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Stepmothers as Villains: The Dark Side of Medieval Motherhood
Posted on April 16, 2013 | No CommentsAnglo-Norman writers seem to assign women to one of two extremes within the chronicles: on one side there are women who are presented as visions of perfection. With almost super-human ease, these women excel at marriage, motherhood, and religious devotion all of which are reflected in their physical beauty. -
The Roots of Rhythm: The Medieval Origins of the New Orleans’ Mardi Gras Beignet
Posted on April 15, 2013 | No CommentsThis paper argues that the beloved Mardi Gras beignet, eaten in advance of the Lenten fast, derives from deep-fried pastries used to break the Ramadan fast by medieval Muslims living in Spain. -
![It has indeed been confidently asserted that [Richard the 3d] killed his two Nephews & his Wife, but it has also been declared that he did not kill his two Nephews.](http://www.medievalists.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Princes-115x115.jpg "The Enduring Appeal of Richard III")
The Enduring Appeal of Richard III
Posted on April 14, 2013 | No CommentsIt has indeed been confidently asserted that [Richard the 3d] killed his two Nephews & his Wife, but it has also been declared that he did not kill his two Nephews. -
Teaching the Creed and Articles of Faith in England: Lateran IV to Ignorantia sacerdotum
Posted on April 14, 2013 | No CommentsThe broad conclusion of this thesis is that the available evidence shows that the basic principles of Christian doctrine were available both to the lower clergy who would preach and teach the Creed and Articles of Faith and also to the laity who would receive this preaching and instruction. -
Julian of Norwich’s “Christ as Mother” and Medieval Constructions of Gender
Posted on April 13, 2013 | No CommentsRecent Christian feminists have revived an interest in women mystics and feminine religious imagery. In light of what most people generalize about medieval misogyny and about the veneration of the Virgin as a surrogate for a female divinity, Julian of Norwich's trope of Christ as Mother seems even more remarkable. -
Wonders and Wisdom: Anglo-Saxons and the East
Posted on April 11, 2013 | No CommentsWhat the Anglo-Saxons ‘‘knew’’ about Moslems and Jews, and about Babylon and Egypt and India, depended upon Biblical exegesis, saints’ lives, and other texts derived from Latin sources. Numerous Old English texts, as well as Latin versions that circulated and were copied in Anglo-Saxon England, concern Asia; these are quite varied in genre and in content. -
The Voices of Counsel: Women and Civic Rhetoric in the Middle Ages
Posted on April 11, 2013 | No CommentsA full discussion of women’s civic rhetoric in the Middle Ages has been somewhat obfuscated for two reasons: persistent generalities about women’s roles, and generalities about the nature of the civic itself in the Middle Ages. -
When the Dark Ages Were Lit Up: The Sutton Hoo discovery 70 years on
Posted on April 11, 2013 | No CommentsAlex Burghart looks back 70 years to the discovery of the fabulous Anglo-Saxon burial at Sutton Hoo, and ponders how far we've come in our knowledge of the period since 1939. -
The Interrogation of of a Male Transvestite Prostitute in Fourteenth Century London
Posted on April 11, 2013 | No CommentsDespite the general rule that sexual offenses were matters for the church courts, in some cases the city of London took charge of these offenses. Prostitution and procuring, for example, involved public order; the temporal courts dealt with them for that reason, so that the same people might be prosecuted in both jusrisdictions for the same offense. -
Hatred as a Social Institution in Late-Medieval Society
Posted on April 8, 2013 | No CommentsAt some point early in 1355, the laborer Pons Gasin of Marseilles killed a woman named Alazais Borgona. The peace act that arose from this killing does not tell us why. What it does tell us is that the killing marked the birth of a great hatred between Alazais's kinfolk and Pons. -
Society, economy and lordship in Devon in the age of the first two Courtenay earls, c. 1297-1377
Posted on April 8, 2013 | No CommentsThis thesis is a contribution to the social history of medieval Devon and the south- west in the lifetimes of the first two Courtenay earls, Hugh II (1275-1340) and Hugh III (1303-77). -
The Death Toll of Justinian’s Plague and Its Effects on the Byzantine Empire
Posted on April 4, 2013 | No CommentsIn 541 a plague arrived in Egypt and rapidly began to spread. The following account of the beginning of the plague, while clearly an exaggeration still shows the impact of the disease. -
Corpus Christi Plays and the Stations of the Cross: Medieval York and Modern Sydney
