A brawl in the streets of 14th century Alexandria between Egyptians and Europeans – what caused it?
The 727/1327 Silk Weavers’ Rebellion in Alexandria: Religious Xenophobia, Homophobia, or Economic Grievances
December 7, 2012 By
Perkin Warbeck: Whether my hero was or was not an impostor, he was believed to be the true man by his contemporaries
December 2, 2012 By
So what about the famous confession? By historians in the Tudor tradition this is usually seen as absolute proof that he was an impostor, arguing that “there is nothing in [his] confession which should make us doubt his truthfulness”. Somehow they cannot have looked at it too closely.
The Curious Career and Uncertain Past of Perkin Warbeck
December 2, 2012 By
Was Warbeck just another in a long line of pretenders to the throne of England, or did his appearance in Ireland in 1491 prove the innocence
of Richard III, whom most historians accuse of murdering his nephews, the Princes in the Tower?
Spectacularizing Justice in Late Medieval England
November 28, 2012 By
I use the word ritual because in cases of treachery use of a general ‘script’ as ordered by these two accounts emerges with surprising frequency in England in the late 13th and early 14th century.
Murder and Execution within the Political Sphere in Fifteenth Century Scandinavia
November 23, 2012 By
A quick glance at the regnal list of fifteenth-century Sweden shows that members of the nobility were at each others’ throats more or less all the time, especially from the 1430s and onwards.
Flemings in the Peasants’ Revolt, 1381
November 14, 2012 By
While the Peasants’ Revolt has been studied in depth by generations of medieval historians, the same cannot be said of England’s foreign-born inhabitants, and the largest group among these, the so-called Flemings (a term which was also applied to those from other principalities in the Low Countries besides Flanders).
SESSION III: The Medieval Experience of Siege
November 6, 2012 By
These are two papers from SESSION III: The Medieval Experience of Siege given at Boston College’s Haskin’s Conference. The first paper examined knightly interaction during sieges and the second paper delved into the actions of the besieged and besiegers during times of war.
Vikings were “first to begin criminal profiling”, historian says
September 8, 2012 By
The Saga of Egil Skallagrimsson tells the story of a tenth-century Viking warrior who took part in raids in Europe and often fought with his own neighbours in Iceland. When his life’s story was written in the thirteenth-century, was the author using him as an example of the type of man that society had to worry about?
Violence, Christianity, and the Anglo-Saxon charms
August 7, 2012 By
Our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon charms comes from surviving magico-medical manuscripts as well as some liturgical manuscripts dated from the tenth to the twelfth centuries.
Kings, Peasants, and the Restless Dead: Decapitation in Anglo-Saxon Saints’ Lives
August 5, 2012 By
Decapitation is not a particularly common event, however notable, in the records of Anglo-Saxon history.
Of the Thief on the Cross: The Problem of Pain in Punishment
July 15, 2012 By
Legal and social historians assume that once a state structure became involved in the punishment of crimes, the aim of punishment was obviously deterrence. The spectacle of hanging or of broken bodies hoisted on the wheel served that end.
A Difference in Sixteenth-Century French Violence
July 4, 2012 By
This article considers the implications of both Catholic and Calvinist types of violence during the Reformation of mid-sixteenth-century France.
Gender and Violence in the Northern French Farce
June 24, 2012 By
I will briefly examine here the identity of farce’s violent characters and their victims, as well as the deviant behaviors punished by comically violent means, ending with a brief discussion of the social conditions which, in my opinion, may have caused the farce’s target audience to enjoy watching the aggressive correction of certain types of antisocial behavior in the century following the Hundred Years’ War.
Borderlands, Cross-Cultural Exchange and Revenge in the Medieval and Early Modern Balkans: Roots of Present Regional Conflicts or Merely a Historical Case-Study?
June 20, 2012 By
Acts of revenge could be carried out across generations, forcing the relatives of a slain individual to escape humiliation and shame by embarking on a never-ending journey of vengeance and retaliation.
í víking : Norse who went plundering
June 10, 2012 By
Raids were commonplace among the Norse. They outfitted ships, plundered towns and monasteries, and sought adventure. Although they pursued far more peaceful pursuits much of the time, the summers saw them go í víking, plundering.
The Court of Beast and Bough: Contesting the Medieval English Forest in the Early Robin Hood Ballads
May 6, 2012 By
The medieval English forest has long been a space of contested legal meanings. After King William I first created the 75,000-acre New Forest, the English monarchy sought to define the vert, both legally and ideologically, as a multiplicity of sites in which the king’s rights were vigorously enforced.
York’s Blackest Hour
May 6, 2012 By
The infamous Shabbos HaGadol massacre of the Jews of York in 1190 was the most notorious example of anti-Semitism in medieval England.
The Harsh Life on the 15th Century Croatia-Ottoman Empire Military Border: Analyzing and Identifying the Reasons for the Massacre in Cepin
April 4, 2012 By
Turkish intrusions into what is today the continental part of Croatia began in 1391 and continued throughout the 15th, and the beginning of the 16th century when a large part of continental Croatia was incorporated into the Turkish Empire.
The Peace of God in Iceland in the 12th and 13th centuries
March 21, 2012 By
This article focuses on one of the most strife-ridden periods of Icelandic history, the Age of the Sturlungs (1220–1262) and the Church’s endeavours to bring about peace.
The politics of factional conflict in late medieval Flanders
February 10, 2012 By
In his influential study on political factions in medieval Europe, Jacques Heers demonstrated the importance of factionalism in the political life of the middle ages, at the level of cities and regions as well as at the ‘national’ level.
The Rectitudines singularum personarum: A Pre- and Post-Conquest Text
February 8, 2012 By
The most important extant document for our understanding of Anglo-Saxon manorial social structure is a text scholars call the Rectitudines singularum personarum
Torture and Plea Bargaining
February 5, 2012 By
Under certain circumstancesthe law permitted the criminal courts to employ physical coercionagainst suspected criminalsin orderto induce them to confess. The law went to great lengths to limit this technique of extorting confessions to cases in which it was thought that the accused was highly likely to be guilty…
Review: The Countess
February 3, 2012 By
The Countess is a 2009 film about Elizabeth Báthory. It is the Julie Delpy’s third directorial effort. Julia casts her self in the starring role as Erzsébet Báthory.
Feuding in Viking Age Iceland’s Great Village
January 29, 2012 By
My premise is that we come closest to understanding early Icelanders through a two-pronged approach: on the one hand, by focusing on their well-documented perception of themselves as a community and, on theother hand, through anthropological and historical analyses of the forces that shaped this perception.
Early Irish Law, Annals, and Computer Science
January 22, 2012 By
What I propose to do is establish the approximate number of people who died during the fighting by feeding the rules of Early Irish law into a computer program.
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