Journal articles on the topic 'Monastic and religious life of women History Middle Ages'

What could it mean to a medieval monastic community to own a valuable object? Certainly, property in general was crucial to the survival of a stable community, ideals of poverty and the thirteenth-century Franciscan experiment in radical poverty notwithstanding. More specifically, what did it mean to own not simply a field or mill that generated revenue, but an object that was believed to have power beyond its material qualities? Such objects—saints’ relics and wonder-working images—did of course also generate revenue, but their meaning and role for the monastic community and the wider society could be much richer than that. And what if the monastic community was a convent of nuns, of professed religious women whose lives were shaped not just by the rule they shared with their male counterparts, but also by the codes, both implicit and increasingly explicit, that constrained the range of women's religious activities?Although the first two of these questions—about monastic property and the religious value of sacred objects—have been extensively discussed in scholarship on the Middle Ages, a specific focus on gender in relation to monastic ownership of sacred objects has not been widely examined. My focus on gender here is generated by two salient aspects of religious life in the twelfth century, the period of this study. First, there was an increasing articulation of the priesthood as the sole means of mediating divine presence, and of that priesthood as exclusively male.

This is the introduction to the thematic issue Faithful to the Cross in a Moving World: Late Medieval Carthusians as Devotional Reformers. The editors discuss how the Carthusian order expanded in the Late Middle Ages and how, in contrast to the first Carthusians, new charterhouses were created in or close to the cities. The introduction studies how this change came about, connecting it to the order's origin in the monastic reform movement of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the changing economy of piety in the Late Middle Ages, and developing ideas as to what was the best form of religious of religious life.

This essay begins with the paradox that Catherine of Siena, perhaps the most famous uncloistered religious woman in the Middle Ages, became after her death an authority and model for cloistered monasticism for women during the Dominican reform movement. But the dissonance in the idea of Catherine as a model for cloistered religious women is heightened by false assumptions or oversimplifications of Catherine’s religious status, and of what it meant for Catherine to be a model for this or that form of religious life. This essay surveys Catherine’s letters to religious women, including letters to penitents or mantellate and letters to abbesses and nuns in monasteries. While Catherine’s letters to penitents and other women living in the world focus on the challenges of living without a formal religious rule, her letters to nuns focus on the importance of their maintaining claustration, following their rule and on the dangers of wealth—a recognition of the generally higher social and economic standing of monastic women. Catherine seems also to identify certain kinds of prayer with monastic life. It is important to remember that Catherine herself founded a monastery, and while it remains unclear what precisely her intentions were for this community, it is another sign of Catherine’s interest in and commitment to cloistered religiosity. The essay concludes by arguing for a more nuanced understanding of what it might have meant for Catherine to be a model for specific forms of religious life.

It has frequently been observed that the intellectual activities of the English Black Monks were in decline during the last two-and-a-half centuries before the Dissolution. There is, indeed, a remarkable contrast between the fecundity of the monastic scriptoria in the two centuries after the Conquest and the apparent inertia of later years, when the creative stimulus seems to have dwindled to the verge of extinction and few, if any, original minds are found at work within the cloister. This generalisation cannot be challenged, as the evidence leaves little room for doubt, but the ‘apparent inertia’ may be questioned since it is a contradiction of the emerging facts. The latter suggest not apathy but persistence in the pursuit of learning, that is, a continuing concern for study on the part of the monastic community; and this should not be disparaged because it bore little more than the practical, commonplace fruits of preaching and teaching. We cannot regard these as fruits of scholarship to be compared with the original compositions which grew out of the philosophical and theological disputations at the centre of university life; they were daily or weekly activities, quite unremarkable, and probably for this very reason left scant record of their occurrence. Moreover, the Black Monk Chapter was promoting these fruits by stating unequivocally, in its statutes of c. 1363, that the principal reason behind the joint decision to send one monk in twenty for further study at the university was to fulfil these precise and practical requirements. A clear indication of the enduring commitment to this policy on the part of most of the cathedral monasteries is to be found in many of the surviving documents, which affirm a consistent adherence to their obligations.

This article examines the regulation of religious life in the late Middle Ages (14th and 15th centuries), focusing comparatively on Catholic monastic communities in pre-Reformation England and Buddhist monasticism in early Ming China. This comparative approach to two of the most important monastic traditions across Eurasia allows us to problematize the paradigm of ideas and praxes surrounding monastic self-governance in Latin Christendom and to integrate the current scholarship on Ming regulation of religious communities by investigating the pivotal changes in imperial religious policies taking place in the early period of this dynasty. We find that monks and secular authorities at the two ends of Eurasia often shared the same concerns about the discipline of religious men and women, the administration of their properties, and the impact of these communities on society at large. Yet, the article identifies significant differences in the responses given to these concerns. Through the analysis of primary sources that have thus far been overlooked, we show how in early Ming China the imperial government imposed a strict control over the education, ordination and disciplining of Buddhist monks. This bureaucratic system was especially strengthened during the reign of Zhu Yuanzhang (r. 1368–1398), when the figure of the Monk-Official and other tools of secular regulation were introduced, and limits to property claims and economic activities of monasteries were imposed. Instead, during the same period, English monasteries benefited from the previous disentangling of the Church from secular political authorities across Europe. In fact, in late medieval England, the Benedictine tradition of self-governance and independence from the secular sphere was arguably even more marked than in the rest of the continent.

It is a characteristic merit of Richard Southern—recently voted the historians’ historian in The Observer—that as long ago as 1970, in Western Society and the Church, he devoted some luminous pages to ‘the influence of women in religious life’. Though these pages nestle in a chapter called ‘Fringe orders and anti-orders’, twenty years ago such labels were not pejorative. Southern made women emblematic of what could be called a pendulum-swing theory of medieval religious history. First came a primitive, earlier medieval age of improvization and individual effort, of spiritual warriors and local initiatives; the central medieval period saw ‘a drive towards increasingly well-defined and universal forms of organization’ in an age of hierarchy and order; then, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, back swung the pendulum towards complexity and confusion, individual experiment, and ‘small, humble, shadowy organizations’.

Since Herbert Grundmann’s 1935 Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, interest in the Beguines has grown significantly. Yet we have struggled whether to call Beguines “religious” or not. My conviction is that the Beguines are one manifestation of an impulse found throughout Christian history to live a form of life that resembles Christian monasticism without founding institutions of religious life. It is this range of less institutional yet seriously committed forms of life that I am here calling the “Beguine Option.” In my essay, I will sketch this “Beguine Option” in its varied expressions through Christian history. Having presented something of the persistent past of the Beguine Option, I will then present an introduction to forms of life exhibited in many of the expressions of what some have called “new monasticism” today, highlighting the similarities between movements in the past and new monastic movements in the present. Finally, I will suggest that the Christian Church would do well to foster the development of such communities in the future as I believe these forms of life hold much promise for manifesting and advancing the kingdom of God in our midst in a postmodern world.

The idea and the ideal of religious poverty exerted a powerful force throughout the Middle Ages. “Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff,” Christ had commanded his apostles. He had sternly warned, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for someone who is rich to enter into the kingdom of God.” And he had instructed one of the faithful, who had asked what he needed to do to live the most holy sort of life, “if you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give your money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” Beginning with these biblical injunctions, voluntary poverty, the casting off of wealth and worldly goods for the sake of Christ, dominated much of medieval religious thought. The desire for a more perfect poverty impelled devout men and women to new heights of piety, while disgust with the material wealth of the church fueled reform movements and more radical heresies alike. Often, as so clearly illustrated by the case of the Spiritual Franciscans andfraticelliin the later thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the lines separating devout believer from condemned heretic shifted and even reversed themselves entirely depending on how one understood the religious call to poverty. Moreover, the Christian ideal of poverty interacted powerfully with and helped to shape many major economic, social, and cultural trends in medieval Europe. As Lester Little demonstrated over two decades ago, for example, developing ideals of religious poverty were deeply intermeshed with the revitalizing European economy of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries and did much to shape the emerging urban spirituality of that period.

This study aims at providing an overview of the everyday life of Russian nuns in Palestine after World War II. This research encompassed the following tasks: to analyze the range of ego-documents available today, characterizing the everyday life and internal motivation of women in choosing the church jurisdiction; to identify, on the basis of written sources, the most active supporters of the Moscow Patriarchate to examine the nuns’ activity as information agents of the Russian Orthodox Church and Soviet government; to characterize the actors influencing the everyday life of the Russian nuns in the context of the creation of the state of Israel and new borders dividing the Holy Land; to present the motives and instruments of influence employed by the representatives of both secu-lar and church diplomacies in respect to the women leading a monastic life; to describe consequences of including the nuns into the sphere of interest of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR; to show the specific role of “Russian women” in the context of the struggle for securing positions of the USSR and the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in the region. The sources for the study were prodused by the state (correspondence between the state authorities, meeting notes) and from the religious actors (letters of nuns to the church authorities, reports of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission, memoirs of the clergy). By combining the methods of micro-history and history of the everyday life with the political history of the Cold War, the study examines the agency of the nuns — a category of women traditionally unnoticeable in the political history. Due to the specificity of the sources, the study focuses exclusively on a group of the nuns of the Holy Land who came under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patri-archate. The majority of the Russian-speaking population of Palestine in the mid-1940s were women in the status of monastic residents (nuns and novices) and pilgrims, and in the 1940s–1950s, they were drawn into the geopolitical combinations of the Soviet Union. The Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem, staffed with representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church, becomes a key institution of influence in the region. This article shows how elderly nuns became an object of close attention and even funding by the Soviet state. The everyday life of the nuns became directly dependent on the activities of the Soviet agencies and Soviet-Israeli relations after the arri-val of the Soviet state representatives. At the same time, the nuns became key participants in the inter-jurisdictional conflicts and began to act as agents of influence in the region. The study analyzes numerous ego-documents created by the nuns themselves from the collection of the Council on the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church under the USSR Council of Ministers. The study shows how nuns positioned themselves as leading a monastic life in the written correspondence with the ROC authorities and staff of the Soviet MFA. The instances of influence of different secular authorities on the development of the female monasticism presented here point to promising research avenues for future reconstruction of the history of women in the Holy Land based on archival materials from state departments, alternative sources should also be found. The study focused on the life of elderly Russian nuns in the Holy Land and showed their activity in the context of the geopolitical transformations in the Near East in the 1940s–1950s.

Brian Stock's definition of textual community describes the process by which—in the face of growing levels of literacy and the rise of heretical movements in eleventh- and twelfth-century France—religious communities (from heretical sects to orthodox monastic communities) came to understand their identities through the mediation of written texts, which often were interpreted for them by key individuals. The text, the written word, became central to communal identity, affecting even the non-literate through its dissemination and acceptance by the members of the community. The relationship between the oral and the written, and the relationship developed between text and life, word and deed, in the interpretive models that developed out of texts and came to be applied to the lives of the readers or auditors, are two areas which are not the exclusive preserve of eleventh- and twelfth-century France, but are continuing concerns throughout the Middle Ages. Furthermore, the tendency to develop textual communities can also be found in the later medieval period, but with a different perspective on the question of literacy. For women religious in late-medieval England, for example, literacy usually did not denote Latinity but rather vernacularity; as a result, vernacular texts comprised the means by which these female religious came to understand their communal identity. While Bernard of Clairvaux's sermons on the Song of Songs addressed his male monastic community in Latin, women's religious rules formed a different kind of textual community that relied not on Latin exposition of mystical experience but on vernacular instruction concerning certain daily activities and proper conduct. The parallels between Stock's examples and the situation of medieval English female religious are still useful, because both highlight literacy, textuality, ritual, and activity as central to how communities define themselves.

AbstractAbelard’s Rule. The Paraclet convent and its order. Petrus Abaelardus is the man who divides opinion. This was already the case during his lifetime, and it also becomes evident in current research. It is striking that even though a number of studies have appeared on his capacity as a philosopher, not many discuss him as a theologian and even fewer as the founder of an order. The following article will address this unique aspect. Even though reference will be made to examples of the monastic life of women in the 12th century. Above all an attempt should be made to perceive this role as founder of an order as the logical evolution of Abaelard’s previous development and as the consistent continuation of his theological work. What role did Abaelard play as the founder of a convent for women? What developments had led to this role in the first place? How was the interaction with Heloise, who became the first abbess of the Paraclet convent? Why was the convent’s rule only ever formulated theoretically, but never realised and implemented? In any case, the radically spiritual fresh start which had emerged in the correspondence between Heloise and Abelard, did not take place. Abaelard’s rule, however, remains the fascinating legacy of a man who managed to transform the traumatic experience of castration into deep spirituality. This spirituality turned out to be an extension of his critical dialectic, coupled with the passionate piety of the Middle Ages.

Notes an Hospitaller Sisters in Central Europe (outside Frisia) during the later Middle Ages The military-religious orders were supposed to fight and shed blood for the faith. Nevertheless, the Hospitallers included women, similar to the Teutonic Order. This should not be a surprize because both military-religious orders upheld caring for the needy and sick as important tasks. In Upper Germany, however, there were no convents of Hospitaller sisters. This was different from Frisia, where special socio-political conditions produced Hospitaller nunneries, and it was also different from other European countries where there had been enough female Hospitallers to concentrate them in special houses. Yet according to a list of 1367 the southern part of the Priory of Alamania had four commanderies where, in each case, seven sisters were supposed to live alongside with knights and priests: Heimbach, Dorlisheim, Freiburg im Breisgau and Villingen. From documents it is known that in many other commanderies married couples, widows or single women bought for themselves life-rents from and maintenance in Hospitaller houses. The legal status of such females was not always clear. Some of them may have hoped to be recognized as fully-professed sorores, in order to enjoy the privileged status of religious persons, whereas others may only have been consorores or donate. Others may have been female servants or just members of ecclesiastical fraternities.

Much evidence has been brought to light recently to demonstrate the vitality of religious life among the English laity on the eve of the Reformation. Attention has been drawn to the fact that, in the period before the advent of Protestantism, lay men and women evinced a high degree of commitment to their church. The religious changes of the sixteenth century are as pressing a historical problem as ever; moreover, they provide a valuable litmus with which to test the qualities of the late-medieval church. Nevertheless, there is a danger that the fascination of the Reformation question, together with the bias of documentary sources on lay religion towards the latter end of the medieval period, may impoverish our appreciation of the ways in which, for a thousand years, Christians in Britain had been shaping their religious lives. To take a long view of religious voluntarism may help to put the developments of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in a proper perspective. There has also been a tendency, in discussion of lay religious life in the late middle ages, to accept the institutional framework as given. Yet in practice that framework was both adjustable and expressive of a wide range of lay initiatives in religion. That men and women were prepared to lend material support to a variety of religious institutions is apparent from any medieval collection of wills or set of churchwardens' accounts. But what, exactly, was expressed by such support? This is not an easy question to answer. Any assessment calls for an understanding of the medieval parish, not as a legal abstraction, nor yet as a supposedly ‘natural’ community of inhabitants, but as a more or less adaptable framework shaped by, and in turn shaping, the lives of the members. The evidence of religious activity, from processions to church-building, is, so far as it goes, not hard to find. But what of the parochial structure which gave meaning to these gestures, and which could in turn be modified by them?

The article examines the ethical system of Jainism on the example of the lifestyle of ascetic monks and lay householders. The disciplinary rules for lay followers (both Digambara and Śvetāmbara branches of Jainism) are fixed in the texts of the śrāvakācāra genre compiled by ascetics. This reflects the hierarchical distribution of “roles” within the Jain community. Ascetics represent the most advanced part of the community on the spiritual Path of Liberation, while lay people have only just entered this path. The author focuses on the fact that in Jainism monasticism is considered as a spiritually higher stage, and not just a different (but equally significant) way of salvation. Only monks of certain ranks have the right to preach publicly, interpret the Scriptures, and instruct the laity. Householders can only do this in the absence of monks. At the same time, ascetics are almost completely dependent on the laity for their everyday life, since householders are obliged to provide them with everything necessary for life. The introduction of an intermediate, quasi-monastic way of life in the form of the bhaṭṭārakas (Digambra) and śrīpūjya (Śvetāmbra) in the middle ages allowed the Jain community to survive and even have a direct impact on the political and economic situation in various regions of India. The author emphasizes that written in all-India paradigm of the life regulations (artha, kāma, dharma and mokṣa), Jain system of domestic rituals, coupled with the practice of vows and limitations focused on training of householders to move towards self-improvement and eventually achieve the main religious goal – realization the nature of one’s own soul.

