Byzantine Military Advice
‘General, when the enemy acts boldly, entice him into premature, reckless action and useless maneuvers. If he is on timid side, hit him hard with constant and rapid attacks. You must know the disposition of the enemy general and employ your own stratagems accordingly.’
Hungary’s Conversion to Christianity: The Establishment of Hungarian Statehood and its Consequences to the Thirteenth Century
The Carpathian Basin occupies a peculiar place in history. It was the ground where Roman-Germanic world met that of the Slavs and mounted nomad peoples, where no group had achieved sustained unity before the state of Hungary was founded.
Miracula, Saints’ Cults and Socio-Political Landscapes: Bobbio, Conques and post-Carolingian society
Despite the centrality of monastic sources to debates about social and political transformation in post-Carolingian Europe, few studies have approached the political and economic status of monasteries and their saints’ cults in this context, to which this thesis offers a comparative approach.
The Sisters of King Æthelstan
King Edward the Elder, son and successor of Alfred the Great of England, had many children.
White Croatia and the arrival of the Croats: an interpretation of Constantine Porphyrogenitus on the oldest Dalmatian history
The article examines Constantine Porphyrogenitus’ (913–59) witness on the arrival of the Croats in Dalmatia during the seventh century. The emperor’s narrative proposes a migration from a land called White Croatia, located somewhere in central Europe, and a battle with the Avars in order to secure their new territory.
Melancholia in medieval Persian literature: The view of Hidayat of Al-Akhawayni
This paper aims to review Al-Akhawayni’s 10th century knowledge on melancholia which can represent the early concept of this disorder in the Near East.
Æthelstan, Anglo-Saxon King of England
Æthelstan was the first King of Wessex to bring together all the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in England. He was well educated, very pious and a collector of saints relics and manuscripts. He was also a formidable warrior.
Saints, Tradition and Monastic Identity: The Ghent Relics, 850-1100
The extraordinary story ofthe Ghent relics was first told by Oswald Holder- Egger in an article published in 1886. During his work on part two of volume 15 of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores series, which Holder- Egger had just finished, he had come across the hagiographie literature produced at the abbeys of St Baafs and St Pieters in Ghent.
Kingdom, emporium and town: the impact of Viking Dublin
In recent years the precise location and nature of Viking Dublin have been much debated. It is now generally accepted that there was a longphort phase from 841 to 902: a period of enforced exile from 902 to 917, and thereafter a dún phase.
Anglo Saxon and Viking Ship Burial – The British Museum
This session explores Viking and Anglo Saxon ship burials between the seventh and tenth centuries presented at The British Museum.
10th-century Viking king may have been discovered in Scotland
These might be the remains of Olaf Guthfrithsson, King of Dublin and Northumbria from 934 to 941.
Time, space and power in later medieval Bristol
With a population of almost 10,000, Bristol was later medieval England’s second or third biggest urban place, and the realm’s second port after London. While not particularly large or wealthy in comparison with the great cities of northern Italy, Flanders or the Rhineland, it was a metropolis in the context of the British Isles.
Northumbria in Stone: Material Evidence and Tenth Century Politics
This paper will illustrate how different forms of evidence provide disparate answers regarding the political situation in tenth-century Northumbria.
War and nation-building in Widukind of Corvey’s Deeds of the Saxons
Military conflicts constituted a central function of early medieval rulership and, correspondingly, of the historiographical tradition. War and violence in the Middle Ages have been the subject of various studies, which are above all devoted to warfare and to the army.
Food and prejudice: a western ambassador in Byzantium
On the 4th of June, 968, Liutprand of Cremona made landfall at Constaninople as ambassador for the German emperor Otto I.
Lords Of The North Sea: A Comparative Study Of Aristocratic Territory In The North Sea World In The Tenth And Eleventh Centuries
The paper is a comparative study on the aristocrats of eastern England, eastern Normandy, western Flanders and central Norway.
Auðun of the West Fjords and the Saga Tradition: Similarities of Theme and Structural Suitability
This paper evaluates the story of Auðun from the West Fjords, a þáttr dating from the Sturlunga period of medieval Iceland. It compares the short prose narrative to the much longer sagas in terms of their mutual concerns with kings, peace, and the place of Iceland in a larger Christian world.
The Origins of the Tale of the Blood Drinking Hungarians
The motif of the covenant of blood was quite widespread in West European chronicle literature, and it was not necessarily applied to Oriental peoples, nor particularly to Hungarians.
The Ottonians and the Word: Gospel Books as Objects, Images, and Texts
I would like to consider issues of the material texts, literacy and the status of the written word in Ottonian Germany, as they coalesce at the site of deluxe liturgical manuscripts.
Herb-workers and Heretics: Beguines, Bakhtin and the Basques
During the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, the word beguine was used by women to identify themselves as members of a wide-spread and influential women’s movement. The same term was used by their detractors and overt opponents, with the highly charged negative meaning of “heretic.” The etymology of the term “beguine” and ultimate origins of the movement have never been satisfactorily explained.
Fortified Settlements of the 9th and 10th Centuries ad in Central Europe: Structure, Function and Symbolism
The structure, function(s) and symbolism of early medieval (9th–10th centuries ad) fortified settlements from central Europe, in particular today’s Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia, are examined in this paper.
The Woman who Ruled the Papacy
She was the lover of one Pope, mother to another, and grandmother to a third.
The derivation of the date of the Badon entry in the Annales Cambriae from Bede and Gildas
The battle of Badon [Bellum Badonis], in which Arthur carried the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ for three days and three nights on his shoulders and the Britons were victorious.
10th century find points to medieval sea routes around Ibiza
A bronze candelabra discovered by a diver in Ibiza in the 1970s is offering clues to the maritime history of this region.
Writing conquest: traditions of Anglo-Saxon invasion and resistance in the twelfth century
Writing Conquest examines the ways in which Latin, Old English, and Middle English twelfth-century historical and pseudo-historical texts remembered and reconstructed three formative moments of Anglo-Saxon invasion and resistance…