Medieval History

This thesis examines the Solomonic grimoire manuscripts between 1400-1800. Grimoires, as books of magic materials, claim an ancient lineage from the time of King Solomon of Israel.  Modern scholarship has attempted to argue either for or against such a claim, but has not adequately addressed the meanings of imagery and alphabetic symbols contained within each grimoire as an indicator of origin. Through comparisons of several manuscript collections, the basic geometric shapes of circles and squares, that repeatedly form the templates for several objects to be constructed by the magus, are here examined, their various scripts deciphered, and their purpose contextualized for the early modern magician and conjuror. This thesis suggests that the genre of the Solomonic grimoires, in manuscript or printed form, possibly originated only from the 16th-century works of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, a conclusion based on use of the Malachim alphabet. Furthermore, the thesis questions grimoire use beyond library transcriptions, the existence of any practice related to them, and the possible origins of the scientific experiment.

Viking Language 2: The Old Norse Reader immerses the learner in the legends, folklore, and myths of the Vikings. The readings are drawn from sagas, runes and eddas. They take the student into the world of Old Norse heroes, gods, and goddesses. There is a separate chapter on the ‘Creation of the World’ and another on ‘The Battle at the World’s End,’ where the gods meet their doom. Other readings and maps focus on Viking Age Iceland, Greenland, and Vínland. A series of chapters tackles eddic and skaldic verse with their ancient stories from the old Scandinavian past. Runic inscriptions and explanations of how to read runes form a major component of the book. Where there are exercises, the answers are given at the end of the chapter. Both Viking Language 1 and 2 are structured as workbooks. Students learns quickly and interactively. More information on our website: vikinglanguage.com

This special issue addresses the possible connections and mutual benefits of examining together two analytic concepts – memory and periphery. These concepts receive much attention in various scholarly discussions, yet they have done so rather independently from each other. The potential applications and utilities of combining memory and periphery and the epistemic insights they provide for various disciplins are presented in the different contributions to this issue.

How does Christianity explain the existence of the two rival Abrahamic faiths, Judaism and Islam?  What place does it allow in Christian society for Jews and Muslims?  The responses to these questions are many; this brief article examines a few prominent examples.  Rather than a survey of Christians’ attitudes towards Jews (or Judaism) and Muslims (or Islam), it examines how Christian law accommodated Jews and Muslims as residents of Christian societies and at the roles that Christian thinkers assigned to Judaism and Islam in a Christian scheme of history.  The emphasis is on a few salient examples from the fourth century (when Christianity obtains social and intellectual predominance in the Roman Empire) to the nineteenth (when Christianity loses that predominance in Europe).

The book includes medieval swords from the Balkans and the Carpathian Basin (Pannonian Plain). The Catalogue contains data on 412 swords that come from this area, from the Alps to Istanbul, including all states of the former Yugoslavia (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia), Bulgaria, Greece and Albania and from Slovakia via Hungary, Romania and Moldova to the Black Sea. Division of the shapes and forms of the basic parts of swords is based on the typology made by Ewart Oakeshott. In addition to this division, the existing shapes were compared with the typologies of other researchers (Alexander Ruttkay, Marian Głosek, Anatolij Kirpichnikov, Alfred Geibig, Karl-Zeno Pinter and others). Considering that swords from southeastern Europe include also some characteristic finds, Oakeshott`s typology is supplemented by some new types of pommels, blades and cross-guards.
Certain typological and other properties of swords are mapped in order to explore their spatial distribution. In addition to archaeological findings, in book have been used other medieval source material, such as historical written sources as well as artistic representations of swords. Illustrative part of the book contains drawings and color photos of swords, their visual representations as well as geographical and historical maps.

Some of the reviews:

• B. Milosavljević, Vesnik Vojnog muzeja 34, Beograd 2008.
• H. Sanchiz Alvarez de Toledo, Gladius 29, Madrid 2009, 207-208. - http://gladius.revistas.csic.es/index.php/gladius/article/view/220/221
• Michal Pírek, Slovenska Archaeologia 57/1, Nitra 2009, 191-192. - http://www.archeol.sav.sk/nove/pub_slovarch.php#s22009
• Lech Marek, Acta Archaeologica Carpathica, Vol. XLIV, Krakow 2009, 267-271.
•J. Piet Puype, Waffen- und Kostümkunde 2012, Heft 1, 126-128.

Viking Language 1: Learn Old Norse, Runes, and Icelandic Sagas is an introduction to the language of the Vikings offering in one book graded lessons, vocabulary, grammar exercises, pronunciation, student guides, and maps. It explains Old Icelandic literature, Viking history, and mythology. Readings include runestones, legends, and sagas.  Viking Language 1 focuses on the most frequently occurring words in the sagas, an innovative method which speeds learning. Because the grammar has changed little from Old Norse, the learner is well on the way to mastering Modern Icelandic. It provides a wealth of information about Iceland, where the sagas were written and Old Scandinavian history and mythology were preserved. Viking Language 1 is accompanied by Viking Language 2: The Old Norse Reader.

