Was King Æthelred ‘the Unready’ seen as a failure by his contemporaries? The study looks at sources that were written during and immediately after Æthelred’s reign in order to see if the king was criticised or blamed for the misfortunes in the conflicts with the Danes. The most important authors to be considered are Ælfric of Eynsham and Archbish…[Read more]

This is a case study on how the positioning of bishops in succession struggles had effects on the dioeceses. It looks at the dioeceses of Worms and Cologne during the three royal successions of Otto III (984), Henry II (1002) and Conrad II (1024).

This article examines the processes of reformation in the episcopal city of Naumburg, which took place in parallel and at different speeds. Drawing on sociological theories of social movements (collective good problem and threshold theory), it is argued that in addition to individual (partly corporate) actors such as the bishop, the sovereign and…[Read more]

The article highlights the importance and role of Zwickau in the Central German educational and university landscape of the 15th and 16th centuries.

The article examines the history of the origins of the Franciscan monastery of Kamenz, founded in 1493, in the context of the late medieval reform movement and against the background of the Bohemian kings’ development of power in Upper Lusatia.

The article examines the prerequisites and conditions of late medieval reform movements in the convents of the Thuringian Augustinian canons from the perspective of organizational sociology. The 15th century was marked by a veritable reform mania to which all institutions were subjected. It was believed, that a return to an old, “better” way of…[Read more]

The article explores the question what kind of economical impact late-medieval universities could make on their surrounding cities. By studying the sources for the university of Leipzig (founded in 1409) it can be shown, that despite a proportionately rather high amount of students in the city, the economic impact should not be overestimated.…[Read more]

This article is a draft of my post-doc project concerning the late-medieval phenomenon of inter-dynastic divisions (Herrschaftsteilungen) between two or more successors in german higher nobility. What are the preconditions of division, why did houses divide and what (political, economical and cultural) implications arise from the practice of…[Read more]