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Patrick has long been celebrated as the apostle to the Irish, responsible for bringing Christianity from Britain to Ireland for the first time during the fifth century. Due to the numerous hagiographical and mythical tales that have built up around Patrick over the centuries, as well as his importance as a symbol of Irish national identity, it can be extremely difficult to disentangle fact from fiction. Recent work has sought increasingly to move away from the mythical accretions to the story of Patrick and instead to contextualise him historically, in terms of the social and political contexts in which he operated, as well as the broader religious situation in post-Roman Britain and Ireland. Rather than the singular action of a charismatic individual, when viewed in this context Patrick and his mission can be viewed as another episode in the transformation of the Roman into the medieval world on the edge of the empire.

Translated Texts for Historians (TTH) is a mainstay of late antique and early medieval scholarship, offering a wide range of translations of Greek and Latin texts from the fourth through eighth centuries. This translation of the works of Jonas of Bobbio, an early seventh-century monk, abbot, and missionary, was intended to be one of its earliest volumes. As its translators point out, its unexpectedly long genesis has allowed it to benefit from developments in scholarship on hagiography, monastic archaeology, and the Irish saint and monastic founder Columbanus, that occurred between the early 1980s and 2017. This volume collects Jonas's three biographies of saints: the Life of Columbanus, Life of John of Réomé, and Life of Vedast. Although there have been some earlier attempts to translate these texts in part, this represents the first full English translation of Jonas's work.

The accepted narrative for medieval Breton political history emphasises a lack of centralised authority which resulted in political volatility. Like all accepted narratives, this one needs re-interrogation. Recent scholarship has expanded 'political culture' to recognise the contributions of ministers, advisers, family and others, Analysis of the political actions and contributions of Countess Ermengarde (c.1070-1147, r. 1093-1147) will provide an opportunity to reconsider twelfth-century Breton political culture. Another feature of the historiography of medieval political power is that it was only exercised by men or those who were gendered male. I will argue, however, that Ermengarde remained very much a female and that her gender, in fact, gave her power and influence that she could command in the political realm not available to her husband or son. In particular, Ermengarde was skilled in creating and cultivating relationships with powerful people and important ecclesiastical institutions of the Loire valley. Her talents and connections contributed significantly both to the stability of Brittany, but also its political culture.

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.

This special issue of Eranos: Acta Philologica Suecana comprises an introduction and six essays devoted to the study of the discourse of Latin in the post-Classical world. Our object is to study the language of the language itself: the value attributed to Latin, its standing vis-à-vis other languages, the qualities linked with it, and the issues in which it was implicated. Our remit is Latinity after Antiquity, and our coverage ranges from late antique North Africa to nineteenth-century Hungary.

Habermas’ identification of a ‘public sphere’ as a democratic, open, and fundamentally participatory space is often identified as the emergence of a kind of modern political consciousness. Given its identification within the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it thus emerges as a modern invention to be contrasted against the implied feudalism of the Middle Ages. However, at the same time, the growing recognition that such a public sphere belonging to the prosperous middle-classes is “less a signifier of democracy than a shift in power toward an educated, property-owning middle class”. The translation of a Habermasian public sphere to the equally ‘democratic’ Web 2.0 environment has prompted renewed celebrations of its apparently participatory online sphere, even if in the context of the above critique the parallels with a less demotic shift of power are abundantly clear. In this chapter, I analyse the use of the hashtag ‘#medieval’ across Instagram and Twitter in particular to explore the ways in which those same dominant voices have collocated and constructed the new Middle Ages through a so-called participatory culture. I will show how the medieval has come to be created, in the context of a narrower participatory culture than is usually imagined, as a specifically western, class-based phenomenon which both controls and constricts our abilities to connect with it.

A volume in the Routledge World Series. This volume concerns Arthuriana from the medieval to the modern periods.

