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-century England and Normandy it is significant that women had a role in the patronage of innovative forms of literature which affected the development of secular literature. Royal women or women of high status were in the vanguard of patronising these new forms of literature. As discussed earlier, Adela of Blois was a patron of poets, and writers were able to articulate a positive image of lay women as readers. Hugh of Fleury in the dedication of his Ecclesiastica Historia praised Adela’s generosity, intelligence and literary skills, and stated that women were often capable of
scholars even as they have begun to delineate the importance of gender as an analytical tool (albeit similarly unconsciously!). For example, Harvey and McGuinness stated that the 123 noblewomen and power emergence of heraldic devices on men’s seals was ‘all but spontaneous’ but for the seals of women ‘it had to be consciously introduced’.17 Such categories rely on the definition of the seals of men as ‘natural’ and women’s seals as ‘other’; the utilisation of such categories is ahistorical, gender-blind and simplistic. This interpretation of differences in men’s and
problem across social status: Alice, the widow of William fitz Chetell, the king’s goshawk keeper, is stated to have the custody of her son (singular) in the Rotuli de Dominabus.64 Yet the Pipe Roll for 1184–85 states that she owed four marks that year for the custody of her boys (plural).65 Bertrada countess of Chester is known to have had one son and four daughters by Earl Hugh, yet these children are not listed in the Rotuli.66 The figures derived from the Rotuli de Dominabus must be treated with caution and may be taken as only an approximate guide to the minimum
subsidiary but intrinsic party to them. Female participation could thus be predicated on their tenurial interests and thus women appear in transactions as witnesses or as the recipients of countergifts. Affidation The affidation ceremony was, like witnessing and the exchange of countergifts, a method of ensuring the security of an agreement. The ritualised public nature of affidation was briefly discussed by Herbert Fowler, who commented on the oddity of these occasions. He stated that affidation overlapped the beginning of warranty and that, according to Pollock and
founded by her father, William de Percy, in 1147 and was in a state of decline. On 25 March 1189 Matilda took action. At the advice of various clerics, including Julian abbot of Igny and William abbot of Mortemer, William Vavasour, aliorum proborum hominum et fidelium meorum et totius curie mee, she re-endowed the monastery.98 The witness list included, among others, William Vavasour, Richard Vavasour and Nigel de Plumpton, significant 70 countesses individuals. The grant was made for the soul of her husband, King Henry, William de Percy, her father, Alice of
‘Walensis’ half a hide of land c. 1165–72, and Margeret witnessed the charter.57 When Mabel, the wife of Ralph, son of Nicholas, witnessed her husband’s charter her name was last on the witness list and the scribe added a clause specifically stating that the grant had been made at the advice of Mabel and with her concession.58 Circa 1160–73 Bertrada countess of Chester used her personal influence to secure a grant to her servant and witnessed her husband’s charter.59 However, the striking feature of these examples is that the beneficiaries were secular individuals
passionnée’, as Noel-Yves Tonnerre puts it. 11 The work of Breton scholars, such as J.-P. Brunterc’h, Hubert Guillotel, Tonnerre himself, or Bernard Merdrignac, suggests by contrast that although we may reasonably see the reign of Erispoë in the mid-ninth century as the period of the formation of the Breton state and of the establishment of its historic frontiers, his father Nominoë’s revolt had been
was certainly a sense of unfairness in the young dying while older people remained alive. Llywelyn ap Gutun (writing in Welsh c .1480) sighed at a situation where ‘Young men are carried off / God leaves an old man for a long time’. 24 But was old age really so bad? Someone who dreaded the onset of old age was Petrarch, who stated that ‘having embraced fleeting youth, I was clinging to it with great
, mental disabilities (strictly speaking, here meaning mental illness) and intoxication to the visible defects (lame, hunchback, dwarf) that disqualified someone from the priesthood. Speech and hearing disabilities, mental disorders and drunkenness all share the same functional deficit, in that people affected by these conditions were deemed unsuitable to perform ordered actions, communicate reliably and hence be in a state of ritual purity. The child or minor was also excluded in Sifra Emor , even if none of the categories of ‘blemishes’ applies. Although the Sifra
Hugh’s subsequent election and elevation to the throne in the summer of 987 was a monumental event in the history of France; the dynasty he founded would produce fourteen successive kings who would rule France uninterrupted for more than three and a half centuries. 3 By the time the last Capetian, Charles IV, died in 1328, the French King was among the most powerful rulers in Europe, reigning over a strong and bureaucratically centralized State. This was a far cry from the kingdom that Hugh inherited; his power extended only to the limits of the Ile-de-France, and