Any medieval household with a surplus of small children might use them to guard flocks of geese. Eating off grass during summer, they might be fattened in the autumn supplying the household with either an extra bit of cash or a delicious treat. In the Middle Ages, they would have been cooked, stuffed with fruit.
Medieval Music, Legend, and the Cult of St Martin: The Local Foundations of a Universal Saint
By Yossi Maurey
Cambridge University Press, 2. okt. 2014
Communities of Saint Martin: Legend and Ritual in Medieval Tours
By Sharon Farmer
Cornell University Press 2019 (1991)
Sharon Farmer here investigates the ways in which three medieval communities—the town of Tours, the basilica of Saint-Martin there, and the abbey of Marmoutier nearby—all defined themselves through the cult of Saint Martin. She demonstrates how in the early Middle Ages the bishops of Tours used the cult of Martin, their fourthcentury predecessor, to shape an idealized image of Tours as Martin’s town. As the heirs to Martin’s see, the bishops projected themselves as the rightful leaders of the community. However, in the late eleventh century, she shows, the canons of Saint-Martin (where the saint’s relics resided) and the monks of Marmoutier (which Martin had founded) took control of the cult and produced new legends and rituals to strengthen their corporate interests. Since the basilica and the abbey differed in their spiritualities, structures, and external ties, the canons and monks elaborated and manipulated Martin’s cult in quite different ways. Farmer shows how one saint’s cult lent itself to these varying uses, and analyzes the strikingly dissimilar Martins that emerged. Her skillful inquiry into the relationship between group identity and cultural expression illuminates the degree to which culture is contested territory. Farmer’s rich blend of social history and hagiography will appeal to a wide range of medievalists, cultural anthropologists, religious historians, and urban historians.
Tours 1500. Capitale des Arts
de Béatrice de Chancel-Bardelot, Pascale Charron, Pierre-Gilles Girault and Jean-Marie Guillouët
Somogy 2012
The Old English Lives of St Martin of Tours
Edition and Study
By Mertens, Andre
Universitätsverlag Göttingen 2017
Open Source
St Martin of Tours is one of Christianity’s major saints and his significance reaches far beyond the powerful radiance of his iconic act of charity. While the saint and his cult have been researched comprehensively in Germany and France, his cult in the British Isles proves to be fairly unexplored. Andre Mertens closes this gap for Anglo-Saxon England by editing all the age’s surviving texts on the saint, including a commentary and translations. Moreover, Mertens looks beyond the horizon of the surviving body of literary relics and dedicates an introductory study to an analysis of the saint’s cult in Anglo-Saxon England and his significance for Anglo-Saxon cultur
Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints’ Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
By Thomas F. X. Noble and Thomas Head
The Pennsylvania State University Press 1995
The St. Martin Embroideries: A Fifteenth-century Series Illustrating the Life and Legend of St. Martin of Tours
By Margaret B. Freeman
Metropolotan Museum of Art
In the Middle Ages pictorial embroidery was considered one of the fine arts, and those who made pictures with needle and thread were often as highly skilled and highly valued as those who made pictures with brush and pigment. Franco-Flemish and Flemish pictorial embroideries of the first half of the fifteenth century are rare today, and a series as extensive and fascinating as the one analyzed here can hardly be equaled. The thirty-seven individual works have been known to scholars and connoisseurs for eighty years or so, and during this time speculation has accumulated as to their origin, purpose, and iconography. The present study resolves at least part of the mystery.
These embroideries celebrate the life and achievements of one of Christendom’s most beloved saints. Admired for his heroism in successful confrontations with emperors, devils, brigands, and pagans, St. Martin, bishop of Tours, is remembered also for his power over nature and his restoration of the dead to life. In this most readable treatise each subject is integrated in the storytelling scheme, the styles of the several artists who made the designs are differentiated, the particular embroidery techniques are discussed, the name of the Burgundian nobleman who may have commissioned the set is sifted out of the historical and artistic evidence, and what is known of the embroideries’ recent history is reported. The discussion is such that it greatly enlarges one’s own knowledge not only of Medieval French, Franco-Flemish, and Flemish embroidery but of painting and manuscript illumination in these regions.
Suddenly, in the 1340s young Italian men began to wear cropped tunics, drooping hoods, and large purses hanging from elaborate metallic belts. This new silhouette was both mysterious and daring.
Exploring prejudice and persecution in the Medieval World, the Getty Center last year mounted an exhibition on Outcasts. Late autumn 2019, this initiative will be followed by another exhibition on the topoi of the Black King, Balthazar, in Medieval and Renaissance Art.
Endless seals imprinted on wax! Countless pieces of parchment, neatly stacked. We tend to value these leftovers from the Middle Ages for their content. Matthew Collins sees aDNA.
Read the stories about St Martin of Tours, one of the most popular saints in medieval and modern Europe
St. Martin was a Roman soldier, who turned into a Christian ascetic. Later he was adopted as a national saint for France, as well as a soldier of Christ. His final disguise, though, was as a popular saint
The “Martin” of the 7th to 10th centuries was not the ascetic bishop of the 5th century. The leopard changed its spots and became a National Frankish saint and a budding Christian Knight
"Fara" is an enigmatic term. Traditionally meant to designate an Germanic agnatic clan or lineage as well as a band of brothers, the meaning still eludes us.
Some may think that medieval gardens were all about cabbages, beans and medicinal herbs. But gardens also came to be intended for lush and frivolous play
Rumour has it this Book of Hours accompanied Richard III to the Battle of Bosworth. Later impaired by the mother of Henry VII, it has now been digitised.
Late medieval manuscripts are filled with lovely interiors. New book delights in showing off the decorative details and explain the stories behind
Medieval creativity: While Vikings huddled around long fires, the French sat with their backs to chimneys and the Germans invented tiled ovens.
New Czech study raises the question whether a caesarean section was successfully carried out in Prague in the 14th century.
Hans Brask was bishop of Linköping in Östergötland from 1513 – 1527. He is primarily known for his household book with calendar, menus and regulations
From Sweden comes an old bishop’s manual dating from c. 1520. It tells the story of how Christmas was celebrated in Linköping in Östergötland.
