Books by Jonathan Jarrett
The Barber Institute of Fine Arts
The Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham, UK, is one of the finest small picture galleries... more The Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham, UK, is one of the finest small picture galleries in the world. It is home to a magnificent collection of paintings, drawings, sculptures, objets d'art and coins, and may justly claim to be the most representative collection of Western artwork formed in Britain over the past 100 years. Fully revised and updated, this catalog presents 120 of the finest works in the collection, with extended captions alongside glorious full-color illustrations. Bellini, Rubens, Gainsborough and all the major Impressionist painters are represented. The story of each work is described in detail, placing it in a wider art-historical context.
Inheriting Rome: the imperial legacy in coinage and culture
Look at one of the coins you’re carrying today: you’ll see the Queen’s portrait facing right and ... more Look at one of the coins you’re carrying today: you’ll see the Queen’s portrait facing right and Latin script around the royal head.
It seems our coins have looked this way forever - and that’s nearly true. But why? This exhibition uses money to explore and question our deep-seated familiarity with the Roman Empire’s imagery. Britain is not the only nation, empire or state to channel ancient Rome in this way: the Barber’s excellent collection of coins from the Byzantine Empire – as well as examples from Hungary, Georgia and Armenia – illustrate both the problems and possibilities of being genuine heirs of Rome.
Attempting to uncover the political uses of Rome’s legacy, this exhibition encourages the visitor to ponder why we are so often told of the empire’s importance – and whose interests such imagery serves.
Problems and Possibilities of Early Medieval Charters
Although historical work on the early Middle Ages relies to an enormous extent on the evidence pr... more Although historical work on the early Middle Ages relies to an enormous extent on the evidence provided by charters and other such documents, the paradigms within which such documents are interpreted have changed relatively slowly and unevenly. The critical turn, the increasing availability of digital tools and corpora for study, and the acceptance among charter specialists that their discipline can inform a wider field all encourage rethinking. From 2006 to 2011 a series of sessions at the Leeds International Medieval Congress addressed this by applying new critiques and technologies to early medieval diplomatic material from all over Europe. This volume collects some of the best of these papers by new and young scholars and adds related work from another session. The subjects range from reinterpretations of Carolingian or Anglo-Saxon political history, through the production and use of charters by all ranks of society and their subsequent preservation from Spain to Germany and England to Italy, to explorations of new media leading to new kinds of results from such evidence. The result is an array of new perspectives which makes an important contribution to recent reconsiderations of charter studies. It will inform a wide audience from all walks of medieval historical studies.
Coins in Collections: care and use
Papers by Jonathan Jarrett
al-Masāq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean, 2019
The articles accompanying this one study a range of medieval island situations, varying in size, ... more The articles accompanying this one study a range of medieval island situations, varying in size, location, internal complexity, economic potential and political loyalties. The geographical range is similarly broad, encompassing the length of the Mediterranean Sea and stretching onwards into the Indian Ocean. This article therefore extracts comparisons from the articles its authors have here edited. Against a broader historiographical and theoretical background, it aims to isolate the common characteristics of what is here termed "islandness" and the key gradients along which those characteristics vary. These are identified as size and internal complexity, location within wider spaces, relationship to a frontier, and social position between connectivity and isolation. While most islands fit in this matrix, the category remains fuzzy; not all geographical islands were always "island-like" and some areas not surrounded by water were. The article thus sets up models of thinking about islands for comparison with other areas and periods. Many people and institutions have helped us to research and complete this endeavour. Indeed, this thematic issue stems from a selection of the papers delivered at a workshop held at Bilkent University in February 2018. The workshop was the final stage of a twopronged project that brought together institutions and scholars based in the UK and Turkey.
