medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Friday, April 17, 2009. at 7:53 am, christopher crockett wrote:
> From: John Dillon <[log in to unmask]>
>
> >Tortona (AL)
>
> >Sezzadio (AL)
>
> >Castelletto d'Orba (AL)
>
> what's "(AL)"?
>
> none of these places show up in my gazetteer of Alabama.
A slightly longer version of that first quote provides important context:
> early bishop of Tortona (AL) in Piedmont.
While it's true that part of Alabama is in the North American Piedmont, it's unlikely that any town in Alabama had a bishop quite as early as the fourth century. As a guess, I'd say that these are places in the Italian region of Piedmont and that AL is an abbreviation for one of the latter's provinces. See the key here:
http://home.no.net/lotsberg/data/italia/legenda.html
The number of letters in Roman alphabet being fairly small, it is not surprising that there should be correspondences between two-letter abbreviations for Italian provinces and two-letter USAmerican postal codes. Other examples that come to mind are CA (Cagliari/California), CT (Catania/Connecticut), ME (Messina/Maine), MI (Milano/Michigan), OR (Oristano/Oregon), PA (Palermo/Pennsylviania), and TN (Trento/Tennessee). The dissimilarities or incomplete correspondences between places signified by the Italian and the USAmerican members of these pairs are sometimes a source of mild amusement.
> >St-Ayoul at today's Provins (Seine-et-Marne) in Île-de-France
>
> 20km. north of Sens, not then, and not now in the Ile-de-France.
Ah, but Seine-et-Marne _is_ a _département._ in today's _région Île-de-France_. See:
http://encyclopedia.farlex.com/Ile-de-France
http://www.sifex.co.uk/region_details.asp?Regionid=16
or here (scroll down to 'Repères administratifs'):
http://tinyurl.com/c65c64
This exchange affords an opportunity to correct an omission in my post. I had written:
> 6) Robert of Molesme (d. 1111). We know about R., the founder of
> Cîteaux, chiefly from early accounts of the rise of the Cistercian
> Order.
That should have read: 'chiefly from his twelfth-century Vita by a monk of Molesme (BHL 7265) and from early accounts of the rise of the Cistercian Order.'
Best again,
John Dillon
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