El lugar de importancia en la historia de la cultura hispánica medieval que ocupan los Claros varones de Castilla (BETA texid 1714) es absolutamente indiscutible. Su autor, Fernando de Pulgar, desde su evidente y marcado “pensamiento literario forjado en el tránsito de la Castilla enriqueña a la isabelina”, es considerado por muchos como el más…[Read more]

La valía militar y guerrera de Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, universalmente conocido por su apodo de Gran Capitán, comenzó a difundirse casi de inmediato en la literatura de los tiempos que le tocaron vivir, hasta el punto de que se podría considerar al héroe cordobés como “la primera figura contemporánea a cuyo alrededor se agolpa esa intensa ac…[Read more]

The Plague of Justinian began in 541 and quickly spread over the area of the late antique Mediterranean. There it continued in more than a dozen plague waves until the middle of the 8th century, causing much suffering and a great number of deaths. Academia traditionally debates it as the end of Antiquity. Isochronal, the effect of climate change…[Read more]

«La Celestina» está integrada por dos labores distintas. El inacabado comienzo, escrito por el anónimo Primer Autor, es la primera; la segunda, compuesta por Fernando de Rojas, la continúa y concluye. La inicial, la «Celestina Primitiva», añade, a la calidad intrínseca, el mérito de ser el origen de la segunda. Entender y separar ambas labores e…[Read more]

El presente artículo es un sucinto repaso del devenir histórico y tecnológico de PhiloBiblon, uno de los proyectos pioneros en las Humanidades Digitales aplicadas al estudio de las fuentes primarias de las literaturas hispánicas e ibéricas escritas durante la Edad Media y el Renacimiento. La historia del proyecto tiene como hilo conductor las dife…[Read more]

This article deals with representations of Christian-Islamic confluence in the medieval Portuguese genealogical compilation known as Livro de Linhagens do Conde D. Pedro (Count Pedro’s Book of Lineages), assembled in the mid-fourteenth century by Count Pedro of Barcelos. Several narratives dealing with the non-military interaction of Christians a…[Read more]

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]

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]

Scholars of the medieval family would generally agree that the lot of the medieval wife was not an easy one. Medieval husbands held the upper hand in the power relationship, both legally and socially. Although Lawrence Stone’s view of niarried life in the Middle Ages as “brutal and often hostile, with little communication, [and] much wife-beating”…[Read more]

The use of the term “community” in historical studies continues to present problems for many medievalists. Myriad studies have emphasized the inadequacy of the term when describing medieval society. Microstudies of manors and villages, especially in the English context, by historians Barbara A. Hanawalt, J. Ambrose Raftis, and Sherri Olson (am…[Read more]

Art historian Barbara Kellum’s 1973 article on child murder in medieval England paints a picture of a world replete with ruthless and murderous single mothers who escaped the legal consequences of their actions due to an indifferent court system that chose to turn a blind eye to the deaths of young children. Despite the overstated tone of her w…[Read more]

The history of homicidal insanity in the courts of law of medieval England.

Given the hurdles one faced in trying to stay healthy in later medieval England, it should come as no surprise that the medieval English placed a premium on competent medicine. As Carole Rawcliffe has argued, “medieval life was beset by constant threats to health arising from poor diet (at both ends of the social spectrum), low levels of h…[Read more]

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]