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Fifth Century Archive
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Settlement and Taxes: the Vandals in North Africa
Posted on April 14, 2013 | No CommentsWith the Vandals, the migration of Northern barbarians flowed into a region that had of course been weakened by innumerable internal crises but was still essentially wealthy, productive and well governed. -
Brigit: Goddess, Saint, ‘Holy Woman,’ and Bone of Contention
Posted on March 4, 2013 | No CommentsBrigit1 and Patrick, two saints from the beginnings of Christianity in Ireland in the fifth century CE, retain their popularity with Catholic Christians to this day. -
The British Kingdom of Lindsey
Posted on February 3, 2013 | No CommentsThe first piece of evidence which offers support for the above contention comes from the kingdom-name ‘Lindsey’ itself. Two forms of this name exist in Anglo-Saxon sources, reflecting two different Old English suffixes:6 Lindissi (later Lindesse, as used by Bede and the earliest manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle)7 and Lindesig... -
Rebaptism as a Ritual of Cultural Integration in Vandal Africa
Posted on January 6, 2013 | No CommentsMidway through the first book of his History of the Vandal Persecution, Victor of Vita narrates the story of a Vandal master who deemed it appropriate to allow his two Roman slaves, Martinianus and Maxima, to marry. -
New Testament from the oldest complete Bible available online for the first time
Posted on December 18, 2012 | No CommentsThe New Testament volume from one of the British Library’s most valuable treasures, Codex Alexandrinus, has been made available online for the first time on the British Library’s website. -
Ecclesiastics and Ascetics: Finding Spiritual Authority in Fifth and Sixth Century Palestine
Posted on October 4, 2012 | No CommentsIn the context of ongoing christological controversy and division within eastern Christianity, the relationship between ecclesiastic and ascetic authority is a fruitful avenue of investigation. -
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. -
The Gallic Aristocracy and the Roman Imperial government in the fifth century A.D.
Posted on September 23, 2012 | No CommentsThe recovery, however, proved to be too superficial for the continuing prosperity of either Gaul or the Western Roman Empire. The problems of the imperial government continued with little relief. The government still had to drive out and keep out the barbarians... -
Clovis: How Barbaric, How Pagan?
Posted on August 18, 2012 | No CommentsThe mainstream portrait of Clovis, still dominant in English and American writing, derives its many negative features from secondary sources written a half-century or more after his death and abounding in grossly unreliable anecdotes. -
Shedding Light on a Dark Age: Britain in the Forth and Fifth Centuries
Posted on August 17, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper seeks to examine the fourth and fifth centuries in Britain in order to address the issue of collapse versus continuity after the end of the Roman state. -
Barbarian Invaders and Roman Collaborators
Posted on July 13, 2012 | No CommentsIn a law drawn up on December 10, 408 (CTh 10.10.25) Honorius stated that a barbarian inroad was expected in Illyricum, and that numbers of the inhabitants had taken flight to other provinces. He declared that their freedom was therefore in danger: they were likely to be kidnapped by unscrupulous men and enslaved. -
‘Arthritis’ in Byzantium (AD 324-1453): unknown information from non-medical literary sources
Posted on June 24, 2012 | No CommentsMost Byzantine physicians described several types of arthritis that resemble rheumatoid arthritis, chronic deformans polyarthritis and gout. -
VAGANTES: Necessary Imperfection: The Body of Sainte Marie l’Egyptienne
Posted on March 30, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper seeks to examine the role of the body and its relationship to the world around it in the “vie de sainte” of Marie l’Egyptienne, who is an excellent example of a female saint who begins life as a sinner and transforms her body into something holy. This presentation will focus on the version of Marie l’Egyptienne’s life written by Rutebeuf in the 13th century, but will also bring in elements of other versions and of the stories of other female saints who transform their bodies for comparison. -
A tragic case of complicated labour in early Byzantium (404 A.D.)
Posted on January 10, 2012 | No CommentsThe study of the works of celebrated physicians of that era reveals that many of them had especially been occupied with the specialties of gynecology and obstetrics. -
Christianity and burial in late Iron Age Scotland, AD 400-650
Posted on January 9, 2012 | No CommentsIn the period after the fall of Rome and before the Vikings, Scotland became a Christian society, but there are few historical documents to help understand how this happened. -
The Archaeology of Play Things: Theorising a Toy Stage in the Biography of Objects
Posted on January 8, 2012 | No CommentsThe cemeteries contained the remains of not less than 867 people, some of whom died in childhood, but all of whom, if they had survived the first few years of life... -
Visigoths and Romans: Integration and Ethnicity
Posted on November 15, 2011 | No CommentsThe year was 414 and Galla Placidia, Roman princess and half-sister of Honorius, emperor of the Western Empire, sat next to Athaulf, barbarian king of the Visigoths -
St Benedict of Nursia: the Birth of Western Monasticism
Posted on October 23, 2011 | No CommentsSt Benedict of Nursia: the Birth of Western Monasticism Steele, Helen Published Online, Guernicus.com (2006) Abstract St Benedict of Nursia was the founder of western monasticism and an important figure in... -
A Late Antique Crossbow Fibula in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Posted on October 23, 2011 | No CommentsA Late Antique Crossbow Fibula in the Metropolitan Museum of Art Deppert-Lippitz, Barbara Metropolitan Museum Journal, Vol. 35 (2000) Abstract In 1995 The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired a gold brooch of... -
Theoderic, the Goths, and the Restoration of the Roman Empire
Posted on October 13, 2011 | No CommentsTheoderic, the Goths, and the Restoration of the Roman Empire By Jonathan J. Arnold PhD Dissertation, University of Michigan, 2008 Abstract: This dissertation places “Ostrogothic Italy,” conventionally seen as a... -
The role of the nobility in the creation of Gallo-Frankish society in the late fifth and sixth centuries AD
Posted on October 9, 2011 | No CommentsThe role of the nobility in the creation of Gallo-Frankish society in the late fifth and sixth centuries AD Wood, Catrin Mair Lewis PhD Thesis, University of Nottingham (2002) Abstract The... -
Hierusalem in Laterano: Translation of Sacred Space in Fifth-Century Rome
Posted on October 5, 2011 | No CommentsHierusalem in Laterano: Translation of Sacred Space in Fifth-Century Rome By Christian Sahner New Jerusalems: Hierotopy and Iconography of Sacred Spaces, edited by Alexei Lidov (Moscow, 2009) Introduction: Richard Krautheimer... -
The Ostrogoths in Italy
Posted on July 20, 2011 | No CommentsThe Ostrogoths in Italy By Biagio Saitta Polis: Revista de ideas y formas políticas de la Antigüedad Clásica, Vol. 11 (1999) Introduction: The attempt at Roman-Germanic cohabitation which Odoacer (Odovacar)... -
Constructed Landscapes and Social Memory; Tales of St. Samson in Early Medieval Cornwall
Posted on June 26, 2011 | No CommentsConstructed Landscapes and Social Memory; Tales of St. Samson in Early Medieval Cornwall Harvey, Dr. David C. (Department of Geography, University of Exeter) Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Vol. 20:2... -
The Western Roman Embassy to the Court of Attila in AD 449
Posted on June 20, 2011 | No CommentsThe Western Roman Embassy to the Court of Attila in AD 449 By Hrvoje Gracanin Byzantinoslavica, Vol. 61 (2003) Abstract: Based on the analysis of an early Byzantine source, The...