Medieval European History Research Articles

The State of The Topiaj During 14th Century

Purpose: The paper provides historical context on the Topias family's role in Naples' political and religious landscape, detailing their break from Byzantium, alliances with Anjouans, and power dynamics. Methods: The paper discusses the Topias family's historical context, indicating that historical scholars used a combination of archival research, primary source analysis, comparative analysis, contextualization, and narrative storytelling to understand their interactions, relationships, and historical context. These methods were likely used to gather and analyze information about the family's history. Results and Conclusion: The paper provides a narrative account of the Topias family's historical significance, their break from Byzantium, and their role as vassals to the king of Naples. It highlights their resilience and adaptability in medieval European politics, highlighting the complex dynamics of political and religious spheres. Research implications: The paper provides a rich historical account of the Topias family, highlighting their political strategies, interfaith relations, vassalage, Anjouan influence in the Balkans, and the influence of clergy in politics. It also highlights the importance of examining the historical narrative and its potential to contribute to ongoing scholarly discussions on medieval European history, politics, and culture. Originality/value: The paper provides valuable insights into medieval Balkan politics, interfaith relations, and vassalage dynamics in medieval Europe. It focuses on lesser-known actors like the Topias family, their religious conversion, Angevin influence in the Balkans, and the complexities of feudal relationships. The narrative also highlights the intersection of clerical and political power, enhancing our understanding of medieval governance and interfaith relations.

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

Gabriele, Matthew and David Perry, The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe

Gabriele, Matthew and David Perry, The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe

(DE)CONSTRUCTION OF THE HISTORICAL NARRATION OF MODERN AMERICAN MEDIEVALISM: THE “INVENTION” OF THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS OF WESTEROS

Purpose. The purpose of the article is to deconstruct the constructed “historical” narrative in contexts of the social, political and economic features of the feudalism of the world of the Seven Kingdoms, imagined in the imitated narration of the American writer George Martin, presented in his novels that make up the “A Song of Ice and Fire” cycle.
 The novelty of the article lies in the study of the features of the social and economic history of the imagining medieval world of the Seven Kingdoms.
 Methodology. Methodologically, the article is based on the principles of interdisciplinary historiography proposed in intellectual and cultural histories, as well as in the study of medievalism as a synthetic form of mass ideas about the Middle Ages in modern consumer society.
 Results. It is assumed that George Martin proposed a model for the development of medieval society. The political relations and institutions described by G. Martin have parallels with those social forms of organization that arose and developed in the Medieval West. Therefore, in contexts of social history, the society described by George Martin can be defined as feudal. Critically analyzing George Martin’s texts as sources and deconstructing the narratives that form them, the author presumes that in the Seven Kingdoms the processes of feudal revolution led to the formation of a system of relations of vassalage and suzerainty. George Martin’s texts are a source on the history of the institutions of royalty, describing both the history of regional dynasties and the features of their subordination and integration into the state established as a result of the conquest of Westeros by Aegon I.
 Conclusions. The article shows that 1) George Martin became constructor of a parallel version of the social and political histories of the Middle Ages and feudalism, 2) George Martin proposed an image of the Middle Ages, genetically ascending in the history of Medieval Europe, 3) the analyzed texts can be identified as a source on the social, economic and political history of the Seven Kingdoms.

Did the Black Death Reach the Kingdom of Poland in the Mid-Fourteenth Century?

Abstract The Black Death is a turning point in late medieval European history. Recent studies have shown that even regions ostensibly not affected by it directly, or only marginally affected by it, suffered from profound demographic and economic consequences. The scale and geographical range of the plague in Central Europe, including the Kingdom of Poland, remains, however, a matter of dispute. Important to note in this regard is that the outbreak of the plague in Western Europe coincided with the reign of King Casimir of the Piast dynasty, which is associated with Poland’s extraordinarily successful modernization. Thus far, neither the primary sources documenting this era nor the palynological data that refer it can testify to the demographic and economic changes that would have ensued if an outbreak of the plague similar to the one that ravaged Western Europe had occurred in the Kingdom of Poland during the mid-fourteenth century.

A New Viewpoint to the Agatha Problem: Who Was the Mother of Margaret, Queen of Scots?

The family background of Agatha, the mother of Margaret of Scotland, is still one of the not yet fully clarified questions of Medieval European history. Here, the possibility that she could have been the daughter of Prince Imre, heir of the Hungarian throne, from the Árpád family and his wife, daughter of Romanos III Argyros, Emperor of the East Roman Empire, is discussed.

