The Southern African Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies

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For content queries on this community please email Professor Victor Houliston : victor.houliston@wits.ac.za Alternatively use the following telephone number to contact Prof, Tel: 011 717 4357

The Southern African Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies is the official publication of the Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS) and is published annually.

Instructions to Contributors The journal welcomes submissions in any of the disciplines of the humanities relating to the Middle Ages or the Renaissance up to 1700. All submissions will be refereed. Typescripts should be prepared in accordance with the MLA Style Manual and submitted by email in a file format compatible with Microsoft Word.

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 151

A Bishop and the Less Privileged in an African Diocese in the Late Roman Empire: Augustine at Hippo Regius
(The Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS), 2008) Saddington, D. B.; Houliston,Victor
Augustine1 reached the highest levels of a classical education in Africa, first at Madauros (Mdaourouch) near his home town and then in the provincial capital of Carthage (nr. Tunis), before completing his studies in Rome itself, where he probably hoped to find a patron able to secure him a lucrative post in the civil service. But philosophy, and Christianity, intervened. A man of genius, he chose to spend his life in monastic retreat devoted to study and writing. However, he was ordained a priest against his will and, soon afterwards, bishop in a humdrum harbour town. The question to be addressed is how the highly educated and brilliantphilosopher and theologian that he became could respond to the less privileged in his diocese.
A Jesuit 'Memento Mori': the Passage of Death in the 'Resolution' of Robert Persons
(The Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS), 1995) Houliston, Victor; Houliston,Victor
A Reappraisal of Late-Thirteenth-Century Responses to the Shroud of Lirey-Chambery-Turin: 'Encolpia' of the Eucharist, 'vera eikon' or Supreme Relic?
(The Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS), 1994) Allen, Nicholas Peter Leagh; Houliston,Victor
A Tale of 'synne and harlotries'? The Miller's Tale as Social Ideology
(The Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS), 2015) Knoetze, Retha; Houliston,Victor
This article provides a detailed discussion of how romance tropes are parodied in the Miller’s Tale in order to pose a social challenge to the Knight’s Tale and in order to reject the vertical view of social relations which romance tales traditionally uphold. Through a comprehensive investigation of this issue, the article illustrates Paul Strohm’s argument that the clash between the romance genre of the Knight’s Tale and the fabliau genre of the Miller’s Tale symbolically reflects the tension between two different ideologies simultaneously present within Chaucer’s society. The Miller’s fabliau tale is shown to express a mercantile outlook of calculation in one’s own interest that was becoming more prominent in the increasingly commercial world of late fourteenth-century England, as opposed to the feudal view of social relations which is found in the Knight’s Tale.
Alexander Barclay's Pastoral and 'good old Mantuan'
(The Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS), 1990) Claassen, Jo-Marie; Houliston,Victor
Anarchy and Ordure in Ben Jonson's 'On the Famous Voyage'
(The Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS), 1999) Parr, Anthony N.; Houliston,Victor
Aspects of Dramatic Development in the Roles of Devil Characters in the Religious Drama of the Netherlands, with particular reference to 'Mariken van Nieumeghen'
(The Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS), 1996) Raftery, Margaret Mary; Houliston,Victor
Assisi: An Urban Centre transformed by two Saintly Lives
(The Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS), 1993) Mare, Estelle A.; Houliston,Victor
Between Scholasticism and Folk Wisdom: The Weather Lore of William Merle
(The Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS), 1997) Snedegar, K. V.; Houliston,Victor
As Jeff Opland’s interdisciplinary research into the Anglo-Saxon and Xhosa poetic traditions has shown, the cross-fertilization of medieval and African studies can stimulate new flowerings of insight within both disciplines (Opland 1980; 1983). Thus it is fitting that my recent occupation with indigenous South African calendar systems should have caused this lapsed medievalist to revisit the career of an obscure fourteenth-century meteorological scholar, William Merle, whom I had first met in dissertation work on medieval astrology (Snedegar 1988; 1995). The examination of African calendars has increased my appreciation of just how keenly attuned to seasonal variation traditional agro-pastoral peoples are. Their food production largely depends on environmental contingencies, most important of which is the presence of water in adequate quantities at appropriate times. And although southern Africa and northern Europe experience vastly different weather patterns, the essential relationship between climate and agricultural success pertains to traditional Africa and medieval Europe alike.