Joachim of Fiore (1135-1202) – a Middle Age exegete and mystic – is the author of an impressive work on the vision of history, whose most renown ele­ment is the tertius status, i.e. the age of the Holy Spirit which precedes the end of the world and the Final Judgment. As an author, Joachim was also interested in the history of religious life in the Middle Ages and in various exegetical tools which he developed to analyze this subject. In his works, especially the minor ones, he also discusses practical problems related to religious life in the 12th century. The small tractate, Questio de Maria Magdalena et Maria sorore Lazari et Marthae, has been preserved in a single 13th century manuscript and is kept in the Biblioteca Antoniana in Padua. In his exegesis on various Gospel passages which deal with the anointing of Jesus’ feet and head in Galilee and Bethany, Joachim of Fiore intends to show that the actions of women who performed this gesture pos­sess a hidden moral significance: the certainty concerning the internal unity that occurs between contemplation and the virtue of humility. An example of this unity is Mary of Bethany who anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped them with her hair (cf. Jn 12:3) as a person who is humble and – at the same time – given to contem­plation. Still – according to Joachim – as a righteous person, she had the right to reach for the head of the Savior.

AbstractResearchers of Jewish History dealing with the topic of women’s character and status in Medieval Jewish texts drew their information mainly from Rabbinical Responsa and tended to neglect other types of literature: sermons and Biblical commentaries. Responsa were a primary source for two reasons—convenience and availability of the material. However, this type of literature was written out of necessity and dealt with the problematic situations in a woman’s life, whether with regard to her private life (as for instance in matters of marriage or divorce), her financial situation or other difficult issues. It may be possible to put together a clearer picture of women and their position in the Middle Ages, including their treatment by the men of their immediate surroundings, by examining and researching the vast literature of sermons and Biblical commentaries.Using an interpretation of Chapter 31 of the book of Proverbs (“Woman of Valor”), the preacher draws an image of the ideal woman and uses it to present his opinion on women, their shortcomings and their virtues. The main topic that preachers and interpreters discussed was the question of the perfection of women’s intellectual souls. As women did not usually acquire great intellectual learning, it stands to reason that they could not achieve perfection. Therefore, replacements were created that allowed women’s perfection to surpass that of men’s.

The main criteria of social differentiation of women in the first state formations of the Middle Ages have been studied. The influence of religion on the formation of understanding of the place and role of women in society has been shown. Peculiarities of marriage and family relations in ancient Mesopotamia have been considered. The factors determining the social hierarchy of women in the ancient civilizations of the Biennial have been determined and analyzed. The causes of temple and street mass prostitution have been clarified. Features of the position of female slaves have been described. The work is based on the principle of historicism. When studying primary sources, comparative legal, hermeneutic methods and systematic analysis were used. The anthropological method was used when revealing the worldview of the people of that time and their values, the gender method was used when studying the status of women in the state institutions of the Middle Ages. It was concluded that the social position of women in ancient Mesopotamia was not unambiguous. Religion influenced a person's worldview, the understanding of the nature of a woman, her place and role in society. The rite of “sacred marriage” was one of the significant religious rituals, which encouraged the reproduction of similar sacred acts in worldly life, and became the ideological basis of the activity of the priests of Mezhyrechya. On the basis of the analysis of the legislation of the state institutions of the time, the purpose of marriage was determined, that is the birth and upbringing of children who were to inherit and multiply the family property and perform the necessary sacred rites, which were to help the dead in the afterlife. The inability to have children became the reason for divorce, as a rule, at the husband's will. The wife also had the right to initiate the divorce process in the municipal court, but under certain circumstances specifically defined by law. The most influential in society were the high priestesses – entum and naditum, who were related by blood to the famous families of Mesopotamia. They had wealth, broad socio-economic rights and the greatest social protection. Prostitutes and slaves were the least protected. It is noted that the origins of modern problems of gender inequality can be seen in the distant past, in the ancient world, in particular in Mesopotamia, which had a significant impact on European civilization. Women's History The Biennial provides grounds for asserting that solving the problems of gender inequality is not possible only by changing the legislation. A comprehensive approach is necessary, which would take into account such components as religion, culture, law, economy, psychology, etc.

One of the most persistent and frustrating problems which the social historian faces is that of gaining access to private lives in the past. This is true for all periods, but it is especially so for the Middle Ages. There are some letters available, but they tend to be scarce and limited in nature. Another type of document which proves a useful means of entry into medieval life is the testament. The information it contains is often of an intensely personal nature and allows the reader to understand the testator's relationships with others.The wealth of information contained in testaments is only beginning to be fully exploited. In his article “Fifteenth and Sixteenth-Century Wills as Historical Sources,” Michael L. Zell has demonstrated the breadth of information which these documents contain and points the way to many areas of further investigation. The usefulness of testamentary evidence to trace inheritance patterns and the disposition of property is well established. Eleanor S. Riemer has used testaments from Siena to examine the economic position of women. W. K. Jordan used wills extensively in his three volume study of charity in urban and rural England. More recently, Joel T. Rosenthal employed them to study gift-giving patterns among the English aristocracy. Wills have been used as sources for the study of religious values and popular piety, as a means of investigating the patterns of epidemic disease, and of tracing the spread of literacy. Historians have also begun to use testamentary evidence in the investigation of family life. For the history of the English family, the use of testamentary evidence is just beginning.

RESUMENLa pretensión de este artículo es ofrecer una serie de reflexiones y valoraciones metodológicas sobre la historia medieval de la Iglesia y la religiosidad partiendo de algunos aspectos destacados de la producción historiográfica reciente y esbozar ciertas propuestas en la misma clave metodológica. Este ensayo reflexiona sobre temas, enfoques y perspectivas, sobre los niveles de estudio de lo religioso y sobre la integración de la historia de la Iglesia y la historia social, y aboga por una historiasocial de la Iglesia.PALABRAS CLAVE: Historia Medieval, Historia de la Iglesia y la vida religiosa en la Edad Media, Metodología histórica, Liturgia y sociedad, Tendencias historiográficas.ABSTRACTThe aim of this article is to offer a series of reflections and methodological evaluations on the medieval history of the Church and religiosity based on some outstanding aspects of recent historiographical production, and to outline certain proposals in the same methodological vein. This essay reflects on themes, approaches and perspectives, on the levels of study of the religious and on the integration of the history of the Church and social history, and advocates a social history of the Church.KEY WORDS: Medieval History, History of the Church and religious life in the Middle Ages, historical methodology, liturgy and society, historiographical trends. BIBLIOGRAFÍAAbad Ibáñez, J. A., La celebración del misterio cristiano, Pamplona, Eunsa, 1996.Andrés-Gallego, J., “Historia religiosa en España”, Anuario de historia de la Iglesia, 4 (1995), pp. 259-270.Araus Ballesteros, L. y Prieto Sayagüés, J. A. (coords.), Las tres religiones en la Baja Edad Media peninsular. Espacios, percepciones y manifestaciones, Madrid, La Ergástula, 2018.Arranz Guzmán, A., “Amores desordenados y otros pecadillos del clero”, en Carrasco Manchado, A. I. y Rábade Obradó, M. del P. (coords.), Pecar en la Edad Media, Madrid, Sílex, 2008, pp. 227-262.Asensio Palacios, J. C., “Neuma, espacio y liturgia. La ordenación sonora en Compostela según el Codex Calixtinus”, Medievalia, 17 (2014), pp. 131-152.Asociación de historia religiosa contemporánea, http://www.aehrc.es/ (consulta: 2-1-2019).Associaçâo Nacional de História, Brasil, http://www.snh2013.anpuh.org/ (consulta: 28-12-2018).Aurell, J. y Pavón Benito, J. (eds.), Ante la muerte: actitudes, espacios y formas en la España medieval, Pamplona, Universidad de Navarra, 2002.Bartolomé Herrero, B., Iglesia y vida religiosa en la Segovia medieval (1072-1406), Tesis Doctoral, Madrid, Universidad Complutense, 2000.Bartolomé Herrero, B., “Los obispos de Segovia en la Edad Media. Siglos XII, XIII y XIV”, Anthologica annua, 63 (2016), pp. 11-561.Bazán Díaz, I., Los herejes de Durango y la búsqueda de la Edad del Espíritu Santo en el siglo XV, Durango, Museo de historia y arte de Durango, 2007.Beceiro Pita. I. (dir.): La espiritualidad y la configuración de los reinos ibéricos (siglos XII-XV), Madrid, Dykinson, 2018.Bricourt, H. Hélène y Klöckener, M. (eds.), Liturgie, pensée théologique et mentalités religieuses au haut Moyen Âge. Le témoignage des sources liturgiques, Munster, Aschendorff Verlag, 2016.Burke, P., ¿Qué es la historia cultural? Barcelona, Paidós Ibérica, 2006.Bynum, C., Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe, Brooklyn, Zone Books, 2011.Carrasco Manchado, A. I. y Rábade Obradó, M. del P. (coords.), Pecar en la Edad Media, Madrid, Sílex, 2008.Carrero Santamaría, E. y Rico Camps, D., “La organización del espacio litúrgico hispánico entre los siglos VI y XI”, Antiquité tardive: revue internationale d’histoire et d’archéologie (Ejemplar dedicado a Isidore de Séville et son temps), 23 (2015), pp. 239-248.Cavero Domínguez, G., Martín Fernández, un obispo leonés del siglo XIII. Poder y gobierno, Madrid, La Ergástula, 2018.Clío & Crimen (2004), 1, “Las herejías medievales”; (2010), 7, dedicado a “Pecado-Crimen y Penitencia-Castigo en la Edad Media a través de la literatura y el arte”. http://www.durango-udala.net/portalDurango/p_86_final_Contenedor_5.jsp?seccion=s_ldes_d1_v1.jsp&codbusqueda=196&codMenuPN=265&codMenu=145&tmn=1&language=es (consulta: 2-1-2019).Cueva Merino, J. de la, Montero, F. y Louzao, J. (eds.), La historia religiosa de la España contemporánea. Balance y perspectivas, Alcalá, Universidad de Alcalá, 2017.Christian, Jr., W. A., Apariciones en Castilla y Cataluña (siglos XIV-XVI), Madrid, Nerea, 1990.Díaz Ibáñez, J., La Iglesia de Cuenca en la Edad Media (siglos XII-XV): estructura institucional y relaciones de poder, Madrid, Universidad Complutense, 2001.Domínguez Sánchez, S., Documentos de Gregorio IX (1227-1241) referentes a España, León, Universidad de León, 2004.Domínguez Sánchez, S., Documentos de Nicolás IV (1288-1292) referentes a España, León, Universidad de León, 2009.Domínguez Sánchez, S., Documentos pontificios medievales del Monasterio de Santa María de Poblet (1132-1499), León, Universidad de León, 2017.Donado Vara, J., Echevarría Arsuaga, A. y Barquero Goñi, C., La Edad Media: siglos V-XII. Madrid, Centro de Estudios Ramón Areces – UNED, 2009;Donado Vara, J., Echevarría Arsuaga, A. y Barquero Goñi, C., La Edad Media: siglos XIII-XV. Madrid, Centro de Estudios Ramón Areces – UNED, 2009.Esteban, A. y Étienvre, J.-P. (eds.), Fêtes et liturgie, fiestas y liturgia, Madrid, Casa de Velázquez-Universidad Complutense, 1988.Fasti ecclesiae gallicanae. https://fasti.huma-num.fr/feg/%3Cfront%3E (consulta: 4-12-2018).Fernández Conde, F. J., “La transmisión del saber en una sociedad predominantemente analfabeta: Una catequesis permanente”, en Historia de España Menéndez Pidal, XVI, Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1994, pp. 863-890.Fernández Gallardo, L., Alonso de Cartagena: iglesia, política y cultura en la Castilla del siglo XV, Tesis Doctoral, Madrid, Universidad Complutense, 2003.García de Cortázar, J. Á. y Sesma Muñoz, J. Á., Historia de la Edad Media. Una síntesis interpretativa, Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 1988, con sucesivas reediciones.García de Cortázar, J. Á., “La Civitas Dei: la ciudad como centro de vida religiosa en el siglo XIII”, en González Jiménez, M. (ed.), El mundo urbano en la Castilla del siglo XIII, Sevilla, Ayuntamiento de Ciudad Real, Fundación El Monte, 2006, pp. 275-301.García Guzmán, M. del M., La sociedad de El Puerto de Santa María a finales de la Edad Media a través de sus testamentos, El Puerto de Santa María, Ayuntamiento de El Puerto de Santa María, 2007.García Hernán, E., “Visión acerca del estado actual en España de la Historia de la Iglesia”, Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia, 16 (2007), pp. 281-308.García Oro, J., Cisneros: el cardenal de España, Barcelona, Ariel, 2002.García y García, A., “Religiosidad popular y festividades en el Occidente peninsular”, en A. Esteban y J.-P. Étienvre (eds.), Fêtes et liturgie, fiestas y liturgia, Madrid, Casa de Velázquez-Universidad Complutense, 1988, pp. 45-51.García y García, A., Alonso Rodríguez, B. y Cantelar Rodríguez, F., El “Libro de las confesiones” de Martín Pérez. Una radiografía de la sociedad medieval española, Salamanca, Instituto de Historia de la Teología Española, 1992.Gerbet, M. C., “La vida religiosa de los laicos”, en B. Benassar (dir.), Historia de los españoles, I, siglos VI-XVI, Barcelona, Crítica, 1989.González Novalín, J. L., “Infiltraciones de la devoción popular a Jesús y a María en la liturgia romana de la baja Edad Media”, Studium Ovetense, 3 (1975), pp. 259-285;González Novalín, J. L., “Misas supersticiosas y misas votivas en la piedad popular del tiempo de la Reforma”, Miscelánea José Zunzunegui (1911-1974), II (1975), pp. 1-40.Guerreau, A., El futuro de un pasado. La Edad Media en el siglo XXI, Barcelona, Crítica, 2002.Guijarro González, S., Maestros, Escuelas y Libros: El Universo Cultural de las Catedrales en la Castilla Medieval, Madrid, Universidad Carlos III-Dykinson, 2004.Hamburger, J. F., Schlotheuber, E., Marti, S. and Fassler, M., Liturgical life and Latin Learning at Paradies bei Soest, 1300-1425, Inscription and Illumination in the Choir Books of a North German Dominican Convent, Aschendorff Verlag, Munster, 2016, 2 v.Historia de las diócesis españolas, http://bac-editorial.es/17-historia-de-las-diocesis (consulta: 6-12-2018).Iogna-Prat, D., Palazzo, É. et Russo, D. (eds.), Marie. Le culte de la Vierge dans la société médievale, París, Beauchesne, 1996.Jiménez López de Eguileta, J. E., “Expresiones de la religiosidad medieval en la región gaditana (siglos XIII-XIV)”, Alcanate, 10 (2016-2017), pp. 139-195.Jungmann, S. I., J. A., El sacrificio de la misa. Tratado histórico-litúrgico, Madrid, Editorial Católica, 1953, 2ª ed. (trad. de la 3ª ed. alemana Missarum Solemnia, Wien, 1949).Kroesen, J., “The Altar and its Decorations in Medieval Churches”, Medievalia, 17 (2014), pp. 153-183.Ladero Quesada, M. Á. y Nieto Soria, J. M., “Iglesia y sociedad en los siglos XIII al XV (ámbito castellano-leonés)”, En la España medieval, 11 (1998), pp. 125-151.Ladero Quesada, M. Á. y Sánchez Herrero, J., “Iglesia y ciudades”, Las ciudades andaluzas (siglos XIII-XVI). VI Coloquio Internacional de Historia Medieval de Andalucía. Málaga, Universidad de Málaga, 1991, pp. 227-264.Ladero Quesada, M. Á., “Tinieblas y claridades de la Edad Media”, en E. Benito Ruano (coord.), Tópicos y realidades de la Edad Media, I, Madrid, Real Academia de la Historia, 2000, pp. 78-81.Ladero Quesada, M. Á., “Historia de la Iglesia de España medieval”, en J. Andrés Gallego (ed.), La historia de la Iglesia en España y el mundo hispano, Murcia, Universidad Católica San Antonio, 2001, pp. 121-190.Ladero Quesada, M. Á., Las fiestas en la cultura medieval, Barcelona, Areté, 2004.Lop Otín, M. J., El cabildo catedralicio de Toledo en el siglo XV. Aspectos institucionales y sociológicos, Madrid, Fundación Ramón Areces, 2003.Lop Otín, M. J., “Las catedrales y los cabildos catedralicios de la Corona de Castilla durante la Edad Media. Un balance historiográfico”, En la España medieval, 26 (2003), pp. 371-404.Lop Otín, M. J., “Un grupo de poder a fines de la Edad Media: los canónigos de la catedral de Toledo”, Anuario de estudios medievales, 35, 2 (2005), Ejemplar dedicado a “El clero secular en la Baja Edad Media”, pp. 635-670.Lop Otín, M. J., “El esplendor litúrgico de la Catedral primada de Toledo durante el Medievo”, Medievalia, 17 (2014), pp. 185-213.Lop Otín, M. J., “La devoción como factor de jerarquización urbana en el arzobispado de Toledo (ss. XIV-XV): Apuntes para su estudio”, Anuario de Estudios Medievales, 48/1 (2018), pp. 361-389.Lop Otín, M. J., “De catedrales, escuelas y niños: el ejemplo del Toledo bajomedieval”. Studia Historica. Edad Media, 36/2 (2018), pp. 39-60.Maldonado, L., Religiosidad popular. Nostalgia de lo mágico, Madrid, Cristiandad, 1975.Martimort, G.-A., (dir.), La Iglesia en oración. Introducción a la liturgia, Herder, Barcelona, 1992 (4ª ed. actualizada y aumentada).Martín Rodríguez, J. L., “Iglesia y vida religiosa”, en La historia medieval en España. Un balance historiográfico (1968-1998). Pamplona, Gobierno de Navarra, 1999, pp. 431-456Martínez García, L. (coord.), El Camino de Santiago: Historia y patrimonio, Burgos, Universidad de Burgos, 2011.Memoria Ecclesiae, https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/revista?codigo=8483 (consulta: 2-1-2019).Mitre Fernández, E., Fantasmas de la sociedad medieval: enfermedad, peste, muerte, Valladolid, Universidad de Valladolid, 2004.Mitre Fernández, E., “Historia Eclesiástica e Historia de la Iglesia”, en Martínez San Pedro, M. D. y Segura del Pino, M. D. (coords.), La iglesia en el mundo medieval y moderno, Almería, Instituto de Estudios Almerienses, 2004, pp. 13-28.Mitre Fernández, E., Iglesia, herejía y vida política en la Europa medieval, Madrid, Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 2007.Mitre Fernández, E., “El enclave hereje en la sociedad: el ‘otro’ cristiano entre la teología y la moral”, en López Ojeda, E. (ed.), Los caminos de la exclusión en la sociedad medieval: pecado, delito y represión. XXII Semana de Estudios Medievales. Nájera, 1-5 de agosto de 2011, Logroño, Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 2012.Mitre Fernández, E., “Los ‘sacramentos sociales’. La óptica del medievalismo”, ‘Ilu. Revista de ciencias de las religiones, 19 (2014), pp. 147-171.Miura Andrades, J. M., Fundaciones religiosas y milagros en la Écija de fines de la Edad Media, Écija, Gráficas Sol, 1992.Miura Andrades, J. M. y Pérez González, S. M. (dirs.), Religiosidad sevillana: homenaje al profesor José Sánchez Herrero, Sevilla, Aconcagua Libros, 2012.Nagy, P., “L’historien de l’émotion de l’autre côté du miroir? Expérience affective dans la vita de Lukarde d’Oberweimar”, Vínculos de historia, 4 (2015), pp. 91-105.Narbona Vizcaíno, R., La ciudad y las fiestas: cultura de la representación en la sociedad medieval, Madrid, Síntesis, 2017.Nieto Soria, J. M., Iglesia y poder real en Castilla: el episcopado, 1250-1350, Madrid, Universidad Complutense, 1988.Nieto Soria, J. M., “Los obispos y la catedral de León en el contexto de las relaciones monarquía-iglesia, de Fernando III a Alfonso XI”, en Yarza Luaces, J., Victoria Herráez, M. V. y Boto Varela, G., La catedral de León en la Edad Media. Congreso internacional. Actas, León, Universidad de León, Ayuntamiento de León, 2004, pp. 99-112.Ornamenta sacra, https://uclouvain.be/fr/instituts-recherche/incal/ornamenta-sacra.html (consulta: 4-12-2018).Ory, P., L’histoire culturelle, París, Presses Universitaires de France, 2004.Pablo Maroto, D. de, Espiritualidad de la Alta Edad Media (siglos VI-XII), Madrid, Editorial de Espiritualidad, 1998.Pagès Poyatos, A., “El Queenship como modelo teórico de poder formal e informal aplicado a la nobleza: apuntes para una propuesta metodológica”, Journal of Feminist, Gender and Women Studies, 5 (Marzo 2017), pp. 47-56.Palazzo, É., Liturgie et société au Moyen Âge, Paris, Aubier, 2000.J. Pérez, Cisneros, el cardenal de España, Madrid, Taurus, 2014.Pérez González, S. M., Los laicos en la Sevilla bajomedieval. Sus devociones y cofradías, Huelva, Universidad de Huelva, 2005.Pérez Vidal, M., “Algunas consideraciones sobre el estudio de la liturgia procesional y paraliturgias a través del arte en la Orden de Predicadores en Castilla”, Medievalia, 17 (2014), pp. 215-242.Pérez-Embid Wamba, J., Santos y milagros, la hagiografía medieval, Madrid, Síntesis, 2017.Resines, L., La catequesis en España. Historia y textos, Madrid, Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1997.Righetti, M., Historia de la liturgia, Madrid, Editorial Católica, 1955, 2 v.Rodríguez Molina, J., El obispado de Baeza-Jaén (siglos XIII-XVI): organización y economía diocesanas, Jaén, Diputación Provincial, 1986.Rubin, M., Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991.Ruiz Jiménez, J., “Música y ritual en la procesión del día de difuntos en la catedral de Sevilla (siglos XIV-XVII)”, Medievalia, 17 (2014), pp. 243-277.Ruiz de Loizaga, S., Camino de Santiago. Fuentes documentales vaticanas referentes al noroeste peninsular (siglos XIV-XV), Burgos, ed. Saturnino Ruiz de Loizaga, 2017.Sáinz Ripa, E., La documentación pontificia de Gregorio IX: 1227-1241, Roma, Instituto Español de Historia Eclesiástica, 2001.Sánchez Herrero, J. et al., Las cofradías de Sevilla historia, antropología, arte, Sevilla, Universidad de Sevilla, 1999.Sánchez Herrero, J. et al., Synodicon Baeticum. Constituciones conciliares y sinodales del arzobispado de Sevilla. Años 590 al 1604, Sevilla, Universidad de Sevilla, 2007.Sánchez Herrero, J., “Unas reflexiones sobre la historia de la Iglesia de los siglos V al XV”, en Iglesia de la historia, Iglesia de la fe. Homenaje a Juan María Laboa Gallego, Madrid, Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 2005, pp. 41-66.Sánchez Herrero, J., Concilios provinciales y sínodos toledanos de los siglos XIV y XV. La religiosidad del clero y pueblo, La Laguna, Universidad de La Laguna, 1976Sánchez Herrero, J., Las diócesis del Reino de León, siglos XIV y XV, León, Centro de Estudios e Investigación San Isidoro, 1978.Sanz Sancho, I., “Para el estudio de la Iglesia medieval castellana”, Estudios eclesiásticos. Revista teológica de investigación e información, 73 (1998), pp. 61-77.Sanz Sancho, I., “Notas sobre la casa de los obispos de Córdoba en la Edad Media”, Espacio, tiempo y forma. Serie III, Historia medieval, 18 (2005), pp. 245-264.Sanz Sancho, I., La iglesia de Córdoba (1236–1454): Una diócesis de la provincia eclesiástica de Toledo en la baja Edad Media, Madrid, Fundación Ramón Areces, 2006.Simón Valencia, M. E., El cabildo de la iglesia catedral de Burgos en la Baja Edad Media (1352-1407). Tesis doctoral. Santander, Universidad de Cantabria, 2017.Sociedad española de ciencias de las religiones, http://secr.es/ (consulta: 29-12-2018).Soto Rábanos, J. M., “Visión y tratamiento del pecado en los manuales de confesión de la baja edad media hispana”, Hispania Sacra, 58, 118 (2006), pp. 411-447.Sureda i Jubany, M., “Clero, espacios y liturgia en la catedral de Vic. La iglesia de sant Pere en los siglos XII y XIII”, Medievalia, 17 (2014), pp. 279-320.Teja, R. y García de Cortázar, J. Á., (coords.), Cristianismo marginado: rebeldes, excluidos, perseguidos. II. Del año 1000 al año 1500: actas del XII Seminario sobre Historia del Monacato, Aguilar de Campoo, Fundación Santa María La Real, 1998.Torres Jiménez, R., “Liturgia y espiritualidad en las parroquias calatravas (siglos XV-XVI)”, en Izquierdo Benito, R. y Ruiz Gómez, F. (coords.), Las Órdenes Militares en la Península Ibérica, I, Edad Media, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Cuenca, 2000, pp. 1087-1116.Torres Jiménez, R., “Devoción eucarística en el Campo de Calatrava al final de la Edad Media. Consagración y elevación”, en Hevia Ballina. A. (ed.), Memoria Ecclesiae, XX. Religiosidad popular y Archivos de la Iglesia. Oviedo, Asociación de Archiveros de la Iglesia en España, 2001, I, pp. 293-328.Torres Jiménez, R., “Pecado, confesión y sociedad bajo dominio calatravo al final del Medievo”, en Adao da Fonseca, L., Amaral, L. L. C. y Ferreira, M. C. F. (coords.), Os Reinos Ibéricos na Idade Média. Livro de Homenagem ao Professor Doutor Humberto Carlos Baquero Moreno, Porto, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto / Livraria Civilizaçao Editora, 2003, vol. III, pp. 1267-1274.Torres Jiménez, R., Formas de organización y práctica religiosa en Castilla-La Nueva. Siglos XIII-XVI. Señoríos de la Orden de Calatrava. Madrid, Universidad Complutense, Col. Tesis Doctorales, 2005.Torres Jiménez, R., “Notas para una reflexión sobre el cristocentrismo y la devoción medieval a la Pasión y para su estudio en el medio rural castellano”, Hispania Sacra, 58, 118 (2006), pp. 449-487.Torres Jiménez, R., “El castigo del pecado: excomunión, purgatorio, infierno”, en López Ojeda, E. (ed.), Los caminos de la exclusión en la sociedad medieval: pecado, delito y represión. XXII Semana de Estudios Medievales de Nájera. 1 al 5 de agosto de 2011, Logroño, Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 2012, pp. 245-307.Torres Jiménez, R., “Ecce Agnus Dei, qui tollit peccata mundi. Sobre los símbolos de Jesucristo en la Edad Media”, Hispania Sacra, 65, Extra I (enero-junio 2013), pp. 49-93.Torres Jiménez, R., “La devoción mariana en el marco de la religiosidad del siglo XIII”, Alcanate, 10 (2016-2017), pp. 23-59.Torres Jiménez, J., “El ‘templo vestido’. Espacios, liturgia y ornamentación textil en las iglesias del Campo de Calatrava (1471-1539)”, en Araus Ballesteros, L. y Prieto Sayagués, J. A. (coords.), Las tres religiones en la Baja Edad Media peninsular. Espacios, percepciones y manifestaciones, Madrid, La Ergástula, 2018, pp. 145-160.C. Vagaggini, El sentido teológico de la liturgia. Ensayo de liturgia teológica general, Editorial Católica, Madrid, 1959.Vauchez, A., “Les nouvelles orientations de l’histoire religieuse de la France médiévale », en Tendances, perspectives et méthodes de l’Histoire Médiévale. Actes du 100e Congrès Nacional des Sociétés Savantes, I, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, 1977, pp. 95-135.Vauchez, A. (ed.), La religion civique à l’époque médiévale et moderne (Chrétienté et Islam). Actes du colloque de Nanterre (21-23 juin 1993), Roma, École française de Rome, 1995.Vauchez, A., La espiritualidad del Occidente medieval (siglos VIII-XII), Madrid, Cátedra, 1985.Vilar, H. y Branco, M. J. (eds.), Ecclesiastics and Political State Building in the Iberian Monarchies, 13th-15th centuries, Évora, Publicações do CIDEHUS-Universidade de Évora, 2016.Villarroel González, Ó., Las relaciones monarquía-Iglesia en época de Juan II de Castilla (1406-1454). Tesis doctoral. Madrid, Universidad Complutense, 2006.Villarroel González, Ó., “Álvaro Núñez de Isorna: un prelado y el poder”, Edad Media: revista de historia, 18 (2017), pp. 263-292.