Towards a trans‐regional approach to early medieval Iberia
History Compass
The past few decades have witnessed great change in the study of the early Middle Ages in the Nor... more The past few decades have witnessed great change in the study of the early Middle Ages in the Northern Iberian Peninsula. Spanish and Portuguese historiographies have moved away from older grand narratives such as ‘Reconquest and Repopulation’, which traced a centuries-long process encompassing the ultimate victory of Christianity over Islam and the construction of distinct nations or national societies. The basic tenets of these and other essentialist approaches to a period traditionally seen as the cradle of Spain and Portugal have been questioned and now superseded by a clearer awareness of the territorial diversity characterising the 8th to 11th centuries. Yet the ballast of both nationalism and regionalism has obstructed meaningful comparison amongst the Iberian regions to date. Drawing on the work of the research group EarlyMedIberia, this article argues for a new trans-regional approach to Northern Iberia, looking beyond political and geographical boundaries to consider the whole in a comparative light, and stressing the commonalities between regional and local societies. It does so by providing an overview of the extant charter material from before 1100 (indicating the principal editions) and by reviewing the major historiography. The conclusion proposes a closer assessment of the differences and similarities amongst regional historiographies, based on a more nuanced understanding of how they have been moulded by the specificities of the charter corpus in each region, as the first step towards a more integrated, contextualised, and rigorously comparative approach to the early Middle Ages in Northern Iberia.
货币与王朝: 国际视野下钱币的影响与改变, ed. by 主 编 (Beijing: 北京时), pp. 266-276, 2021
"在很多方面，我们很难简单地将罗马帝国与传统上被学者称为拜占庭帝国的东罗马帝国区分开 来，因为对于帝国的臣民、著作家和统治者而言，并不存在这样的划分，只有罗马帝国。然而，对 于钱币学家而言，传统... more "在很多方面，我们很难简单地将罗马帝国与传统上被学者称为拜占庭帝国的东罗马帝国区分开 来，因为对于帝国的臣民、著作家和统治者而言，并不存在这样的划分，只有罗马帝国。然而，对 于钱币学家而言，传统的时间分野是公元 498 年。在这一年，皇帝阿纳斯塔修斯一世推出了一系列 全新的铜合金钱币，这些钱币与过去的罗马钱币完全不同，并且沿用了两个世纪。因此，这次货币 改革被认为是“拜占庭钱币”的肇始，尽管它是与已经沿用了两个世纪的金币索里德相伴的。或许 因为新的钱币比之前的钱币更容易识别和使用，钱币学家们普遍称赞这次改革是开明政策的成果。
本文认为，事实上，改革在当时并不受欢迎，这是因为阿纳斯塔修斯试图将罗马钱币的使用规则从 钱币的自身价值转变为信用价值，但这一点并没有得到足够的重视."
From Constantinople to Chang'an: Byzantine Gold Coins in the World of Late Antiquity, ed. by Sven Günther, Li Qiang, Lin Ying and Claudia Sode (Changchun: Institute for the History of Ancient Civilizations), 2021
By 400 AD, almost all money circulating in the provinces of the Roman Empire was just that, Roman... more By 400 AD, almost all money circulating in the provinces of the Roman Empire was just that, Roman; all provincial coinages and the money which had run in some of these areas before the rule of Rome was long gone, doubtless occasionally discovered in hoards but not any part of circulation. But the Roman system was on the point of break-up; by 500, all the provinces of the imperial West would be under the rule of kings whose rule owed only a grudging recognition to the imperial will. Meanwhile, in the East the Empire continued as that polity that scholars now call Byzantium, although of course the Romans of the East still considered it the Empire of the Romans.
The Empire had however been ruled in two parts (and sometimes more) since 395, and its money too was beginning to become distinctive. Paradoxically, this was more by its conservatism than any kind of deviation: solidi in the West held closely to older standards of portraiture while in the East the rarely-struck three-quarter face helmeted portrait became the norm, for example. This trend is only more marked after the end of direct imperial rule in the West, when although changes were forced upon the so-called successor kingdoms by metal shortage and factors of their much-shrunken monetary economies, these changes were reflected in the most minimal changes in iconography. Even the supposedly barbarous style of many coins by the sixth century can be partly explained by the imitation of an existing coin stock already much supplemented by imitations. The difference between East and West is even more sharply visible in copper-alloy coinage, which where it was struck at all in the West went back even to pre-imperial models, but in the East, from the reign of Anastasius I, adopted entirely new patterns.
This paper thus sets out these differences and the basics of their development, compares Eastern and Western pictures and finally argues that it is a measure of the security of the Byzantine empire that, unlike its western successors, it could risk innovation in its coinage.
