Agatha, Clerical ‘Wife’ and Wet Nurse to King John of England, Longtime Companion to Godfrey de Lucy, Bishop of Winchester
Agatha’s life, like that of her mistress Eleanor of Aquitaine, is remarkable in an age when women’s innate inferiority and wives’ subordination to their husbands were almost universally accepted, and discussions of women and marriage in learned treatises, sermons, and vernacular stories were ‘at worst misogynistic and at best ambivalent.’
Infant Burials and Christianization: The View from East Central Europe
This was the second paper in the Early Medieval Europe I series given at KZOO and another fabulous archaeology paper. It contrasted infant grave sites in early converted medieval Poland and Anglo Saxon England.
“Full Faith and Credit” in Merrie Olde England: New Insights for Marriage Conflicts Law from the Thirteenth Century
Here the subject is full faith and credit and the implications which the exposure of the myth of universality might carry for the recognition of judgments concerning marriage. As with the choice of law problem, so with the recognition of judgments, there is discovered in the anti- quities of English law a perception and comprehension exceeding our own.
En/gendering representations of childbirth in fifteenth-century Franco-Flemish devotional manuscripts
Late-medieval representationsof the births of holy and heroic children invariably show a domestic interior with the new mother lying in bed attended
by female assistants.These images thus appearto show a `genderedspace’ in which women cared for each other and from which men were marginalized.
Awkward Adolescents: Male Maturation in Norse Literature
Although medieval masculinities have become a subject of scholarly interest, there has been relatively little discussion of the transition in Old Norse until very recently.
Girls Growing Up In Later Medieval England
Teenage pregnancy and street gossip – but also lessons in housekeeping and good husbandry. Jeremy Goldberg draws on contemporary documents to assess the pluses and minuses of entering adulthood as a woman in the late Middle Ages.
TROUBLESOME CHILDREN IN THE SAGAS OF ICELANDERS
It must be stressed that the concept of childhood is certainly not an easy one. One is tempted to ask whether any generalisations about medieval or modern attitudes to childhood might not pose problems.
Fleas, Flies, and Friars: Children’s Poetry from the Middle Ages
In Fleas, Flies, and Friars, Nicholas Orme, an expert on childhood in the Middle Ages, has gathered a wide variety of children’s verse that circulated in England beginning in the 1400s, providing a way for modern readers of all ages to experience the medieval world through the eyes of its children.
Beyond fragments and shards: Children in medieval Bergen
By analysing physical remains reflecting the games, behaviour and clothing of children (specifically toys and shoes) it has been possible to obtain new information and shed new light on the everyday life of children in medieval Bergen
Dark Age Migrations and Subjective Ethnicity: The Example of the Lombards
This study is an attempt to clarify the functions and structure of the Volker- wanderungen. Peoples or warrior-bands? The basic problem is that small warrior bands as well as big migrations of peoples are characterized in the same way by the classical and early medieval writers: they used tribal names.
An Unexpected Audience: Manner Manuals in Renaissance Europe
Translated into twenty-two languages within the first decade of publication, On Civility in Children was the cultural phenomenon of the day
Noble and Urban Family-Structures in the Late Middle Ages in the Hungarian Kingdom
The everyday life of the clan people was filled with disputes over small plots, since it was the main duty of each generation to preserve and enlarge the lands of the clan. It was also the basic interest of the members of the clans to secure the survival of the clan by marriages that were fertile in every sense. It was a sign of the strength of the clan that the members had to consult before taking decisions in questions of marriage, inheritance.
Shifting Experiences: The Changing Roles of Women in the Italian, Lowland, and German Regions of Western Europe from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period
Specifically, the thesis compares and analyzes the changing roles that women could employ economically, politically, socially, and religiously.
Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament – a Review
What is Medieval Times? Medievalists.net decided to see for ourselves and go to the Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament in Toronto, Canada. Here is our review of the show:
Mothering in the Casa Datini
The Casa Datini flourished in a region and during a period that historians have carefully explored for decades. Despite its value, however, few researchers travel to Prato to use the Datini collection.
Gender Equality in Wage Labour Relations: the example of statutory regulation in late medieval and early Tudor England
The first question, not yet raised in labour historiography, is about the impact of wage labour relations on gender equality.
The second question is related to the first one: what role did women play as protagonists of wage labour relations.
Fruit of the Womb: Prenatal Food in Renaissance Italy
One of the crucial tenants of humoral theory is the belief that females are of a colder and wetter disposition than the hotter, drier nature of males. To achieve optimal health the humors needed to be in perfect balance, as seen in all recommendations for food, drink, preparation and even environment.
Vilification of Identity and the Exilic Narrative: The Illustrated Pied Piper Story
This paper situates The Pied Piper story as an exilic narrative, part of a larger repertoire of stories that follow the romantic quest-myth formula, a formula that conveys a totla metaphor for the “journey of life”.
City Orphans and Custody Laws in Medieval England
The extent to which English towns protected children during the Middle Ages is known only in broad outline.
Oar walking, underwater wrestling and horse fighting – historian examines the sports and games of the Vikings
Playing ball games is an activity played by children around the world. But while parents might worry that their sons and daughters might get scrapes and bruises, in the Viking world such a game could end with an axe being driven into an opponents head.
Oda: An Extraordinary Example of a Medieval Woman’s Religious Authority and Economic Power
hristianity posed as a shackle for many women in the early Middle Ages. Though sexism and female subordination were prevalent prior to the emergence of this monotheistic religion, Christianity established its own justifications for continuing in the male domination.
Women and Marriage in Medieval Society
The feudal world was a face-to-face society in which women participated in important activities and were expected to submit to social discipline like their men.
Flowers for the Book-binder’s Wife: An Investigation of Florilegia and Early Modern Women’s Writing
To an early modern, nothing could be fully learned through a “hands off” approach. Heidi Brayman Hackel corroborates this with her book, Reading Material. Critical to early modern thoughts on comprehension was “taking note,” a phrasing that carried the double implication of both noticing and annotating…
Diseases as causes of divorce in Byzantium
Τhe purpose of this study is to describe the diseases for which divorce could be issued if one of the spouses wanted, in Byzantine times.
Elites and their children : a study in the historical anthropology of medieval China, 500-1000 AD
The only information we have about children in medieval China comes from male adults with an elite and literary social background.