Where the Middle Ages Begin
Best-selling author Sharon Kay Penman has published her twelfth novel, Lionheart, which focuses on King Richard I and his crusade to the Holy Land in the late-twelfth century. We had the pleasure of interviewing Sharon Kay Penman about this novel and how she writes historical fiction: This book is a kind of sequel to your […]
Lionheart By Sharon Kay Penman Penguin Books, 2011 ISBN: 978039915785 Publisher’s Description: From the New York Times-bestselling novelist, a stunning story of a great medieval warrior-king, the accomplished and controversial son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine: Richard, Coeur de Lion. They were called “The Devil’s Brood,” though never to their faces. They were the […]
Richard I and the Jewish “Servi Camarae” as a Funding Source for the Third Crusade By Dana Cushing Published Online (2011) Introduction: This essay provides the examines the social, legal, and financial position of the Jews in England during the years 1190 and 1191AD and explains the financial worth of their transactions as calculated from […]
No fourteenth-century English cook is known to have prepared for consumption the flesh of a real Turk, yet the Turk’s Head, a sweet-and-sour meat pie shaped and decorated to resemble the outlandish features of a stereotyped Saracen, was a familiar late medieval dish
Cum consilio et deliberatione episcoporum, comitum, et baronum nostrorum’: institutional consultation and cooperative governance in the Spanish kingdoms and England (1100-1188) Cerda, José Manuel (University of New South Wales) Separation of Powers and Parliamentarism: The Past and the Present, 56th Conference of the International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions, Cracow, 2005 (Warsaw, 2007) Abstract […]
Joanna, Queen of Sicily By Dana Cushing The Plantagenet Connection, v. 8 n. 1 (Summer 2000) Introduction: In my studies of the Third Crusade there has been the occasional but recurring mention of an English princess, whose name is given variously as Giovanna della Inglese, Jehanne, or Joanna Plantagenet. Although her life became inextricably bound […]
The Byzantines and Saladin, 1185-1192: Opponents of the Third Crusade Brand, Charles M. Speculum, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Apr., 1962) Abstract On the eve of the Third Crusade the chief Christian state in the East joined with Saladin, sultan of Egypt and Syria, to further their common interests, which involved opposition to the Latins in the […]
The Artifice of War: Intelligence and Intrigue in the Third Crusade By Dana Cushing Paper given at the 33rd International Medieval Congress, Western Michigan University (1998) Abstract: Since I have always believed that the essential element of a successful military undertaking is right knowledge, even foreknowledge, based on communication, I became enamoured of a unique […]
The Romance of England: Richard Coer De Lyon, Saracens, Jews, and the Politics of Race and Nation By Geraldine Heng The Postcolonial Middle Ages, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (New York, 2000) Introduction: At the heart of one version of the thirteenth/fourteenth/fifteenth century romance, Richard Coer de Lyon – whole Middle English text recount, in […]
Ultimately, when it became clear that the True Cross and ransoms were not forthcoming, Richard I was forced to make a military decision.
Determining Participation Patterns in Medieval Courts Through Charter Witness Lists By Rose Mary Coley Historical Social Research, Vol. 14, No.3 (1989) Introduction: Knowledge about the great and famous is easily obtained. A monarch and his actions are recorded many times over by historians, chroniclers, and poets. Little is known about the men that participated at […]
A question of timing: Walter de Lacy’s seisin of Meath 1189–94 Veach, Colin T. (Trinity College Dublin) Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Vol. 109C, (2009) Abstract The Irish kingdom of Mide was granted by King Henry II to Hugh de Lacy in 1172. After Hugh’s death in 1186, what had come to be known […]
King John and Arthur of Brittany Powicke, F.M. English Historical Review, Vol.24 (1909) Abstract After studying, in the order of their composition, the authorities which refer to or discuss the death of Arthur and the alleged condemnation of King John by his peers in the French court, I have been led to feel considerable doubt concerning […]
Traditional assessments of Richard I’s first years on the throne treat him as a king interested only in draining the Angevin realm of men and money in the interest of the Third Crusade.
Both Howden and the Histoire relate that a great battle and some fierce close fighting took place, even if Howden lacks the details of the operation. The king himself was in the thick of the fighting.
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