In a number of these principles, the church was borrowing much from the lessons drawn from the later Roman Empire. It is conclusive and arguable that the ecclesiastical courts were humanizing the law (Geremek 56)
The ecclesiastical courts protected the helpless people in the society like women, orphans, and children. It also handled a broad range of semi-secular offenses like forgery, perjury, libel, and falsification of testimony, weights, and measures among other crimes (Merback 8)
Although they were generally awarded a tract of land to reign over they rarely exercised any real power. The highest rank of nobility was the Duke (Adonis)
This group (duke, marquees, earl, viscount, and baron) acquired their titles through hereditary and generally passed through the male line. Beneath the peerage was the group known as the landed gentry (Cokayne)
¶ … feudal system in medieval England has been romanticized through the movies and literature but few truly understand the makeup of the society that supported the system. Basically, English society in the 16th century was composed of two essential groups, the peerage and landed gentry (Debrett)
" Deetz regarded eighteenth-century changes in the popular mindset and purchasing patterns as being indicators of the profound transformation that was occurring in societal values of the time. Deetz went further, to raise the question of whether the poor of America may have actually "missed out" on the Renaissance, as he regarded the transition into a Georgian-structured home to be a key indicator of the "shift from medieval into modern ways of thinking (Berger and Associates, 1997)
The important pattern that emerged from this analysis by Deetz and counterparts was that of the life cycle of decorative motifs and patterns, which were typically created, became popular for a time, and then declined in usage as society's interest shifted to newer designs. Their work also helped to track the migration and movement of the local populations, as distinctive gravestone patterns could be observed to move in a westward direction over time, as stone masons and artisans migrated in that direction (Orser, 2003)
To become a knight, a youth had to study and prove his ability to fight, and he had to be knighted by a lord or his king. The Gies' write, the word knight "simply indicated a warrior who fought on horseback, but even in its earliest stage it connoted a superiority of class, since only a man of means could afford a horse" (Gies 170)
The choice of Roscommon as a castle site appears to have possessed special significance as the Anglo-Norman settlement that had been founded there was frequently under attack from the O'Conors. It was following the burning of the town, yet again, in 1360, that the English-built castle came into the possession of the O'Conor dynasty, records of the time revealing a place under so little English control that the returns of a fee farm in Roscommon equaled barely one-seventh of the returns of a similar fee farm in Cork (Barry, 1988, p
Structural elements like stair turrets served as more than the means of communication between different rooms and floors. The stair turret at Harlech's gatehouse, while linking the building's three floors, extended the rear defenses deep into the inner ward by projecting beyond the already deep D-shaped main towers (Brown, 1970, p
Owain Glyn Dwr's eventual surrender was not brought about because Harlech was taken, but rather through a series of local battles and skirmishes that effectively cut off Owain Glyn Dwr's line of supply. The hero of Wales was literally starved out of Wales' last great stronghold (Davies, 1997, p
Harlech is the type of a concentric castle, a fortress that is defended by a double line of walls and towers, with attackers exposed to a double line of defending fire at virtually every point. Built substantially during the 1280s, Harlech represents the perfection of the concentric system in Edward's domains, the great towers of the inner ward being employed to enfilade the outer works and provide a murderous crossfire concentrated at the point of the single outer gate (King 1988, p
Nevertheless, Roscommon's original layout, down to the focus on the great gatehouse with its generous accommodations and suites of private chambers, recalls almost exactly the arrangement at Harlech. The two castles were built during exactly the same period of time and reveal a similar guiding force even in their detail - they reflected the master plan of English royal castle building (McNeill, 1997, p
Much as Harlech's water gate (on the western side of the castle) was once lapped by the waters of the sea, Roscommon was once nearly surrounded by the waters of Loughnaneane - a lake that was drained around the year 1800. Ordnance Survey maps, combined with archeological field work, reveal Roscommon Castle to have been situated near the northeastern edge of Loughnaneane, and to have been surrounded on its northern, eastern, and southern sides by a moat that was fed directly from the lake (Murphy 2003, p
Much as Harlech's water gate (on the western side of the castle) was once lapped by the waters of the sea, Roscommon was once nearly surrounded by the waters of Loughnaneane - a lake that was drained around the year 1800. Ordnance Survey maps, combined with archeological field work, reveal Roscommon Castle to have been situated near the northeastern edge of Loughnaneane, and to have been surrounded on its northern, eastern, and southern sides by a moat that was fed directly from the lake (Murphy 2003, p
The sea and the mountains of Snowdonia provide a majestic backdrop to the royal castle. It has even been suggested at Roscommon that the castle's original location beside a lake and in the middle of an expansive field may have been chosen to enhance the magnificence of the structure (O'Conor, 2008, p
Harlech combined the advantages of the concentric system with the advantages of an easily-defensible site. Situated on the top of a 200-foot high rock spur, the castle could be attacked from the land only on its eastern and southern sides, these two sides being further strengthened by the addition of a third concentric line of defense - a deep, wide ditch cut directly into the rock, a dry ditch that made mining virtually impossible (Williams 2007, p
28) So with a sweep of his hand, Constantine ended the persecution of the church, and declared that he was also a member of the Christian church. As one who was close to divine himself, who would question his proclamation? His friend Eusebius, a devoted Christian scribe (Maier, 1999) of the time chronicled Constantine's actions, and his new found devotion, so who would dare question the emperor's sincerity
for no one can do well unless he has deliberately chosen, and unless he has loved what is in free will; but the fear of punishment keeps the evil desire from escaping beyond the bounds of thought. (Peters, 1980) In other words, only through the exercise of free choice might one acquire spiritual merit, although the use of coercive force considered as appropriate, both to punish sinners and to make the world safer for 'good' Christians
While limited and fragmentary, there are sources for the understanding of dance in the European Middle Ages, including paintings and illuminations, scattered text allusions. The first detailed details of medieval dance date from late in the medieval period that is 1450 in Italy after the start of the Renaissance (Diehl and Donnelly 111)