Blasts of Vain Doctrine: Cranmer’s New Collect for St Mark’s Day.
(The Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS), 1998) Nichols, Bridget
A number of saintsâ€™ day collects were rewritten for the First Prayer Book of Edward VI of 1549 to replace their Sarum Rite predecessors. This was to avoid the impression, abhorrent to Reformation principles, that the saints themselves were being invoked. This article explores the process of composition of the collect for St Markâ€™s Day, which concludes with an admonition against â€˜blasts of vain doctrineâ€™. While the collect conforms to the typical practice of basing compositions on the readings for the day, it must be seen in the wider context of current debates on control of doctrine and teaching in the Church. The concluding discussion reflects on the fate of the collect in the Elizabethan Church and especially in modern Anglican revisions. It asks whether the arguably bland style of contemporary renderings marks a division between determination to defend right doctrine, coupled with serious political convictions and their liturgical expression. The discussion concludes by asking whether modern liturgists should now re-examine the challenges of writing liturgy in a political setting.
Cales and Guiana: John Donne and Elizabethan Foreign Policy
(The Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS), 2009) Parr, Anthony N.; Houliston,Victor
As a young man John Donne joined at least two maritime campaigns in England’s long-running war with Spain, and he wrote a good deal of poetry in direct response to those experiences. His verse also reflects more generally the contemporary fascination with overseas enterprise and discovery, and has been extensively scrutinised for evidence of Donne’s attitude to foreign adventure, colonisation and the new geography. This essay argues that, partly by misinterpreting the historical facts, critics have offered a somewhat muddled picture of the way he and others in his circle addressed themselves to English maritime ventures in the closing years of the sixteenth century. Moreover, Donne’s use of voyage metaphor in his poetry, though subjected to elaborate analysis in recent years, has been misread in some influential discussions, so that the discursive role of his verse in Elizabethan controversies over maritime warfare and the colonial project is not always clearly understood.
Camoes and the Sanctuary of Venus: A Climax in all Senses of the WORD
(The Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS), 1999) Meihuizen, Nicholas; Houliston,Victor
Chamberlayne's Pharonnida: The First English Verse Novel
(The Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS), 2015) Addison, Catherine; Houliston,Victor
This article seeks to explain George Saintsbury’s and W. MacNeile Dixon’s enigmatic categorization of William Chamberlayne’s Pharonnida (1659) as a verse novel, by elaborating the relation of Pharonnida with the ancient Greek prose novels, especially the Aethiopica of Heliodorus. Pharonnida imitates the Aethiopica quite closely: it is comparably long and its plot follows the ancient formula in which a pair of nobly-born young lovers manage to remain faithful to each other during a scarcely credible proliferation of adventures, including imprisonment, rescue, enslavement, disguise, and kidnapping by pirates and robbers. Whereas the Aethiopica is set in its own contemporary world, Pharonnida is set in a past resembling the present of the Aethiopica. Chamberlayne compensates for non-novelistic lack of contemporaneity by including some contemporary authorial comments and autobiographical episodes. The only significant generic difference is that Pharonnida is composed in verse. If the ancient popular written narratives are indeed prose novels, then Pharonnida can surely be claimed as a verse novel since it is so close a reading of Aethiopica.
Chaucer's 'Franklin's Tale': 'Trouthe', 'Routhe' and the 'Rokkes Blakke'
(The Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS), 1994) Kearney, John; Houliston,Victor
Chaucer's Theseus: Tyrant or Philosopher-King?
(The Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS), 1993) Northover, Alan; Houliston,Victor
Church And Commune in Thirteenth Century Pistoia: Grain and the Struggle for Political Legitimacy in Medieval Tuscany.
(The Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS), 2012) Dameron, George
