medieval history research topics

Medieval History Research Paper Topics

In this page dedicated to medieval history research paper topics , students are presented with a wide-ranging list of captivating subjects that delve into the intricacies of the medieval era. Divided into ten categories, each containing ten unique topics, this comprehensive collection explores various aspects of political, cultural, religious, and military life during this fascinating period. From analyzing influential events to examining societal transformations, these research paper topics provide students with the opportunity to immerse themselves in the rich tapestry of medieval history and develop engaging academic papers.

100 Medieval History Research Paper Topics

The study of medieval history opens a doorway to a captivating era filled with knights, castles, and profound societal changes. Exploring the medieval period through research papers allows students to dive deep into various aspects of this time, uncovering fascinating stories and shedding light on significant historical events. In this comprehensive list, we present ten captivating research paper topics in each of the ten categories, offering students a plethora of options to explore and delve into the rich tapestry of medieval history.

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Political History

• The Role of Monarchy in Medieval Europe: Power, Succession, and Dynasties
• Feudalism and Its Influence on Medieval Society
• The Magna Carta and the Evolution of Constitutionalism
• The Crusades: A Political and Religious Endeavor
• The Hundred Years’ War: Causes, Key Battles, and Consequences
• The Byzantine Empire: Politics and Influence on Medieval Europe
• Papal Power and the Medieval Church-State Relationship
• The Black Death and Its Political Impact
• The Norman Conquest of England: William the Conqueror and Its Aftermath
• The Golden Age of Charlemagne: The Carolingian Empire and Its Legacy

Cultural History

• Chivalry and Knighthood: Codes of Conduct and Idealized Behavior
• The Role of Women in Medieval Society: From Noble Ladies to Peasant Women
• Medieval Art and Architecture: Cathedrals, Illuminated Manuscripts, and Iconography
• Courtly Love: Romance and Relationships in Medieval Literature
• Education and Intellectual Life in Medieval Monasteries
• Folklore and Legends: Robin Hood, King Arthur, and the Arthurian Legends
• Music and Dance in Medieval Society: Troubadours and Minstrels
• Medieval Festivals and Celebrations: Feast Days, Carnivals, and Jousting Tournaments
• The Influence of Islamic Culture on Medieval Europe
• The Role of Guilds in Medieval Trade and Craftsmanship

Religious History

• The Crusades: Motivations, Impact, and Legacy
• Heresy and Inquisition: Religious Dissent and Its Suppression
• The Great Schism: East-West Division in the Christian Church
• Pilgrimage in Medieval Europe: Meaning, Routes, and Shrines
• Saints and Relics: Veneration and the Cult of the Holy
• Monasticism and Monastic Orders: Benedictines, Franciscans, and Dominicans
• The Mendicant Movement: Poverty, Preaching, and Social Engagement
• The Medieval Inquisition: Origins, Methods, and Consequences
• The Witch Hunts of the Medieval Period: Beliefs and Persecution
• The Impact of the Printing Press on Religious Change in the Late Medieval Era

Military History

• The Battle of Hastings: William the Conqueror’s Triumph
• Knights and Armor: Technology and Tactics in Medieval Warfare
• The Siege of Constantinople: The Fall of the Byzantine Empire
• The Teutonic Knights and the Northern Crusades
• The Reconquista: Christian Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula
• The Battle of Agincourt: Henry V’s Victory against the French
• The Mongol Invasions: Genghis Khan and the Conquest of Asia
• The Wars of the Roses: Noble Rivalry for the English Throne
• The Spanish Inquisition: Religion and Warfare
• The Battle of Tours: Charles Martel and the Defense against the Moors

Economic History

• The Hanseatic League: Trade and Economic Power in Medieval Northern Europe
• The Rise of Italian City-States: Florence, Venice, and Genoa
• The Silk Road: Trade and Cultural Exchange between East and West
• The Medieval Merchant Guilds: Economic Influence and Regulation
• The Black Death and its Economic Impact on European Society
• The Agricultural Revolution: Technological Advances in Medieval Farming
• The Commercial Revolution: Growth of Urban Centers and Market Economy
• Medieval Coinage and Currency: Monetary Systems and Economic Stability
• The Role of Fairs and Trade Routes in Medieval Commerce
• The Rise of Banking and Financial Institutions in Medieval Europe

Intellectual History

• Scholasticism and the Rise of Medieval Universities
• The Influence of Aristotle on Medieval Thought
• The Works of Thomas Aquinas: Theology and Philosophy
• The Development of Vernacular Literature in Medieval Europe
• The Influence of Arabic and Islamic Scholarship on Western Intellectual Tradition
• Mysticism and Spiritual Movements in Medieval Christianity
• Humanism and the Renaissance in Medieval Italy
• The Role of Medieval Monastic Libraries in Preserving Knowledge
• Astrology and Alchemy: Esoteric Knowledge in Medieval Society
• Medieval Science and the Pursuit of Natural Philosophy

Social History

• Feudal Society: Hierarchy, Classes, and Social Mobility
• Women’s Role in Medieval Society: Power, Influence, and Restrictions
• Peasant Life: Agriculture, Serfdom, and Rural Communities
• Medieval Crime and Punishment: Justice, Law, and Order
• The Black Death: Social Disruption and Demographic Changes
• Marriage and Family Life in the Middle Ages
• Slavery and Servitude in Medieval Europe
• Medieval Medicine: Healing Practices, Medical Knowledge, and Remedies
• The Role of Medieval Guilds in Urban Life
• The Impact of the Crusades on Social Structures and Cultural Exchange

Art and Architecture

• Gothic Architecture: Cathedrals, Flying Buttresses, and Stained Glass
• Romanesque Architecture: Churches, Monasteries, and Fortifications
• Illuminated Manuscripts: Book Production and Miniature Art
• Medieval Sculpture and Woodcarving: From Reliefs to Free-Standing Statues
• Mosaic Art: Byzantine Influence and Iconographic Representation
• The Bayeux Tapestry: A Visual Chronicle of the Norman Conquest
• Metalwork and Jewelry: Craftsmanship and Decorative Arts
• Medieval Painting: From Icons to Altarpieces
• Castle Architecture and Military Engineering
• The Art of Heraldry: Coats of Arms and Symbolism

Scientific and Technological Advances

• Medieval Astronomy and Astrology: Understanding the Universe
• The Development of the Compass and Its Impact on Navigation
• The Invention of the Mechanical Clock and Timekeeping
• Advances in Agriculture: Crop Rotation and Improved Farming Techniques
• Medieval Engineering: Bridges, Aqueducts, and Cathedrals
• The Use of Gunpowder in Medieval Warfare
• The Printing Press: Gutenberg’s Revolutionary Invention
• Medieval Alchemy: From Transmutation to Experimental Science
• The Impact of Islamic Scientific Knowledge on Medieval Europe
• The Evolution of Medieval Medicine: From Herbal Remedies to Surgical Techniques

Regional Studies

• The Kingdom of England: Political, Social, and Cultural Transformations
• The Byzantine Empire: Politics, Religion, and Artistic Legacy
• The Kingdom of France: Monarchy, Conflict, and Cultural Flourishing
• The Holy Roman Empire: Structure, Dissolution, and Legacy
• The Iberian Peninsula: Reconquista, Kingdoms, and Cultural Exchange
• The Italian City-States: Artistic Renaissance and Political Dynamics
• The Kingdom of Scotland: Independence, Wars, and Cultural Identity
• The Nordic Countries: Viking Age, Norse Mythology, and Scandinavian Influence
• The Crusader States: Kingdoms in the Levant and Interactions with the Muslim World
• The Papal States: Power, Influence, and Religious Authority

This comprehensive list of medieval history research paper topics covers various aspects of political, cultural, religious, military, economic, intellectual, social, artistic, scientific, and regional history. Students are presented with a wide range of intriguing subjects to choose from, allowing them to explore and analyze different facets of the medieval era. Whether delving into the intricacies of political power, examining the influence of chivalry and knighthood, or unraveling the mysteries of medieval art and architecture, these topics offer a wealth of opportunities for engaging and enlightening research papers.

Medieval History: Exploring the Time of Knights, Castles, and Crusades

The medieval period, spanning roughly from the 5th to the 15th century, holds a special place in history as a time of profound societal change, cultural transformation, and iconic imagery. It was an era marked by the rise and fall of empires, the flourishing of art and architecture, the clash of religions, and the advent of chivalry and knighthood. Understanding medieval history provides a fascinating glimpse into a world of castles and cathedrals, knights and peasants, and epic quests for power and glory.

One of the remarkable aspects of medieval history is the sheer diversity of topics it encompasses. From political intrigues and military campaigns to religious upheavals and economic transformations, there is a vast array of research paper topics that offer students the opportunity to delve into this captivating period. Exploring medieval history allows us to unravel the stories of kings and queens, explore the everyday lives of ordinary people, and examine the intellectual and cultural developments that shaped the course of history.

One of the key areas of interest in medieval history is political history. The medieval world was characterized by a complex web of political structures, including feudalism, monarchy, and the rise of city-states. Research papers in this area could delve into topics such as the power struggles between monarchs and nobles, the impact of the Magna Carta on the concept of constitutionalism, or the influence of the Crusades on European politics and diplomacy.

Cultural history is another fascinating aspect of the medieval period. From the awe-inspiring cathedrals of Gothic architecture to the illuminations of medieval manuscripts, the cultural achievements of this era continue to captivate scholars and enthusiasts alike. Exploring topics such as the role of women in medieval society, the development of courtly love in literature, or the influence of Islamic culture on European art provides a deeper understanding of the rich cultural tapestry of the time.

Religion played a central role in medieval society, and the interplay between different religious beliefs and institutions shaped the course of history. Research papers on religious history could explore topics such as the impact of the Crusades on Christian-Muslim relations, the rise of heretical movements and the Inquisition, or the role of monasticism in preserving knowledge and scholarship.

Military history is another prominent area of study within medieval history. The image of knights in shining armor, jousting tournaments, and epic battles captures the imagination. Research papers could focus on topics such as the strategies and tactics employed during key battles, the influence of castles and fortifications on warfare, or the impact of the Mongol invasions on European military practices.

Economic history offers insight into the economic systems and developments of the medieval period. Research papers could delve into topics such as the growth of trade and commerce, the role of guilds in regulating and advancing specific industries, or the impact of the Black Death on the economic landscape.

Intellectual history in the medieval period witnessed the rise of scholasticism, the pursuit of knowledge, and the development of universities. Research papers could explore topics such as the influence of medieval philosophy on later intellectual movements, the role of monastic libraries in preserving and disseminating knowledge, or the emergence of vernacular literature and its impact on cultural identity.

