What’s new in medieval studies? Here are ten open-access articles published in July, which range from a new database about London to a look back at the works of Jinty Nelson.
This ongoing series on Medievalists.net highlights what has been published in journals over the last month that deal with the Middle Ages. All ten articles are Open-Access, meaning you can read them for free. We now also have a special tier on our Patreon where you can see the full list of 73 open-access articles we found.
Genetic Evidence of Yersinia pestis from the First Pandemic
By Swamy R. Adapa, Karen Hendrix, Aditya Upadhyay, Subhajeet Dutta, Andrea Vianello, Gregory O’Corry-Crowe, Jorge Monroy, Tatiana Ferrer, Elizabeth Remily-Wood, Gloria C. Ferreira, Michael Decker, Robert H. Tykot, Sucheta Tripathy and Rays H. Y. Jiang
Genes
Abstract: Background/Objectives: The Plague of Justinian marked the beginning of the First Pandemic (541–750 CE), yet no genomic evidence of Yersinia pestis has previously been recovered from the Eastern Mediterranean, where the outbreak was first recorded. This study aimed to determine whether Y. pestis was present in a mid-6th to early 7th century mass grave in Jerash, Jordan, and to characterize its genome within the broader context of First Pandemic strains.
Methods: We analyzed samples from multiple individuals recovered from the Jerash mass grave. Initial screening for potential pathogen presence was conducted using proteomics. Select samples were subjected to ancient DNA extraction and whole genome sequencing. Comparative genomic and phylogenetic analyses were conducted to assess strain identity and evolutionary placement.
Results: Genomic sequencing recovered Y. pestis DNA from five individuals, revealing highly similar genomes. All strains clustered tightly with other First Pandemic lineages but were notably recovered from a region geographically close to the pandemic’s historical epicenter for the first time. The near-identical genomes across diverse individuals suggest an outbreak of a single circulating lineage at the time of this outbreak. Conclusions: This study provides the first genomic evidence of Y. pestis in the Eastern Mediterranean during the First Pandemic, linking archaeological findings with pathogen genomics near the origin point of the Plague of Justinian.
‘The Plan of St Gall’ and the Power of Water: An Environmental Reconsideration
By Ellen F. Arnold
Journal of Medieval History
Abstract: This article revisits Walter Horn’s 1975 essay, ‘Water Power and the Plan of St. Gall.’ It contextualises the article within Horn’s career and as part of the rise of more attention to medieval technologies and of environmental history. It summarises the article and the interventions that Horn made at the time but also briefly surveys changes to the field of both environmental history and water history in the period since its initial publication. This article is part of a Special Issue marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Journal of Medieval History.
Late Medieval Shipboard Artillery on a Northern European Carvel: Gribshunden (1495)
By Brendan Foley, Kay Douglas Smith and Martin Hansson
International Journal of Nautical Archaeology
Abstract: We present the artillery of a well-preserved late medieval Danish-Norwegian carvel warship, Gribshunden. Probably built in the Netherlands in 1484, the ship served King Hans until sinking in June 1495. Of its original 50 or more guns, elements of 11 have been recovered and digitally recreated, and more remain on the wreck. Investigation of this site provides insights into the development of shipboard artillery in the late 15th century, the crucial period of technological evolution for the ship-gun combination. It offers a Nordic-region comparison to the handful of early 16th–century gun-carrying Iberian wrecks, commonly known as ships of discovery.
Empress Dowager Lou the Kingmaker: Succession, Marriage, Identity, and Politics in Northern Qi (550–577)
By Soojung Han
Journal of Chinese History 中國歷史學刊
Abstract: Delving into fraternal succession, intermarriage practices, and levirate marriages of the Northern Qi dynasty (550–577), this article demonstrates that these practices served as pillars of stability for the imperial family. In this exploration, Empress Dowager Lou 婁太后 (501–562) emerges as the central figure behind these practices, playing a pivotal role in their implementation and wielding immense power as kingmaker. Starting from before the official reign of the Northern Qi, she personally chose her husband, laid the groundwork for him to become regent of the preceding Eastern Wei (534–550) court, and controlled the succession system to seat her own sons as emperors of the Northern Qi. Drawing on her Xianbei 鮮卑 roots, Empress Dowager Lou enforced an agenda of Inner Asian practices and politics in her pursuit to consolidate the rule and identity of the Northern Qi imperial family.