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

Henry of Blois, New Interpretations ed. by William Kynan-Wilson and John Munns

Reviewed by: Henry of Blois, New Interpretations ed. by William Kynan-Wilson and John Munns Benjamin Bertrand William Kynan-Wilson and John Munns, eds., Henry of Blois, New Interpretations ( Woodbridge: Boydell, 2020), xvii + 289 pp., 60 ills. This new volume offers an exciting collection of interdisciplinary essays on a well-known but seldom-studied player in twelfth-century English history, Henry of Blois. By calling attention to the multifaceted career of this bishop, abbot, papal legate, and brother to King Stephen of England, the contributors hope to subvert long-standing historiographical biases about his life and blaze a trail for future research. As editors William Kynan-Wilson and John Munns make clear in their introduction, historians have often trivialized Henry of Blois as a corrupt opportunist, disregarding his place as a churchman of international importance and as a powerful patron of the arts. The book and its nine collected essays are [End Page 260] the result of a symposium on the eponymous bishop held at Fitzwilliam College in 2015, with contributors from the fields of history, archaeology, and art history. By reexamining various aspects of Henry of Blois's life through available written, archaeological, and artistic evidence, the book's editors and contributors hope to inject new life into discussions of the bishop. Kynan-Wilson and Munns are careful to define the scope of their project in their introduction. They describe the book not as a new biography of Henry of Blois but as an attempt to "offer new interpretations of specific aspects of Henry's life, personality, career and significance as they have drawn the interest of individual contributors." (3). They are particularly interested in breaking down older scholarly interpretations that sought to characterize Henry's career as either a success or a failure. The editors seek to integrate Henry into "the narrative of medieval European history" by understanding him in the context of his many continental connections (2). There is a commendable focus in their introduction on the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholars who embraced Henry as a symbol of a more "muscular Church" (14). Their historiographical survey speaks favorably of Lena Voss's Heinrich von Blois, Bischof von Winchester, the last major monograph published on Henry in 1932, and somewhat less so of David Knowles's discussion of the bishop in his writing. Knowles's rather negative portrait of Henry as an opportunist and lackluster churchman is much of what this volume hopes to reinterpret. The editors' limited scope for the volume is both realistic and commendable, positioning the reader for the nine essays that follow. While not organized into sections per se, the volume's essays seem to have been grouped thematically, with the first three addressing Henry's place in twelfth-century ecclesiastical politics. M. J. Franklin's article concerns Henry's attachments and loyalties to the monastery where he was raised, Cluny. He pores over the evidence for Henry's itinerary, noting his many visits to the abbey and the considerable time and resources he devoted to it. Franklin argues that scholars must recognize this commitment to his mother house in order to understand fully Henry's political motivations. Barbara Bombi analyzes another aspect of Henry's career by focusing on his tenure as England's papal legate from 1139–43. She reassesses Henry's legatine achievements to argue that, rather than wielding his power capriciously and corruptly, Henry primarily used his position to advance Church reform and papal interests. She argues for a re-contextualization not only of his career but also of legatine powers in the twelfth century, offering a fresh perspective on Henry's legatine activities. John Munns's contribution to the volume further reconsiders Henry's episcopacy by comparing him to his "episcopal colleagues" (69). He pushes back on scholars who have characterized Henry as uniquely nepotistic, militaristic, and opportunistic. On the contrary, Munns suggests that his behavior was in fact fairly typical of English bishops at this time. He argues that historians have been too quick to "substitute caricature for complexity" when analyzing figures such as Henry of Blois (92). Throughout this handful of essays, the authors do an admirable job of providing context for the bishop's...

Dispelling the Myth of the “Tang-Song Transition Theory”

Abstract Administrative statutes in the Tang clearly recognized that the fields of commoners could be held through private ownership. Field ownership structures in the recently restored Tang Statutes, while seeming to support ideas of land nationalization, did not actually change the private landowning practices that had been in place since the Qin and the Han dynasties. Numerous tenancy contracts unearthed in Dunhuang and Turfan dating back to the Tang and Five Dynasties show ample evidence that, prior to the establishment of the double-tax system in 780, a highly developed system of contract tenancy was already in place. Tenancy was clearly the leading form of agricultural production outside subsistence farming. This proves that the labor force during the Sui and Tang dynasties consisted not of “slaves and tenant farmers” or “agricultural dependents and serfs” but of commoners who were legally free. The Sui, Tang, and Five Dynasties, as described by Japanese historian Naitō Konan, bear no resemblance to the historical reality of this period. In many instances, Naitō’s arguments have distorted the history of these dynasties in an effort to make China’s history fit neatly into the framework of medieval European history. Consequently, his premises, arguments, and his central conclusion are all wrong. It is crucial that we dispel the myth of Naitō’s “Tang-Song transition theory” and return to historical reality.

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Paul Oldfield, Urban Panegyric and the Transformation of the Medieval City, 1100–1300. (Oxford Studies in Medieval European History.) Oxford, Oxford University Press 2019

Paul Oldfield, Urban Panegyric and the Transformation of the Medieval City, 1100–1300. (Oxford Studies in Medieval European History.) Oxford, Oxford University Press 2019

Andrea Gamberini, The Clash of Legitimacies. The State-Building Process in Late Medieval Lombardy. (Oxford Studies in Medieval European History.) Oxford, Oxford University Press 2018

Andrea Gamberini, The Clash of Legitimacies. The State-Building Process in Late Medieval Lombardy. (Oxford Studies in Medieval European History.) Oxford, Oxford University Press 2018

Undoing the Discipline: History in the Time of Climate Crisis and COVID-19

COVID-19 gives a fresh urgency to research trajectories around climate and environment in historical research. We use examples from African, Japanese, and medieval European environmental history to chart new ways to mobilise collaborative research into the planetary past in academic and public discussions. Our main points are, first, that COVID-19 has underlined the entanglements between human and planetary life, which historians must better account for. Secondly, it is pertinent to decentre knowledge production. COVID-19 and climate crisis are both global phenomena. Yet patterns of knowledge production that propose ‘universal’ frameworks and solutions obscure highly unequal power relations. We call for more plural histories - in time, space, and species - to confront the complex crises of our times.

