What Seamus Heaney Did to Beowulf : An Essay on Translation and Transmutation of English Identity
Heaney’s Beowulf provides us with a great deal which other translations do not: a poetic fluency rendered in Modern English, a skilled understanding of linguistic choices, and most importantly, a consciousness of the translative act which negotiates fluidly between modern perspectives and Anglo Saxon artistry.
Post-mortem Ablation of the Heart: a Medieval Funerary Practice
In the Middle Ages the heart represented the whole body. Unlike modern man for whom the brain is the centre of higher function, medieval Christians saw the heart as the moral and intel- lectual centre. Saint Augustine contributed much to this attitude by describing the heart not only as the seat of intelligence, will power, memory, emotion, and other feelings but also as the authentic and indivisible source of life.
To Take Care of the Monks, Take Care of Christina: Christina of Markyate and the Medieval Spiritual/Material Market
In this essay I will delineate two of these emphases: (1) Christina’s powerful interaction with boundaries and the spaces they demarcate, and (2) the material/spiritual economy that develops between Christina and Geoffrey, the Abbot of the St. Albans Monastery. I will then argue that these emphases together form a message that might have been aimed at The Life’s monastic (and to some extent aristocratic) audience, perhaps even the abbots who succeeded Geoffrey.
Impregnable friendship : locating desire in the middle English ‘Amis and Amiloun’
Scholarship on Amis and Amiloun has generally been divided into two critical schools. The majority of critics have read the work as an exemplar of perfect friendship, overlooking (or ignoring) any trace of homoeroticism, citing the possibility itself as anachronistic, or explaining away its presence by offering historical or theoretical justification for intimacy among medieval men.
The Territorial Strategy of the Italian City-State
How did Europe move from a medieval system characterised by several overlapping territorial strategies, to one dominated by a single, territorially exclusive model of rule?
Plagues, Epidemics and Their Social and Economic Impact on the Egyptian Society during the Mameluke Period
The study aims at shedding light on plagues and epidemics that hit Egypt during the Mameluke period through describing the plague disease and the plagues and epidemics that hit Egypt, and their social and economic effects on the Egyptian society, The study is based on some historical sources contemporary of the Mameluke period, especially the book “Al-Suluk li-marifatiduwal Al-muluk” by Al Maqrizi.
A Study on the Effects of Ghazan Khan’s Reformative Measures for the Settlement of the Nomadic Mongols (1295-1304)
The Ilkhanid’s sovereignty in Iran was part of the great empire under the command of Genghis Khan and his successors. It extended broadly from Korea to Eastern Europe and China to Iran and Syria. Such conquest originated from Mongolia (Middle Asia), which was the original land of these homeless nomadic people. They lived by shepherding, hunting and sometimes looting nearby tribes or civilized centers.
Queen Guinevere. A queen through time
According to Hopkins, “[Arthur’s] queen, Guinevere, is more elusive, less written about [than Arthur and his knights], and yet has been for centuries a central character playing a critical role in the rise and fall of the Round Table” (6). He goes on by characterizing her as “a key figure in the life of Camelot, this remarkable woman is seen variably as scholar, seductress, warrior, and dignified gentle beauty by the countless artists and writers who have depicted her. Who, then, was Guinevere?” (10) The purpose of this essay is to answer this question by looking at different texts and novels referring to the Queen.
A short exploration of the inauguration of kings in late medieval Ireland, and its depiction in bardic poetry
The status and image of a king was, at least partially, derived from the sacral king of sagas, such as that of Niall Noígiallach. In these sagas it is conveyed that under a righteous and unblemished king of royal ancestry there is peace and prosperity…I will give an overview of the elements of these ceremonies, the sources in which they are mentioned, and the developments during the high and late medieval period.
Noble Women’s Position in the Capetian Dynasty
In this paper, I will try to show mainly the women’s position in the noble family and its marriage in the Capetian Dynasty which is considered as a typical feudal period.
The Peasant War of Upper Swabia
Here we deal with the situation of Upper Swabia (Oberschwaben, South Germany) of 1525, where in the revolts of the late Middle Ages old law appeared and in the Peasant War both old law and divine law appeared.
Catalonia’s Mediterranean Expansion: An Instance of Colonialism?
It is apparent that not all historians agree on what Catalonian expansion means, and what expansion meant to Catalonia.
