The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory: the Albigensian Crusade and the Subjugation of the Languedoc

Albigensian Crusade

In March of 1208, Pope Innocent III preached the Albigensian Crusade. The crusade, which covered an area from Agen to Avignon and the Pyrenees to Cahors, initiated a new phase in the already strained relationship between the Catholic Church and the Languedoc.

Miracula, Saints’ Cults and Socio-Political Landscapes: Bobbio, Conques and post-Carolingian society

Medieval depiction of the martyrdom of St. Faith with a red hot poker

Despite the centrality of monastic sources to debates about social and political transformation in post-Carolingian Europe, few studies have approached the political and economic status of monasteries and their saints’ cults in this context, to which this thesis offers a comparative approach.

Signs of Power. Manorial Demesnes in Medieval Iceland

King Eric II Magnusson of Noway & Iceland (1268 - 1299)

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.

Women’s Devotional Bequests of Textiles in the Late Medieval English Parish Church, c.1350-1550

Medieval woman reading

My investigation is set within the context of the current high level of interest in the workings of the late medieval parish.

Living cheek by jowl: the pathoecology of medieval York

A panoramic view of York in the 15th century. A watercolour by E. Ridsdale Tate produced in 1914,

This paper aims to present the environmental context for disease combined with the human osteological record to reconstruct the pathoecology of medieval York.

Enemy and Ancestor: Viking Identities and Ethnic Boundaries in England and Normandy, c.950 – c.1015

The Bayeux Tapestry and the Vikings

This thesis is a comparison of ethnicity in Viking Age England and Normandy. It focuses on the period c.950-c.1015, which begins several generations after the initial Scandinavian settlements in both regions.

Caught in Love’s Grip: Passion and Moral Agency in French Courtly Romance

The art of courtly love

French royal courts in the late twelfth century were absolutely smitten with love. Troubadaours traveled from place to place reciting stories of knights and the ladies they wooed.

Women, Heresy, and Crusade: Toward a Context for Jacques de Vitry’s Relationship to the Early Beguines

Beguines

Grundmann‘s search for a founding figure is understandable in light of the problematic nature of Beguine institutional history. Beguine historiography has long struggled with the anomalous lack of clear foundation documents and accounts.

The Physicality of Service in German Ideas of Knighthood, c.1200-1500

German Knight - Jörg (Georg) von Ehingen

Jörg’s memoir is a particularly informative example of how one knight understood his own calling to knighthood and his practice of it. The medieval knight had a voice, and although precious few memoirs like Jörg’s exist, knightly perspectives inform a considerable breadth of primary materials.

Saints’ Cults in Medieval Livonia

Medieval Saints

Saints’ cults played a crucial role in medieval society. Although we know very little about the beliefs and rituals of the indigenous peoples of Livonia, either before or after the thirteenth-century conquest, we may assume that the process of Christianization must have caused major changes in their religious practices.

Ritual, Behaviour and Symbolic Communication in the dispute between Thomas Becket and King Henry II

Henry II quarrels with Becket

From the dispute between Becket and Henry II we see the continuation of many traditional forms of political communication, including the use of symbolic rhetoric and items in the conduct of rituals, and also the deliberate staging of emotions.

Saints, Tradition and Monastic Identity: The Ghent Relics, 850-1100

Ghent altarpiece

The extraordinary story ofthe Ghent relics was first told by Oswald Holder- Egger in an article published in 1886. During his work on part two of volume 15 of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores series, which Holder- Egger had just finished, he had come across the hagiographie literature produced at the abbeys of St Baafs and St Pieters in Ghent.

The Uses Made of History by the Kings of Medieval England

Kingship

The kings of medieval England, besides using history for the entertainment of themselves and their courts, turned it to practical purposes. They plundered history-books for precedents and other evidences to justify their claims and acts. They also recognised its value as propaganda, to bolster up their positions at home and strengthen their hands abroad.

The Legend of the Pied Piper in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Grimm, Browning, and Skurzynski

The Pied Piper of Hamelin

This paper examines the changes that were made in the literary telling and retelling of the story of the Pied Piper during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, comparing the folktale “Die Kinder zu Hameln” (1816) by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the poem “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”(1842) by Robert Browning, and the book What Happened in Hamelin (1979), by Gloria Skurzynski.

Kingdom, emporium and town: the impact of Viking Dublin

Archaeology from Viking Dublin

In recent years the precise location and nature of Viking Dublin have been much debated. It is now generally accepted that there was a longphort phase from 841 to 902: a period of enforced exile from 902 to 917, and thereafter a dún phase.

The Consolidation of Local Authority Through the Defense of the Church in the Royal Domain of France Under Louis VI

The_crowning_of_Louis_VI_in_Orleans

When Louis VI ascended to the throne in 1108 AD, he faced substantial challenges as the fifth monarch of the Capetian dynasty; he confronted the problem of stopping the general decline of the monarchy and achieved this in a way that reasserted the foundations of the crown as the sole dominant figure in the royal domain and a respected lord throughout the kingdom.

Mapping the Medieval Countryside

Medieval Feudalism - Roland pledges his fealty to Charlemagne

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

Medieval Children

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.

THINGS TO SEE: Murder in the Cathedral

Death of Thomas Becket

This is my review of the T.S. Eliot’s play, “Murder in the Cathedral”, on at St. Bartholomew in Smithfield, London.

Like Father Like Son? Henry III’s Tomb at Westminster Abbey as a Case Study in Late Thirteenth-Century English Kingship

The tomb of Henry III, Westminster Abbey, from the chapel of St

Who was this king, and who made this grand monument to him? An inscription around the edge of the upper tomb chest identifies its occupant as Henry III, the English king who died in 1272 after a reign of fifty-six years.

Holy rulers and the integration of the medieval Serbian space

Nemanjic Dynasty - Serbia

This paper proposes a new line of analysis of the rich body of medieval Serbian royal hagiography.

Medieval Widowhood and Textual Guidance: The Corpus Revisions of Ancrene Wisse and the de Braose Anchoresses

Medieval Nuns

In this article, I shall examine the lives of Loretta and her siblings as templates for the kind of audience imagined by the authors of the Ancrene Wisse Group and, in particular, by the author of Ancrene Wisse as he revised his original text.

Power relations in the royal forests of England patronage : privilege and legitimacy in the reigns of Henry III and Edward I

medieval forest and woods

The England of the Plantagenets (1189–1377) which honed the royal forest system was a typically medieval land. Its ultimate foundations lay upon the long established notion of the three estates: those who fought, those who prayed, and those who worked.

MOVIE REVIEW: Barbarossa – Siege Lord

Barbarossa - Movie Poster

MOVIE REVIEW: Barbarossa – Siege Lord “I order Milan to be raised to the ground. None of its towers will ever be standing. I also order all the Milanese to leave the city before sunset, in all different directions so that no one will be able to call themselves Milanese and the name “milan” will […]

Time, space and power in later medieval Bristol

Medieval Bristol - Robert_Ricart's_map_of_Bristol

With a population of almost 10,000, Bristol was later medieval England’s second or third biggest urban place, and the realm’s second port after London. While not particularly large or wealthy in comparison with the great cities of northern Italy, Flanders or the Rhineland, it was a metropolis in the context of the British Isles.

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