The social history of the medieval period provides a lens through which to examine the lives of ordinary people. Research papers could focus on topics such as the role of women, the lives of peasants, or the impact of epidemics such as the Black Death on society and demographics.

Art and architecture flourished during the medieval period, leaving behind magnificent cathedrals, sculptures, and illuminated manuscripts. Research papers in this area could explore topics such as the architectural innovations of Gothic cathedrals, the symbolism in medieval art, or the techniques and materials used in manuscript illumination.

The scientific and technological advances of the medieval period also deserve attention. Research papers could delve into topics such as the developments in astronomy and astrology, the impact of the printing press on the dissemination of knowledge, or the contributions of medieval scholars to the fields of medicine and alchemy.

Finally, regional studies provide a unique perspective on the medieval period, showcasing the distinct characteristics and events of specific regions. Research papers could focus on topics such as the Norman Conquest of England, the Byzantine Empire, or the Kingdom of Scotland.

In conclusion, the medieval period offers a captivating journey into a world of knights, castles, and crusades. The wide range of research paper topics available allows students to explore different aspects of medieval history, shedding light on the political, cultural, religious, military, economic, intellectual, social, artistic, scientific, and regional dynamics of the time. By engaging with these topics, students can develop a deeper understanding of this transformative period in human history and appreciate its lasting impact on the world we live in today.

How to Choose Medieval History Research Paper Topics

Choosing a research paper topic in medieval history can be an exciting yet challenging task. With such a vast and diverse range of subjects to explore, it’s essential to narrow down your focus and select a topic that aligns with your interests and academic goals. Here are ten tips to help you choose a compelling and engaging medieval history research paper topic:

• Identify Your Interests : Start by reflecting on your personal interests within medieval history. Are you drawn to a specific time period, region, or theme? Consider the aspects that intrigue you the most and use them as a starting point for your topic selection.
• Conduct Preliminary Research : Begin your journey by conducting preliminary research on broad topics or themes in medieval history. Read books, scholarly articles, and reputable online resources to gain a general understanding of the subject matter and identify potential areas of further exploration.
• Consult Reference Works : Consult reference works such as encyclopedias, handbooks, and historiographies dedicated to medieval history. These resources can provide valuable insights, highlight key topics, and guide you towards specialized areas within the field.
• Engage with Recent Scholarship : Familiarize yourself with the latest research and scholarly debates in medieval history. Stay up-to-date with academic journals, conferences, and reputable websites to identify emerging topics and gaps in the existing scholarship that you can contribute to through your research.
• Consider Chronological and Geographic Factors : The medieval period spans over a thousand years and encompasses a wide range of regions. Narrow down your focus by selecting a specific time period or geographic area that interests you. For example, you could explore the High Middle Ages in Western Europe or the Islamic Golden Age in the Middle East.
• Explore Different Themes and Perspectives : Medieval history offers a rich tapestry of themes and perspectives to explore. Consider topics related to politics, religion, culture, art, society, economy, intellectual developments, or military conflicts. Think about how these themes intersect and influence each other.
• Examine Primary and Secondary Sources : Before finalizing your topic, evaluate the availability of primary and secondary sources. Assess the accessibility of relevant manuscripts, chronicles, letters, legal documents, archaeological artifacts, and other primary materials that can support your research.
• Consult with Your Advisor : Seek guidance from your academic advisor or professor. They can provide valuable insights, suggest potential topics based on their expertise, and help you refine your research question to ensure it aligns with the requirements of your assignment.
• Consider Comparative Studies : Explore the possibility of conducting comparative studies within medieval history. By comparing different regions, cultures, or time periods, you can analyze similarities, differences, and patterns that shed light on broader historical phenomena.
• Brainstorm and Refine : Take time to brainstorm ideas, create mind maps, or engage in discussions with peers and professors. Refine your topic by narrowing it down to a specific research question or thesis statement that is manageable within the scope of your research paper.

In conclusion, choosing a medieval history research paper topic requires careful consideration and exploration of your interests, available sources, and scholarly discourse. By following these ten tips, you can find a topic that ignites your passion, offers academic value, and allows you to make a unique contribution to the field of medieval history. Remember to select a topic that challenges you intellectually and aligns with the guidelines and objectives of your research paper assignment.

How to Write a Medieval History Research Paper

Writing a research paper on medieval history can be a rewarding and enlightening experience. It allows you to delve into the rich tapestry of the past, explore fascinating events and figures, and contribute to the scholarly understanding of the medieval period. To help you navigate the writing process, here are ten tips for crafting an engaging and well-researched medieval history research paper:

• Understand the Assignment : Familiarize yourself with the assignment guidelines, requirements, and expectations. Clarify any questions you have with your professor to ensure that you meet all the necessary criteria.
• Develop a Clear Thesis Statement : Formulate a clear and concise thesis statement that articulates the main argument or research question of your paper. Your thesis will provide a guiding framework for your research and analysis.
• Conduct In-Depth Research : Engage in thorough research to gather relevant and reliable sources. Explore primary sources such as manuscripts, chronicles, letters, and secondary sources such as books, articles, and scholarly journals. Evaluate the credibility and scholarly reputation of the sources you use.
• Organize Your Thoughts : Create an outline or a structured plan that outlines the main sections and subtopics of your research paper. This will help you maintain a logical flow of ideas and ensure that your arguments are well-organized.
• Analyze and Interpret Sources : When analyzing primary and secondary sources, critically evaluate their content, context, and bias. Look for patterns, themes, and arguments that emerge from your research and use them to support your thesis statement.
• Provide Historical Context : Situate your research within its historical context by providing background information on the time period, events, and individuals you are studying. Help your readers understand the significance of your topic in relation to the broader historical narrative.
• Incorporate Multiple Perspectives : Explore diverse perspectives and interpretations of the medieval period. Engage with different schools of thought, scholarly debates, and varying viewpoints to present a comprehensive and nuanced analysis of your topic.
• Use Proper Citation and Referencing : Ensure that you properly cite and reference all sources used in your research paper. Follow the citation style guidelines specified by your professor, whether it’s APA, MLA, Chicago/Turabian, or another format.
• Craft Engaging and Coherent Writing : Write clearly and concisely, using academic language appropriate for your discipline. Develop well-structured paragraphs that flow logically from one idea to the next. Use transitions to connect different sections of your paper.
• Revise and Edit : Set aside time for thorough revision and editing of your research paper. Review your work for clarity, coherence, grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. Ensure that your arguments are well-supported and that your paper adheres to the required formatting guidelines.

In conclusion, writing a medieval history research paper requires careful planning, extensive research, and effective communication of your findings. By following these ten tips, you can craft a well-written and compelling paper that demonstrates your knowledge of the subject matter and contributes to the field of medieval history. Remember to allow yourself enough time for research, writing, and revision, and seek feedback from professors or peers to enhance the quality of your work.

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By choosing iResearchNet, you gain access to a team of highly qualified writers with expertise in medieval history. They will work closely with you to understand your research objectives and craft a custom-written paper that meets your unique requirements. Our writers have a deep understanding of the historical period, enabling them to deliver insightful and well-researched papers that demonstrate your knowledge and critical thinking skills.

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The Middle Ages - Medieval History 7: Research Topics

• Research Topics

1. Children's Crusade

Your name is Daniel of Cloyes. In 1212 AD you embarked on the fifth crusade to“capture” Jerusalem but ended up in Egypt. It was also known as the Children’s Crusade. Out of 30,000 crusading children, you were one of the few who returned home. All of your relatives and neighbors have gathered to hear your adventures. You must tell them the truth as you witnessed it. Describe your reasons for joining the Crusade, your observations and experiences on the crusade, and the results of the crusade.      

• Medieval Sourcebook: The Children's Crusade
• Medieval Sourcebook; The Crusades
• The Children's Crusades

2. Anna Comnena

Most histories of the Crusades tend to focus on the Crusaders themselves without thought of the people whose lands were invaded and cities destroyed. Anna Comnena (also called Anna Komnene) was the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor and was living in Constantinople when the First Crusade came through the city. She wrote a book entitled The Alexiad , which described her father’s reign that detailed her reactions to the Crusaders. Describe Anna to your classmates based on her opinions and writings, focusing on her thoughts and observations of the Crusades and the crusaders. 

• Women in World History: Anna Comnena
• Dangerous Women: Anna Komnene
• Ancient History Encyclopedia: Anna Komnene

4. Apprenticeship

The son of a very progressive man, you have been given a choice that many medieval youth do not receive. You have been allowed to decide which trade you would like to pursue and must decide to whom you will apprentice. You narrowed your options down to becoming a mason, a fuller, a shoemaker, or a baker. Investigate the process of medieval apprenticeship, the life and duties of an apprentice, and the role of guilds in medieval society.  Research the trades you are considering and chose which one you wish to pursue.

Present your findings and your final decision to your father (and the class). 

• Medieval England: Daily Life in Medieval Towns
• Medieval Guilds
• The Rise of Commerce and Towns
• Medieval Trades
• The Middle Ages: Tradesmen

5. Universities

Your Uncle Bartholomew has offered to pay for you to attend a university. Write your kind uncle four or more letters that keep him informed about the following topics: 

• The culture and reputation of your university.  Have there been any riots? Is it considered “party school”?
• The subject/curriculum you are studying
• Your typical day as a student
• Some of the more famous scholars and their publications in law, medicine, mathematics and philosophy that you are studying. Be sure to include some Muslim and Jewish scholars like Avicenna, Averroes, and Maimonides.
• Medieval Science, the Church, and Universities
• University of Cambridge: The Medieval University
• Medieval University - The Medievalists The video at the top of this article offers a nice overview.
• The Rise of Universities

6. Medicine and the Humors

As a child you were fascinated by the art of medicine because it combined elements of faith and the physical aspects of healing. You have decided to attend medical school in Salerno, Italy because they practice the latest advances in Arab medicine. After your first semester, you pay a visit to your family. Everyone is interested to know about the latest developments for healing people. In your conversations with your parents, be sure to tell them about the following:

• the theory of the humors
• the importance of Muslim scholarship and medical advances
• examples of treatments for a few diseases
• Middle Ages Health Click 'Enter' and then click 'Health' from the topics menu along the right side of the screen.
• Medicine, Diagnosis, and Treatment in the Middle Ages
• Medieval Medicine
• The Science Museum: Humours
• Arab Roots of European Medicine
• The Islamic World in the Middle Ages This quick overview includes examples of Muslim advances in medicines and their influence on European medicine at the time -- scroll down a bit to find it!