Situated on a bluff overlooking the Loire River, the village of Beaugency played host to a defining moment in the life of Louis VII. In April of 1152, the luminaries of the French realm gathered at Beaugency to witness a church council charged with investigating whether or not King Louis VII’s marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine was consanguineous. Among those at Beaugency were men whose lives were intricately intertwined with that of the king, yet we cannot be sure they ever met. These men were King Louis VII of France and Lords Simon I and Lancelin III of Beaugency. Sandwiched between the reigns of his illustrious father and son, Louis’ tenure as king has often been interpreted as lackluster. Like Louis, Simon and Lancelin also fell under the shadow of their famous Crusader father, Lord Ralph I of Beaugency. Neither Simon nor Lancelin went on Crusade, they did not hold any office beyond that of lord, and they did not fight for or against their king. Instead, Simon and Lancelin of Beaugency lived quiet, unexceptional lives due to the stability and economic growth provided by Louis VII, himself depicted as an unremarkable king whose reign has often been defined by his failures. But given the turbulence of the previous century, perhaps Simon and Lancelin’s unremarkable lives were in fact remarkable and, as such, cast Louis VII’s reign in a different light.

V. Alice Tyrrell, Merovingian Letters and Letter Writers. (Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin 12.) Turnhout: Brepols, 2019. Paper. Pp. xxxi, 386; 2 figures and 1 table. €90. ISBN: 978-2-5035-8358-7.

The Introduction to The Arthurian World.

Review of Kahlos, Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity, 350450 (2019)

Almost twenty years ago, in The Myth of Nations, Patrick Geary wrote of a crisis of European identity in the fallout from the end of the Cold War. Describing the new contours of Europe amid a turbulent series of revolutions and national conflicts, Geary takes a particularly long view of the emergence of a European identity and the emergence of national consciousness as—in part—a product of the European Middle Ages. Bringing his ideas to bear on the (then contemporary) European conflicts, Geary describes how the new models of national consciousness often unwittingly used medieval ideas of national borders and boundaries to underpin modern concerns about independence, with new nation-states emerging from the wreckage of a twentieth-century reconfiguration of Europe. In the aftermath of the UK’s referendum in June 2016, which resulted in a vote to leave the European Union commonly referred to by the portmanteau “‘Brexit,”’ Geary’s observations seem even more appropriate, and medievalist rhetoric finds itself once again entrenched in political discourse – —especially in their capacity as an imagined longue durée of Selfhood. What this means for the present argument outlined here is that the use of medieval history in the support of individual nationalistic projects is neither new nor original, but often exerts a powerful pull on the ways in which a nation comes to be reimagined, particularly in periods of crisis and upheaval. This essay will compare Geary’s arguments about national identity with the uses of political medievalisms in the context of the Brexit crisis unfolding between 2016 and the present day.

Ermengarde, countess of Brittany, was well known to her contemporaries. Moreover, these clerics were clearly impressed by her abilities. Yet modern scholarship has all but effaced Ermengarde's activities and, when she is discussed at all, she is often reduced to a handmaiden to Robert of Arbrissel or Bernard of Clairvaux. The quote that provides the title for this article, 'Daughter of Fulk, glory of Brittany,' comes from a poem written to Ermengarde by Bishop Marbode of Rennes around 1096. In this couplet, Marbode captured the unique position that Ermengarde, in particular, and noblewomen, in general, held as members of two influential kin groups. While some have argued that marriage severed a woman ties to her natal kin, recent scholarship has demonstrated that aristocratic daughters, wives, sisters and mothers, were successful in cultivating and maintaining relationships with two potentially opposing affinities. In other words, their gender gave them unique opportunities and space for influence. Her strong ties to her natal family in Anjou made Ermengarde the 'daughter of Fulk,' but through her marriage to Count Alan IV and her leadership of the county, she also became the 'glory of Brittany.' These two identities were inextricably linked. For, as I will argue, being the 'daughter of Fulk' helped Ermengarde to become the 'glory of Brittany.'

Guy Ritchie’s recent reworking of the Arthurian legend, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword was released to a barrage of both professional and amateur criticism. The usual complaints abounded, from laments over misused sources or confused plots, to casting choices or directorial decisions. However, in one small corner of the internet, self-styled political analyst, part-time historian and apparently award-winning filmmaker, Matt Taylor was calling for a boycott of Ritchie’s film for very different reasons. According to Taylor, Ritchie (alongside Hunnum and Beckham) were no less than traitors to the nation and a tool of the New World Order. Taylor’s reasoning is less than clear. However, the main thrust of his argument is summarized in a meme prominently featured on his blog, which justifies the boycott on the grounds that the films are “not based on the real King Arthur’s [sic] they are based on French romantic crap [sic]”. On the strength of his use of French sources, Taylor continues, Ritchie and Beckham are not only traitors but agents in a giant cover up which, apparently, includes the Royal Family (as a “foreign German royal dynasty”). For Arthurian scholars, of course, it is hard to take ideas like these very seriously; rather, they seem to confirm Umberto Eco’s famous line about the signs of a lunatic being that, sooner or later, they will bring up the Templars. However, peering beneath the surface, the logic and its online connections reveal a different story of national myth, nationalism and a complex question about who can really lay claim to ownership of the medieval past. This paper, accordingly, will explore how the online Arthur, and its cinematic equivalents, take their place in a complex parallel world of real, and contested, King Arthurs.

