Viking Ethnicities: A Historiographic Overview
The word ‘viking’ is itself used by different scholars to mean different things. Its use in Modern English stems from the early 19th century and it was broadly used to describe people of Scandinavian cultural identity active in the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries.
Muslim City Life during the Era of the Great Caliphs
Baghdad and many other cities in this Islamic world were international melting pots that attracted entrepreneurs and intellectuals of many languages, ethnicities, and faiths, including Jewish astrologers and Christian doctors.
The Medieval and Renaissance Transmission of the Tabula Peutingeriana
Some time ago close correspondences were discovered between the content of the Tabula and a very unusual text composed in the eighth century, the Cosmographia of the Anonymous of Ravenna.
Sacred Kingship among the Peoples of the Steppes
eurThe vast belt of the Steppes, located between the Hungarian plains and the Great Wall of China,
runs along the southern edge of the Eurasian arboreal zone. Starting in the 1st millenium B.C. this region has been inhabited by Iranian, Hunnish, Turkish and Mongol mounted nomads who, at various times, unified a large portion of the Steppes into a single empire.
Conceptions of Ethnicity in Early Medieval Studies
Today’s nationalist movements in many eastern European countries have rediscovered the nineteenth-century ideal of the homogeneous nation-state; it is sad to see that after so many tragedies it has brought about, some more seem to follow, and often in the name of history.
The Place of the Papacy in the Ecclesial Piety of the 11th-century Reformers
In the tenth century, it was still the Ecclesia rather than the pope which constituted the fundamental reality. The men of the Gregorian reform, in contrast, saw the Church as dependent upon the pope and derived in some way from papal power.
The Rectitudines singularum personarum: A Pre- and Post-Conquest Text
The most important extant document for our understanding of Anglo-Saxon manorial social structure is a text scholars call the Rectitudines singularum personarum
New Website Showcases Suffolk’s Medieval Masterpieces
This month sees the launch of a new website designed to showcase one of the most important sets of medieval wall paintings to be found in East Anglia
Reading Medieval Religious Disputation: The 1240 “Debate” Between Rabbi Yehiel of Paris and Friar Nicholas Donin
This dissertation takes as its subject the Latin and Hebrew accounts of a much-studied event: the Jewish-Christian Disputation of 1240.
Writers in religious orders and their lay patrons in late medieval England
Critics have long recognized that the religious orders played an important part in the production of vernacular devotional literature in late medieval England. The orders were well suited to this task. Reading and writing were an important part of the life of those who lived under a rule.
Publicity through the voice of God: Hildegard of Bingen as a Public Figure in the Twelfth Century
Hildegard was peripherally involved in contemporary politics, and she was in contact with some of the most esteemed theologians of her day, including Bernard of Clairvaux and Pope Eugenius III, who, according to her vita, ‘commanded’ her to continue writing Scivias. Hildegard also communicated with the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Early Chinese Tattoo
The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I hope to provide a brief introduction to the various modes of tattoo as represented in several types of early Chinese texts.
Christine de Pizan and Jean Gerson on the Body Politic: The Limits of Intellectual Influence?
The present paper represents a small attempt to test competing hypotheses about the substance of the intellectual friendship between Christine and Jean by examining one overlapping theme in their respective body of writings: the organic metaphor between the human body and the political community.
The Legend of Kosovo
The earliest traces of the Kosovo legend can be found in texts dating from the end of the fourteenth century. The legend evolved gradually so that by the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century it had already taken shape, and in texts of the eighteenth century it can be found in its complete form.
The ancient and medieval Greek writers perceptions concerning the relationship between sexual characteristics and testicular volume
Hippocrates (5th-4th c. BC) was the first Greek medical writer to leave a written re- port on the changes in the voice of eunuchs…
Through the veiled window: feminine autonomy, masculine authority, and discursive tension in anchoritic writings
Contemporary framings and traditional scholarly discussions of anchoritic women have tended to view them as powerless and silenced due to their life of permanent enclosure within their hermit’s cell. This thesis argues for a more nuanced view of the personal freedom these women enjoyed and of the awareness of that freedom possessed by anchoresses and by the male religious authorities who supervised them
Diseases as causes of divorce in Byzantium
Τhe purpose of this study is to describe the diseases for which divorce could be issued if one of the spouses wanted, in Byzantine times.
From destrier to danseur: the role of the horse in early modern French noble identity
This study argues that horses and horsemanship played a crucial role in refashioning noble identity in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France.
Torture and Plea Bargaining
Under certain circumstancesthe law permitted the criminal courts to employ physical coercionagainst suspected criminalsin orderto induce them to confess. The law went to great lengths to limit this technique of extorting confessions to cases in which it was thought that the accused was highly likely to be guilty…
Scandinavian Influences on the English Language
The Viking Age lasted roughly from the eighth century to the eleventh, with the Viking attacks on Europe beginning around 750 AD. The Scandinavians were excellent sailors, and they had impressive ships and navigational skills that carried them as far as North America (‘Vinland’) long before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.
Noch Einmal 918-919: Of the ritualized demise of kings and of political rituals in general
As 918 drew to a wintry close, King Conrad lay dying. His reign had been short. Perhaps, as Adalbert of Magdeburg later suggested, the Franconian ruler had been exhausted by bitter feuds against his former peers, the German ‘dukes’.
The Saints of Epilepsy
It will be seen below that many of the legendary happenings on which belief in the curative powers of saints was based were ridiculously improbable or impossible.
Modeling the Joust
Consider the thought of being a medieval knight about to enter a joust. Imagine donning your armor, which weighs nearly half as much as you, and climbing onto your half-ton-plus warhorse. Feel the anticipation as you look down the course to your similarly equipped opponent and prepare to charge.
Medieval heteronomy, modern nationalism: Language assertion between Liège and Maastricht, 14th-20th century
The result has been a protracted debate on the existence and nature of pre-modern nationalism or national sentiment.1 That debate has by now ground into an entrenched stalemate. I think we can rescue the underlying historical issue from this stagnation, and the present article is intended to give a little shove to that effect.