Glossary
| aids | In England, this refers to payments made by vassals to their lords on important occasions. |
| The Annunciation | See Virgin Mary (below). |
| antiking | A king elected illegally. |
| antipope | A pope elected illegally. |
| Book of Hours | A prayer book for lay devotion, meant to be read eight times a day either at home or in church. It normally contained the church calendar; a lesson from each of the gospels; prayers and other readings in honor of the Virgin Mary (see below) based on simplified versions of the Divine Office (see Office below); the penitential psalms; the Office of the Dead; and prayers to saints. Some were lavishly illustrated, and even humble ones were usually decorated. |
| bull | An official document issued by the papacy. The word derives from bulla, the lead impression of the pope’s seal that was affixed to the document to validate it. |
| canon law | The laws of the church. These were at first hammered out as need arose at various regional church councils and in rules issued by great bishops, particularly the pope. Early collections of canon law were incomplete and sometimes contradictory. Beginning in the ninth century, commentators began to organize and systematize them. The most famous of these treatises was the midtwelfth-century Decretum of Gratian, which, although not an official code, became the basis of canon law training in the schools. |
| cathedral | The principal church of a bishop or archbishop. |
| church | To the Roman Catholics of the Middle Ages, this had two related meanings. It signified in the first place the eternal institution created by Christ, composed of the whole body of Christian believers, and served on earth by Christ’s ministers—priests, bishops, the pope. Related to the eternal church were individual, local churches (parish churches, cathedrals, collegiate churches, chapels) where the daily liturgy was carried out and the faithful received the sacraments. |
| cleric | A man in church orders. |
| collegiate church | A church for priests living in common according to a rule. |
| The Crucifixion | The execution of Jesus by hanging on a cross (crux in Latin). The scene, described in some detail in the Gospels,was often depicted in art; and free-standing crucifixes (crosses with the figure of Jesus on them) were often placed upon church altars. |
| dogma | The authoritative truth of the church. |
| empire | Refers in the first instance to the Roman Empire. Byzantium considered itself the continuation of that empire. In the West, there were several successor empires, all ruled by men who took the title “emperor”: there was the empire of Charlemagne, which included more or less what later became France, Italy, and Germany; it was followed in the tenth century (from the time of Otto I on) by the empire held (after a crowning at Rome) by the German kings. This could be complicated: a ruler like Henry IV was king of Germany in 1056 at the age of five; he took the real reins of power in 1066; but he was not crowned emperor until 1084. Nevertheless, he acted as an emperor long before that. That “German” empire, which lasted until the thirteenth century, included Germany and (at least in theory) northern Italy. Later “German” empires, such at that of the Habsburgs, did not include Italy. Some historians call all of these successor empires of Rome the “Holy Roman Empire,” but in fact that term was not used until 1254. The Holy Roman Empire, which had nothing to do with Rome, ended in 1806. By extension, the term empire can refer to other large realms, often gained through conquest, such as the Mongol Empire or the Ottoman Empire. |
| episcopal | As used for the Middle Ages, this is the equivalent of “bishop’s.” An “episcopal church” is the bishop’s church; an “episcopal appointment” is the appointment of a bishop;“episcopal power” is the power wielded by a bishop. |
| excommunication | An act or pronouncement that cuts someone off from participation in the sacraments of the church and thus from the means of salvation. |
| gentry | By the end of the Middle Ages, English landlords consisted of two groups, lords and gentry. The gentry were below the lords; knights, squires, and gentlemen were all considered gentry. Even though the term comes from the Late Middle Ages, it is often used by historians as a rough and ready category for the lesser English nobility from the twelfth century onward. |
| The Flagellation | The scene in the Gospels (Matt. 27:26 and Mk. 15:15) where Christ is scourged by his executioners prior to his Crucifixion (see above). The scene was frequently depicted by artists. |
| fresco | A form of painting using pigments on wet plaster, frequently employed on the walls of churches. |
| grisaille | Painting in monochrome grays highlighted with color tints. |