Inheritance in the lands of the Loire was fluid and largely dictated by family circumstance. Unlike the Nordic regions or Roman practice, there were no laws that prescribed how much property a donor could give away or regulations assuring family members (such as children and wives) of a specific portion of family property. There customs in place that governed family interactions and distribution of property. Dower, for example, usually consisted of a third of the husband’s property. Further it was customary for donors to secure the consent of all family members who had a potential right or claim to the property being alienated. Yet these customs would not be codified until much later in the middle ages (1454 AD). For the aristocrats living in western France in the Central Middle Ages, this meant that inheritance could take a variety of forms. In spite of assertions made by some scholars, most notably Georges Duby, there was no one preferred form of inheritance. Most aristocratic families did prefer inheritance strategies that provided support for all progeny, including divisible and collective inheritance. Some families did practice primogeniture and invested the first born male with titles and the lion’s share of family property, but this inheritance option did not necessarily preclude younger children from a share of family property or support. This commitment to children grew out of family ethos that was based in affection for and care of all variety of kin. The fluidity of inheritance practice meant that aristocratic family could adjust how they passed along their resources from generation to generation. This provided them with some flexibility as family circumstance change. But because there were no laws governing inheritance, donors were free to give away as much of their property as they liked, which could have deleterious effects for their children and kin. Aristocratic inheritance in the lands of the Loire in the Central Middle Ages thus provides a marked c

This special issue of Medieval Prosopography is dedicated to one of the founding editors, Joel Rosenthal. The essays cover Prof Rosenthal's interest in late medieval England and are authored by many of his friends and students. Collectively, the essays represent the range of Prof Rosenthal's own research and interests: prosopography, women, wills, and medieval England.

This volume contains a series of essay in honor of the notable Carolingian scholar, Richard E. Sullivan. This volume examines the world of the medieval monk. The first section of the volume is organized around the theme of monks and the world and explores the intersections between the secular and sacred. The second section is concerned with the ideological or intellectual lives of medieval monks. These essays examine the ideas that were important to monks and that shaped the intellectual discourse of the Middle Ages.

Translated Texts for Historians (TTH) is a mainstay of late antique and early medieval scholarship, offering a wide range of translations of Greek and Latin texts from the fourth through eighth centuries. This translation of the works of Jonas of Bobbio, an early seventh-century monk, abbot, and missionary, was intended to be one of its earliest volumes. As its translators point out, its unexpectedly long genesis has allowed it to benefit from developments in scholarship on hagiography, monastic archaeology, and the Irish saint and monastic founder Columbanus, that occurred between the early 1980s and 2017. This volume collects Jonas's three biographies of saints: the Life of Columbanus, Life of John of Réomé, and Life of Vedast. Although there have been some earlier attempts to translate these texts in part, this represents the first full English translation of Jonas's work.

Review of Leonard, In Defiance of History: Orosius and the Unimproved Past (2022)

This book challenges many assumptions about the aristocratic family, specifically the dominance of patrilineage, primogeniture, and patriarchy. Based on careful analysis of the documents, specifically medieval charters, it offers a new interpretation of medieval family life that emphasizes the affection that bound family members together. Taking a feminist approach, this work rescues women from the margins of history and refutes the characterization of the "male Middle Ages" coined by the noted French medievalist Georges Duby. The book demonstrates the autonomy and influence that women had in ruling lordships, managing households and children, controlling property, and forging key relationships with the medieval church.

Review of L’empreinte chrétienne en Gaule du IVe au IXe siècle. Edited by Michèle Gaillard.

