A Dictionary of Medieval Terms & Phrases

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2009), "A Dictionary of Medieval Terms & Phrases", Library Review, Vol. 58 No. 7, pp. 548-550. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530910978262

The Middle Ages interest readers of many types, from the specialist to the general reader, from someone closely examining medieval canon law and the etiquette of the tournament to someone else reading Ellis Peters's Brother Caedfael detective novels. It was well said that history is another country, not merely in terms of its vocabulary but in its thinking, and the Middle Ages is such a place. This dictionary – which first appeared in hardback from the same publisher in 2004, was reprinted in 2005, and appears for the first time in paperback now – addresses such issues. It fills that gap between comprehensive reference works (dictionaries and encyclopedias on the one hand, legal and ecclesiological sources on the other) and focussed glossaries (say, to works like Gawain and the Green Knight, Piers Plowman, and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales).

These qualities will attract any student and teacher and librarian keen to get a reasonably‐priced all‐purpose quick reference guide to some 3,000‐4,000 terms regularly used in, and often found in, sources from and about the Middle Ages. Many of them are Latin, since that was the language of the church, law and government, and it is in fields such as these that terms, in both Latin and English, appear in large numbers. We get an insight, then, into a wide range of specialist legal and administrative and church terms (and concepts underlying them) and get confirmation, if that were needed, of the subtlety and complexity of arrangements at the time. In addition, we find an assortment of specialist terms we would expect to be there, in fields like heraldry and warfare and trade, as well as many everyday terms and phrases. Many are distinctively medieval, like læcecræft (for medicine), while many more look like modern words but have their own meaning, like havoc and craven and churl. Phrases like hue and cry, charter of franchise, and others are on offer too.

What comes across strongly in this dictionary is that such terms have been helpfully gathered together in one place for easy reference. Helpfully, too, there are references to major monastic orders like the Benedictines and the Cistercians, major historical events like the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and the expulsion of Jews from Britain in 1290, events in the calendar (like hock‐day, the Tuesday after Easter Sunday, one of the days on which rents had to be paid), much on warfare and armour, agriculture and trade (hogshead, esplees, and escheat, the silver coin called a sceatta), and aspects of social and cultural history like pilgrimage, courtly love, the crusades, and a feudal levy (when the king could summon an army). Etymologies (for Latin and English terms) are provided in concise form. At the back two lists (regnal dates of the kings of Wessex and of England, and a select bibliography) are provided.

Numerous Latin terms are included: some of these, like terra regis (or the king's land) appear in the Domesday Book; others are legal, like quare impedit (why does he impede?, used in legal writs where benefices were in dispute) and lex mercatoria (unwritten customs of the merchant community). Helpfully, there are as many English legal terms on offer (like leywrite, the minor offence of fornication), and a lot of information on courts and assizes (such as the Forest Assizes where, in the twelfth century, people were punished for taking animals from the king's hunting grounds) to set such terms in context. Specific laws (like the Statute of Forestallers of 1390, where a trader would buy up goods and corner the market, thus forestalling prohibitions levied by an assize) are included too. We get a glimpse into life at the time from terms like calciamenta hyemalia or winter shoe allowance (servants of the royal household were given money for shoes as part of their livery), or the Assize of the Moneyers (moneyers were called together and questioned about their honesty and could lose a hand or more), and the custom of having lay brothers or conversi in monastic life.

Sources such as Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae (On the Laws and Customs of England), dating from judge Henry Bracton (who died in 1268) and Leges Henrici Primi (The Laws of Henry I), a compilation based on law of the Anglo‐Saxon kinds made between 1110 and 1120 (and dealing with both secular and ecclesiastical law) are noted and may be pursued independently by the specialist reader. Information is provided on the various courts and aspects of legal procedure and decision‐making.

Yet as well as all this specialist information there are many terms that readers are likely to wonder about in their everyday reading about the period, in fact and fiction: the medieval court continually on the move, how meadows were enclosed, feudal duties to a lord, what people ate, what journeymen got paid, how jousts were organized, what the guilds were, Fitz as a patronymic, and why the Augustinians were called the Black Canons. Peeping out are technical terms like aulnage (how cloth was measured and paid for, by the ell) and recreantia (being defeated in a duel, where there were strict rules of engagement). Cross references are simple but logical, and specialist word‐order using obsolete letters (like thorn and ash) is avoided. A dictionary, then, very clear to use, general‐purpose as well as a useful desk‐source for the expert, and suitable for the academic library where the medieval period is seriously studied.