| Guelfs and Ghibellines | Guelf was the Italian for Welf (the dynasty that competed for the German throne against the Staufen), while Ghibelline referred to Waiblingen (the name of an important Staufen castle). In the various conflicts between the popes and the Staufen emperors, the “Guelfs”were the factions within the Italian city-states that supported the papacy, while the “Ghibellines” supported the emperor. More generally, however, the names became epithets for various inter- and intra-city political factions that had little or no connection to papal/imperial issues. |
| illumination | The term used for paintings in medieval manuscripts. These might range from simple decorations of capital letters to full-page compositions. An “illuminated” manuscript is one containing illuminations. |
| layman/laywoman/laity | Men and women not in church orders, not ordained. In the early Middle Ages it was possible to be a monk and a layperson at the same time. But by the Carolingian period, most monks were priests, and, although nuns were not, they were not considered part of the laity because they had taken vows to the church. |
| Levant | The lands that border the eastern shore of the Mediterranean; the Holy Land. |
| liturgy | The formal worship of the church, which included prayers, readings, and significant gestures at fixed times appropriate to the season. While often referring to the Mass (see below), it may equally be used to describe the Offices (see below). |
| The Madonna | See Virgin Mary (below). |
| Maghreb | A region of northwest Africa embracing the Atlas Mountains and the coastline of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. |
| Mass | The central ceremony of Christian worship; it includes prayers and readings from the Bible and culminates in the consecration of bread and wine as the body and blood of Christ, offered to believers in the sacrament of the “Eucharist,” or “Holy Communion.” |
| New Testament | This work, a compilation of the second century, contains the four Gospels (accounts of the life of Christ) by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; the Acts of the Apostles; various letters, mainly from Saints Paul, Peter, and John to fledgling Christian communities; and the Apocalypse. It is distinguished from the “Old Testament” (see below). |
| Office | In the context of monastic life, the day and night were punctuated by eight periods in which the monks gathered to recite a precise set of prayers. Each set was called an “Office,” and the cycle as a whole was called the “Divine Office.” Special rites and ceremonies might also be called offices, such as the “Office of the Dead.” |
| Old Testament | The writings of the Hebrew Bible that were accepted as authentic by Christians, though reinterpreted by them as prefiguring the coming of Christ; they were thus seen as the precursor of the “New Testament” (see above), which fulfilled and perfected them. |
| Presentation in the Temple | An event in the life of Christ and his mother. See The Virgin below. |
| referendary | A high Merovingian administrative official responsible for overseeing the issuing of royal documents. |
| relief | This has two separate meanings. In connection with medieval English government, the “relief ” refers to money paid upon inheriting a fief. In the history of sculpture, however,“relief ” refers to figures or other forms that project from a flat background. “Low relief ” means that the forms project rather little, while “high relief ” refers to forms that may be so three-dimensional as to threaten to break away from the flat surface. |
| sacraments | The rites of the church that (in its view) Jesus instituted to confer sanctifying grace. With the sacraments, one achieved salvation. Cut off from the sacraments (by anathema, excommunication, or interdict), one was damned. |
| scriptorium | (pl. scriptoria) The room of the monastery where parchment was prepared and texts were copied, illuminated, and bound. |
| summa | (pl. summae) A compendium or summary. A term favored by scholastics to title their comprehensive syntheses. |
| The Virgin/The Virgin Mary/The Blessed Virgin/The Madonna | The Gospels of Matthew (1:18-23) and Luke (1:27-35) assert that Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit (rather than by a man) and born of Mary, a virgin. Already in the fourth century the Church Fathers stressed the virginity of Mary, which guaranteed the holiness of Christ. In the fifth century, at the Council of Chalcedon (451), Mary’s perpetual (eternal) virginity was declared. Mary was understood as the exact opposite of (and antidote to) Eve. In the medieval church, Mary was celebrated with four feasts—her Nativity (birth), the Annunciation (when the Angel Gabriel announced to her that she would give birth to the Messiah), the Purification (when she presented the baby Jesus in the temple and was herself cleansed after giving birth), and her Assumption (when she rose to Heaven). (The Purification is also called the Presentation in the Temple.) These events were frequently depicted in paintings and sculpture, especially in the Later Middle Ages, when devotion to Mary’s cult increased and greater emphasis was placed on her role as intercessor with her son in Heaven. |
