France Archive
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Making the martyr: the liturgical persona of Saint Thomas Becket in visual imagery
Posted on February 10, 2013 | No CommentsHow was the historical figure of the worldly chancellor reconciled to the saintly archbishop who was martyred for his faith on the floor of Canterbury Cathedral? One of the most important vehicles of expression in the Middle Ages was the liturgy. -
Oh, for Shame: Public Perception and Punishment in Chretien’s Cliges
Posted on February 9, 2013 | No CommentsTo develop this argument, a basic understanding of medieval society's conventions is necessary in order to outline the parameters of this honor/shame culture. -
Understanding terrorism and radicalisation: a network approach
Posted on February 5, 2013 | No CommentsOur most recent work with this model has concentrated on the suppression of a network in the case of the Inquisition and the Cathar heresy in France in the 13th century; and on the spreading of a network in the case of the conversion to Protestantism of England in the mid-16th century. -
Testimonies of the Living Dead: The Martyrology-Necrology and the Necrology in the Chapter-Book of Mont-Saint-Michel
Posted on February 5, 2013 | No CommentsOn the face of it, a necrological record indicating the day of the year on which a subject died might be nothing more than the point at which to draw the line. In fact, the place, or even places, in which such records occur yields significant information about the subject’s life, rather than his death. -
Did Joan of Arc have to be a woman? Contemporary and later perspectives on her gender
Posted on January 29, 2013 | No CommentsThe only trustworthy drawing of Joan of Arc made during her lifetime has often been reproduced. Yet, to those of us who study the fifteenth-century French military saint, this portrait is actually a disappointment. -
En/gendering representations of childbirth in fifteenth-century Franco-Flemish devotional manuscripts
Posted on January 27, 2013 | No CommentsLate-medieval representationsof the births of holy and heroic children invariably show a domestic interior with the new mother lying in bed attended by female assistants.These images thus appearto show a `genderedspace' in which women cared for each other and from which men were marginalized. -
Bawdy badges and the Black Death : late medieval apotropaic devices against the spread of the plague
Posted on January 27, 2013 | No CommentsOwing to the fact that historians generally view the late medieval period as an "age of faith," the existence ofthese remarkable objects raises some fundamental questions about the exact socio-religious nature ofmedieval culture. The primary questions, however, that need answering are: when, where, and for whom were the badges produced, and perhaps most importantly, why. -
The Making of Men, not Masters: Right Order and Lay Masculinity According to Dhuoda and Nithard
Posted on January 27, 2013 | No CommentsSetting Nithard’s and Dhuoda’s works in dialogue with one another, this study seeks to explore how the conflicts of the early 840s may have triggered reevaluations of contemporary ideals regarding lay masculinty. At the core of both authors’ works is the understanding that the problems the realm was facing at that time were primarily due to no- blemen’s expression of unmanly modes of conduct. -
Ransoming prisoners of war became widespread in the Hundred Years War, new book finds
Posted on January 24, 2013 | No Comments'There is widespread evidence to suggest that during the 15th century the practice of ransom is increasingly extended to commoners, not just kings or chivalrous knights.' -
A Burgundian Death: The tournament in Le Chevalier Délibéré
Posted on January 18, 2013 | No CommentsLe Chevalier Délibéré (1483) by Olivier de la Marche (c. 1425-1502) is a poem of great literary value. But it was also conceived and received in a historical context. Its central theme, the tournament of Atropos (Death), reflects the spectacle of choice for the Burgundian Nobility of the fifteenth century: the tournament, specifically the Pas d'Armes. -
Musical Characteristics of the Songs Attributed to Peter of Blois (c. 1135-1211)
Posted on January 15, 2013 | No CommentsToward the end of the twelfth century, moral conflict was rampant in the Catholic Church regarding the conduct (and misconduct) of all levels of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, though especially at the two extremes on the scale of power. Music and literature from the period have immortalized the mischievous and impious escapades of certain members of the lower orders of clergy, termed satirically the ordo vagorum. -
The English Soldier in the Campaign of Agincourt
Posted on January 13, 2013 | No CommentsThe field between the English and French was open, devoid of hedges, thickets, valleys, ravines, or other obstacles, and had been chosen by the French themselves. For our purpose the country was like a table; rarely is a battlefield so simple and easy to describe. -
