European Chivalry in the 1490s
This paper’s first goal is to give some idea of the atmosphere of the decade, of the pervasiveness of this chivalric element. Chivalry functioned as a medium for international understanding and communication, a common social, cultural, political, and even religious language.
Delivering stability: Primogeniture and autocratic survival in European monarchies 1000-1800
Although the dominating position of primogeniture at the end of the period might seem natural given primogeniture’s many advantages for the monarch and the ruling elite it was first rather late in history that the principle came to dominate Europe.
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.
Syphilis in Renaissance Europe: rapid evolution of an introduced sexually transmitted disease?
When syphilis first appeared in Europe in 1495, it was an acute and extremely unpleasant disease. After only a few years it was less severe than it once was, and it changed over the next 50 years into a milder, chronic disease.
Nordic Witchcraft in Transition: Impotence, Heresy and Diabolism in 14th-century Bergen
Within the orbit of witchcraft, what is the relationship between sexuality, heresy, and diabolism?
A Peripheral Matter? Oceans in the East in Late Medieval Thought, Report and Cartography
Focusing in particular on the southern and eastern parts of the Ocean Sea, this article traces the broad contours of a representational and conceptual shift brought about, I argue, by the interplay between geographical thought and social (navigational, mercantile) practice.
The fabric of society: The organization of textile manufacturing in the Middle East and Europe, c. 700 – c. 1500
In recent years several attempts have been made to use institutional theory to explain this divergence between the Middle East and Europe. Most of these attempts focus on the organization of international trade.
’I am well done – please go on eating’ – Food, Digestion, and Humour in Late Medieval Danish Wall Paintings
Jesus never laughed or smiled. Holy people behave like Him: they tend to be solemn, austere, and their body language is restricted. They ought in any case to behave like Jesus. But in late medieval Danish wall paintings some holy people rebel, and St Laurence even jokes.
‘Low’ culture, laymen, and what we can learn from history
Historical evidence shows strong interaction between philosophy and the emancipation of the common man or the rise of popular culture in Western Europe during the late Middle Ages and Early Modernity
Persecution Perpetuated: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Semitic Violence in Nazi Germany
We explore the long-term persistence of interethnic hatred by using a new data set of almost 400 towns where Jewish communities are documented for both the medieval period and interwar Germany.
European Women Patrons of Art and Architecture, c. 1500-1650. Some Patterns
To assess women’s patronage roles in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries requires the acknowledgement that women’s support of the arts transpired within a deeply embedded patron-client arrangement pervasive in European social relations and religious practice.
The Black Death and the origins of the ‘Great Divergence’ across Europe, 1300–1600
One important recent theme emerging from the literature on early modern Europe is that some of the key structural and institutional changes that are responsible for the increases in incomes may have taken place rather early, in the late medieval period or in the era of the Black Death.
The Black Death and the Burning of Jews
Curiously, far less attention has been devoted to the most monumental of medieval Jewish persecutions, one that eradicated almost entirely the principal Jewish communities of Europe — those of the Rhineland — along with many other areas.
The Gypsies and Their Impact on Fifteenth-Century Western European Iconography
Since Gypsies had no chroniclers of their own, their history is difficult to reconstruct. The origin of the Gypsies was a complete mystery until late in the eighteenth century, when their derivation from India was proved by means of early linguistic com- parison.