The Meek And Mighty Bride: Representations of Esther, Old Testament Queen of Persia, on Fifteenth-Century Italian Marriage Furniture
Cassone and spalliere panels depicting the Old Testament Book of Esther were produced by a number of Florentine artists during the fifteenth century.
BOOKS: Daily Life in the Middle Ages
Ever wonder how monks, women and Vikings lived their day to day lives in the Middle Ages? These books will give you a glimpse into their world.
Men Who Talk about Love in Late Medieval Spain: Hugo de Urriés and Egalitarian Married Life
In the last third of the fifteenth century, Hugo de Urriés’s work can offer the modern reader a very rare and informative perspective from the points of view of social history and history of ideas.
Love in the Time of the Black Death
When I first started writing this blog, I wanted to tell a medieval love story. It is the story of the dashing Black Prince of Wales, and his Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent.
Medieval marriage and superstitions
They would try to have the bed chamber hot as men were believed to be hot by nature and that would encourage the conception of a boy. Hot food such as red meat and spices may have been consumed as part of the wedding feast for the same reason.
Valentine’s Day Medieval Love: Books for that special someone
Love is in the air! Here are a few medieval books on the topic of love for your Valentine.
An Ideal Marriage: Abraham and Sarah in Old English Literature
Offers a look at how Bible characters Abraham and Sarah are treated in the old English literature. How their marital relationship is portrayed; Neglect in the character of Sarah; Development in the character of Abraham; How the old English literary writers treated Abraham.
Gay Reformers? Why the Medieval Church Banned Priests from Marrying
Among the issues that the current-day Roman Catholic Church is debating are whether or not priests should marry, and how accepting they should be of homosexuals. Interestingly, about nine hundred years ago both of these issues intertwined in the Anglo-Norman world.
Sex, lies and the Íslendinga sögur
Sex, lies and the Íslendinga sögur By Damian Fleming Sagas and Society, No.6 (2004) Abstract: Past scholars used to look upon the Icelandic…
Henry Ill’s Plans for a German Marriage (1225) and their Context
In this paper I would like to investigate how these and other factors influenced the two major marriage projects pursued by Henry III in 1225: the king himself was to marry a daughter of the duke of Austria, and his sister Isabella the son and heir of Emperor Frederick I, Henry (VII).
Love and Marriage: Medieval Style
What may be even more surprising about medieval marriage is that it was (at least officially) very much based on mutual consent.
New book examines the controversy over clerical marriage in the Middle Ages
Around the year 1100 the Papacy set about to end the practice of priests and bishops being able to marry. The church hoped to impose the same standards of celibacy that were followed by monks. A new book examines how ecclesiastical figures within the Catholic church dealt with the change.
Transvestite Knights: Men and Women Cross-dressing in Medieval Literature
In this thesis, I will look at mainly French and German texts from the 12th to the 15th centuries which deal with the subject of cross-dressers in the decidedly masculine domain of the knight. There are many tales of cross-dressing, particularly of women, but the concept of men dressing as women while jousting, and women dressing as knights, brings up several questions about the clothes, what it meant to be male and female, and how cross-dressing could be viewed on the tournament field.
The Queen and her consort : succession, politics and partnership in the kingdom of Navarre, 1274-1512
This thesis draws attention to an exceptional group of sovereigns and demonstrates the important role that these women and their spouses played in the political history of Western Europe during the Late Middle Ages. It also highlights the particular challenges of female rule and offers new modes of analysis by focusing on unique areas of investigation which have not been previously examined
The Storie of Asneth and its literary relations: the Bride of Christ tradition in late Medieval EnglandThe Storie of Asneth and its literary relations: the Bride of Christ tradition in late Medieval England
This is a study of the fifteenth-century, “Storie of Asneth,” a late-medieval English translation of a Jewish Hellenistic romance about the Patriarch, Joseph, and his Egyptian wife, Asneth (also spelled Aseneth, Asenath).
The Clerical Wife: Medieval Perceptions of Women During the Eleventh‐ and Twelfth‐Century Church Reforms
To those who promoted the agendas of the eleventh and twelfth century church reforms the cleric’s wife embodied those things which inhibited the process of man reaching the holy: lust, defilement, worldliness, and temptation.
Wild woman and her sisters in medieval English literature
The subject of this work is the concept and figure of the Wild Woman. The primary focus will be on various forms this figure assumes in medieval English literature: Grendel’s mother—the second monster Beowulf faces—and Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, along with other figures.
Double sex, double pleasure? Hermaphrodites and the medieval laws
I think the question of how the medieval laws dealt with ambivalent bodies deserves some attention in own right. The more general question is: how did medieval societies deal with experiences that challenged accepted views of what was normal?
Clandestine Marriage in the Diocese of Rochester during the Mid-Fourteenth Century
Seventeen suits concerned with some aspect of marriage litigation have left traces amongst the instance business dealt with between 1347 and 1348.
The Chaste Erotics of Marie d’Oignies and Jacques de Vitry
The Chaste Erotics of Marie d’Oignies and Jacques de Vitry Jennifer Brown (Marymount Manhattan College) Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 19,…
Noble Women’s Position in the Capetian Dynasty
In this paper, I will try to show mainly the women’s position in the noble family and its marriage in the Capetian Dynasty which is considered as a typical feudal period.
Inquiring into Adultery and Other Wicked Deeds: Episcopal Justice in Tenth- and Early Eleventh-Century Italy
This article suggests that Italian bishops often had recourse to spiritual penalties to exercise their coercive authority over serious offences during the tenth and early eleventh centuries.
Identifying Women Proprietors in Wills from Fifteenth-Century London
Most Londoners lodged their post obit requests with the Husting Court, the county court of London. The testators were primarily wealthy artisans and merchants, since one needed to possess a substantial amount of property in order to register the details of the division of that property.
“Walkynge in the mede” : Chaucerian gardens and the recasting of the Edenic fall
In this thesis, I intend to illustrate how Chaucer uses his knowledge of garden traditions, both biblical and practical, to discuss the concept of the Garden of Eden and the Fall of humanity.
Intermarriage in fifteenth-century Ireland: the English and Irish in the ‘four obedient shires’
The so-called ‘four obedient shires’ of Meath, Kildare, Louth and Dublin are a fruitful area for a study of marriage between the English of Ireland and the Irish, as these counties comprised the region of the colony most firmly under English control in the fifteenth century. Much of the anti-Irish rhetoric that survives in sources from the period…