7. The Black Death

During the years of the Black Death, one quarter to one third of the entire European population perished.  Villages turned into ghost towns.  The whole fabric of society was altered.  Create a documentary film about the impact of the plague on Medieval society.  In your film, you should explore: the cause and spread of the plague, the disease's major symptoms and any possible treatments or preventative measures used, and the wider effects of the plague on society. 

• Plague and Public Health in Renaissance Europe
• The Black Death: Bubonic Plague
• Eyewitness to History: Plague
• The Black Death and Early Public Health Measures

8. Medieval English Fashion

You have been hired to design costumes for the new movie Quest set in the England of 1250. Your job is to create original, accurate costumes for the main characters including: Eleanor, the young and beautiful noblewoman; William, the nobleman to whom she is betrothed; Stephen, the crusader secretly in love with Eleanor; Hilda, the middle class gossip; and Rufus, the elderly serf. You must then present sketches of your designs to the producers (your classmates), offering background information on clothing in the Middle Ages and explanations defending the historical accuracy of your costumes. Your costume plans should include hairstyles and hats or headpieces for each character. 

• Costumes and courtiers: garments and fashion ideas in late medieval Western Europe
• Medieval Clothing and Fabrics
• Middle Ages Clothing Click 'Enter" and then click on 'Clothing' from the menu along the right side of the page.
• Clothes in Medieval England

9. Falconry

After many years as Lord Falconer, the King has given you an assistant to help you prepare for an upcoming hawking festival. Unfortunately, your assistant is unacquainted with falconry. Explain the process, equipment, and skills involved in training a falcon to hunt and the historical significance of falconry.    

• Ancient & Medieval Falconry: Origins & Functions in Medieval England
• Medieval Hunting History
• Medieval Falconry: Birds and Lovebirds
• Leisure in an English Medieval Castle

You’re a wandering minstrel from the 13 th century who has been traveled through time to modern-day England.  Even though the world is now a strange and confusing place, you just can’t give up your minstrel ways.  But new advances in technology now allow your music to reach a large audience without having to hike all across the country by foot.  You’re going to create a podcast  to share your music. In your broadcast, you want to be sure to include samples of all the different kinds of music ( plainchant, polyphonic and monophonic) from the Middle Ages.

You might also discuss:

• the importance of this music to your former culture.
• the difference between music heard in churches and the type of music you sing
• the difference between a jongleur, a minstrel, a bard and a troubadour like yourself?
• the difference between your music and the music of today
• Medieval and Renaissance Music
• A Guide to Medieval and Renaissance Musical Instruments
• The Middle Ages Arts and Entertainment
• A Short History of Medieval Music

11. Gardening

In your role of head gardener, you have been told to plan a new garden for the lord of the manor’s house. The lord has asked that you include some medicinal plants to help with his aches and pains and his wife wishes you to include culinary herbs. Draw up a design to present to the lord and explain why you have chosen the plants you did. Include images of at least two plants you have chosen to grow in the lord’s new garden in your presentation.

• The Bonnefort Cloister Herb Garden
• Design: The Medieval Garden Style
• Medieval gardens: Middle Ages to 1500
• What to Grow in a Medieval Herb Garden

Feasts in the Middle Ages were a celebratory time for all, but they could also prove to be a lot of work! As the Chief Cook of the castle, you are responsible for preparing feasts for various holidays. Choose one of these important feast days: Twelfth Night, St. Valentines Day, or St. John’s Day, often called Mid-Summer’s Eve. Give a brief background of the holiday and create an annotated menu for a party. Present your feast proposal along with a taste of one of the dishes for the class.

• Medieval and Renaissance Food
• Dining in State: A High Cuisine Guide
• Medieval Feast
• Medieval Food

13. Illuminated Manuscripts

 You are a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.  You are preparing a new exhibit focused on illuminated book and manuscript production from different cultures during the Middle Ages.    Investigate the calligraphy and the book/manuscript production processes during the Middle Ages in Western Europe, the Muslim world, and Chinese civilization. Prepare a presentation to introduce your peers to your exhibit and include visual examples of illuminated books and manuscripts from each culture.  

• Illuminated Islamic Manuscript
• Calligraphy in Islamic Art
• Western European Illuminated Manuscripts
• Making Illuminated Manuscripts: Video
• Illuminated Manuscripts
• Manuscript Illumination in Northern Europe
• Chinese Calligraphy
• Center for Global Education: Chinese Calligraphy
• Chinese Calligraphy History

14. Marco Polo

Your name is Marco Polo and you have just returned to Venice after 24 years traveling to distant parts of the world. Your book, The Travels  of Marco Polo has become a best seller and you have been asked to go on a book tour to various Italian towns.    Share highlights and things that were especially wonderful or strange to you, such as a  postal system, coal,   and   paper money.  Be sure to describe your visits with the great Kublai Khan.      

• Excerpts of Marco Polo's Travels
• Marco Polo and His Travels
• Mariners' Museum: Marco Polo

15. The Silk Road

The ancient Silk Road was a vast network of trade routes whose flow of ideas, culture, music and art crossed the mountains and deserts of Central Asia to connect East Asia and the Mediterranean. Your boss is a Chinese silk merchant who has left the business to his son. Before he officially retires, he has hired you to take his son on one trip to experience the wonders, risks, trade, religions, and hardships of the Silk Road.  You decide to give him a guidebook that will provide him with information ahead of time.

Your guidebook should include the following:

• A map of the route that you are to travel.
• Examples of the goods that will be traded along the route.
• Brief descriptions of the different religions that he will encounter.
• Descriptions of some of the sounds, sights, and tastes that he might experience.
• Explanations of dangers that he must avoid such as bandits, extreme weather conditions, and geographic challenges.
• The Secrets of the Silk Road
• The Silk Road
• UNESCO: About the Silk Roads

16. Zheng He

You are are eager recreate the voyages of the infamous Zheng He (San Bao), one of the most successful and admired admirals in the Chinese fleet as it reached the height in 1421.   Investigate Zheng He’s career and travels as well as the events that led to a shift in China’s approach to exploration and contact with the rest of the world. Create a “virtual field trip” that highlights all the important places Zheng He traveled and the key places in China that are significant to Zheng He’s life.  

 Please note: his name is  also spelled as Cheng Ho  in many books and web sites.

• Admiral Zhen He
• Zheng He's Voyages of Discover
• The Ages of Exploration: Zheng He
• The Seven Voyages of Zheng He

17. Tale of Genji

While the people of Europe were warring amongst themselves, literature’s first novel The Tale of Genji, was being written by Murasaki Shikibu, a woman of Japan’s Heian period. Murasaki’s was not the only prominent work written by a female in Japan during this period. Courtly women also wrote “Pillow Books,” similar to diaries, some of which have survived to this day. Imagine you are the famed Murasaki writing an entry in your own “Pillow Book,” discussing the following topics:

• court life for women in the Heian period, including the clothing, music, activities, manner, and living spaces
• the general plot and topics of  The Tale of Genji
• the reasons for  The Tale of Genji' s   popularity
• The Heian Period
• Heian Period Court and Clan
• The Tale of Genji

18. Timbuktu

You are living in the city of Timbuktu during the reign of Mansa Musa (1312 –1337). Write a persuasive letter to your family to convince them to travel across the Sahara Desert to live with you in Timbuktu. In your letter, you might discuss:

• Timbuktu's fame and reputation
• the trade routes passing through Timbuktu and the major waterway nearby
• Timbuktu's major industries
• the major structures and landmarks of the city  
• Exploring Mali
• The Empire of Mali
• Sankore Mosque
• Timbuktu: The El Dorado of Africa

19. Ibn Battuta

You are an established author of historical fiction writing your next novel about Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan explorer and scholar who lived and traveled in the 1300s.  But before you can begin developing plot and character ideas, you need to do more research on your subject.  Investigate:

• Battuta’s reasons for initially leaving his home  
• M ajor cities and landmarks he visited on his journeys  
• C hallenges and  dangers  he faced  
• His methods for funding his travels and gaining access to important people   
• Medieval Sourcebook: Ibn Battuta: Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-1354
• The Travels of Ibn Battuta
• Ibn Battuta

20. Saladin

One of the greatest known figures in the Middle Ages is Saladin, the  Muslim  warrior who recaptured Jerusalem from the European Crusader Kingdom, effectively ending the 3 rd  great Crusade.  Saladin was a greatly respected figure, not only in the  Muslim  world, but also throughout Europe. He was recognized as a great and honorable enemy by Richard the Lionheart.  Create a video about his life and legacy.    

• Richard and Saladin: Warriors of the Third Crusade

21. Eleanor of Acquitaine

You are auditioning to play Eleanor of Aquitaine in a new miniseries based on her long and fascinating life.  To convince the producers of your commitment and passion for the role, you have decided to research Eleanor’s life and create a special monologue based on your research.  Investigate the major events of Eleanor’s life and gain a sense of her personality. 

Use the results of your research to write a monologue (approximately 500 words in length) from Eleanor’s perspective, reflecting back on her life and sharing with the audience her greatest successes and her failures or regrets.  

• Eleanor of Acquitaine
• The Use of Power and Influence by a Medieval Woman

22. Heloise and Abelard

You are Heloise, one half of the world’s most tragic couples. Many years have passed since you and your beloved Peter Abelard have seen one another, but recently you have gotten your hands on a letter written by Abelard to one of his friends.  You’ve decided to write to Abelard, reflecting on your past together and your current situation as the abbess of a convent.

• Peter Abelard's Historia Calamitatum
• The Letters of Heloise and Abelard (Project Gutenberg)
• Heloise (video by Professor Sara McDougall)
• Epistolae: Heloise Brief bio of Heloise and translations of many of her letters, to Abelard and others.

Databases To Use

To access this database from home, you will need to log in using the following username and password:

Username : ncsstudent Password : student

See the video below for some tips and help from Ms. Dickinson on how to use this database effectively.

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Medieval Studies @ Harvard

• Ph.D. dissertations in Medieval Studies, 1990-2016

The lists provided here offer a guide to the hundreds of dissertations on topics in Medieval Studies completed at Harvard University during the last three decades. Please inform Sean Gilsdorf of any omissions, errors, or necessary corrections.

