Christianity and burial in late Iron Age Scotland, AD 400-650
In the period after the fall of Rome and before the Vikings, Scotland became a Christian society, but there are few historical documents to help understand how this happened.
Fossils as Drugs: pharmaceutical palaeontology
The present paper surveys the medicinal applications of a number of fossils which were well known in classical, mediaeval and renaissance times….
Dreaming of dwarves: Nightmares and Shamanism in Anglo-Saxon Poetics and the Wid Dweorh Charm
Psychological and psychiatric ailments must have baffled early medical practitioners.
Building Civic Pride: Strasbourg Cathedral from 1300 to 1349
This dissertation investigates primarily how the town of Strasbourg, which was torn by bitter internal strife in the first half of the fourteenth century, managed to create a sense of civic unity in the continuing work on the extraordinarly expensive construction project of the cathedral’s west front.
New in Medieval Books this week!
Hey Medievalverse! Ring in 2012 with these fab, hot off the press releases!
Waiting For Prester John: the legend, the Fifth Crusade, and medieval Christian holy war
The legend of Prester John and his magnificent kingdom has captivated scholarly and lay audiences from the twelfth-century through the twenty-first.
The foundational rape tale in Medieval Iberia
When one reads Medieval historiographic texts—whether written in Latin, Arabic or Romance—it appears that both the Moorish invasion and the Christian Reconquest of Spain are linked to a rape episode.
Sacred, secular, or sacrilegious? prehistoric sites, pagans and the Sacred Sites project in Britain
This paper introduces our Sacred Sites, Contested Rites/Rights Project (www.sacredsites.or.uk), now in its fifth year, and explores issues and tensions developing within today’s Britain around prehistoric
‘sacred sites’ and ‘heritage’, and their appropriation by a wide range of interested or concerned
groups.
Relations between the Late Roman World and Barbarian Europe in the Light of Coin Finds
And so, during a period of well developed exchange between the Roman Empire and the Barbaricum, coinciding with the Golden Age and the House of Antonine, Roman coins started to flow more intensively in the reign of the last two Antonine emperors.
Seeing and Not Seeing the Reliquary Bust of Saint Yrieix
The reliquary was experienced through an orchestrated system of punctuated non-sight, suggesting that experiencing was not about seeing, but believing.
If She Says Yes or Is Silent: A New Interpretation of Female Marital Consent in the Settlement Period in Iceland as Revealed Through the Family Sagas
Icelandic Sagas have captivated the minds of casual readers and historians alike due to their complex depiction of character and deeply resonant storylines. All of the characters are highly nuanced and developed, but many times it is the female characters that catch a reader’s attention because of their exceptional level of activity and variety.
Beowulf, Orality and the Anglo-Saxon Conversion
There is no source quite like the Beowulf manuscript, as it is the longest poem and the only epic composed in Old English which has survived to the modern era, and thus is central to any understanding of Anglo-Saxon literature.
Producing the Middle English Corpus: Confession and Medieval Bodies
In Producing the Middle English Corpus: Confession and Medieval Bodies, I argue that confessional discourse played an important role in the creation of the Middle English canon.
Sales, swindles and sanctions: Bishop Salla of Urgell and the counts of Catalonia
Salla moved in a world in which churchmen and lay magnates could be hard to distinguish. They did not just share families, and sometimes offices, but outlooks…
Herbs of the Field and Herbs of the Garden in Byzantine Medicinal Pharmacy
An interested student or scholar wishing to inquire about the essentials of herbalism in the Byzantine Empire likely will be led into the Greek texts on gardens, well illustrated by the Christian “dream garden” as published in Greek…
The Planetary Portent of 1524 in China and Europe
Events of 1524 in China and Europe in response to the planetary phenomenon offer insights into the divergent Chinese and Western responses to such “millennial” events.
Greeks in Early Medieval Barcelona?
The aim of this article is to draw attention to a group of persenal names which occurs almost exclusively in the city of Barcelona in tilese decades around the year 1000, which may throw some additional llght on the range of externa1 cgntacts. The name in question is that of Greco.
Culture in the Time of Tolerance: Al-Andalus as a Model for Our Time
It existed in any number of different political configurations over nearly eight hundred years, and it was and has been called many names, all of them imprecise for different reasons: al-Andalus in Arabic, ha-Sefarad in Hebrew; the names of a half-dozen different cities when they were at its center; Castile at other moments.
Divine Love in a World History Perspective: Contributions of Medieval Female Saint
Scholars have noted that similar notions of Divine Love have existed among the mystical traditions within Christianity, Islam and Hinduism.
Polish Pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostella: Way of St. James in Poland
It is very difficult to estimate the exact scope of Polish pilgrimages to Santiago de
Compostela in the Middle Ages on the basis of preserved historical sources. The presence of pilgrims from Poland was mentioned in the Pilgrim Records of the Middle Ages found in the archive of the Kingdom of Aragon in Barcelona…
Silencing the Bells: A Statement of Power in Medieval Spain
Much scholarship has been devoted to researching and documenting the significance and metaphysical qualities of the ringing of the bells within Christian culture. Specific efforts have been made to capture bells from defeated cathedrals as symbols of victory throughout history.
Eunuchs in the Byzantine Empire: A Study in Byzantine Titulature and Prosopography
The presence of innumerable eunuchs at the Byzantine court seems to be in conflict with the laws that severely prohibited eunuchism. The Roman emperors early formally prohibited this practice, at least within the boundaries of the empire.
Saint by Association: Samson, Thomas Becket, and Simon de Montfort
The seemingly unusual companionship of Samson (of Samson and Delilah fame), Thomas Becket, the murdered Archbishop of Canterbury, and Simon de Montfort, the leader of the Barons War, has come about, for this paper, because of their mutual presence in the British Library’s Harley Manuscript 978.
Archaeologists uncover early Christian community in Norway
The cathedral in Stavanger was built in the year 1125, and is one of the earliest pieces of evidence for permanent settlement in the Norwegian town. However, new analyses of medieval skeletons found beneath the cathedral suggest that Christians lived in Stavanger for several generations prior to this.