Walter of Henley

Last updated

Walter of Henley (Walter de Henley) was an English agricultural writer of the thirteenth century, writing in French. His known work is called Le Dite de Hosebondrie (or Husbandry), written about 1280, and deals with the agricultural management of a manor. [1]

Little of Walter of Henley is known except that he once served in the office of bailiff. [2] A manuscript of Husbandry housed at the University of Cambridge states that Walter was first a knight and then a friar-preacher, specifically a Dominican. [3] [4]

Walter's Husbandry was one of four agrarian treatises that appeared in the thirteenth century, treatises said by medieval historian Eileen Power to be "undoubtedly the most original contribution of the Middle Ages to scientific agriculture. Their value lies," she noted, "in their strictly empirical character, for they appear to spring straight from the soil, owing nothing to their great classical forerunners." [5] Power attributes the appearance of these treatises in the thirteenth century to the fact that an intellectual revival was fostered by the friars of the time, notably the Franciscans, while, at the same time, the studies of the English schoolmen were beginning to lean toward what we might call "physical and biological inquiry." Desmene (or manorial) farming was at its height, creating a market for agrarian treatises among the great landowners, and indeed it is known that copies of the manuscripts were owned by religious houses which owned extensive lands. [6]

Walter of Henley employed a "rustic" style of writing, making use of proverbs in French and English to make his points memorable. [7] His work makes for pleasurable reading, so much so that Professor Bertha Haven Putnam noted, as a teacher, that "American undergraduate students read no mediæval work with greater pleasure than Walter of Henley's treatise." [8]

A manuscript of Walter of Henley's work dating from the fifteenth century stated that it was translated into English by Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln. This attribution has often been considered a mistake, probably arising from the fact that Robert wrote his own agrarian treatise called Rules, [9] but Power argues that it is not far-fetched to associate Walter of Henley's treatise with the bishop of Lincoln since the latter was obviously interested in the subject. [10]

Dr. William Cunningham has listed twenty surviving manuscripts of Walter of Henley's Husbandry, [4] which was widely used until the sixteenth century when Sir Anthony Fitzherbert published The Boke of Husbandry, which, notably, contained several unattributed segments of Walter's work. [11]

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

Agrarianism is a social and political philosophy that promotes subsistence agriculture, family farming, widespread property ownership, and political decentralization. Adherents of agrarianism tend to value traditional bonds of local community over urban modernity. Agrarian political parties sometimes aim to support the rights and sustainability of small farmers and poor peasants against the wealthy in society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geoffrey Chaucer</span> English poet and author (c. 1340s – 1400)

Geoffrey Chaucer was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey. Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific A Treatise on the Astrolabe for his 10-year-old son, Lewis. He maintained a career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat, and member of parliament.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manorialism</span> Economic, political, and judicial institution during the Middle Ages in Europe

Manorialism, also known as seigneurialism, the manor system or manorial system, was the method of land ownership in parts of Europe, notably France and later England, during the Middle Ages. Its defining features included a large, sometimes fortified manor house in which the lord of the manor and his dependants lived and administered a rural estate, and a population of labourers or serfs who worked the surrounding land to support themselves and the lord. These labourers fulfilled their obligations with labour time or in-kind produce at first, and later by cash payment as commercial activity increased. Manorialism was part of the feudal system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Omar Khayyam</span> Persian polymath and poet (1048–1131 CE)

Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm Nīsābūrī, commonly known as Omar Khayyam, was a Persian polymath, known for his contributions to mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and poetry. He was born in Nishapur, the initial capital of the Seljuk Empire, and lived during the period of the Seljuk dynasty, around the time of the First Crusade.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Grosseteste</span> 13th-century Bishop of Lincoln, astrologer, scientist, and philosopher

Robert Grosseteste, also known as Robert Greathead or Robert of Lincoln, was an English statesman, scholastic philosopher, theologian, scientist and Bishop of Lincoln. He was born of humble parents in Suffolk, but the association with the village of Stradbroke is a post-medieval tradition. Upon his death, he was revered as a saint in England, but attempts to procure a formal canonisation failed. A. C. Crombie called him "the real founder of the tradition of scientific thought in medieval Oxford, and in some ways, of the modern English intellectual tradition". As a theologian, however, he contributed to increasing hostility to Jews and Judaism, and spread the accusation that Jews had purposefully suppressed prophetic knowledge of the coming of Christ, through his translation of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry</span> Agricultural advocacy group in the United States

The National Grange, a.k.a. The Grange, officially named The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, is a social organization in the United States that encourages families to band together to promote the economic and political well-being of the community and agriculture. The Grange, founded after the Civil War in 1867, is the oldest American agricultural advocacy group with a national scope. The Grange actively lobbied state legislatures and Congress for political goals, such as the Granger Laws to lower rates charged by railroads, and rural free mail delivery by the Post Office.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Archibald Sayce</span> British Assyriologist and linguist (born 1845)

Archibald Henry SayceFRAS was a pioneer British Assyriologist and linguist, who held a chair as Professor of Assyriology at the University of Oxford from 1891 to 1919. He was able to write in at least twenty ancient and modern languages, and was known for his emphasis on the importance of archaeological and monumental evidence in linguistic research. He was a contributor to articles in the 9th, 10th and 11th editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

<i>Ancrene Wisse</i>

Ancrene Wisse is an anonymous monastic rule for female anchoresses written in the early 13th century.

