Saint Birgitta of Sweden: paving the way for female writers and philosophers
The Legacy of Birgitta of Sweden. Women, Politics, and Reform in Renaissance Italy project tracks the impact of the 14th century mystic and founder of the Bridgettines on later generations.
“Thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns”: The Biblical Unicorn in Late Medieval Religious Interpretation
We do not usually think of the unicorn as a ‘biblical creature,’ but it can indeed be found in Bible translations from Late Antiquity.
Built on a True Dream: The Medieval Church and Its Representation in Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth
This thesis aims to illustrate the way in which Follett has depicted the medieval Church of the twelfth century and answer the question of whether this depiction is a historical accurate representation.
The Story of Christmas: Medieval Extended Edition
Ludolph of Saxony’s 14th century work The Life of Christ offers an extended version of the Christmas story of the birth of Jesus.
The Medieval Ritual Landscape: Archaeology and Folk Religion
This lecture explores the value of archaeology in reconstructing lived religion as it was practised and experienced by medieval people.
Virgin Sacrifice in the 12th century: The Hortus Deliciarum
If you put a group of bookish virgins up against a monster bent on devouring the world, what do you get? Something approximating salvation, right?
Art and Devotional Practices in the Byzantine Village: The Long View
In this talk, Gerstel will look at devotional art in several Greek villages and will also discuss how engaging with art in the village may provide opportunities for medievalists to move beyond the strict chronological confines of our field to take a more activist stance in approaching buildings and their communities.
Religious belief and cooperation: a view from Viking-Age Scandinavia
Did the Vikings perceive themselves subject to supernatural monitoring and punishment?
How to Be an Atheist in Medieval Europe
This lecture will take a tour of medieval unbelief, showing how and why some medieval people defied the powerful orthodoxies of their day: fired not by intellectual or philosophical doubts but by suspicion that ‘God’ was being used to swindle and manipulate them.
Encounters in the Ruins: Latin Captives, Franciscan Friars and the Dangers of Religious Plurality in the early Mongol Empire
For the historian wishing to investigate forms of religious encounter, the complexities and ambiguities of life in the Mongol camps are enticing
Recording Miracles in Renaissance Italy
This essay has surveyed the changing form of Renaissance Italian ex-votos, and the ways in which they were compiled and conserved in a variety of shrines across the peninsula, in order to argue that votive offerings came to function as archives of the miraculous.
The Tour Guide in the Middle Ages: Guide Culture and the Mediation of Public Art
This study investigates the medieval “tour guide” or, perhaps better, it investigates guide culture. Toward this end, I ask such questions as was there a “tour guide” in the Middle Ages, that is, is there evidence for an artistic component within medieval guide culture?
Heart, Hand, and Mind: Grasping the Cross in Early Medieval England
Far removed from the bodies they once adorned and the graves which from which they were unearthed gold cross pendants richly inlaid with garnets sit behind glass in various museums in Great Britain.
‘Death in a Dread Place’: Belief, Practice, and Marginality in Norse Greenland, ca. 985-1450
This thesis finds that the development of Christianity was driven by the Greenlanders’ increasing perception of their place in the world as one of marginality and spiritual danger.
Sko-Ella: The Woman Worse than the Devil
What is it that you truly desire? How far are you prepared to go to get it? Would you, say, treasure it even more than your immortal soul?
The Goat and the Cathedral – Archaeology of Folk Religion in Medieval Turku
This paper introduces three cases of material signs of folk religion that archaeologists have discovered in the medieval soil layers of Turku
Ampullae and Badges: Pilgrim Paraphernalia in Late Medieval England
Late medieval persons who adorned their hats and cloaks with the traces of their pilgrimage visits grappled with many conflicting perspectives.
The Relationship of the Italian and Southern French Cathars, 1170-1320
The aim of this thesis is to answer two questions, namely why Southern French Cathars chose to flee to Italy
when persecuted in the early thirteenth century and secondly to assess the extent to which Catharism was a ‘universal church’.
The Audacious Metaphors of Mystical Women: The Model of Caterina da Siena
Religious education for women included spiritual meditation by which it was specifically taught to revive the life and passion of Christ. Caterina da Siena has been a model for many mystical writers.
Life, Literature and Prayer in Early Anglo-Saxon England
This thesis deals with the representation of prayer in literary texts from early Anglo-Saxon England, investigating the role of reading in the life of prayer and the various ways in which literary texts from the eighth and ninth centuries attest to cultures of prayer in this period.
The Spiritual Athlete: Elizabeth of Spaalbeek
Elizabeth stands out, though, in the sheer physical strength and flexibility shown by her ability to hold postures such as lying down with her head and shoulders elevated for an extended time – an incredible feat of core strength!
Monastic Reform and the Geography of Christendom: Experience, Observation and Influence
Historians have suggested that tropes about the desert, solitude, etc., drawn from early texts found their way into mainstream accounts of monastic change in the period c. 1080–1150; this paper challenges this model.
Cardinals and the War of Ferrara
The bestowal of a red hat can turn even the most humbly born cleric into an ecclesiastical prince, but whereas few cardinals of the modern era have been born princely, most of those created in the Renaissance period could claim to be of noble lineage.
Medieval Manuscripts: Epiphany in The Great Hours of Anne of Brittany
The Great Hours of Anne of Brittany is undoubtedly a masterpiece of French painting, as is fitting for a manuscript intended for someone who was twice queen of France: with Charles VIII and then Louis XII.