Is Ashgate Publishing about to close?
With Ashgate Publishing’s American office closing this week, and its British office rumoured to do the same next month, it seems that days are numbered for one of the most important publisher’s in the field of medieval studies.
Free Online course – Exploring English: Magna Carta
The British Council and FutureLearn are teaming up to offer a free online course on Magna Carta aimed at non-native English speakers. The course, Exploring English: Magna Carta, begins next week.
The Use of the Lead and Line by Early Navigators in the North Sea?
This paper draws attention to the lack of information as to how early North Sea sailors navigated, particularly during the one thousand year period that followed Roman times.
Making Medievalists Merry!
Making a list and checking it twice? Looking for something for Black Friday? Shopping for a scholar? Check out our shop for some items with a medieval bent!
The Snow Baby: A Cautionary Tale
Most of the time, fabliaux are lighthearted and lusty, but occasionally they stray into dark humour, like ‘The Snow Baby’.
Between A Rock And A Hot Place: The Role Of Subjectivity In The Medieval Ordeal By Hot Iron
This article discusses various forms of ordeals, such as the ordeal of hot iron, and analyzes whether, and to what extent, these ordeals could have served as ‘rational’ forms of adjudication during the period.
Medieval Tastes: Food, Cooking, and the Table
In his new history of food, acclaimed historian Massimo Montanari traces the development of medieval tastes, both culinary and cultural, from raw materials to market and captures their reflections in today’s food trends.
The Struggle is Real: Where are the Medieval Economists?!
Another fascinating paper from “Making the Medieval Relevant” was given by Daniel Curtis, a specialist in Social and Economic History, and a professor at the University of Utrecht.
The Sick and The Dead: Medieval Concepts of Illness and Spinal Disability
There is an often erroneous idea that past societies were a) very sick, and b) didn’t care about the sick. This as I want to show is not the case. I will show examples of illness, but I also want to show that ideas of what is sick and what needs healing are not the same as our own.
Book Talk: Ivory Vikings, by Nancy Marie Brown
Nancy Marie Brown speaking on her new book Ivory Vikings: The Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World and the Woman Who Made Them, at Cornell University on October 15, 2015
England’s Immigrants 1330-1550: Resident Aliens in the Later Middle Ages
Paper by Bart Lambert given at Medieval and Early Modern Records Seminar held in Leeds, on August 2, 2014
Animated Epics: The Canterbury Tales
A 1998 animated version of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
Guns in Scotland: the manufacture and use of guns and their influence on warfare from the fourteenth century to c.1625
Guns first came into use in Western Europe in the fourteenth century and the Scots were using them by the 1380s.
Which Royal Ruler Were You In Your Past Life?
Ever felt like you were descended from royalty? Find out which ruler you used to be with this personality quiz.
Making the Medieval Relevant: Crossing Boundaries: Interdisciplinary Studies on Disease and Disability
A summary of a paper given by Professor Christina Lee at the University of Nottingham’s “Making the Medieval Relevant” Conference.
Last Words from a Medieval Mother to her Son
Yesterday, I stumbled across a passage from the Liber Manualis, written by a ninth-century Frankish woman named Dhuoda to her fifteen-year-old son.
“These are beautiful words to understand” – Proverbs from the 14th century
‘If those who wound felt the pain of those who are wounded, they could not often wound with pleasure.’
John Hardyng and his Chronicle
Hardyng, an ex-soldier and spy of Henry V, set about composing the work after he ‘retired’ to the Augustinian priory at South Kyme, Lincolnshire, in the 1440s or 1450s.
Video shows the reconstruction of an Early Medieval Turf House
This time-lapse video shows the reconstruction of an early medieval turf house in the northern Dutch town of Firdgum.
Christmas market coming to York’s Barley Hall
If you are interested in a Christmas market with a medieval flavour, Barley Hall in York will be the place to go later this month, as they are organising a festive shopping treat stocked full of unique gifts.
Ponderous, Cruel and Mortal: A Review of Medieval Poleaxe Technique from Surviving Treatises of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
There is no weapon more evocative of the brute force in violence both public and private, a weapon that seems to be perhaps epitomize and even enshrine violence on a grand scale.
‘Pirates, robbers and other malefactors’: The role played by violence at sea in relations between England and the Hanse towns, 1385 – 1420
This thesis will argue that the impact of specific phenomena, particularly the activities of the Vitalienbrüder, on Anglo-Hanseatic relations has been not only neglected but misunderstood, and that attention to English sources can help flesh out our understanding of the Vitalienbrüder’s history.
Call for Papers: International Society of Medievalism Annual Conference
The next annual conference of the International Society of Medievalism will take place at Bamberg University and is scheduled to take place 18-20 July 2016.
Yale University acquires ‘treasure trove’ of medieval manuscripts
Otto F. Ege, an Ohio-based scholar and book dealer, made a controversial practice of dismantling medieval and Renaissance manuscripts and selling the individual leaves for profit during the first half of the last century.