중세사] 2017~2018년 서양중세사 연구현황과 과제

중세사] 2017~2018년 서양중세사 연구현황과 과제

Mitochondrial ancestry of medieval individuals carelessly interred in a multiple burial from southeastern Romania

The historical province of Dobruja, located in southeastern Romania, has experienced intense human population movement, invasions, and conflictual episodes during the Middle Ages, being an important intersection point between Asia and Europe. The most informative source of maternal population histories is the complete mitochondrial genome of archaeological specimens, but currently, there is insufficient ancient DNA data available for the medieval period in this geographical region to complement the archaeological findings. In this study, we reconstructed, by using Next Generation Sequencing, the entire mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) of six medieval individuals neglectfully buried in a multiple burial from Capidava necropolis (Dobruja), some presenting signs of a violent death. Six distinct maternal lineages (H11a1, U4d2, J1c15, U6a1a1, T2b, and N1a3a) with different phylogenetic background were identified, pointing out the heterogeneous genetic aspect of the analyzed medieval group. Using population genetic analysis based on high-resolution mitochondrial data, we inferred the genetic affinities of the available medieval dataset from Capidava to other ancient Eurasian populations. The genetic data were integrated with the archaeological and anthropological information in order to sketch a small, local piece of the mosaic that is the image of medieval European population history.

Andronikos I Komnenos: Tyrant of Twelfth-century Europe

Few, if any, rulers in twelfth-century Christendom received as much attention by contemporary chroniclers as the Byzantine Emperor Andronikos I Komnenos (1183–85). Even though Andronikos ruled for less than three years, his rise to power, reign of terror, downfall and gruesome death at the hands of the lynch mob of Constantinople struck contemporaries. In contrast to medieval chroniclers, modern historians have shown little interest in this emperor. While some scholarly attention has been paid to the Greek sources in order to reconstruct the historical facts of Andronikos’s reign, there has been little focus on the Greek historians’ perceptions and representations of their ruler. As to the relatively large number of Latin accounts of Andronikos’s reign, these have been either completely disregarded by historians or dismissed as ‘full of imagined conversations and romantic fictions’ and therefore as being of limited value for the reconstruction of historical events. All these accounts, however, are important, among others, in giving great insight into how a harsh and oppressive rule was viewed in both Byzantium and the Latin world in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century. This article examines accusations of tyranny against Andronikos expressed uniformly across Byzantine, French, German–Austrian and English accounts, and explores their meaning and function. To gain a greater appreciation of their significance, these accusations against the Byzantine emperor are subsequently cast against the backdrop of charges of tyranny levelled against other Christian rulers in twelfth-century Christendom. Therefore, the significance of this article extends beyond Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire to the evolution of many other strands of political philosophy of rulership in medieval European history.1

«Эко-история» и современная медиевистика: новые методологические подходы

Two recent books on the history of the environment and the Middle Ages published by Cambridge University Press are analyzed: Richard Hoffman’s “Ecological History of Medieval Europe” (2014) and Bruce M. S. Campbell’s “The Great Transition: Climate, Disease and Society in the Late Medieval World” (2016). The interdisciplinary approach of both authors is noted, which allowed to re-illuminate such central themes of medieval history as the decline of Rome, religious doctrines, urbanization and technology. It is indicated that the books address key environmental topics: energy use, sustainability, disease and climate change. It is reported that Hoffman and Campbell identify the role of natural forces in such processes as climate change, disease and the transformation of military and political balance. This approach is positively evaluated in this article, as it allows to study the devastating effects of the above factors: hunger, floods, mortality of people and animals, wars and financial crises. It is emphasized that the authors of the analyzed books, immersing medieval history in the context of social ecology, introduce the world of nature into historiography as an acting character (actant) and an object of history itself.

Alice Taylor, The Shape of the State in Medieval Scotland, 1124–1290: Oxford Studies in Medieval European History

Alice Taylor, The Shape of the State in Medieval Scotland, 1124–1290: Oxford Studies in Medieval European History

A Revolutionary Narrative of European History: Bonneville's History of Modern Europe (1789–1792)

A Revolutionary Narrative of European History: Bonneville's <i>History of Modern Europe</i> (1789–1792)

Where are the wild things? Animals in western medieval European History

AbstractDespite the humanities' “animal turn,” the historiography of western European medieval animals is limited. Social historians have examined specific (usually economically important) species, and cultural historians have analyzed the symbolism of animals in the Middle Ages, but few are interested in the animals themselves. Drawing on the highly interdisciplinary field of Critical Animal Studies and other fields of history, I suggest ways that medieval historians could embrace the animal turn to study the experiences of real animals and animal–human entanglements of the Middle Ages.