One British Archive: The Medieval Londoners Database
By Maryanne Kowaleski
Journal of British Studies
Abstract: This article introduces the scope, content, and capabilities of a new born-digital archive. The Medieval Londoners Database (MLD) uses an online platform to collect from and connect to both documents (printed and archival) and digitized resources (such as British History Online and the History of Parliament Online). As a digital prosopography, MLD is a freely available resource that offers sophisticated search options to discover more about the lives of both the civic elite and ordinary individuals who resided in the city of London or its suburbs of Southwark and Westminster between ca. 1100 and 1520. MLD exemplifies how digitization and the semantic web enhance historical research by creating super-powered archival collections that are ever-expanding, accessible via multiple entry points, and able to facilitate highly analytical research.
Hlǫðskviða and the Rise of the Old Norse Legendary Sagas
By Mikael Males
Neophilologus
Abstract: Hlǫðskviða or “The Battle of the Goths and the Huns” is the most famous of the poems contained in the Old Norse legendary sagas, being generally held to belong to the earliest Old Norse poems. By contrast, the present article argues that linguistic features and the characteristics of verbal and metrical correspondences with other poems are most easily explained by a twelfth-century date. Comparable examples are explored, and the study indicates that the poetry in the legendary sagas should probably not be divided into old and young poems, but rather be viewed generally as the product of a twelfth-century antiquarian flowering drawing on older elements.
It is suggested that older poems treating the topics of the legendary sagas may once have existed, since stray stanzas in the sagas appear to be old, but that they did not belong to the canon of poetry transmitted by court poets. They would therefore not have enjoyed the stable transmission typical of eddic and skaldic poetry, ensuring the survival of entire poems. For this reason, would-be authors of the twelfth century needed to expand the corpus, leading to a greater ratio of late poetry in the legendary sagas than in any other genre of Old Norse historical literature. This process was crucial to the emergence of the genre of legendary sagas as we know it.
What does the waste say about the medieval town of Banská Bystrica (Central Slovakia) and its environment
By Martin Miňo, Barbora Styková, Ivan Jarolímek, Jozef Šibík, Mária Šibíková, Mojmír Choma, Katarína Šimunková, Michaela Látková, Ivo Světlík, Kateřina Pachnerová Brabcová, Markéta Petrová, Peter Ďurica, Peter Barta, Pavol Midula, Janka Ševčíková
Archeologické Rozhledy
Abstract: The historical town hall of Banská Bystrica was rebuilt in the second half of the 16th century from a medieval town mansion that had traditionally been owned by the town’s high-ranking citizens. As the building was an important structure, there is an extraordinary record of written sources depicting its history. However, there is almost no information before the year 1500 due to the fire that destroyed the town archives. Just as the fire obliterated the written record, modern construction activities severely damaged the archaeological record.
The archaeological survey at the historical town hall of Banská Bystrica conducted between 2008 and 2009 could be considered a prime example of a rescue event. The small assemblage of artefacts dated shortly before and after the great fire was complemented by animal bones, water-preserved wooden planks, and archaeobotanical material. These finds underwent dendrochronological and radiocarbon dating, providing clues for assessing settlement continuity from the pre-colonisation period. By applying an interdisciplinary approach, which included the analysis of pottery, chemical analysis, DNA sampling, archaeobotanical and archaeozoological analysis, it became possible to reconstruct certain aspects of everyday life as well as the environment in the town and its surroundings.
Coexistence and colonialism: religious conversion and the expansion of Christianity in Northeast Africa (second–sixteenth centuries)
By Jacke Phillips and Tania Tribe
Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa
Abstract: This paper explores how the expansion of Christianity in Northeast Africa between the second and sixteenth centuries played a central and often complex role in the dissemination of colonialism. Initially introduced to first- or second-century Egypt, the religion spread in subsequent centuries to Aksum and Nubia. Gradual personal conversion preceded state-sponsored Christianity in all three regions, but ‘official’ conversion differentially accelerated the transition. Despite little evidence for direct colonisation, Coptic (and, less significantly, Byzantine) ecclesiastical practices strongly influenced the spread of Christianity in Nubia and Ethiopia, which remained independent states. Already well-established before their physical isolation from the Mediterranean world with the Muslim invasion of Egypt (639–646), their doctrines and practices then developed semi-independently from ecclesiastical authorities to their north. Theological, political and historical perspectives highlight the complicity of Christianity in the establishment of relations of colonial dominance and its use as a tool of resistance and cultural negotiation. The power dynamics involved variable forms of communication and behaviour, from gradual replacement of other cultural and religious forms to overt enslavement and violent control. Visual materials and archaeological and ethnographical data provide an insight into this evolution.