The multiple similarities between the Greek and Syriac eucharistic liturgies of Antioch and its hinterland on the one hand and the Jerusalem Liturgy of Saint James on the other hand situate Jerusalem within a single cultural area as regards liturgical life. Compared with Antioch, however, we have much more early evidence for the Liturgy of the Hours in Jerusalem. Main sources, which are briefly presented in the paper, are a) the Itinerary of Egeria, who in the 380s produced extensive liturgical notes on celebrations in the Anastasis cathedral and the related stational sites;b) the Armenian Lectionary, 5thcentury, which gives more specific detail of the services held in Jerusalem;c) the Georgian Lectionary, 6thcentury, which gives a slightly later stage of the material described in the Armenian Lectionary;d) the Old Iadgari, or first Jerusalem Tropologion, entirely preserved in Georgian. It is clear from these documents that the Anastasis Cathedral was officiated by monastic communities of different ethnic origins who used their own languages for their liturgical offices. We also have considerable evidence for this period for the Lavra of Saint Sabbas in the Judaean desert, where several ethnic communities prayed separately in their own languages, coming together only for the Eucharistic synaxis (in Greek). This multi-ethnic situation continues today on Mount Athos and continued throughout the Middle Ages on Sinai. The vast library of manuscripts at Saint Catherine’s monastery is well known. It contains manuscripts in a very wide variety of Christian languages, including numerous liturgical texts. The Manuscript Sinai Arabic 232 (13th century) contains a complete Psalter, a complete Horologion and other texts. It can be shown to be of Alexandrian Melkite origin, used by Arabic-speaking monks who were part of the Sinai community. There are archaic and specifically Egyptian, and even Coptic, elements that are of special interest.

