Interview with Damien Kempf on Robert the Monk’s Historia Iherosolimitana
Damien Kempf, Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Liverpool, has recently completed with Marcus Bull The Historia Iherosolimitana of Robert the Monk, the first critical edition of this important text since the 1860s.
The Place of Germany in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance: Books, Scriptoria and Libraries
Scholars in Germany and elsewhere have studied individual instances of this growth in the output of scriptoria and expansion of collections, but no-one, as far as I know, has drawn attention to the impressive scale and character of the phenomenon as a whole.
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,…
The Failed Experience: Why Did Manuel Komnenos Lose the Battle at Myriokephalon?
On the 17th of September, 1176, a huge Byzantine army entered a defile some 40 km east of modern Konya. The Byzantine chronicles call it Myriokephalon
To Take Care of the Monks, Take Care of Christina: Christina of Markyate and the Medieval Spiritual/Material Market
In this essay I will delineate two of these emphases: (1) Christina’s powerful interaction with boundaries and the spaces they demarcate, and (2) the material/spiritual economy that develops between Christina and Geoffrey, the Abbot of the St. Albans Monastery. I will then argue that these emphases together form a message that might have been aimed at The Life’s monastic (and to some extent aristocratic) audience, perhaps even the abbots who succeeded Geoffrey.
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.
Contextualizing Hildegard of Bingen’s Violent and Apocalyptic Imagery
This essay focuses on the graphic and violent language of Hildegard’s visions. I argue that Hildegard drew upon the political and ecclesiastical context in which she lived for her visionary experiences, rather than a fully developed form of salvation history.
Lamentation, History, and Female Authorship in Anna Komnene’s Alexiad
Anna’s laments are grounded in a Greek tradition of female lamentation and reflect her deliberate decision to add a female voice along side the historian’s conventional dispassion.
Neonatal care and breastfeeding in medieval Persian literature
The present article is a review of the Jorjani’s teachings on the neonatal care, breastfeeding, weaning and teething along with comparisons between the Treasure and modern medicine in this regard.
Representations of English Women and their Pilgrimages in Twelfth-Century Miracle Collections
Drawing on a survey of sixteen miracle collections compiled in twelfth-century England, the study examines the representation of women as pilgrims, and demonstrates that many modern assumptions about female travel in the Middle Ages are not consistent with the miracle accounts.
The God of History: The Concept of God in the Works of Galbert of Bruges and Walter of Thérouanne
Charles the Good, count of Flanders, was surrounded by assassins and killed by a sword blow to the forehead while praying in an upper chapel of his castral church of Saint Donation in Bruges on March 2, 1127.
Agatha, Clerical ‘Wife’ and Wet Nurse to King John of England, Longtime Companion to Godfrey de Lucy, Bishop of Winchester
Agatha’s life, like that of her mistress Eleanor of Aquitaine, is remarkable in an age when women’s innate inferiority and wives’ subordination to their husbands were almost universally accepted, and discussions of women and marriage in learned treatises, sermons, and vernacular stories were ‘at worst misogynistic and at best ambivalent.’
Countess Hodierna of Tripoli: From Crusader Politician to ‘Princesse Lointaine’
This case study of Hodierna (c. 1115 to c. 1161), princess of Jerusalem and countess of Jerusalem, highlights how any given woman’s historical reputation is subject to unpredictable forces, often beyond her control and rarely reflective of her actions in life.
The Participation of the Military Orders in Truces with Muslims in the Holy Land and Spain during the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
Although the military orders’ primary function was to fight against the infidel, warfare in the Middle Ages was never continuous, as armies could not be kept in the field indefinitely, and when there was an imbalance of power between Christians and Muslims it was in the interests of the weaker side to seek truces, even at the expense of concessions.
The Chronicle and Historical Notes of Bernard Itier
This book offers an edition and translation of an interesting chronicle written in France at the end of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.
The Calamitous Fourteenth Century in England: All Doom and Gloom?
This was a fantastic paper given at the Crown and Country in Late medieval England session at KZOO. There were only two papers but both were interesting and enjoyable. This paper delved into the history of science in late medieval England and examined why the fourteenth century, a time that is usually synonymous with doom and gloom, plague and uprising, wasn’t all that bad upon closer observation.
Theft, Homicide and Crime in Late Anglo-Saxon Law
In order to understand these issues properly we must first consider our own ideas about ‘crime’, a deeply problematic term for the period before the late twelfth century.
The Battle of Arsuf, 7 September 1191
Benjamin Z. Kedar asks what was Richard I’s plan at Arsuf, one of the key battles of the Third Crusade?
Was the White Ship disaster mass murder?
It was perhaps the worst maritime disaster of the Middle Ages, not just because it cost 300 lives, but because one of them was the heir to the Anglo-Norman Empire. One scholar has a theory that the sinking of the White Ship on the night of November 25, 1120 was not a tragic accident, rather a case of mass murder.
The Development of Stained Glass in Gothic Cathedrals
In this research paper, I will be primarily focusing on the stained glass windows and architectural styles employed in five gothic buildings in France, each having their own unique and notable attributes pertaining to the development of stained glass windows.