A Likely Story: purpose in narratives from charters of the early medieval Pyrenees
Beyond the Reconquista: New Directions in the History of Medieval Iberia (711–1085), eds †Simon Barton & Rob Portass (Leiden: Brill), 2020
El monestir de Sant Joan: Primer cenobi femení dels comtats catalans (887-1017), ed. by Irene Brugués, Coloma Boada and Xavier Costa (Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadía de Montserrat), 2019
Nuns, Signatures and Literacy in Late-Carolingian Catalonia
Traditio, 2019
It is somewhat rare to be able to analyze the membership of an early medieval women's religious c... more It is somewhat rare to be able to analyze the membership of an early medieval women's religious community in any detail. Sant Joan de Ripoll, which operated from the late ninth century until 1017 at modern-day Sant Joan de les Abadesses in Catalonia, provides not just this opportunity but the even rarer chance to evaluate the nuns’ command of writing, by means of a single original charter of 949 that several of them signed autograph. This article argues that the signatures of these nuns indicate that they had in fact been taught to write before joining the nunnery. They are thus a source for female lay, rather than religious, literacy in this time and area. Consolidating this, the article provides a prosopography of the known nuns derived from the other charters of the nunnery's part-surviving archive, including tracing some of their careers beyond the 1017 dissolution of the house. This shows that the members of the comital family who had founded the house and provided several of its abbesses were not otherwise frequent among the nuns; rather, the nunnery recruited from the local notables in its neighborhoods, to whose interest in female literacy these signatures therefore testify. Such support could not prevent the closure of the house, however, and the article closes with a reflection on the agency available to the nuns in a political sphere dominated by male, secular interests.
Ceremony, Charters and Social Memory: Property Transfer Ritual in Early Medieval Catalonia
Social History, 2019
Work on the use of documents in the Middle Ages has now accepted that written record-keeping in E... more Work on the use of documents in the Middle Ages has now accepted that written record-keeping in Europe did not collapse with Roman rule, to be replaced only by orality and memory, but continued throughout the period, albeit to greater or lesser extents from place to place. Nonetheless, much remains unclear about how documents were actually used and understood following the Roman collapse, and how far that reflected continuity with the past. Using the numerous early medieval charters from modern Catalonia, this article argues that, instead of registration in public archives as under Rome, documents here were validated by social consensus about their contents, created by repeated recitation of the texts. This could even be used to create new documents. The article argues that this was an innovative replacement of older institutions of record intended to enable continuing document use, but that it blurs categories both of literacy and orality and of continuity and change; continuity of the land charter was here maintained despite the discontinuity and irrelevance of many other practices. Both documents and their users were agents in these processes, in ways that can instruct us about institutional survival and replacement in times of social change.
Nests of Pirates: the Balearic Islands and la-Garde-Freinet compared
Al-Masāq, 2019
The “World of Medieval Islands” project invites the questioning of the category of island from me... more The “World of Medieval Islands” project invites the questioning of the category of island from medieval evidence, and coincided with another project of the author’s that was undertaking a similar exercise with medieval frontiers. Combining these two research areas, this article investigates two island, or island-like, zones that were situated at the edges of early medieval polities, primarily (though variably) of Umayyad al-Andalus, and compares their situation so as to elucidate what about their geopolitical situation made them island-like and how steady that likeness was. Working through the historiographies of the Balearic Islands, which shifted from Byzantine to Islamic control through a variably evaluated transition period, and of the Muslim settlement at La Garde-Freinet, Provence, from inception to extermination, the article concludes that what was island-like or indeed frontier-like about both areas was not continuous, and that the category “island” is historically contingent and subjective, despite its apparent geographic concreteness.
Outgrowing the Dark Ages: agrarian productivity in Carolingian Europe re-evaluated
Agricultural History Review, Jun 2019
Despite numerous studies that stand against it, there remains a textbook consensus that agricultu... more Despite numerous studies that stand against it, there remains a textbook consensus that agriculture in the early Middle Ages was unusually low in productive capacity compared to the Roman and high medieval periods. The persistence of this view of early medieval agriculture can in part be explained by the requirement of a progress narrative in medieval economic history but is also attributable to the continuing influence of the work of Georges Duby. Duby’s view rested on repeated incorrect or inadequate readings of his source materials, which this article deconstructs. Better figures for early medieval crop yields are available which remove any evidential basis for a belief that early medieval agriculture was poorer in yield than that of later eras. The cliché of low early medieval yields must therefore be abandoned and a different basis for economic development be sought.