Dissertations by Author

Rahim Acar (NELC, 2002): Creation: A comparative study between Avicenna's and Aquinas' positions

Catherine Adoyo (Romance Languages, 2011): The order of all things: Mimetic craft in Dante's Commedia

Panagiotis Agapitos (Classics, 1990): Narrative structure in the Byzantine vernacular romances: A textual and literary study of Kallimachos , Belthandros and Libistros

Ahmad Ahmad (NELC, 2005): Structural interrelations of theory and practice in Islamic law: A study of Takhrīj al-Furūʻ ʻalá al-Uṣūl literature

Aslıhan Akışık (History and Middle Eastern Studies, 2013): Self and other in the Renaissance: Laonikos Chalkokondyles and Late Byzantine Intellectuals

Yasmine Al-Saleh (History of Art, 2014): "Licit Magic": The Touch and Sight Of Islamic Talismanic Scrolls

Dimiter Angelov (History, 2002): Imperial ideology and political thought in Byzantium, 1204-ca. 1330

Diliana Angelova (History of Art, 2005): Gender and imperial authority in Rome and early Byzantium, first to sixth centuries

Zayde Antrim (History, 2005): Place and belonging in medieval Syria, 6th/12th to 8th/14th centuries

Sinān Antūn (NELC, 2006): The poetics of the obscene: Ibn al-Ḥajjāj and Sukhf

Francesco Aresu (Romance Languages, 2015): The Author as Scribe: Materiality and Textuality in the Trecento

Kirsten Ataoguz (History of Art, 2007): The apostolic commissioning of the monks of Saint John in Müestair, Switzerland: painting and preaching in a Churraetian Monastery

Sarah Axelrod (Romance Languages, 2015): Umorismo and Critical Reading in Boccaccio’s Vernacular and Latin Opere ‘Minori’

Fatemeh Azinfar (Comparative Literature, 1999): Doubt , dissent and skepticism in the literary tradition of the medieval period

Patrick Baker (History, 2009): Illustrious men: Italian renaissance humanists on humanism

Timothy Baker (Religion, 2015): “Be You as Living Stones Built Up, A Spiritual House, A Holy Priesthood”: Cistercian Exegesis, Reforms, and the Construction of Holy Architectures

Abigail Balbale (History, 2011): Between Kings and Caliphs: Religion and Authority in Sharq al-Andalus, 542-640 AH/1145-1243 C.E.

Bridget Balint (Classics, 2002): Hildebert of Lavardin's "Liber de querimonia" in its cultural context

Henry Bayerle (Comparative Literature, 2004): Speakers in the Latin historical epics of twelfth-century Italy

Dianne Bazell (Religion, 1991): Christian diet: A case study using Arnald of Villanova's De esu carnium

Alexis Becker (English, 2015): Practical Georgics: Managing the Land in Medieval Britain

William Bennett (English, 1992): Interrupting the word: Mankind and the politics of the vernacular

Jessica Berenbeim (History of Art and Architecture, 2012): Art of Documentation: The Sherborne Missal and the Role of Documents in English Medieval Art

Robert Berkhofer (History, 1997): Monastic patrimony, management and accountability in Northern France, ca. 1000-1200

Persis Berlekamp (History of Art, 2003): Wonders and their images in late medieval Islamic culture: "the wonders of creation" in Fars and Iraq, 1280-1388

Gabriella Berzin (Near Eastern Languages, 2010): The Medieval Hebrew version of psychology in Avicenna's Salvation ( Al-Najāt )

Janna Bianchini (née Wasilewski) (History, 2007): Regina : The life of Berenguela of Castile, 1180-1246

Noël Bisson (Music, 1998): English polyphony for the Virgin Mary: The votive antiphon, 1430-1500

Josiah Blackmore (History, 1992): Fernão Lopes and the Writing of History in the Crónica de D. João I

James Blasina (Music, 2015): Music and Gender in the Medieval Cult of St. Katherine of Alexandria, c. 1050-1300

Emmanuel Bourbouhakis (Classics, 2006): "Not composed in a chance manner": The epitaphios for Manuel I Komnenos by Eustathius of Thessalonike: text, translation, commentary

Matthieu Boyd (Celtic, 2011): The source of enchantment: The Marvels of Rigomer ( Les Mervelles de Rigomer ) and the evolution of Celtic influence on medieval francophone storytelling

Nancy Breen (Celtic, 1999): Towards an edition of Di astud chirt ⁊ dligid

Benjamin Bruch (Celtic, 2005): Du gveras a.b.c/An pen can hanna yv d : Cornish verse forms and the evolution of Cornish prosody, c. 1350-1611

Christopher Cannon (English, 1993): The making of Chaucer's English: A study in the formation of a literary language

Nicola Carpentieri (NELC, 2012): The Poetics of Aging Spain and Sicily at the Twilight of Muslim Sovereignty

William Carroll (Germanic Languages, 1995): Latin education and secular German literature: An analysis of Latin grammar instruction and its influence on middle high German poets

Gary Cestaro (Romance Languages, 1990): The whip and the wet nurse: Dante's De vulgari eloquentia and the psychology of grammar in the Middle Ages

Kathryn Chadbourne (Celtic, 1999): The otherworld procession in Irish and Welsh literature and folklore

Christina Chance (Celtic, 2010): Imagining empire: Maxen Wledic, Arthur, and Charlemagne in Welsh literature after the Edwardian conquest

Horacio Chiong Rivero (Romance Languages, 2002): Maker of masks: Fray Antonio de Guevara's pseudo-historical fictionalizations

Jeffrey Cohen (English, 1992): The tradition of the giant in early England: A study of the monstrous in folklore, theology, history and literature

William Cole (Romance Languages, 1991): Romance to tragedy: A comparative study of the Tristan poems of Béroul and Gottfried

Jonathan Conant (History, 2004): Staying Roman: Vandals, Moors, and Byzantines in late antique North Africa, 400-700

Kassandra Conley (Celtic Languages, 2014): Looking towards India: Nativism and Orientalism in the Literature of Wales, 1300-1600

Alan Cooper (History, 1998): Obligation and jurisdiction: Roads and bridges in medieval England (c. 700-1300)

Michael Cooperson (NELC, 1994): The heirs of the prophets in classical Arabic biography

Jason Crawford (English, 2008): Personification and its discontents: Studies from Langland to Bunyan

Barbara Croken (NELC, 1990): Zabîd under the Rasulids of Yemen, 626-858 AH/ 1229-1454 AD

Michael Cuthbert (Music, 2006): Trecento fragments and polyphony beyond the codex

Philip Daileader (History, 1996): The medieval community of Perpignan, 1162-1397

Jennifer Davis (History, 2007): Patterns of Power: Charlemagne and the Invention of Medieval Rulership

Robert Davis (Religion, 2012): The Force of Union: Affect and Ascent in the Theology of Bonaventure

Anthony D'Elia (History, 2000): In praise of matrimony: Italian renaissance humanists on marriage and sexual pleasure

Susan Deskis (English, 1991): Proverbial backgrounds to the sententiae of Beowulf

Mark DeStephano (Romance Languages, 1995): Feudal relations in the Poema de mío Cid : Comparative perspectives in medieval Spanish and French epic

Alnoor Dhanani (History of Science, 1991): Kalām and Hellenistic cosmology: Minimal parts in Basrian Muʻtazilī atomism

Giorgio DiMauro (Slavic Languages, 2002): The furnace, the crown, and the serpent: Images of Babylon in Muscovite Rus'

Saskia Dirkse (Classics, 2015): The Great Mystery: Death, Memory and the Archiving of Monastic Culture in Late Antique Religious Tales

Rowan Dorin (History, 2015): Banishing Usury: The Expulsion of Foreign Moneylenders in Medieval Europe, 1200-1450

Carol Dover (Romance Languages, 1990): Nature, nurture and the hero: Narrating identity in the old French prose Lancelot

Simon Doubleday (History, 1996): The Laras: An aristocratic family in the kingdoms of Castile and León, 1075-1361

David Drogin (History of Art, 2003): Representations of Bentivoglio authority: Fifteenth-century painting and sculpture in the Bentivoglio Chapel, San Giacomo Maggiore, Bologna

Ivan Drpić (History of Art, 2011): Kosmos of verse: Epigram, art, and devotion in later Byzantium

Mary Dunn (Religion, 2008): Sainte-Anne-du-Petit-Cap: The making of an early modern shrine

Leslie Dunton-Downer (Comparative Literature, 1992): The obscene poetic self in Rutebeuf and Chaucer

Koray Durak (History, 2008): Commerce and networks of exchange between the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic Near East from the early ninth century to the arrival of the Crusaders

Nadia El Cheikh (History, 1992): Byzantium viewed by the Arabs

Ahmed El Shamsy (Middle Eastern Studies, 2009): From tradition to law: The origins and early development of the Shāfi‘ī School of Law in ninth-century Egypt

Daphna Ephrat (NELC, 1993): The Sunni ʻulama ʾ of eleventh-century Baghdad and the transmission of knowledge: A social history

Charlene Eska (née Shipman) (Celtic, 2006): An edition of Cáin Lánamna : An Old Irish tract on marriage and divorce law

Pauline Eskenasy (NELC, 1991): Antony of Tagrit's Rhetoric book one: Introduction, partial translation, and commentary

Marilina Falzarano (Romance Languages, 1999): Il volgarizzamento dei seitte salmi penitenziali di Simone Da Cascina

Lianna Farber (English, 1998): Legitimacy in late medieval England

Feng Xiang (English, 1990): Chaucer and the Romaunt of the Rose : A new study in authorship

Justine Firnhaber-Baker (History, 2007): Guerram publice et palem faciendo : Local war and royal authority in late medieval southern France

Timothy Fitzgerald (Middle Eastern Studies, 2009): Ottoman methods of conquest: Legal imperialism and the city of Aleppo, 1480-1570

Hugh Fogarty (Celtic, 2005): A critical edition of the Middle Irish saga Aided Guill meic Carbada ocus Aided Gairb Glinni Rígi

Sheryl Forste-Gruppe (Comparative Literature, 1996): Signifying acts: Writing in the Middle English romances

Katherine Forsyth (Celtic, 1996): The Ogham inscriptions of Scotland: An edited corpus

Elizabeth Fowler (English, 1992): The contingencies of person: Studies in the poetic and legal conceits of early modern England

Shirin Fozi (History of Art, 2010): The body recast and revived: Figural tomb sculpture in the Holy Roman Empire, 1080--1160

Brian Frykenberg (Celtic, 1994): Poetry of Suibne Geilt and St. Mo-Ling from Brussels Bibliothèque Royale MS. 5100-04

Bruce Fudge (NELC, 2003): The major Qurʼān commentary of al-Ṭabrisī (d. 548/1154)

John Gagné (History, 2008): French Milan: Citizens, occupiers, and the Italian Wars, 1499-1529

Sophia Georgiopoulou (Classics, 1990): Theodore II Dukas Laskaris (1222-1258) as an author and an intellectual of the XIIIth century