The most original and shocking interpretation of Lucretius in the last 40 years.

Thomas Nail argues convincingly and systematically that Lucretius was not an atomist, but a thinker of kinetic flux. In doing so, he completely overthrows the interpretive foundations of modern scientific materialism, whose philosophical origins lie in the atomic reading of Lucretius' immensely influential book De Rerum Natura.

This means that Lucretius was not the revolutionary harbinger of modern science as Greenblatt and others have argued; he was its greatest victim. Nail re-reads De Rerum Natura to offer us a new Lucretius--a Lucretius for today.

This article offers a fresh critique of the work of political scientists and historians who have propagated the Eurocentric history of democracy. The paper argues that such work can be dissected and critiqued along several key lines: their reliance on a distinctly patriarchal discourse riddled with prejudices; the assertion that one can understand the history of democracy via the etymology of the word itself; and the deeply Eurocentric
roots of the study of democracy’s past embedded in the canon of Western political thought. The paper concludes by calling on contemporary political scientists and political historians concerned with the history of  democracy to be careful in re-iterating this deeply flawed history of democracy and to instead work towards a history of democracy that retrieves the silenced histories and the forgotten democratic moments that lay behind the roar of Western power.

Scholarship on Buddhist and Muslim interactions has long proposed that Islam was largely responsible for the decline of Buddhism in its homeland of India during the medieval period. The popularity of the idea that Islam not only injured by actually killed off Indian Buddhism c. 1200 CE far outstrips the historical evidence for such a proposition. Nonetheless, this narrative of an antagonistic, fatal relationship between Islam and the Buddhist dharma on the subcontinent is widespread and oft repeated in modern scholarship, especially introductory-level textbooks. This paper considers the sparse historical sources that undergird the “Islam killed Indian Buddhism” narrative and traces how this storyline has nonetheless been resilient and embellished over time. I argue that the notion that Islam finished off Indian Buddhism endures in both premodern and modern sources because of its rhetorical force and assumptions about the life cycles of religious traditions. Prejudices about both Buddhism and Islam are also partly responsible for the persistence of this narrative in contemporary scholarship. The paper closes by analyzing the difficulties of reframing the question of what happened to Indian Buddhism and suggests some shifts that may better position future scholars to move beyond the tired and largely ahistorical approach of crudely blaming Islam and more accurately capture the elusive end (or near end) of Indian Buddhism.

"This volume contains a collection of eleven essays dealing with aspects of the society of southern Italy and Sicily from the 11th through to the 13th centuries. It covers the evolution of the social structures, the aristocratic family; the agrarian economy; regional differences across the South Italian Peninsula and Sicily; Norman-papal relations; charters and chanceries; Latin- and Greek-rite Churches; religious conversion, and the position of Greeks, Arab-Christians and Muslims within the Norman Kingdom of Sicily.

For an extensive preview:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1IBspuVRwnUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+society+of+noman+italy&ei=e_WTSsnbBojUMq3b1ZgH#v=onepage&q&f=false"

This chapter introduces some of the arts and sciences generally subsumed under the notion of occult thought during the Christian Middle Ages, roughly defined as the period from 500 to 1500 ce. It is divided into sections 1. Astrology in the Middle Ages; 2. Alchemy in the Middle Ages; 3. Magic in the Middle Ages (Natural Magic, Astral Magic; Ritual Magic in the Late Middle Ages), plus a list of references and suggestions for further reading

The identification of deviant burials as those of ‘vampires’ is a feature of excavated skeletons from sites across Eastern, Central and Southern Europe as well as the Balkans. Based on a close reading of historic and folkloric sources researchers have sought to match features of excavated sites with narrative descriptions drawn from vampire legend and myth. This study critically reviews the recent claims based on sites in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Poland and Slovakia. Whilst it is found that there was a widespread belief in vampires across Europe, it is argued that it is difficult to make absolute claims for ‘vampire’ burials on archaeological grounds as in most cases there are alternate and equally compelling interpretations of the data.