Füssel, Marian / Antje Kuhle / Michael Stolz (Hrsg.), Höfe und Experten. Relationen von Macht und Wissen in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, Göttingen 2018, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 228 S. / Abb., € 55,00. (Alexander Querengässer, Leipzig) Fertig, Christine / Margareth Lanzinger (Hrsg.), Beziehungen – Vernetzungen – Konflikte. Perspektiven Historischer Verwandtschaftsforschung, Köln / Weimar / Wien 2016, Böhlau, 286 S. / Abb., € 35,00. (Simon Teuscher, Zürich) Geest, Paul van/ Marcel Poorthuis / Els Rose (Hrsg.), Sanctifying Texts, Transforming Rituals. Encounters in Liturgical Studies. Essays in Honour of Gerard A. M. Rouwhorst (Brill’s Studies in Catholic Theology, 5), Leiden / Boston 2017, Brill, XL u. 489 S. / Abb., € 145,00. (Martin Lüstraeten, Mainz) Kallestrup, Louise Nyholm / Raisa M. Toivo (Hrsg.), Contesting Orthodoxy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Heresy, Magic and Witchcraft (Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic), Cham 2017, Palgrave Macmillan, XVII u. 349 S. / Abb., £ 63,00. (Vitali Byl, Greifswald) Grüne, Niels / Jonas Hübner / Gerhard Siegl (Hrsg.), Ländliche Gemeingüter. Kollektive Ressourcennutzung in der europäischen Agrarwirtschaft / Rural Commons. Collective Use of Resources in the European Agrarian Economy (Jahrbuch für Geschichte des ländlichen Raums, 2015), Innsbruck / Wien / Bozen 2016, StudienVerlag, 310 S. / Abb., € 29,90. (Christine Fertig, Münster) Wilson, Peter H., The Holy Roman Empire. A Thousand Years of Europe’s History, [London] 2016, Allan Lane, XII u. 941 S. / Abb., £ 14,99. (Alexander Jendorff, Gießen) Krischer, André (Hrsg.), Stadtgeschichte (Basistexte Frühe Neuzeit, 4), Stuttgart 2017, Steiner, 260 S. / Abb., € 24,00. (Nicolas Rügge, Hannover) Fouquet, Gerhard / Jan Hirschbiegel / Sven Rabeler (Hrsg.), Residenzstädte der Vormoderne. Umrisse eines europäischen Phänomens. 1. Symposium des Projekts „Residenzstädte im Alten Reich (1300 – 1800)“ der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Kiel, 13.–16. September 2014 (Residenzenforschung. Neue Folge: Stadt und Hof, 2), Ostfildern 2016, Thorbecke, 501 S. / Abb., € 79,00. (Michel Pauly, Luxemburg) Lau, Thomas / Helge Wittmann (Hrsg.), Reichsstadt im Religionskonflikt. 4. Tagung des Mühlhäuser Arbeitskreises für Reichsstadtgeschichte, Mühlhausen 8. bis 10. Februar 2016 (Studien zur Reichsstadtgeschichte, 4), Petersberg 2017, Imhof, 400 S. / Abb., € 29,95. (Stephanie Armer, Nürnberg) Universitätsarchiv Heidelberg durch Heike Hawicks u. Ingo Runde / Historischer Verein zur Förderung der internationalen Calvinismusforschung e. V. / Kurpfälzisches Museum der Stadt Heidelberg (Hrsg.), Päpste – Kurfürsten – Professoren – Reformatoren. Heidelberg und der Heilige Stuhl von den Reformkonzilien des Mittelalters zur Reformation. Begleitband zur Ausstellung im Kurpfälzischen Museum der Stadt Heidelberg, 21. Mai bis 22. Oktober 2017, Ubstadt-Weiher [u. a.] 2017, Verlag Regionalkultur, 120 S. / Abb., € 14,00. (Anuschka Holste-Massoth, Heidelberg) Buchet, Christian / Michel Balard (Hrsg.), The Sea in History / La Mer dans lʼHistoire, [Bd. 2:] The Medieval World / Le Moyen Âge, Woodbridge 2017, Boydell Press, XXX u. 1052 S. / Abb., £ 125,00. (Thomas K. Heebøll-Holm, Odense) Scholl, Christian / Torben R. Gebhardt / Jan Clauß (Hrsg.), Transcultural Approaches to the Concept of Imperial Rule in the Middle Ages, Frankfurt a. M. [u. a.] 2017, Lang, 379 S. / Abb., € 66,95. (Linda Dohmen, Bonn) Connell, Charles W., Popular Opinion in the Middle Ages. Channeling Public Ideas and Attitudes (Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 18), Berlin / Boston 2016, de Gruyter, XVIII u. 347 S. / Abb., € 89,95. (Heike Johanna Mierau, Erlangen) Netherton, Robin / Gale R. Owen-Crocker (Hrsg.), Medieval Clothing and Textiles, Bd. 13, Woodbridge / Rochester 2017, Boydell Press, XIII u. 161 S. / Abb., £ 40,00. (Angela Huang, Lübeck) Kirsch, Mona, Das allgemeine Konzil im Spätmittelalter. Organisation – Verhandlungen – Rituale (Heidelberger Abhandlungen zur Mittleren und Neueren Geschichte, 21), Heidelberg 2016, Universitätsverlag Winter, 655 S., € 68,00. (Johannes Helmrath, Berlin) Burton, Janet / Karen Stöber (Hrsg.), Women in the Medieval Monastic World (Medieval Monastic Studies, 1), Turnhout 2015, Brepols, VIII u. 377 S. / Abb., € 90,00. (Cristina Andenna, Dresden) Baker, John, The Reinvention of Magna Carta 1216 – 1616 (Cambridge Studies in English Legal History), Cambridge [u. a.] 2017, Cambridge University Press, XLIX u. 570 S., £ 120,00. (Andreas Pečar, Halle a. d. Saale) Bünz, Enno (Hrsg.), Geschichte der Stadt Leipzig, Bd. 1: Von den Anfängen bis zur Reformation, Leipzig 2015, Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 1055 S. / Abb., € 49,00. (Christian Speer, Halle a. d. S.) Kinne, Hermann, Das (exemte) Bistum Meißen 1: Das Kollegiatstift St. Petri zu Bautzen von der Gründung bis 1569 (Germania Sacra. Dritte Folge, 7), Berlin / Boston 2014, de Gruyter, XII u. 1062 S., € 169,95. (Ulrike Siewert, Chemnitz) Bauch, Martin / Julia Burkhardt / Tomáš Gaudek / Václav Žůrek (Hrsg.), Heilige, Helden, Wüteriche. Herrschaftsstile der Luxemburger (1308 – 1437) (Forschungen zur Kaiser- und Papstgeschichte des Mittelalters, 41), Köln / Weimar / Wien 2017, Böhlau, 449 S. / Abb., € 55,00. (Lenka Bobkova, Prag) Voigt, Dieter, Die Augsburger Baumeisterbücher des 14. Jahrhunderts, 2 Bde., Bd. 1: Darstellung; Bd. 2: Transkriptionen (Veröffentlichungen der Schwäbischen Forschungsgemeinschaft. Reihe 1: Studien zur Geschichte des Bayerischen Schwabens, 43), Augsburg 2017, Wißner, XII u. 228 S. / Abb. / CD-ROM (Bd. 1); X u. 906 S. (Bd. 2), € 65,00. (Jörg Rogge, Mainz) Housley, Norman (Hrsg.), Reconfiguring the Fifteenth-Century Crusade, London 2017, Palgrave Macmillan, XIII u. 344 S., € 106,99. (Kristjan Toomaspoeg, Lecce) Fudge, Thomas A., Jerome of Prague and the Foundations of the Hussite Movement, Oxford 2016, Oxford University Press, XV u. 379 S. / Abb., £ 64,00. (Jan Odstrčilík, Wien) Braun, Karl-Heinz / Thomas Martin Buck (Hrsg.), Über die ganze Erde erging der Name von Konstanz. Rahmenbedingungen und Rezeption des Konstanzer Konzils (Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für geschichtliche Landeskunde in Baden-Württemberg, Reihe B: Forschungen, 212), Stuttgart 2017, Kohlhammer, XXI u. 268 S. / Abb., € 32,00. (Ansgar Frenken, Ulm) Fuchs, Franz / Pirmin Spieß (Hrsg.), Friedrich der Siegreiche (1425 – 1476). Beiträge zur Erforschung eines spätmittelalterlichen Landesfürsten (Stiftung zur Förderung der pfälzischen Geschichtsforschung. Reihe B: Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Pfalz, 17), Neustadt a. d. Weinstraße 2016, Selbstverlag der Stiftung zur Förderung der pfälzischen Geschichtsforschung, X u. 366 S., € 59,00. (Gabriel Zeilinger, Kiel) Förschler, Silke / Anne Mariss (Hrsg.), Akteure, Tiere, Dinge. Verfahrensweisen der Naturgeschichte in der Frühen Neuzeit, Köln / Weimar / Wien 2017, Böhlau, 258 S. / Abb., € 35,00. (Isabelle Schürch, Bern) Rediker, Marcus, Gesetzlose des Atlantiks. Piraten und rebellische Seeleute in der frühen Neuzeit, übers. v. Max Henninger u. Sabine Bartel (Kritik & Utopie), Wien 2017, Mandelbaum, 310 S., € 18,00. (Magnus Ressel, Frankfurt a. M.) Forrestal, Alison / Seán A. Smith (Hrsg.), The Frontiers of Mission. Perspectives on Early Modern Missionary Catholicism (Catholic Christendom, 1300 – 1700), Leiden / Boston 2016, Brill, XI u. 202 S. / Abb., € 110,00; als Brill MyBook € 25,00. (Irina Pawlowsky, Tübingen) Graf, Joel, Die Inquisition und ausländische Protestanten in Spanisch-Amerika (1560 – 1770). Rechtspraktiken und Rechtsräume, Köln / Weimar / Wien 2017, Böhlau, 320 S., € 45,00. (Christoph Nebgen, Mainz) Mazur, Peter A., Conversion to Catholicism in Early Modern Italy (Religious Cultures in the Early Modern World, 22), New York / London 2016, Routledge, XIV u. 178 S. / Abb., £ 95,00. (Kim Siebenhüner, Jena) Germann, Michael / Wim Decock (Hrsg.), Das Gewissen in den Rechtslehren der protestantischen und katholischen Reformationen / Conscience in the Legal Teachings of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations (Leucorea-Studien zur Geschichte der Reformation und der Lutherischen Orthodoxie, 31), Leipzig 2017, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 345 S. / Abb., € 68,00. (Nils Jansen, Münster) Höppner, Anika, Gesichte. Lutherische Visionskultur der Frühen Neuzeit, Paderborn 2017, Fink, 389 S. / Abb., € 69,00. (Rainer Walz, Bochum) Millar, Charlotte-Rose, Witchcraft, the Devil, and Emotions in Early Modern England (Routledge Research in Early Modern History), London / New York 2017, Routledge, XII u. 230 S. / Abb., £ 105,00. (Christina Antenhofer, Salzburg) Kounine, Laura / Michael Ostling (Hrsg.), Emotions in the History of Witchcraft (Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions), London 2016, Palgrave Macmillan, XVI u. 321 S. / Abb., £ 74,50. (Christina Antenhofer, Salzburg) Dirmeier, Artur (Hrsg.), Leben im Spital. Pfründner und ihr Alltag 1500 – 1800 (Studien zur Geschichte des Spital-‍, Wohlfahrts- und Gesundheitswesens, 12), Regensburg 2018, Pustet, 269 S. / Abb., € 34,95. (Christina Vanja, Kassel) Nicholls, Angela, Almshouses in Early Modern England. Charitable Housing in the Mixed Economy of Welfare, 1550 – 1725 (People, Markets, Goods: Economies and Societies in History, 8), Woodbridge / Rochester 2017, Boydell, XI u. 278 S., £ 19,99. (Christina Vanja, Kassel) Mączak, Antoni, Eine Kutsche ist wie eine Straßendirne … Reisekultur im Alten Europa. Aus dem Polnischen von Reinhard Fischer und Peter O. Loew (Polen in Europa), Paderborn 2017, Schöningh, 237 S. / Abb., € 29,90. (Benjamin Müsegades, Heidelberg) Garner, Guillaume (Hrsg.), Die Ökonomie des Privilegs, Westeuropa 16.–19. Jahrhundert / Lʼéconomie du privilège, Europe occidentale XVIe-XIXe siècles (Studien zu Policey, Kriminalitätsgeschichte und Konfliktregulierung), Frankfurt a. M. 2016, Klostermann, VII u. 523 S. / graph. Darst., € 79,00. (Rachel Renault, Le Mans) Gemeine Bescheide, Teil 1: Reichskammergericht 1497 – 1805, hrsg. v. Peter Oestmann (Quellen und Forschungen zur höchsten Gerichtsbarkeit im Alten Reich, 63.1), Köln / Weimar / Wien 2013, Böhlau, VI u. 802 S., € 79,90. (Ralf-Peter Fuchs, Essen) Gemeine Bescheide, Teil 2: Reichshofrat 1613 – 1798, hrsg. v. Peter Oestmann (Quellen und Forschungen zur höchsten Gerichtsbarkeit im Alten Reich, 63.2), Köln / Weimar / Wien 2017, Böhlau, 480 S., € 60,00. (Ralf-Peter Fuchs, Essen) Süß, Thorsten, Partikularer Zivilprozess und territoriale Gerichtsverfassung. Das weltliche Hofgericht in Paderborn und seine Ordnungen 1587 – 1720 (Quellen und Forschungen zur höchsten Gerichtsbarkeit im Alten Reich, 69), Köln / Weimar / Wien 2017, Böhlau, 570 S., € 90,00. (Michael Ströhmer, Paderborn) Luebke, David M., Hometown Religion. Regimes of Coexistence in Early Modern Westphalia (Studies in Early Modern German History), Charlottesville / London 2016, University of Virginia Press, XI u. 312 S. / Abb., $ 45,00. (Alexander Schunka, Berlin) Blum, Daniela, Multikonfessionalität im Alltag. Speyer zwischen politischem Frieden und Bekenntnisernst (1555 – 1618) (Reformationsgeschichtliche Studien und Texte, 162), Münster 2015, Aschendorff, X u. 411 S., € 56,00. (Alexander Schunka, Berlin) Wüst, Wolfgang (Hrsg.) / Marina Heller (Red.), Historische Kriminalitätsforschung in landesgeschichtlicher Perspektive. Fallstudien aus Bayern und seinen Nachbarländern 1500 – 1800. Referate der Tagung vom 14. bis 16. Oktober 2015 in Wildbad Kreuth (Franconia, 9), Erlangen / Stegaurach 2017, Zentralinstitut für Regionenforschung, Sektion Franken / Wissenschaftlicher Kommissionsverlag, XX u. 359 S., € 29,80. (Jan Siegemund, Dresden) Liniger, Sandro, Gesellschaft in der Zerstreuung. Soziale Ordnung und Konflikt im frühneuzeitlichen Graubünden (Bedrohte Ordnungen, 7), Tübingen 2017, Mohr Siebeck, X u. 362 S., € 59,00. (Beat Kümin, Warwick) Scott, Tom, The Swiss and Their Neighbours, 1460 – 1560. Between Accomodation and Aggression, Oxford 2017, Oxford University Press, XII u. 219 S. / graph. Darst., £ 55,00. (Volker Reinhardt, Fribourg) Tomaszewski, Marco, Familienbücher als Medien städtischer Kommunikation. Untersuchungen zur Basler Geschichtsschreibung im 16. Jahrhundert (Spätmittelalter, Humanismus, Reformation, 98), Tübingen 2017, Mohr Siebeck, XII u. 252 S. / Abb., € 89,00. (Beate Kusche, Leipzig) Horst, Thomas / Marília dos Santos Lopes / Henrique Leitão (Hrsg.), Renaissance Craftsmen and Humanistic Scholars. Circulation of Knowledge between Portugal and Germany (Passagem, 10), Frankfurt a. M. [u. a.] 2017, Lang, 245 S. / Abb., € 55,95. (Martin Biersack, München) Boer, Jan-Hendryk de, Unerwartete Absichten – Genealogie des Reuchlinkonflikts (Spätmittelalter, Humanismus, Reformation, 94), Tübingen 2016, Mohr Siebeck, VIII u. 1362 S., € 189,00. (Albert Schirrmeister, Paris) Peutinger, Konrad, Tischgespräche (Sermones convivales) und andere Druckschriften. Faksimile-Edition der Erstdrucke mit einer Einleitung von Johannes Burkhardt und einer kommentierten Übersetzung von Helmut Zäh und Veronika Lukas, hrsg. v. Johannes Burkhardt (Historia Scientiarum. Fachgebiet Geschichte und Politik), Hildesheim / Zürich / New York 2016, Olms-Weidmann, XXVII u. 217 S., € 118,00. (Nikolaus Staubach, Münster) Blickle, Peter, Der Bauernjörg. Feldherr im Bauernkrieg. Georg Truchsess von Waldburg. 