Matthew Paris and Henry III’s elephant
Matthew Paris’s drawings of Henry III’s elephant are well-known, and popular accounts of the Tower of London often mention the elephant’s brief residence there.
Peasant Society as Revealed by a Thirteenth-Century Manorial Extent
Peasant Society as Revealed by a Thirteenth-Century Manorial Extent By Donald R. Abbott Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Vol. 11…
The Protocol of Vengeance in Viking-age Scandinavia
Violence, even murder, perpetuated this cycle of revenge. This code of retribution can be broken down further into the following dimensions: the individuals involved, the appropriate actions as deemed by Viking society, and any extenuating circumstances, such as supernatural strength or the wronged party’s reluctance to seek revenge.
How to Invade Iraq: The Mongol Way
‘Even a brief mention of it would be terrible to hear – how much worse its recapitulation in detail! Things happened which I shall not record, imagine them and do not ask for a description!’
Past/Present: Leonardo Bruni’s History of Florence
Past/Present: Leonardo Bruni’s History of Florence Giuseppe Bisaccia Renaissance and Reformation, Vol. 21, No 1 (1985) Abstract The importance of historical consciousness in the…
Fasting and the female body : from the ascetic to the pathological
Importantly, the dietary practices of the early Christians cannot be understood as a single corpus of ideas or practices. It could mean going without food altogether, as in the case of one of the desert fathers, Simeon Stylites, who ate nothing for the whole of lent.
Gothic Architecture and the Civilizing Process: The Great Hall in Thirteenth Century England
Gothic Architecture and the Civilizing Process: The Great Hall in Thirteenth Century England By Matthew Reeve New Approaches to Medieval Architecture, eds. Abby…
Choice of law in Medieval France
The medieval scholastic when faced with a doctrine he did not like or an authority that stood in the way of his own ideas would simply say “sed distinguo” and remove the opposition from his path, whether it was a phrase from St. John, a comment of St. Augustine, or a constitution of Innocent III. Modern lawyers are very much the heirs to this technique,
Margaret Plantagenet, Queen of Scotland
The English Princess Margaret Plantagenet married King Alexander III of Scotland in December of 1251. This was to be the third youngest marriage of monarchs in British history.
Mondino’s book and the human body
The assertion that Mondino da Luzzi, the 14th Century Bolognese anatomist, was the first genuine human anatomist is questioned.
A Fourteenth-Century Augustinian Approach to the Jews in Riccoldo da Monte Croce’s Ad Nationes Orientales
Riccoldo da Monte Croce (d.1320) was an educated Florentine Dominican preacher who traveled as a pilgrim and missionary in the Middle East between the years c.1288 to 1300.
Worse than buggery? Incest discourses in the 12th and 13th centuries
In my paper today, I will not attempt the question why it was possible that the law developed in such an extreme way as to exclude such an excessive number of people as potential marriage partners, although my opinions on some recent approaches to this problem may become transparent in the course of this talk. Instead, my interest is focussed on what I call the incest discourses in the twelfth and thirteenth century.
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,…
English government bought “many millions” of crossbow bolts during the 13th century, historian finds
A new study about the medieval military industry shows that the English Royal government was making and purchasing as much as hundreds of thousands of crossbow bolts each year, revealing how important this weapon was to the medieval armies of England.
The First of Century of Magna Carta: Three Crises
The First of Century of Magna Carta: Three Crises Ralph Turner (Florida State University, Department of History – Emeritus) Paper given at Presbyterian…
Deer park created by Llywelyn the Great discovered by archaeologists
Archaeologists in Wales have discovered the remains of a thirteenth-century deer park, likely built during the reign of Llywelyn the Great (1195–1240).
Book Review: A Thing Done, by Tinney Sue Heath
I’ve read a lot of historical novels over the last few years but I have to say that hands down, this one is at the top of my list.
Were there heretics in medieval Ireland?
In her article, ‘Heresy in Ireland in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries’, Bernadette Williams uncovers some cases where people were accused and convicted of heresy, including insulting the Virgin Mary and denying the Jesus was the son of God.
Mapping Scottish Identity in the Roman de Fergus
In the Roman de Fergus, a thirteenth-century verse romance in Old French, Guillaume le Clerc considers the consequences of Arthur’s assimilationist expansionism with a more focused attention to cultural difference and personal identity, again centered on the experience of a knight from Galloway, the eponymous
Impregnable friendship : locating desire in the middle English ‘Amis and Amiloun’
Scholarship on Amis and Amiloun has generally been divided into two critical schools. The majority of critics have read the work as an exemplar of perfect friendship, overlooking (or ignoring) any trace of homoeroticism, citing the possibility itself as anachronistic, or explaining away its presence by offering historical or theoretical justification for intimacy among medieval men.
A Study on the Effects of Ghazan Khan’s Reformative Measures for the Settlement of the Nomadic Mongols (1295-1304)
The Ilkhanid’s sovereignty in Iran was part of the great empire under the command of Genghis Khan and his successors. It extended broadly from Korea to Eastern Europe and China to Iran and Syria. Such conquest originated from Mongolia (Middle Asia), which was the original land of these homeless nomadic people. They lived by shepherding, hunting and sometimes looting nearby tribes or civilized centers.
Catalonia’s Mediterranean Expansion: An Instance of Colonialism?
It is apparent that not all historians agree on what Catalonian expansion means, and what expansion meant to Catalonia.
Organized Collective Violence in Twelfth and Thirteenth Century Tuscan Countryside: Some Case Studies from Central and North Eastern Tuscany
Violence is often thought of as a characteristic of all medieval societies. How such societies chose to exercise this violence is therefore a good, and understudied, way into understanding the basic rules about how they worked. Concentrating on twelfth and thirteenth century Tuscany, my intention is to show that a specific form of violence, namely organized collective violence, was not an option available to all social groups within the medieval rural society of northern Italy…
Ibn Jubayr: The Rihla
Abu ‘l-Husayn Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Jubayr (1145-1217) was not an exceptional man. As a relatively ordinary, middle-aged Muslim, Ibn Jubayr was neither the first nor the last to leave Al-Andalus to perform the hajj. Admiring kings only from afar, the closest that Ibn Jubayr came to royalty were encounters with imperial tax collectors. Paradoxically though, it is precisely Ibn Jubayr’s lack of distinction that helped earn him repute throughout the Islamic world in his time. It also makes him the ideal subject of the present study.