Chroniclers observing the complex politics of medieval Brittany referred to it as a “den of scorpions.” Eleventh- and early twelfth-century Brittany was politically unstable, with comital power under threat from both local lords and ambitious neighbors. The counts of Brittany depended upon their wives to bolster relationships with other regional powers, including the church, and to create alliances. These women brought with them relationships, ties, and associations to many powerful ecclesiastical foundations. This article examines the experiences of Countess Havoise (r. 1008–1034), Countess Bertha of Blois (c. 1020–1100), Countess Bertha (d. 1085), wife of Geoffrey Grenonat, and Countess Constance (r. 1076–1090), who all used ecclesiastical patronage to solidify the power of husbands and sons. This support allowed women to develop relationships with medieval clerics, making them, like Queen Esther, ideally placed to intervene and negotiate when tensions arose between the counts and the church.

This introduction sets the scene for six essays devoted to the study of the discourse of Latin. Despite the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, Latin remained the dominant code of communication in European society for a millennium. And yet in the minds of many of its most prolific users and commentators, it has experienced a continuous cycle of existential crises. After multiple reappraisals and re-fashionings of Latinity in the early and high Middle Ages, the self-conscious definition of language and its relationship to culture which arose in fourteenth-century Italy led to the bestowal of the much-controverted title of "renaissance" on the ensuing age. But, with respect to Latinity, was (and is) this label a distinction without a difference? Not only in the Quattrocento, but also in earlier and later eras, cultivating "good Latin", however this was defined, and indeed being seen to cultivate it were matters of the utmost importance, an inexhaustible wellspring of sociocultural capital. Our object here is to study the language of the language itself: the value attributed to Latin, its standing vis-à-vis other languages, the qualities linked with it, and the issues in which it was implicated. Our remit is Latinity after Antiquity, and the six essays which follow range from late antique North Africa to nineteenth-century Hungary.

Though medieval women’s historians have done much to tease out the experiences of women in the Middle Ages from recalcitrant sources, scholarship is currently at something of a crossroads. By implementing innovative research and narrative strategies (some borrowed from the scholarship of the early modern world), these essays demonstrate how scholars can push the boundaries to add more texture, detail, and vitality to the lives of medieval women. Essays in this volume examine a range of the life experiences of medieval women, from Frankish peasants to Iberian queens. They also employ different methodologies of exploring women's lives -- such as examination of material culture, archeology, space, and the environment -- and different texts -- letters, charters, saints' lives, and economic documents.

Medieval Lives c. 1000–1292: The World of the Beaugency Family is a gateway into Europe during the Central Middle Ages. Through charting the lives of the Beaugency family, this book delves into the history of Western Europe and explores the impact of the changes and events of the period on those who experienced them. The Central Middle Ages were years of profound transformation, and through the two centuries in which they lived the Beaugency family experienced many of the key developments that have characterized the period, such as the launch of the crusades and the emergence of the commercial economy. By following the lives of the family, this book instills a deeper understanding of the significance that human experience has on our ability to truly comprehend the crucial historical events of the age. It personalizes the history of the Middle Ages and provides students with a unique insight into the culture of the period.

Our understanding of the economic foundations of rural society in early medieval north-western Iberia remains wedded to explanations that emphasise the structural limitations that framed human activity while seeking to attenuate the economic agency of non-elite groups and individuals. This article argues that the early medieval peasantry of north-western Iberia was not the staid caricature presented by much of the historiography, but a much more economically dynamic section of society. To demonstrate this dynamism, it uses charters to analyse peasant productive strategies that went beyond subsistence. These reveal that peasants not only dabbled in the land market but invested in non-movable capital goods, with the result that some peasants produced surpluses for the express purpose of exchange by the tenth century, fundamentally altering the contours of their communities from within. By examining the evidence concerning peasant ownership of watermills, the article sheds new light on causal explanations for phenomena as diverse as social mobility, the possibilities of commercial integration, and the logic of market exchange. It concludes by contending that narratives focused on uncovering the beginnings of growth must more readily concede that its origins are to be found both beyond as well as within seigneurial contexts.

In large courses it can be particularly challenging to engage students in active reading practices. The shift over the last decade to the use of digital sources, and during the pandemic the adoption of online teaching, has further exacerbated the problem. In this paper, we discuss our strategies for engaging large classes (150-250 students) in active reading through use of Talis Elevate, a social annotation tool. We outline two case studies in which we used social annotation and observed a significant increase in student engagement. We propose a new concept, 'active online reading' , which combines structured individual commenting tasks with responding to other students' annotations to enhance learning. This concept has relevance not only in our reading-rich discipline of History but also across higher education more generally.

