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Unveiling the medieval world
Step into the medieval world, where the echoes of history come to life. Manchester Medieval Sources Online offers a captivating array of first-hand accounts, vividly illustrating the realities of life in this bygone era. Many of these accounts are presented in English for the very first time. From the harrowing tales of the Black Death to the gripping drama of the Norman invasion, our collection immerses you in the heart of medieval experiences.
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What sets this collection apart is a commitment to providing extensive introductory and explanatory materials. These resources serve as your compass, helping beginners grasp the diversity of interpretations within these sources. Moreover, they shed light on linguistic challenges that have sparked controversy and debate.
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This chapter translates the vivid description of the life of the noble lord Wiprecht of Groitzsch. It then offers a very different perspective on Henry IV and Henry V's reigns than the typical pro-Salian or pro-Saxon narrative sources. For understanding the political, social, religious and economic developments in the region between Saxony and Bohemia during the early twelfth century, it is a rich, almost unparalleled source. Wiprecht of Groitzsch has earned a reputation in modern scholarship as the social climber par excellence of the late Salian period. The turning point in Wiprecht's career seems to have been Henry IV's first Italian campaign during the early 1080s; according to the Deeds, Wiprecht led the Czech contingent alongside Czech king Vratislav's young son, Borivoj. Thereafter, Wiprecht of Groitzsch would be an increasingly prominent player in Saxon and imperial politics until his death.
This introduction provides historical background and a discussion of the translated texts. The book aims to illuminate the diversity of the aristocratic experience by providing five texts, translated into English for the first time, that show how noblemen and women from across the German kingdom lived and died approximately during 1075-1200. Margrave Wiprecht of Groitzsch emerges from these pages as a ruthless and cunning lord, one whose fortunes fluctuated dramatically as he played the games of court politics and local lordship with varying degrees of success. The extraordinary career of Bishop Otto I of Bamberg depicts how medieval Christians sought to convert pagans and convince them of the errors of their ways. An unnamed magistra, born into a ministerial family, wrote poems that have made scholars put forward various theories, in some cases identifying a pope or an archbishop of Salzburg as a potential patron for the text. A vita of the canoness Mechthild of Diessen, who had briefly been abbess of Edelstetten, written by the Cistercian monk Engelhard of Langheim. Finally the deeds of Count Ludwig III and a history of the Premonstratensian community at Arnstein.
According to the translated text in this chapter, the unnamed magistra was born into a ministerial family belonging to the archbishops of Salzburg. She belonged to one of the most important Benedictine communities in the south-east of the German kingdom: the double monastery of monks and nuns at Admont in the march of Styria (today a part of Austria). During the twelfth century, the male community played an active role in reform circles, and many Admont monks were sent to other Benedictine houses across the south-east of the German kingdom to improve monastic practices in other communities. The chapter offers its readers a deeply personal account of the anonymous nun's life, written by another Admont nun who seems to have known her quite well.
Few if any German prelates of the twelfth century had as extraordinary a career as Bishop Otto I of Bamberg. His influence stretched from the shores of the Baltic to the papal see in Rome. As bishop of one of the most important dioceses in the German kingdom, he founded and endowed numerous monastic communities while also pursuing territorial strategies that strengthened significantly his bishopric's control of the region in and around Bamberg. The life of Bishop Otto of Bamberg by a monk of Prüfening survives in three manuscripts from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. All three of these codices include portions of the Magnum Legendarium Austriacum (MLA), an extensive collection of saints' lives compiled and copied at several Austrian monasteries around the year 1200.
At some point around the year 1200, a noblewoman asked the Cistercian monk Engelhard of Langheim to write a vita of the canoness Mechthild of Diessen, who had briefly been the abbess of Edelstetten. At the time of Pope Anastasius IV, she reluctantly agreed to become the abbess of Edelstetten, a convent desperately in need of reform in Engelhard's version of events. She successfully improved the religious practices and commitment to the spiritual life at Edelstetten, but her time there seems to have been relatively short. The descriptions of Mechthild's interactions with people inside and outside the religious houses are a rich source for the thin grey line that separated the ecclesiastical and secular spheres in the German kingdom during the twelfth century.
Noble society in the twelfth-century German kingdom was vibrant and multi-faceted, with aristocratic families spending their lives in the violent pursuit of land and power. This book illuminates the diversity of the aristocratic experience by providing five texts that show how noblemen and women from across the German kingdom, from Rome to the Baltic coast and from the Rhine River to the Alpine valleys of Austria, lived and died between approximately 1075 and 1200. The five subjects of the texts translated here cut across many of the strata of German elite society. how interconnected political, military, economic, religious and spiritual interests could be for some of the leading members of medieval German society-and for the authors who wrote about them. Whether fighting for the emperor in Italy, bringing Christianity to pagans in what is today northern Poland, or founding, reforming and governing monastic communities in the heartland of the German kingdom, the subjects of these texts call attention to some of the many ways that noble life shaped the world of central medieval Europe.
A large proportion of evidence for heresy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries comes from chronicles. Peter of Les Vaux-de-Cernay was writing an account of a specific set of events with heresy at their centre, drawing primarily on first-hand experience. The 'Deeds of bishops' were popular subgenre, focused of course on a particular diocese and its sequence of incumbents. The work which the Inquisitor Bernard Gui produced on the development of his religious order, the Dominicans, in which his topics were the foundation and spread of Dominican convents in the south of France, and their priors.
The wars of the Albigensian crusade were brought to an end by the Peace of Paris in 1229, by which Raymond VII, Count of Toulouse, capitulated and swore to persecute heresy. This part includes the provisions of Dominican provincial chapters, which cast interesting light on relations between ordinary Dominican brothers and Dominican inquisitors. It provides a substantial portion of the documentary sources from which the early history of inquisition is written.
Between 858 and 869, an unprecedented scandal played out in Frankish Europe, becoming the subject of gossip not only in palaces and cathedrals. It was in these years that a Frankish king, Lothar II, made increasingly desperate efforts to divorce his wife, Queen Theutberga, and to marry instead a woman named Waldrada, the mother of his children. Lothar, however, faced opposition to his actions. Kings and bishops from neighbouring kingdoms, and several popes, were gradually drawn into a crisis affecting the fate of an entire kingdom. This book offers eye-opening insight not only on the political wrangling of the time, but also on early medieval attitudes towards issues, including magic, penance, gender, the ordeal, marriage, sodomy, the role of bishops, and kingship.
Heresy is a topic that exerts almost universal fascination. This book an invaluable collection of primary sources in translation, aimed at students and academics alike. It provides a wide array of materials on both heresy (Cathars and Waldensians) and the persecution of heresy in medieval France. The book is divided into eight sections, each devoted to a different genre of source material. A large proportion of evidence for heresy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries comes from chronicles, but by the thirteenth century they do not loom quite so large in comparison to other genres. Historians sometimes use the label 'chronicle' as a shorthand term to cover any kind of medieval written account of past events. For those interested in seeing how 'heresy' was constructed rhetorically by orthodoxy, sermons are an invaluable source. The book presents a selection of extracts from two of the most important works of preaching in the thirteenth century, the tales collected by Stephen of Bourbon and those written by Humbert of Romans. It also offers a variety of letters, from a very public letter, widely circulated with the aim of stirring prelates into action against heresy, to administrative letters. In the wake of the Peace of Paris, a series of ecclesiastical councils provided for the prosecution of heresy in Languedoc. There is an abundance of modern scholarship on inquisition records and registers of inquisition trials.