Project MUSE®: Mediaevalia - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/580
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Mediaevalia.daily12026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 32 (2011) through current issueLatest Articles: MediaevaliaTWOProject MUSE®Mediaevalia2161-80460361-946xLatest articles in Mediaevalia. Feed provided by Project MUSE®John Weever's Copies of Langland, Gower, and Chaucer
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974358
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John weever's Ancient Fvnerall Monvments within the Vnited Monarchie of Great Britaine, Ireland, and the Ilands Adiacent (1631) makes frequent reference to William Langland's Piers Plowman, Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and John Gower's Cronica tripertita, quoting sizable passages from all three works and three other of Gower's poems in Latin and English.1 Most of the quotations are satirical in tone and anticlerical in focus, so that, for example, Weever (1575/76–1632) favors the critical portraits from the General Prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales over Chaucer's other works, and book 3 of Gower's Vox clamantis, on the prelacy, over the rest. Notwithstanding its polemical selectivity in this regard
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/580/image/coversmallJohn Weever's Copies of Langland, Gower, and Chaucer2025-11-13text/htmlen-USJohn Weever's Copies of Langland, Gower, and Chaucer2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®1407502026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13Editor's Note
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974359
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This issue marks Mediaevalia's fiftieth year of publication, and the milestone of a golden anniversary seems like a good moment to review the history of the journal. Mediaevalia is a publication of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CEMERS) at Binghamton University (SUNY). CEMERS was cofounded by professors Aldo Bernardo and Bernard Huppé in 1966 and held its first of many conferences in 1967. (There have been nearly fifty of them to date.) CEMERS was only the third research center of its kind in the United States, following closely on the heels of the Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University in 1962 and the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Center at UCLA in 1964. CEMERS's 1967 conference was
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/580/image/coversmallEditor's Note2025-11-13text/htmlen-USEditor's Note2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®47402026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13Reassessing the Acts of the Concilium Modogarnomense
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974360
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The late seventh-century episcopal council of Saint-Pierrede-Grannon (Concilium Modogarnomense), also sometimes referred to as the Council of Bordeaux, holds the dubious distinction of being one of the least studied of the Merovingian-era Gallo-Frankish synods. While its acts now have been edited multiple times, as well as mined for evidence for ecclesiastical policy in the late seventh century, there have been hardly any comprehensive analyses of its context, program, and influence. This comparative neglect likely is due to several factors, including (1) the council's brief acta (i.e., the written record of its decisions) that contain only four canons, (2) its occurrence near the very end of the Merovingian
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/580/image/coversmallReassessing the Acts of the Concilium Modogarnomense2025-11-13text/htmlen-USReassessing the Acts of the Concilium Modogarnomense2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®1721492026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13Bertram of Metz and John of Alta Silva: Law and Blindness in Dolopathos (De rege et septem sapientibus)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974361
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Dolopathos, a work of prose fiction in Latin, was written in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century by a Cistercian monk called John from the French monastery of Alta Silva (Haute Seille).1 It is the earliest known example of a Book of Sindibad / Seven Sages of Rome story in Latin. It is related to both the so-called eastern group of the tradition (The Book of Sindibad) and the rest of the Seven Sages literature in Latin, French, and other European languages (the western group), but it contains several features not found elsewhere in either group. Taking the form of a frame tale, Dolopathos shares only four of its ten internal stories with the western group (canis, gaza, puteus+inclusa), only one with the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/580/image/coversmallBertram of Metz and John of Alta Silva: Law and Blindness in Dolopathos (De rege et septem sapientibus)2025-11-13text/htmlen-USBertram of Metz and John of Alta Silva: Law and Blindness in Dolopathos (De rege et septem sapientibus)2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®568762026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13Fraught Histories: Compilation and Incongruence in a Late Medieval Manuscript (Paris, BnF, fr. 821)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974362
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In medieval history-writing, compilation was an essential method for crafting narratives about the past. Through a process of selection, recombination, and the mediation of excerpts from existing texts, compilation allowed historians and manuscript makers to draw on a vast textual archive to propose new histories to their readers. Definitions from the Middle Ages focus more on what compilation or a compiler does than on what a compilation/compiler is, and modern scholars have consequently used the term broadly.1 In its current usage, "compilation" designates the process of selecting, recombining, and mediating textual excerpts in a new text; the product of such a process, such as Vincent of Beauvais's Speculum
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/580/image/coversmallFraught Histories: Compilation and Incongruence in a Late Medieval Manuscript (Paris, BnF, fr. 821)2025-11-13text/htmlen-USFraught Histories: Compilation and Incongruence in a Late Medieval Manuscript (Paris, BnF, fr. 821)2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®2517062026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13Saladin the Courteous: Legends and Lore in Late Medieval Tuscan Short Stories
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974363
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Of all literary genres, the short story is particularly well-suited for grappling with reality. This suitability extends beyond mere representation; it also involves the capacity to actively engage readers in their own education and opinion formation. The Tuscan collections of short stories from the late Middle Ages tend to corroborate this assumption, a point noted by scholars throughout decades. Vittore Branca, for instance, noticed how mercantile society "isolata ancora nell'opera di Dante in un cerchio di aristocratico disprezzo … irrompe nella 'commedia umana' del Decameron e la domina con la sua esuberante vitalità,"1 while Lanfranco Caretti dedicated a concise yet enlightening section of a famous essay to
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/580/image/coversmallSaladin the Courteous: Legends and Lore in Late Medieval Tuscan Short Stories2025-11-13text/htmlen-USSaladin the Courteous: Legends and Lore in Late Medieval Tuscan Short Stories2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®1442082026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13The Wounds of Saint Francis and Female Devotion in an Illuminated Legenda Maior