By Alice Rio, Stuart Airlie, Kate Cooper, Wendy Davies, Paul Fouracre, David Ganz, John Gillingham, Peter Heather, Judith Herrin, Henrietta Leyser, Julia M. H. Smith, Rachel Stone and Ian N. Wood
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
Abstract: This collection gathers thirteen contributions by a number of historians, friends, colleagues and/or students of Jinty’s, who were asked to pick their favourite article by her and say a few words about it for an event held in her memory on 15 January 2025 at King’s College London. We offer this collection in print now for a wider audience not so much because it has any claim to be exhaustive or authoritative, but because taken all together these pieces seemed to add up to a useful retrospective on Jinty’s work, its wider context, and its impact on the field over the decades. We hope that, for those who know her work well already, this may be an opportunity to remember some of her classic (and a few less classic) articles, while at the same time serving as an accessible introduction to her research for anyone who knew her without necessarily knowing about her field, as well as for a new and younger generation of readers.
Abstract: Women played a significant part in tenth-century Rome, and the documentation makes them visible in a way rarely seen in early medieval sources. First examining the political agency of the foremost among them, women like Marozia and the Theophylact family senatrices, this paper also highlights the socio-economic, legal and cultural role of many women of lower status. As donors, buyers and lessees, able to acquire property as well as to dispose of it within Roman law, their impact as part of a family group or in their own name becomes far more visible than either earlier or later.
We found 73 open-access articles from July – you can get the full list by joining our Patreon – look for the tier that says Open Access articles in Medieval Studies.
What’s new in medieval studies? Here are ten open-access articles published in July, which range from a new database about London to a look back at the works of Jinty Nelson.
This ongoing series on Medievalists.net highlights what has been published in journals over the last month that deal with the Middle Ages. All ten articles are Open-Access, meaning you can read them for free. We now also have a special tier on our Patreon where you can see the full list of 73 open-access articles we found.
Genetic Evidence of Yersinia pestis from the First Pandemic
By Swamy R. Adapa, Karen Hendrix, Aditya Upadhyay, Subhajeet Dutta, Andrea Vianello, Gregory O’Corry-Crowe, Jorge Monroy, Tatiana Ferrer, Elizabeth Remily-Wood, Gloria C. Ferreira, Michael Decker, Robert H. Tykot, Sucheta Tripathy and Rays H. Y. Jiang
Genes
Abstract: Background/Objectives: The Plague of Justinian marked the beginning of the First Pandemic (541–750 CE), yet no genomic evidence of Yersinia pestis has previously been recovered from the Eastern Mediterranean, where the outbreak was first recorded. This study aimed to determine whether Y. pestis was present in a mid-6th to early 7th century mass grave in Jerash, Jordan, and to characterize its genome within the broader context of First Pandemic strains.
Methods: We analyzed samples from multiple individuals recovered from the Jerash mass grave. Initial screening for potential pathogen presence was conducted using proteomics. Select samples were subjected to ancient DNA extraction and whole genome sequencing. Comparative genomic and phylogenetic analyses were conducted to assess strain identity and evolutionary placement.
Results: Genomic sequencing recovered Y. pestis DNA from five individuals, revealing highly similar genomes. All strains clustered tightly with other First Pandemic lineages but were notably recovered from a region geographically close to the pandemic’s historical epicenter for the first time. The near-identical genomes across diverse individuals suggest an outbreak of a single circulating lineage at the time of this outbreak. Conclusions: This study provides the first genomic evidence of Y. pestis in the Eastern Mediterranean during the First Pandemic, linking archaeological findings with pathogen genomics near the origin point of the Plague of Justinian.
Click here to read this article
‘The Plan of St Gall’ and the Power of Water: An Environmental Reconsideration
By Ellen F. Arnold
Journal of Medieval History
Abstract: This article revisits Walter Horn’s 1975 essay, ‘Water Power and the Plan of St. Gall.’ It contextualises the article within Horn’s career and as part of the rise of more attention to medieval technologies and of environmental history. It summarises the article and the interventions that Horn made at the time but also briefly surveys changes to the field of both environmental history and water history in the period since its initial publication. This article is part of a Special Issue marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Journal of Medieval History.
