The Personal Carriage of Arrows from Hastings to the Mary Rose
What were the different methods the archer used to allow him to carry more arrows?
“The English Exodus to Ionia”: The Identity of the Anglo-Saxon Varangians in the Service of Alexios Comnenos I (1081-1118)
Most historians who focus on this period have examined the effects of the Norman invasion and its aftermath on the island itself, but few have studied the journeys of those who left England in search for new opportunities in foreign lands.
Women on the Rack: Torture and Gender in the Ius commune
The story that I will tell in this essay is of four women. Queen Sibílla Fortià of Aragon, an unknown woman named Mita, Beatrice Cenci of Rome, and Artemisia Gentileschi, also of Rome. What unites these four women is torture. All four were summoned to court, and all four were tortured.
The Law’s Violence against Medieval and Early Modern Jews
Ken Pennington examines the issue of forced baptism of Jewish children in the legal literature from the Middle Ages to the early modern period.
The Knighting of Henry, son of William the Conqueror, in 1086
This paper was part of SESSION VIII: Power & Politics in the Long Twelfth Century, at the Haskins Conference at Boston College.
John Lydgate and the Poetics of Fame
Read our interview with Mary C. Flannery about her new book
Comital Authority, Accountability and the Personnel of Comital Administration in Greater Anjou, 1129-51
This paper was part of SESSION VIII:Power & Politics in the Long Twelfth Century. It examined the charters of Geoffrey of
Is it King Richard III? We we will know in January
DNA testing, environmental sampling and radiocarbon dating are some of the tests being undertaken to determine whether the skeleton found in Leicester was once Richard III
The Archaeology of Colonialism in Medieval Ireland: Shifting Patterns of Domination and Acculturation
This project seeks to identify the processes at work in Scandinavian and Anglo- Norman colonialism in Ireland, and their interaction with the landscape, by examining the impact of each phase of activity on the settlement pattern in two representative case-study regions. The successes, failures, similarities and differences of Scandinavian and Anglo-Norman settlement and society in Ireland are examined and compared in this project in terms of three sub-phases of the overall process, namely expansion, consolidation and domination, within an overall developmental diachronic framework.
Furor Teutonicus: The View of the ‘Germans’ in Italy during the Reign of Emperor Frederick I, ‘Barbarossa’ (1152-90)
“Medieval Europe did not love the Germans. The Italians hated them, the French admitted their courage, but detested their manners, the English were jealous of them, the Slavs both feared and hated them, while the Germans despised and contemned the Slavs.”16 But it is the Italian side I would like to concentrate on in this paper. Further, I do not wish to examine the reasons for the conflicts between ‘Germans’ and ‘Italians’ in this era, nor the events surrounding them. I will try to focus strictly on the views that were expressed about Germans in mediaeval Italy in general and during the reign of Frederick Barbarossa in particular.
Haraldr the Hard-Ruler and his poets
If Haraldr’s contemporaries and the early writers did not know him as hardradi, what did they call him?
Civilization versus Barbarians? Fortification Techniques and Politics in Carolingian and Ottonian Borderlands
In many ways the situation on the north-eastern and eastern frontier of the Carolingian and Ottonian empires is an early medieval replica of phenomena associated with the frontiers of the Later Roman Empire.
The Evolution of the Saladin Legend in the West
William of Tyreʼs account of the history of the Crusades stops suddenly in 1184. As he lays down his pen he is in despair at the inevitable outcome which he foresees for the struggle with Saladin. It was fortunate for him that he did not live to see the triumph of Saladin at Hattin and Jerusalem. Williamʼs judgement of Saladin, there- fore, is one of fear and admiration but he is also able to criticize his faults, especially his ruthless ambition.
An 11th-Century Scandal
Complaints from Damian about the church’s unwillingness to confront the sexual behavior of the clergy, however, met with inaction. In 1049 Damian wrote to Pope Leo IX (1048-54) about the cancer of sexual abuse that was spreading through the church: boys and adolescents were being forced and seduced into performing acts of sodomy by priests and bishops; there were problems with sexual harassment among higher clergy; and many members of the clergy were keeping concubines.
“My trouthe for to holde—allas, allas!”: Dorigen and Honor in “The Franklin’s Tale”
We can see from the beginning of the Franklin’s Tale that honor as pub- lic esteem is an overriding concern for Arveragus, who qualifies his exceedingly courtly marriage vow, swearing always to remain Dorigen’s servant in love, with the condition that he retain the public appearance of lordly husband, “That wolde he have for shame of his degree”.
Was Innovation unwanted in Byzantium?
This paper aims at answering these questions by studying Byzantine sources. After some preliminary reflections on the study of innovation in historical writing, it looks briefly at the Byzantine explanation of innovation in Byzantine lexica. Then it considers if the Byzantine understanding of innovation in politics, that is to say innovation as rebellion, was as monolithic as modern scholarship seems to believe.
Missionaries and Crusaders in Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur
The War of Roses might have been the most prominent event on the English political stage at the time when the Morte d’Arthur was written, and there is evidence that Malory’s writing was in part informed by he civil discord he was witnessing.
Beneath the Battle: Engineers and miners as mercenaries in the Holy Land
Although the mercenary phenomenon was differently considered and regulated in the West, the practice of taking up arms in the service of a rival army is attested in the Latin East in the twelfth and thirteenth-century.
Medicine and Health Care in Later Medieval Europe: Hospitals, Public Health, and Minority Medical Practitioners in English and German Cities, 1250-1450
This interdisciplinary study, written from the standpoint ofan aspiring physician, seeks to contribute to the humanistic dimension of medicine by helping to integrate it further with its past, illuminating the meaning of health and disease in medieval society while adding depth to current thinking about medicine and public health. This study places various aspects ofhealth and disease within the framework of two major topics, religious beliefs and urban social history.
The Doctrine of Active Resistance in the Sixteenth Century
This article will explore the late medieval sources and the sixteenth century context of Continental Reformation theologians’ response to that agony of conscience.
What can written sources, sculpture and archaeology tell us about Pictish identity and how this might have changed between the sixth and ninth centuries?
Arguably one of the biggest changes in how the Picts portrayed themselves is understood through their use of sculpture. The earliest is thought to date to around the fifth century (Historic Scotland, 2012) lending itself to the Class I typology.
The Three Recensions of Eriugena’s Versio Dionysii
However, as G. Théry later discovered, Traube’s point of departure—the citations of Dionysius in Hincmar’s treatise on predestination—was faulty. Since Traube published his notes on the manuscripts of the Versio, Théry has proven that the citations in Hincmar’s Liber de praedestinatione come from Hilduin’s translation rather than that of Eriugena.