Networks and Neighbours, May 26, 2018
[Prompted by the invitation to think in terms of Bourdieu's theories of cultural capital, this ar... more [Prompted by the invitation to think in terms of Bourdieu's theories of cultural capital, this article applies that framework to the question of the engagement of local frontier communities in the expansive Christian polities of the Iberian Peninsula during the 9th and 10th centuries. Rather than assuming a teleological recreation of any earlier kingdom (as implied by the word 'Reconquista'), it asks why such groups should have sacrificed autonomy in favour of becoming part of these polities, and having examined a variety of answers and found them inadequate, suggests that rulers of expanding polities (here especially Catalonia, but with continual comparison to Castile-León) needed to offer both material and cultural capital to allow their jurisdiction to be enduringly recognised by such groups. Such 'combination capital' therefore deserves to be considered as an important motor of the eventual Christian domination of the peninsula, and may be a model that can be applied to other frontier situations.]
Middle Byzantine Numismatics in the Light of Franz Füeg's Corpora of Nomismata
Numismatic Chronicle, Feb 10, 2018
Franz Füeg, Corpus of the Nomismata from Anastasius II to John I in Constantinople 713–976: Struc... more Franz Füeg, Corpus of the Nomismata from Anastasius II to John I in Constantinople 713–976: Structure of the Issues; Corpus of Coin Finds; Contribution to the Iconographic and Monetary History, trans. H. Thomas Hofmänner, ed. Italo Vecchi (Lancaster, PA, 2007). Franz Füeg, Corpus of the Nomismata from Basil II to Eudocia 976–1067: Corpus from Anastasius II to John I 713–976 with Addenda; Structure of the Issues 976–1067; The Concave/ Convex Histamena; Contribution to the Iconographic and Monetary History, trans. H. Thomas Hofmänner, ed. Italo Vecchi (Lancaster, PA, 2014).
XV International Numismatic Congress Taormina 2015: Proceedings, Dec 13, 2017
The concave shape of some Middle Byzantine coinage is one of its most striking features to the un... more The concave shape of some Middle Byzantine coinage is one of its most striking features to the uninitiated, but not all scholars have been equally intrigued by the phenomenon. Many have dealt with the subject in only a few lines. More work has focused on the technical question of how the coins were struck this way than on that of why, and none of the reasons proposed have been wholly free of difficulties. This paper briefly reviews those explanations and their problems and then offers a further possibility which may avoid most of the difficulties.
Before the Reconquista: frontier relations in medieval Iberia, 718 to 1031
The Routledge Companion to Iberian Studies, ed. by Javier Muñoz-Bassols, Laura Lonsdale and Manuel Delgado, Apr 3, 2017
That the fall of most of the Iberian peninsula to Islamic control between 711 and 718 set up a di... more That the fall of most of the Iberian peninsula to Islamic control between 711 and 718 set up a division between Christian and Muslim is a truism, and that by the end of the Middle Ages the Christian powers had ended this situation equally so, but the roots of the process by which this came about have been cut increasingly short by the scholarship of the last fifty years. Where the constant and burning intent of the rulers of eighth- to tenth-century Galicia, Asturias, León, Castile, Navarre and what would become Catalonia to rebuild the erstwhile kingdom of the Goths for Christianity was axiomatic for scholars of the early twentieth century and the Franco era, more modern work has tended to stress rivalry between Christian powers, cultural mixing across the frontiers and emergent independent local identities in the zones between powers. Using textual, archaeological and architectural evidence to texture its account, this chapter endeavours to summarise these changes in thinking by providing a brief account of the major political developments at the frontier from 718 to the collapse of the Caliphate of Córdoba in 1031 and a critical examination of the writings that these areas produced, their agendas and the identities which they reveal. These findings are evaluated against the shifting trends of modern scholarship both Spanish and foreign, illustrating a move from the writing of national origin legends to a developing picture of proto-states expanding through their connections into their own frontiers.
