Karen Louise Jolly – författare

In tenth- and 11th-century England, Anglo-Saxon Christians retained an old folk belief in elves as extremely dangerous creatures capable of harming unwary humans. To ward off the afflictions caused by these invisible beings, Christian priests modified traditional elf charms by adding liturgical chants to herbal remedies. In this text Karen Jolly traces this cultural intermingling of Christian liturgy and indigenous Germanic customs and argues that elf charms and similar practices represent the successful Christianization of native folklore. Jolly describes a dual process of conversion in which Anglo-Saxon culture became Christianized but at the same time left its own distinct imprint on Christianity. Illuminating the creative aspects of this dynamic relationship, she identifies liturgical folk medicine as a middle ground between popular and elite, pagan and Christian, magic and miracle. Her analysis, drawing on the model of popular religion to redefine folklore and magic, reveals the richness and diversity of late Saxon Christianity.

This text is designed to serve as a primary source reader. It addresses medieval Christendom in the context of world history. It combines the traditional approach (the medieval Christian tradition found in the church hierarchy and theological development) with the newer approach to cultural diversity - diversity within European Christianity (women mystics, heretics, and popular religion), and diversity without, in a world context (non-European Christianity and relations with Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism).

This text is designed to serve as a primary source reader. It addresses medieval Christendom in the context of world history. It combines the traditional approach (the medieval Christian tradition found in the church hierarchy and theological development) with the newer approach to cultural diversity - diversity within European Christianity (women mystics, heretics, and popular religion), and diversity without, in a world context (non-European Christianity and relations with Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism).

In tenth- and eleventh-century England, Anglo-Saxon Christians retained an old folk belief in elves as extremely dangerous creatures capable of harming unwary humans. To ward off the afflictions caused by these invisible beings, Christian priests modified traditional elf charms by adding liturgical chants to herbal remedies. In Popular Religion in Late Saxon England, Karen Jolly traces this cultural intermingling of Christian liturgy and indigenous Germanic customs and argues that elf charms and similar practices represent the successful Christianization of native folklore. Jolly describes a dual process of conversion in which Anglo-Saxon culture became Christianized but at the same time left its own distinct imprint on Christianity. Illuminating the creative aspects of this dynamic relationship, she identifies liturgical folk medicine as a middle ground between popular and elite, pagan and Christian, magic and miracle. Her analysis, drawing on the model of popular religion to redefine folklore and magic, reveals the richness and diversity of late Saxon Christianity.

This text is designed to serve as a primary source reader. It addresses medieval Christendom in the context of world history. It combines the traditional approach (the medieval Christian tradition found in the church hierarchy and theological development) with the newer approach to cultural diversity - diversity within European Christianity (women mystics, heretics, and popular religion), and diversity without, in a world context (non-European Christianity and relations with Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism).

This text is designed to serve as a primary source reader. It addresses medieval Christendom in the context of world history. It combines the traditional approach (the medieval Christian tradition found in the church hierarchy and theological development) with the newer approach to cultural diversity - diversity within European Christianity (women mystics, heretics, and popular religion), and diversity without, in a world context (non-European Christianity and relations with Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism).

Interrogations of materiality and geography, narrative framework and boundaries, and the ways these scholarly pursuits ripple out into the wider cultural sphere.Early medieval England as seen through the lens of comparative and interconnected histories is the subject of this volume. Drawn from a range of disciplines, its chapters examine artistic, archaeological, literary, and historical artifacts, converging around the idea that the period may not only define itself, but is often defined from other perspectives, specifically here by modern scholarship.The first part considers the transmission of material culture across borders, while querying the possibilities and limits of comparative and transnational approaches, taking in the spread of bread wheat, the collapse of the art-historical "decorative" and "functional", and the unknowns about daily life in an early medieval English hall. The volume then moves on to reimagine the permeable boundaries of early medieval England, with perspectives from the Baltic, Byzantium, and the Islamic world, including an examination of Vercelli Homily VII (from John Chrysostom's Greek Homily XXIX), Hārūn ibn Yaḥyā's Arabic descriptions of Barṭīniyah ("Britain"), and an consideration of the Old English Orosius. The final chapters address the construction of and responses to "Anglo-Saxon" narratives, past and present: they look at early medieval England within a Eurasian perspective, the historical origins of racialized Anglo-Saxonism(s), and views from Oceania, comparing Hiberno-Saxon and Anglican Melanesian missions, as well as contemporary reactions to exhibitions of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and Pacific Island cultures.Contributors: Debby Banham, Britton Elliott Brooks, Caitlin Green, Jane Hawkes, John Hines, Karen Louise Jolly, Kazutomo Karasawa, Carol Neuman de Vegvar, John D. Niles, Michael W. Scott, Jonathan Wilcox

Medieval history is taking a global turn in two key ways: first, the inclusion of content extending beyond Europe and the Afro-Eurasian interconnected worlds to the Americas and Oceania; and second, the integration of historiographic approaches emerging from outside Euro-American traditions, and specifically from postcolonial and Indigenous Studies. How should those teaching medieval history incorporate these global perspectives? What are the ethical issues for a non-Indigenous scholar using Indigenous knowledge systems to re-orient our understanding of premodern histories? This book offers insights and practical suggestions from a historian trained as a Euro-medievalist transforming into a global medievalist, and drawing on experiences teaching premodern world and medieval histories in Oceania.

Cross and Cruciform in the Anglo-Saxon World: Studies to Honor the Memory of Timothy Reuter is edited by Sarah Larratt Keefer, Karen Louise Jolly, and Catherine E. Karkov and is the third and final volume of an ambitious research initiative begun in 1999 concerned with the image of the cross, showing how its very material form cuts across both the culture of a society and the boundaries of academic disciplines - history, archaeology, art history, literature, philosophy, and religion - providing vital insights into how symbols function within society. The flexibility, portability, and adaptability of the Anglo-Saxon understanding of the cross suggest that, in pre-Conquest England, at least, the linking of word, image, and performance joined the physical and spiritual, the temporal and eternal, and the earthly and heavenly in the Anglo-Saxon imaginative landscape.This volume is divided into three sections. The first section of the collection focuses on representations of ""The Cross: Image and Emblem,"" with contributions by Michelle P. Brown, David A. E. Pelteret, and Catherine E. Karkov. The second section, ""The Cross: Meaning and Word,"" deals in semantics and semeology with essays by Helen Damico, Rolf Bremmer, and Ursula Lenker. The third section of the book, ""The Cross: Gesture and Structure,"" employs methodologies drawn from archaeology, new media, and theories of rulership to develop new insights into subjects as varied as cereal production, the little-known Nunburnholme Cross, and early medieval concepts of political power.Cross and Cruciform in the Anglo-Saxon World: Studies to Honor the Memory of Timothy Reuter is a major collection of new research, completing the publication series of the Sancta Crux/Halig Rod project. Cross and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies in Honor of George Hardin Brown.