M. E. Bratchel’s Medieval Lucca and the Evolution of the Renaissance State (2008) and David Herlihy’s Medieval and Renaissance Pistoia: The Social History of an Italian Town, 1200–1430 (1967) may be separated by forty-one years, but they both represent outstanding examples of historical research on medieval Italy. They are both detailed and comprehensive studies of a single city, based on extensive archival research. Whereas the former focuses on political and administrative history and the latter concerns itself primarily with social and economic developments, both studies draw useful comparisons with other city-states and highlight the distinctive qualities of the commune that constitutes their subject. This essay will draw on that same tradition and examine a single city-state. It will return to the subject of Herlihy’s classic study, Pistoia, and it will draw some comparisons and contrasts with other communes. However, it will also explore a theme that was common to the history of the ruling regimes of most city-states in northern Italy in the closing decades of the thirteenth century: the fragility of political power, made worse by periodic grain shortages. As the population of Tuscan cities and their surrounding rural districts (contadi) continued to increase markedly as the century drew to a close, the ability of the major magistracies of those communes to secure dependable and adequate supplies of grain became ever more necessary. A deficiency in the food supply, as we can see occurred at Pistoia in 1282, can contribute to the triggering of a political crisis.
The Clash of Cultures at Cardoba
(The Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS), 1998) Maré, Estelle
The purpose of this research is to examine the evidence that an existing architectural monument offers regarding the effect of the conflict during the Conquista, followed by the period of Arab rule in Spain, which was terminated by the Reconquista. The theme of the article is medieval violence and counter violence manifested in the stages of development of the Great Mosque at CÃ³rdoba and its transformation into the Church of Santa Maria. I will deal with the ethical issues at stake in the behaviour of the Arabs and Spaniards in CÃ³rdoba during the conquest and reconquest of a sacred site, which through several centuries became a theatre in which religious emotions were aroused and resulted in unresolved loss in an anti-cathartic way. What happened at CÃ³rdoba is an object lesson to all multicultural societies in which the dominant group revenges itself upon the cultural artifacts of a subjected group, not an uncommon occurrence in the history of architecture.
Clero urbano e sistema parrocchiale a Lucca nel Tardo Medioevo: il convento dei cappellani lucchesi.
(The Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS), 2012) Savigni, Rafael
La medievistica ha privilegiato per molto tempo lo studio degli Ordini mendicanti e delle confraternite ad essi legate rispetto al clero secolare ed alle sue modalit associative. Se spetta, rispettivamente va a Paolo Sambin e ad Antonio Rigon il merito di aver avviato ricerche sistematiche sullâ istituzione parrocchiale e sulle associazioni del clero urbano, anche in ambito lucchese maturato un precoce interesse per il processo di formazione delle parrocchie, che, come noto, si concluse (dopo secoli segnati dalla centralit della pieve, che svolse anche funzioni civili) soltanto alla fine del Medioevo, con la progressiva concessione del fonte battesimale ad una serie di chiese che in precedenza avevano acquisito una pi precisa identit territoriale ed un proprio cimitero. Presso lâ archivio diocesano di Lucca conservato lâ archivio di unâ associazione del clero urbano (parallela ad altre associazioni di chierici delle Seimiglia), che, esplicitamente attestata dal 1145 al 1490 (quando, ormai in crisi, verr riassorbita nella universitas dei cappellani beneficiati della cattedrale) e denominata conventus, fraternitas o congregatio dei cappellani lucchesi, associava lâ aspetto corporativo a quello confraternale, coinvolgendo i benefattori laici nei benefici spirituali connessi alle celebrazioni periodiche degli anniversari. Avendo gi presentato in altra sede un quadro complessivo dellâ evoluzione di tale associazione,
Compass, Centre and Circumscription: Some Themes in Paradise Lost Books VII and VIII
(The Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS), 1997) Hall, Ronald; Houliston,Victor
My theme is human limitation. It’s perhaps appropriately in keeping with that theme that I want to begin very simply, even naively, with some homespun philosophy which I like to share with my students when beginning to teach Paradise Lost.
Cosmic Signs: The Representation of Go[o]d and [the] [D]Evil in the Medieval Morality Play Mankind.
(The Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS), 2005) Raftery, Margaret
The English moralities make use of different foci and techniques to create the spirit of repentance which Potter claims to be their central and unifying theme and aim. While Castle of Perseverance investigates the whole spiritual course of God`s creation innocence, followed by iterated temptation, fall and redemption over the whole human lifespan, and Every man encapsulates only its last, urgent hours, Mankind reveals the interconnectedness of the divine and the demonic with the quotidian. In the course of the normal, apparently chance encounters of the day, Mankind represents the human soul adrift between Redemption and Damnation. On the one hand, he is in the loving care of God via the counsel of the priest (whose allegorical name, Mercy, allows him to denote both the saving virtue of forgiveness and a clerical character representing God and Christ). On the other, Mankind is equally the prey of the devil via temptation to sin by the other characters he meets: the Vice, Mischief; the Devil, Titivillus, and the three world lings, New Guise, Nowadays, and Nought.

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