Magna Carta just celebrated its 800th birthday this past Monday. In honour of this incredible milestone, King’s College London, and the Magna Carta Project, hosted a 3 day conference dedicated to this historic document.
The Anglo-Saxon War-Culture and The Lord of the Rings: Legacy and Reappraisal
January 18, 2015 By
The literature of war in English claims its origin from the Homeric epics, and the medieval accounts of chivalry and the crusades.
Besteiros Do Conto (Crossbowmen): Organization, abuses of power and irregularities during the reign of Dom João I (1385-1433)
November 23, 2014 By
The aim of this paper is to examine an aspect of social life linked to one of the most important and original forms of military organization in the whole of Portuguese history—the besteiros do conto (crossbowmen).
Characteristics of Medieval Artillery in the Light of Written Sources from Bohemia and Poland
September 8, 2014 By
Artillery appears in Central Europe at the end of the 14th c. and it starts playing a more significant role only in the next century.
‘Protecting the non-combatant’: Chivalry, Codes and the Just War Theory
May 23, 2014 By
The concept of chivalry, a traditional code of conduct idealised by the knightly class relating to times of both peace and war, dominated the medieval period and many of the scholars who contributed to the principle of jus in bello were in fact writing about chivalry.
BOOK REVIEW: “Defending the City of God” : A Medieval Queen, the First Crusades, and the Quest for Peace in Jerusalem, by Sharan Newman
May 9, 2014 By
This is my review of Sharan Newman’s latest book, Defending the City of God: A Medieval Queen, the First Crusades, and the Quest for Peace in Jerusalem.
The soldier’s life: martial virtues and hegemonic masculinity in the early Byzantine Empire
April 13, 2014 By
This dissertation argues that martial virtues and images of the soldier’s life represented an essential aspect of early Byzantine masculine ideology. It contends that in many of the visual and literary sources from the fourth to the seventh centuries CE, conceptualisations of the soldier’s life and the ideal manly life were often the same.
Christian Iberia: A Society Religiously Organized for War
February 15, 2014 By
Reconquista society in medieval Christian Spain is all too often considered through only economic and martial eyes. In this study of the prevelant cult of Santiago de Compostela (or St. James the Greater) I will demonstrate how medieval society meshed both war and religion.
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.
Warfare and propaganda: the portrayal of Andronikos II Palaiologos (1282 – 1328) as an incompetent military leader in the Histories of John VI Kantakouzenos (1347-1354)
February 9, 2014 By
The Histories of Kantakouzenos is the main source for the civil war between Andronikos II and Andronikos III which was fought intermittently from 1321 until 1328.
Warriors and warfare: ideal and reality in early insular texts
February 6, 2014 By
This thesis investigates several key aspects of warfare and its participants in the Viking Age insular world via a comparison of the image which warriors occupy in heroic literature to their concomitant depiction in sources which are primarily nonliterary in character, such as histories, annalistic records, and law codes.
The Management of the Mobilization of English Armies: Edward I to Edward III
January 31, 2014 By
This thesis examines government administrative action that can be described as ‘management’, in the context of the logistics of mobilizing royal armies during the reigns of Edward I, Edward II and Edward III.
Plague and Persecution: The Black Death and Early Modern Witch Hunts
January 27, 2014 By
The century or so from approximately 1550 to 1650 is a period during which witch-hunts reached unprecedented frequency and intensity. The circumstances that fomented the witch- hunts—persistent warfare, religious conflict, and harvest failures—had occurred before, but witch-hunts had never been so ubiquitous or severe.
Sword and Spirit: Bushido in Practice from the Late Sengoku Era through the Edo Period
December 29, 2013 By
Bushido’s derivative word, bushi, was the original term for the upper warrior classes. The spiritual aspects of it arose from two main sources: Buddhism and Shintoism. Buddhism provided the necessary components for bravery in the face of death.
‘Defending the Christian Faith with Our Blood’. The Battle of Lepanto (1571) and the Venetian Eastern Adriatic: Impact of a Global Conflict on the Mediterranean Periphery
July 22, 2013 By
The battle of Lepanto, which took place on the 7th of October 1571, was the greatest naval battle of oar driven vessels in the history of the Mediterranean1. It was then that the mighty Ottoman navy suffered its first and utter defeat in a direct confrontation with Christian forces, joined in the Holy League. Its purpose was to help Venice in the defence of Cyprus, stormed by the Ottoman troops in July of 1570, but to no avail, as on the 3rd of August 1571 the island was taken by the Ottomans.
Welsh Poetry and the War of the Roses
May 5, 2013 By
This is a brief summary of a paper on Welsh poetry, patronage and politics. It was given at the Celtic Studies Association of North America Annual Conference at the University of Toronto April 18 – 21, 2013.
Sir John Fortescue and the French Polemical Treatises of the Hundred Years War
February 10, 2013 By
Inevitably Fortescue had to adopt new arguments for the defence of Henry VI. To this end he asserted that the Lancastrians now had a just title through divine and ecclesiastical approbation, popular consent and prescription, but the core of his case was a direct response to the Yorkist claim that they had a superior hereditary title to the throne.
Solem a Tergo Reliquit: The Troublesome Battle of Bosworth Field
February 10, 2013 By
The first major point upon which we disagree concerns the nature of existing evidence about the Battle. Richardson points to a number of sources, but the central problem here is that, with one ex- ception, they are not contemporary with the Battle itself.
The Trebuchet
January 13, 2013 By
Recent reconstructions and computer simulations reveal the operating principles of the most powerful weapon of its time
The Scottish wars of Edward III, 1327-1338
January 13, 2013 By
This thesis deals with the events of the Anglo-Scottish wars of the 1330s and the English military machine that allowed Edward III to win numerous successes against the Scots yet was unable to secure a permanent conquest of any portion of Scotland save Berwick-upon Tweed.
Charlemagne’s Jihad
January 3, 2013 By
In 782, after almost two years with no clashes in the Saxon front, Charlemagne led his army into Saxony once again. This time, the main purpose was to subdue the Saxons who rebelled under the leadership of Widukind. It was a brutal campaign, during which, our sources relate, more than 4,500 Saxon rebels were beheaded in one day at the order of Charlemagne.
Excavating All Saints: a medieval church rediscovered
January 1, 2013 By
When excavations started at the site of the ‘lost’ church of All Saint’s in York, archaeologists knew they would find burials. What they found was much more than expected: an Anchoress and the remains of soldiers who helped Oliver Cromwell take the city at the Siege of York in 1644. Lauren McIntyre and Graham Bruce explain the evidence.
England: One Country, Two Courts
December 26, 2012 By
The 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.
Querimonia desolacionis terre sancte – The fall of Acre and the Holy Land in 1291 as an emotional element in the Teutonic Order tradition
December 24, 2012 By
Those Military Orders − the Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights, along with other Military Orders, had shed their blood across the Latin Kingdom and suffered many casualties in the final siege which took place in Acre between March and May 1291.
Tolkien’s Heroic Criticism: A Developing Application of Anglo-Saxon Ofermod to the Monsters of Modernity
December 12, 2012 By
The structure of this study follows the development of Tolkien’s social criticism and heroic aesthetic. The study begins by looking at some biographical elements of Tolkien’s life and how those elements shaped the creation of Tolkien’s anti-hero, the Hobbit.
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