Posted on April 1, 2013 | No CommentsThe earliest surviving reference to the Corpus Christi festival in York is dated 1322, when Archbishop William Melton commended it as „the glorious feast of the most precious sacrament of the flesh and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ‟. In 1408 the York Guild of Corpus Christi was established „as a confraternity of chaplains and lay persons, with the encouragement of the city government, probably to form the focus of the civic Corpus Christi Day procession‟. -
New Towns in Medieval France and Nature of Institutions
Posted on April 1, 2013 | No CommentsIn its early stages, a new town was a village community created by a central authority (king or overlord) on his wildland to meet the needs of growing populations and to further both its own benefits and the common interests of the inhabitants. -
Intermarriage in fifteenth-century Ireland: the English and Irish in the ‘four obedient shires’
Posted on March 31, 2013 | No CommentsThe so-called ‘four obedient shires’ of Meath, Kildare, Louth and Dublin are a fruitful area for a study of marriage between the English of Ireland and the Irish, as these counties comprised the region of the colony most firmly under English control in the fifteenth century. Much of the anti-Irish rhetoric that survives in sources from the period... -
“One Woman with Many Faces”: Imaginings of Mary Magdalen in Medieval and Contemporary Texts
Posted on March 31, 2013 | No CommentsThis project explores these contradictory and myriad imaginings of Mary Magdalen, emphasizing particularly the connections to be made between those emerging from the later Middle Ages and in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. -
The Virgin Mary in High Medieval England, A Divinely Malleable Woman: Virgin, Intercessor, Protector, Mother, Role Model
Posted on March 31, 2013 | No CommentsThis thesis examines the significance of the Virgin Mary in England between the late fifteenth century and early sixteenth century. The primary sources selected indicate the variety of ideas circulating about her during this period. Strictly religious texts such as the Bible and early Christian writings ground Late Medieval beliefs about Mary in their historical context. -
Best Clothes and Everyday Attire of Late Medieval Nuns
Posted on March 25, 2013 | No CommentsThe habit symbolises humility because it nulifies any difference of estate; it signifies the will to chastity because it disguises the feminine form of the body; and it displays outer obedience to divine com- mands by its timelessly simple cut and fabric of linen or wool. Given this sort of symbolism, fashion and nuns appear to be mutually exclusive themes. -
Manure and the medieval social order
Posted on March 24, 2013 | No CommentsTaking examples from the open fields of England, it is argued that peasants used manure to differentiate their holdings from those of the lord, and by so doing helped to defne both space and their own social identity. -
Licit and Illicit Sexuality in Medieval Iberia: A Survey of Las Siete Partidas
Posted on March 22, 2013 | No CommentsThis thesis examines Las Siete Partidas, a thirteenth-century Castilian legal code of laws, including on marriage and illicit sexual behaviors. -
Archeological and Historical Approaches to Complex Societies: The Islamic States of Medieval Morocco
Posted on March 20, 2013 | No CommentsWe postulate that during the Medieval period two widely different sociopolitical contexts existed, giving rise to diverse urban patterns. Most importantly, we argue that the second of these patterns represents a widespread situation that is inadequately treated in the literature. -
The Persuasive Power of a Mother’s Breast: The Most Desperate Act of the Virgin Mary’s Advocacy
Posted on March 17, 2013 | No CommentsThe image of the Virgo Lactans orMaria Lactans (the image of the Virgin Mary suckling the Child Jesus), which occurs as early as the third century in the catacomb of Priscilla inRome, later spread ing across Europe, is found in a number of Irish sources. -
Saga Motifs on Gotland Picture Stones: The Case of Hildr Högnadóttir
Posted on March 17, 2013 | No CommentsThis article will only examine one of these legends, namely the ‘Hildr legend’ in the context of two of these stones, lärbro stora hammars and stenkyrka smiss . An attempt will be made to place the images in a larger context than has been done before, and by doing so to strenghten the probability that they were indeed intended to refer to the original Hildr legend. -
Detecting gestures in medieval images
Posted on March 17, 2013 | No CommentsWe present a template-based detector for gestures visualized in legal manuscripts of the Middle Ages. Depicted persons possess gestures with specific semantic meaning from the perspective of legal history. -
Functions of the Cantred in Medieval Ireland
Posted on March 17, 2013 | No CommentsThe cantred as territorial division was recognised everywhere in Ireland by the Anglo-Norman colonists in the first decades of the establishment of the colony. The subsequent use made of these units depended on a number of variables.