Rather than being the lawless barbarian society that history and popular culture have painted it, medieval Scandinavian culture was more complex and nuanced. This dissertation interrogates the use of a rhetoric of reasonableness (hóf) in the medieval Nordic society to give voice…
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This dissertation examines key examples of foliate carving from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, re-evaluating its historiographic context while refracting foliate decoration through the lens of climate in the medieval West. Looking to medieval ideas about plant life, weath…
When Činggis Qan died in 1227, the Mongol Empire was a confederation of steppe peoples engaged in conquests over other steppe societies as well as civilizations of Central Eurasia. By the time of the election of Činggis Qan’s grandson, Möngke, to the office of qa’an in 1251, the…
Within late medieval Castilian royal chronicle narratives, the ways in which rulers were shown disempowering subjects, and what it meant for them to do so, evolved significantly between the mid-fourteenth and mid-fifteenth century. Narratives of removals from power at royal hand…
Civil war and military incompetence were a mainstay in England for nearly two decades by the start of Edward III’s majority reign in 1330. Moreover, money contracts were beginning to replace the feudal oath, and the gentry and merchants were gaining more economic power. England …
This dissertation examines music making in late medieval London (c.1300–c.1550) from the commoners’ perspective, and with this emphasis, does not discuss royal or monastic musical ensembles or music in aristocratic households, nor does it examine the music of St Paul’s Cathedral…
In exploring the community building techniques of the medieval saint and doctor of the church, Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), this essay argues that the Italian mystic actively envisioned a vibrant community of followers alongside collaborative efforts of Dominican clergymen. I…
This dissertation studies the circumstances under which explicit norms of evidentiary admissibility were adopted in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Roman-canon procedure. I demonstrate that norms of admissibility arose in two areas: the law of positions and the law of witnesses.…
This dissertation examines inventiones, that is narratives of relic discoveries, written in southern Italy between the tenth and twelfth centuries. During this period, communities dealt with sweeping changes brought on by political upheaval, invasion, and ecclesiastical reforms.…
This project is a comprehensive military history of East Francia during the reign of King Louis the German (c. 825-876). It interrogates annals and chronicle sources, royal and ecclesiastical charters, Carolingian capitularies, and papal letters to study all aspects of Louis’s m…
Martyrdoms by beheading are not uncommon in hagiographic narratives. In fact, it is one of the most common forms of martyrdom. In 8th century Francia, the beheading of Saint Denis became rose to national prestige. Saint Denis, the patron saint of Paris, engaged in a unique and o…
This thesis encompasses the first partial critical edition and specialised study of a series of lectures from the cathedral school of Notre-Dame, Peter Comestor’s Glosae super Iohannem glosatum. Delivered in Paris in the mid-1160s, Comestor’s lecture course on the Glossa ‘ordina…
My dissertation seeks to clarify the notion of “Judeo-French”, a linguistic variety of Old North French transliterated into Hebrew characters. Judeo-French was an intriguing area of research, given its “birth” during the Romantic period, aligning itself with some of the characte…
Wales in the Middle Ages was a region both divided by war and united by culture. Frequent raids from the Hiberno-Irish, Scandinavians, and Flemish threatened Wales from the outside, while the kings within the borders of Wales fought for supremacy. During the late eleventh centur…
This is a study of the anonymous Destructions of the Modes of Signifying (DMS). Produced in the mid- to late fourteenth century and occasionally attributed to the famous French cardinal Peter of Ailly (1351–1420), the DMS is one of very few surviving texts representative of late…
Augusitne of Hippo was born in Thagaste, North Africa, in 354, and died in 430 after serving as bishop of the North African city of Hippo Regius for thirty-five years. His writings are an invaluable account of a tumultuous period of the Christian Roman empire, internally divided…
“Medics carried more responsibilities than dry feet, salt tablets, syphilis, and puncture wounds,” U.S. Army Medic Ben Sherman stated after reflecting on his tour in Vietnam. On the battlefields of North Africa, Italy, France, and Vietnam, the medics of the U.S. Army Medical Dep…
When questioning whether political deception can be ethically warranted, two competing intuitions jump to the fore. First, political deception is a fact of human life, used in the realpolitik of governance. Second, the ethical warrant of truth asserts itself as inexorably and in…
This dissertation examines urban expulsions of Jews in the Holy Roman Empire 1000-1520 CE. I argue that expulsions were policy changes undertaken within a political economy that placed increasing value on religiously-based concepts of political responsibility and Christian commu…