Bread in the Middle Ages
Bread was the staple of life in the Middle Ages. You could also be called a heretic or go insane if you ate the wrong one. Includes medieval bread recipes.
A Feast for Aesculapius: Historical Diets for Asthma and Sexual Pleasure
Throughout Western history, people of all social classes have insisted that particular foods and drinks affected their bodies-purifying or contaminating them, and stimulating or tranquilizing their sensual spirits.
Medieval Pet Names
What did people in the Middle Ages name their dogs and cats?
Exploring Medieval European Society with Chess
More specifically, it provides educators with a classroom-tested lesson activity for teaching medieval European society content using the game of chess by providing background information on the history of chess, a rationale for including chess in the classroom, and step-by-step procedures to infuse this activity when the topic of feudalism is covered.
Feeding the Dogs: The Queer Prioress and Her Pets
Everybody knows what we should think about the Prioress’ love for animals. She steals from the poor by feeding her ‘smale houndes’ roast meat and good bread. And she’s breaking the rules just by keeping pets.
Feasting with Early Medieval Chiefs: Locating Political Action through Environmental Archaeology
This excellent paper was the first given in the session on Early Medieval Europe. It looked at various archaeological excavations in Iceland and Denmark and the political role feasting played in pre-Christian Viking societies.
Man Bites Dog: Alarming Effects of Medieval Animal Venom
This paper was part of a fantastic series on mental health and disability in the Middle Ages. It was very humorous. This paper examined various types of bites, the “medieval symptoms” and some cures. So if you don’t want to bark like a dog, or lash out at people with your teeth, read on…
Bite Me: Rude Food and the Anglo-Saxon Riddle Tradition
Andy Orchard, one of the world’s leading experts in Old English literature, presented on the tradition of early medieval riddles, and how the themes of food and sex can be found in these works.
Vikings – Review of Episode 8: Sacrifice
This week’s episode of Vikings takes a break from the usual raiding and pillaging with the gang headed out to get some spiritual fulfillment. Fortunately, this also involves killing.
The Lost Western Settlement of Greenland, 1342
In the early 1340s, something was amiss in the Western Norse Settlement in Greenland.
Cottage Gardening in the 14th Century England
As a student member of this research project, I spent my fall semester investigating various aspects of 14th century English agriculture and cottage gardening and blogged regularly about my findings to exchange information with the other project members.
Horticulture and Health in the Middle Ages: Images from the Tacuinum Sanitatis
The relationships between plants and health have been and continue to be of great concern for humankind considering both diet and medicinal uses.
When the Dark Ages Were Lit Up: The Sutton Hoo discovery 70 years on
Alex Burghart looks back 70 years to the discovery of the fabulous Anglo-Saxon burial at Sutton Hoo, and ponders how far we’ve come in our knowledge of the period since 1939.
From Marvels of Nature to Inmates of Asylums: Imaginations of Natural Folly
Even human beings were collected when their physical or mental state did not fit the norms of men. According to an inventory in 1621, the portrait gallery of Ambras showed pictures of people who were perceived as giants, dwarfs, or so-called hirsute men.
Foolishness and Fools in Aquinas’s Analysis
Fools are legion. This self-evident truth, vouched for by Holy Scripture, is quoted more than twenty times by Thomas Aquinas: ‘stultorum infinitus est numerus’.
The Music of the Medieval Body in Pain
In the fifteenth-century Passion d’Auvergne, the rounding up of martyrs for persecution inspires torturer Maulbec to teach his cronies the words of a hunting song which imitates the cries of wounded animals.
Sexuality in the Natural and Demonic Magic of the Middle Ages
Throughout the Middle Ages – especially the later Middle Ages – ideas of magic played a large part in the formation of deviant sexual behaviours and it was believed that magic played a main role in sexual malfunctions and abilities.
Manure and the medieval social order
Taking examples from the open fields of England, it is argued that peasants used manure to differentiate their holdings from those of the lord, and by so doing helped to defne both space and their own social identity.
Making Manuscripts
A short video on how medieval illuminated manuscripts were made.
Conquest, Contact, and Convention: Simulating the Norman Invasion’s Impact on Linguistic Usage
How do conventions arise? Lewis adressed this in his work Convention via signaling games, a mathematical model of communication where a sender sends a message to a receiver who then interprets it. When we say conventions, we mean by that a system of coor- dinated behavior pairing information states with actions
Horses for Courses? Religious Change and Dietary Shifts in Anglo-Saxon England
The spread of Christianity across England over the course of the Anglo-Saxon period brought new worldviews, ways of acting and dietary habits.
Faerie Folklore in Medieval Tales: An Introduction
Defining the term ‘faerie’ is not easy; some definitions include only specific, pre-Christian types of mythological creatures while other definitions include all of the spirits, angels and supernatural animals as well as the souls of the dead. I will take a middle road and include the spirits and the souls of the dead, since the dead and the faeries have an intimate connection in the folklore of the British Isles.
Why did the English people stop eating horses in the Middle Ages?
People living in Anglo-Saxon England were turned off the idea of eating horses once they became Christian as they believed it was ‘pagan’ food, argues a new research paper.
Evolution of the Werewolf Archetype from Ovid to J.K. Rowling
The medieval period has a greater variety of theories and perspectives regarding werewolves than any other pre-modern era.
An Environmental History of the Middle Ages: The Crucible of Nature
John Aberth focuses his study on three key areas: the natural elements of air, water, and earth; the forest; and wild and domestic animals.