A brief overview of where these “mechanical arts” fit into the scholastic world. The thesis of the “Dark Ages” often suggests that there was a discontinuity in knowledge between Antiquity and the Renaissance, and perhaps nowhere so obviously as in the mechanical arts. This is certainly false…
Wax or wane? Insect perspectives on human environmental interactions
May 19, 2014 by
The sites discussed in this paper include a range of sites investigated on national road schemes and other development projects across Ireland, covering a long time-span from the Neolithic period through to the medieval period.
Apocalyptic Calculators of the Later Middle Ages
May 1, 2014 by
The purpose of my talk today is to explore why and how astrology became an accepted tool for apocalyptic calculation in the later Middle Ages.
The Cyrurgia of Albucasis and other works, 1500
April 12, 2014 by
Four surgical treatises, printed in the last year of the fifteenth century, make up the oldest illustrated printed book in the Sibbald Library. The second one, the Cyrurgia of Albucasis, is the most interesting and I shall deal only briefly with the others.
Quasicrystals in Medieval Islamic Architecture
March 28, 2014 by
Quasicrystal patterns have remarkable properties: they do not repeat periodically, and have special symmetry—and were not understood in the West until the 1970s.
A Medieval Multiverse
March 26, 2014 by
Ideas in a thirteenth-century treatise on the nature of matter still resonate today, say Tom C. B. McLeish and colleagues.
Medieval Magic Tricks
March 23, 2014 by
How to turn water into wine, make a cross turn by itself, or have worms appear on cooked meat – some fun medieval magic tricks!
The fire that comes from the eye
February 28, 2014 by
One of the earliest ideas about vision is that it depends on light that streams out of the eye and detects surrounding objects. This view was attacked in its own time and finally disproved more than 2000 years later.
Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds
February 20, 2014 by
A Professor in Applied Linguistics believes he has decoded a few words from the mysterious Voynich Manuscript, a 600-year old work that has baffled scholars for the last hundred years.
Limitations imposed by wearing armour on Medieval soldiers’ locomotor performance
February 10, 2014 by
Our findings can predict age-associated decline in Medieval soldiers’ physical performance, and have potential implications in understanding the outcomes of past European military battles.
‘Royal’ pediculosis in Renaissance Italy: lice in the mummy of the King of Naples Ferdinand II of Aragon (1467-1496)
February 3, 2014 by
Pediculosis seems to have afflicted humans since the most ancient times and lice have been found in several ancient human remains. Examination of the head hair and pubic hair of the artificial mummy of Ferdinand II of Aragon (1467-1496), King of Naples, revealed a double infestation with two different species of lice…
Anesthesia Drugs in the Medieval Muslim Era
January 25, 2014 by
In the Middle Ages, Christian Europe was in a state of intellectual stagnation and the theological doctrine that pain serves God’s purpose and must not be alleviated militated against the improvement in methods of narcosis. Nuland points out that the Middle Ages in Europe were dark ages so far as advances in the pharmacology of anesthesia were concerned.
Stature and frailty during the Black Death: the effect of stature on risks of epidemic mortality in London, A.D. 1348-1350
January 4, 2014 by
Recent research has shown that pre-existing health condition affected an individual ’ s risk of dying duringthe 14th-century Black Death. However, a previous study of the effect of adult stature on risk of mortality during the epidemic failed to find a relationship between the two; this result is perhaps surprising given the well-documented inverse association between stature and mortality in human populations.
Can medieval drugs help modern patients?
December 14, 2013 by
Were medieval drugs effective at helping patients? Can modern pharmaceuticals make use of their knowledge?
Depicting the Medieval Alchemical Cosmos: George Ripley’s Wheel of Inferior Astronomy
December 10, 2013 by
Alchemical writing often develops the idea of a physical or analogical correspondence between heaven and earth: a relationship most fre- quently and conveniently expressed by the use of the seven planetary symbols (Sol, Luna, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) to denote the seven metals (usually gold, silver, quicksilver, copper, iron, tin and lead respectively).
Healthscaping a Medieval City: Lucca’s Curia viarum and the Future of Public Health History
November 24, 2013 by
Healthscaping a Medieval City: Lucca’s Curia viarum and the Future of Public Health History G. Geltner (Department of History, University of Amsterdam) Urban History: 40, 3 (2013) Abstract In early fourteenth-century Lucca, one government organ began expanding its activities beyond the maintenance of public works to promoting public hygiene and safety, and in ways that suggest both […]
Ironing Out the Myth of the Flat Earth
November 21, 2013 by
It seems there’s one fact about the Middle Ages that always seems to astound people: medieval people did not actually think the world was flat.
Galileo, the Impact of the Telescope, and the Birth of Modern Astronomy
October 19, 2013 by
Galileo would have dearly loved to explain to his examiners how his observations made belief in the Copernican system more intellectually respectable even though he had no irrefutable proof of the Earth’s motion, but this was an opportunity he never got.
From Rome to the antipodes: the medieval form of the world
October 9, 2013 by
Here we discuss how some medieval scholars in the Western Europe viewed the form of the world and the problem of the Antipodes
Into the frontier: medieval land reclamation and the creation of new societies. Comparing Holland and the Po Valley, 800-1500
September 29, 2013 by
In the paper it is shown that medieval land reclamation led to the emergence of two very divergent societies, characterised by a number of different configurations; (a) power and property structure, (b) modes of exploitation, (c) economic portfolios, and (d) commodity markets.
Political Science in Late Medieval Europe: The Aristotelian Paradigm and How It Shaped the Study of Politics in the West
September 26, 2013 by
While scholars have provided many interesting insights into the role of Aristotle in shaping later political theory, I argue that they are inadequate to explain the rapid “Aristotelianization” of political thought in the later Middle Ages.
Islamic Astronomy in Medieval China
September 15, 2013 by
In 1271, Kublai Khan founded the Bureau of Islamic Astronomy in Peking, which operated alongside the long-established Chinese Astronomical Bureau.
The Medieval Metal Industry Was the Cradle of Modern Large-Scale Atmospheric Lead Pollution in Northern Europe
September 4, 2013 by
This study indicates that the contemporary atmospheric pollution climate in northern Europe was established in Medieval time, rather than in the Industrial period. Atmospheric lead pollution deposition did not, when seen in a historical perspective, increase as much as usually assumed with the Industrial Revolution (1800 A.D.).
The Moon in the Middle Ages
July 21, 2013 by
People in the Middle Ages asked what was the moon made of? How far away was it? Could it make my child vindictive? Here is what they found out.
Abortions in Byzantine times (325-1453 AD)
July 18, 2013 by
All legislation of Byzantium from the earliest times also condemned abortions. Consequently, foeticide was considered equal to murder and infanticide and the result was severe punishments for all persons who participated in an abortive technique reliant on drugs or other methods. The punishments could extend to exile, confiscation of property and death.
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