Conflicts between parish clergy and parishioners in late medieval England have been described as acts of both anticlericalism and proclericalism (that is, an attempt to compel clergy into living up to the parishioners’ increasingly high expectations of them). This paper hopes to expand our knowledge of parish conflict by turning to an o…[Read more]

With regard to English common law, medieval women were able to participate in the curial process in only a limited way. This is not true of women as defendants: women could be sued for almost any civil or criminal plaint, but their privileges as plaintiffs were broadly curtailed by marital status and cultural expectation. The legal fiction of…[Read more]

In the year 1304, Matilda Bonamy of Guernsey, a young woman from one of the Anglo-Norman island’smost established and affluent families, found herself in a predicament familiar to many of today’s youth. A liaison with Jordan Clouet, also from a family of long provenance in Guernsey if not as comfortable, had left her pregnant. To Matilda the sol…[Read more]

This essay explores how and why three early Christian figures–Epiphanius, Romanos the Melode, and Ambrosiaster–have, at various times, been imagined as former Jews. By applying a hermeneutics of conversion, this essay argues that the significance of these three Christians’ ex-Jewishness lies not in its historicity (or falsity) but in the way…[Read more]

Review of Medieval Dublin XVI: Proceedings of Clontarf 1014-2014

Review of Medieval Dublin XVI: Proceedings of Clontarf 1014-2014

This paper examines the nature and basis of the competition between the dynasty based in Moray, to which the famous MacBeth belonged, and the mainline of Scottish kings.

This article examines the evidence for Pictish kingship being transmitted through the female line.

This paper discussed the micro demography of households in later prehistoric and early medieval northern Europe.

An examination of the career of the quondam king of Dublin and Northumbria Óláfr Kvaran.

The title is a terrible editorial imposition. This article argues that the term ‘Scotland’ though not attested before the late ninth-century (for Ireland) and the early tenth (for Alba) was probably already in use as the Northumbrian English term for Dál Riata in the time of Bede and certainly by the beginning of the Viking Age.

This paper attempts to correlate Bede’s account of the British king Caedualla, to whom he attributed Edwin’s death, with the information provided by Historia Brittonum and the Harleian pedigrees. It is suggested, inter alia, that his identification with Cadwallon ap Cadfan may be in error.

This paper examines the career and reputation of perhaps the longest reigning Pictish king, Onuist son of Urguist, who was a contemporary of Offa of Mercia.

This brief note reconsiders the standard translation of a brief passage in the Annals of Ulster and considers the implications of this alternate view.

In the nineteenth century the Pictish kingdom of Fortriu and the site of
the Battle of Nechtansmere were located by scholars in Menteith and
Strathearn and at Dunnichen in Forfarshire respectively. These identifications
have largely gone unchallenged. The purpose of this article is to
review the evidence for these locations and to suggest that…[Read more]

A description and edition of a fragment of the early rabbinic work Sifre Numbers, miscatalogued as a different work, found in the university library, Wrocław.

It is often claimed that the mortuary traditions that appeared in lowland Britain in the fifth century AD are an expression of new forms of ethnic identity, based on the putative memorialisation of a ‘Germanic’ heritage. This article considers the empirical basis for this assertion and evaluates it in the light of previously proposed ethnic con…[Read more]

It is often claimed that the mortuary traditions that appeared in lowland Britain in the fifth century AD are an expression of new forms of ethnic identity, based on the putative memorialisation of a ‘Germanic’ heritage. This article considers the empirical basis for this assertion and evaluates it in the light of previously proposed ethnic con…[Read more]

It is often claimed that the mortuary traditions that appeared in lowland Britain in the fifth century AD are an expression of new forms of ethnic identity, based on the putative memorialisation of a ‘Germanic’ heritage. This article considers the empirical basis for this assertion and evaluates it in the light of previously proposed ethnic con…[Read more]

“Selling Science in the 20th Century” was a public talk delivered as part of the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s Saturday Speakers series. The presentation focused on Beckman Instruments, science advertising, the Beckman Historical Collection, and the digitization component of CHF’s Beckman Legacy Project. Audience members also had the opportunity…[Read more]