Bovo Soldare: a sacred cow of Spanish economic history re-evaluated
Rory Naismith, Martin Allen & Elina Screen (edd.), Early Medieval Monetary History: studies in memory of Mark Blackburn, Nov 2014
The bovo soldare is an entity that appears, in both masculine and feminine genders and a variety ... more The bovo soldare is an entity that appears, in both masculine and feminine genders and a variety of spellings characteristic of the time, in transactional documents of
northern Christian Spain from Galicia to Castile in the ninth and tenth centuries. It almost invariably appears as a price: that is, it was given in exchange for goods of some other kind. In the records that survive, which ineluctably deal with durable property or they would hardly have been kept, these goods were almost always land. The term appears, simply enough, to mean an ox, or a cow, worth a solidus. The complication immediately arises, however, that this was not an area and period where coinage is known to have been struck: none had been struck since at latest the early eighth
century, in fact, and neither would it be again until, at earliest, the mid-eleventh. In any case, the usage, while persistent (attested from 796 to 1010 at least), is nonetheless extremely rare. This chapter takes new stock of this apparent monetary referent and suggests some implications of the system it supposedly demonstrates.
Antonella Ambrosio, Sébastien Barret & Georg Vogeler (edd.), Digital Diplomatics 2011: the computer as a tool for the diplomatist?, Sep 2014
The speed of change encapsulated in Moore’s Law and its consequences dictate that it is very easy... more The speed of change encapsulated in Moore’s Law and its consequences dictate that it is very easy for those who took the time to educate themselves in computing for the humanities to find that it has now moved far beyond them. Projects with cutting-edge methodologies blunt quickly at this pace. Nonetheless, it would seem that in some areas progress is being made more slowly, these being those where the techniques required are more those of cognition than of data management. This paper uses the example of the speaker’s own doctoral project, a ‘straight’ socio-political historical enquiry that happened to employ electronic means of an untheorised kind to manage the diplomatic data on which it was founded, to explore the line between these zones. By taking an early adopter’s position it uses the speaker’s primitive approaches for the storing and sorting of diplomatic data to ask, among other things: what judgements do we ask computers to make? can human judgements in diplomatics be trusted to a computer, and if not can we change that? Where is human input still required in digital diplomatics? And, can the advantages of human and computerised judgement be enjoyed at the same time without diminishment of either?
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Books by Jonathan Jarrett
It seems our coins have looked this way forever - and that’s nearly true. But why? This exhibition uses money to explore and question our deep-seated familiarity with the Roman Empire’s imagery. Britain is not the only nation, empire or state to channel ancient Rome in this way: the Barber’s excellent collection of coins from the Byzantine Empire – as well as examples from Hungary, Georgia and Armenia – illustrate both the problems and possibilities of being genuine heirs of Rome.
Attempting to uncover the political uses of Rome’s legacy, this exhibition encourages the visitor to ponder why we are so often told of the empire’s importance – and whose interests such imagery serves.
Papers by Jonathan Jarrett
本文认为，事实上，改革在当时并不受欢迎，这是因为阿纳斯塔修斯试图将罗马钱币的使用规则从 钱币的自身价值转变为信用价值，但这一点并没有得到足够的重视."
The Empire had however been ruled in two parts (and sometimes more) since 395, and its money too was beginning to become distinctive. Paradoxically, this was more by its conservatism than any kind of deviation: solidi in the West held closely to older standards of portraiture while in the East the rarely-struck three-quarter face helmeted portrait became the norm, for example. This trend is only more marked after the end of direct imperial rule in the West, when although changes were forced upon the so-called successor kingdoms by metal shortage and factors of their much-shrunken monetary economies, these changes were reflected in the most minimal changes in iconography. Even the supposedly barbarous style of many coins by the sixth century can be partly explained by the imitation of an existing coin stock already much supplemented by imitations. The difference between East and West is even more sharply visible in copper-alloy coinage, which where it was struck at all in the West went back even to pre-imperial models, but in the East, from the reign of Anastasius I, adopted entirely new patterns.
This paper thus sets out these differences and the basics of their development, compares Eastern and Western pictures and finally argues that it is a measure of the security of the Byzantine empire that, unlike its western successors, it could risk innovation in its coinage.
northern Christian Spain from Galicia to Castile in the ninth and tenth centuries. It almost invariably appears as a price: that is, it was given in exchange for goods of some other kind. In the records that survive, which ineluctably deal with durable property or they would hardly have been kept, these goods were almost always land. The term appears, simply enough, to mean an ox, or a cow, worth a solidus. The complication immediately arises, however, that this was not an area and period where coinage is known to have been struck: none had been struck since at latest the early eighth
century, in fact, and neither would it be again until, at earliest, the mid-eleventh. In any case, the usage, while persistent (attested from 796 to 1010 at least), is nonetheless extremely rare. This chapter takes new stock of this apparent monetary referent and suggests some implications of the system it supposedly demonstrates.