Kelly Gibson (History, 2011): Rewriting History: Carolingian Reform and Controversy in Biographies of Saints

Clare Gillis (History, 2010): Illicit sex, Unfaithful Translations: Latin, Old High German and the Birth of a New Sexual Morality in the Early Middle Ages

Luis Girón Negrón (Religion, 1997): Alfonso de la Torre's Visión deleytable : Philosophical rationalism and the religious imagination in fifteenth-century Spain

Roberto Gonzalez-Casanovas (Romance Languages, 1990): Predicación y Narrativa en Ramón Llull: De Imagen a Semejanza en Blanquerna

Jennifer Gordon (History, 2014): Obeying Those in Authority: The Hidden Political Message in Twelver Exegesis

Sara Gorman (English, 2013): Transformative Allegory: Imagination from Alan of Lille to Spenser

Margaret Marion Gower (Religion, 2015): The Heart of Peace: Christine de Pizan and Christian Theology

Stefanie Goyette (Romance Languages, 2012): Indiscriminate Bodies: The Old French Fabliaux in Relation to Thirteenth-Century Medical and Religious Cultures

Rachel Goshgarian (History, 2008): Beyond the social and the spiritual: Redefining the urban confraternities of late medieval Anatolia

Jeffrey Gross (English, 1991): "Such stuff as dreams are made on": The poetics of narrative voice in Chaucer's Book of the Duchess

Rosemary Hale (Religion, 1992): Imitatio Mariae : Motherhood motifs in late medieval German spirituality

Leor Halevi (Middle Eastern Studies, 2002): Muhammad 's grave: Death, ritual and society in the early Islamic world

Cynthia Hall (History of Art, 2002): Treasury book of the passion: Word and image in the Schatzbehalter

Elizabeth Haluska-Rausch (History, 1998): Family, property, and power: Women in medieval Montpellier, 985-1213

John Harkness (Linguistics, 1991): An approach to the metrical behavior of Old English verbs

Kyle Harper (History, 2007): Slavery in the late ancient Mediterranean

Margaret Healy-Varley (English, 2011): Anselm's fictions and the literary afterlife of the Proslogion

Erik Heinrichs (History, 2009): The plague cure: Physicians, clerics and the reform of healing in Germany, 1473--1650

Eva Helfenstein (History of Art, 2012): The Goblet of Philip the Good: Precious Vessels at the Court of Burgundy

Georgia Henley (Celtic Languages and Literatures, 2017): Monastic Manuscripts of the Anglo-Welsh March: A Study in Literary Transmission

Samantha Herrick (History, 2002): Imagining the sacred past in hagiography of early Normandy: The Vita Taurini , Vita Vigoris and Passio Nicasii

Seth Hindin (History of Art, 2011): History and ethnic commitment in the visual culture of medieval Bohemia, ca. 1200-ca. 1420

Elisabeth Hodges (Romance Languages, 2002): City views: Writing and the topography of Frenchness and the Renaissance

Megan Holmes (History of Art, 1993): Frate Filippo Di Tommaso Dipintore : Fra Filippo Lippi and Florentine Renaissance religious practices

Katharine Horsley (English, 2004): Poetic visions of London civic ceremony, 1360-1440

Gregory Hutcheson (Romance Languages, 1993): Marginality and empowerment in Baena's Cancionero

John Hutton (History of Art, 1992): Rural buildings in Netherlandish painting, ca. 1420-1570

Sarah Insley (Classics, 2011): Constructing a sacred center: Constantinople as a holy city in early Byzantine literature

Kathryn Izzo (Celtic, 2007): The Old Irish hymns of the Liber Hymnorum : A study of vernacular hymnody in medieval Ireland

Angela Jaffray (NELC, 2000): At the threshold of philosophy: A study of al-Fārābī's introductory works on logic

Paul Jefferiss (Celtic, 1991): Literary theory and criticism in medieval Ireland

Geraldine Johnson (History of Art, 1994): In the eye of the beholder: Donatello's sculpture in the life of Renaissance Italy

Aled Jones (Celtic, 2011): Ol wrth ol attor ar eu hennyd: Political Prophecy in the Earliest Welsh Manuscripts, c. 1250-c. 1540

Lars Jones (History of Art, 1999): Visio divina, exegesis, and beholder-image relationships in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Indications from donor figure representations

Danielle Joyner (History of Art, 2007): A timely history: Images and texts in the Hortus Deliciarum

Jakub Kabala (History, 2014): Imaginging Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages: Frankish, Roman and Byzantine Concepts of Space and Power in the Slavlands, c.750-900

Kathryn Karczewska (Romance Languages, 1996): In days of future past: Prophecy and knowledge in the French vulgate grail legends

Dimitris Kastritsis (Middle Eastern Studies, 2005): The Ottoman interregnum (1402-1413): Politics and narratives of dynastic succession

David Keck (History, 1992): The angelology of Saint Bonaventure and the harvest of medieval angelology

Craig Kennedy (History, 1994): The Juchids of Muscovy: A Study of Personal Ties Between Émigré Tatar Dynasts and the Muscovite Grand Princes in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

Alexander Key (NELC, 2012): A Linguistic Frame of Mind: ar-Ragib al-Isfahani and What it Meant To Be Ambiguous

Elaheh Kheirandish (History of Science, 1991): The medieval Arabic tradition of Euclid's Optika

Nuha Khoury (History of Art, 1992): The mihrab concept: Palatial themes in early Islamic religious architecture

Ji-Hyun Kim (Romance Languages, 2005): For a modern medieval literature: Gaston Paris, courtly love, and the demands of modernity

Margaret Kim (English, 2000): Visions of theocratics: The discourse of politics and the primacy of religion in Piers Plowman

Bettina Kimpton (Celtic, 2006): An edition of Brislech mór maige murthemni

Irit Kleiman (Romance Languages, 2003): Traitor, author, text: Four late medieval narratives of betrayal

† Elka Klein (History, 1996): Power and patrimony: The Jewish community of Barcelona, 1050-1250

Yaron Klein (NELC, 2009): Musical instruments as objects of meaning in classical Arabic poetry and philosophy

Jennifer Knight (Celtic, 2011): Self and society in early Irish literature

Adam Kosto (History, 1996): Making and keeping agreements in medieval Catalonia, 1000-1200

Thomas Kozachek (Music, 1995): The repertory of chant for dedicating churches in the Middle Ages: Music, liturgy, and ritual

Aden Kumler (History of Art, 2007): Visual translation, visible theology: Illuminated compendia of spiritual instruction in late medieval France and England

Demetrios Kyritses (History, 1997): The Byzantine aristocracy in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries

Justin Lake (Classics, 2008): Rhetorical and narrative studies on the Historiae of Richer of Saint-Remi

Christian Lang (Religion, 2006): Executing justice in Sunnī Islam: Historical, poetical, eschatological and legal dimensions of punishment under the Saljūqs (1055-1194 CE)

Heather Larson (Celtic, 1999): The Women's Voice in Gaelic Poetry

Rena Lauer (History, 2014): Venice’s Colonial Jews: Community, Identity, and Justice in Late Medieval Venetian Crete

Marc Laureys (Classics, 1992): An edition and study of Giovanni Cavallini's Polistoria de virtutibus et dotibus Romanorum

Eric Lawee (NELC, 1993): "Inheritance of the fathers": Aspects of Isaac Abarbanel's stance towards tradition

Lisa Lawrence (Religion, 2002): The Irish and the incarnation: Images of Christ in the Old Irish poems of Blathmac

F. Dominic Longo (Religion, 2011): Spiritual Grammar: A Comparative Theological Study of Jean Gerson's Donatus moralizatus and Abd al Karim al-Qushayri's Nahw al-qulub

William Layher (Germanic Languages, 1999): Queen Eufemia's Legacy: Middle Low German Literary Culture, Royal Patronage, and the First Old Swedish Epic (1301)

Anne Lea (Celtic, 1995): Contextualizing the Gorhoffeddau : A Study in the Intellectual Background of Two Medieval Welsh Poems

Christine Lee (Comparative Literature, 2011): Renaissance Romance: Redrawing the Boundaries of Fiction

Isabelle Charlotte Levy (Comparative Literature, 2014): The Poetics of Love in Prosimetra across the Medieval Mediterranean

Christina Linklater (Music, 2006): Popularity, Presentation and the Chansonnier Saint-Germain-des-Prés

Benjamin Liu (Romance Languages, 1996): Equivocal Poetics and Cultural Ambiguity in the Cantigas d'escarnho e de mal dizer

Yan Liu (History of Science, 2015): Toxic Cures: Poisons and Medicines in Medieval China

Christopher Livanos (Comparative Literature, 2001): Greek and Latin traditions in the work of George Gennadios Scholarios

Sally Livingston (Comparative Literature, 2008): Owning property, being property: Medieval and modern women shape the narratives of marriage

Diana Luft (Celtic, 2004): Medieval Welsh translation: The case of Ymddiddan Selyf a Marcwlff

Bernard Lumpkin (Comparative Literature, 1999): The Making of a Medieval Outlaw: Code and Community in the Robin Hood Legend

Amanda Luyster (History of Art, 2003): Courtly Images Far From Court: The Family Saint-Floret, Representation, and Romance

Evan MacCarthy (Music, 2010): Music and Learning in Early Renaissance Ferrara, c. 1430-1470

Patricia Malone (Celtic, 2009): "Entirely Outside the World": Rhetoric, Legitimacy, and Identity in the Biography of Gruffudd ap Cynan

† Laurance Maney (Celtic, 1999): High-Kings and Holy Men: Hiberno-Latin Hagiography and the Uí Néill Kingship, ca. 650-750

Craig Martin (History of Science, 2002): Interpretation and Utility: The Renaissance Commentary Tradition on Aristotle's Meteorologica IV

Fay Martineau (Divinity, 2006): Envisioning Heaven with Faith, Imagination, and Historical relevance: Selected Writings from Early and Medieval Christianity

Zachary Matus (Religion, 2010): Heaven in a Bottle: Franciscan Apocalypticism and the Elixir, 1250-1360

Maria Mavroudi (Byzantine Studies, 1998): The so-called Oneirocriticon of Achmet: A Byzantine Book on Dream Interpretation and its Arabic Sources

Anne McClanan (History of Art, 1998): Empress, Image, State: Imperial Women in the Early Medieval World

Nancy McKinley (English, 1991): Poetry vs. Paraphrase: The Artistry of Genesis A

James McMenamin (Romance Languages, 2008): The Sequence "Beginning-Middle-End," Dante and Petrarch

Joseph McMullen (Celtic Languages and English, 2015): Echoes of Early Irish Influence in Anglo-Saxon Literary Landscapes

