibition of 2006 and in this virtual display of the collection.
Three sessions will look at three different formats of academic publishing. We will consider the all-important book proposal, with a focus on converting the PhD thesis into a monograph; the process of writing a journal article; and producing an edited volume of conference proceedings. A medievalist well-versed in academic publishing will kick off each session with a talk based on their own experiences, and the participants will then have the opportunity to consider matters from the other side of the table, as they conduct their own editorial board meetings discussing and assessing a book proposal / journal article / volume of conference proceedings. The workshop leaders, as well as academic publishers, will be on hand to guide and advise the participants in their discussions; there will also be opportunity for a questions and answer session.
Pacific Univ.
Girona was simultaneously a count. Yet Sal·la excommunicated laymen for appropriating tithes and Pope Benedict VII charged Miró with the combat of simony in his homeland; these men were not deaf to the reform movement. This paper will show how these two were exemplars of a wider use of political opportunity and the reform movement which established a
new profile for bishops as leaders of the future territory of Catalonia and even the architects of its unity.