How you can Follow Us!
Medieval News
Mediterranean Archive
-
The European Reconquest of North Africa
Posted on April 14, 2013 | No CommentsThe chief structural features of Africa Minor are simple. The territory consists of a long strip of land bounded on the north by the Mediterranean,on the south by the Sahara, on the east by the Gulf of Tripoli and the Libyan Desert, on the west by the Atlantic. -
Danger from the high seas: Pirates shaped the history of the Mediterranean for 3000 years
Posted on March 22, 2013 | No CommentsEye patch, peg leg and hook arm – these are the attributes commonly connoted with pirates. What many might not know is that pirates had been painting the waters of the Mediterranean red for almost 3,000 years. -
Why There May Have Been Contacts between Slovenes and Jews before 1000 A.D.
Posted on March 16, 2013 | No CommentsThe first documented evidence of a Jewish presence in Slovenia dates from the 13th century, when Yiddish- and Italian-speaking Jews migrated south from Austria to Maribor and Celje, and east from Italy into Ljubljana. This is a good three centuries after the first mention of Jews in the Austrian lands. -
Syphilis, Misogyny, and Witchcraft in 16th-Century Europe
Posted on February 19, 2013 | No CommentsSyphilis, Misogyny, and Witchcraft in 16th-Century Europe Eric B. Ross Current Anthropology, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Apr., 1995), pp. 333-337 Abstract While debate continues over the geographical origin of syphilis... -
Medieval enchantment techniques: St Christopher and the Siren
Posted on January 31, 2013 | No CommentsThe traditional image of St Christopher, which was particularly frequent in the Middle Ages, portrays him crossing the waters of a river while he is carrying the child Jesus on his shoulder. -
The Trebuchet
Posted on January 13, 2013 | No CommentsRecent reconstructions and computer simulations reveal the operating principles of the most powerful weapon of its time -
Early Islamic Maritime Technology
Posted on December 30, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper examines the extent to which the events of the 7th century were actually responsible for alterations to the maritime technology and associated practices of the Mediterranean during the early Islamic period. -
Dark Age Migrations and Subjective Ethnicity: The Example of the Lombards
Posted on December 5, 2012 | No CommentsThis study is an attempt to clarify the functions and structure of the Volker- wanderungen. Peoples or warrior-bands? The basic problem is that small warrior bands as well as big migrations of peoples are characterized in the same way by the classical and early medieval writers: they used tribal names. -
‘You say that the Messiah has come.’:The Ceuta Disputation (1179) and its place in the Christian anti-Jewish polemics of the high middle ages
Posted on October 28, 2012 | No CommentsDisputation could be the result of the Christian protagonist’s meeting with the North AfricanJew face-to-face and discovering that the Messianic promise was a subject of considerableinterest for his opponent. More importantly, regardless of whether the discussion in Ceuta hador had not taken place, the new Christian attitude towards anti-Jewish polemics expressed inthe Disputation’s text was most likely inspired by real-life discussions between Jews andChristians. Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Jewish and Christian relations; Mediterranean trade in the middle ages; Ceuta; Genoa;Scriptural exegesis, Almohads The Messiah came in the twelfth century. This time he did not arrive in themanner anticipated by the prophets of the Bible. Rather, his arrival occurred in theworld of polemics, where he suddenly emerged from relative obscurity to becomethe central topic of the continuing religious debate between Jews and Christians -
The Fatimid and Kalbite Governors in Sicily : 909-1044
Posted on October 21, 2012 | No CommentsThis is the second part of my investigation on the Muslim governors (or rulers) in Sicily. -
Slavery and Identíty in Mozarabic Toledo: 1201-1320
Posted on October 7, 2012 | No CommentsRomán Iberia became thoroughly Romanized early in its existenec. Spain adopted the law, the language, the culture, and eventually the religión of clas- sicat Rome. Moreover, Hispania produced some truly stellar figures in the arena of Latin scholarship, including Séneca, Lucían, Quintilian, Columella, and Prudentius. -
Moors and Saracens in Europe: estimating the medieval North African male legacy in southern Europe
Posted on October 2, 2012 | No CommentsOur results confirm a general correlation between historical and genetic data: Iberia and Sicily are the regions with the highest MNA male legacy. -
Sailing with the Mu’allim: The Technical Practiceof Red Sea Sailing during the Medieval Period