Lawrence Morris (Comparative Literature, 2002): Veritas and literary fiction in the hagiography of the pre-Norman British Isles

Paula Molloy (Anthropology, 1993): Cod , commerce, and climate: A case study from late medieval/early modern Iceland

Alexander More (History, 2014): At the Origins of Welfare Policy: Law and the Economy in the Pre-Modern Mediterranean (AD 1150-1350)

Elizabeth Mozzillo-Howell (Romance Languages, 1998): Dante 's Art of Reason: A Study of Medieval Logic and Semantics in the Monarchy

Aisha Musa (NELC, 2004): A Study of Early and Contemporary Muslim Attitudes toward Hadīth as Scripture with Translation of al-Shāfi ʹ ī's Kitāb Jimāʹ al-ʹIlm

Emire Muslu (Middle Eastern Studies, 2007): Ottoman -Mamluk Relations: Diplomacy and perceptions

Erez Naaman (NELC, 2009): Literature and literary people at the court of Al-Ṣāḥib Ibn 'Abbād

Alexander Nagel (History of Art, 1993): Michelangelo , Raphael and the altarpiece tradition

Rae Ann Nager (Comparative Literature, 1990): The Poetria nova as a Poetics: Geoffrey of Vinsauf's Lex sit danda poetis

Nevra Necipoglu (History, 1990): Byzantium Between the Ottomans and the Latins: A Study of Political Attitudes in the Late Palaiologan Period, 1370-1460

Leonard Neidorf (English, 2014): The Origins of Beowulf: Studies in Textual Criticism and Literary History

Ingrid Nelson (English, 2010): The Lyric in England, 1200-1400

Mark Nevins (English, 1993): The Literature of Curiosity: Geographical and Exploration Writings in Early Northern Europe

Lena Norrman (Germanic Languages, 2006): Women's Voices, Power, and Performance in Viking Age Scandinavia

Barnaby Nygren (History of Art, 1999): The Monumental Saint's Tomb in Italy, 1260-1520

Joshua O'Driscoll (History of Art, 2015): Image and Inscription in the Painterly Manuscripts from Ottonian Cologne

Lisi Oliver (Linguistics, 1995): The language of the early English laws

Katharine Olson (Celtic, 2008): Fire from heaven: Popular religion and society in Wales, c. 1400--1603

Julie Orlemanski (English, 2010): Symptomatic subjects: Diagnosis, narrative, and embodiment in Middle English literature

Ada Palmer (History, 2009): Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance

Cameron Partridge (Divinity, 2008): Transfiguring sexual difference in Maximus the Confessor

Stephen Partridge (English, 1992): Glosses in the manuscripts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales : An edition and commentary

Gregory Pass (History, 1996): Source studies in the early secular lordship of the bishops of Mende

Jennifer Paxton (History, 1999): Charter and chronicle in twelfth-century England: The house-histories of the Fenland abbeys

Bissera Pentcheva (History of Art, 2001): Images and icons of the virgin and their public in middle Byzantine Constantinople

Kristin Peterson (History of Science, 1993): Translatio libri Avicennae De viribus cordis et medicinis cordialibus Arnaldi de Villanova

Susan Phillips (English, 1999): Gossip's work: the problems and pleasures of not-so-idle talk in late medieval England

Simone Pinet (Romance Languages, 2002): Archipelagoes: insularity and fiction in medieval and early modern Spain

Prydwyn Piper (Celtic, 2001): Mabinogi Iessu Grist : An edition and study of the Middle Welsh translations of the apocryphal Latin Pseudo-Matthaei evangelium

Amy Powell (History of Art, 2004): Repeated forms: Rogier van der Weyden's Descent from the Cross and its "copies"

Francisco Prado-Vilar (History of Art, 2002): In the shadow of the Gothic idol: The Cantigas de Santa Maria and the imagery of love and conversion

Debra Prager (Germanic Languages, 2003): Orienting the self: Encounters with the Eastern other in German narrative fiction

Jennifer Pruitt (History of Art, 2009): Fatimid architectural patronage and changing sectarian identities (969-1021)

Ghada Qaddumi (NELC, 1990): A medieval Islamic book of gifts and treasures: Translation, annotation, and commentary on the Kitāb al-Hadāyā wa al-tuḥaf

Tahera Qutbuddin (NELC, 1999): Al-Mua̓yyad fī al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī: Founder of a new tradition of Fatimid Dawa poetry

Lynn Ramey (Romance Languages, 1997): Christians and Saracens: Imagination and cultural interaction in the French Middle Ages

Emmanuel Ramírez-Nieves (Comparative Literature, 2015): Repenting Roguery: Penance in the Spanish Picaresque Novel and the Arabic and Hebrew Maqama

Chase Robinson (History, 1992): The early Islamic history of Mosul

James Robinson (NELC, 2002): Samuel Ibn Tibbon's Commentary on Ecclesiastes

Nicolas Rofougaran (History of Science, 2000): Avicenna and Aquinas on individualism

Maria Roglieri (Romance Languages, 1994): "Uror, et in uaco pectore regnat amor": The influence of Ovid's amatory works on Dante's Vita nuova and Commedia

Panagiotis Roilos (Classics, 1999): Generic modulations in the medieval Greek learned novels

Maria Romagnoli (Romance Languages, 1996): Andreas Capellanus: Issues of identity, reception and audience

John Romano (History, 2007): Ritual and society in early medieval Rome

Elizabeth Ross (History of Art, 2004): Picturing knowledge and experience in the early printed book: Reuwich's illustrations for Breydenbach's Pereginatio in terram sanctam (1486)

Gidon Rothstein (NELC, 2003): Writing Midrash Avot: The Change That Three Fifteenth Century Exegetes Introduced to Avot Interpretation, Its Impact and Origins

Leyla Rouhi (Romance Languages, 1995): A Comparative Typology of the Medieval Go-Between in Light of Western-European, Near-Eastern, and Spanish Cases

Steven Rozenski (English, 2012): Henry Suso and Richard Rolle: Devotional Mobility and Translation in Late-Medieval England and Germany

Elisha Russ-Fishbane (NELC, 2009): Between Politics and Piety: Abraham Maimonides and his Times

Stephen Ryan (NELC, 2001): Studies in Bar Salibi's Commentary on the Psalms

Claire Sahlin (Religion, 1996): Birgitta of Sweden and the Voice of Prophecy: A Study of Gender and Religious Authority in the Later Middle Ages

Elizabeth Scala (English, 1994): Absent Narratives: Medieval Literature and Textual Repression

Rebecca Schoff (English, 2004): Freedom from the Press: Reading and Writing in Late Medieval England

Iklil Selcuk (Middle Eastern Studies, 2009): State and Society in the Marketplace: A Study of Late Fifteenth-Century Bursa

Mark Sendor (NELC, 1994): The Emergence of the Provençal Kabbalah: Rabbi Isaac the Blind's Commentary on Sefer Yeẓirah

Daniel Sheffield (NELC, 2012): In the Path of the Prophet: Medieval and Early Modern Narratives of the Life of Zarathustra in Islamic Iran and Western India

Maryann Shenoda (History, 2010): Lamenting Islam, Imagining Persecution: Copto-Arabic Opposition to Islamization and Arabization in Fatimid Egypt (969-1171 CE)

James Skedros (Divinity, 1996): St. Demetrios of Thessaloniki: Civic Patron and Divine Protector (4th-7th c. CE)

Ewa Slojka (Comparative Literature, 2006): The Pious Knight: Crusading Ideals, Purgatory, and Grail Romances

Rachel Smith (Religion, 2012): Exemplarity and its Limits in the Hagiographical Corpus of Thomas of Cantimpré

Laura Smoller (History, 1991): History, prophecy, and the stars: The Christian astrology of Pierre d'Ailly, 1350-1420

Theoharis Stavrides (History, 1996): The Ottoman Grand Vezir Mahmud Pasha Angelovic (1453-1474)

Daniel Stein Kokin (History, 2006): The Hebrew question in the Italian Renaissance: Linguistic, cultural, and mystical perspectives

Gregg Stern (Religion, 1995): Menahem Ha-Meiri and the second controversy over philosophy

Kristen Stilt (Middle Eastern Studies, 2004): The Muḥtasib, Law, and Society in Early Mamluk Cairo and Fustat (648-802/1250-1400)

David Strain (English, 1992): Occasional poetics: The politics and poetics of fiction in Chaucer's House of Fame , Parliament of Fowls , and Legend of Good Women

Anne Stone (Music, 1994): Writing rhythm in late medieval Italy: Notation and musical style in the manuscript Modena, Biblioteca estense, Alpha.M.5.24

Justin Stover (Classics, 2011): Reading Plato in the twelfth century: A study on the varieties of Plato's reception in the Latin west before 1215

Carol Symes (History, 1999): The makings of a medieval stage: Theatre and the culture of performance in thirteenth-century Arras

Emily Tai (History, 1996): Honor among Thieves: Piracy, Restitution, and Reprisal in Genoa, Venice, and the crown of Catalonia-Aragon, 1339-1417

Adena Tanenbaum (NELC, 1993): Poetry and Philosophy: The Idea of the Soul in Andalusian Piyyut

Nathaniel Taylor (History, 1995): The Will and Society in Medieval Catalonia and Languedoc, 800-1200

Anne Thayer (Religion, 1996): Penitence and Preaching on the Eve of the Reformation: A Comparative Overview from Frequently Printed Model Sermon Collections, 1450-1520

Lucille Thibodeau (Comparative Literature, 1990): The Relation of Peter Abelard's Planctus Dinae to Biblical Sources and Exegetic Tradition: A Historical and Textual Study

Jane Tolmie (English, 2001): Persuasion: Blood-feud, Romance and the Disenfranchised

Timothy Tomasik (Romance Languages, 2003): Textual Tastes: The Invention of Culinary Literature in Early Modern France

Deborah Tor (Middle Eastern Studies, 2002): From holy warriors to chivalric order: The Ayyars in the eastern Islamic world, A.D. 800-1055

Nicolette Trahoulia (History of Art, 1997): The Venice Alexander romance, Hellenic Institute codex Gr. 5: A study of Alexander the Great as an imperial paradigm in Byzantine art and literature

Nicolas Trépanier (History, 2008): Food as a window into daily life in fourteenth century Central Anatolia

Elly Truitt (History of Science, 2007): From magic to mechanism: Medieval automata, 1100—1550

Ece Turnator (History, 2013): Turning the Economic Tables in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Latin Crusader Empire and the Transformation of the Byzantine Economy, ca. 1100-1400

Raquel Ukeles (Religion, 2006): Innovation or Deviation: Exploring the Boundaries of Islamic Devotional Law

Phillip Usher (Romance Languages, 2004): The Holy Lands in Early Modern Literature: Negotiations of Christian Geography and Textual Space

Claire Valente (History, 1997): Generations of Revolt: Reform, Rebellion, and Political Society in Later Medieval England, 1258-1415

Bruce Venarde (History, 1992): Women, Monasticism, and Social Change: The Foundation of Nunneries in Western Europe, c. 890-c. 1215

Paolo de Ventura (Romance Languages, 2003): Dramma e Dialogo nella Commedia di Dante

Marco Antonio Viniegra (History of Science, 2013): Neoclassical Medicine: Transformations in the Hippocratic Medical Tradition from Galen to the Articella

Nargis Virani (NELC, 1999): "I am the nightingale of the merciful": Macaronic or Upside-down? The mulammaʻāt of Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī

Alicia Walker (History of Art, 2004): Exotic Elements in Middle Byzantine Secular Art and Aesthetics, 843-1204 C.E.

