[tied] re Of Vennemann's proposals

As often I find myself stepping in with a reality check rather than an IE contribution.

I do not follow the argument that an abbot cannot own a watercourse.  In England at least it is not uncommon for toponyms to include the title of an ecclesiastic, where the place/whatever was owned by the institution he headed - eg Abbot's Bromley in Staffordshire, Abbot's Lench in Worcestershire, or Brampton Abbots in Herefordshire (I'm not sure where the monastery was in any of these cases); and consider Stoke Prior (cases in both Worcestershire and Herefordshire) and Stoke Bishop (Bristol, formerly Gloucestershire) - also Cleeve Prior (Worcestershire) and Bishop's Cleeve (Gloucestershire) - where the cathedral monastery at Worcester was the owner of the church living and/or the manor, but in the Prior cases the cash went to the Prior and Chapter and in the Bishop cases to his lordship.

Such proprietorships were very common pre-reformation, when gifts to churches would remain in the donee's hand for ever, unless (as with Henry VIII and Thos. Cromwell) the state intervened.

Bte, the London Independent on Sunday carried pieces yesterday about scientific advances allowing many more of the Oxyrhyncus papyri to be read.  I'd not imagine they will add to our understanding of comparative IE questions, but it seemed worth a mention.  The BBC mentioned the story, but I've seen nothing else about it anywhere else.

Best wishes,

Gordon

<gordonselway@...>

At 11:58 this morning GMT tgpedersen wrote: