Who was part of the medieval family?
A look at the size, concepts and members of the family and household in the Later Middle Ages.
Bastards and Priests in the Middle Ages with Sara McDougall
What was it like to be a bastard in medieval Europe? Were you excluded from one of the most important institutions of the time: the priesthood? Danièle is joined by Sara McDougall to talk about bastards, priests, and if you could be both at that same time.
The Ilkhanid Mongols, the Christian Armenians, and the Islamic Mamluks: a study of their relations, 1220-1335
This work seeks to fill a gap in the academic literature concerning the study of the Ilkhanid Mongols of the Middle East during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries CE using Armenian, Persian, Arabic, and Syriac primary sources in English translation.
How Medieval Kings and Queens raised their children – an interview with Carolyn Harris
Carolyn Harris’ latest book Raising Royalty: 1000 Years of Royal Parenting looks at the unique challenges of being parents to princes and princesses.
10 Medieval Royal Parents Whose Decisions Influence the Lives of Royal Children Today
From royal baby names to marrying for love – how five medieval English couples influence the lives of royal children today.
Spousal Abuse in Fourteenth-Century Yorkshire
One area which historians of marriage have chosen to focus on in particular as a measure of love within marriage is spousal abuse. Two approaches have been employed in this respect.
Grandparents in Urban and Rural Lower Languedoc at the End of the Middle Ages
This article analyzes the role and place of grandparents in their kinship groups in Lower Languedoc at the end of the Middle Ages.
BOOK REVIEW: A Year in the Life of Medieval England by Toni Mount
Author Toni Mount is back again, but this time with an in-depth look at daily life in Medieval England. Her book, A Year in the Life of Medieval England, explores war, medicine, marriage, disputes, work, and cooking. A fascinating almanac of bits and bobs about Medieval England from the most most mundane, to the most important events in its history.
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.
Parental Grief and Prayer in the Middle Ages: Religious Coping in Swedish Miracle Stories
This article focuses on expressions of bereavement and religious coping in medieval miracle stories from Sweden.
Picturing Maternal Anxiety in the Miracle of the Jew of Bourges
During the middle ages, one of the most popular and most frequently illustrated Miracles of the Virgin Mary was the Miracle of the Jew of Bourges. According to the text of the miracle, the Virgin saves a young Jewish boy after his father throws him into a fiery oven upon learning he attended a Christian mass.
Medieval Parenting Advice
For as long as there have been children, there has been parental advice. This week, let’s take five minutes to look at two Middle English texts that deal with advice
‘There is more to the story than this, of course’: Character and Affect in Philippa Gregory’s The White Queen
Philippa Gregory has critiqued gendered representations of Elizabeth Woodville and has stated that her 2009 novel The White Queen fictionalises Woodville’s history with the aim of challenging such depictions.
Replacing the Father – Representing the Child: A Few Notes on the European History of Guardianship
There are medieval European varieties of guardianship that is closely connected to feudal forms of power relations. In English feudal society, where inheritance practice was largely dominated by the principles of primogeniture, the oldest male heir of a deceased father would become the ward of the feudal guardian.
Kissing Cousins: Incest and Sex Change in Tristan de Nanteuil
In this paper I re-examine Blanchandine‘s sex change in light of its relation to the issue of incest; as I will show, incest is directly related to the sex change and also punctuates the narrative at other points. Tristan de Nanteuil depicts two sexual and/or romantic relationships between cousins…
Royal and Magnate Bastards in the Later Middle Ages: The View from Scotland
Theory and Practice in Scotland and Elsewhere Medieval Scotland’s law on bastardy is set out in the lawbook Regiam Majestatem (c.1320)…In England things were different, as Michael Hicks has demonstrated. Admittedly, English heraldic practice eventually followed the French, and the formula ‘X bastard of Y’ is occasionally found for magnates’ bastards.
CONFERENCES: Count Hugh of Troyes and the Crusading Nexus of Champagne
This is my summary of a paper given at the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London.
Making a difference in tenth-century politics: King Athelstan’s sisters and Frankish queenship
In the early years of the tenth century several Anglo-Saxon royal women, all daughters of King Edward the Elder of Wessex (899-924) and sisters (or half-sisters) of his son King Athelstan (924-39), were despatched across the Channel as brides for Frankish and Saxon rulers and aristocrats. This article addresses the fate of some of these women through an analysis of their political identities.
‘Forgive me for all I have done and all I must do’: Portrayals of Negative Motherhood in George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords
I will argue that Martin both transgresses traditional high fantasy narratives but also employs other stereotypes found in general literature regarding motherhood and female power, often negative in tone.
‘Romeo and Juliet of Stonegate’: a medieval marriage in crisis
The course of the case can therefore be reconstructed, issues touched by the case identified and educated guesses can be given about what happened to the principal actors after the case had been abandoned by the archbishop’s court.
Integrative Medicine: Incorporating Medicine and Health into the Canon of MedievalEuropean History
Hitherto peripheral (if not outright ignored) in general medieval historiography, medieval medical history is now a vibrant subdiscipline, one that is rightly attracting more and more attention from ‘mainstream’ historians and other students of cultural history.
Youth and Old Age in Late Medieval London
This article is concerned with the relationship between life stages and a person’s place in urban society. The two life stages studied here are the end of youth and the onset of old age, that is to say the two stages at either end of that period in life when men were most active economically, socially, and politically, when they were expected to build a family and run a business.
Looking in the Past for a Discourse of Motherhood: Birgitta of Sweden and Julia Kristeva
This essay explores two parallel trajectories of mythic retrospection: medieval “myths” of the Biblical past (like Birgitta’s prophetic visions), and modern “myths” of the medieval past (like Kristeva’s survey).
Love and Marriage: Medieval Style
What may be even more surprising about medieval marriage is that it was (at least officially) very much based on mutual consent.
New book examines Medieval Muslim Motherhood
Modern discourse often casts science and religion as bitter enemies. But if you were to rewind roughly 12 centuries, you would find at least one worldview in which the two domains were considered symbiotic.