Medieval Movie Review: Valhalla Rising
It’s intelligent, interesting and beautiful to watch even at it’s bloodiest. If you’re looking for action beyond the usual hack-n’-slash Hollywood film, this quiet little movie will do the trick.
Medieval records shed light on Italian earthquakes
The researchers combed through written records and information from archaeological excavations, covering the period from ancient Roman occupation in the first century A.D. to the late Middle Ages.
Pagan traces in medieval and early modern European witch-beliefs
The aim of this research is to explore how pre-Christian beliefs, cults and popular traditions may have indirectly survived in early modern and medieval European witch-beliefs.
Greed wasn’t good in the Middle Ages – historian looks at medieval business ethics
Self-serving behavior deemed necessary on Wall Street today might have been despised in medieval Europe. One might even have been murdered for using wealth as a justification for circumventing societal norms.
Vikings’ demise on foreign soil – a case of ethnic cleansing?: The discovery of two mass graves containing the remains of Scandinavians in Anglo-Saxon England
The aim of this essay is to analyse the reasons for why a group of male Scandinavians met their fate in two mass graves during the Viking age (most generally taken to run from c. AD 800 to c. 1050) in Anglo-Saxon England.
Living off the dead : the relationship between emperor cult and the cult of the saints in late antiquity
So while on the surface, Christianity and Roman religion seemed entirely different, it is clear that Christianity drew on certain aspects of Roman religion when establishing major tenets of Christian beliefs.
Divine Constructions: A Comparison of the Great Mosque of Cordoba and Notre-Dame-du-Chartres
However different the two buildings may be the impulse to create them was the same. The glittering stained glass windows of Chartres share something with the elegant Kufic inscriptions in Cordoba.
Erectile dysfunction in the Middle Ages
Like today, the problem of male impotence in the Middle Ages was often taken seriously and had important consequences for marriages and families. This can be seen in two court cases from 14th century York.
Reading Bede as Bede would read
Early medieval readers read texts differently than their modern scholarly counterparts.
Medieval Cities of Europe: Click, Tweet, Map, and Present
During spring semester 2010, a long-standing upper-division lecture course, Medieval Cities of Europe, 500-1500 CE, underwent a course transformation. Our goal was to address specific challenges with student engagement that we had experienced in the course
Magna Carta: Teaching Medieval Topics for Historical Significance
With the approach of the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, the famous charter of rights from medieval england, we have a timely and useful example for considering what a focus on historical significance could look like.
The road to the Industrial Revolution: hypotheses and conjectures about the medieval origins of the ‘European Miracle’
One of the big questions of economic history, and perhaps of the social sciences in general, is why Western Europe developed into an industrial society and generated a process of ‘modern economic growth’ continuing until today.
What Vikings really looked like
Were Vikings really dirty savages who wore horned helmets, or did they look like we do today? Here’s what the experts say.
Between Byzantium and Venice: Western Music in Crete
Were there orchestras, and which was their place in the life of the Catholic or Byzantine Churches? On the other hand, to what extent was the organ used in the liturgical space and by whom?