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Word of Mouth: Charlemagne’s Capitulare de Villis
Posted on May 23, 2013 | No CommentsXavier Riaud examines The Capitulare de Villis, one of Charlemagne’s documents which has a surprising dental content. -
The Ecology and Economics of Medieval Deer Parks
Posted on May 22, 2013 | No CommentsThere is a wealth of literature on a diversity of aspects of medieval parks, from their invertebrate ecologies, to rare lichens and bryophytes, to their herds of deer, their fishponds, and to the politics of fashion and taste and the provision of sport and entertainment for an affluent elite. -
The so-called Genoese World Map of 1457: A Stepping Stone Towards Modern Cartography?
Posted on May 18, 2013 | No CommentsAround the time of Christopher Columbus’s birth, we find on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, especially in the north of Italy, a variety of people particularly interested in problems of geography and cartography. -
English Writings on Chivalry and Warfare during the Hundred Years War
Posted on May 18, 2013 | No CommentsAlongside the Old Testament stories of famous warriors like Joshua and Judas Maccabeus, these chivalric tales were to provide Oldcastle with the appropriate models for knightly behaviour that would, in turn, restore him to the path of heterodoxy. -
Blood Vengeance and the Depiction of Women in La leyenda de los siete infantes de Lara, The Nibelungenlied and Njal’s Saga
Posted on May 18, 2013 | No CommentsDespite countless manifestations in literature of many traditions and cultures, the archetype of vengeance as a theme is a common and current one -
Reincarnation among the Norse: Sifting through the Evidence
Posted on May 17, 2013 | No CommentsThis short article looks at the possibilty of reincarnation as a common alternative concept of life after death among Germanic heathens and then as a possible non-standard alternative belief. -
Black in Camelot (Africans in Arthurian Legend)
Posted on May 16, 2013 | No CommentsExamining depictions of Africans in medieval and contemporary Arthurian literature, television and film. -
Medieval Histories – On balancing along the precipice between Medieval Living History and the Medieval Studies of Academia
Posted on May 15, 2013 | No CommentsBut it is also easy to detect something else, which is the beleaguered and policed frontier between academia and living history – or as it is often called between Medieval Studies and Medievalism. Something both parties are acutely aware of. -
The Jerusalem Conquest of 492/1099 in the Medieval Arabic Historiography of the Crusades: From Regional Plurality to Islamic Narrative
Posted on May 14, 2013 | No CommentsA number of contemporary or near-contemporary Arabic texts leave no doubt that a massacre did take place, but they contain no evidence of large-scale carnage of the town’s population that was any greater than that which took place in cities and towns such as Antioch, Caesarea or Maʿarrat al-Nuʿmān. -
The Orkney Islands
Posted on May 13, 2013 | No CommentsThe Islands of Orkney are a mystical place steeped in history and legend. Like the rest of the British Isles, Orkney is an amalgam of influences. -
Female brewers in Holland and England
Posted on May 7, 2013 | No CommentsI also want to know why women worked in those professions, what the background of these women was and if changes occurred over time. -
Human Monstrosity in Terminator II: Judgement Day, Beowulf and The Passion of St Christopher
Posted on May 6, 2013 | No CommentsThe idea of a humanoid monster that can be reluctantly empathized with can be traced back to various source texts. For example, Grendel in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf is a bloodthirsty savage, however upon a close reading of the poem he appears more human. -
The Crusades: A Modern Perspective on the 900th Anniversary of the Event
Posted on May 5, 2013 | No CommentsThe Crusades were not wars between states or nations but a great ideological conflict between two cultures: Christian Europe and the Islamic Near East. -
The Erotic Paternoster
Posted on May 4, 2013 | No CommentsThe word paternoster has been applied in a variety of senses. In the Middle ages paternoster became a synonym for lovemaking. -
Acquiring, Flaunting and Destroying Silk In Late Anglo-Saxon England
Posted on May 4, 2013 | No CommentsThis paper will argue that vibrantly coloured silks and other elaborate textiles were ubiquitous in England in the late Anglo-Saxon period. -
Late Medieval Attitudes on the Evil in Warfare: Honoré Bouvet’s Arbre des batailles and its Sources
Posted on May 2, 2013 | No CommentsMy approach in this paper will be to look at Bouvet’s view on the nature of warfare under these broad guidelines, and to treat them as a part of the greater tradition of medieval thought that was fed simulatenously by both pagan and Christian writings. -
War and Peace in the Works of Chaucer and his Contemporaries
Posted on May 1, 2013 | No CommentsBut whenever authors of work on chivalry and war during the Middle Ages have tried to determine the exact historical influence and result of chivalric ideals, they have run into difficulties. That is why there are such widely varying hypotheses concerning the 'Golden Age' of chivalry. -
Jewish Hawking in Medieval France: Falconry, Rabbenu Tam, and the Tosafists
Posted on April 29, 2013 | No CommentsFalconry 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
Posted on April 29, 2013 | No CommentsIn 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. -
Magic in English Thirteenth-Century Miracle Collections
Posted on April 29, 2013 | No CommentsThis 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
Posted on April 28, 2013 | No CommentsI 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
Posted on April 28, 2013 | No CommentsThis 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
Posted on April 28, 2013 | No CommentsFrom 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
Posted on April 28, 2013 | No CommentsIn 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
Posted on April 28, 2013 | No CommentsPeter 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.