Holy Meditations and Earthly Curiosities: Understanding Late Medieval Pilgrims to Jerusalem
There were many worthy sites along the way, destinations in themselves, but Jerusalem in particular was unrivaled. It lured pilgrims to face death just to stand upon Mountjoy, that fabled vantage point overlooking the city.
Burial of King Richard III to cost £1 million
The remains of Richard III will be buried with honour beneath a raised tomb within a specially created area in Leicester Cathedral. The announcement has pleased many observers, although some are hopeful that English king will received a state funeral.
‘Defending the Christian Faith with Our Blood’. The Battle of Lepanto (1571) and the Venetian Eastern Adriatic: Impact of a Global Conflict on the Mediterranean Periphery
The battle of Lepanto, which took place on the 7th of October 1571, was the greatest naval battle of oar driven vessels in the history of the Mediterranean1. It was then that the mighty Ottoman navy suffered its first and utter defeat in a direct confrontation with Christian forces, joined in the Holy League. Its purpose was to help Venice in the defence of Cyprus, stormed by the Ottoman troops in July of 1570, but to no avail, as on the 3rd of August 1571 the island was taken by the Ottomans.
Organized Collective Violence in Twelfth and Thirteenth Century Tuscan Countryside: Some Case Studies from Central and North Eastern Tuscany
Violence is often thought of as a characteristic of all medieval societies. How such societies chose to exercise this violence is therefore a good, and understudied, way into understanding the basic rules about how they worked. Concentrating on twelfth and thirteenth century Tuscany, my intention is to show that a specific form of violence, namely organized collective violence, was not an option available to all social groups within the medieval rural society of northern Italy…
Crac des Chevaliers struck by missile, heavily damaged
Video footage provided by rebels in the Syrian Civil War shows an air strike on Crac des Chevaliers, one of the most famous castles of the Middle Ages.
The Moon in the Middle Ages
People in the Middle Ages asked what was the moon made of? How far away was it? Could it make my child vindictive? Here is what they found out.
Bread and Falcons: The View from Crete in 1501
An overview of 62 letters written between 1500 and 1502 by Bartolomeo Minio, Venetian Captain of Crete.
Religious and Cultural Boundaries between Vikings and Irish: The Evidence of Conversion
If we compare sources from England, the horror with which viking attacks were viewed is immediately apparent. The heathenism of vikings is stressed as one of their dire attributes in Alcuin’s famous response to news of the attack on Lindisfarne in 793. Literary accounts of vikings also became more lengthy and imaginative over time.
Lexical imposition Old Norse vocabulary in Scottish Gaelic
Although few specifics are known about the historical daily patterns of interaction between ON speakers and Gaelic speakers in the Highlands and Western/Hebrides Islands of what is present-day Scotland, it is clear neverthe- less that the groups lived more or less side by side in that region over a period of several centuries.
Ibn Jubayr: The Rihla
Abu ‘l-Husayn Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Jubayr (1145-1217) was not an exceptional man. As a relatively ordinary, middle-aged Muslim, Ibn Jubayr was neither the first nor the last to leave Al-Andalus to perform the hajj. Admiring kings only from afar, the closest that Ibn Jubayr came to royalty were encounters with imperial tax collectors. Paradoxically though, it is precisely Ibn Jubayr’s lack of distinction that helped earn him repute throughout the Islamic world in his time. It also makes him the ideal subject of the present study.
Avicenna’s Concept of Cardiovascular Drug Targeting in Medicamenta Cordialia
Avicenna (980 – 1037 AD) known as the prince of physicians in the west was one of the most prominent Persian thinkers, philosophers, and physicians. Owing to his interests in cardiology, he authored considerable works on different aspects of cardiology.
‘Cast out into the hellish night’: Pagan Virtue and Pagan Poetics in Lorenzo Valla’s De voluptate
Valla wrote about Epicureanism before the Renaissance rediscovery of classical Epicurean texts. Poggio Bracciolini had not yet circulated his newly-discovered manuscript of first century Epicurean philosopher Lucretius’ De rerum natura, and Valla wrote without access to Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Philosophers, which discussed Epicurus’ teachings in greater detail.
Absoluimus uos uice beati petri apostolorum principis. Episcopal authority and the reconciliation of excommunicants in England and Frankia c. 900-c.1050
No mention is made of any rite being followed by Bishop Wulfstan on this occasion, but services for the reconciliation of excommunication are first recorded in the tenth and eleventh centuries.