It seems our coins have looked this way forever - and that’s nearly true. But why? This exhibition uses money to explore and question our deep-seated familiarity with the Roman Empire’s imagery. Britain is not the only nation, empire or state to channel ancient Rome in this way: the Barber’s excellent collection of coins from the Byzantine Empire – as well as examples from Hungary, Georgia and Armenia – illustrate both the problems and possibilities of being genuine heirs of Rome.
Attempting to uncover the political uses of Rome’s legacy, this exhibition encourages the visitor to ponder why we are so often told of the empire’s importance – and whose interests such imagery serves.
本文认为，事实上，改革在当时并不受欢迎，这是因为阿纳斯塔修斯试图将罗马钱币的使用规则从 钱币的自身价值转变为信用价值，但这一点并没有得到足够的重视."
The Empire had however been ruled in two parts (and sometimes more) since 395, and its money too was beginning to become distinctive. Paradoxically, this was more by its conservatism than any kind of deviation: solidi in the West held closely to older standards of portraiture while in the East the rarely-struck three-quarter face helmeted portrait became the norm, for example. This trend is only more marked after the end of direct imperial rule in the West, when although changes were forced upon the so-called successor kingdoms by metal shortage and factors of their much-shrunken monetary economies, these changes were reflected in the most minimal changes in iconography. Even the supposedly barbarous style of many coins by the sixth century can be partly explained by the imitation of an existing coin stock already much supplemented by imitations. The difference between East and West is even more sharply visible in copper-alloy coinage, which where it was struck at all in the West went back even to pre-imperial models, but in the East, from the reign of Anastasius I, adopted entirely new patterns.
This paper thus sets out these differences and the basics of their development, compares Eastern and Western pictures and finally argues that it is a measure of the security of the Byzantine empire that, unlike its western successors, it could risk innovation in its coinage.
northern Christian Spain from Galicia to Castile in the ninth and tenth centuries. It almost invariably appears as a price: that is, it was given in exchange for goods of some other kind. In the records that survive, which ineluctably deal with durable property or they would hardly have been kept, these goods were almost always land. The term appears, simply enough, to mean an ox, or a cow, worth a solidus. The complication immediately arises, however, that this was not an area and period where coinage is known to have been struck: none had been struck since at latest the early eighth
century, in fact, and neither would it be again until, at earliest, the mid-eleventh. In any case, the usage, while persistent (attested from 796 to 1010 at least), is nonetheless extremely rare. This chapter takes new stock of this apparent monetary referent and suggests some implications of the system it supposedly demonstrates.
At Lester Watson's death in 1959, the collection was inherited by his children, first of whom is Mr L. Hoyt Watson. It was by the gift of Hoyt Watson and his wife Anne that the collection became the property of Cambridge in America, who have loaned it to the Museum, and it is by their kindness and that of the Watson family that the Museum has been able to display the medals, both in the Imagery of War exhibition of 2006 and in this virtual display of the collection.
Three sessions will look at three different formats of academic publishing. We will consider the all-important book proposal, with a focus on converting the PhD thesis into a monograph; the process of writing a journal article; and producing an edited volume of conference proceedings. A medievalist well-versed in academic publishing will kick off each session with a talk based on their own experiences, and the participants will then have the opportunity to consider matters from the other side of the table, as they conduct their own editorial board meetings discussing and assessing a book proposal / journal article / volume of conference proceedings. The workshop leaders, as well as academic publishers, will be on hand to guide and advise the participants in their discussions; there will also be opportunity for a questions and answer session.
Girona was simultaneously a count. Yet Sal·la excommunicated laymen for appropriating tithes and Pope Benedict VII charged Miró with the combat of simony in his homeland; these men were not deaf to the reform movement. This paper will show how these two were exemplars of a wider use of political opportunity and the reform movement which established a
new profile for bishops as leaders of the future territory of Catalonia and even the architects of its unity.