Book Review: An Unsuitable Princess, by Jane Rosenberg LaForge
The fantasy breaks up the troubling narcissism of the diary, while the diary gives the fantasy its grounding and meaning.
Galavant: ‘Spamalot meets Princess Bride’
The American television network ABC has unveiled a trailer for the upcoming series Galavant.
Let’s Eat! Banquets in the Middle Ages
When we think about medieval people eating together, it seems we invariably conjure up an image of a great hall, filled with people sitting at long tables.
Top 10 Strangest Deaths in the Middle Ages
Check out our list of the top ten strangest deaths from the Middle Ages
A forgotten plague: making sense of dancing mania
On Christmas Eve in 1021, 18 people gathered outside a church in the German town of Kölbigk and danced with wild abandon.
How to study St. Thomas Aquinas: An interview with Therese Scarpelli Cory
He’s not the kind of thinker who wants to complicate things or show off his brilliance—he just wants to make sense of the world the best he can, within the limitations of the human mind.
Did the Battle of Hyddgen even take place?
The Battle of Hyddgen is said to be the first victory of the Welsh leader Owain Glyndŵr and many historians believe it played a central role to his revolt in the early fifteenth-century. A historian is now questioning where the battle took place, and even if the encounter took place at all.
‘Vampire’ skeleton discovered in Poland
Archaeologists working in northwestern Poland have unearthed the remains of man who was buried with a rock jammed into his jaw and a stake driven into his leg.
Medieval Sculpture and Nuclear Science
This 1996 video demonstrates the use of neutron activation analysis to help determine the provenance (origin) of a fragment of medieval sculpture
Staging Medievalisms: Touching the Middle Ages through Contemporary Performance
Examining the Middle Ages through modern eyes: movies, TV, stage, tourism and books. How do we perform the Middle Ages?
Andronikos I Komnenos: A Greek Tragedy
The life and death of Andronikos I Komnenos provide us with a window into the aesthetic, moral, intellectual, religious, economic and emotional world of Byzantine society in the 12th century.
Jewish Shock-Troops of the Apocalypse
It would not be difficult to dismiss the legend of the Antichrist in its medieval manifestations as pure fantasy—analogous to such entertaining motifs as fire-breathing dragons, unicorns, enchantments and the like.
Christopher Columbus’ flagship may have been found
An underwater archaeological search may have discovered the Santa Maria, the flagship of Christopher Columbus when he sailed across the Atlantic reaching the New World in 1492.
Emergency Baptisms in the Middle Ages
What to do if the priest might not arrive in time to carry out a baptism?
War and nation-building in Widukind of Corvey’s Deeds of the Saxons
Military conflicts constituted a central function of early medieval rulership and, correspondingly, of the historiographical tradition. War and violence in the Middle Ages have been the subject of various studies, which are above all devoted to warfare and to the army.
Ten Thoughts on Game of Thrones, Season 4 Episode 6: The Laws of Gods and Men
Tyrion goes on trial as we catch up on some of the other storylines in Game of Thrones.
The Most ‘Evil’ Rulers of the Middle Ages
These medieval rulers would earn the nicknames Bad, Cruel and Accursed!
New Project to look at Medieval Miracles in the British Isles
A team of researchers from the University of Cambridge have started creating an online database to categorize the miracles found in saints’ lives that were written in Britain and Ireland between 500 and 1300.
New study to look at Norse farming on the Orkney Isles
A year-long study will begin this fall that will look look at herding economies in the Orkney Isles from the 8th to the 15th century AD.
Mortality in the Fifteenth Century
For decades medieval historians have placed population at the centre of they concerns, but it is only in recent years that their studies have begun to constitute a respectable branch of historical demography.
The Medievalverse Roundtable from Kalamazoo
We talk about the 49th International Congress of Medieval Studies with John France, Elizabeth Koza and Danielle Trynoski.
BOOKS: Medieval Motherhood
Books celebrating motherhood in the Middle Ages for Mother’s Day!
Making a difference in tenth-century politics: King Athelstan’s sisters and Frankish queenship
In the early years of the tenth century several Anglo-Saxon royal women, all daughters of King Edward the Elder of Wessex (899-924) and sisters (or half-sisters) of his son King Athelstan (924-39), were despatched across the Channel as brides for Frankish and Saxon rulers and aristocrats. This article addresses the fate of some of these women through an analysis of their political identities.
When banquets were dangerous for the soul
What used to happen during wedding banquets that could threaten the integrity of people?
Viking Winter Camps
Danielle Trynoski and Matthew Ziebarth talk about their project to locate previously unknown winter camps used by the Vikings during their raids into the British Isles and Western Europe