Stylistic Variation and Roman Influence in the Bayeux Tapestry
There are a number of places in the Tapestry where the graphics of the main register are different in both subject matter and style. The men pictured at these points are workers, engaged in practical, mundane (distinctly non-heroic) tasks.
The Bayeux Tapestry and the Vikings
How did the Bayeux Tapestry, with its images of Normans and Englishmen, come to be so strongly equated with the legendary Vikings in the popular imagination?
Personal Equipment and Fighting Techniques Among the Anglo-Saxon Population in Northern Europe During the Early Middle Ages
The Anglo-Saxon military equipment included a sword or axe, a lance and a buckler, whereas most men would wear a dagger hanging from their belt.
An Appeal to Rome: Anglo-Saxon Dispute Settlement, 800-810
In this paper, I argue that Anglo-Saxon dispute settlement in the early ninth century exploited Charlemagne’s title as Holy Roman Emperor. T
The Otherworld Yet Real-Time Exploits of Gregory the Great
This article examines the idea of the otherworldly in medieval experience from the perspective of Gregory the Great’s mission to the English. The paper reviews the history of travel literature in the medieval world, how Britain’s remoteness and no known history placed it into the realm of the otherworldly…
Kentigern and Gonothigernus A Scottish saint and a Gaulish bishop identified
Kentigern and Gonothigernus A Scottish saint and a Gaulish bishop identified Gough-Cooper, Henry The Heroic Age Issue 6 Spring 2003 Abstract Onomastic, documentary…
Saint Gildas and the Pestilent Dragon: A Meander through the Sixth-Century Landscape With a Most Notable Guru
The historical value of the pilgrimage episode in the Life of Gildas by the Monk of Ruys is defended by advancing solutions to the problems of composition-dating, integrity of tradition, motivation, and the appearance of a dragon. An approach is taken to delimiting the date of the pilgrimage in light of the Yellow Death pandemic and the geopolitics of the contemporary Mediterranean world.
Adomnán, Iona, and the Life of St. Columba: Their Place Among Continental Saints
Adomnán, Iona, and the Life of St. Columba: Their Place Among Continental Saints Wetherill, Jeffrey The Heroic Age Issue 6 Spring 2003 Abstract…
Oswald and the Irish
Oswald and the Irish Ziegler, Michelle The Heroic Age Issue 4 Winter 2001 Abstract To understand King Oswald of Bernicia (r. 634/5-642), it…
What’s in a name? Britons, Angles, ethnicity and material culture from the fourth to seventh centuries
The emergence of various ‘ethnically’ based polities in early medieval Britain has long been a source of debate and confusion. I explore how ethnic self-identity is constructed and how the identities of the former Roman citizens of Britain changed.
The Anglo-British Cemetery at Bamburgh An E-Interview with Graeme Young of the Bamburgh Castle Research Project
The Anglo-British Cemetery at Bamburgh An E-Interview with Graeme Young of the Bamburgh Castle Research Project Ziegler, Michelle The Heroic Age Issue 4…
Saxon Bishop and Celtic King: Interactions between Aldhelm of Wessex and Geraint of Dumnonia
Saxon Bishop and Celtic King: Interactions between Aldhelm of Wessex and Geraint of Dumnonia Grimmer, Martin The Heroic Age Issue 4 Winter 2001…
Post-Severan Cramond: A Late Roman and Early Historic British and Anglo-Saxon Religious Centre?
Post-Severan Cramond: A Late Roman and Early Historic British and Anglo-Saxon Religious Centre? Cessford, Craig The Heroic Age Issue 4 Winter 2001 Abstract…
Redundant Ethnogenesis in Beowulf
Redundant Ethnogenesis in Beowulf Davis, Craig R. The Heroic Age Issue 5 Summer/Autumn 2001 Abstract One of the Beowulf poet’s purposes is to…
Gæst, gender, and kin in Beowulf: Consumption of the Boundaries
Gæst, gender, and kin in Beowulf: Consumption of the Boundaries Anderson, Carolyn The Heroic Age Issue 5 Summer/Autumn 2001 Abstract Grendel’s Mother’s masculinity…
Hwanan sio fæhð aras: Defining the Feud in Beowulf
Hwanan sio fæhð aras: Defining the Feud in Beowulf Day, David The Heroic Age Issue 5 Summer/Autumn 2001 Abstract The Beowulf poet’s use…
The Social Centrality of Women in Beowulf: A New Context
This paper examines the roles of the women in Beowulf, focusing on those of hostess, peaceweavers, and monsters. When read through an anthropological lens, Beowulf presents the female characters as being central both in the story itself and in the society presented in the poem.
Art and reform in tenth-century Rome – the paintings of S. Maria in Pallara
The medieval wall paintings of the church of S. Maria in Pallara, situated on the Palatine Hill, Rome, provide insight into the intellectual use of images in the Middle Ages. The fragmentary apse programme survives, supplemented by antiquarian drawings that include copies of lost nave cycles and a lost donor portrait of their patron, Petrus Medicus.
Donor Portraits in Late Medieval Venice c.1280-1413
Although the donor portrait was extremely popular throughout Europe and mainland Italy during the late Middle Ages, the few art historians who have addressed the subject have concluded that the motif was not popular in fourteenth-century Venice.
An Education in the Mead-Hall : Beowulf’s Lessons for Young Warriors
This essay explores how Beowulf may have indoctrinated the young warriors hearing the tale. The poem prompts the geoguð (young warriors) to consider how they would respond in psychologically threatening situations, and it presents as their model Beowulf, who faces each risk bravely and is justly rewarded.
“The Wealth They Left Us”: Two Women Author Themselves through Others’ Lives in Beowulf
“The Wealth They Left Us”: Two Women Author Themselves through Others’ Lives in Beowulf Osborn, Marijane The Heroic Age Issue 5 Summer/Autumn 2001…
Wicked Queens and Cousin Strategies in Beowulf and Elsewhere
This essay sets the ‘Modthrytho Episode’ of Beowulf in the context of historical and legendary ‘wicked queens’ in Anglo-Saxon England
Beowulf and the Wills: Traces of Totemism?
Beowulf and the Wills: Traces of Totemism? Glosecki, Stephen O. The Heroic Age Issue 5 Summer/Autumn 2001 Abstract This paper accounts for the…
The chalice and the cup : the changing role of wine in the High Middle Ages
In an interdisciplinary approach, this study integrates the historiographies of viticulture as well as of the Christian liturgy to answer the question: why did wine disappear from the Eucharist in the high Middle Ages?
The journal of Roberto da Sanseverino (1417-1487) : a study on navigation and seafaring in the fifteenth century
Roberto da Sanseverino went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1458. He travelled from Venice to Jaffa on a galley and made his return, from Acre to Ancona, on a three-masted sailing ship.