Laura Wang (English, 2014): Natural Law and the Law of Nature in Early British Beast Literature

Jeffrey Webb (History, 2009): Cathedrals of Words: Bishops and the Deeds of their Predecessors in Lotharingia, 950-1100

Jessica Weiss (Comparative Literature, 2003): Herbert of Bosham's Liber melorum : Literature and Sacred Sciences in the Twelfth Century

Amanda Wesner (Music, 1992): The Chansons of Loyset Compère: Authenticity and Stylistic Development

Dan Wiley (Celtic, 2000): An Edition of Aided Diarmata meic Cerbaill from the Book of Uí Maine

Ryan Wilkinson (History, 2015): The Last Horizons of Roman Gaul: Communication, Community, and Power at the End of Antiquity

Emily Wood (History, 2009): The Execution of Papal Justice in Northern France, 1145-1198

Jeffrey Woolf (NELC, 1991): The Life and Responsa of Rabbi Joseph Colon b. Solomon Trabotto (Maharik)

Annelies Wouters (Classics, 2003): The Meaning of Formal Structure in Peter Abelard's Collationes

Lisa Wurtele (née Karp) (NELC, 1992): Sahl b. Hârǔn: The man and his contribution to 'adab

Suzan Yalman (History of Art, 2011): Building the Sultanate of Rum: Memory, urbanism and mysticism in the architectural patronage of 'Ala al-Din Kayqubad (r. 1220-1237)

Hikmet Yaman (NELC, 2008): The Concept of Hikmah in Early Islamic Thought

Julian Yolles (Classics, 2015): Latin Literature and Frankish Culture in the Crusader States (1098-1187)

Anna Zayaruznaya (Music, 2010): Form and Idea in the Ars Nova Motet

Sarah Zeiser (Celtic Languages, 2012): Latinity, Manuscripts, and the Rhetoric of Conquest in Late-Eleventh-Century Wales

Dissertations by Ph.D. - Granting Department

Anthropology

Paula Molloy (1993): Cod , commerce, and climate: A case study from late medieval/early modern Iceland

Committee on Byzantine Studies

Maria Mavroudi (1998): The so-called Oneirocriticon of Achmet: A Byzantine book on dream interpretation and its Arabic sources

Celtic Languages and Literatures

Paul Jefferiss (1991): Literary theory and criticism in medieval Ireland

Kaarina Hollo (1992): A critical edition of Fled Bricrenn ocus loinges mac nDuíl Dermait

Brian Frykenberg (1994): Poetry of Suibne Geilt and St. Mo-Ling from Brussels Bibliothèque Royale MS. 5100-04

Anne Lea (1995): Contextualizing the Gorhoffeddau : A study in the intellectual background of two medieval Welsh poems

Katherine Forsyth (1996): The Ogham inscriptions of Scotland: An edited corpus

Barbara Hillers (1997): The medieval Irish Odyssey Merugud Uilixis meic Leirtis

Nancy Breen (1999): Towards an edition of Di astud chirt ⁊ dligid

Kathryn Chadbourne (1999): The otherworld procession in Irish and Welsh literature and folklore

Heather Larson (1999): The women's voice in Gaelic poetry

† Laurance Maney (1999): High-kings and holy men: Hiberno-Latin hagiography and the Uí Néill kingship, ca. 650-750

Dan Wiley (2000): An edition of Aided Diarmata meic Cerbaill from the Book of Uí Maine

Prydwyn Piper (2001): Mabinogi Iessu Grist : An edition and study of the Middle Welsh translations of the apocryphal Latin Pseudo-Matthaei evangelium

Diana Luft (2004): Medieval Welsh translation: the case of Ymddiddan Selyf a Marcwlff

Benjamin Bruch (2005): Du gveras a.b.c/An pen can hanna yv d : Cornish verse forms and the evolution of Cornish prosody, c. 1350-1611

Hugh Fogarty (2005): A critical edition of the Middle Irish saga Aided Guill meic Carbada ocus Aided Gairb Glinni Rígi

Charlene Eska (née Shipman) (2006): An edition of Cáin Lánamna : an Old Irish tract on marriage and divorce law

Bettina Kimpton (2006): An edition of Brislech mór maige murthemni

Kathryn Izzo (2007): The Old Irish hymns of the Liber Hymnorum : A study of vernacular hymnody in medieval Ireland

Katharine Olson (2008): Fire from heaven: Popular religion and society in Wales, c. 1400-1603

Patricia Malone (2009): "Entirely outside the world": Rhetoric, legitimacy, and identity in the biography of Gruffudd ap Cynan

Christina Chance (2010): Imagining empire: Maxen Wledic, Arthur, and Charlemagne in Welsh literature after the Edwardian conquest

Matthieu Boyd (2011): The source of enchantment: The Marvels of Rigomer ( Les Mervelles de Rigomer ) and the evolution of Celtic influence on medieval francophone storytelling

Aled Jones (2011): Ol wrth ol attor ar eu hennyd: Political Prophecy in the Earliest Welsh Manuscripts, c. 1250-c. 1540

Jennifer Knight (2011): Self and society in early Irish literature

Panagiotis Agapitos (1990): Narrative structure in the Byzantine vernacular romances: A textual and literary study of Kallimachos , Belthandros and Libistros

Sophia Georgiopoulou (1990): Theodore II Dukas Laskaris (1222-1258) as an author and an intellectual of the XIIIth century

Marc Laureys (1992): An edition and study of Giovanni Cavallini's Polistoria de virtutibus et dotibus Romanorum

Panagiotis Roilos (1999): Generic modulations in the medieval Greek learned novels

Bridget Balint (2002): Hildebert of Lavardin's "Liber de querimonia" in its cultural context

Annelies Wouters (2003): The meaning of formal structure in Peter Abelard's Collationes

Emmanuel Bourbouhakis (2006): "Not composed in a chance manner": The epitaphios for Manuel I Komnenos by Eustathius of Thessalonike: text, translation, commentary

Justin Lake (2008): Rhetorical and narrative studies on the Historiae of Richer of Saint-Remi

Sarah Insley (2011): Constructing a sacred center: Constantinople as a holy city in early Byzantine literature

Justin Stover (2011): Reading Plato in the twelfth century: A study on the varieties of Plato's reception in the Latin west before 1215

Comparative Literature

Rae Ann Nager (1990): The Poetria nova as a poetics: Geoffrey of Vinsauf's Lex sit danda poetis

Lucille Thibodeau (1990): The relation of Peter Abelard's Planctus Dinae to biblical sources and exegetic tradition: A historical and textual study

Leslie Dunton-Downer (1992): The obscene poetic self in Rutebeuf and Chaucer

Sheryl Forste-Gruppe (1996): Signifying acts: Writing in the Middle English romances

Fatemeh Azinfar (1999): Doubt , dissent and skepticism in the literary tradition of the medieval period

Bernard Lumpkin (1999): The making of a medieval outlaw: Code and community in the Robin Hood legend

Christopher Livanos (2001): Greek and Latin traditions in the work of George Gennadios Scholarios

Lawrence Morris (2002): Veritas and literary fiction in the hagiography of the pre-Norman British Isles

Jessica Weiss (2003): Herbert of Bosham's Liber melorum : Literature and sacred sciences in the twelfth century

Henry Bayerle (2004): Speakers in the Latin historical epics of twelfth-century Italy

Ewa Slojka (2006): The pious knight: Crusading ideals, purgatory, and grail romances

Sally Livingston (2008): Owning property, being property: Medieval and modern women shape the narratives of marriage

Divinity School

James Skedros (1996): St. Demetrios of Thessaloniki: Civic patron and divine protector (4th-7th c. CE)

Fay Martineau (2006): Envisioning heaven with faith, imagination, and historical relevance: Selected writings from early and medieval Christianity

Cameron Partridge (2008): Transfiguring sexual difference in Maximus the Confessor

English Language and Literature

Feng Xiang (1990): Chaucer and the Romaunt of the Rose : A new study in authorship

Susan Deskis (1991): Proverbial backgrounds to the sententiae of Beowulf

Jeffrey Gross (1991): "Such stuff as dreams are made on": The poetics of narrative voice in Chaucer's Book of the Duchess

Nancy McKinley (1991): Poetry vs. paraphrase: The artistry of Genesis A

William Bennett (1992): Interrupting the word: Mankind and the politics of the vernacular

Jeffrey Cohen (1992): The tradition of the giant in early England: A study of the monstrous in folklore, theology, history and literature

Elizabeth Fowler (1992): The contingencies of person: Studies in the poetic and legal conceits of early modern England

Stephen Partridge (1992): Glosses in the manuscripts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales : An edition and commentary

David Strain (1992): Occasional poetics: The politics and poetics of fiction in Chaucer's House of Fame , Parliament of Fowls , and Legend of Good Women

Christopher Cannon (1993): The making of Chaucer's English: A study in the formation of a literary language

Mark Nevins (1993): The literature of curiosity: Geographical and exploration writings in early northern Europe

Elizabeth Scala (1994): Absent narratives: Medieval literature and textual repression

Lianna Farber (1998): Legitimacy in late medieval England

Susan Phillips (1999): Gossip's work: The problems and pleasures of not-so-idle talk in late medieval England

Margaret Kim (2000): Visions of theocratics: The discourse of politics and the primacy of religion in Piers Plowman

Jane Tolmie (2001): Persuasion: Blood-feud, romance and the disenfranchised

Katharine Horsley (2004): Poetic visions of London civic ceremony, 1360-1440

Rebecca Schoff (2004): Freedom from the press: Reading and writing in late medieval England