Historiography in Visigothic Iberia was intimately interconnected with episcopal power. This chapter explores the central role that bishops played in the historiography of the period, both as authors and as subjects within the histories. The centrality of bishops to the historiography of the period is further illustrated by consideration of what historians failed to pass on (or treated very briefly), from the local disputes in which they engaged in their bishoprics to the moments that they became involved in disputes with the monarchy or with other bishops. In general, the purely historiographical writings obscure historical instances of disputation over episcopal office at the local level, except in a few limited cases where the aim was to establish the righteousness of the Nicene position.

This book explores how one early medieval poet survived and thrived amidst the political turbulence of sixth century Gaul—with a little help from his friends. Born in northern Italy, Venantius Fortunatus made his career writing for and about members of the Merovingian elite. Although he is no longer dismissed as an opportunistic poetaster who wrote undistinguished flattery for undeserving kings and aristocrats, his work remains unduly neglected. This book reframes Fortunatus as a writer uniquely suited to his times, a professional poet who addressed his contemporaries’ needs and wishes for the prestige and sophistication of Classical culture. His poems and letters enabled his aristocratic patrons to situate themselves in networks, which they made and maintained in order to navigate a post-imperial but not post-Roman world. It makes an important contribution to our understanding of friendship in the Middle Ages and offers a fresh look at the Frankish kingdoms of Merovingian Gaul.

In his account of the life of William the Conqueror, William of Poitiers relayed some insights into the Bretons and their culture. He claimed they were polygamous, vegetarian and like the Muslims in many of their customs. William also asserted they were fierce warriors who, when not engaged in battle, enjoyed “plunder, brigandage and domestic feuds.” William of Poitiers’ portrait of Brittany is a classic example of an exotic other. These were people not like those living in the west of France. In fact, Bretons were so foreign as to be compared to Muslims. They were also a brutal, violent people. Although only one authorial voice, William of Poitiers’ view of the Bretons was one that was widely shared. Indeed, throughout the Middle Ages Brittany was characterized by barbarity and lacking “civilization.” Th e focus of this essay will be to analyze how two medieval clerics, raised and schooled in the Loire Valley, described and understood Brittany and its inhabitants. Baudri of Bourgueil and Robert of Arbrissel both accepted ecclesiastical appointments in Brittany and each expressed an opinion about their new home. While their views were their own, they were influenced by writings like those of William of Poitiers, but also classical writers. Brittany was located only a short distance from the heart of the Loire valley. Yet to medieval clergy it was a different and distant world.

In a collection of essays devoted to the representation of Beowulf in film, E.L. Risden argues that when it comes to cinematic translation of the epic poem, “the character readily accepts, even seeks, a position as a commodity: the martial and political hero necessary in the context of his world.”1 Such a claim is perhaps questionable when considering the broad spectrum of interpretations in film, but within the more restricted choice of video games based on the legend, it is most certainly true. In contrast to films and television, with only two major video games explicitly referencing Beowulf by name, ludic interpretations of the legend clearly favour a martial hero, and one whose popular-cultural early medieval setting privileges fighting, running, battles and challenges. This chapter explores the logic of Beowulf-themed video games as more than just bad translations, but as expressions of, and contributions to, popular-cultural understandings of the poem and the period. Instead of questioning accuracy and fidelity, it will examine why adaptations of the poem unduly privilege what we call ‘hack-and-slash’ medievalism, how they compare to similarly ‘medieval’ games like Lord of the Rings, Skyrim or Age of Conan, and what impression of the Middle Ages such unequal representation produces.

Book Description by the Editors (Stefan Esders, Yitzhak Hen, Pia Lucas, Tamar Rotman): The book explores the place of the Merovingian kingdoms in Gaul within a broader Mediterranean context. Their politics and culture have mostly been interpreted in terms of a local phenomenon, but as this book shows, the Merovingian kingdoms had complicated and multi-layered political, religious, and socio-cultural relations with their Mediterranean counterparts, from Visigothic Spain in the West to the Byzantine Empire in the East. The papers provide new insights into the history of the Merovingian kingdoms in their late-antique and early-medieval Mediterranean context, examining subjects from the formation of identity to the shape and rules of diplomatic relations, social, legal, and religious aspects that reflect cultural transfer, as well as voiced attitudes towards the other. The perspectives of the individual sources and their contextualization are at the centre of this analysis, and each paper thus begins with a short excerpt from a relevant source text, which then serves as a jumping board to the discussion of broader issues. This innovative structuring principle ensures discussions are accessible to students and non-specialists, without jeopardizing the high standard of academic debate and diligent historical analysis

What I hope to show in the following pages is that Isidore of Seville, seen in the mirror of his own words, aimed not to become catechist to centuries of priests and monks, nor indeed to achieve any great stylistic or generic innovation as such, but to carry through the scholarly project which he had set for himself: to take full stock of Classical civilisation and recatalogue it for good in the epistemology of God.