1488 – 1531, München 2015, Beck, 586 S. / Abb., € 34,95. (Robert von Friedeburg, Lincoln) Goertz, Hans-Jürgen, Thomas Müntzer. Revolutionär am Ende der Zeiten. Eine Biographie, München 2015, Beck, 351 S. / Abb., € 19,99. (Robert von Friedeburg, Lincoln) Hirbodian, Sigrid / Robert Kretzschmar / Anton Schindling (Hrsg.), „Armer Konrad“ und Tübinger Vertrag im interregionalen Vergleich. Fürst, Funktionseliten und „Gemeiner Mann“ am Beginn der Neuzeit (Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für geschichtliche Landeskunde in Baden-Württemberg. Reihe B: Forschungen, 206), Stuttgart 2016, Kohlhammer, VI u. 382 S. / Abb., € 34,00. (Robert von Friedeburg, Lincoln) Hirte, Markus (Hrsg), „Mit dem Schwert oder festem Glauben“. Luther und die Hexen (Kataloge des Mittelalterlichen Kriminalmuseums in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, 1), Darmstadt 2017, Theiss, 224 S. / Abb., € 19,95. (Rainer Walz, Bochum) Dingel, Irene / Armin Kohnle / Stefan Rhein / Ernst-Joachim Waschke (Hrsg.), Initia Reformationis. Wittenberg und die frühe Reformation (Leucorea-Studien zur Geschichte der Reformation und der Lutherischen Orthodoxie, 33), Leipzig 2017, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 444 S. / Abb., € 68,00. (Stefan Michel, Leipzig) Bauer, Joachim / Michael Haspel (Hrsg.), Jakob Strauß und der reformatorische Wucherstreit. Die soziale Dimension der Reformation und ihre Wirkungen, Leipzig 2018, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 316 S. / Abb., € 29,00. (Mark Häberlein, Bamberg) Zinsmeyer, Sabine, Frauenklöster in der Reformationszeit. Lebensformen von Nonnen in Sachsen zwischen Reform und landesherrlicher Aufhebung (Quellen und Forschungen zur sächsischen Geschichte, 41), Stuttgart 2016, Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig / Steiner in Kommission, 455 S. / Abb., € 76,00. (Andreas Rutz, Bonn/Düsseldorf) Der Kurfürstentag zu Regensburg 1575, bearb. v. Christiane Neerfeld (Deutsche Reichstagsakten. Reichsversammlungen 1556 – 1662), Berlin / Boston 2016, de Gruyter Oldenbourg, 423 S., € 139,95. (Thomas Kirchner, Aachen) Kerr-Peterson, Miles / Steven J. Reid (Hrsg.), James VI and Noble Power in Scotland 1578 – 1603 (Routledge Research in Early Modern History), London / New York 2017, Routledge, XVI u. 219 S., £ 75,00. (Martin Foerster, Düsseldorf) Nellen, Henk J. M., Hugo Grotius. A Lifelong Struggle for Peace in Church and State, 1583 – 1645, übers. v. J. Chris Grayson, Leiden / Boston 2015, Brill, XXXII u. 827 S. / Abb., € 199,00. (Peter Nitschke, Vechta) Weber, Wolfgang E. J., Luthers bleiche Erben. Kulturgeschichte der evangelischen Geistlichkeit des 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin / Boston 2017, de Gruyter Oldenbourg, VI u. 234 S. / Abb., € 29,95. (Cornel Zwierlein, Bamberg / Erfurt) Hennings, Werner / Uwe Horst / Jürgen Kramer, Die Stadt als Bühne. Macht und Herrschaft im öffentlichen Raum von Rom, Paris und London im 17. Jahrhundert (Edition Kulturwissenschaft, 63), Bielefeld 2016, transcript, 421 S. / Abb., € 39,99. (Susanne Rau, Erfurt) „Das Beispiel der Obrigkeit ist der Spiegel des Unterthans“. Instruktionen und andere normative Quellen zur Verwaltung der liechtensteinischen Herrschaften Feldsberg und Wilfersdorf in Niederösterreich (1600 – 1815), hrsg. v. Anita Hipfinger (Fontes Rerum Austriacarum. Abt. 3: Fontes Iuris, 24), Wien / Köln / Weimar 2016, Böhlau, 875 S. / Abb., € 97,00. (Alexander Denzler, Eichstätt) Roper, Louis H., Advancing Empire. English Interests and Overseas Expansion, 1613 – 1688, New York 2017, Cambridge University Press, XI u. 302 S., £ 25,99. (Mark Häberlein, Bamberg) Wimmler, Jutta, The Sun King’s Atlantic. Drugs, Demons and Dyestuffs in the Atlantic World, 1640 – 1730 (The Atlantic World, 33), Leiden / Boston 2017, Brill, XIII u. 229 S. / graph. Darst., € 80,00; als Brill MyBook € 25,00. (Mark Häberlein, Bamberg) Dauser, Regina, Ehren-Namen. Herrschertitulaturen im völkerrechtlichen Vertrag 1648 – 1748 (Norm und Struktur, 46), Köln / Weimar / Wien 2017, Böhlau, 357 S., € 45,00. (Nadir Weber, Lausanne) Clementi, Siglinde, Körper, Selbst und Melancholie. Die Selbstzeugnisse des Landadeligen Osvaldo Ercole Trapp (1634 – 1710) (Selbstzeugnisse der Neuzeit, 26), Köln / Weimar / Wien 2017, Böhlau, 252 S., € 40,00. (Stefan Hanß, Cambridge) Kremer, Joachim (Hrsg.), Magdalena Sibylla von Württemberg. Politisches und kulturelles Handeln einer Herzogswitwe im Zeichen des frühen Pietismus (Tübinger Bausteine zur Landesgeschichte, 27), Ostfildern 2017, Thorbecke, 190 S. / Abb., € 25,00. (Pauline Puppel, Berlin) Onnekink, David, Reinterpreting the Dutch Forty Years War, 1672 – 1713, Palgrave Pivot 2016, London, VIII u. 138 S., £ 37,99. (Johannes Arndt, Münster) Froide, Amy M., Silent Partners. Women as Public Investors during Britainʼs Financial Revolution, 1690 – 1750, Oxford / New York 2017, Oxford University Press, VI u. 225 S. / Abb., £ 60,00. (Philipp R. Rössner, Manchester) Mulsow, Martin / Kasper Risbjerg Eskildsen / Helmut Zedelmaier (Hrsg.), Christoph August Heumann (1681 – 1764). Gelehrte Praxis zwischen christlichem Humanismus und Aufklärung (Gothaer Forschungen zur Frühen Neuzeit, 12), Stuttgart 2017, Steiner, XVI u. 265 S. / Abb., € 54,00. (Claire Gantet, Fribourg/Freiburg) Harding, Elizabeth (Hrsg.), Kalkulierte Gelehrsamkeit. Zur Ökonomisierung der Universitäten im 18. Jahrhundert (Wolfenbütteler Forschungen, 148), Wiesbaden 2016, Harrassowitz in Kommission, 300 S. / Abb., € 62,00. (Andrea Thiele, Halle a. d. S.) Fulda, Daniel, „Die Geschichte trägt der Aufklärung die Fackel vor“. Eine deutsch-französische Bild-Geschichte (IZEA. Kleine Schriften, 7/2016), Halle a. d. S. 2017, Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 213 S. / Abb., € 16,00. (Kai Bremer, Kiel) Suitner, Riccarda, Die philosophischen Totengespräche der Frühaufklärung (Studien zum achtzehnten Jahrhundert, 37), Hamburg 2016, Meiner, 276 S. / Abb., € 78,00. (Helmut Zedelmaier, München / Halle a. d. S.) Mintzker, Yair, The Many Deaths of Jew Süss. The Notorious Trial and Execution of an Eighteenth-Century Court Jew, Princeton / Oxford 2017, Princeton University Press, X u. 330 S. / Abb., £ 27,95. (Gudrun Emberger, Berlin) Zedler, Andrea / Jörg Zedler (Hrsg.), Prinzen auf Reisen. Die Italienreise von Kurprinz Karl Albrecht 1715/16 im politisch-kulturellen Kontext (Beihefte zum Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 86), Köln / Weimar / Wien 2017, Böhlau, 364 S. / Abb., € 50,00. (Michael Maurer, Jena) Streminger, Gerhard, Adam Smith. Wohlstand und Moral. Eine Biographie, Beck 2017, München, 253 S. / Abb., € 24,95. (Georg Eckert, Wuppertal) Home, Roderick W. / Isabel M. Malaquias / Manuel F. Thomaz (Hrsg.), For the Love of Science. The Correspondence of J. H. de Magellan (1722 – 1790), 2 Bde., Bern [u. a.] 2017, Lang, 2002 S. / Abb., € 228,95. (Lisa Dannenberg-Markel, Aachen) Wendt-Sellin, Ulrike, Herzogin Luise Friederike von Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1722 – 1791). Ein Leben zwischen Pflicht, Pläsir und Pragmatismus (Quellen und Studien aus den Landesarchiven Mecklenburg-Vorpommerns, 19), Köln / Weimar / Wien 2017, Böhlau, 468 S. / Abb., € 60,00. (Britta Kägler, Trondheim) Oehler, Johanna, „Abroad at Göttingen“. Britische Studenten als Akteure des Kultur- und Wissenstransfers 1735 bis 1806 (Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission für Niedersachsen und Bremen, 289), Göttingen 2016, Wallstein, 478 S. / graph. Darst., € 39,90. (Michael Schaich, London) Düwel, Sven, Ad bellum Sacri Romano-Germanici Imperii solenne decernendum: Die Reichskriegserklärung gegen Brandenburg-Preußen im Jahr 1757. Das Verfahren der „preußischen Befehdungssache“ 1756/57 zwischen Immerwährendem Reichstag und Wiener Reichsbehörden, 2 Teilbde., Münster 2016, Lit, 985 S. / Abb., € 79,90 (Bd. 3 als Download beim Verlag erhältlich). (Martin Fimpel, Wolfenbüttel) Pufelska, Agnieszka, Der bessere Nachbar? Das polnische Preußenbild zwischen Politik und Kulturtransfer (1765 – 1795), Berlin / Boston 2017, de Gruyter Oldenbourg, VIII u. 439 S., € 74,95. (Maciej Ptaszyński, Warschau) Herfurth, Stefan, Freiheit in Schwedisch-Pommern. Entwicklung, Verbreitung und Rezeption des Freiheitsbegriffs im südlichen Ostseeraum zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts (Moderne europäische Geschichte, 14), Göttingen 2017, Wallstein, 262 S. / Abb., € 29,90. (Axel Flügel, Bielefeld) Boie, Heinrich Christian / Luise Justine Mejer, Briefwechsel 1776 – 1786, hrsg. v. Regina Nörtemann in Zusammenarbeit mit Johanna Egger, 4 Bde. im Schuber, Bd. 1: Juni 1776 – Juni 1782; Bd. 2: Juli 1782 – Juni 1784; Bd. 3: Juli 1784 – Juli 1786; Bd. 4: Kommentar, Göttingen 2016, Wallstein, 612 S. (Bd. 1); 608 S. (Bd. 2); 571 S. (Bd. 3); 846 S. / Abb. (Bd. 4), € 149,00. (Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, Berlin / Münster) Poniatowski, Fürst Stanisław, Tagebuch einer Reise durch die deutschen Länder im Jahre 1784. Aus dem Manuskript übers. u. hrsg. v. Ingo Pfeifer, Halle a. d. S. 2017, Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 269 S., € 24,95. (Michael Maurer, Jena) Blaufarb, Rafe, The Great Demarcation. The French Revolution and the Invention of Modern Property, New York 2016, Oxford University Press, XIV u. 282 S., £ 47,99. (Moritz Isenmann, Köln) Behringer, Wolfgang, Tambora und das Jahr ohne Sommer. Wie ein Vulkan die Welt in die Krise stürzte, 4. Aufl., München 2016, Beck, 398 S. / Abb., € 24,95. (Wolfgang Reinhard, Freiburg i. Br.) Die Tagebücher des Ludwig Freiherrn Vincke 1789 – 1844, Bd. 10: 1830 – 1839, bearb. v. Heide Barmeyer-Hartlieb (Veröffentlichungen des Vereins für Geschichte und Altertumskunde Westfalens, Abt. Münster, 10; Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission für Westfalen. Neue Folge, 45; Veröffentlichungen des Landesarchivs Nordrhein-Westfalen, 69), Münster 2018, Aschendorff, 949 S. / Abb., € 88,00. (Heinz Duchhardt, Mainz)

