Making Sacrifices: Beowulf and Film
This essay reviews opening scenes in some recent film Beowulfs, which, although they have nothing at all to say about Scyld Scefing, suggest a sacrificial reading of the prologue and perhaps even the whole poem.
Goths, Lombards, Romans, and Greeks: Creating Identity in Early Medieval Italy
This essay explores how two different non-Roman historians represented the past to their peoples: the Gothic historian Jordanes’ sixth-century work, the Getica, and the eighth-century Lombard historian Paul the Deacons’ History of the Lombards.
Scandinavia and the Huns: an Interdisciplinary Approach to the Migration Era
The aim of this paper is to discuss the early Migration period as a particular period of ‘short term history’ and its formative impact on the Scandinavian longue duree in the first millenium.
Britain and the Beginning of Scotland
Until recently it was generally held that Scotland first began to take shape with a union of Picts and Scots under Cinaed mac Ailpín, who died in 858.
Medieval Letter-Collections as a Mirror of Circles of Friendship? The Example of Stephen of Tournai, 1128-1203
We are well informed on the life of Stephen of Tournai and some of his work (97). Born in 1128, he grew up in the chapter of Sainte-Croix in Orléans, where he was educated in the artes liberales.
Could Duke Phillip the Good of Burgundy have owned the Bayeux tapestry in 1430?
An entry in the Inventory of the Bayeux cathedral treasury records that in 1476 the church owned the following: Item une tente tres longue et estroicte de telle a broderie d’ymages et escripteaulx, faisans representation du Conquest d’Angleterre, laquelle est tendu environ la nefde l’église le jour et par l’octave des reliques (l). Not until the 1720 ‘s did scholars first find and appreciate the potential importance of this brief entry.
Saints, Tradition and Monastic Identity: The Ghent Relics, 850-1100
The extraordinary story ofthe Ghent relics was first told by Oswald Holder- Egger in an article published in 1886. During his work on part two of volume 15 of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores series, which Holder- Egger had just finished, he had come across the hagiographie literature produced at the abbeys of St Baafs and St Pieters in Ghent.
The Reordering of Society in Medieval Provence
“Here, some pray, others fight, still others work …” {}). “Since the beginning of time, mankind has been divided into three groups, men of prayer, farmers, and warriors” (2). Appearing between 1024 and 1031 in the writings of Adelbero, bishop of Laon, and his cousin Gerard, bishop of Cambrai, these two statements constitute the first fully developed expression of a tripartite, or more accurately a trifunctional conceptualization of European society.
The Uses Made of History by the Kings of Medieval England
The kings of medieval England, besides using history for the entertainment of themselves and their courts, turned it to practical purposes. They plundered history-books for precedents and other evidences to justify their claims and acts. They also recognised its value as propaganda, to bolster up their positions at home and strengthen their hands abroad.
What’s the Matter?: Medieval Literary Theory and the Irish Campaigns in The Bruce
John Barbour’s Bruce, composed in the mid 1370s, is the first long poem in the Scots vernacular. It contains twenty books, the first thirteen of which trace the Wars of Liberty from their origins until triumph at the Battle of Bannockburn. At this point the Irish ‘matter’ enters the poem.
The transition between late antiquity and the early medieval period in north Etruria (400-900 AD)
Traditionally, the idea that the Roman empire ‘declined and fell’ was considered a historical fact, not a matter for debate. The beginning of the ‘decline’ was usually dated to the 3rd or 4th century AD.
The use of animals in medicine of Latin tradition: Study of the Tresor de Beutat, a medieval treatise devoted to female cosmetics
The Tresor de Beutat is a medieval treatise written in the 14th century. It contains a set of medical and cosmetic recipes aimed exclusively at women.
The Legend of the Pied Piper in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Grimm, Browning, and Skurzynski
This paper examines the changes that were made in the literary telling and retelling of the story of the Pied Piper during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, comparing the folktale “Die Kinder zu Hameln” (1816) by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the poem “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”(1842) by Robert Browning, and the book What Happened in Hamelin (1979), by Gloria Skurzynski.
Kingdom, emporium and town: the impact of Viking Dublin
In recent years the precise location and nature of Viking Dublin have been much debated. It is now generally accepted that there was a longphort phase from 841 to 902: a period of enforced exile from 902 to 917, and thereafter a dún phase.
Climatic Change and the North Atlantic Seaways During the Norse Expansion
In order to appreciate how the Norse expansion might have been influenced by climatic fluctuations it is necessary to consider in outline the mechanisms which control weather and climate in the North Atlantic area at the present day, and which also obtained in the past.
Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great: Tracing the Literary Zeitgeist from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance
My purpose here is to examine how English writers viewed and depicted these men in poetry, prose, and drama, beginning in medieval England and on through the Renaissance, in search of a pattern. In all ways, a society or culture is in a constant state of change.
The Consolidation of Local Authority Through the Defense of the Church in the Royal Domain of France Under Louis VI
When Louis VI ascended to the throne in 1108 AD, he faced substantial challenges as the fifth monarch of the Capetian dynasty; he confronted the problem of stopping the general decline of the monarchy and achieved this in a way that reasserted the foundations of the crown as the sole dominant figure in the royal domain and a respected lord throughout the kingdom.
The Identity of the St Bees Lady, Cumbria: An Osteobiographical Approach
USING AN OSTEOBIOGRAPHICAL approach, this contribution considers the identity of the woman found alongside the St Bees Man, one of the best-preserved archaeological bodies ever discovered. Osteological, isotopic and radiocarbon analyses, combined with the archaeo- logical context of the burial and documented social history, provide the basis for the identifica- tion of a late 14th-century heiress whose activities were at the heart of medieval northern English geopolitics.
Mapping the Medieval Countryside
My summary of a Institute of Historical Research session on the digitization of records in Late Medieval England.
Two Rabbinic Views of Christianity in the Middle Ages
In the sessions of our section over the past decade, I introduced a significant distinction between two rabbinic attitudes in the Mediterranean countries during the Middle Ages of 12th and 13th centuries as to their view of Christianity.
Royal and Magnate Bastards in the Later Middle Ages: The View from Scotland
Theory and Practice in Scotland and Elsewhere Medieval Scotland’s law on bastardy is set out in the lawbook Regiam Majestatem (c.1320)…In England things were different, as Michael Hicks has demonstrated. Admittedly, English heraldic practice eventually followed the French, and the formula ‘X bastard of Y’ is occasionally found for magnates’ bastards.
The Apple in Early Irish Narrative Tradition: A Thoroughly Christian Symbol?
Echtrae Chonnlai is regarded as being one of the earliest extant tales in Irish, dating from the eighth or ninth century A.D.
John of Gaunt and John Wyclif
Historians have always been somewhat puzzled at the alliance of two such men as John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster and third son of Edward III, and John Wyclif, controversialist and reformer.
CONFERENCES: Count Hugh of Troyes and the Crusading Nexus of Champagne
This is my summary of a paper given at the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London.