Dark Ages In Medieval History __HOT__
We need to understand these tendencies in medievalist games. Not just the stories they tell and whether these accounts are accurate, but how these stories are constructed, why these games present this version of history, and what impact this has on their players and the modern world.
Dark Ages in Medieval History
It is one of the most fascinating periods in history, popularised by Magna Carta, the Black Death, and the Hundred Years' War. But how much do you really know about the Middle Ages? Here, John H Arnold, professor of medieval history at Birkbeck, University of London, reveals 10 things about the period that might surprise you
What makes studying medieval history fascinating is that you have to grapple with both the puzzle of extracting information from difficult and often fragmented surviving records, and the challenge of constantly checking your own thinking for assumptions and inherited stereotypes.
John H Arnold, professor of medieval history at Birkbeck, University of London, is the author The Oxford Handbook to Medieval Christianity (OUP, 2014). He is also the author of What is Medieval History? (Polity, 2008) and Belief and Unbelief in Medieval Europe (Bloomsbury, 2005)
Contesting the Middle Ages is a thorough exploration of recent arguments surrounding nine hotly debated topics: the decline and fall of Rome, the Viking invasions, the Crusades, the persecution of minorities, sexuality in the Middle Ages, women within medieval society, intellectual and environmental history, the Black Death, and, lastly, the waning of the Middle Ages.
The historiography of the Middle Ages, a term in itself controversial amongst medieval historians, has been continuously debated and rewritten for centuries. In each chapter, John Aberth sets out key historiographical debates in an engaging and informative way, encouraging students to consider the process of writing about history and prompting them to ask questions even of already thoroughly debated subjects, such as why the Roman Empire fell, or what significance the Black Death had both in the late Middle Ages and beyond.
Sparking discussion and inspiring examination of the past and its ongoing significance in modern life, Contesting the Middle Ages is essential reading for students of medieval history and historiography.
These late-term abortions echo their modern counterpart, demonstrating that this was a known and established practice in the Middle Ages. This medical knowledge flourished in particular in the Greek-speaking, eastern Roman Empire, most commonly known to us today as the Byzantine Empire. Glimmers of the medical prowess of the Byzantine Empire and its long-thriving history are scattered across medieval sources.
Whose Middle Ages? is an interdisciplinary collection of short, accessible essays intended for the non-specialist reader and ideal for teaching at an undergraduate level. Each of twenty-two essays takes up an area where humans have dug for meaning into the medieval past and brought something distorted back into the present: in our popular entertainment; in our news, our politics, and our propaganda; and in subtler ways that inform how we think about our histories, our countries, and ourselves. Each author teases out the stakes of a history that has refused to remain past and uses the tools of the academy to read and reread familiar stories, objects, symbols, and myths.
Contributions: Lauren ManciaLauren Mancia is Assistant Professor of History at Brooklyn College. She is a scholar of the Western European Middle Ages, with specialties in medieval Christianity, the history of emotions, and medieval monasticism. She has published on her scholarly interests both in peer- reviewed academic journals and in publications for wider, more general audiences.
Contributions: Cord WhitakerCord J. Whitaker is Assistant Professor of English at Wellesley College where he researches and teaches late medieval English literature, especially Chaucer and romance. His research also focuses on medieval religious conflict and the history of race. He received his MA and PhD from Duke University.
The internet is considered by many to be a delivery-system for pictures of cats, and it should be no surprise, therefore, to learn the identity of today's bestiary animal. As it is today, the enmity between the cat and the mouse was well-established in the medieval imagination. Isidore of Seville even proposed an (incorrect) etymology for 'cat' (Latin catus) in the word captura, a form of a word meaning 'catch,' suggesting that this referred to the cat's catching of mice. Or, he continues, 'capture' may refer to cats 'catching' large amounts of light with their eyes, to see in the dark. Either way, cats were often shown in manuscript illumination with mice they have caught, and below, we can even see a Tom-and-Jerry style depiction of a mouse caught by a cat, caught in turn by a dog. No word on the current disposition of the house that Jack built.
"Written in a lucid, engaging style, A Short History of the Middle Ages remains the best survey of medieval history in print today. Barbara H. Rosenwein skillfully balances the story of medieval Europe and the Mediterranean with fascinating commentary on connections across Eurasia and, by 1500, to the Americas. The text includes new maps; many full-color reproductions of art, artifacts, and architecture; and updated suggestions for further reading."
I am a historian of the late antique and medieval world with a focus on Italy and the Mediterranean from the sixth century to the 11th century. While my current research is based on textual sources (charters and narratives), and their intersection with paleoenvironmental and climate records, my background was in archaeological and I still gravitate towards objects, places and their contexts. My teaching covers a range of course, covering the periods from beginning of the Roman Mediterranean to the High Middle Ages, and I am currently developing new offerings in premodern environmental history.
John Haldon is a sophisticated scholar of the Byzantine Empire who is also interested in the comparative analysis of the Ottoman and Mughal empires. Like Chris Wickham, Haldon was a student of Rodney Hilton, one of the founding fathers of the British tradition of Marxist historiography that developed from the early 1950s. While figures such as Eric Hobsbawm, Christopher Hill, George Rudé, and E. P. Thompson concentrated on the modern or early modern periods of European history, Hilton spent his scholarly life researching medieval Europe, notably the peasant revolts he explored in his 1973 book Bond Men Made Free.
The Middle Ages have been stamped an unlucky time to be born and popular consensus is that people were poor, food was dull, everything was dirty, and for the vast majority of it the population was dropping like flies. What we don't hear about is that people created some of the most peculiar, bizarre, hilarious and astounding trends in human history. Let's take some time to embrace the medieval period and all of its lovable eccentricities.
As mentioned, most upper-class medieval marriages were often loveless husks designed purely for financial and social gains. Therefore, in order to not throw themselves into the nearest bog, medieval nobles fulfilled their romantic desires in "courtly love."
The reason that this medieval battle makes the list is because of the impact it had not just on Rome itself, but on Roman thinking: they had been completely obliterated by an army of savages. They realised that they were not immortal, and their city was in fact penetrable. The Visigoths had certainly played their part in ensuring its quick demise after the Sack of Rome in 410.
Finally, the Fall of Constantinople is such a key event in medieval history, that it is sometimes referred to as the end of the Middle Ages, and the ushering in of the Early Modern period. However, some historians disagree and instead prefer to turn to 1492, which is the final battle on this list of the greatest medieval battles.
Characterizing the Middle Ages as a period of darkness falling between two greater, more intellectually significant periods in history is misleading. The Middle Ages was not a time of ignorance and backwardness, but rather a period during which Christianity flourished in Europe. Christianity, and specifically Catholicism in the Latin West, brought with it new views of life and the world that rejected the traditions and learning of the ancient world. 041b061a72