As the name suggests, the humanities is largely a study of the human condition, in which history sits as a discipline concerned with the past. Environmental history is a new field that brings together scholars from a range of disciplines to consider the changing relationships between humans and the environment over time. Critiques of anthropocentrism that place humans at the centre of the universe or make assessments through an exclusive human perspective provide a challenge to scholars to rethink our traditional biases against the nonhuman world. The movement towards nonhumanism or posthumanism, however, does not seem to have had much of an impression on history as a discipline. What would a nonhumanist history look like if we re-centred the historical narrative around pigs? There are histories of pigs as food (see for example, The Cambridge History of Food which has a chapter on “Hogs”). There are food histories that feature pork in terms of its relationship to multiethnic identity (such as Donna Gabaccia’s We Are What We Eat) and examples made of pigs to promote ethical eating (Singer). Pigs are central to arguments about dietary rules and what motivates them (Soler; Dolander). Ancient pig DNA has also been employed in studies on human migration and colonisation (Larson et al.; Durham University). Pigs are also widely used in a range of products that would surprise many of us. In 2008, Christien Meindertsma spent three years researching the products made from a single pig. Among some of the more unexpected results were: ammunition, medicine, photographic paper, heart valves, brakes, chewing gum, porcelain, cosmetics, cigarettes, hair conditioner and even bio diesel. Likewise, Fergus Henderson, who coined the term ‘nose to tail eating’, uses a pig on the front cover of the book of that name to suggest the extraordinary and numerous potential of pigs’ bodies. However, my intention here is not to pursue a discussion of how parts of their bodies are used, rather to consider a reorientation of the historical narrative to place pigs at the centre of stories of our co-evolution, in order to see what their history might say about humans and our relationships with them. This is underpinned by recognition of the inter-relationality of humans and animals. The relationships between wild boar and pigs with humans has been long and diverse. In a book exploring 10,000 years of interaction, Anton Ervynck and Peter Rowley-Conwy argue that pigs have been central to complex cultural developments in human societies and they played an important role in human migration patterns. The book is firmly grounded within the disciplines of zoology, anthropology and archaeology and contributes to an understanding of the complex and changing relationship humans have historically shared with wild boar and domestic pigs. Naturalist Lyall Watson also explores human/pig relationships in The Whole Hog. The insights these approaches offer for the discipline of history are valuable (although overlooked) but, more importantly, such scholarship also challenges a humanist perspective that credits humans exclusively with historical change and suggests, moreover, that we did it alone. Pigs occupy a special place in this history because of their likeness to humans, revealed in their use in transplant technology, as well as because of the iconic and paradoxical status they occupy in our lives. As Ervynck and Rowley-Conwy explain, “On the one hand, they are praised for their fecundity, their intelligence, and their ability to eat almost anything, but on the other hand, they are unfairly derided for their apparent slovenliness, unclean ways, and gluttonous behaviour” (1). Scientist Niamh O’Connell was struck by the human parallels in the complex social structures which rule the lives of pigs and people when she began a research project on pig behaviour at the Agricultural Research Institute at Hillsborough in County Down (Cassidy). According to O’Connell, pigs adopt different philosophies and lifestyle strategies to get the most out of their life. “What is interesting from a human perspective is that low-ranking animals tend to adopt one of two strategies,” she says. “You have got the animals who accept their station in life and then you have got the other ones that are continually trying to climb, and as a consequence, their life is very stressed” (qtd. in Cassidy). The closeness of pigs to humans is the justification for their use in numerous experiments. In the so-called ‘pig test’, code named ‘Priscilla’, for instance, over 700 pigs dressed in military uniforms were used to study the effects of nuclear testing at the Nevada (USA) test site in the 1950s. In When Species Meet, Donna Haraway draws attention to the ambiguities and contradictions promoted by the divide between animals and humans, and between nature and culture. There is an ethical and critical dimension to this critique of human exceptionalism—the view that “humanity alone is not [connected to the] spatial and temporal web of interspecies dependencies” (11). There is also that danger that any examination of our interdependencies may just satisfy a humanist preoccupation with self-reflection and self-reproduction. Given that pigs cannot speak, will they just become the raw material to reproduce the world in human’s own image? As Haraway explains: “Productionism is about man the tool-maker and -user, whose highest technical production is himself […] Blinded by the sun, in thrall to the father, reproduced in the sacred image of the same, his rewards is that he is self-born, an auto telic copy. That is the mythos of enlightenment and transcendence” (67). Jared Diamond acknowledges the mutualistic relationship between pigs and humans in Guns, Germs and Steel and the complex co-evolutionary path between humans and domesticated animals but his account is human-centric. Human’s relationships with pigs helped to shape human history and power relations and they spread across the world with human expansion. But questioning their utility as food and their enslavement to this cause was not part of the account. Pigs have no voice in the histories we write of them and so they can appear as passive objects in their own pasts. Traces of their pasts are available in humanity’s use of them in, for example, the sties built for them and the cooking implements used to prepare meals from them. Relics include bones and viruses, DNA sequences and land use patterns. Historians are used to dealing with subjects that cannot speak back, but they have usually left ample evidence of what they have said. In the process of writing, historians attempt to perform the miracle, as Curthoys and Docker have suggested, of restoration; bringing the people and places that existed in the past back to life (7). Writing about pigs should also attempt to bring the animal to life, to understand not just their past but also our own culture. In putting forward the idea of an alternative history that starts with pigs, I am aware of both the limits to such a proposal, and that most people’s only contact with pigs is through the meat they buy at the supermarket. Calls for a ban on intensive pig farming (RSPCA, ABC, AACT) might indeed have shocked people who imagine their dinner comes from the type of family farm featured in the movie Babe. Baby pigs in factory farms would have been killed a long time before the film’s sheep dog show (usually at 3 to 4 months of age). In fact, because baby pigs do grow so fast, 48 different pigs were used to film the role of the central character in Babe. While Babe himself may not have been aware of the relationship pigs generally have to humans, the other animals were very cognisant of their function. People eat pigs, even if they change the name of the form it takes in order to do so:Cat: You know, I probably shouldn’t say this, but I’m not sure if you realize how much the other animals are laughing at you for this sheep dog business. Babe: Why would they do that? Cat: Well, they say that you’ve forgotten that you’re a pig. Isn't that silly? Babe: What do you mean? Cat: You know, why pigs are here. Babe: Why are any of us here? Cat: Well, the cow’s here to be milked, the dogs are here to help the Boss's husband with the sheep, and I’m here to be beautiful and affectionate to the boss. Babe: Yes? Cat: [sighs softly] The fact is that pigs don’t have a purpose, just like ducks don’t have a purpose. Babe: [confused] Uh, I—I don’t, uh ... Cat: Alright, for your own sake, I’ll be blunt. Why do the Bosses keep ducks? To eat them. So why do the Bosses keep a pig? The fact is that animals don’t seem to have a purpose really do have a purpose. The Bosses have to eat. It’s probably the most noble purpose of all, when you come to think about it. Babe: They eat pigs? Cat: Pork, they call it—or bacon. They only call them pigs when they’re alive (Noonan). Babe’s transformation into a working pig to round up the sheep makes him more useful. Ferdinand the duck tried to do the same thing by crowing but was replaced by an alarm clock. This is a common theme in children’s stories, recalling Charlotte’s campaign to praise Wilbur the pig in order to persuade the farmer to let him live in E. B. White’s much loved children’s novel, Charlotte’s Web. Wilbur is “some pig”, “terrific”, “radiant” and “humble”. In 1948, four years before Charlotte’s Web, White had published an essay “Death of a Pig”, in which he fails to save a sick pig that he had bought in order to fatten up and butcher. Babe tried to present an alternative reality from a pig’s perspective, but the little pig was only spared because he was more useful alive than dead. We could all ask the question why are any of us here, but humans do not have to contemplate being eaten to justify their existence. The reputation pigs have for being filthy animals encourages distaste. In another movie, Pulp Fiction, Vincent opts for flavour, but Jules’ denial of pig’s personalities condemns them to insignificance:Vincent: Want some bacon? Jules: No man, I don’t eat pork. Vincent: Are you Jewish? Jules: Nah, I ain’t Jewish, I just don’t dig on swine, that’s all. Vincent: Why not? Jules: Pigs are filthy animals. I don’t eat filthy animals. Vincent: Bacon tastes gooood. Pork chops taste gooood. Jules: Hey, sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I’d never know ’cause I wouldn’t eat the filthy motherfucker. Pigs sleep and root in shit. That’s a filthy animal. I ain’t eat nothin’ that ain’t got sense enough to disregard its own feces [sic]. Vincent: How about a dog? Dogs eats its own feces. Jules: I don’t eat dog either. Vincent: Yeah, but do you consider a dog to be a filthy animal? Jules: I wouldn’t go so far as to call a dog filthy but they’re definitely dirty. But, a dog’s got personality. Personality goes a long way. Vincent: Ah, so by that rationale, if a pig had a better personality, he would cease to be a filthy animal. Is that true? Jules: Well we’d have to be talkin’ about one charming motherfuckin’ pig. I mean he’d have to be ten times more charmin’ than that Arnold on Green Acres, you know what I’m sayin’? In the 1960s television show Green Acres, Arnold was an exceptional pig who was allowed to do whatever he wanted. He was talented enough to write his own name and play the piano and his attempts at painting earned him the nickname “Porky Picasso”. These talents reflected values that are appreciated, and so he was. The term “pig” is, however, chiefly used a term of abuse, however, embodying traits we abhor—gluttony, obstinence, squealing, foraging, rooting, wallowing. Making a pig of yourself is rarely honoured. Making a pig of the humanities, however, could be a different story. As a historian I love to forage, although I use white gloves rather than a snout. I have rubbed my face and body on tree trunks in the service of forestry history and when the temperature rises I also enjoy wallowing, rolling from side to side rather than drawing a conclusion. More than this, however, pigs provide a valid means of understanding key historical transitions that define modern society. Significant themes in modern history—production, religion, the body, science, power, the national state, colonialism, gender, consumption, migration, memory—can all be understood through a history of our relationships with pigs. Pigs play an important role in everyday life, but their relationship to the economic, social, political and cultural matters discussed in general history texts—industrialisation, the growth of nation states, colonialism, feminism and so on—are generally ignored. However “natural” this place of pigs may seem, culture and tradition profoundly shape their history and their own contribution to those forces has been largely absent in history. What, then, would the contours of such a history that considered the intermeshing of humans and pigs look like? The intermeshing of pigs in early human history Agricultural economies based on domestic animals began independently in different parts of the world, facilitating increases in population and migration. Evidence for long-term genetic continuity between modern and ancient Chinese domestic pigs has been established by DNA sequences. Larson et al. have made an argument for five additional independent domestications of indigenous wild boar populations: in India, South East Asia and Taiwan, which they use to develop a picture of both pig evolution and the development and spread of early farmers in the Far East. Domestication itself involves transformation into something useful to animals. In the process, humans became transformed. The importance of the Fertile Crescent in human history has been well established. The area is attributed as the site for a series of developments that have defined human history—urbanisation, writing, empires, and civilisation. Those developments have been supported by innovations in food production and animal husbandry. Pig, goats, sheep and cows were all domesticated very early in the Fertile Crescent and remain four of the world’s most important domesticated mammals (Diamond 141). Another study of ancient pig DNA has concluded that the earliest domesticated pigs in Europe, believed to be descended from European wild boar, were introduced from the Middle East. The research, by archaeologists at Durham University, sheds new light on the colonisation of Europe by early farmers, who brought their animals with them. Keith Dobney explains:Many archaeologists believe that farming spread through the diffusion of ideas and cultural exchange, not with the direct migration of people. However, the discovery and analysis of ancient Middle Eastern pig remains across Europe reveals that although cultural exchange did happen, Europe was definitely colonised by Middle Eastern farmers. A combination of rising population and possible climate change in the ‘fertile crescent’, which put pressure on land and resources, made them look for new places to settle, plant their crops and breed their animals and so they rapidly spread west into Europe (ctd in ScienceDaily). Middle Eastern farmers colonised Europe with pigs and in the process transformed human history. Identity as a porcine theme Religious restrictions on the consumption of pigs come from the same area. Such restrictions exist in Jewish dietary laws (Kashrut) and in Muslim dietary laws (Halal). The basis of dietary laws has been the subject of much scholarship (Soler). Economic and health and hygiene factors have been used to explain the development of dietary laws historically. The significance of dietary laws, however, and the importance attached to them can be related to other purposes in defining and expressing religious and cultural identity. Dietary laws and their observance may have been an important factor in sustaining Jewish identity despite the dispersal of Jews in foreign lands since biblical times. In those situations, where a person eats in the home of someone who does not keep kosher, the lack of knowledge about your host’s ingredients and the food preparation techniques make it very difficult to keep kosher. Dietary laws require a certain amount of discipline and self-control, and the ability to make distinctions between right and wrong, good and evil, pure and defiled, the sacred and the profane, in everyday life, thus elevating eating into a religious act. Alternatively, people who eat anything are often subject to moral judgments that may also lead to social stigmatisation and discrimination. One of the most powerful and persuasive discourses influencing current thinking about health and bodies is the construction of an ‘obesity epidemic’, critiqued by a range of authors (see for example, Wright & Harwood). As omnivores who appear indiscriminate when it comes to food, pigs provide an image of uncontrolled eating, made visible by the body as a “virtual confessor”, to use Elizabeth Grosz’s term. In Fat Pig, a production by the Sydney Theatre Company in 2006, women are reduced to being either fat pigs or shrieking shallow women. Fatuosity, a blog by PhD student Jackie Wykes drawing on her research on fat and sexual subjectivity, provides a review of the play to describe the misogyny involved: “It leaves no options for women—you can either be a lovely person but a fat pig who will end up alone; or you can be a shrill bitch but beautiful, and end up with an equally obnoxious and shallow male counterpart”. The elision of the divide between women and pigs enacted by such imagery also creates openings for new modes of analysis and new practices of intervention that further challenge humanist histories. Such interventions need to make visible other power relations embedded in assumptions about identity politics. Following the lead of feminists and postcolonial theorists who have challenged the binary oppositions central to western ideology and hierarchical power relations, critical animal theorists have also called into question the essentialist and dualist assumptions underpinning our views of animals (Best). A pig history of the humanities might restore the central role that pigs have played in human history and evolution, beyond their exploitation as food. Humans have constructed their story of the nature of pigs to suit themselves in terms that are specieist, racist, patriarchal and colonialist, and failed to grasp the connections between the oppression of humans and other animals. The past and the ways it is constructed through history reflect and shape contemporary conditions. In this sense, the past has a powerful impact on the present, and the way this is re-told, therefore, also needs to be situated, historicised and problematicised. The examination of history and society from the standpoint of (nonhuman) animals offers new insights on our relationships in the past, but it might also provide an alternative history that restores their agency and contributes to a different kind of future. As the editor of Critical Animals Studies, Steve Best describes it: “This approach, as I define it, considers the interaction between human and nonhuman animals—past, present, and future—and the need for profound changes in the way humans define themselves and relate to other sentient species and to the natural world as a whole.” References ABC. “Changes to Pig Farming Proposed.” ABC News Online 22 May 2010. 10 Aug. 2010 http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/22/2906519.htm Against Animal Cruelty Tasmania. “Australia’s Intensive Pig Industry: The Intensive Pig Industry in Australia Has Much to Hide.” 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.aact.org.au/pig_industry.htm Babe. Dir. Chris Noonan. Universal Pictures, 1995. Best, Steven. “The Rise of Critical Animal Studies: Putting Theory into Action and Animal Liberation into Higher Education.” Journal for Critical Animal Studies 7.1 (2009): 9-53. Cassidy, Martin. “How Close are Pushy Pigs to Humans?”. BBC News Online 2005. 10 Sep. 2010 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/4482674.stmCurthoys, A., and Docker, J. “Time Eternity, Truth, and Death: History as Allegory.” Humanities Research 1 (1999) 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.anu.edu.au/hrc/publications/hr/hr_1_1999.phpDiamond, Jared. Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. Dolader, Miguel-Àngel Motis. “Mediterranean Jewish Diet and Traditions in the Middle Ages”. Food: A Culinary History. Eds. Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari. Trans. Clarissa Botsford, Arthus Golhammer, Charles Lambert, Frances M. López-Morillas and Sylvia Stevens. New York: Columbia UP, 1999. 224-44. Durham University. “Chinese Pigs ‘Direct Descendants’ of First Domesticated Breeds.” ScienceDaily 20 Apr. 2010. 29 Aug. 2010 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100419150947.htm Gabaccia, Donna R. We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1994. Haraway, D. “The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others.” The Haraway Reader. New York: Routledge, 2005. 63-124. Haraway, D. When Species Meet: Posthumanities. 3rd ed. London: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Henderson, Fergus. Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking. London: Bloomsbury, 2004. Kiple, Kenneth F., Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas. Cambridge History of Food. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Larson, G., Ranran Liu, Xingbo Zhao, Jing Yuan, Dorian Fuller, Loukas Barton, Keith Dobney, Qipeng Fan, Zhiliang Gu, Xiao-Hui Liu, Yunbing Luo, Peng Lv, Leif Andersson, and Ning Li. “Patterns of East Asian Pig Domestication, Migration, and Turnover Revealed by Modern and Ancient DNA.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, United States 19 Apr. 2010. 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0912264107/DCSupplemental Meindertsma, Christien. “PIG 05049. Kunsthal in Rotterdam.” 2008. 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.christienmeindertsma.com/index.php?/books/pig-05049Naess, A. “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement.” Inquiry 16 (1973): 95-100. Needman, T. Fat Pig. Sydney Theatre Company. Oct. 2006. Noonan, Chris [director]. “Babe (1995) Memorable Quotes”. 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112431/quotes Plumwood, V. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge, 1993. Pulp Fiction. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Miramax, 1994. RSPCA Tasmania. “RSPCA Calls for Ban on Intensive Pig Farming.” 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.rspcatas.org.au/press-centre/rspca-calls-for-a-ban-on-intensive-pig-farming ScienceDaily. “Ancient Pig DNA Study Sheds New Light on Colonization of Europe by Early Farmers” 4 Sep. 2007. 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070903204822.htm Singer, Peter. “Down on the Family Farm ... or What Happened to Your Dinner When it was Still an Animal.” Animal Liberation 2nd ed. London: Jonathan Cape, 1990. 95-158. Soler, Jean. “Biblical Reasons: The Dietary Rules of the Ancient Hebrews.” Food: A Culinary History. Eds. Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari. Trans. Clarissa Botsford, Arthus Golhammer, Charles Lambert, Frances M. López-Morillas and Sylvia Stevens. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. 46-54. Watson, Lyall. The Whole Hog: Exploring the Extraordinary Potential of Pigs. London: Profile, 2004. White, E. B. Essays of E. B. White. London: HarperCollins, 1979. White, E. B. Charlotte’s Web. London: HarperCollins, 2004. Wright, J., and V. Harwood. Eds. Biopolitics and the ‘Obesity Epidemic’. New York: Routledge, 2009. Wykes, J. Fatuosity 2010. 29 Aug. 2010 http://www.fatuosity.net

