Pleasurable Forms and Forms of Pleasure in the Pages of the Pearl – manuscript
Bahr discussed the poem, Pearl, jokingly termed, ‘a formalists wet dream’, and focused on its implied relationship between pleasure and form and how it explored the relationship between desire and fruitfulness.
Rare 15th-Century Manuscript of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah purchased by The Israel Museum, Jerusalem and The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Mishneh Torah was created by Moses Maimonides (d.1204), and is considered one of the most important documents of medieval Jewish law.
Jewish Hawking in Medieval France: Falconry, Rabbenu Tam, and the Tosafists
Falconry reached an apex in the Middle Ages and Renaissance periods, but in the modern era it was displaced to a great extent by the use of firearms. The present article explores the medieval Jewish knowledge of, and especially the exploitation of this technique, centered in twelfth-century Northern France in the communities surrounding the great master Tosafist, Rabbenu Tam.
Queen of All Islands: The Imagined Cartography of Matthew Paris’s Britain
In the middle decade of the thirteenth century, the Benedictine monk and historian Matthew Paris drew four regional maps of Britain. The monk’s works stand as the earliest extant maps of the island and mark a distinct shift from the cartographic traditions of medieval Europe.
Vikings – Review of Episode 9: All Change
The season finale of Vikings – an angry wife, a decimated village, a pregnant lover and treacherous brother.
The Borgias – Review of Season 3 Episode 3: Siblings
Negotiations, marriage, deadly plots and forbidden love are all par for the course this week. It seems nobody can have a normal day in the Borgia household.
Game of Thrones – Review of Season 3 Episode 5: Kissed by Fire
This week on Game of Thrones, plots thicken and are thwarted, alliances are made, and punishment is doled out.
Magic in English Thirteenth-Century Miracle Collections
This contribution focuses on miracle collections as a source for medieval magic for three reasons. The first is the very closeness of magic and miracles, for both seek to procure results which transcend nature, and to do this through the medium of a human practitioner.
Bede’s Perspective and Purpose in the Ecclesiastical History of the English People
I argue that Bede’s involvement in ecclesiastical affairs throughout his life both illuminates and clouds his perspective on the history of the English church.
Conflict and Coercion in Southern France
This paper endeavors to examine the mechanisms by which the crown of France was able to subsume the region of Languedoc in the wake of the Albigensian Crusade in the thirteenth century.
The Possible Reasons for the Arab-Khazar Wars
From the middle of the 7th century until the second half of the 8th century, the Arab-Khazar wars were fought by the Umayyad, and later by the Abassid Caliphate against the regional power, the Khazar Khaganate.
The Development of Stained Glass in Gothic Cathedrals
In this research paper, I will be primarily focusing on the stained glass windows and architectural styles employed in five gothic buildings in France, each having their own unique and notable attributes pertaining to the development of stained glass windows.
Peter of Dusburg’s attitude towards the Holy Land in the Crusades Period
Peter of Dusburg, a monk and brethren of the Teutonic Order had been one of the greatest Chronicles writers of the Military Order. He had written his book ‘Chronicon Terrae Prussiae’ in Latin in 1326, during the tenure of the Teutonic Grand Master Werner von Orseln.
Access to the Margins: Outlawry and Narrative spaces in medieval Icelandic outlaw sagas
In a society where social ties and solidarity were needed in order to endure the unwelcoming weather and landscape, exclusion and isolation appear as the worst punishment that man can inflict to man, even worse than death.
Magic for the dead? The archaeology of magic in later medieval burials
Was this magic healing or protective? Did it aim to safeguard the living or conjure the dead? Who were the recipients of such magical rites — and who was responsible for performing them?
The Seven Deadly Sins: Some Problems of Research
In the following pages, I should like to point out a number of aspects or areas which my own study of acedia has convinced me must and can be fruitfully explored.The account does not aim at comprehensiveness; certainly, other students of mediaeval thought and literature will be able to point out other desiderata. If it merely revives some interest in its subject, it will have fulfilled its purpose.
The Eucharistic Man of Sorrows in Late Medieval Art
Eucharistic devotion also found it’s ways of visual expression in the art of the period. Numerous new iconographical types were created in late medieval art for the purpose of visualizing the mystery of the Eucharist.
Dancing plagues and mass hysteria
John Waller on how distress and pious fear have led to bizarre outbreaks across the ages
Maps Illustrating the Viking Invasions of England
The accompanying maps, which were prepared for lecture-purposes, may perhaps be useful to others who want to illustrate a popular account of the Viking invasions of this country
Lincolnshire and the Arthurian Legend
This article is intended to rectify this, proceeding from the widely-held assumption of the existence of a genuinely ‘historical Arthur’, before going on to consider the even more fundamental question of whether we ought to believe in Arthur’s existence at all.
Comparing Harems: Abbasid and Ottoman Harem Organization
The following research delves into the organizational structures of the luxurious harems of Medieval Abbasid and Ottoman Empires; comparing the two different empires’ harems within the political, economic, and social spheres that the royal women lived in.
Queen’s Gold and Intercession: The Case of Eleanor of Aquitaine
This essay will consider basic questions about queen’s gold and intercession. First it will address the mechanics of the levy and collection of queen’s gold, beginning with fundamentals such as the nature of the levy and who paid. An investigation into the origins of queen’s gold will follow.
King John’s Testament and the Last Days of his Reign
King John’s testament is the first royal testament or will to survive in its original form in an English context.
More skeletons discovered at medieval site in Edinburgh
Archaeologists working on the building site of the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation have discovered what appears to be a family tomb, perhaps related to a medieval knight who was discovered in the same location last month.
Richard III may have gone through painful medical treatments to ‘cure’ his scoliosis
Scoliosis – a lateral or side-to-side curvature of the spine – can be a very painful condition to live with. But some of the treatments practised in the late medieval period would have themselves caused sufferers a lot of anguish.