Where the Middle Ages Begin
Curiously, despite huge difficulties everywhere, perhaps mostly coming from the administrative side where enrollment figures matter the most, medieval research is booming, and the output of new critical studies on the Middle Ages is truly astounding.
In honour of the day, it seems fitting to throw out some interesting facts about St. Patrick, Ireland’s patron saint.
This article focuses on one aspect of the contestation in history writing between Ukraine and Russia; that of the medieval state of Kyiv Rus.
This article surveys the history of Kyiv Rus within the realm of nation building, identity and historical myths.
The following paper is meant as a contribution to the mentioned critical description of German medieval studies, by referring to the history of historiography.
It was the historians of the Age of Enlightenment who defined what kind of period the Middle Ages was.
How did the term ‘Dark Ages’ become synonymous with the Middle Ages, and why do we still refer to it like that?
On 28th January it will be 1200 years since Charlemagne died in 814. His legacy was immense.
Did ever Charles the Great had such a modern European ideology or it is just about a forced modernization of his ideas.
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.
Hitherto peripheral (if not outright ignored) in general medieval historiography, medieval medical history is now a vibrant subdiscipline, one that is rightlyattracting more and more attention from ‘mainstream’ historians and other studentsof cultural history.
So what lies beyond King Arthur and the Round Table, and some bawdy poems by Chaucer? Is this a period that deserves to be better understood? Might medieval beliefs and attitudes to society, to mankind, to culture and literature offer insights into issues — from the relationship between church and state to the place of man in the universe — that still concern us today?
Video from a Workshop at the 2014 American Historical Association Annual Meeting
The relationship of historical writing to the “truth” is by definition an ambivalent one. Historical practice is located in the site of tension between a critical examination of the sources and a narrative reconstruction, in which the historian fills the documentary gaps and interstices with his own imagination.
Of course, it is well known that some Anglo-Saxon historians took issue with Michael’s characterization of the use and extent of writing in England before 1066. They saw a contradiction between their interpretation of the role of literacy and what Michael had concluded.
Ekphrasis in the Alexiad By Niki Touriki Diogenes, Vol. 1 (2014) Introduction: The historical text of the Alexiad written by Anna Komnene in the mid-twelfth century constitutes the prime example of history-writing of the Komnenian period. Too much ink has been shed on the encomiastic nature of the work as well as on the author’s literary […]
This article examines the inclusion of the supernatural and mythological in Thomas Walsingham’s Chroncia Maiora.
Dike construction apparently uses simple technology, with slow and gradual change; not the kind of technology that reshaped the material conditions of living, comparable to the spread of electricity or sanitation in the 19th century ‘networked’ city (and linked to the disciplining of society and the rise of domesticity and the modern self-reflexive individual) (often inspired by Latour and Foucault).
Natalie Zemon Davis’ lecture at the 2010 Ludwig Holberg Prize Symposium
This study will revolve around the characterisation of Edward as constructed in the various surviving texts, and its emphasis will be twofold: my primary concern is to explore how St. Edward the Confessor’s images were constructed, i.e. how he is represented in the various texts written about him.
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.
It is true, as the poem claims, that in 778 the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army was massacred at Roncevaux. But in reality — and in contrast to the claims of the song — the Basques, and not the Muslims, destroyed the rear guard of the Frankish forces.
Healthscaping a Medieval City: Lucca’s Curia viarum and the Future of Public Health History G. Geltner (Department of History, University of Amsterdam) Urban History: 40, 3 (2013) Abstract In early fourteenth-century Lucca, one government organ began expanding its activities beyond the maintenance of public works to promoting public hygiene and safety, and in ways that suggest both […]
From Scott to Rispart, from Ivanhoe to The York Massacre of the Jews Rewriting and translating historical “fact” into fiction in the historical novel Nitsa Ben-Ari Palimpsestes, 24 (2011) Abstract Historical “data” concerns not only facts, as we all know, but memory (individual as well as collective), language, cultural heritage (“real” or invented). In his […]
Dr. Brian Jeffrey Maxson describes Biondo Flavio’s account of the Fourth Crusade
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