This module will deal with the study of a few texts written in Medieval and Early Modern Europe related to Witchcraft, Heresy and Inquisition. The main purpose of this course is to consider how some patterns and stereotypes in the European cultural history of the past use to appear also in our current times. The outline below gives the general…[Read more]

María Montes, musicologist expert in Medieval Music, interviewed me on April 6th, 2019 on my experience designing and teaching a course on Medieval Iberian Literature and History using the HBO Show “Game of Thrones” as a thematic axis.

María Montes, musicologist expert in Medieval Music, interviewed me on April 6th, 2019 on my experience designing and teaching a course on Medieval Iberian Literature and History using the HBO Show “Game of Thrones” as a thematic axis.

This articel identifies the German cookbook in the manuscript Solothurn, Zentralbibliothek, Cod. S 490 as a copy of a ‘Küchenmeisterei’-print (from 1487 or later).

The early Church regarded dreams as potential messages from God, private revelations that appear as visions while the soul is undistracted by bodily sensations. Sleep, with its accompanying dreams, was also believed to be the temporary state of the disembodied soul as it awaits the resurrection of its body at the Last Judgment. Not only did…[Read more]

Early medieval literate culture, dominated by Christian monks and clerics, was focused on interpreting biblical texts and correlating them with a theological system devised in patristic times and late antiquity. Central to biblical exegesis was the fourfold method that distinguished the literal (or historical) sense of Old Testament narratives…[Read more]

Ernst Haeckel and Emil du Bois-Reymond were the most prominent champions of Darwin in Germany. This essay compares their contributions to popularizing the theory of evolution, drawing special attention to the neglected figure of du Bois-Reymond as a spokesman for a world devoid of natural purpose. It suggests that the historiography of the German…[Read more]

This article studies the relationship between love and violence in Celestina. It departs from Octavio Paz’s essay La llama doble, in particular, the difference be- tween eroticism and love, and the acknowledgement of a dark and destructive side within sexual desire. It concludes that desire is the main driving force of the plot in Celestina and t…[Read more]

In this Visual Arts Journal Invited Lecture, I conduct a reading of art education historiography through two concepts, dis-appearance and re-turn, as an attempt to think philosophical research in art education historically and historical research in art education philosophically.

‘Große Heidelberger Liederhandschrift’, ‘Ambrasser Heldenbuch’, ‘Rostocker Liederbuch’, ‘Hausbuch des Michael de Leone’, ‘Heidelberger Schicksalsbuch’, ‘Alsfelder Dirigierrolle’, ‘Bamberger mathematisches Manuskript’ …, there are many established names for medieval German manuscripts. Their proper names consist of nominal phrases and the heads…[Read more]

A brief report on an MA course on Tolkien taught at Leiden University

This essay considers the category of “Jewish law” in Jewish studies while inviting scholarly and historiographic assessment of the ways that Judaism’s link to law has come to appear as obvious. Considering that our present concepts of law are invariably linked to a geographically and temporally parochial “mythology of modern law,” the essay sounds…[Read more]

Bibliography of research on bishops in Anglo-Saxon England and Ottonian-Salian Germany in the tenth and eleventh centuries, as well as comprehensive and comparative studies of this period, as long as either of the aforementioned geographical entities is covered.

The book chapter looks at the additional information given in the twelfth century itinerary made by the Icelandic monk Nikulás of Munkaþverá and includes a German translation of the itinerary.

The book chapter analyses how bishops saw their role in succession struggles of tenth and early eleventh centuries Germany.

The book chapter looks at the role of bishops in the German royal successions of 984 and 1024.

This article shows how I have been lately combining my research in the cultural
history of the Spanish Middle Ages and Early Renaissance with the TV show Game
of Thrones for teaching purposes. I have been able to design a capstone seminar to
attract students interested in the popular medievalising TV fiction, proving them
than most of the…[Read more]

This article shows how I have been lately combining my research in the cultural
history of the Spanish Middle Ages and Early Renaissance with the TV show Game
of Thrones for teaching purposes. I have been able to design a capstone seminar to
attract students interested in the popular medievalising TV fiction, proving them
than most of the…[Read more]

This article explores the changes to the legal status of Scots in ‘English Ireland’ after the advent of the Scottish Wars of Independence (c.1295). There appears to have been a drastic change in status as the Scots in Ireland were not explicitly labelled before 1295, but were afterwards and they were arrested on sight usually. It is also peculiar…[Read more]

This paper examines two issues: misconceptions concerning English law in high medieval Ireland; and the invention and mutation of an exceptio (objection) in court which was based on a fabrication. The plea, or defensive claim, was that the plaintiff in a court case was an unfranchised Gael (Hibernica/Hibernicus) and therefore could not sue a civil…[Read more]