The Survival of Roman Education in Early Medieval Britain
Roman rule ended in 410, but Latin education did not. Nicholas J. Higham explores elite learning and literary culture in post-Roman Britain.
Military Education in Early Medieval Europe: Learning from Books
Discover how early medieval commanders were trained using books, manuals, and historical texts—revealing the role of reading in preparing leaders for war, sieges, and logistics.
Reading in Byzantium: Literacy, Books, and a World of Texts
In Byzantium, reading wasn’t just private study—it was performed aloud in churches and monasteries, woven into government, and preserved in precious manuscripts. Zoe Tsiami explores who could read, what they read, and how texts shaped everyday life.
“Standing on the Shoulders of Giants”: Revisiting Bernard of Chartres’ Metaphor and Its Hidden Legacy
A look at the medieval origins and deeper meaning behind the metaphor of standing on the shoulders of giants.
New Medieval Books: The Science of Music
Did you know there was a vibrant music scene in 13th-century Baghdad, even during the time of the Mongol conquest? This book traces the life of a prominent musical scholar and explores what his works reveal about education and intellectual life in the medieval Islamic world.
Swim in the Sea Yourself: Twelfth-Century Insights on Experiential Learning
Discover how the 12th-century philosophical tale Hayy Ibn Yaqzan by Ibn Tufayl explores self-guided learning, critical thinking, and the power of experience—insights still relevant in modern education
New Medieval Books: The Genius of Their Age
A double biography of two of the most important scholars from the Middle Ages. Working out of Central Asia in the 11th century, Ibn Sina and Biruni both made significant impacts on several scientific fields.
The ‘classical’ author imagined by medieval readers
How did medieval readers understand and imagine the classical authors?
John Trevisa and Medieval Information, with Emily Steiner
Many medieval people were hugely invested in finding ways to organize and share what they knew about the world, including one influential translator from England. This week, Danièle speaks with Dr. Emily Steiner about John Trevisa and how his work on medieval compendia influenced history.
Medieval (Mis)attributions
Why do people write, read and share texts that are connected to famous authorities but probably not written by them?
Book production and circulation from Antiquity to the Middle Ages
Three episodes will lead us from the Classical Age to Late Antiquity, and then to the Middle Ages, illustrating the powers that can steer the success of a literary piece, and, sometimes, determine its fate.
“From what is earthly to what is divine”: The Story of Caritas Pirckheimer, Renaissance Woman
An abbess fighting for her nuns, a scholar of humanism, and a historian of the Franciscans.
Aristotle and the Medieval University: The Birth of a New Book Format
This paper focuses on manuscripts with Latin copies of Aristotle’s works produced for educational purposes between c. 1100 and c. 1300.
Medieval Studies and STEM
Here are 15 ways that medieval studies and STEM are working together.
The Revolution in Writing Styles during the Renaissance
Just as we have our faces, we each should have own writing style – this was the lesson that two leading Renaissance thinkers, Erasmus and Montaigne, gave to their contemporaries in 16th century Europe.
Scholars, Teachers and Students in Early Medieval Europe: Towards a Total Network
This talk, part of a larger project, is concerned with intellectuals (scholars, teachers and their students) active in the late eighth through ninth centuries, a period usually referred to as the Carolingian Renaissance.
The Influence of Humanist Culture on Sephardi Scholars Active in Medieval Italy
This talk will set the context by introducing three generations of the Iberian Shohams, a late 14th-mid-15th century Sephardic family moving from Sicily to Apulia and Calabria.
The case for a West Saxon minuscule
Julian Brown’s famous analysis of what he termed the Insular system of scripts marked out a number of routes, now well trodden, through the debris of undated and unlocalized manuscript material from the pre-Viking-Age British Isles.
Looking to the future of medieval archaeology
A symposium entitled ‘Looking to the Future’ was held as part of the Society for Medieval Archaeology’s 50th anniversary to reflect upon current and forthcoming issues facing the discipline. The discussion was wide-ranging, and is summarized here under the topics of the research potential of development-led fieldwork, the accessibility of grey literature, research frameworks for medieval archaeology, the intellectual health of the discipline, and relevance and outreach.
Lay Religion and Pastoral Care in Thirteenth Century England: the Evidence of a Group of Short Confession Manuals
This poses a question: where did these engaged laypeople come from, and when? There is some evidence that suggests they should be pushed back to the thirteenth century.
Francesco Filelfo at the court of Milan (1439-1481)
Milan was the city where Filelfo spent half his life, where he wrote almost all his works and where he left a deep imprint in the development of humanistic culture.
A Late Byzantine Swan Song: Maximos Neamonites and His Letters
Maximos Neamonites’ epistulae depict their author as a schoolmaster of primary education active in the second and the third decades of the fourteenth-century Constantinople (fl.1315–1325), true to generic conventions (and the realities of life), eking out a meager income on the basis of his teaching activities, and occasionally lifting his pen to interfere on behalf of others.
Jewish Collaborators in Alfonso’s Scientific Work
What is remarkable about the Jewish translators whose work was sponsored by Alfonso, following an already old tradition of Jewish translation activity, was their concentration almost exclusively on scientific literature and their significant contribution to the development of the Spanish language.