Eastern Europe Archive
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Infant Burials and Christianization: The View from East Central Europe
Posted on May 19, 2013 | No CommentsThis was the second paper in the Early Medieval Europe I series given at KZOO and another fabulous archaeology paper. It contrasted infant grave sites in early converted medieval Poland and Anglo Saxon England. -
Bohemian Barbarians: Bohemia in Late Antiquity
Posted on April 15, 2013 | No CommentsThe settlement of the Bohemian Basin passed through a very complicated development during Late Antiquity. -
Barbarians to the Balkans
Posted on March 17, 2013 | No CommentsIn the High Middle Ages, in a now clearly articulated opposition between the West and the East, Europe and the Balkans began to emerge and be fixed as distinct and hostile entities. In Crusading chronicles, the Balkan lands lay on the way from Europe to the Holy Land. In the late twelfth and in the thirteenth centuries, the conventional separation line between the civilized and barbarian world, identical with the river Danube, began to break down and the barbarians came to be located in the Balkans. -
Why There May Have Been Contacts between Slovenes and Jews before 1000 A.D.
Posted on March 16, 2013 | No CommentsThe first documented evidence of a Jewish presence in Slovenia dates from the 13th century, when Yiddish- and Italian-speaking Jews migrated south from Austria to Maribor and Celje, and east from Italy into Ljubljana. This is a good three centuries after the first mention of Jews in the Austrian lands. -
Jews of Medieval Eastern Europe migrated from Caucasus region, study shows
Posted on January 22, 2013 | No CommentsDespite being one of the most genetically analysed groups, the origin of European Jews has remained obscure. -
In search of a missing link: The Bogomils and Zoroastrianism
Posted on January 13, 2013 | No CommentsBoth Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism are dualist relig- ions. Implicit in the beliefs held true by these religions is the notion of co-equal and co-eternal principles. Implicit in this notion is the belief that both good and evil exist and are acted upon from the very beginning. -
The Morosinis in Hungary under King Andrew III and the two versions of the death of the Queen of Hungary Tommasina
Posted on January 9, 2013 | No CommentsIn reality, Charles Robert’s predecessor, the last Arpád, Andrew III, called the Vene- tian, was already a foreigner on the throne of Hungary. -
Princess Salomea and Hungarian – Polish Relations in the Period 1214 – 1241
Posted on January 9, 2013 | No CommentsIt is necessary to say at the beginning that almost all works devoted to Salomea come from the pens of Polish historians. Slovak and Hungarian historiography has devoted little attention to her, in spite of the fact that she played a part in the history of the Kingdom of Hungary. -
Mummified saints of the Northern Croatian Littoral
Posted on January 8, 2013 | No CommentsEuropean mummies occupy a significant place among the world known mummies. -
The Chronicle of Ulrich Richental as an Exceptional Source for the History of Slovakia
Posted on December 19, 2012 | No CommentsOne of the most interesting testimonies is the work of a burgher of Konstanz Ulrich Richental, who gave a straight forward account of everyday life in the city during the council, of things he saw, heard or learnt directly from participants in the council. -
Fools, Devils, and Alchemy: Secular Images in the Monastery
Posted on December 9, 2012 | No CommentsThe fool is one of the most popular and stable character types throughout cultures and times. This is especially true of medieval Europe. The fool, sometimes a jester, sometimes a clown or a trickster, is always recognizable through his abnormal appearance. -
Conversion and Empire: Byzantine Missionaries, Foreign Rulers, and Christian Narratives (ca. 300-900)
Posted on December 3, 2012 | No CommentsFor a broader modern audience today, if taken somewhat journalistically, Pusicius’ story is an example that cuts along cultural and religious lines that presumably originate in ancient, political divisions and confirm a “clash of civilizations” thesis. -
A diplomat in the service of the Kings of Hungary: The activity of the Bishop of Nitra Antony of Šankovce at the end of the Middle Ages
Posted on November 27, 2012 | No CommentsAccording to this medieval handbook, the work of the diplomat includes: 'honouring the Church and the Imperial Crown, protecting the rights of the kingdom, strengthening obedience and friendship, agreeing peace, removing the possible causes of future unpleasantness reprimanding tyrants, making rebels obedient...' -
The Effects of the Mongol Empire on Russia