KEYWORDS
ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, SIXTEENTH CENTURY, SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, VAMPIRE, DEVIANT BURIAL, PLAGUE, BLACK DEATH, FOLKLORE, PAGAN, BURIAL, WITCH, BALKANS, EASTERN EUROPE, CENTRAL EUROPE, SOUTHERN EUROPE, BULGARIA, CZECH REPUBLIC, POLAND, GREECE, ITALY, SLOVAKIA, LESBOS, VENICE, APOTROPAIC, VAMPIRIDZHIJA, PERPERIKON, SOZOPOL, PROSTEJOV, CELAKOVICE, DRAWSKO, GLIWICI, SOUTHWELL, KILTEASHEEN, LAZZARETTO NUOVO, NACHTZEHRER, KAMIEN POMORSKI

Collective identity in the so-called Byzantine Empire is a much-debated issue that has drawn a lot of attention over the years. The current paper attempts a critical assessment of the hitherto main lines of thinking about Byzantine identity, focussing on the period between the seventh and the thirteenth centuries. By proposing an alternative view on source material based on a comprehensive theoretical framework, I argue that a conceptualization of the collective identity of this medieval imperial social order with its constantly fluctuating geopolitical and cultural boundaries needs to be disconnected from essentialist and reifying views on perennial ethnicity as well as from the modern phenomenon of the nation-state.

La presenza e l’azione femminile nel periodo altomedievale, fra VI e X secolo, sono studiate in modo specifi co solo da pochi decenni, e in maniera pressoché univoca dalla storiografia anglosassone e francese. In quella italiana, ancora oggi, l’apporto delle donne alle vicende umane che segnano questo periodo storico è fortemente sottovalutato. Il volume colma una lacuna editoriale, indagando le caratteristiche, le differenze e il signifi cato della presenza femminile nell’alto Medioevo tramite l’analisi ragionata della storiografi a e la presentazione di fonti – trattatistiche, normative, biografi che, religiose, testamentarie, capitolari e di altro genere, scritte e iconografi che – accompagnate da commenti chiari ed efficacemente organizzate per temi.

This article investigates geometry’s importance within freemasonry and discovers the de facto guardianship provided geometry by operative masons through the Middle Ages. Operative masons passed their geometry and their philosophy from generation to generation via initiation. This paper illustrates the transmission and sometimes startling application of those principles while examining the masonic symbolism of the 47th Proposition of Euclid, the Golden Ratio and the Point within a Circle. Consequently, the study reveals an extraordinary path from the operative to the speculative age. By tracing the history of the Master Mason, or third degree, we gain a deeper understanding of this transition. We find a suggestion the third degree came into common usage in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, and an implication the resurrection and/or esoteric modification of masonic geometry occurred during this era. We explore the fascinating intersection of Dr John Theophilus Desaguliers and Sir Isaac Newton at the centre of this intriguing period, and contend these men played a part in not only the modification (or re-creation) of the Master Mason degree, but also in the resurrection of those geometric symbols from the operative age that define present freemasonry.

North Africa is rarely mentioned in scholarship on the medieval Mediterranean. This paper demonstrates the potential of archaeology for understanding the impact of the Arab conquests on settlement and society in seventh- and eighth- century North Africa. Despite difficulties in dating early medieval occupation, synthesis of the available evidence reveals that the Arab conquest was not catastrophic for settled life. Mapping the distribution of urban sites across North Africa shows that the majority of Byzantine towns were not abandoned but remained significant centres. The rural evidence is less clear, but suggests a relatively busy countryside of estates, farms and fortified villages. The paper then presents three detailed case-studies of the towns of Tocra, Sbeïtla and Volubilis in the early medieval period, before considering more broadly the evidence for fortifications, religious buildings (churches and mosques), housing and production in towns. It concludes with some preliminary observations on the nature of Arab rule in North Africa from the perspective of the archaeological evidence.

A new and updated edition of this Western civilization textbook emphasizes a wide global perspective and adds new primary sources, terms, and many other features, including the intriguing question What Would You Do? to help students  personalize historical events and make history theirs.

Paper published in Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 65 (2015) p. 195-242.

Abstract: This paper discusses a recently proposed scenario of a climate-induced “Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean” in the 11th century AD. It demonstrates that such a scenario cannot be maintained when confronted with proxy data from various regions. On the other hand, data on the interplay between environment and economy in the Komnenian period (1081–1185) and evidence for a change of climatic conditions in the period of the Angeloi (1185–1204) is presented, arguing that climatic parameters should be taken into consideration when comparing socio-economic dynamics in the Eastern Mediterranean with those in Western Europe. The necessity of further research on the regional as well as over-regional level for many aspects of the interaction between human society and environment in the medieval Eastern Mediterranean is highlighted.