The Scottish wars of Edward III, 1327-1338
Posted on January 13, 2013 | No CommentsThis thesis deals with the events of the Anglo-Scottish wars of the 1330s and the English military machine that allowed Edward III to win numerous successes against the Scots yet was unable to secure a permanent conquest of any portion of Scotland save Berwick-upon Tweed. -
Handspinners of the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance
Posted on January 6, 2013 | No CommentsThe Handspinners of Paris, France: In 1270, a royal judge, Etienne Boileau, compiled “Le Livre de Metiers” (The Book of Trades) which contained the ordinances of 100 Parisian craft guilds. By consulting the surviving tax rolls of 1292, 1300, and 1313, it is possible to determine the extent to which these crafts were practiced. -
Charlemagne’s Jihad
Posted on January 3, 2013 | No CommentsIn 782, after almost two years with no clashes in the Saxon front, Charlemagne led his army into Saxony once again. This time, the main purpose was to subdue the Saxons who rebelled under the leadership of Widukind. It was a brutal campaign, during which, our sources relate, more than 4,500 Saxon rebels were beheaded in one day at the order of Charlemagne. -
Creating and Recreating Jean d’Arras’ Mélusine from the Hundred Years’ War to Isabelline Spain
Posted on January 3, 2013 | No CommentsMelusine enjoyed great success in France, even inspiring imitations commissioned by lesser nobility, and spread throughout Europe, eventually reaching Spain fifteen years into the reign of Isabella I of Castile. -
Women in Troubadour Song: Of the Comtessa and the Vilana
Posted on December 30, 2012 | No CommentsSince we have melodies for both songs, the question of what “feminine” voices we are hearing is a musi- cal as well as a poetic issue. -
Aspects of the English royal succession, 1066-1199: the death of the king
Posted on December 28, 2012 | No CommentsThe death of any ruler in the twelfth century, even if it were expected, caused a considerable amount of shock and disquiet amongst those who were left behind. -
England: One Country, Two Courts
Posted on December 26, 2012 | No CommentsThe tension created by the two-court system is an integral part of England’s administrative and constitutional history. Exactly how integral has generated a considerable amount of scholarly work, from explanations of the sources of the conflict, to how the disagreement over jurisdiction was addressed throughout the Middle Ages, to what impact the issue had in shaping England’s overall political development. -
Looking Back: Medieval French Romance and the Dynamics of Seeing
Posted on December 24, 2012 | No CommentsThis dissertation builds upon the work of feminist medievalists and other literary and cultural scholars to argue that sight, and objects that are seen, articulate love relationships between characters in medieval romances, and that seeing is frequently a locus of resistance to gender norms the texts both establish and refuse to accept. -
Edition, Translation, and Exegesis: The Carolingians and the Bible
Posted on December 23, 2012 | No CommentsIn their attention to philological procedures and details, to the work of editing, revising, and translating, ninth-century scholars made a lasting contribution to the ways in which Europeans would think about the Bible. -
Abbo of Fleury: strategies for gaining influence and authority in tenth-century West Francia
Posted on December 17, 2012 | No CommentsThis dissertation analyzes how a tenth-century abbot, Abbo of Fleury (ca. 945 – 1004), used learnedness, church precedents, and intimations of heresy as strategies to renegotiate the bonds between powerful persons in order to increase his authority and influence within the church and kingdom of West Francia. -
Suicide in the Middle Ages
Posted on December 17, 2012 | No CommentsAll three types of source need careful interpretation. Suicide is notoriously elusive to records even in modern times, and more so for the Middle Ages. Once due allowances have been made for each genre, however, it is some reassurance that they agree on certain basics, and that these, in turn, agree with estimates from better-recorded centuries... -
Trickster, Convert, Martyr, Saint: Four Ways of Dying in Dudo of St. Quentin’s History of the Normans
Posted on December 16, 2012 | No CommentsI want to push this a bit further here and argue that Dudo was aiming to produce something that we might term sacramentary history, to show the three-fold interaction of the linear time experienced by fallen humanity, the cyclical time in which events are continually re-enacted and foreshadowed in the sacraments, and the unchanging eternity of time as experienced by God. -
Innocent III and England
Posted on December 16, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper begins with the dispute between England and the papacy over an election to the see of Canterbury. The beginning of the quarrel, seemed simple enough: King John’s refusal to accept Stephen Langton as archibishop of Canterbury.
