Religious Life Archive
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Norse Religion and Ritual Sites in Scandinavia in the 6th – 11th century
Posted on October 19, 2014 | No CommentsToday we have increasing opportunities for archaeological identification of the pre-Christian rites in the various accounts given by the written sources. -
The Episcopal Body and Sexuality in Late Medieval England
Posted on October 15, 2014 | No CommentsHow was long-term celibacy thought to affect the health of religious men? How could medical knowledge help clerics to achieve bodily purity? -
Tundale’s Vision: Socialization in 12th Century Ireland
Posted on October 11, 2014 | No CommentsThe purpose of this project is to explore the historical image of Hell in Medieval Europe as an agent of socialization for illiterate Christian communities. -
The influence of conflicting medieval church and social discourses on individual consciousness : dissociation in the visions of Hadewijch of Brabant
Posted on October 10, 2014 | No CommentsThis article examines the influence of the conflicting dis- courses in the medieval church and its social context on the subconscious experiences of Hadewijch of Brabant, a 13th century Flemish visionary, mystical author, vernacular theologian and Beguine leader -
The Devil as a Christian Author? The Case of Versus maligni angeli
Posted on October 8, 2014 | No CommentsThe devil as an author of a poem is a unique occurrence in the Middle Ages. The devil as an author of a Christian poem is a paradox that calls for interpretation, and this special situation has indeed been explained already in the Middle Ages in at least three different ways. The present study discusses the curious medieval justifications of the devil as a Christian author. -
Top 10 Strange Things done with the Medieval Dead
Posted on October 7, 2014 | No CommentsFrom piles of bones to embalmed hearts, with stories about mass graves and sleeping for hundreds of years, here is our top 10 list of strange things done with the medieval dead. -
INTERVIEW: A Conversation with SD Sykes about Plague Land
Posted on October 3, 2014 | No CommentsMy interview with fiction author, SD Sykes about her fantastic medieval crime novel, Plague Land. -
Latin Patrons, Greek Fathers: St Bartholomew of Simeri and Byzantine Monastic Reform in Norman Italy, 11th-12th Centuries
Posted on September 29, 2014 | No CommentsSt 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. -
If the afterlife looks like a banquet
Posted on September 28, 2014 | No CommentsMedieval literature would prove the huge success of such an idea, so we are compelled to stop for a moment and ask ourselves the reasons for this reception. Why did men use to link heaven with repletion? And what shape did this longing take inside of their minds? -
The Power of Word: Preachers in Medieval Dubrovnik
Posted on September 28, 2014 | No CommentsIn the pastoral of the Franciscan and Dominican orders preaching became the principal task of their mission. Preaching manuals represented the basis of the new art. The preachers also used sermon collections, Bible concordances and exempla collections. -
A monastic landscape: The Cistercians in medieval Leinster
Posted on September 23, 2014 | No CommentsThis study endeavours to discuss the Cistercian monasteries of Leinster with regard to their physical location in the landscape, the agricultural contribution of the monks to the broader social and economic world and the interaction between the cloistered monks and the secular world. -
Religious Education as the Basis of Medieval Literature
Posted on September 15, 2014 | No CommentsThe medieval literature was written with a purpose to teach Christian dogmas to the masses. The prose and poetry of the time meant to show men the ugliness of sin and the beauty of goodness. -
A Private Matter
Posted on September 11, 2014 | No CommentsI thought it might be worth taking five minutes to address just one of these statements: privacy is a relatively new idea. -
Christian Charm Discovered on 1,500-year-old Tax Receipt
Posted on September 11, 2014 | No CommentsA 1,500 year old papyrus fragment found in The University of Manchester’s John Rylands Library has been identified as one the world’s earliest surviving Christian charms. -
Narratives of resistance: arguments against the mendicants in the works of Matthew Paris and William of Saint-Amour
Posted on September 8, 2014 | No CommentsThe rise of the new mendicant orders, foremost the Franciscans and Dominicans, is one of the great success stories of thirteenth-century Europe. Combining apostolic poverty with sophisticated organization and university learning, they brought much needed improvements to pastoral care in the growing cities. -
Banditry and the Clash of Powers in 14th-Century Thrace: Momcilo and his Fragmented Memory
Posted on September 7, 2014 | No CommentsIn 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. -
The Friars Preachers: The First Hundred Years of the Dominican Order
Posted on September 7, 2014 | No CommentsWhen Dominic of Caleruega began preaching in southern France in the early 1200s, he would have had no idea of the far reaching influence that the band of men he would attract would leave such a broad and enduring influence on medieval history. -
BOOK REVIEW: Plague Land by SD Sykes
Posted on September 4, 2014 | No CommentsMy review of SD Sykes brilliant medieval thriller, Plague Land. -
Holy Islands and the Otherworld: Places Beyond Water
Posted on September 1, 2014 | No CommentsIn this article I attempt to demonstrate that there is a connection between holy islands and notions of an Otherworld beyond water. I believe that the essence of holy islands is their location on the other side of water. -
Monsters: An etymological and cultural reading of the ‘freak’ in the Middle Ages
Posted on August 31, 2014 | No CommentsThat the medievals did not interpret 'freaks' as an insult to creation is the theme of this paper, showing that medieval thought on the disabled body was not as 'backward' as the Dark Ages school of popular historical perception teaches -
Manor Village and Individual in Medieval England
Posted on August 25, 2014 | No CommentsThis thesis explores peasant life of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in England from information found in the manorial court rolls-the village court records--of Ramsey Hepman grove and Bury. -
Æcerbot and Wassail: Blessing the Fields and Orchards
Posted on August 24, 2014 | No CommentsDuring the autumn season when imagery of the harvest is all around, it can be easy to forget that the cornucopia of produce yielded is the product of year round effort. -
The Knight, the Hermit, and the Pope: Some Problematic Narratives of Early Crusading Piety
Posted on August 23, 2014 | No CommentsA much more general question, one that extends beyond the geographic confines of the Limousin and the period between 27 December 1095 and 15 August 1096 is why an individual choose to confront any of these difficulties at all. Why did they go? -
Pope Joan and the Black Swan: Medieval Christianity as a Resource for Gender Justice in the Church
Posted on August 23, 2014 | No CommentsThis essay offers resources from within medieval European Christianity in a feminist reading of the Christian dogma of hypostatic union, medieval political theory on royal twinning, and two medieval legends on the numinous double. -
Conversion on the Scaffold: Italian Practices in European Context
Posted on August 23, 2014 | No Comments11 January 1581 was a fine day in Rome. That morning, Michel de Montaigne, recently arrived in the city, had gone out on horseback when he encountered a procession accompanying a condemned man to execution. Montaigne stopped to watch the sight.
