A peasant is a peasant, is a peasant…or is s/he? Was the life of a peasant who lived in the coastal regions of England the same as that of the peasant who made his livelihood toiling on the land for his local lord?
The Anglo-Saxon War-Culture and The Lord of the Rings: Legacy and Reappraisal
January 18, 2015 By
The literature of war in English claims its origin from the Homeric epics, and the medieval accounts of chivalry and the crusades.
High-Tech Feudalism: Warrior Culture and Science Fiction TV
November 9, 2014 By
“Richard ΠΙ with aliens” is how Cornell (102) describes “Sins of the Father,” an episode of Star Trek: TheNext Generation (hereafter TNG) in which the Klingon warrior Worf, son of Mogh, seeks to restore his family’s honour by exposing and challenging those responsible for falsely accusing his dead father of treason to the Klingon Empire.
Crafting the witch: Gendering magic in medieval and early modern England
November 2, 2014 By
This project documents and analyzes the gendered transformation of magical figures occurring in Arthurian romance in England from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries.
BOOK REVIEW: Plague Land by SD Sykes
September 4, 2014 By
My review of SD Sykes brilliant medieval thriller, Plague Land.
Manor Village and Individual in Medieval England
August 25, 2014 By
This thesis explores peasant life of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in England from information found in the manorial court rolls-the village court records–of Ramsey Hepman grove and Bury.
Signs of Power. Manorial Demesnes in Medieval Iceland
August 20, 2014 By
An important aspect of medieval Icelandic social organization, namely the manor, has been neglected in previous research, and very little research has been undertaken comparing Icelandic manorial organization with other regions. This article focuses on one aspect of manorial organization, namely the manorial demesne or central farm of the manor.
Mapping the Medieval Countryside
June 18, 2014 By
My summary of a Institute of Historical Research session on the digitization of records in Late Medieval England.
Royal and Magnate Bastards in the Later Middle Ages: The View from Scotland
June 15, 2014 By
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.
Bastard Feudalism in England in the Fourteenth Century
March 3, 2014 By
As this summary indicates, the study of fifteenth-century bastard feudalism has shown the necessity of exploring both the private relationship – its nature, extent and function – and the public system of local rule within which it operated and of which it was an essential part.
Tenure to Contract: Lordship and Clientage in Thirteenth-Century England
February 23, 2014 By
English historians have increasingly stressed the underlying continuity between feudalism and ‘bastard feudalism.’ Indentured retaining is no longer seen as a corrupted and disruptive form of feudalism, but instead as its ‘logical successor.’
The Knights in the Middle Ages of England
February 14, 2014 By
Chivalry was a special phenomenon in the Middle Ages of Europe, and was also a part of the military system in the Middle Ages of Europe.
Advocating change: monasteries, territories and justice between East and West Francia, 11th-12th centuries
February 1, 2014 By
This article looks at the question of the formation of territorial principalities in western Europe through the issue of ecclesiastical advocacy.
Managing the Commons: The role of the elites in the uses of common lands in the Midlands of the kingdom of Valencia during the Middle Ages
December 21, 2013 By
In a recent paper, Danie Curtis has given a framework for classifying preindustrial societies in accordance with four variables, these are, the property, the power, the market of basic products and the modes of production.
The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe
December 6, 2013 By
Historians have for years harbored doubts about the term ‘feudalism’ and the phrase ‘feudal system,’ which has often been used as a synonym for it.
European Chivalry in the 1490s
April 1, 2013 By
This paper’s first goal is to give some idea of the atmosphere of the decade, of the pervasiveness of this chivalric element. Chivalry functioned as a medium for international understanding and communication, a common social, cultural, political, and even religious language.
Functions of the Cantred in Medieval Ireland
March 17, 2013 By
The cantred as territorial division was recognised everywhere in Ireland by the Anglo-Norman colonists in the first decades of the establishment of the colony. The subsequent use made of these units depended on a number of variables.
The Family Consciousness in Medieval Genoa: The Case of the Lomellini
March 10, 2013 By
The most famous figure of the family in this century was Napoleone Lomellini. He was a member of the ‘anziani’ and was known as ‘multum dives et magnus mercator a very rich and important merchant’
Friendship structures – modern and pre-modern
March 3, 2013 By
At the same time, friendship has been shown, by medievalists working on many different regions and societies, to have been a widespread social bond often, indeed predominantly, cultivated outside personal, emotional attachments, and often explicitly as a form of allegiance, carrying concomitant expectations and obligations of mutual support; as such, it was central to political organisation.
Conquest or Colonisation: The Scandinavians in Ryedale from the Ninth to Eleventh Centuries
November 25, 2012 By
The study of settlement history has developed within the fields of history, archaeology and geography. As a result much of the work carried out in settlement studies has borrowed the research and conclusions of scholars from other disciplines.
Shifting Experiences: The Changing Roles of Women in the Italian, Lowland, and German Regions of Western Europe from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period
November 12, 2012 By
Specifically, the thesis compares and analyzes the changing roles that women could employ economically, politically, socially, and religiously.
Technological Change in Medieval England: A Critique of the Neo-Malthusian Argument
October 13, 2012 By
The last two sections will address this issue by dividing the material into two periods preceding and following the great epidemic. The interpretation that will be provided is heavily indebted to Brenner.
Lordship, service and worship in Julian of Norwich
August 26, 2012 By
Both lord and servant, as Rosemary Horrox puts it, lived in ‘a society where standing was intimately bound up with “face” – what contemporaries called worship’.
The personnel of English and Welsh castles, 1272-1422
August 22, 2012 By
In England, the role played on the continent by the castellanies would appear to have been performed by the county castle and the sheriff, a post that remained firmly under the king’s control in all but a few counties. Instead, a more subtle link between the castle community and political power will have to be found. It will be searched for in the appointment of constables to royal castles, and in grants of ownership of castles, royal or forfeited. It may be found in the building activity that was so common in this period, or in the marriage alliances that created many of the great castle owning estates.
Anglo-Norman defence strategy in selected English border and maritime counties, 1066-1087
August 22, 2012 By
Ella Armitage’s analysisof early Norman castles in 1912 provides a clear espousalof this view, in particular her statement that in England the reasonsfor the erection of mottes seem to have been manorial rather than military; that is, the Norman landholder desired a safe residence for himself amidst a hostile peasantry, rather than a strong military position which could hold out against skilful and well-armed foes.
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