Benjamin Savill
Biographic Data
| ID | 1712092 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Benjamin Savill |
| GIVEN NAMES | Benjamin |
| FAMILY NAME | Savill |
| SIGNATURE | SAVILL B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Freie Universität Berlin |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 7 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 6 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Papyrus Economies and the Experience of Early Medieval Papal Documents
The medium of papyrus, a ubiquitous, state-sponsored product in the Roman world, was turned by the empire’s loss of Egypt in the 630s–640s into a comparatively rare, high-status good in the early medieval northern Mediterranean (though not in the early caliphate, where it continued to have more or less the same value and associations as it had in the Roman period). The significance of papyrus altered radically as its economic value outside the Is…
Civic factions, denied conversions and the first European narrative of Jewish infanticide
This is the first dedicated study of the long-overlooked Gesta (‘deeds’) of Austremonius of Clermont, now understood to be a seventh-century composition. Its central focus is the Gesta’s remarkable anti-Jewish emphases, which reinvent this hitherto obscure missionary as an early apostle martyred by Jews. Building upon earlier research on civic factionalism in Merovingian Clermont, it situates this reinvention within the city’s competitive politic…
The consul vanishes? On using and not using Gregory the Great's Register in early medieval England
This article builds upon recent scholarship emphasizing the importance of Gregory the Great's Register as a key text of the Carolingian and post‐Carolingian library, exploring by contrast its peculiarly limited reception in England. It first surveys what little evidence we have for its citation by English ecclesiastics (post‐c.1000, mostly via Wulfstan); it then examines the single text in a pre‐Conquest manuscript usually catalogued as a letter …
Remembering St Brictius
This article builds upon recent scholarship on the role of church ‘reform’ and the cult of saints in English royal politics around the turn of the second millennium, arguing that the infamous ‘St Brice's Day massacre’ of 13 November 1002 may have been planned for that date in part because of the associations of the cult of Brice/Brictius. After outlining this hypothesis, the article explores the broader implications of the emergence of a universa…
Conquests in Eleventh-Century England
I can summarize my argument in a single image. Around 1110 a Canterbury scribe copied a charter onto the endleaves of an ancient Roman gospel book (Fig. 7.1). He recorded the name of the king, Henry I, and he interlined the styles and surnames of the witnesses in French fashion; but the anomalous feature is the script. Nearly sixty years after the Norman Conquest, in the reign of the third Norman king, a scribe at the heart of the Anglo-Norman es…
Conquests in Eleventh-Century England
Prelude to Forgery
This article argues that we can only understand Bury St Edmunds’ post-Conquest dossier of forged Anglo-Saxon royal diplomas by viewing it alongside that house’s earlier acquisition of an authentic papal privilege from Alexander II (Oct. 1071). That is, the hitherto overlooked failure of that the genuine papal document to find any acceptance in 1070s England necessitated Bury’s recourse to royal forgery. The implications of this go well beyond Bur…
Prelude to Forgery
This article argues that we can only understand Bury St Edmunds’ post-Conquest dossier of forged Anglo-Saxon royal diplomas by viewing it alongside that house’s earlier acquisition of an authentic papal privilege from Alexander II (Oct. 1071). That is, the hitherto overlooked failure of that the genuine papal document to find any acceptance in 1070s England necessitated Bury’s recourse to royal forgery. The implications of this go well beyond Bur…
Prelude to Forgery
This article argues that we can only understand Bury St Edmunds’ post-Conquest dossier of forged Anglo-Saxon royal diplomas by viewing it alongside that house’s earlier acquisition of an authentic papal privilege from Alexander II (Oct. 1071). That is, the hitherto overlooked failure of that the genuine papal document to find any acceptance in 1070s England necessitated Bury’s recourse to royal forgery. The implications of this go well beyond Bur…
Conquests in Eleventh-Century England
I can summarize my argument in a single image. Around 1110 a Canterbury scribe copied a charter onto the endleaves of an ancient Roman gospel book (Fig. 7.1). He recorded the name of the king, Henry I, and he interlined the styles and surnames of the witnesses in French fashion; but the anomalous feature is the script. Nearly sixty years after the Norman Conquest, in the reign of the third Norman king, a scribe at the heart of the Anglo-Norman es…
Conquests in Eleventh-Century England
Remembering St Brictius
This article builds upon recent scholarship on the role of church ‘reform’ and the cult of saints in English royal politics around the turn of the second millennium, arguing that the infamous ‘St Brice's Day massacre’ of 13 November 1002 may have been planned for that date in part because of the associations of the cult of Brice/Brictius. After outlining this hypothesis, the article explores the broader implications of the emergence of a universa…
The consul vanishes? On using and not using Gregory the Great's Register in early medieval England
This article builds upon recent scholarship emphasizing the importance of Gregory the Great's Register as a key text of the Carolingian and post‐Carolingian library, exploring by contrast its peculiarly limited reception in England. It first surveys what little evidence we have for its citation by English ecclesiastics (post‐c.1000, mostly via Wulfstan); it then examines the single text in a pre‐Conquest manuscript usually catalogued as a letter …
Civic factions, denied conversions and the first European narrative of Jewish infanticide
This is the first dedicated study of the long-overlooked Gesta (‘deeds’) of Austremonius of Clermont, now understood to be a seventh-century composition. Its central focus is the Gesta’s remarkable anti-Jewish emphases, which reinvent this hitherto obscure missionary as an early apostle martyred by Jews. Building upon earlier research on civic factionalism in Merovingian Clermont, it situates this reinvention within the city’s competitive politic…
Papyrus Economies and the Experience of Early Medieval Papal Documents
The medium of papyrus, a ubiquitous, state-sponsored product in the Roman world, was turned by the empire’s loss of Egypt in the 630s–640s into a comparatively rare, high-status good in the early medieval northern Mediterranean (though not in the early caliphate, where it continued to have more or less the same value and associations as it had in the Roman period). The significance of papyrus altered radically as its economic value outside the Is…
History (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Medieval Literature and History (5 works) · Political science (5 works) · Ancient history (3 works) · Byzantine Studies and History (3 works) · Classics (3 works) · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome (3 works) · History (3 works) · Law (3 works)