<i>Conductus</i> Sacred Latin song in the Middle Ages

The conductus was a sacred Latin song in the Middle Ages, one whose poetry and music were newly composed. It is non-liturgical since its Latin lyric borrows little from previous chants. The conductus was northern French equivalent of the versus, which flourished in Aquitaine. It was originally found in the twelfth-century Aquitanian repertories. But major collections of conducti were preserved in Paris. The conductus typically includes one, two, or three voices. A small number of the conducti are for four voices. Stylistically, the conductus is a type of discant. Its form can be strophic or through-composed form. The genre flourished from the early twelfth century to the middle of thirteenth century. It was one of the principal types of vocal composition of the ars antiqua period of medieval music history.

The Camden Society was a text publication society founded in London in 1838 to publish early historical and literary materials, both unpublished manuscripts and new editions of rare printed books. It was named after the 16th-century antiquary and historian William Camden. In 1897 it merged with the Royal Historical Society, which continues to publish texts in what are now known as the Camden Series.

The Economic Journal is a peer-reviewed academic journal of economics published on behalf of the Royal Economic Society by Oxford University Press. The journal was established in 1891 and publishes papers from all areas of economics.The editor-in-chief is Francesco Lippi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walter Burley</span> 14th-century English scholastic philosopher and logician

Walter Burley was an English scholastic philosopher and logician with at least 50 works attributed to him. He studied under Thomas Wilton and received his Master of Arts degree in 1301, and was a fellow of Merton College, Oxford until about 1310. He then spent sixteen years in Paris, becoming a fellow of the Sorbonne by 1324, before spending 17 years as a clerical courtier in England and Avignon. Burley disagreed with William of Ockham on a number of points concerning logic and natural philosophy. He was known as the Doctor Planus and Perspicuus.

Plain Folk of the Old South is a 1949 book by Vanderbilt University historian Frank Lawrence Owsley, one of the Southern Agrarians. In it he used statistical data to analyze the makeup of Southern society, contending that yeoman farmers made up a larger middle class than was generally thought.

Mamprusis are an ethnic group in northern Ghana and Togo. Estimates are that there are about 200,000 Mamprusis living in the Northern Regions of Ghana as of 2013. They speak Mampruli, one of the Gur languages. In Ghana, the Mamprusis live mainly in Nalerigu, Gambaga, Walewale, and their surrounding towns and villages in the North East Region. Their origin is in the Upper East Region, principally, Bawku, and they also inhabit parts of the Upper West Region, too.

Henry Daniel was a Dominican friar and author of widely circulating medieval medical and scientific treatises. He is credited with introducing important Latin medical terms and concepts into Middle English.

The Maikulan were an indigenous Australian people of the state of Queensland. They have sometimes been confused with the Maithakari.

André Wink is an emeritus professor of history at University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is known for his studies on India and the Indian Ocean area, particularly over the medieval and early modern age. He is the author of a series of books published by Brill Academic, Oxford University Press, and Cambridge University Press on al-Hind – a term used in Arab history to refer to the Islamized regions in the Indian subcontinent and nearby regions.

Philippa Mary Hoskin is a British historian of the English Middle Ages, who specializes in the religious, legal and administrative history of the English Church. She is the Fellow Librarian of the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

<i>Experiments and Observations on Electricity</i> Book by Benjamin Franklin

Experiments and Observations on Electricity is a treatise by Benjamin Franklin based on letters that he wrote to Peter Collinson, who communicated Franklin's ideas to the Royal Society. The letters were published as a book in England in 1751, and over the following years the book was reissued in four more editions containing additional material, the last in 1774. Science historian I. Bernard Cohen crafted an edition with historical commentary that was published in 1941.

References

  1. ↑ PDF gone, p.3.
  2. ↑ Lamond, Elizabeth (trans.) (1890). Walter of Henley's Husbandry, Together with an Anonymous Husbandry, Seneschausie, and Robert Grosseteste's Rules. London. p. xxi. Retrieved 15 Nov 2022.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  3. ↑ Power, Eileen (1934). "On the Need for a New Edition of Walter of Henley". Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 17: 106. doi:10.2307/3678522. JSTOR   3678522. S2CID   162627855 . Retrieved 15 Nov 2022.
  4. 1 2 "Henley, Walter de"  . Dictionary of National Biography . Vol. 25. 1891. pp. 420–421.
  5. ↑ Power, Eileen (1934). "On the Need for a New Edition of Walter of Henley". Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 17: 104. doi:10.2307/3678522. JSTOR   3678522. S2CID   162627855 . Retrieved 15 Nov 2022.
  6. ↑ Power (1934). "On the Need for a New Edition of Walter of Henley". Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 17: 104–105. doi:10.2307/3678522. JSTOR   3678522. S2CID   162627855.
  7. ↑ Power (1934). "On the Need for a New Edition of Walter of Henley". Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 17: 104. doi:10.2307/3678522. JSTOR   3678522. S2CID   162627855.
  8. ↑ Power (1934). "On the Need for a New Edition of Walter of Henley". Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 17: 114. doi:10.2307/3678522. JSTOR   3678522. S2CID   162627855.
  9. ↑ Lamond (1890). Walter of Henley's Husbandry. Longmans, Green, and co. p. xxxi.
  10. ↑ Power (1934). "On the Need for a New Edition of Walter of Henley". Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 17: 106. doi:10.2307/3678522. JSTOR   3678522. S2CID   162627855.
  11. ↑ Lamond (1890). Walter of Henley's Husbandry. Longmans, Green, and co. p. xx-xxi.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.