Posted on September 30, 2012 | No CommentsThe status of the Red Sea as a lane of communication be-tween the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean has beenwidely commented upon...The medieval period was no exception to this. The establishment of Mecca as a centre of pilgrimage and theincreasing importance of Cairo both served to provide further motives for seafaring activity along and across theRed Sea. -
Through the Eyes of a Crusader: An Intensive Study Into the Personal Involvement of Two Men in the Fourth Crusade
Posted on September 21, 2012 | No CommentsWhat was going through the minds ofthese men who were fighting for the cross when they attacked a Christian city, which was one oftheir allies? -
On the Making of Holy Places Along the Sea Routes of the Eastern Mediterranean
Posted on September 1, 2012 | No CommentsThe connection with the Holy Land was frequently made visible by the dissemination of both site-relics (such as stones from the holy sites) and body-parts of saints being especially worshipped by Holy Land pilgrims, such as Saint Catherine and Saint Barbara. -
A Spectacle of Great Beauty: The Changing Faces of Hagia Sophia
Posted on August 28, 2012 | No CommentsFor Constantine, Justinian, Sultan Mehmed II, and Atatürk, Hagia Sophia served as a model for the changing political and religious ideals of a nation. To use the useful phrase coined by Linda Young, Hagia Sophia is a building that is “in between heritage.” -
The Black Road – Trade and State-building in Medieval Sub-Saharan Africa
Posted on August 26, 2012 | No CommentsBy the early fourteenth century, the Mediterranean was approaching maturity as a commercial structure. Various arteries of exchange brought into its scope the full range of European, African and Asian commodities. -
‘Images of the Other: Venice’s Perception of the Knights of Malta’
Posted on August 15, 2012 | No CommentsThe hostile perception which Venice generally entertained of the Knights Hospitallers on Rhodes and Malta was not an attitude which the Republic secretly assumed and secretly endeavoured with much effort to disguise. -
Plague And Changes In Medieval European Society And Economy In The 14th And 15th Centuries
Posted on August 5, 2012 | No CommentsStandards of hygiene in the Middle Ages appeared high enough to prevent diseases as medieval Europeans, contrary to popular beliefs, bathed quite often. However, contact with domestic animals, which were frequently kept in the part of the house reserved for human activity, exposed people to animal-related diseases passed to humans via insects. -
Horse and cargo handling on Medieval Mediterranean ships
Posted on July 29, 2012 | No CommentsArt from Venice and Ravenna in north-east Italy and the Topkapı Museum in Instanbul, Turkey, offers keys to understanding several questions of Medieval ship-loading practices in the Mediterranean, including cargo loading, and where the war-horse entered his Crusader’s ship. -
“For the Honor of God and of the Holy Roman Church:” Understanding Venetian Motivations and Involvement during the Fourth Crusade
Posted on July 24, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis will attempt to unravel how it came to be that men who claimed to fight in the name of the cross had come to attack one of the most important cities in all of Christendom. It shall focus particularly on the motivations and actions of the Venetians, a people whose involvement in this crusade and the crusading movement in general has often been misunderstood. -
Economy of Ragusa, 1300 – 1800: The Tiger of Mediaeval Mediterranean
Posted on July 24, 2012 | No CommentsAn economist is indeed tempted to think of Ragusa as the “Adriatic Tiger “ of yesteryear, an early example of a small open economy with strong fundamentals, and to hypothesize further that, in analogy to the current consensus about what it takes to minimize the impact of external crises, these strengths also allowed Ragusa to mitigate the effects of the many external shocks and financial crises in Medieval Europe. -
Pervenimus Edessam: The Origins of a Great Christian Centre Outside the Familiar Mediaeval World
Posted on July 17, 2012 | No CommentsThis is the meeting place of the western and eastern worlds, for near here passed the movements between Palestine and Mesopotamia associated with Abraham, near here the Assyrians made their last stand after their capital fell in 610 B.C., and near here Crassus ill-advised attempt to press eastwards came to an end. -
Honor, Verbal Duels, and the New Testament in Medieval Iceland
Posted on July 1, 2012 | No CommentsHonor and shame are considered pivotal values of both early Mediterranean and medieval Scandinavian society. -
Mapping Metageographies: The Cartographic Invention of Italy and the Mediterranean
Posted on June 10, 2012 | No CommentsThis article discusses the emergence of Italy as a discrete object in the Mediterranean in the history of Western cartography. In particular, it focuses on different coexisting Renaissance mapping traditions that rested on two opposed spatial understandings and experiences of the basin