Medieval Mystery Plays: Cain and Abel
Medieval mystery plays were cycles of plays, covering salvation history from the Creation to the Last Judgment, which were performed in England during the late Middle Ages.
Medieval reads for Dad!
Father’s Day is just around the corner – here are some fun medieval reads to make his day special!
The idea of Christian chivalry in the chronicles of the Teutonic Order
This thesis has as its subject matter the chronicles written by members of the Teutonic Order to describe and justify the crusades undertaken by the Order in Prussia and Lithuania in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Pope Gregory X and the Crusades
Pope Gregory X’s papal tenure (September 1271 – January 1276) stood at the very
centre of the crusading movement in the later thirteenth century.
In Defense of History
…the twin dangers against which, I suggest, history is in need of defense: disuse and misuse – or, putting it differently, neglect and perversion.
The Staffordshire Hoard and the Mercian Royal Court
In England, whatever date you prefer for the composition of Beowulf, it is of interest that the poet thought of the king as a goldwine gumena – the gold-friend of the warriors – or as the goldwine Geata – the gold-friend of the Geats.
Montaigne and the Sports of Italy
Athletic excellence was an equally strong component of Italian culture in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
Canadian Society of Medievalists
The Canadian Society of Medievalists aims to represent Canadian medievalists around the world and medievalists working in Canada.
Petrarch’s “Conversion” on Mont Ventoux and the Patterns of Religious Experience
Petrarch’s letter, with its moments of meditation, its allegorical exploitation of the features in the physical ascent, and its program of classical allusions informing even the geographical descriptions, is much more than a travel narrative.
The Publisher Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, Female Readers, and the Debate about Women in Sixteenth-Century Italy
Drawing on recent work on the social history of the book and the politics of reading, this essay considers the texts under question as social products, whose meaning is not just determined by the author’s initial intentions, but is further shaped in the process of production, dissemination, and reception as a result of negotiation among several parties in a given historical moment.
Spectacular Antiquities: power and display of anticaglie at the court of Cosimo I de’ Medici
Florentines were interested in the early history of their city. Several founding legends were developed over the centuries, some of which owed more to fantasy than to history, but all of which insisted that Florence was an ancient city, going back at least to the late Roman Republic.
Creating An Online Portal Into The Medieval World
Researchers are in the process of pulling together a website bringing together scores of electronic resources on medieval subjects, including literature, history, theology, architecture, art history and philosophy.
Filippino Lippi and Music
Filippino belongs to that stream of later Quattrocento Florentine painting in which topographical accuracy and careful attention to detail was particularly valued.4 He included musical images, mostly instruments, in a number of his works: some are clearly realistic representations of contemporary instruments, others are obviously intended to be symbolic; occasionally the two types are found in a single work.
The African Paradise of Cardinal Carvajal: New Light on the “Kunstmann II Map,” 1502-1506
The Kunstmann II map (99 x 110.5 cm) records the discoveries made in the New World by Miguel Corte-Real and Amerigo Vespucci in 1501–1502.
Why are there spaceships in Medieval art?
In other artwork there are golden disks shooting down lights that look like tractor beams onto the faithful. There are random ovals, with what look like wires coming out of them, over the shoulder of the Virgin Mary while she’s holding the baby Jesus.
Two French Views of Monstrous Peoples in Sub-Saharan Africa
Although the existence of these peoples was increasingly put into question during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, they had not yet vanished from the face of the earth.
Black Africans’ Religious and Cultural Assimilation to, or Appropriation of, Catholicism in Italy, 1470-1520
Current scholarship emphasizes that the old model of conversion—of, say, Christianity being actively forced onto passive and subordinate peoples—is no longer satisfactory, and instead prefers to frame the issue around concepts of cultural interaction or cultural transmission, and selective appropriation of the host religion.
Reading in the Refectory: monastic practice in England from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries
Teresa Webber discusses monastic practices of communal public reading at mealtimes.
Rediscovering Medieval Ireland
A lecture to mark the new internet resource: CIRCLE: A Calendar of Irish Chancery Letters, c.1244–1509.
The Elusive Netherlands. The question of national identity in the Early Modern Low Countries on the Eve of the Revolt
The identity of the Low Countries was also muddied by contemporary debates about the correspondence between ‘Gallia’ and France and between ‘Germania’ and ‘Deutschland’.
Historian uncovers cases of ransoms paid to Vikings in the 11th century
How much were two women worth in 11th century Iberia? For the Vikings the price was a blanket of wolf skin, a sword, a shirt, three scarves, a cow and some salt.
Looking a medieval gift horse in the mouth. The role of the giving of gift objects in the definition and maintenance of the power networks of Philip the Bold
Guenée dubbed the late fourteenth century le temps des alliances’, pointing to the effect on politics and administration in France of visible, recognised networks. These might be based on kinship, marriage and godparenting, where the obligations were well understood, but not necessarily written down
The Universe through Medieval Eyes
The way an educated person eight hundred years ago might think about the world. What did they think about space? What did they think the world was made of? What kind of creatures lived in the world?
Hospitals and leper houses in the Latin west during the Middle Ages
Audio podcast of a lecture by John Hine Mundy
Shooting Arrows Through Myth and History: The Evolution of the Robin Hood Legend
This study begins with an examination of Robin Hood as he appeared in popular media from the fourteenth century through the twenty-first century.