The Holy Roman Empire, the Schmalkald League, and the Idea of Confessional Nation-Building
Recent research on nationalism draws a fundamental heuristic distinc- tion between political and cultural nationalism. Scholars define the his- torian’s task as the analysis of political and cultural nationalism in each historic context.
Technologies of authority in the medical classroom in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
In this paper I would like to explore the strategies developed by the university medical master towards the recognition and establishment of authority for himself and for those contemporary authors who, like himself, worked within the medieval Studia. I would develop this possibility by analysing a uniquely academic product, the medical commentary.
Sex and Political Legitimacy: an Examination of Byzantine Empresses (399 -1056 c.e.)
The intent of this paper was to examine another aspect of the life of Byzantine Empresses: their ability to assert political power.
Gesturing in the Early Universities
A notable feature of research into the early universities is that it usually pays close attention to the oral and literary traditions that underpinned scholastic education. By focusing exclusively upon these logocentric traditions, however, the significance of the word (whether written or spoken) in late medieval pedagogy has often been over- emphasized. In this essay I wish to correct this perspective by investigating the use of gestures in early university education as a non-verbal means of communication.
The Church and Slavery in Anglo-Saxon England
Slaves and slavery were an accepted part of everyday Anglo-Saxon life. This paper examines a range of original sources that reveal the ways in which the teachings and practices of Christianity and Christians were part of that acceptance.
A Reevaluation of the Impact of the Hundred Years War On The Rural Economy and Society of England
This paper seeks to examine both the positive and negative impacts of the Hundred Years War on the rural society and economy of England and to demonstrate that the overall impact of the war was not as negative as the majority of historians have previously maintained.
Organa doctorum: Gerbert of Aurillac, organbuilder?
He was born a peasant. Yet, through intelligence, political skill and uncommon good luck he came to be one of the most influential people in the Europe of his time…Pope Sylvester II.
The Disposal of Human Waste: A comparison between Ancient Rome and Medieval London
This essay examines the waste disposal options used in Ancient Rome and Medieval London, two cities that dealt with sewage in different ways.
The status of women in Roman and Frankish law
Under both Roman and Frankish laws, women, although they did not have judicial equality with men, did have many legal rights and freedoms.
Chaucer’s costume rhetoric in his portrait of the Prioress
No critic has ever discussed costume signs in order to reveal to what extent the Prioress does or does not conform in her costume to the fourteenth century norm, with consideration given, simultaneously, to the historical records, literature and visual arts of the period that form and inform the signs from the many traditions Chaucer in corporates in his portrait of the Prioress.
Social Deviancy: A Medieval Approach
Why bother with the weakest members of society by allocating substantial resources for keeping them alive and well in designated spaces?
Worcester’s medieval walls undergoes repairs
Worcester’s medieval city walls are undergoing substantial renovation work, the largest done in over 40 years
Settlement and Field Structures in continental North-West Europe from the Ninth to the Thirteenth Centuries
Since the eighties and increasingly during the nineties there has been a renewed interest on the continent in medieval rural settlement, mainly among archaeologists and geographers
Bernard Ayglier and William of Pagula: Two Approaches To Monastic Law
The paper examines the role of canon law in two monastic works, the Speculum monachorum (SM) (1272×74) of Bernard Ayglier (d.1282), abbot of Montecassino, and the Speculum religiosorum (SR) (c.1322) of William of Pagula, a canonist and secular priest (d.1332)
The castrati: a physician’s perspective
The phenomenon of the castrati enters the history of Western music in the latter half of the 16th century, becoming a dominant factor in Italian music through most of the 17th and 18th centuries, and then gradually fading during the 19th century.
The remarkable Baldwin IV: leper and king of Jerusalem
Medieval teen king, precocious politician, and successful battlefield commander, Baldwin IV not only surmounted disabling neurological impairment but challenged the stigma of leprosy, remarkably continuing to rule until his premature death aged twenty-three.
Botticelli’s Primavera and the Poetic Imagination of Italian Renaissance Art
The Primavera is now so much a part of our historical consciousness and aesthetic heritage that it is hard to believe that after Vasari briefly mentioned it in his Lives of the artists from the middle years of the sixteenth century, the painting was all but forgotten until the end of the nineteenth century, when Botticelli’s art was rediscovered.
The British History Podcast
With over seventy episodes recorded, the British History Podcast is giving people a lot to listen too.
The Black Death in Medieval India: a Historical Mystery
Why did a pestilence that had such an impact on one part of the world go unmentioned in another part of the world?
Leicestershire settlements through the late fourteenth century poll tax records – urban or rural?
Leicestershire’s medieval settlement pattern consisted of nucleated villages, generally 1·2 miles apart; these followed a regime of mixed farming on common fields.
The Black Death – lecture by Sir Richard J. Evans
In this series of six lectures I want to look at some of the great diseases and their relationship to human history.
Two University of Chicago Humanists and a Landmark Edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
Partly thanks to their experience as code-breakers in World War I, theirs was the first edition to take account of all 83 medieval witnesses to parts or the whole of the Tales.
Expectations of empire: some twelfth- and early thirteenth-century English views of what their kings could do
In this paper I shall try to see what the ways in which a number of twelfth- and early thirteenth-century English authors interpreted the past might reveal about their assumptions about the reach of the king’s government.
Nomadic Violence in the First Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Military Orders
That the threat posed by bands of marauders was taken seriously by the early crusader settlers can be seen by some of the barons’ brutal reactions to it.
Solar Eclipses in Medieval Islamic Civilization
In ancient times, the births and deaths of leaders or dignitaries were often supposed to be associated with celestial omens. However, Islamic theology does not accept that eclipses are indications of events on earth.