Ships & Shipping in Medieval Manuscripts


Book Description

The ship loomed large in the medieval world and mind. Whether cruising upriver laden with grain, or cresting the high seas bristling with guns, ships symbolized power and promise, strength and safety, crusade and conquest.




Shipping the Medieval Military


Book Description

Mariners made a major - but neglected - contribution to England's warfare in the middle ages. Here their role is examined anew, showing their importance. During the fourteenth century England was scarred by famine, plague and warfare. Through such disasters, however, emerged great feats of human endurance. Not only did the English population recover from starvation and disease butthousands of the kingdom's subjects went on to defeat the Scots and the French in several notable battles. Victories such as Halidon Hill, Neville's Cross, Crécy and Poitiers not only helped to recover the pride of the English chivalrous class but also secured the reputation of Edward III and the Black Prince. Yet what has been underemphasized in this historical narrative is the role played by men of more humble origins, none more so than the medievalmariner. This is unfortunate because during the fourteenth century the manpower and ships provided by the English merchant fleet underpinned every military expedition. The aim of this book is to address this gap. Its fresh approach to the sources allows the enormous contribution of the English merchant fleet to the wars conducted by Edward II and Edward III to be revealed; the author also explores the complex administrative process of raising a fleet andprovides career profiles for many mariners, examining the familial relationships that existed in port communities and the shipping resources of English ports. Craig L. Lambert is Research Assistant at the University ofHull.




Medieval Warfare in Manuscripts


Book Description

The glamour associated with knights in shining armour, colourful tournaments and heroic deeds appeal strongly to the modern imagination. However, few pieces of military dress and equipment have survived to provide direct insight into the way that war was waged in the Middle Ages. For a comprehensive view of the nature of medieval warfare we rely on written documentation and the information preserved in paintings, sculptures, carvings, and other pictorial sources. The most numerous by far of these are the miniatures and drawings found in manuscript books, partly because books tend to survive better that other artefacts and partly because many individual volumes contain multiple representations. Pamela Porter presents and describes a variety of evocative manuscript illuminations in an effort to reveal them as a source of information about military dress, equipment, and practices.




Medieval Manuscripts for Mass and Office


Book Description

Many books discuss the theology and doctrine of the medieval liturgy: there is no dearth of information on the history of the liturgy, the structure and development of individual services, and there is much discussion of specific texts, chants, and services. No book, at least in English, has struggled with the difficulties of finding texts, chants, or other material in the liturgical manuscripts themselves, until the publication of Medieval Manuscripts for Mass and Office in 1982. Encompassing a period of several centuries, ca 1200-1500, this book provides solutions for such endeavours. Although by this period the basic order and content of liturgical books were more or less standardized, there existed hundreds of different methods of dealing with the internal organisation and the actual writing of the texts and chants on the page. Generalization becomes problematic; the use of any single source as a typical example for more than local detail is impossible. Taking for granted the user's ability to read medieval scripts, and some codicological knowledge, Hughes begins with the elementary material without which the user could not proceed. He describes the liturgical year, season, day, service, and the form of individual items such as responsory or lesson, and mentions the many variants in terminology that are to be found in the sources. The presentation of individual text and chant is discussed, with an emphasis on the organisation of the individual column, line, and letter. Hughes examines the hitherto unexplored means by which a hierarchy of initial and capital letters and their colours are used by the scribes and how this hierarchy can provide a means by which the modern researcher can navigate through the manuscripts. Also described in great detail are the structure and contents of Breviaries, Missals, and the corresponding books with music. This new edition updates the bibliography and the new preface by Hughes presents his recent thoughts about terminology and methods of liturgical abbreviation.




The Well-laden Ship


Book Description

The Well-Laden Ship is an eleventh-century Latin poem composed of ancient and medieval proverbs, fables, and folktales. It was one of the few surviving works from the Middle Ages written explicitly for schoolroom use. Most of the content derives from the Bible, especially the wisdom books, from the Church Fathers, and from the ancient poets.




Trades and Crafts in Medieval Manuscripts


Book Description

This is a book for readers who are interested in the art and the social history of the Middle Ages. Illuminated manuscripts of that period are a primary source of information about the way in which men and women went about the everyday business of living-working on the land, engaging in trade and commerce, devoting themselves to crafts and manufactures, or carrying on the range of activities that we now regard as the professions. Many of the scenes reproduced in this superbly illustrated account are simply works of art in their own right; others are taken from manuscripts that are famous for the very high quality of their illumination. Patricia Basing provides a rich commentary, full of interesting observations, that relates each picture its historical context, explores the connections between the illustrations and text, and gives an account of the general background of manuscript production in medieval times.




Shipping, Trade and Crusade in the Medieval Mediterranean


Book Description

The cutting-edge papers in this collection reflect the wide areas to which John Pryor has made significant contributions in the course of his scholarly career. They are written by some of the world's most distinguished practitioners in the fields of Crusading history and the maritime history of the medieval Mediterranean. His colleagues, students and friends discuss questions including ship construction in the fourth and fifteenth centuries, navigation and harbourage in the eastern Mediterranean, trade in Fatimid Egypt and along the Iberian Peninsula, military and social issues arising among the crusaders during field campaigns, and wider aspects of medieval warfare. All those with an interest in any of these subjects, whether students or specialists, will need to consult this book.




The Medieval Manuscript Book


Book Description

This book situates the medieval manuscript within its cultural contexts, with chapters by experts in bibliographical and theoretical approaches to manuscript study.




Monsters and Grotesques in Medieval Manuscripts


Book Description

Images of monstrosities pervade art and culture in the Middle Ages, and for medieval people they must have been a tantalizing suggestion of unknown worlds and unthinkable dangers.




England's Medieval Navy 1066-1509


Book Description

We are accustomed to think of England in terms of Shakespeare's 'precious stone set in a silver sea', safe behind its watery ramparts with its naval strength resisting all invaders. To the English of an earlier period _ from the 8th to the 11th centuries _ such a notion would have seemed ridiculous. The sea, rather than being a defensive wall, was a highway by which successive waves of invaders arrived, bringing destruction and fear in their wake.??Deploying a wide range of sources, this new book looks at how English kings after the Norman Conquest learnt to use the Navy of England, a term which at this time included all vessels whether Royal or private and no matter what their ostensible purpose _ to increase and safety and prosperity of the kingdom. The design and building of ships and harbour facilities, the development of navigation, ship handling, and the world of the seaman are all described, while comparisons with the navies of England's closest neighbours, with particular focus on France and Scotland, are made, and notable battles including Damme, Dover, Sluys and La Rochelle included to explain the development of battle tactics and the use of arms during the period. ??The author shows, in this lucid and enlightening narrative, how the unspoken aim of successive monarchs was to begin to build 'the wall' of England, its naval defences, with a success which was to become so apparent in later centuries.