Windows on Justice in Northern Iberia, 800-1000. By Wendy Davies. Abingdon and New York, NY: Routledge. 2016. xii + 291 pp. £115. ISBN 9781409464730.

How do I get to early medieval Hispania, and can you meet me there? If we go looking, we can find it, but not where we might expect. More than a few contemporaries gave this some thought, and all who did so pointed to the same spot – at least at first. Where, then, was Hispania in the early Middle Ages, and why? Our canvas for reconstructing this geography is spread from the eighth century to the eleventh, what we used to think of as stage one of the Reconquista. Through the prism of Hispania, both Christians and Muslims, in all their ways of looking back at what used to be and ahead at what God had foreordained to be, perceived and processed continuity and change, triumph and disaster, and by what can seem divergent paths arrived in the end at the same destination, each to stake out a special claim.

This essay is a case study in the textual transmission of the Visigothic law code or Book of Judgements (Liber Iudiciorum). Rather than relying solely on manuscript copies, I draw on charters as sources for the text, and by tracking the citation of treason law across the corpus of documentation from early medieval Asturias-León and Navarra, I identify three new witnesses. On the basis of this methodology and its results, I then propose a new approach to reading the code through its use in practice which should be taken into account in the revision of the standard Monumenta Germaniae Historica edition.

In July 1220, the boy king Henry III attended the translation of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury, whereby the saint’s body was transferred from its original tomb in the crypt of Canterbury cathedral to a splendid new shrine in the main body of the church. This article explores the continuing appeal of Becket’s cult at Canterbury for elite ecclesiastical and lay circles in thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century England. It argues that the Englishmen, or holders of ecclesiastical office in England, who were canonised as saints in the thirteenth century were associated with St Thomas and his cult. Drawing on the records of the English royal household and wardrobe, alongside letters and charters, this article then examines the reception of Becket’s cult at the royal court. Although Henry III was more famous for his adult devotion to St Edward the Confessor, Henry and his wife, Eleanor of Provence, still paid their respects to Becket’s shrine at Canterbury. Royal interest in St Thomas of Canterbury, or St Thomas the Martyr, continued, but with added vigour, under Edward I, his wives and his children. Despite St Thomas’s appeal for opponents of the English crown, Becket’s cult remained firmly connected to the English ruling dynasty.

This chapter begins with an examination of the educational features of Paulus Orosius’s Historiae adversus paganos. Orosius was a Christian presbyter from the Iberian Peninsula writing in the early fifth century, predominantly in North Africa. At the request of Augustine, he composed an apologetic Christian history in seven books. The enormous impact of Orosius’s work on the historiography of later centuries is of direct relevance to understanding the development of history-writing in Visigothic Iberia in the sixth and seventh centuries. The Historiae therefore serves as a crucial reference point from which we can chart the later relationship between history and education. The next section examines the influence of Orosius’s work and that of other late antique historians and theologians in late sixth- and seventh-century Iberia. Finally, this chapter explores the intersection of history and education in texts that were produced in Visigothic Spain. Monastic rules and instructional manuals for the clergy are particularly useful here because they often promote history as a key element of pedagogic practice. It is also likely that certain technical and stylistic elements of historical writings were deployed with educational objectives in mind. Here we focus on the works of Isidore of Seville, usually considered as the kingdom’s most important bishop in the early seventh century.

Friendship, with its plethora of expressions , was – and still is – central in political and diplomatic communication. Focusing on the fluctuating relationships between the thirteenth-century Iberian rulers, Alfonso X of Castile and James I of Aragon, this study will examine how the rhetoric, discourses and performance of friendship, which were based upon widespread cultural models, functioned as powerful communication tools, especially in peacemaking and diplomatic negotiations. The analysis of legal records, literary and narrative sources from both Castile and Aragon will shed light on the multiple discursive functions of their rhetoric of friendship which, for its historical and cultural legacy, and universal appeal, constituted a cross-cultural tool to legitimise the establishment and preservation of social networks and of the power structures that they contributed to shape and strengthen.