How you can Follow Us!
Medieval News
Twelfth Century Archive
-
Making the martyr: the liturgical persona of Saint Thomas Becket in visual imagery
Posted on February 10, 2013 | No CommentsHow was the historical figure of the worldly chancellor reconciled to the saintly archbishop who was martyred for his faith on the floor of Canterbury Cathedral? One of the most important vehicles of expression in the Middle Ages was the liturgy. -
Oh, for Shame: Public Perception and Punishment in Chretien’s Cliges
Posted on February 9, 2013 | No CommentsTo develop this argument, a basic understanding of medieval society's conventions is necessary in order to outline the parameters of this honor/shame culture. -
Picturing Gregory: The Evolving Imagery of Canon Law
Posted on February 4, 2013 | No CommentsThis paper surveys images created for the opening of the Liber extra between around 1240 and 1350, from a variety of standpoints: iconography, page layout, patrons and readers - and also suggests possible ideological agendas that might be embedded in the illustrations. -
Musical Characteristics of the Songs Attributed to Peter of Blois (c. 1135-1211)
Posted on January 15, 2013 | No CommentsToward the end of the twelfth century, moral conflict was rampant in the Catholic Church regarding the conduct (and misconduct) of all levels of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, though especially at the two extremes on the scale of power. Music and literature from the period have immortalized the mischievous and impious escapades of certain members of the lower orders of clergy, termed satirically the ordo vagorum. -
The patronage of the Templars and of the Order of St. Lazarus in England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
Posted on January 15, 2013 | No CommentsThe religious revival of the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries saw the rise of a host of new orders ranging from the Cistercians and Carthusians to the Augustinian and Premonstratensian canons. In addition, it also saw the development of the Military Orders which originated in the Holy Land after the capture of Jerusalem in 1099, and fulfilled a mixture of military, hospitaller, religious and political functions. -
The Representation of Antichrist in Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias
Posted on January 13, 2013 | No CommentsThe image thatis the subjectof this essay is one of thirty-five miniatures that once illuminated the lost Rupertsberg manuscript (Wiesbaden, Hessisches Landesbibl., MS 1, ca. 1165-75), a deluxe copy of Scivias. -
Transitional Holiness in the Twelfth Century: The Social and Spiritual Identity of Domina Christina of Markyate
Posted on January 13, 2013 | No CommentsVisions flourish within particular domestic contexts and disciplines, and Christina enables us to glimpse a sub-culture of visionary experience in twelfth-century England, which rarely shows up in sources and is given little authority in the dominant narratives. -
The Papal Bulls for the Invasions of England and Ireland
Posted on January 13, 2013 | No CommentsJohn has represented his master's enterprise in the very best light, making him out as an enthusiast for the reformation of the lax moral and ecclesiastical condition of Ireland. -
The Battle of Beroia: A Byzantine ‘Face of Battle’
Posted on January 7, 2013 | No CommentsIt was by reading John Keegan’s Face of Battle that I discovered that it was possible to write military history that was both intellectually rigorous and engaging to read. -
Lay Writers and the Politics of Theology in Medieval England From the Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries
Posted on January 3, 2013 | No CommentsMy intention is not to continue the discourse on such practices but to analyze narrative content in relation to the politics of theology that had an impact on lay writers and their artistic creativity concerning the search for selfhood from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. -
Matrimonial politics and core-periphery interactions in twelfth- and early thirteenth-century Scotland
Posted on December 31, 2012 | No CommentsThe medieval kingdom of Scotland was a rich amalgam of diverse ethnic elements which reflected the turbulent history of the first millennium of its development. -
Women in Troubadour Song: Of the Comtessa and the Vilana
Posted on December 30, 2012 | No CommentsSince we have melodies for both songs, the question of what “feminine” voices we are hearing is a musi- cal as well as a poetic issue. -
Aspects of the English royal succession, 1066-1199: the death of the king
Posted on December 28, 2012 | No CommentsThe death of any ruler in the twelfth century, even if it were expected, caused a considerable amount of shock and disquiet amongst those who were left behind. -
The Cross as Tree: The Wood-of-the-Cross Legends in Middle English and Latin Texts in Medieval England
Posted on December 28, 2012 | No CommentsThe wood-of-the-cross legend is actually a group of narratives that trace the pre- history of the wood used to make Christ's cross back to Old Testament figures, or in some cases back to paradise itself. -
England: One Country, Two Courts
Posted on December 26, 2012 | No CommentsThe tension created by the two-court system is an integral part of England’s administrative and constitutional history. Exactly how integral has generated a considerable amount of scholarly work, from explanations of the sources of the conflict, to how the disagreement over jurisdiction was addressed throughout the Middle Ages, to what impact the issue had in shaping England’s overall political development. -
Looking Back: Medieval French Romance and the Dynamics of Seeing
Posted on December 24, 2012 | No CommentsThis dissertation builds upon the work of feminist medievalists and other literary and cultural scholars to argue that sight, and objects that are seen, articulate love relationships between characters in medieval romances, and that seeing is frequently a locus of resistance to gender norms the texts both establish and refuse to accept. -
King and magnate in medieval Ireland: Walter de Lacy, King Richard and King John
Posted on December 17, 2012 | No CommentsPerhaps the best way to capture the essence of the relationship between Richard, John and their magnates is to focus on one such relationship and to analyse the changes it underwent over the twenty-seven years the two brothers ruled England. The career of Walter de Lacy provides an excellent opportunity for such an analysis. -
Property Rights in Celtic Irish Law
Posted on December 16, 2012 | No CommentsUnfortunately, many historians not specializing in the study of the ancient Irish law tracts have been unaware of the textual inaccuracies of the O'Curry - O'Donovan translations and have continued to incorporate their older unscientific work, and that of their editors, into their own work. -
Neither ill nor healthy: The intermediate state between health and disease in medieval medicine
Posted on December 16, 2012 | No CommentsParadoxically, however, the notion of an intermediate state between health and disease also has a long history, harking back, at least, to the times of Galen. The question of the existence of such a state and the utility and necessity for physicians to acknowledge it, was particularly hotly debated in the Middle Ages... -
INTERVIEW: Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths
Posted on December 13, 2012 | No CommentsAn interview with author Nancy Brown on her latest medieval offering: "Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths". -
Male Friendship in The Lord of the Rings: Medievalism, the First World War, and Contemporary Rewritings
Posted on December 10, 2012 | No CommentsI would like to present this research about male friendships in the First World War and to discuss how Tolkien’s work reflects what we see in other writers who represented their experiences in the First War -
The castle building of William Marshal in Ireland
Posted on December 9, 2012 | No CommentsTwelve years later, King Richard presented Isabelle in marriage to his then landless Norman warlord William the Marshall. Marshall had inherited the title of Marshall from his brother, but little in the way of property. -
The Consuetudines canonice of Lund
Posted on December 4, 2012 | No CommentsIn this paper we shall deal with the customs in Lund, the so-called Consuetudines canonice. -
Transylvanian Identities in the Middle Ages
Posted on November 25, 2012 | No CommentsIdentity has become a subject of historical exploration as it is also one of the themes examined from the perspectives of various disciplines belonging to the social sciences such as sociology, psychology or anthropology. -
The Passion of Peter Abelard
Posted on November 22, 2012 | No CommentsIn the philosophical part of the project we chose not to use Abelardís work Dialogue of the Philosopher with a Jew and a Christian, which explains his views on different religions. Since we decided to use the Letters of Direction in order to get an overview about Abelardís view on Christianity, there appeared to be little need for the aforementioned book.