Introduction The decline of marriage in the West has been extensively researched over the last three decades (Carmichael and Whittaker; de Vaus; Coontz; Beck-Gernshein). Indeed, it was fears that the institution would be further eroded by the legalisation of same sex unions internationally that provided the impetus for the Australian government to amend the Marriage Act (1961). These amendments in 2004 sought to strengthen marriage by explicitly defining, for the first time, marriage as a legal partnership between one man and one woman. The subsequent heated debates over the discriminatory nature of this definition have been illuminating, particularly in the way they have highlighted the ongoing social significance of marriage, even at a time it is seen to be in decline. Demographic research about partnering practices (Carmichael and Whittaker; Simons; Parker; Penman) indicates that contemporary marriages are more temporary, fragile and uncertain than in previous generations. Modern marriages are now less about a permanent and “inescapable” union between a dominant man and a submissive female for the purposes of authorised sex, legal progeny and financial security, and more about a commitment between two social equals for the mutual exchange of affection and companionship (Croome). Less research is available, however, about how couples themselves reconcile the inherited constructions of romantic love as selfless and unending, with trends that clearly indicate that romantic love is not forever, ideal or exclusive. Civil marriage ceremonies provide one source of data about representations of love. Civil unions constituted almost 70 per cent of all marriages in Australia in 2010, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The civil marriage ceremony has both a legal and symbolic role. It is a legal contract insofar as it prescribes a legal arrangement with certain rights and responsibilities between two consenting adults and outlines an expectation that marriage is voluntarily entered into for life. The ceremony is also a public ritual that requires couples to take what are usually private feelings for each other and turn them into a public performance as a way of legitimating their relationship. Consistent with the conventions of performance, couples generally customise the rest of the ceremony by telling the story of their courtship, and in so doing they often draw upon the language and imagery of the Western Romantic tradition to convey the personal meaning and social significance of their decision. This paper explores how couples construct the idea of love in their relationship, first by examining the western history of romantic love and then by looking at how this discourse is invoked by Australians in the course of developing civil marriage ceremonies in collaboration with the author. A History of Romantic Love There are many definitions of romantic love, but all share similar elements including an intense emotional and physical attraction, an idealisation of each other, and a desire for an enduring and unending commitment that can overcome all obstacles (Gottschall and Nordlund; Janowiak and Fischer). Romantic love has historically been associated with heightened passions and intense almost irrational or adolescent feelings. Charles Lindholm’s list of clichés that accompany the idea of romantic love include: “love is blind, love overwhelms, a life without love is not worth living, marriage should be for love alone and anything less is worthless and a sham” (5). These elements, which invoke love as sacred, unending and unique, perpetuate past cultural associations of the term. Romantic love was first documented in Ancient Rome where intense feelings were seen as highly suspect and a threat to the stability of the family, which was the primary economic, social and political unit. Roman historian Plutarch viewed romantic love based upon strong personal attraction as disruptive to the family, and he expressed a fear that romantic love would become the norm for Romans (Lantz 352). During the Middle Ages romantic love emerged as courtly love and, once again, the conventions that shaped its expression grew out of an effort to control excessive emotions and sublimate sexual desire, which were seen as threats to social stability. Courtly love, according to Marilyn Yalom, was seen as an “irresistible and inexhaustible passion; a fatal love that overcomes suffering and even death” (66). Feudal social structures had grounded marriage in property, while the Catholic Church had declared marriage a sacrament and a ceremony through which God’s grace could be obtained. In this context courtly love emerged as a way of dealing with the conflict between the individual and family choices over the martial partner. Courtly love is about a pure ideal of love in which the knight serves his unattainable lady, and, by carrying out feats in her honour, reaches spiritual perfection. The focus on the aesthetic ideal was a way to fulfil male and female emotional needs outside of marriage, while avoiding adultery. Romantic love re-appeared again in the mid-eighteenth century, but this time it was associated with marriage. Intellectuals and writers led the trend normalising romantic love in marriage as a reaction to the Enlightenment’s valorisation of reason, science and materialism over emotion. Romantics objected to the pragmatism and functionality induced by industrialisation, which they felt destroyed the idea of the mysterious and transcendental nature of love, which could operate as a form of secular salvation. Love could not be bought or sold, argued the Romantics, “it is mysterious, true and deep, spontaneous and compelling” (Lindholm 5). Romantic love also emerged as an expression of the personal autonomy and individualisation that accompanied the rise of industrial society. As Lanz suggests, romantic love was part of the critical reflexivity of the Enlightenment and a growing belief that individuals could find self actualisation through the expression and expansion of their “emotional and intellectual capacities in union with another” (354). Thus it was romantic love, which privileges the feelings and wishes of an individual in mate selection, that came to be seen as a bid for freedom by the offspring of the growing middle classes coerced into marriage for financial or property reasons. Throughout the 19th century romantic love was seen as a solution to the dehumanising forces of industrialisation and urbanisation. The growth of the competitive workplace—which required men to operate in a restrained and rational manner—saw an increase in the search for emotional support and intimacy within the domestic domain. It has been argued that “love was the central preoccupation of middle class men from the 1830s until the end of the 19th century” (Stearns and Knapp 771). However, the idealisation of the aesthetic and purity of love impacted marriage relations by casting the wife as pure and marital sex as a duty. As a result, husbands pursued sexual and romantic relationships outside marriage. It should be noted that even though love became cemented as the basis for marriage in the 19th century, romantic love was still viewed suspiciously by religious groups who saw strong affection between couples as an erosion of the fundamental role of the husband in disciplining his wife. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries romantic love was further impacted by urbanisation and migration, which undermined the emotional support provided by extended families. According to Stephanie Coontz, it was the growing independence and mobility of couples that saw romantic love in marriage consolidated as the place in which an individual’s emotional and social needs could be fully satisfied. Coontz says that the idea that women could only be fulfilled through marriage, and that men needed women to organise their social life, reached its heights in the 1950s (25-30). Changes occurred to the structure of marriage in the 1960s when control over fertility meant that sex was available outside of marriage. Education, equality and feminism also saw women reject marriage as their only option for fulfilment. Changes to Family Law Acts in western jurisdictions in the 1970s provided for no-fault divorce, and as divorce lost its stigma it became acceptable for women to leave failing marriages. These social shifts removed institutional controls on marriage and uncoupled the original sexual, emotional and financial benefits packaged into marriage. The resulting individualisation of personal lifestyle choices for men and women disrupted romantic conventions, and according to James Dowd romantic love came to be seen as an “investment” in the “future” that must be “approached carefully and rationally” (552). It therefore became increasingly difficult to sustain the idea of love as a powerful, mysterious and divine force beyond reason. Methodology In seeking to understand how contemporary partnering practices are reconstituting romantic love, I draw upon anecdotal data gathered over a nine-year period from my experiences as a marriage celebrant. In the course of personalising marriage ceremonies, I pose a series of questions designed to assist couples to explain the significance of their relationship. I generally ask brides and grooms why they love their fiancé, why they want to legalise their relationship, what they most treasure about their partner, and how their lives have been changed by their relationship. These questions help couples to reflexively interrogate their own relationship, and by talking about their commitment in concrete terms, they produce the images and descriptions that can be used to describe for guests the internal motivations and sentiments that have led to their decision to marry. I have had couples, when prompted to explain how they know the other person loves them say, in effect: “I know that he loves me because he brings me a cup of coffee every morning” or “I know that she loves me because she takes care of me so well.” These responses are grounded in a realism that helps to convey a sense of sincerity and authenticity about the relationship to the couple’s guests. This realism also helps to address the cynicism about the plausibility of enduring love. The brides and grooms in this sample of 300 couples were a socially, culturally and economically diverse group, and they provided a wide variety of responses ranging from deeply nuanced insights into the nature of their relationship, to admissions that their feelings were so private and deeply felt that words were insufficient to convey their significance. Reoccurring themes, however, emerged across the cases, and it is evident that even as marriage partnerships may be entered into for a variety of reasons, romantic love remains the mechanism by which couples talk of their feelings for each other. Australian Love and Marriage Australians' attitudes to romantic love and marriage have, understandably, been shaped by western understandings of romantic love. It is evident, however, that the demands of late modern capitalist society, with its increased literacy, economic independence and sexual equality between men and women, have produced marriage as a negotiable contract between social equals. For some, like Carol Pateman, this sense of equality within marriage may be illusory. Nonetheless, the drive for individual self-fulfilment by both the bride and groom produces a raft of challenges to traditional ideas of marriage as couples struggle to find a balance between independence and intimacy; between family and career; and between pursuing personal goals and the goals of their partners. This shift in the nature of marriage has implications for the “quest for undying romantic love,” which according to Anthony Giddens has been replaced by other forms of relationship, "each entered into for its own sake, for what can be derived by each person from a sustained association with another; and which is continued only in so far as it is thought by both parties to deliver enough satisfactions for each individual to stay within it” (qtd. in Lindholm 6). The impact of these social changes on the nature of romantic love in marriage is evident in how couples talk about their relationship in the course of preparing a ceremony. Many couples describe the person they are marrying as their best friend, and friendship is central to their commitment. This description supports research by V.K. Oppenheimer which indicates that many contemporary couples have a more “egalitarian collaborative approach to marriage” (qtd. in Carmichael and Whittaker 25). It is also standard for couples to note in ceremonies that they make each other happy and contented, with many commenting upon how their partners have helped to bring focus and perspective to their work-oriented lives. These comments tend to invoke marriage as a refuge from the isolation, competition, and dehumanising elements of workplaces. Since emotional support is central to the marriage contract, it is not surprising that care for each other is another reoccurring theme in ceremonies. Many brides and grooms not only explicitly say they are well taken care of by their partner, but also express admiration for their partner’s treatment of their families and friends. This behaviour appears to be seen as an indicator of the individual’s capacity for support and commitment to family values. Many couples admire partner’s kindness, generosity and level of personal self-sacrifice in maintaining the relationship. It is also not uncommon for brides and grooms to say they have been changed by their love: become kinder, more considerate and more tolerant. Honesty, communication skills and persistence are also attributes that are valued. Brides and grooms who have strong communication skills are also praised. This may refer to interpersonal competency and the willingness to acquire the skills necessary to negotiate the endless compromises in contemporary marriage now that individualisation has undermined established rules, rituals and roles. Persistence and the ability not to be discouraged by setbacks is also a reoccurring theme, and this connects with the idea that marriage is work. Many couples promise to grow together in their marriage and to both take responsibility for the health of their relationship. This promise implies awareness that marriage is not the fantasy of happily ever after produced in romantic popular culture, but rather an arrangement that requires hard work and conscious commitment, particularly in building a union amidst many competing options and distractions. Many couples talk about their relationship in terms of companionship and shared interests, values and goals. It is also not uncommon for couples to say that they admire their partner for supporting them to achieve their life goals or for exposing them to a wider array of lifestyle choices and options like travel or study. These examples of interdependence appear to make explicit that couples still see marriage as a vehicle for personal freedom and self-realisation. The death of love is also alluded to in marriage ceremonies. Couples talk of failed past relationships, but these are produced positively as a mechanism that enables the couple to know that they have now found an enduring relationship. It is also evident that for many couples the decision to marry is seen as the formalisation of a preexisting commitment rather than the gateway to a new life. This is consistent with figures that show that 72 per cent of Australian couples chose to cohabit before marriage (Simons 48), and that cohabitation has become the “normative pathway to marriage” (Penman 26). References to children also feature in marriage ceremonies, and for the couples I have worked with marriage is generally seen as the pre-requisite for children. Couples also often talk about “being ready” for marriage. This seems to refer to being financially prepared. Robyn Parker citing the research of K. Edin concludes that for many modern couples “rushing into marriage before being ‘set’ is irresponsible—marrying well (in the sense of being well prepared) is the way to avoid divorce” (qtd. in Parker 81). From this overview of reoccurring themes in the production of Australian ceremonies it is clear that romantic love continues to be associated with marriage. However, couples describe a more grounded and companionable attachment. These more practical and personalised sentiments serve to meet both the public expectation that romantic love is a precondition for marriage, while also avoiding the production of romantic love in the ceremony as an empty cliché. Grounded descriptions of love reveal that attraction does not have to be overwhelming and unconquerable. Indeed, couples who have lived together and are intimately acquainted with each other’s habits and disposition, appear to be most comfortable expressing their commitment to each other in more temperate, but no less deeply felt, terms. Conclusion This paper has considered how brides and grooms constitute romantic love within the shifting partnering practices of contemporary Australia. It is evident “in the midst of significant social and economic change and at a time when individual rights and freedom of choice are important cultural values” marriage remains socially significant (Simons 50). This significance is partially conveyed through the language of romantic love, which, while freighted with an array of cultural and historical associations, remains the lingua franca of marriage, perhaps because as Roberto Unger observes, romantic love is “the most influential mode of moral vision in our culture” (qtd. in Lindholm 5). It is thus possible to conclude, that while marriage may be declining and becoming more fragile and impermanent, the institution remains important to couples in contemporary Australia. Moreover, the language and imagery of romantic love, which publicly conveys this importance, remains the primary mode of expressing care, affection and hope for a partnership, even though the changed partnering practices of late modern capitalist society have exposed the utopian quality of romantic love and produced a cynicism about the viability of its longevity. It is evident in the marriage ceremonies prepared by the author that while the language of romantic love has come to signify a broader range of more practical associations consistent with the individualised nature of modern marriage and demystification of romantic love, it also remains the best way to express what Dowd and Pallotta describe as a fundamental human “yearning for communion with and acceptance by another human being” (571). References Beck, U., and E. Beck-Gernsheim, Individualisation: Institutionalised Individualism and Its Social and Political Consequences. London: Sage, 2002. Beigel, Hugo G. “Romantic Love.” American Sociological Review 16.3 (1951): 326–34. Carmichael, Gordon A, and Andrea Whittaker. “Forming Relationships in Australia: Qualitative Insights into a Process Important to Human Well Being.” Journal of Population Research 24.1 (2007): 23–49. Coontz, Stephanie. Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage. New York: Viking, 2005. Croome, Rodney. “Love and Commitment, To Equality.” The Drum Opinion, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) News. 8 June 2011. 14 Aug. 2012 < http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2749898.html >. de Vaus, D.L. Qu, and R. Weston. “Family Trends: Changing Patterns of Partnering.” Family Matters 64 (2003): 10–15. Dowd, James T, and Nicole R. Pallotta. “The End of Romance: The Demystification of Love in the Postmodern Age.” Sociological Perspectives 43.4 (2000): 549–80. Gottschall, Jonathan, and Marcus Nordlund. “Romantic Love: A Literary Universal?” Philosophy and Literature 30 (2006): 450–70. Jankowiak, William, and Ted Fischer, “A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Romantic Love,” Ethnology 31 (1992): 149–55. Lantz, Herman R. “Romantic Love in the Pre-Modern Period: A Sociological Commentary.” Journal of Social History 15.3 (1982): 349–70. Lindholm, Charles. “Romantic Love and Anthropology.” Etnofoor 19:1 Romantic Love (2006): 5–21. Parker, Robyn. “Perspectives on the Future of Marriage.” Australian Institute of Family Studies 72 Summer (2005): 78–82.Pateman, Carole. “Women and Consent.” Political Theory (1980): 149–68. Penman, Robyn. “Current Approaches to Marriage and Relationship Research in the United States and Australia.” Family Matters 70 Autumn (2005): 26–35. Simons, Michelle. “(Re)-forming Marriage in Australia?” Australian Institute of Family Matters 73 (2006): 46–51.Stearns, Peter N, and Mark Knapp. “Men and Romantic Love: Pinpointing a 20th-Century Change.” Journal of Social History 26.4 (1993): 769–95. Yalom, Marilyn. A History of the Wife. New York: Harper Collins, 2001.

