(Re-)constructing the lineage of one lesser-gentry family in eastern Lancashire (from the thirteenth-century Oldham family to their sale of Werneth Hall), this study – utilising wills, inventories, deeds, parish registers, and other archives – surveys the Cudworths’ socio-political, religious, and educational interests, as well as their wider ass…[Read more]

(Re-)constructing the lineage of one lesser-gentry family in eastern Lancashire (from the thirteenth-century Oldham family to their sale of Werneth Hall), this study – utilising wills, inventories, deeds, parish registers, and other archives – surveys the Cudworths’ socio-political, religious, and educational interests, as well as their wider ass…[Read more]

Socio-economic roles and family life from the late-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century are explored in this study of one non-gentry (yeomanry) family in eastern Lancashire: the Stansfields’ genealogy is (re-)constituted – utilising wills, inventories, parish registers, and other archives – against the broader background of their kinship rel…[Read more]

Some of the complexities of inheritance practices are studied through the example of one non-gentry (yeomanry) family in eastern Lancashire: this study – using wills, parish registers, and other archives – (re-)constructs the Cudworths’ genealogy, and examines their familial ties, socio-economic roles, and disposition of property within local and…[Read more]

Though English supporters of the Oxford theologian John Wycliffe (d.1384)—known as “Lollards”—had been drawn from academic and noble/gentry circles during the later-fourteenth and early-fifteenth centuries, persecution, equation of heresy with sedition, and the failure of Sir John Oldcastle’s Rebellion (1414) ensured overt abandonment of Lollard i…[Read more]

Though English supporters of the Oxford theologian John Wycliffe (d.1384)—known as “Lollards”—had been drawn from academic and noble/gentry circles during the later-fourteenth and early-fifteenth centuries, persecution, equation of heresy with sedition, and the failure of Sir John Oldcastle’s Rebellion (1414) ensured overt abandonment of Lollard i…[Read more]

Duchess Anna Amalia (1739-1807) was a central figure in the duchies of Weimar and Eisenach for over fifty years – as wife of the reigning duke, then as custodial regent and finally as mother of the reigning duke. The article comes to the conclusion that the duchess could barely affect the emergence of the configuration that has been referred to in…[Read more]

The article examines regulations for »order« at the princely courts in the Holy Roman Empire in the 16th century and asks how these prescriptive documents sought to establish “good order” at court. Special attention is paid to the theological justifications of order as well as the confessionality and the confessional character of court orders. T…[Read more]

After the Seven Years War German petty courts increasingly felt obliged to justify their very existence. Therefor members of the reigning dynasties developped strategies to represent themselves as ›enlightened‹ rulers. Especially for non-reigning princesses, practice and patronage of the fine arts – theatre, music, landscape gardening, liter…[Read more]

Freemasonry has traditionally been seen as a key influence in the rise of the Bourgeoisie, since it allegedly subdued social boundaries and behavioural norms of the Ancien Régime. This paper, however, argues that the masonic lodges at least in the smaller German court towns, adopted various elements of court society – organizational structures, my…[Read more]

The idea of the North in Western society has a long and distinguished history. Indeed, the only ‘purely ethnographic treatise that survives from antiquity’ is Tacitus’s Germania, his description of the Germanic peoples (Mellor 1993: 14). Tacitus produced his short treatise as a way of forcing Romans to confront the luxurious decadence that he fe…[Read more]

The metatheatricality of A Midsummer Night’s Dream has invited recent directors to tell particular kinds of socially progressive stories. This article uses the notion of “social reparation” to theorize remedial uses of Shakespeare in adaptations that give artists and audiences more moral agency. By imagining more inclusive local habitations and s…[Read more]

Heracles/Hercules is a particularly striking example of how European societies have received, appropriated and reshaped classical heroic myths into the early 21st century. Is the ancient hero thus also a European site of memory? It will be shown that it was a specific aspect of the myth that was evoked particularly frequently and became a topos by…[Read more]

This dissertation deals with aristocratic historiography and political legitimation in late-medieval Portugal (late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries). It offers a perspective into the historical imaginary of the late-medieval Portuguese aristocracy; an imaginary that underlay the argumentation of members of this social class in defence of their…[Read more]

Viking invasions and settlements left substantial legacies in late Anglo-Saxon England, attested in legal texts as a division between areas under Dena lage and those under Ængla lage. But how legal practice in Scandinavian-settled England functioned and differed from Anglo-Saxon law remains unclear. III Æthelred, the ‘Wantage Code’, provides criti…[Read more]

Der Beitrag untersucht das Verhältnis des Bildprogramms zur Weltchronik des Rudolf von Ems zu anderen Bildprogrammen von volkssprachlichen Weltchroniken.
Es gibt keinen für Rudolf von Ems typischen Illustrationsmodus. Weder Rudolf noch irgendeine andere Weltchronik hat eine derart individuell ausgeprägte und von der biblischen Grundlage sich ab…[Read more]

The article focuses on one of the most famous accounts of the events of 1204: the De Signis by Niketas Choniates. It demonstrates how Choniates constructed a (semi)fictional account of the assaults against the Byzantine culture and identity through a constellation of symbols and passages drawn from the Greek Classics. The article comprises three…[Read more]

The rise of global Shakespeare as an industry and cultural practice—the incorporation of Shakespearean performance in cultural diplomacy and in the cultural marketplace—is aided by digital tools of dissemination and digital forms of artistic expression. Shakespeare has evolved from a cultural nomad in the past centuries—a body of works with no pe…[Read more]

This contribution examines an early modern manuscript, AM 899 4to, from Sweden, which features the Stora Rimkrönikan (Erikskrönikan, Karlskrönikan og Sturekrönikan) from the Swedish Middle Ages. AM 899 4to is extensively annotated. It shows that the medieval texts were read and received in modern times. The various annotations are here for the fir…[Read more]