Medieval Fort Building 101

16th century stonemason at work

What does it take to build a fortification in the 10th century?

Palaces, Itineraries and Political Order in the Post-Carolingian Kingdoms

Diverging Paths? The Shape of Power and Institutions in Medieval Christendom and Islam

What did the same-but-different post-Carolingian kingdoms owe to their predecessors, and how should we characterise that debt if not in simple terms of continuity or change?

Banditry and the Clash of Powers in 14th-Century Thrace: Momcilo and his Fragmented Memory

Macedonian-bracelet (Thrace)

In the 14th century, a time of civil wars, religious and dynastic strifes, epidemics, natural disasters and miserable living conditions for the wider strata in the cities and the countryside that increased migratory movements, banditry, an indigenous phenomenon in the Balkan mountainous regions, intermingled with the intensified political struggles.

War and nation-building in Widukind of Corvey’s Deeds of the Saxons

book cover

Military conflicts constituted a central function of early medieval rulership and, correspondingly, of the historiographical tradition. War and violence in the Middle Ages have been the subject of various studies, which are above all devoted to warfare and to the army.

Food and prejudice: a western ambassador in Byzantium

Otto_I

On the 4th of June, 968, Liutprand of Cremona made landfall at Constaninople as ambassador for the German emperor Otto I.

The Ottonians and the Word: Gospel Books as Objects, Images, and Texts

ottonians and the word

I would like to consider issues of the material texts, literacy and the status of the written word in Ottonian Germany, as they coalesce at the site of deluxe liturgical manuscripts.

Civilization versus Barbarians? Fortification Techniques and Politics in Carolingian and Ottonian Borderlands

Borders, Barriers, and Ethnogenesis, edited by Florin Curta

In many ways the situation on the north-eastern and eastern frontier of the Carolingian and Ottonian empires is an early medieval replica of phenomena associated with the frontiers of the Later Roman Empire.

Ottonian Imperial Art and Portraiture: The Artistic Patronage of Otto III and Henry II

Garrison Jkt_Garrison Jkt

Ottonian Imperial Art and Portraiture represents the first art historical consideration of the patronage of the Ottonian Emperors Otto III (983-1002) and Henry II (1002-1024).

Noch Einmal 918-919: Of the ritualized demise of kings and of political rituals in general

King Conrad, Spieghel Historiael, Jacob van Maerlant, c. 1330

As 918 drew to a wintry close, King Conrad lay dying. His reign had been short. Perhaps, as Adalbert of Magdeburg later suggested, the Franconian ruler had been exhausted by bitter feuds against his former peers, the German ‘dukes’.

Hrotsvit of Gandersheim: Her Works and Their Messages

Hrotswitha_of_Gandersheim

Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, a poetess and playwright during the tenth century, created a body of work that both reflected and instructed people in her society.

Scandinavian way of communication with the Carolingians and the Ottonians

Scandinavia

Scandinavian way of communication with the Carolingians and the Ottonians By Minoru Ozawa Hermeneutique du texte d’histoire: orientation, interpretation et questions nouvelles (2009) Introduction: The Spoleto Symposium, held in 2004, was remarkable for the fact that attending historians discussed certain problems of communication in the early middle ages. Since the 19th century, linguists and philologists have […]

Why Eastern Women Matter: The Influence of Byzantine Empresses on Western Queenship during the Middle Ages

Otto_II_and_Théophano - photo by Clio20

My research proposes that the imperial women of the east had an important and discernable influence on the royal women of the west. In order to show this influence I examine the nature of western queenship by analyzing the Merovingian, Carolingian, and Ottonian dynasties.

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