The region of Ardeche in south-eastern France has a long history of exporting its produce. The Chestnut trees that grow here amazed me, because they are practically non-existent in the U.S.. Here I am standing next to a famous Chestnut tree over 300 years old — the trunk was massive. Grapes for wine (second picture) […]
Notre-Dame in Thines, France, is a jewel of a Romanesque church that I will definitely incorporate in my Medieval class this coming fall. It sits high up the hillside of Thines. Cars can’t go into many of the town’s tiny streets, so we walked along a dirt trail for about a kilometer to see it.
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In Province, France, some amazing ruins from Ancient Rome provide testimony to the wealth and engineering skills the empire’s elites commanded. The Pont-du-Gard still exists as part of the once-enormous aqueduct that brought water 50 kilometers away into the town of Nîmes. Built around 50 CE, it had to have an extremely low gradient to
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From 1309-1370, the central office of the papacy was not Rome, but the French city of Avignon. Petrarch bitingly referred to this situation as “the Babylonian captivity” of the papacy because he thought it was such a displacement. Although the Catholic Church was extremely powerful by this point of the Middle Ages, the King of
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This view of the southern French city of Uzés is taken from the top of a Medieval tower that now forms part of the town’s Medieval garden. The photos that follow show some of the many plant specimens that were grown in this region in the Middle Ages for all sorts of medical and alimentary
Although my posts for the next few weeks are mostly going to be repeats as the website gets built, I couldn’t help but write up this story about willow tree bark and aspirin. Dear reader, you, like me, may have been under the impression that for millennia, people in different parts of the world relied
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The title here “A brief discourse of a disease called the Suffocation of the Mother” is really misleading. Not a tract about matricide, instead it was the first English publication (1603) on hysteria — thought to be a disease that only infected women. And it’s pretty messed up from every angle. For instance, the intent
Studies on Hysteria Read More »
Poor little toads of the Medieval period, getting stuck with horrid associations of despicable things — putrefaction, death, and lust. And did you notice how all three of those adjectives were lumped together? That’s because the Christian Church at the time intentionally set about trying to make carnality associated with disgusting things, because church doctrine
The way cutting-edge technology lets us see into the distant past is so cool. Recently, a technique called “photometric stereo workflow” enabled Medieval historian Jessica Hodgkinson take a fresh appraisal of the pages of a manuscript written in south-east England in the first half of the 700s. The historian discovered that the name of a
Medieval Women’s Literacy Read More »
Cthulhu was orange in the Middle Ages, evidently. (Jk this is Hildegard of Bingen – a famous mystic – being inspired by the Holy Spirit. Totally different primordial mind-influencing force.)
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In the mood for a Medieval ghost story? In 12th century Europe, tales dealing with a procession of the dead (often aristocratic soldiers), who are doomed to wander the earth to atone for their sins and often appeared to be suffering,, became popular. One of these sorts of tails was recorded by an Englishman named
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This is a medieval rendition of Porphyry of Tyre, a philosopher who lived in the late Roman Empire (c 234-305 CE), and one of the most articulate advocates of vegetarianism from Ancient world. Porphyry was renowned for many philosophical contributions, including writing the standard textbook on logic that lasted for over a thousand years, as
A page from the _Etymologiae_ by the 6th-century scholar Isidore of Seville. In the Middle Ages, this was considered one of the most important books written. Isidore tried to cram in every bit of knowledge he thought was important. Although this book preserved a lot of Ancient Roman and Greek knowledge, the book’s popularity ironically
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Bald’s Leechbook is an Anglo-Saxon medical text from the 9th century. In 2015 one of the recipes (it used garlic, a bronze pot, and bile from a cow, among other things) was found to be successful in treating MRSA.
Shippensburg University was very lucky to have Dr. Francesco Lodá speak this evening about dueling in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Focusing especially on the Italian Marcelli familial school-of-arms, Professor Lodà demonstrated that the most advanced Masters of Arms achieved very high status, despite the fact that they had not originated from the aristocracy
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Presenting research today (February 25, 2023) at the Wilson College Humanities Conference, which was focusing on non-human animals! Here I am with my fellow presenters Catherine Clay (who talked about the role of bees in Russia), Christina Luo (speaking about chickens in Ancient Europe). I talked about horses in the Middle Ages. The papers today
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And what, pray tell, is going on here? This macabre device is a 1694 illustration of the weighing chair of Sanctorius Sanctorius (1561-1636), an Italian scientist who was the first (that we know of) to mesh quantitative experiments with the study of how the human body works. For thirty years, Santorio measured people’s sweat. Influenced
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This is a Medieval illumination of a noblewoman with her hawk from the Taymouth Hours, a sumptuous 14th-century work probably made for a royalty. It shows a number of images where women feature prominently. The picture shown here provides evidence that some of the wealhiest engaged in the highly technical art of falconry. Training birds
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A Medieval character of folklore you might have heard of is Maid Marian, the paramore of Robin Hood. Unlike King Arthur, who was likely not to have been based on a real person, many historians think that there might have been a grain of truth to the character of Robin Hood. The first mentions of
“Ah, history!” declares author and YouTuber John Green, “always resisting simplicity!” And you can definitely see these sentiments realized in this brass-and-silver-inlay Islamic wine jug. Inscribed on it are the words “To Allah belongs . . . Might. . . Victory . . . Strength”. But we all know that drinking alcohol is forbidden in
Intoxication in Medieval Islam Read More »