Posted on November 25, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper looks at the Mongol Empire's impacts on Russia in terms of religion, art, language, government, and the ultimate rise of Moscow. -
Transylvanian Identities in the Middle Ages
Posted on November 25, 2012 | No CommentsIdentity has become a subject of historical exploration as it is also one of the themes examined from the perspectives of various disciplines belonging to the social sciences such as sociology, psychology or anthropology. -
Noble and Urban Family-Structures in the Late Middle Ages in the Hungarian Kingdom
Posted on November 15, 2012 | No CommentsThe everyday life of the clan people was filled with disputes over small plots, since it was the main duty of each generation to preserve and enlarge the lands of the clan. It was also the basic interest of the members of the clans to secure the survival of the clan by marriages that were fertile in every sense. It was a sign of the strength of the clan that the members had to consult before taking decisions in questions of marriage, inheritance. -
The Dangerous Dead: The Early Medieval deviant burial at Southwell, Nottinghamshire in a wider context
Posted on October 30, 2012 | No CommentsThis was the deviant burial, which had been buried (or reburied) intact along with a further leg and lower arm bone...Without speculating wildly on the implications of the iron studs, it is known that treatment of this sort was accorded to bodies which had died unnaturally or when there was some reason to fear the supernatural’. -
God’s Warriors from the Czech Kingdom – the Terror of Central and Eastern Europe in the First Half of the 15th Century
Posted on October 28, 2012 | No CommentsThe aim of this study is to point out a distinct phenomenon in the history of Central And Eastern Europe wherein part of the population of a fairly small kingdom in Central Europe invoked justified fear throughout the majority of Europe. Czech history is not all that popular a theme of study within the framework of European history. One of the few exceptions is the period of the first half of the 15th century in particular. -
Scissors or Sword? The Symbolism of a Medieval Haircut
Posted on October 6, 2012 | No CommentsSimon Coates explores the symbolic meanings attached to hair in the early medieval West, and how it served to denote differences in age, sex, ethnicity and status. -
A Distant World: Russian Relations with Europe Before Peter the Great
Posted on October 4, 2012 | No CommentsDespite their isolation and poverty, the Slavic plowmen succeeded in settling this unforgiving region, expanding their numbers, and, most importantly, creating the beginnings of a trading network along the many rivers of the region—the western Dvina, the Volkhov, the northern Dvina, and the Dniepr and its tributaries. -
Mandeville’s Intolerance: The Contest for Souls and Sacred Sites in The Travels of Sir John Mandeville
Posted on October 3, 2012 | No CommentsWhile Chaucer‟s knight has traveled to and fought in Spain, North Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia Minor, Sir John claims to have visited the entire known world from Constantinople and the Holy Land to the farthest reaches of Asia. -
The Amber Trail in early medieval Eastern Europe.
Posted on September 30, 2012 | No CommentsThe standard method employed in characterization studies of amber, namely infrared spectrography, can discriminate roughly between Baltic amber and amber from other European sources... -
Contacts between the Romanians and Turkic nomads. Disinformation, mystification and xenophobia: N. Berend
Posted on September 24, 2012 | No CommentsIt is not as much the lack of minimal knowledge of the history of medieval Moldavia which astounds the reader of the review, as the outpour of misinformation and a hardly veiled bias against Romanians. -
The medieval peasant house in Bohemia – continuity and change
Posted on September 16, 2012 | No CommentsThe archaeologically resolved theme of the medieval peasant house can be divided into three developmental areas, an understanding of which has various groundings, while yielding diverse results. -
The Forgotten Text of Nikolai Golovin: New Light on the Igor Tale
Posted on September 14, 2012 | No CommentsMann argues that a rare text of the Skazanie o Mamaevom poboishche comes from an early, fifteenth-century redaction that scholars could never locate—a redaction that is the prototype for all the redactions that have been studied heretofore. He maintains that unique parallels between this redaction and the Slovo o polka Igoreve support the hypothesis that the Igor Tale was an oral epic song in a tradition that actually continued into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when oral tales about the Kulikovo Battle (1380) were composed. He places the new parallels in the context of other evidence for oral composition in the Igor Tale.
