On 30 September 1399, Richard II’s cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, would usurp the throne, taking the name Henry IV, and months after the coronation, Richard would die a prisoner in Pontefract Castle amidst speculation that he was murdered.
Vice, Tyranny, Violence, and the Usurpation of Flanders (1071) in Flemish Historiography from 1093 to 1294
December 1, 2014 By
The earliest sources of the history of medieval Flanders do not agree on the origins of the counts. The earliest source, the so-called “Genealogy of Arnold [I],” credibly traces the counts’ origin to Baldwin I “Iron Arm,”…
‘Falseness Reigns in Every Flock’: Literacy and Eschatological Discourse in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381
November 30, 2014 By
The literature of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, a miscellany of fourteenth-century poetry and prose penned before, during, and after the insurrection, often stresses the importance of literacy to the nonaristocratic population of England.
CONFERENCES: The Stellinga, the Saxon Elite, and Carolingian Politics
November 26, 2014 By
This is my summary of a paper presented at the Institute of Historical Research on the causes of the Stellinga uprising in the Carolingian period.
Flandria Illustrata: Flemish Identities in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period
November 23, 2014 By
This chapter discusses identity formation in early modern Flanders. It argues that policy makers and their intellectual agents transformed the perception of a province that had been divided by urban rivalries, civil war and conflicts with the Burgundian and Habsburg overlords, into a bastion of the Catholic Counter Reformation with strong ties to the Spanish King and his representatives.
Corbie in the Carolingian Renaissance
November 23, 2014 By
This study opens with a historical account of Corbie from its foundation until the reign of Charles the Simple, which clarifies the political importance of the abbey and its relations with rulers and bishops.
Raymund’s Daughter’s Divorce in the 9th-Century: a Woman’s Textual Role in the Breaking of an Alliance
November 23, 2014 By
This chapter will analyse an aspect of one of the divorce cases of the mid 9th century: I review its links with politics of the day and reconsider the roles given to wife and husband in the only text that deals with this case…
The Bones of St. Cuthbert: Defining a Saint’s Cult in Medieval Northumbria
November 19, 2014 By
This paper investigates the social, political, and religious changes and tensions which surrounded the cult of St. Cuthbert in medieval Northumbria. Specific comparisons are made between the Anglo-Saxon and Norman periods in English history, and how St. Cuthbert’s cult responded to the Norman Conquest in 1066.
The Heraldic Casket of Saint Louis in the Louvre
November 18, 2014 By
The Casket of Saint Louis invokes political and social networks and events relating to the Capetian dynasty in the years before Louis IX reached his majority.
Hagiography and the Experience of the Holy in the Work of Gregory of Tours
November 9, 2014 By
The rich literature associated with the Desert Fathers provides convincing evidence of the important role played by charismatic figures in the transformation of Late Antiquity.
Flee the loathsome shadow: Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) and the Medici in Florence
November 9, 2014 By
This article examines the changing political landscape of Medicean Florence, from Cosimo de’ Medici (1389-1464) to his grandson Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-1492), through the letters of the celebrated neo-Platonist philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433-99).
The Prologue to Alfred’s Law Code: Instruction in the Spirit of Mercy
November 9, 2014 By
The Prologue to Alfred’s Law Code: Instruction in the Spirit of Mercy Michael Treschow Florilegium: Volume 13 (1994) Abstract Alfred’s law code tends to receive scant attention in discussions of the char- acter of his reign. It lacks the distinctive stamp of his other writings and acts. It is a conservative code that seeks not […]
King’s sister, queen of dissent: Marguerite of Navarre (1492-1549) and her evangelical network
November 7, 2014 By
This study reconstructs the previously unknown history of the most important dissident group within France before the French Reformed Church formed during the 1550s.
716: A Crucial Year For Charles Martel
November 3, 2014 By
The early years of Charles Martel’s life are all but obscured from the historian’s view.
Edward II and his Children
October 28, 2014 By
Kathryn Warner, author of Edward II: The Unconventional King, takes a look at the English king’s three sons and two daughters.
An aspect of Alcuin: ‘Tuus Albinus’ – peevish egotist? or parrhesiast?
October 28, 2014 By
In over 270 letters from about a decade and a half, alcuin of york (†804) informed, advised, consoled and admonished contemporaries, reacted to current events, and maintained a circle of friends and partners in reciprocal prayer that extended from Jerusalem to Ireland and from rome to salzburg. Alcuin left york in the 780s to become a friend and chief advisor to Charlemagne.
Beyond the Border. The aristocratic mobility between the kingdoms of Portugal and León (1157- 1230)
October 25, 2014 By
During the reigns of Fernando II and Alfonso IX, the kingdom of León became home to several Portuguese aristocrats. Their relations with the Galician and Leonese nobility helped them create many cross-border ties and a powerful network of family-based relationships which heavily influenced the course of the main political conflicts of this period.
Late Medieval Knight Reflecting on his Public Life: Hugo de Urriés (c. 1405-c. 1493), Diplomacy and Translating the Classics
October 22, 2014 By
This article focuses on Aragonese courtier Hugo de Urriés’s public profile by means of analyzing the critical points derived from examining his personal, political, cultural and historical stands making use of an invaluable primary source, his letter to Fernando the Catholic in the early 1490s.
Gendered Souls: Female Religious and Imperial Power in Early Byzantium
October 20, 2014 By
I examine three empresses, Pulcheria (398-453 CE), Theodora (500-548 CE), and Irene (752-803 CE), in the hopes of illuminating their claims to imperial power while also placing them in the context of a larger historical tradition.
Palaces, Itineraries and Political Order in the Post-Carolingian Kingdoms
October 17, 2014 By
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?
Disputing Identity, Territoriality, and Sovereignty: The Place of Pomerania in the Social Memory of the Kingdom of Poland and the Teutonic Ordensstaat
October 17, 2014 By
This dissertation analyzes state-formation, the development of historical consciousness, and the construction of identities in medieval Europe.
The Frankish Pretender Gundovald, 582–585. A Crisis of Merovingian Blood
October 12, 2014 By
In the autumn of 582, a claimant to Frankish kingship named Gundovald landed in Marseilles, returning from exile in Constantinople with covert support from very powerful persons in the kingdom.
The Contours, Frequency and Causation of Subsistence Crises in Carolingian Europe (750-950)
October 7, 2014 By
The Contours, Frequency and Causation of Subsistence Crises in Carolingian Europe (750-950) Timothy P. Newfield Crisis Alimentarias en la Edad Media: Modelos, Explicaciones y Representaciones (Milenio, Lleida, 2013), pp. 117-172. Abstract The subsistence crises of Carolingian Europe have been widely overlooked in modern histories of the early Middle Ages. Detailed treatment has yet to be […]
The Grant Atour of Metz (1405): denouncing the past, shaping the future
September 29, 2014 By
In the late middle ages, the Imperial free city of Metz is firmly in the hands of the patricians: they control its entire government through associations called paraiges – and as the wealth of the city has been relying heavily on their rural possessions since the decline of the commercial role of the city, their leadership is not seriously at risk.
Latin Patrons, Greek Fathers: St Bartholomew of Simeri and Byzantine Monastic Reform in Norman Italy, 11th-12th Centuries
September 29, 2014 By
St Bartholomew of Simeri (ca. 1050-1130), a Greek monastic founder and reformer from Calabria, saw the effective end of Byzantine imperial power in southern Italy in 1071, the conquest of Muslim Palermo by Robert Guiscard the following year, and the rise of the Norman kingdom of Roger II at the end of his life.
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