En el presente trabajo analizamos el tratamiento que hace Isidoro de Sevilla (c. 556-636), la más ilustre figura de la cultura hispanovisigoda, que ejerció un notabilísimo influjo durante todo el medievo a lo largo y ancho de la cristiandad, del problema de la pobreza y la injusticia social. En los dos primeros epígrafes estudiamos sus con…[Read more]

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).

One of the main arguments used to legitimise Christian military expansion in medieval Iberia was the location of the origin of the Christian Iberian kingdoms in the ancient Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo (507–711), which established a notion of political continuity between these entities. The legitimacy of the Visigothic Kingdom was reflected in t…[Read more]

While it has been known for a long time that human languages can change in various ways, it was only in the early 19th century that scholars realized that certain aspects of language change proceed in a surprisingly regular manner, allowing us to reconstruct historical stages of languages which have never been documented in written sources. The…[Read more]

This article describes the development of the typographical phenomenon of “small capitals” during the fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century.

De Moretussen wisten wat feesten was. Met hun tafels en buiken bourgondisch bol maakten ze er een waar schouwspel van. Ter gelegenheid van het huwelijk van Balthasar II Moretus (1615–1674) met de achttienjarige Anna Goos (1627–1691) kwamen de drukpersen zowaar tot leven! Onder impuls van de Antwerpse jezuïet Jacob de Cater droeg elke drukpers van…[Read more]

Desde que Alan Deyermond, entre los años 70 y 80 del siglo pasado , consiguiera vencer toda reticencia académica para que la obra de Leonor López de Córdoba pasase de ser una delicada rareza literaria a ser introducida con pleno derecho en el canon de la literatura hispánica medieval , la investigación sobre la autora nacida en Calatayud, aunqu…[Read more]

Con mucha frecuencia, las vías que a diario son solo holladas por pacíficos caminantes se tornan en sendas cuyo caminar obedece a razones diametralmente opuestas. Es el triste caso que vivimos en la Europa de nuestros días, marcada por el lamentable tránsito hacia el Viejo Continente de los que huyen de conflictos armados en Oriente Medio. Muy poc…[Read more]

The Abbey of St. Gallen was the foremost centre for the study of the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville in the Carolingian period. Not only can more than twenty early medieval manuscripts transmitting material from the Etymologiaebe associated with Carolingian St. Gallen, but its scriptorium also produced two scholarly redactions of Isidore’s e…[Read more]

Heinsius jarig! Dat vieren we met wijn.

Daniel Heinsius (Heins – Δανιὴλ Εἱνσιάδης, 1580–1655) zag het levenslicht te Gent op 9 juni 1580, vandaag exact 441 jaar geleden. Omwille van hun protestantse geloof moesten zijn ouders echter al vroeg uitwijken naar Engeland; ze keerden na een tijdje terug naar de Lage Landen en vestigden zich in he…[Read more]

The weblog Computer-Assisted Language Comparison in Practice, published on the Hypotheses platform for scientific blogging, offers tutorials and discussion notes on computer-assisted approaches to the history and diversity of languages. A substantial part of its content is contributed as part of the ERC Starting Grant “Computer-Assisted Language C…[Read more]

This is a PDF I made to aid in navigating the 1521 Baldus based on the 2 vol edition by Attilio Portioli (1882-9)

Here are four different versions of a traumatic scene from the life and times of Baldus, starting with the woodcut print of Folengo’s 1521 Macaronic Works

Scanned images of woodcut prints from subsequent editions of Folengo’s 1521 Macaronic Works

51 full-page woodcut prints illustrate Folengo’s 1521 epic poem Baldus

The greatly augmented and extremely popular 1521 ediion of Folengo’s Macaronic Works features many extras: angry letters, highly laudatory letters, an accusation of text theft, a revealing dialogue and more

A letter from Folengo’s pseudonym-personality, Merlin, to the printer Paganini, claiming that he does not want to relinquish his own copy for publication; a response from Paganini telling him that he got a copy of the text from Federico Gonzaga (accompanied by the letter Gonzaga sent to Paganini, 1520); a letter to the reader from Paganini, and a…[Read more]