Bøker av Rory Naismith

Contributions to the forty-eighth volume of Anglo-Saxon England focus on aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture and history across a period from the sixth to the twelfth century. This volume begins with an examination of Beowulf fitt II and the Andreas-poet, and ends with a study of St Dunstan and the heavenly choirs of St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury, as related in Goscelin's Historia translationis S. Augustini. Also included are articles on Leofric of Exeter and liturgical performance as pastoral care, legal culture under Dena lage with reference to III Æthelred, an Agnus Dei penny of King Æthelred the Unready and self-seeking in The Metres of Boethius. Latin verse in an Old English medical codex is examined with reference to Bald's Colophon, the figure of Beow is explored in a Scandinavian context and a new solution is provided for Exeter Riddle 55. Each article is preceded by a short abstract.

Between the end of the Roman Empire in the fifth century and the economic transformations of the twelfth, coined money in western Europe was scarce and high in value, difficult for the majority of the population to make use of. And yet, as Rory Naismith shows in this illuminating study, coined money was made and used throughout early medieval Europe. It was, he argues, a powerful tool for articulating people's place in economic and social structures and an important gauge for levels of economic complexity. Working from the premise that using coined money carried special significance when there was less of it around, Naismith uses detailed case studies from the Mediterranean and Northern Europe to propose a new reading of early medieval money as a point of contact between economic, social, and institutional history. Naismith examines structural issues, including the mining and circulation of metal and the use of bullion and other commodities as money, and then offers a chronological account of monetary development, discussing the post-Roman period of gold coinage, the rise of the silver penny in the seventh century and the reconfiguration of elite power in relation to coinage in the tenth and eleventh centuries. In the process, he counters the conventional view of early medieval currency as the domain only of elite gift-givers and intrepid long-distance traders. Even when there were few coins in circulation, Naismith argues, the ways they were used - to give gifts, to pay rents, to spend at markets - have much to tell us.

Money provides a unique and illuminating perspective on the Middle Ages. In much of medieval Europe the central meaning of money was a prescribed unit of precious metal but in practice precious metal did not necessarily change hands and indeed coinage was very often in short supply. Money had economic, institutional, social, and cultural dimensions which developed the legacy of antiquity and set the scene for modern developments including the rise of capitalism and finance as well as a moralized discourse on the proper and improper uses of money. In its many forms - coin, metal, commodity, and concept - money played a central role in shaping the character of medieval society and, in turn, offers a vivid reflection of the distinctive features of medieval civilization. Drawing upon a wealth of visual and textual sources, A Cultural History of Money in the Medieval Age presents essays that examine key cultural case studies of the period on the themes of technologies, ideas, ritual and religion, the everyday, art and representation, interpretation, and the issues of the age.