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974364
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Apatron saint of italy and the adopted namesake of the previous pope, Saint Francis of Assisi is perhaps the most beloved Christian saint today. Revered as a humble, nature-loving saint dedicated to pious poverty and acts of charity, Francis is also celebrated for receiving the stigmata, the wounds of Christ in his own flesh. The best-known images of Francis, including the famous murals painted in the late thirteenth century, possibly by Giotto, in the Upper Church at Assisi, emphasize Francis's stigmatization as a means of aligning him with Christ.1 The Franciscan Order's emphasis on the saint's stigmata can be credited in large part to the Legenda Maior, the biography by Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. In 1266, the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/580/image/coversmallThe Wounds of Saint Francis and Female Devotion in an Illuminated Legenda Maior2025-11-13text/htmlen-USThe Wounds of Saint Francis and Female Devotion in an Illuminated Legenda Maior2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®780272026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13The Garden of Delights in Boccaccio's Amorosa visione: Desacralizing Dante's Paradiso 23
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974365
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The garden has assumed a privileged role in Giovanni Boccaccio's oeuvre, from the famous setting of the Decameron's cornice to the gardens featured in the novelle, as well as in other works by the poet. The garden of the Amorosa visione (composed 1342–43 in terza rima) holds particular importance for the exploration of the young Boccaccio's relationship with his great predecessor Dante, as it is intentionally designed as an Edenic locale posited at the culmination of his narrator's journey through earthly virtues and vices. And it is precisely through the narrator's sojourn in the garden that Boccaccio offers an alternative to the spiritual journey of Dante, who presents eternal salvation as attainable only after
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/580/image/coversmallThe Garden of Delights in Boccaccio's Amorosa visione: Desacralizing Dante's Paradiso 232025-11-13text/htmlen-USThe Garden of Delights in Boccaccio's Amorosa visione: Desacralizing Dante's Paradiso 232025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®1191892026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13Giletta and the Other Mediche: Gendering Science in Decameron 3.9
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974366
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For a text whose fabula takes place at the onset of a semiglobal health emergency, the Decameron is frighteningly lacking in good doctors. This consideration does not appear to be due to a shortage of medical professionals, since the whole spectrum from skilled physicians to untrained charlatans is present from the very opening of the book. In describing the effects of the plague on society, Boccaccio laments that "né consiglio di medico né virtù di medicina alcuna [neither medical advice nor any power of medicine]" could do anything against the rampage of the pestilence, while the number of "medicanti [doctors]" grew all the more ("era … divenuto grandissimo"), due to the indiscriminate mixing of "scienziati"—that
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/580/image/coversmallGiletta and the Other Mediche: Gendering Science in Decameron 3.92025-11-13text/htmlen-USGiletta and the Other Mediche: Gendering Science in Decameron 3.92025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®1780192026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13Representing Gender in Court: Juridical Women in the Time of Boccaccio's Madonna Filippa (Decameron 6.7)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974367
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In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which stripped people of their right to terminate pregnancy, many of us who spend time with Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron have revisited the novella of Madonna Filippa (Decameron 6.7), who can be read as a sort of medieval champion for women's bodily autonomy.1 While scholars have traditionally historicized her as a morally ambiguous and implausible figure, the recent demise of abortion rights in the United States under Roe has made both novice and seasoned readers eager to find a (proto)feminist ally in Boccaccio's fourteenth-century character.2 Put on trial for adultery, the fictional protagonist surprises the court
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/580/image/coversmallRepresenting Gender in Court: Juridical Women in the Time of Boccaccio's Madonna Filippa (Decameron 6.7)2025-11-13text/htmlen-USRepresenting Gender in Court: Juridical Women in the Time of Boccaccio's Madonna Filippa (Decameron 6.7)2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®1258732026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13Representations of Plague and Violence in Late Medieval Hispano-Jewish Communities
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974368
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Depictions of plague and violence are linked. Both involve representations of death.1 As Jacques Le Goff and Nicolas Truong assert about the late Middle Ages, "Macabre art extends to all forms of representations, iconography in particular. Frescoes, sculptures, miniatures, engravings or playing cards—that 'poor man's book'—strike the spirits with the terror of death and with the abhorrence of the corpse that develops in the fourteenth century, that is, in the Late Middle Ages."2 Earlier, Johan Huizinga asserted that no other period had impressed upon the world the image of death with the continued insistence of the fifteenth century.3 In the aftermath of the Black Death there were concerns with memorializing the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/580/image/coversmallRepresentations of Plague and Violence in Late Medieval Hispano-Jewish Communities2025-11-13text/htmlen-USRepresentations of Plague and Violence in Late Medieval Hispano-Jewish Communities2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®1598842026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13Melancholia and the Lovesick Rapist in Medieval Iberian Literature
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974369
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In a summer midday of 711, legend has it, an act of rape precipitated the downfall of Iberia and its last Visigothic king, Rodrigo. According to Pedro de Corral's Crónica del Rey don Rodrigo (ca. 1443), Rodrigo falls madly in love with Florinda La Cava after seeing her lifting her dress while frolicking with her female companions in the royal garden of Toledo. Subsequently, in a scene that resembles the motif of the Judgment of Paris, the ladies undress as they play a game to assess who has the loveliest body. The narrator, guided by the king's voyeuristic gaze, focuses on La Cava's breasts and nipples. Arrogating for himself Paris's role in the beauty contest, Rodrigo "dezía que no avía en todo el mundo donzella
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/580/image/coversmallMelancholia and the Lovesick Rapist in Medieval Iberian Literature2025-11-13text/htmlen-USMelancholia and the Lovesick Rapist in Medieval Iberian Literature2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®1517732026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13