A presente dissertação de doutoramento insere-se numa àrea partilhada entre a História do Urbanismo e a História Urbana, tendo como objectivo o estudo das alterações da forma urbana que ocorreram na cidade de Lisboa, entre o período dos reinos de Taifas e o final do reinado de D. Dinis. Através da reconstituição possível da forma urbana, pretende-se compreender os processos que desencadearam mutações na imagem da cidade, dentro do referido período.
A utilização de metodologias diversas consoante as múltiplas fontes analisadas tornou possível recuperar as lógicas urbanas que marcaram indelevamente a cidade de Lisboa. Deste modo, cruzaram-se diversas fontes para se obter um panorama mais completo possível do nosso objetco de estudo. Fontes documentais, arqueológicas, cartográficas, iconográficas, e o parcelário actual foram analisados e considerados em conjunto para se obterem imagens coerentes de vários pontos fortes da cidade medieval.
A dimensão de uma cidade como a Lisboa medieval obrigou a que análise dos processos urbanos tenha sido conduzida através de uma focagem selectiva, onde a topografia foi considerada como a principal linha condutora da investigação. Esta opção levou a uma fragmentação deliberada da cidade em diferentes espaços: a Almedina, a Alcáçova, e os três arrabaldes, Ocidental, Oriental e dos Mouros. Esta divisão permitiu observar o modo como dinâmicas diversas moldaram a imagem da cidade, sem perder de vista a actuação destas forças na cidade como um todo. Deste modo, a estrutura deste trabalho reflecte o seu processo de análise, dividindo-se num prólogo seguido de cinco partes. No prólogo são abordados três aspectos de carácter global inseridos em dois momentos de transição: da antiguidade tardia para época medieval, e da época de domínio muçulmano para a de domínio cristão. Na primeira parte do trabalho estudam-se as mutações urbanas ocorridas no espaço compreendido pela cerca urbana. Na segunda parte observam-se os fenómenos de alteração da forma urbana na Alcáçova da cidade. Ao Arrabalde Ocidental foi dedicada a terceira parte deste trabalho, cuja dimensão textual, com um peso comparativamente maior do que as restantes, reflecte a relevância deste espaço.  Os processos de mutação urbana do Arrabalde Oriental foram tratados na quarta parte. Na quinta e última parte foi estudada a evolução urbana do Arrabalde dos Mouros. Na conclusão procurou-se observar a cidade como um todo, identificando-se os processos globais que delinearam a imagem da cidade.
Este estudo, baseado em diversas fontes de informação, permitiu observar que a urbe medieval não se restringia ao perímetro compreendido pela cerca urbana, pois, pelo menos desde a época de domínio islâmico, o seu centro económico e comercial já se centrava na parte ocidental da cidade. Foi também possível compreender a acção das diferentes instituições medievais na modelação da forma urbana, destacando-se a Coroa, o concelho e as instituições eclesiásticas. Esta dissertação revelou o papel definidor das dinâmicas urbanas ocorridas em época medieval e o modo como estas sustentaram os desenvolvimentos posteriores, em época moderna.

This doctoral thesis lies within an area shared between the History of Urbanism and Urban History, aiming to study the changes of urban form that took place in Lisbon, in the period between the Taifa kingdoms and the end of D. Dinis reign. Through the possible reconstitution of urban form, it is intended to understand the processes that triggered the changes in the image of the city in this period.
The use of different methodologies depending on the multiple sources here analyzed made it possible to recover the urban logics that marked the city of Lisbon. Thus, we crossed several sources to obtain a more complete picture of our object of study. Documentary, archeological, cartographical and iconographic sources as well as the current urban property limits were all analyzed and taken together to obtain consistent images of various key points of the medieval city.
The size of a city like medieval Lisbon forced the analysis of urban processes to be conducted through a selective focus, where the topography was considered as the main guiding line. This option led to a deliberate fragmentation of the city in different spaces: the Almedina, the Alcaçova, and the three suburbs, Western, Oriental and Moorish. This division allowed us to observe how different dynamics shaped the city's image, without losing sight of these forces in the city as a whole. Thus, the structure of this study reflects its analysis process, a prologue followed by five parts. In the prologue are addressed three issues inserted in two moments of transition: from late antiquity to medieval times and from the time of Muslim rule to the Christian rule. In the first part we study the urban changes occurred in the space included by the urban fence. In the second part we observe the changing of urban form in the city Alcaçova. The Western area was studied in the third part of this work, with a textual dimension comparatively greater in weight than the other parts that reflects the importance of this area. The urban mutation processes of the Eastern area were treated in the fourth part. In the fifth and last part the urban evolution of Arrabalde of the Moors was studied. In the conclusion we observed the city as a whole, identifying the global processes that shaped the city's image.
This study, based on various sources of information, noted that the medieval metropolis was not confined to the perimeter comprised by the urban fence because, at least from the time of Islamic rule, their economic and commercial center was on the Western area of City. It was also possible to understand the action of different medieval institutions in shaping the urban form, namely the Crown, the city council and the ecclesiastical institutions. This work revealed the defining role of urban dynamics that occurred in medieval times and how they sustained further developments in modern times.