The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa written by Bishop Otto of Freising in the twelfth century sheds light on a general mood of the populace or theme of the Roman empire during this time. The general theme presented by Otto is the constant struggle for superior โdivineโ authority between Roman pontiffs and the emperors of the empire. Another minor theme is the struggle between reason and faith in the populace of the empire. Ottoโs history on Frederick Barbarossa contains four books, the latter two being written by Rahewin, so this paper will focus primarily on the first two books of the history which were written by Otto.
To understand witchcraft persecution in the early modern period, or any topic in history, it’s useful to combine two spyglassesย to get a broader scope, or use binoculars if you will. Witchcraft persecution in the early modern period was rampant across the world, but we’ll be directing our attention to two places–Germany, the Holy Roman Empire in Europe, and Guatemala, the Spanish Catholic colonial society in Central America–specifically.
Tod of Tod’s Worksop YouTube channel recently released a video wherein he discusses why filmmakers sacrifice medieval realism in movies. Today I want to share this video with you, partly because I believe Tod’s Workshop is a great YouTube channel worth sharing but mainly because I have some critique for this video that some medievalists and/or fantasy lovers might find interesting.
Educational / Interesting Articles, Medieval Facts, Medieval Fantasy Misconceptions, Realism in Fantasy
The classic fantasy knight is a wonderful invention, simple in design and easy to write. They are heroes of the battlefield, loyal to their kings, and there is a lot we can learn from the Middle Ages by reading about them. Generally speaking, however, they are very far from the real medieval knight and if they were presented more realistically we could learn a whole lot more. Not every knight was a hedge knight or a knight errant. Most of them had their sh*t together. So how can we make our fantasy knights more like the real knights of the Middle Ages?
Like I often say, Columbus lived in the 15th century. He was a medieval thinker. He invited a bunch of people to his party and now we’re all wondering where in Dante’s Inferno we came from. For many people, things like Mordhau and Game of Thrones fulfill that service of telling us where we came from, even if unintentionally. The entire world as we know it with all its mountains and rivers existed in the Middle Ages. From Chang’an to Baghdad and Rome to London, the medieval world is vast and full of unfinished stories.
Hopefully this discussion can help to answer the question “who were some of the first Germanic pirates and without getting too gritty in the details what are some cool things to know about naval warfare in the Early Middle Ages?”
Welcome to this tour through early medieval naval warfare and Dark Age maritime activity. Our exhibition will begin with a brief yet formal chronological jaunt along some of the many notable accounts of early Germanic piracy and Anglo-Saxon navy activity. Then weโll explore Dark Age naval strategy and tactics before we conclude with a broad analysis of the material culture of early medieval naval warfare.
Faith to one’s lord and loyalty to one’s lord can mean the same thing in everyday speech, but like most words “faith” and “loyalty” also have secondary definitions depending on the context. Today, weโll be exploring these secondary definitions within the context of a hero, warrior or knight in the Middle Ages. In order to examine the differences between heroic loyalty and chivalric faith in this medieval context, we must first clarify the differences between the heroic and the chivalric in medieval literature.
George MacDonald is often credited as being the first fantasy author. Although he was born in 1824 and his works are much older than J.R.R. Tolkien’s or Michael Ende’s, flaunting MacDonald as the founder of fantasy is misleading and doesn’t explain where fantasy really came from. Today I want to talk about the origin of fantasy in a broader narrative, starting with the oral storytelling traditions of the ancients and ending with Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story.
In a time before accurate guns, hawking and falconry were the best means of catching avian prey besides the odd โlucky bows-shotโ or trapping, and falconers put many delicacies on the tables of aristocratic families. But because of the cost of equipment and the vast amounts of time needed to train predatory birds for hunting, hawking was deemed an โupper-class sportโ. The female falcon was favored over the male hawk or tiercel because they were larger and fiercer. The kinds of quarry peregrines would catch were partridges, pheasants, cocks, ducks, bustards, geese, herons, snipes, cranes, mallards and larger falcons would even hunt rodents such as hares. Also, smaller predatory birds like the merlin were useful for hunting smaller birds like larks, and the lark tongue was a delicacy among nobles and wealthier townsfolk.
In the later Middle Ages, with the rise of universities and cathedral schools in urban areas across Europe, regulated organizations began to professionalize the trade of the surgeon or barber-surgeon (Siraisi 18). In Venice, there was a College of Physicians by 1316 which focused on a wide range of different medical practices (Siraisi 18). Bloodletting, however, was by far the most common medical practice throughout the Middle Ages, especially as it was less painful than cautery, and since all humors were believed to be in the blood, and since it was believed that by โdisordered complexionโ these humors could transform into unwanted secondary humors, bloodletting, or phlebotomy, allowed these unwanted humors to be removed from the body before the liver could produce more clean, pure blood (Siraisi 139).
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