Click here to read this article
Late Medieval Shipboard Artillery on a Northern European Carvel: Gribshunden (1495)
By Brendan Foley, Kay Douglas Smith and Martin Hansson
International Journal of Nautical Archaeology
Abstract: We present the artillery of a well-preserved late medieval Danish-Norwegian carvel warship, Gribshunden. Probably built in the Netherlands in 1484, the ship served King Hans until sinking in June 1495. Of its original 50 or more guns, elements of 11 have been recovered and digitally recreated, and more remain on the wreck. Investigation of this site provides insights into the development of shipboard artillery in the late 15th century, the crucial period of technological evolution for the ship-gun combination. It offers a Nordic-region comparison to the handful of early 16th–century gun-carrying Iberian wrecks, commonly known as ships of discovery.
Click here to read this article
Empress Dowager Lou the Kingmaker: Succession, Marriage, Identity, and Politics in Northern Qi (550–577)
By Soojung Han
Journal of Chinese History 中國歷史學刊
Abstract: Delving into fraternal succession, intermarriage practices, and levirate marriages of the Northern Qi dynasty (550–577), this article demonstrates that these practices served as pillars of stability for the imperial family. In this exploration, Empress Dowager Lou 婁太后 (501–562) emerges as the central figure behind these practices, playing a pivotal role in their implementation and wielding immense power as kingmaker. Starting from before the official reign of the Northern Qi, she personally chose her husband, laid the groundwork for him to become regent of the preceding Eastern Wei (534–550) court, and controlled the succession system to seat her own sons as emperors of the Northern Qi. Drawing on her Xianbei 鮮卑 roots, Empress Dowager Lou enforced an agenda of Inner Asian practices and politics in her pursuit to consolidate the rule and identity of the Northern Qi imperial family.
Click here to read this article
One British Archive: The Medieval Londoners Database
By Maryanne Kowaleski
Journal of British Studies
Abstract: This article introduces the scope, content, and capabilities of a new born-digital archive. The Medieval Londoners Database (MLD) uses an online platform to collect from and connect to both documents (printed and archival) and digitized resources (such as British History Online and the History of Parliament Online). As a digital prosopography, MLD is a freely available resource that offers sophisticated search options to discover more about the lives of both the civic elite and ordinary individuals who resided in the city of London or its suburbs of Southwark and Westminster between ca. 1100 and 1520. MLD exemplifies how digitization and the semantic web enhance historical research by creating super-powered archival collections that are ever-expanding, accessible via multiple entry points, and able to facilitate highly analytical research.
Click here to read this article
Hlǫðskviða and the Rise of the Old Norse Legendary Sagas
By Mikael Males
Neophilologus
Abstract: Hlǫðskviða or “The Battle of the Goths and the Huns” is the most famous of the poems contained in the Old Norse legendary sagas, being generally held to belong to the earliest Old Norse poems. By contrast, the present article argues that linguistic features and the characteristics of verbal and metrical correspondences with other poems are most easily explained by a twelfth-century date. Comparable examples are explored, and the study indicates that the poetry in the legendary sagas should probably not be divided into old and young poems, but rather be viewed generally as the product of a twelfth-century antiquarian flowering drawing on older elements.
It is suggested that older poems treating the topics of the legendary sagas may once have existed, since stray stanzas in the sagas appear to be old, but that they did not belong to the canon of poetry transmitted by court poets. They would therefore not have enjoyed the stable transmission typical of eddic and skaldic poetry, ensuring the survival of entire poems. For this reason, would-be authors of the twelfth century needed to expand the corpus, leading to a greater ratio of late poetry in the legendary sagas than in any other genre of Old Norse historical literature. This process was crucial to the emergence of the genre of legendary sagas as we know it.