This essay combines life writing with meditations on the significance of walking as integral to the ritual practice of pilgrimage, where the individual improves her soul or health through the act of walking to a shrine containing healing relics of a saint. Braiding together insights from medieval literature, contemporary ecocriticism, and memory studies, I reflect on my own pilgrimage practice as it impacts the land itself. Canterbury, England serves as the central shrine for four pilgrimages over decades: 1966, 1994, 1997, and 2003.The act of memory was not invented in the Anthropocene. Rather, the nonhuman world has taught humans how to remember. From ice-core samples retaining the history of Europe’s weather to rocks embedded with fossilized extinct species, nonhuman actors literally petrifying or freezing the past—from geologic sites to frozen water—become exposed through the process of anthropocentric discovery and human interference. The very act of human uncovery and analysis threatens to eliminate the nonhuman actor which has hospitably shared its own experience. How can humans script nonhuman memory?As for the history of memory studies itself, a new phase is arguably beginning, shifting from “the transnational, transcultural, or global to the planetary; from recorded to deep history; from the human to the nonhuman” (Craps et al. 3). Memory studies for the Anthropocene can “focus on the terrestrialized significance of (the historicized) forms of remembrance but also on the positioning of who is remembering and, ultimately, which ‘Anthropocene’ is remembered” (Craps et al. 5). In this era of the “self-conscious Anthropocene” (Craps et al. 6), narrative itself can focus on “the place of nonhuman beings in human stories of origins, identity, and futures point to a possible opening for the methods of memory studies” (Craps et al. 8). The nonhuman on the paths of this essay range from the dirt on the path to the rock used to build the sacred shrine, the ultimate goal. How they intersect with human actors reveals how the “human subject is no longer the one forming the world, but does indeed constitute itself through its relation to and dependence on the object world” (Marcussen 14, qtd. in Rodriguez 378). Incorporating “nonhuman species as objects, if not subjects, of memory [...] memory critics could begin by extending their objects to include the memory of nonhuman species,” linking both humans and nonhumans in “an expanded multispecies frame of remembrance” (Craps et al. 9). My narrative—from diaries recording sacred journey to a novel structured by pilgrimage—propels motion, but also secures in memory events from the past, including memories of those nonhuman beings I interact with.Childhood PilgrimageThe little girl with brown curls sat crying softly, whimpering, by the side of the road in lush grass. The mother with her soft brown bangs and an underflip to her hair told the story of a little girl, sitting by the side of the road in lush grass.The story book girl had forgotten her Black Watch plaid raincoat at the picnic spot where she had lunched with her parents and two older brothers. Ponchos spread out, the family had eaten their fresh yeasty rolls, hard cheese, apples, and macaroons. The tin clink of the canteen hit their teeth as they gulped metallic water, still icy cold from the taps of the ancient inn that morning. The father cut slices of Edam with his Swiss army knife, parsing them out to each child to make his or her own little sandwich. The father then lay back for his daily nap, while the boys played chess. The portable wooden chess set had inlaid squares, each piece no taller than a fingernail paring. The girl read a Junior Puffin book, while the mother silently perused Agatha Christie. The boy who lost at chess had to play his younger sister, a fitting punishment for the less able player. She cheerfully played with either brother. Once the father awakened, they packed up their gear into their rucksacks, and continued the pilgrimage to Canterbury.Only the little Black Watch plaid raincoat was left behind.The real mother told the real girl that the story book family continued to walk, forgetting the raincoat until it began to rain. The men pulled on their ponchos and the mother her raincoat, when the little girl discovered her raincoat missing. The story book men walked two miles back while the story book mother and girl sat under the dripping canopy of leaves provided by a welcoming tree.And there, the real mother continued, the storybook girl cried and whimpered, until a magic taxi cab in which the father and boys sat suddenly appeared out of the mist to drive the little girl and her mother to their hotel.The real girl’s eyes shone. “Did that actually happen?” she asked, perking up in expectation.“Oh, yes,” said the real mother, kissing her on the brow. The girl’s tears dried. Only the plops of rain made her face moist. The little girl, now filled with hope, cuddled with her mother as they huddled together.Without warning, out of the mist, drove up a real magic taxi cab in which the real men sat. For magic taxi cabs really exist, even in the tangible world—especially in England. At the very least, in the England of little Susie’s imagination.Narrative and PilgrimageMy mother’s tale suggests how this story echoes in yet another pilgrimage story, maintaining a long tradition of pilgrimage stories embedded within frame tales as far back as the Middle Ages.The Christian pilgrim’s walk parallels Christ’s own pilgrimage to Emmaus. The blisters we suffer echo faintly the lash Christ endured. The social relations of the pilgrim are “diachronic” (Alworth 98), linking figures (Christ) from the past to the now (us, or, during the Middle Ages, William Langland’s Piers Plowman or Chaucer’s band who set out from Southwark). We embody the frame of the vera icon, the true image, thus “conjur[ing] a site of simultaneity or a plane of immanence where the actors of the past [...] meet those of the future” (Alworth 99). Our quotidian walk frames the true essence or meaning of our ambulatory travail.In 1966, my parents took my two older brothers and me on the Pilgrims’ Way—not the route from London to Canterbury that Chaucer’s pilgrims would have taken starting south of London in Southwark, rather the ancient trek from Winchester to Canterbury, famously chronicled in The Old Road by Hilaire Belloc. The route follows along the south side of the Downs, where the muddy path was dried by what sun there was. My parents first undertook the walk in the early 1950s. Slides from that pilgrimage depict my mother, voluptuous in her cashmere twinset and tweed skirt, as my father crosses a stile. My parents, inspired by Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, decided to walk along the traditional Pilgrims’ Way to Canterbury. Story intersects with material traversal over earth on dirt-laden paths.By the time we children came along, the memories of that earlier pilgrimage resonated with my parents, inspiring them to take us on the same journey. We all carried our own rucksacks and walked five or six miles a day. Concerning our pilgrimage when I was seven, my mother wrote in her diary:As good pilgrims should, we’ve been telling tales along the way. Yesterday Jimmy told the whole (detailed) story of That Darn Cat, a Disney movie. Today I told about Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey, which first inspired me to think of walking trips and everyone noted the resemblance between Stevenson’s lovable, but balky, donkey and our sweet Sue. (We hadn’t planned to tell tales, but they just happened along the way.)I don’t know how sweet I was; perhaps I was “balky” because the road was so hard. Landscape certainly shaped my experience.As I wrote about the pilgrimage in my diary then, “We went to another Hotel and walked. We went and had lunch at the Boggly [booglie] place. We went to a nother hotel called The Swan with fether Quits [quilts]. We went to the Queens head. We went to the Gest house. We went to aother Hotle called Srping wells and my tooth came out. We saw some taekeys [turkeys].” The repetition suggests how pilgrimage combines various aspects of life, from the emotional to the physical, the quotidian (walking and especially resting—in hotels with quilts) with the extraordinary (newly sprung tooth or the appearance of turkeys). “[W]ayfaring abilities depend on an emotional connection to the environment” (Easterlin 261), whether that environment is modified by humans or even manmade, inhabited by human or nonhuman actors. How can one model an “ecological relationship between humans and nonhumans” in narrative (Rodriguez 368)? Rodriguez proposes a “model of reading as encounter [...] encountering fictional story worlds as potential models” (Rodriguez 368), just as my mother did with the Magic Taxi Cab story.Taxis proliferate in my childhood pilgrimage. My mother writes in 1966 in her diary of journeying along the Pilgrims’ Way to St. Martha’s on the Hill. “Susie was moaning and groaning under her pack and at one desperate uphill moment gasped out, ‘Let’s take a taxi!’ – our highborn lady as we call her. But we finally made it.” “Martha’s”, as I later learned, is a corruption of “Martyrs”, a natural linguistic decay that developed over the medieval period. Just as the vernacular textures pilgrimage poems in the fourteeth century, the common tongue in all its glorious variety seeps into even the quotidian modern pilgrim’s journey.Part of the delight of pilgrimage lies in the characters one meets and the languages they speak. In 1994, the only time my husband and I cheated on a strictly ambulatory sacred journey occurred when we opted to ride a bus for ten miles where walking would have been dangerous. When I ask the bus driver if a stop were ours, he replied, “I'll give you a shout, love.” As though in a P. G. Wodehouse novel, when our stop finally came, he cried out, “Cheerio, love” to me and “Cheerio, mate” to Jim.Language changes. Which is a good thing. If it didn’t, it would be dead, like those martyrs of old. Like Latin itself. Disentangling pilgrimage from language proves impossible. The healthy ecopoetics of languages meshes with the sustainable vibrancy of the land we traverse.“Nettles of remorse…”: Derek Walcott, The Bounty Once my father had to carry me past a particularly tough patch of nettles. As my mother tells it, we “went through orchards and along narrow woodland path with face-high nettles. Susie put a scarf over her face and I wore a poncho though it was sunny and we survived almost unscathed.” Certain moments get preserved by the camera. At age seven in a field outside of Wye, I am captured in my father’s slides surrounded by grain. At age thirty-five, I am captured in film by my husband in the same spot, in the identical pose, though now quite a bit taller than the grain. Three years later, as a mother, I in turn snap him with a backpack containing baby Sarah, grumpily gazing off over the fields.When I was seven, we took off from Detling. My mother writes, “set off along old Pilgrims’ Way. Road is paved now, but much the same as fifteen years ago. Saw sheep, lambs, and enjoyed lovely scenery. Sudden shower sent us all to a lunch spot under trees near Thurnham Court, where we huddled under ponchos and ate happily, watching the weather move across the valley. When the sun came to us, we continued on our way which was lovely, past sheep, etc., but all on hard paved road, alas. Susie was a good little walker, but moaned from time to time.”I seem to whimper and groan a lot on pilgrimage. One thing is clear: the physical aspects of walking for days affected my phenomenological response to our pilgrimage which we’d undertaken both as historical ritual, touristic nature hike, and what Wendell Berry calls a “secular pilgrimage” (402), where the walker seeks “the world of the Creation” (403) in a “return to the wilderness in order to be restored” (416). The materiality of my experience was key to how I perceived this journey as a spiritual, somatic, and emotional event. The link between pilgrimage and memory, between pilgrimage poetics and memorial methods, occupies my thoughts on pilgrimage. As Nancy Easterlin’s work on “cognitive ecocriticism” (“Cognitive” 257) contends, environmental knowledge is intimately tied in with memory (“Cognitive” 260). She writes: “The advantage of extensive environmental knowledge most surely precipitates the evolution of memory, necessary to sustain vast knowledge” (“Cognitive” 260). Even today I can recall snatches of moments from that trip when I was a child, including the telling of tales.Landscape not only changes the writer, but writing transforms the landscape and our interaction with it. As Valerie Allen suggests, “If the subject acts upon the environment, so does the environment upon the subject” (“When Things Break” 82). Indeed, we can understand the “road as a strategic point of interaction between human and environment” (Allen and Evans 26; see also Oram)—even, or especially, when that interaction causes pain and inflames blisters. My relationship with moleskin on my blasted and blistered toes made me intimately conscious of my body with every step taken on the pilgrimage route.As an adult, my boots on the way from Winchester to Canterbury pinched and squeezed, packed dirt acting upon them and, in turn, my feet. After taking the train home and upon arrival in London, we walked through Bloomsbury to our flat on Russell Square, passing by what I saw as a new, less religious, but no less beckoning shrine: The London Foot Hospital at Fitzroy Square.Now, sadly, it is closed. Where do pilgrims go for sole—and soul—care?Slow Walking as WayfindingAll pilgrimages come to an end, just as, in 1966, my mother writes of our our arrival at last in Canterbury:On into Canterbury past nice grassy cricket field, where we sat and ate chocolate bars while we watched white-flannelled cricketers at play. Past town gates to our Queen’s Head Inn, where we have the smallest, slantingest room in the world. Everything is askew and we’re planning to use our extra pillows to brace our feet so we won’t slide out of bed. Children have nice big room with 3 beds and are busy playing store with pounds and shillings [that’s very hard mathematics!]. After dinner, walked over to cathedral, where evensong was just ending. Walked back to hotel and into bed where we are now.Up to early breakfast, dashed to cathedral and looked up, up, up. After our sins were forgiven, we picked up our rucksacks and headed into London by train.This experience in 1966 varies slightly from the one in 1994. Jim and I walk through a long walkway of tall, slim trees arching over us, a green, lush and silent cloister, finally gaining our first view of Canterbury with me in a similar photo to one taken almost thirty years before. We make our way into the city through the West Gate, first passing by St. Dunstan’s Church where Henry II had put on penitential garb and later Sir Thomas More’s head was buried. Canterbury is like Coney Island in the Middle Ages and still is: men with dreadlocks and slinky didjeridoos, fire tossers, mobs of people, tourists. We go to Mercery Lane as all good pilgrims should and under the gate festooned with the green statue of Christ, arriving just in time for evensong.Imagining a medieval woman arriving here and listening to the service, I pray to God my gratefulness for us having arrived safely. I can understand the fifteenth-century pilgrim, Margery Kempe, screaming emotionally—maybe her feet hurt like mine. I’m on the verge of tears during the ceremony: so glad to be here safe, finally got here, my favorite service, my beloved husband. After the service, we pass on through the Quire to the spot where St. Thomas’s relic sanctuary was. People stare at a lit candle commemorating it. Tears well up in my eyes.I suppose some things have changed since the Middle Ages. One Friday in Canterbury with my children in 2003 has some parallels with earlier iterations. Seven-year-old Sarah and I go to evensong at the Cathedral. I tell her she has to be absolutely quiet or the Archbishop will chop off her head.She still has her head.Though the road has been paved, the view has remained virtually unaltered. Some aspects seem eternal—sheep, lambs, and stiles dotting the landscape. The grinding down of the pilgrimage path, reflecting the “slowness of flat ontology” (Yates 207), occurs over vast expanses of time. Similarly, Easterlin reflects on human and more than human vitalism: “Although an understanding of humans as wayfinders suggests a complex and dynamic interest on the part of humans in the environment, the surround itself is complex and dynamic and is frequently in a state of change as the individual or group moves through it” (Easterlin “Cognitive” 261). An image of my mother in the 1970s by a shady tree along the Pilgrims’ Way in England shows that the path is lower by 6 inches than the neighboring verge (Bright 4). We don’t see dirt evolving, because its changes occur so slowly. Only big time allows us to see transformative change.Memorial PilgrimageOddly, the erasure of self through duplication with a precursor occurred for me while reading W.G. Sebald’s pilgrimage novel, The Rings of Saturn. I had experienced my own pilgrimage to many of these same locations he immortalizes. I, too, had gone to Somerleyton Hall with my elderly mother, husband, and two children. My memories, sacred shrines pooling in familial history, are infused with synchronic reflection, medieval to contemporary—my parents’ periodic sojourns in Suffolk for years, leading me to love the very landscape Sebald treks across; sadness at my parents’ decline; hope in my children’s coming to add on to their memory palimpsest a layer devoted to this land, to this history, to this family.Then, the oddest coincidence from my reading pilgrimage. After visiting Dunwich Heath, Sebald comes to his friend, Michael, whose wife Anne relays a story about a local man hired as a pallbearer by the local undertaker in Westleton. This man, whose memory was famously bad, nevertheless reveled in the few lines allotted him in an outdoor performance of King Lear. After her relating this story, Sebald asks for a taxi (Sebald 188-9).This might all seem unremarkable to the average reader. Yet, “human wayfinders are richly aware of and responsive to environment, meaning both physical places and living beings, often at a level below consciousness” (Easterlin “Cognitive” 265). For me, with a connection to this area, I startled with recollection emerging from my subconscience. The pallbearer’s name in Sebald’s story was Mr Squirrel, the very same name of the taxi driver my parents—and we—had driven with many times. The same Mr Squirrel? How many Mr Squirrels can there be in this small part of Suffolk? Surely it must be the same family, related in a genetic encoding of memory. I run to my archives. And there, in my mother’s address book—itself a palimpsest of time with names and addressed scored through; pasted-in cards, names, and numbers; and looseleaf memoranda—there, on the first page under “S”, “Mr. Squirrel” in my mother’s unmistakable scribble. She also had inscribed his phone number and the village Saxmundum, seven miles from Westleton. His name had been crossed out. Had he died? Retired? I don’t know. Yet quick look online tells me Squirrell’s Taxis still exists, as it does in my memory.Making KinAfter accompanying a class on a bucolic section of England’s Pilgrims’ Way, seven miles from Wye to Charing, we ended up at a pub drinking a pint, with which all good pilgrimages should conclude. There, students asked me why I became a medievalist who studies pilgrimage. Only after the publication of my first book on women pilgrims did I realize that the origin of my scholarly, long fascination with pilgrimage, blossoming into my professional career, began when I was seven years old along the way to Canterbury. The seeds of that pilgrimage when I was so young bore fruit and flowers decades later.One story illustrates Michel Serres’s point that we should not aim to appropriate the world, but merely act as temporary tenants (Serres 72-3). On pilgrimage in 1966 as a child, I had a penchant for ant spiders. That was not the only insect who took my heart. My mother shares how “Susie found a beetle up on the hill today and put him in the cheese box. Jimmy put holes in the top for him. She named him Alexander Beetle and really became very fond of him. After supper, we set him free in the garden here, with appropriate ceremony and a few over-dramatic tears of farewell.” He clearly made a great impression on me. I yearn for him today, that beetle in the cheese box. Though I tried to smuggle nature as contraband, I ultimately had to set him free.Passing through cities, landscape, forests, over seas and on roads, wandering by fields and vegetable patches, under a sky lit both by sun and moon, the pilgrim—even when in a group of fellow pilgrims—in her lonesome exercise endeavors to realize Serres’ ideal of the tenant inhabitant of earth. Nevertheless, we, as physical pilgrims, inevitably leave our traces through photos immortalizing the journey, trash left by the wayside, even excretions discretely deposited behind a convenient bush. Or a beetle who can tell the story of his adventure—or terror—at being ensconced for a time in a cheese box.On one notorious day of painful feet, my husband and I arrived in Otford, only to find the pub was still closed. Finally, it became time for dinner. We sat outside, me with feet ensconced in shoes blessedly inert and unmoving, as the server brought out our salads. The salad cream, white and viscous, was presented in an elegantly curved silver dish. Then Jim began to pick at the salad cream with his fork. Patiently, tenderly, he endeavored to assist a little bug who had gotten trapped in the gooey sauce. Every attempt seemed doomed to failure. The tiny creature kept falling back into the gloppy substance. Undaunted, Jim compassionately ministered to our companion. Finally, the little insect flew off, free to continue its own pilgrimage, which had intersected with ours in a tiny moment of affinity. Such moments of “making kin” work, according to Donna Haraway, as “life-saving strateg[ies] for the Anthropocene” (Oppermann 3, qtd. in Haraway 160).How can narrative avoid the anthropocentric centre of writing, which is inevitable given the human generator of such a piece? While words are a human invention, nonhuman entities vitally enact memory. The very Downs we walked along were created in the Cretaceous period at least seventy million years ago. The petrol propelling the magic taxi cab was distilled from organic bodies dating back millions of years. Jurassic limestone from the Bathonian Age almost two hundred million years ago constitutes the Caen stone quarried for building Canterbury Cathedral, while its Purbeck marble from Dorset dates from the Cretaceous period. Walking on pilgrimage propels me through a past millions—billions—of eons into the past, dwarfing my speck of existence. Yet, “if we wish to cross the darkness which separates us from [the past] we must lay down a little plank of words and step delicately over it” (Barfield 23). Elias Amidon asks us to consider how “the ground we dig into and walk upon is sacred. It is sacred because it makes us neighbors to each other, whether we like it or not. Tell this story” (Amidon 42). And, so, I have.We are winding down. Time has passed since that first pilgrimage of mine at seven years old. Yet now, here, I still put on my red plaid wollen jumper and jacket, crisp white button-up shirt, grey knee socks, and stout red walking shoes. Slinging on my rucksack, I take my mother’s hand.I’m ready to take my first step.We continue our pilgrimage, together.ReferencesAllen, Valerie. “When Things Break: Mending Rroads, Being Social.” Roadworks: Medieval Britain, Medieval Roads. Eds. Valerie Allen and Ruth Evans. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2016.———, and Ruth Evans. Introduction. Roadworks: Medieval Britain, Medieval Roads. Eds. Valerie Allen and Ruth Evans. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2016.Alworth, David J. Site Reading: Fiction, Art, Social Form. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2016.Amidon, Elias. “Digging In.” Dirt: A Love Story. Ed. Barbara Richardson. Lebanon, NH: ForeEdge, 2015.Barfield, Owen. History in English Words. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1967.Berry, Wendell. “A Secular Pilgrimage.” The Hudson Review 23.3 (1970): 401-424.Bright, Derek. “The Pilgrims’ Way Revisited: The Use of the North Downs Main Trackway and the Medway Crossings by Medieval Travelers.” Kent Archaeological Society eArticle (2010): 4-32.Craps, Stef, Rick Crownshaw, Jennifer Wenzel, Rosanne Kennedy, Claire Colebrook, and Vin Nardizzi. “Memory Studies and the Anthropocene: A Roundtable.” Memory Studies 11.4 (2017) 1-18.Easterlin, Nancy. A Biocultural Approach to Literary Theory and Interpretation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2012.———. “Cognitive Ecocriticism: Human Wayfinding, Sociality, and Literary Interpretation.” Introduction to Cognitive Studies. Ed. Lisa Zunshine. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2010. 257-274.Haraway, Donna. “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin.” Environmental Humanities 6 (2015): 159-65.James, Erin, and Eric Morel. “Ecocriticism and Narrative Theory: An Introduction.” English Studies 99.4 (2018): 355-365.Marcussen, Marlene. Reading for Space: An Encounter between Narratology and New Materialism in the Works of Virgina Woolf and Georges Perec. PhD diss. University of Southern Denmark, 2016.Oppermann, Serpil. “Introducing Migrant Ecologies in an (Un)Bordered World.” ISLE 24.2 (2017): 243–256.Oram, Richard. “Trackless, Impenetrable, and Underdeveloped? Roads, Colonization and Environmental Transformation in the Anglo-Scottish Border Zone, c. 1100 to c. 1300.” Roadworks: Medieval Britain, Medieval Roads. Eds. Valerie Allen and Ruth Evans. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2016.Rodriquez, David. “Narratorhood in the Anthropocene: Strange Stranger as Narrator-Figure in The Road and Here.” English Studies 99.4 (2018): 366-382.Savory, Elaine. “Toward a Caribbean Ecopoetics: Derek Walcott’s Language of Plants.” Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of the Environment. Eds. Elizabeth DeLoughrey and George B. Handley. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011. 80-96.Sebald, W.G. The Rings of Saturn. Trans. Michael Hulse. New York: New Directions, 1998.Serres, Michel. Malfeasance: Appropriating through Pollution? Trans. Anne-Marie Feenberg-Dibon. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2011.Walcott, Derek. Selected Poems. Ed. Edward Baugh. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997. 3-16.Yates, Julian. “Sheep Tracks—A Multi-Species Impression.” Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics and Objects. Ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. Washington, D.C.: Oliphaunt Books, 2012.