This article calls attention to documents relating to the early academic life of G. J. P. J. Bolland (1854–1922). During the late 1870s and early 1880s, Bolland was enthralled by the study of Old Germanic languages and Old English in particular. His endeavours soon caught the eye of Pieter Jacob Cosijn (1854–1922), Professor of Germanic Phi…[Read more]

This article calls attention to documents relating to the early academic life of G. J. P. J. Bolland (1854–1922). During the late 1870s and early 1880s, Bolland was enthralled by the study of Old Germanic languages and Old English in particular. His endeavours soon caught the eye of Pieter Jacob Cosijn (1854–1922), Professor of Germanic Phi…[Read more]

This article calls attention to documents relating to the early academic life of G. J. P. J. Bolland (1854–1922). During the late 1870s and early 1880s, Bolland was enthralled by the study of Old Germanic languages and Old English in particular. His endeavours soon caught the eye of Pieter Jacob Cosijn (1854–1922), Professor of Germanic Phi…[Read more]

I wrote the first version of this guide in the summer of 2018. For the first time in my career I had received a multi-year fellowship, and I had been told that the position had a good chance of continuing beyond the initial fellowship period, if not of becoming permanent. So, since I did not expect to have to search for employment again, it seemed…[Read more]

I wrote the first version of this guide in the summer of 2018. For the first time in my career I had received a multi-year fellowship, and I had been told that the position had a good chance of continuing beyond the initial fellowship period, if not of becoming permanent. So, since I did not expect to have to search for employment again, it seemed…[Read more]

Aus historischer Sicht sind genauere Definitionen, Abgrenzungen und ethnische Zuweisungen der
Bevölkerung des Alpengebiets in vorrömischer Zeit ausgesprochen schwierig, umstritten und problematisch.
Die einschlägigen Diskussionen drehen sich meist um die Kategorien „Kelten“ oder „Räter“
3. Beide Zuordnungen sind jedoch seit der Antike unsc…[Read more]

Dieser Text soll auf drei Ebenen Fragen an die Quellen tragen. Erstens will ich versuchen, exemplarisch
Entwicklungslinien zwischen der antiken Provinzstruktur und dem bairischen Dukat
– einer militärisch-politischen Organisation nach spätantikem Muster – bis in karolingische Zeit
herauszuarbeiten. Zweitens soll die Frage gestellt werden, wie u…[Read more]

Dieser Text soll auf drei Ebenen Fragen an die Quellen tragen. Erstens will ich versuchen, exemplarisch
Entwicklungslinien zwischen der antiken Provinzstruktur und dem bairischen Dukat
– einer militärisch-politischen Organisation nach spätantikem Muster – bis in karolingische Zeit
herauszuarbeiten. Zweitens soll die Frage gestellt werden, wie u…[Read more]

Zusammenfassend lässt sich sagen, dass Ethnonyme
über einen sehr langen Zeitraum in Gebrauch
sein konnten. Im Falle der Veneder verschob sich
die Bedeutung. Sie galt nicht mehr nur für eine bestimmte
Gruppe, sondern bezog sich auf die Gesamtheit
der Fremden, die im Wahrnehmungsbereich der
eigenen Sprachgemeinschaft lagen. So wie man de…[Read more]

This chapter examines the ways in which the Linear B ‘extra’ signs – syllabograms which can in certain circumstances replace the ‘core’ signs of the Linear B syllabary – are often used as evidence for the process by which this writing system was created from its parent writing system, Linear A, and thus, by extension, for reconstructing aspects of…[Read more]

A critical historiographical overview of art historical approaches to early medieval material culture, with a focus on the British Museum collections and their connections to religion.

This article analyzes the famous tenth-century Greek alchemical codex Marcianus graecus 299, and in particular its first quire, considering the structure and significance of the manuscript as a whole.

In the year 1397 in the parish of Tuttington (Norfolk), a woman whose name is lost to history, frantic to rid herself of the evil spirit that possessed her, turned to suicide. She attempted first to hang herself, but her husband discovered her while life remained in her body, cut down the rope, and comforted her. A few weeks later she tried once…[Read more]

An examination of three cases of judicial separation from the late medieval court of York.

Since the publication of Philippe Aries’ Centuries of Childhood in the early 1960’s, historians of the family have been intrigued by the prospect of a history of change in familial sentiment. 1 Aries’ study of attitudes about children from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, based primarily on art and material evidence, demonstrates…[Read more]

This paper asks us to rethink the boundaries between consent and coercion in medieval England. From gentle persuasion to threats and abuse, coercion was a part of the courtship process. Although late medieval society expected parents to play an active, even heavy-handed, role in matchmaking, the English church recognized the possibility that…[Read more]

When Isabelle, widow of Richard Vergeons, commissioned the writing of a bill of complaint to Chancery at the end of the fifteenth century, she was clearly at the end of her tether. Six months before the writing of the petition, the wife of Thomas Hyll, a wire monger of London, approached the petitioner’s husband, begging for ‘‘secour and saufg…[Read more]

According to medieval common law, assault against a pregnant woman causing miscarriage after the fi rst trimester was homicide. Some scholars have argued, however, that in practice English jurors refused to acknowledge assaults of this nature as homicide. The underlying argument is that because abortion by assault is a crime against women, male…[Read more]

Sunday, January 23, 1390 was a day that Ralph Peioun of Wotton (Lincs.) and his wife most likely never forgot. On this day, their one-year-old son, Richard, presumably curious and headstrong like most young toddlers his age, made an unfortunate choice of playthings when he picked up a pair of shears and wounded himself in the throat, a fatal…[Read more]

When confronted with cases of self-killing, medieval jurors had to contend with a vast array of often conflicting concerns, from religious and folkloric condemnations of the act of suicide, to fears for the welfare of the family of the dead, and to coping with royal confiscations of a felon’s goods. All of these factors had a profound impact on t…[Read more]