Click here to read this article
What does the waste say about the medieval town of Banská Bystrica (Central Slovakia) and its environment
By Martin Miňo, Barbora Styková, Ivan Jarolímek, Jozef Šibík, Mária Šibíková, Mojmír Choma, Katarína Šimunková, Michaela Látková, Ivo Světlík, Kateřina Pachnerová Brabcová, Markéta Petrová, Peter Ďurica, Peter Barta, Pavol Midula, Janka Ševčíková
Archeologické Rozhledy
Abstract: The historical town hall of Banská Bystrica was rebuilt in the second half of the 16th century from a medieval town mansion that had traditionally been owned by the town’s high-ranking citizens. As the building was an important structure, there is an extraordinary record of written sources depicting its history. However, there is almost no information before the year 1500 due to the fire that destroyed the town archives. Just as the fire obliterated the written record, modern construction activities severely damaged the archaeological record.
The archaeological survey at the historical town hall of Banská Bystrica conducted between 2008 and 2009 could be considered a prime example of a rescue event. The small assemblage of artefacts dated shortly before and after the great fire was complemented by animal bones, water-preserved wooden planks, and archaeobotanical material. These finds underwent dendrochronological and radiocarbon dating, providing clues for assessing settlement continuity from the pre-colonisation period. By applying an interdisciplinary approach, which included the analysis of pottery, chemical analysis, DNA sampling, archaeobotanical and archaeozoological analysis, it became possible to reconstruct certain aspects of everyday life as well as the environment in the town and its surroundings.
Click here to read this article
Coexistence and colonialism: religious conversion and the expansion of Christianity in Northeast Africa (second–sixteenth centuries)
By Jacke Phillips and Tania Tribe
Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa
Abstract: This paper explores how the expansion of Christianity in Northeast Africa between the second and sixteenth centuries played a central and often complex role in the dissemination of colonialism. Initially introduced to first- or second-century Egypt, the religion spread in subsequent centuries to Aksum and Nubia. Gradual personal conversion preceded state-sponsored Christianity in all three regions, but ‘official’ conversion differentially accelerated the transition. Despite little evidence for direct colonisation, Coptic (and, less significantly, Byzantine) ecclesiastical practices strongly influenced the spread of Christianity in Nubia and Ethiopia, which remained independent states. Already well-established before their physical isolation from the Mediterranean world with the Muslim invasion of Egypt (639–646), their doctrines and practices then developed semi-independently from ecclesiastical authorities to their north. Theological, political and historical perspectives highlight the complicity of Christianity in the establishment of relations of colonial dominance and its use as a tool of resistance and cultural negotiation. The power dynamics involved variable forms of communication and behaviour, from gradual replacement of other cultural and religious forms to overt enslavement and violent control. Visual materials and archaeological and ethnographical data provide an insight into this evolution.
Click here to read this article
Jinty Nelson in Thirteen Articles
By Alice Rio, Stuart Airlie, Kate Cooper, Wendy Davies, Paul Fouracre, David Ganz, John Gillingham, Peter Heather, Judith Herrin, Henrietta Leyser, Julia M. H. Smith, Rachel Stone and Ian N. Wood
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
Abstract: This collection gathers thirteen contributions by a number of historians, friends, colleagues and/or students of Jinty’s, who were asked to pick their favourite article by her and say a few words about it for an event held in her memory on 15 January 2025 at King’s College London. We offer this collection in print now for a wider audience not so much because it has any claim to be exhaustive or authoritative, but because taken all together these pieces seemed to add up to a useful retrospective on Jinty’s work, its wider context, and its impact on the field over the decades. We hope that, for those who know her work well already, this may be an opportunity to remember some of her classic (and a few less classic) articles, while at the same time serving as an accessible introduction to her research for anyone who knew her without necessarily knowing about her field, as well as for a new and younger generation of readers.
Click here to read this article
The visibility of women in tenth-century Rome
By Veronica West-Harling
Early Medieval Europe
Abstract: Women played a significant part in tenth-century Rome, and the documentation makes them visible in a way rarely seen in early medieval sources. First examining the political agency of the foremost among them, women like Marozia and the Theophylact family senatrices, this paper also highlights the socio-economic, legal and cultural role of many women of lower status. As donors, buyers and lessees, able to acquire property as well as to dispose of it within Roman law, their impact as part of a family group or in their own name becomes far more visible than either earlier or later.
Click here to read this article
We found 73 open-access articles from July – you can get the full list by joining our Patreon – look for the tier that says Open Access articles in Medieval Studies.
See also our list of open-access articles from June
Top Image: Plan of St Gall – Wikimedia Commons.
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