“Full Faith and Credit” in Merrie Olde England: New Insights for Marriage Conflicts Law from the Thirteenth Century
Here the subject is full faith and credit and the implications which the exposure of the myth of universality might carry for the recognition of judgments concerning marriage. As with the choice of law problem, so with the recognition of judgments, there is discovered in the anti- quities of English law a perception and comprehension exceeding our own.
Reconstruction of the diet in a mediaeval monastic community from the coast of Belgium
The aim of the present article is to report the results of stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis on skeletons from a Belgian mediaeval population, and to look at variations in diet that may relate to age and social status.
The Regular Canons and the Use of Food, c. 1200–1350
We are greatly handicapped by the lack of material available to us for this period. By and large, household accounts which provide gross details of quotidian diet elude us. However, to recover the everyday diet of the canons, one useful approach is to examine corrodies and study the assumptions there, by way of analogy, with what can be inferred as normal consumption by canons.
Medieval enchantment techniques: St Christopher and the Siren
The traditional image of St Christopher, which was particularly frequent in the Middle Ages, portrays him crossing the waters of a river while he is carrying the child Jesus on his shoulder.
The Cross of the Scriptures: Power Meets Religion in Medieval Ireland
A lecture examining the medieval cross and the monastery of Clonmacnoise in Ireland
What is A Chronicle? On the Joy of Reading History
Recent scholarship has hotly debated the definitions of chronicles as a genre, and focussed on the task tracing them back to their authentic, pristine text. However, another way of approaching this is to think of the chronicle as a physical object, a history book, with each new transcription being a new crystalization of the work.
The Church Atrium as a Ritual Space: The Cathedral of Tyre and St Peter’s in Rome
This paper will attempt to outline a perspective on ritual and space regard ing the Early Christian atrium by confronting two cases of early church atria: one known from a literary source, the other from its archaeological reconstruction.
Magna Carta: is it relevant today?
As the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta fast approaches in 2015, Professor Nigel Saul takes a look at its relevance to us today.
The Frankish Annals of Lindisfarne and Kent
Scholars interested in the processes by which the history of Early Anglo Saxon England came to be recorded have long known of the existence of the annals that are referred to here as ‘The Frankish Annals of Linidisfarne and Kent’.
Mi‘ilya: Evidence of an Early Crusader Settlement
Fifty-six diagnostic sherds, dating to the Crusader period, were found in a pit. Most of them represent local Crusader types, with a few belonging to imported types. The chronological range of the Crusader-period pottery dates from the mid-twelfth to the early thirteenth centuries CE.
Edward the Confessor, King of England
He was upstanding and pious, making him a cut above some of the ruthless and treacherous men around him.
Striking a Match on Byzantium’s “Dark Age”
The seventh and eighth centuries have been called the “Dark Age” of Byzantium because of the paucity of historical sources that illuminate them. This lack is commonly ascribed more to scant production than to failed transmission.
Religious prohibitions against usury
Why do religions prohibit usury? From a non-historical perspective, interest rate policy might seem an unlikely candidate for inclusion as a central tenet of religious doctrine.
The Danish attacks on London and Southwark in ‘1016’
This incident has been fatally embroidered by many local historians, taking their cue from various sources, so that the popular accounts have distorted what was already a confusing set of events.
What the Paston Letters Tell about Land Owning in the 15th Century England
How do the terms on land and manors which appear in the Paston Letters reflect his observation? I pick up several terms relating to the land owning system in the England of Middle Ages and examine their distribution in the letters; i.e. the terms ‘villein, serf, demesne, bond, rent, and tenant.’
The Luffield Priory Grange at Monkbarn
The lease of 1351 places Monksbarn in the manor of Pyre (West Perry or Paulerspury) so it might be expected that the site of the grange should lie within the parish of the same name. Despite mention of the wood within which the land lay, abutting landholding arrangements and the naming of a road along which the land must lie, there are few topographical details which can lead to a precise location for the grange.
Marriage between King Harald Fairhair and Snæfriðr, and their Offspring: Mythological Foundation of the Norwegian Medieval Dynasty?
Historians in Nordic countries since the turn of the twentieth century have become increasingly aware of the problem using these primary sources from earlier times, especially the sagas from the late twelfth- and thirteenth centuries, about three hundred years after Harald assumedly lived. It was Halvdan Koht(1873-1965)who introduced this point of view into Norwegian historiography, although some researchers, including Yngvar Nielsen, had cast doubt on the accuracy of the account before him.
Narrative and political strategies at the deposition of Richard II
This paper is an attempt to examine the role of what might loosely be termed formal and informal political ideas in the coup d’e´tat which brought Henry IV to power in 1399.
The Assassination of Godfrey the Hunchback
One of the earliest reports comes from Lambert of Hersfeld. Around 1078, he wrote a rather extensive account of the assassination, with several details: the assault took place in the city of Antwerp, in the night, when the duke had retired ‘because of a natural need’.
The Eternity of the World and Renaissance Historical Thought
Medieval and Renaissance controversies over the Aristotelian doctrine of “the eternity of the world” have hitherto been treated as disputes restricted to natural philosophers and theologians.
En/gendering representations of childbirth in fifteenth-century Franco-Flemish devotional manuscripts
Late-medieval representationsof the births of holy and heroic children invariably show a domestic interior with the new mother lying in bed attended
by female assistants.These images thus appearto show a `genderedspace’ in which women cared for each other and from which men were marginalized.
Bawdy badges and the Black Death : late medieval apotropaic devices against the spread of the plague
Owing to the fact that historians generally view the late medieval period as an “age of faith,” the existence ofthese remarkable objects raises some fundamental questions about the exact socio-religious nature ofmedieval culture. The primary questions, however, that need answering are: when, where, and for whom were the badges produced, and perhaps most importantly, why.
Procopius’ Portrayal of Theodora in the Secret History: ‘Her Charity was Universal’
Like most other writers of late antiquity, what little is known about Procopius comes from his works. Born at the turn of the sixth century in Caesarea, he had the chance to receive education in the traditional Greek fashion, i.e. through the use of classical authors, before Justinian banned pagan teaching in 529
City and Countryside in Medieval England
An impressive array of data, ranging over the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, has been collected by two full-time researchers, James Galloway and Margaret Murphy. Of primary importance for the project are demesne farming accounts and inquisitions post mortem (detailing manorial land and other assets, especially again those of the demesne), both of which sources survive in very large numbers for the period under review. Also, the project incorpor- ates large amounts of data from urban records, particularly those dealing with merchants who were prominent in organizing London’s food supply.