Jason Crawford (2008): Personification and its discontents: Studies from Langland to Bunyan

Julie Orlemanski (2010): Symptomatic subjects: Diagnosis, narrative, and embodiment in Middle English literature

Ingrid Nelson (2010): The lyric in England, 1200-1400

Margaret Healy-Varley (2011): Anselm's fictions and the literary afterlife of the Proslogion

Germanic Languages and Literatures

William Carroll (1995): Latin education and secular German literature: An analysis of Latin grammar instruction and its influence on middle high German poets

William Layher (1999): Queen Eufemia's legacy: Middle low German literary culture, royal patronage, and the first old Swedish epic (1301)

Debra Prager (2003): Orienting the self: Encounters with the Eastern other in German narrative fiction

Lena Norrman (2006): Women's voices, power, and performance in Viking Age Scandinavia

Nevra Necipoglu (1990): Byzantium between the Ottomans and the Latins: A study of political attitudes in the late Palaiologan period, 1370-1460

Laura Smoller (1991): History, prophecy, and the stars: The Christian astrology of Pierre d'Ailly, 1350-1420

Josiah Blackmore (1992): Fernão Lopes and the writing of history in the Crónica de D. João I

Nadia El Cheikh (1992): Byzantium viewed by the Arabs

David Keck (1992): The angelology of Saint Bonaventure and the harvest of medieval angelology

Chase Robinson (1992): The early Islamic history of Mosul

Bruce Venarde (1992): Women, monasticism, and social change: The foundation of nunneries in Western Europe, c. 890-c. 1215

Craig Kennedy (1994): The Juchids of Muscovy: A study of personal ties between émigré Tatar dynasts and the Muscovite grand princes in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries

Nathaniel Taylor (1995): The will and society in medieval Catalonia and Languedoc, 800-1200

Philip Daileader (1996): The medieval community of Perpignan, 1162-1397

† Elka Klein (1996): Power and patrimony: The Jewish community of Barcelona, 1050-1250

Adam Kosto (1996): Making and keeping agreements in medieval Catalonia, 1000-1200

Gregory Pass (1996): Source studies in the early secular lordship of the bishops of Mende

Theoharis Stavrides (1996): The Ottoman Grand Vezir Mahmud Pasha Angelovic (1453-1474)

Emily Tai (1996): Honor among thieves: Piracy, restitution, and reprisal in Genoa, Venice, and the crown of Catalonia-Aragon, 1339-1417

Robert Berkhofer (1997): Monastic patrimony, management and accountability in Northern France, ca. 1000-1200

Demetrios Kyritses (1997): The Byzantine aristocracy in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries

Claire Valente (1997): Generations of revolt: Reform, rebellion, and political society in later medieval England, 1258-1415

Alan Cooper (1998): Obligation and jurisdiction: Roads and bridges in medieval England (c. 700-1300)

Elizabeth Haluska-Rausch (1998): Family, property, and power: Women in medieval Montpellier, 985-1213

Jennifer Paxton (1999): Charter and chronicle in twelfth-century England: The house-histories of the Fenland abbeys

Carol Symes (1999): The makings of a medieval stage: Theatre and the culture of performance in thirteenth-century Arras

Anthony D'Elia (2000): In praise of matrimony: Italian renaissance humanists on marriage and sexual pleasure

Dimiter Angelov (2002): Imperial ideology and political thought in Byzantium, 1204-ca. 1330

Samantha Herrick (2002): Imagining the sacred past in hagiography of early Normandy: The Vita Taurini , Vita Vigoris and Passio Nicasii

Jonathan Conant (2004): Staying Roman: Vandals, Moors, and Byzantines in late antique North Africa, 400-700

Zayde Antrim (2005): Place and belonging in medieval Syria, 6th/12th to 8th/14th centuries

Daniel Stein Kokin (2006): The Hebrew question in the Italian Renaissance: Linguistic, cultural, and mystical perspectives

Janna Bianchini (née Wasilewski) (2007): Regina : The life of Berenguela of Castile, 1180--1246

Jennifer Davis (2007): Patterns of power: Charlemagne and the invention of medieval rulership

Justine Firnhaber-Baker (2007): Guerram publice et palem faciendo : Local war and royal authority in late medieval southern France

Kyle Harper (2007): Slavery in the late ancient Mediterranean

John Romano (2007): Ritual and society in early medieval Rome

Koray Durak (2008): Commerce and networks of exchange between the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic Near East from the early ninth century to the arrival of the Crusaders

John Gagné (2008): French Milan: Citizens, occupiers, and the Italian Wars, 1499-1529

Rachel Goshgarian (2008): Beyond the social and the spiritual: Redefining the urban confraternities of late medieval Anatolia

Patrick Baker (2009): Illustrious men: Italian renaissance humanists on humanism

Erik Heinrichs (2009): The plague cure: Physicians, clerics and the reform of healing in Germany, 1473--1650

Ada Palmer (2009): Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance

Jeffrey Webb (2009): Cathedrals of words: Bishops and the deeds of their predecessors in Lotharingia, 950-1100

Emily Wood (2009): The execution of papal justice in northern France, 1145-1198

Maryann Shenoda (2010): Lamenting Islam, imagining persecution: Copto-Arabic opposition to islamization and arabization in Fatimid Egypt (969-1171 CE)

Kelly Gibson (2011): Rewriting history: Carolingian reform and controversy in biographies of saints

History of Art and Architecture

John Hutton (1992): Rural buildings in Netherlandish painting, ca. 1420-1570

Nuha Khoury (1992): The mihrab concept: Palatial themes in early Islamic religious architecture

Megan Holmes (1993): Frate Filippo Di Tommaso Dipintore : Fra Filippo Lippi and Florentine Renaissance religious practices

Alexander Nagel (1993): Michelangelo , Raphael and the altarpiece tradition

Geraldine Johnson (1994): In the eye of the beholder: Donatello's sculpture in the life of Renaissance Italy

Nicolette Trahoulia (1997): The Venice Alexander romance, Hellenic Institute codex Gr. 5: A study of Alexander the Great as an imperial paradigm in Byzantine art and literature

Anne McClanan (1998): Empress, image, state: Imperial women in the early medieval world

Lars Jones (1999): Visio divina, exegesis, and beholder-image relationships in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Indications from donor figure representations

Barnaby Nygren (1999): The monumental saint's tomb in Italy, 1260-1520

Bissera Pentcheva (2001): Images and icons of the Virgin and their public in middle Byzantine Constantinople

Cynthia Hall (2002): Treasury book of the passion: Word and image in the Schatzbehalter

Francisco Prado-Vilar (2002): In the shadow of the Gothic idol: The Cantigas de Santa Maria and the imagery of love and conversion

Persis Berlekamp (2003): Wonders and their images in late medieval Islamic culture: "The Wonders of Creation" in Fars and Iraq, 1280-1388

David Drogin (2003): Representations of Bentivoglio authority: Fifteenth-century painting and sculpture in the Bentivoglio Chapel, San Giacomo Maggiore, Bologna

Amanda Luyster (2003): Courtly images far from court: The family Saint-Floret, representation, and romance

Amy Powell (2004): Repeated forms: Rogier van der Weyden's Descent from the Cross and its "copies"

Elizabeth Ross (2004): Picturing knowledge and experience in the early printed book: Reuwich's illustrations for Breydenbach's Pereginatio in terram sanctam (1486)

Alicia Walker (2004): Exotic elements in middle Byzantine secular art and aesthetics, 843-1204 C.E.

Diliana Angelova (2005): Gender and imperial authority in Rome and early Byzantium, first to sixth centuries

Jenny Ataoguz (2007): The apostolic commissioning of the monks of Saint John in Müestair, Switzerland: Painting and preaching in a Churraetian Monastery

Danielle Joyner (2007): A timely history: Images and texts in the Hortus Deliciarum

Aden Kumler (2007): Visual translation, visible theology: Illuminated compendia of spiritual instruction in late medieval France and England

Jennifer Pruitt (2009): Fatimid architectural patronage and changing sectarian identities (969-1021)

Shirin Fozi (2010): The body recast and revived: Figural tomb sculpture in the Holy Roman Empire, 1080--1160

Ivan Drpić (2011): Kosmos of verse: Epigram, art, and devotion in later Byzantium

Seth Hindin (2011): History and ethnic commitment in the visual culture of medieval Bohemia, ca. 1200-ca. 1420

Suzan Yalman (2011): Building the Sultanate of Rum: Memory, urbanism and mysticism in the architectural patronage of 'Ala al-Din Kayqubad (r. 1220-1237)

History of Science

Alnoor Dhanani (1991): Kalām and Hellenistic cosmology: Minimal parts in Basrian Muʻtazilī atomism

Elaheh Kheirandish (1991): The medieval Arabic tradition of Euclid's Optika

Kristin Peterson (1993): Translatio libri Avicennae De viribus cordis et medicinis cordialibus Arnaldi de Villanova

Nicolas Rofougaran (2000): Avicenna and Aquinas on individualism

Craig Martin (2002): Interpretation and utility: The renaissance commentary tradition on Aristotle's Meteorologica IV

Elly Truitt (2007): From magic to mechanism: Medieval automata, 1100--1550

Linguistics

John Harkness (1991): An approach to the metrical behavior of Old English verbs

Lisi Oliver (1995): The language of the early English laws

Committee on Middle Eastern Studies

Leor Halevi (2002): Muhammad 's grave: Death, ritual and society in the early Islamic world

Deborah Tor (2002): From holy warriors to chivalric order: The Ayyars in the eastern Islamic world, A.D. 800-1055

Kristen Stilt (2004): The muḥtasib, law, and society in early Mamluk Cairo and Fustat (648-802/1250-1400)

Dimitris Kastritsis (2005): The Ottoman interregnum (1402-1413): Politics and narratives of dynastic succession

Emire Muslu (2007): Ottoman -Mamluk relations: Diplomacy and perceptions

Nicolas Trépanier (2008): Food as a window into daily life in fourteenth century Central Anatolia

Ahmed El Shamsy (2009): From tradition to law: The origins and early development of the Shāfi‘ī School of Law in ninth-century Egypt

Timothy Fitzgerald (2009): Ottoman methods of conquest: Legal imperialism and the city of Aleppo, 1480-1570

Iklil Selcuk (2009): State and society in the marketplace: A study of late fifteenth-century Bursa

Amanda Wesner (1992): The chansons of Loyset Compère: Authenticity and stylistic development

Anne Stone (1994): Writing rhythm in late medieval Italy: Notation and musical style in the manuscript Modena, Biblioteca estense, Alpha.M.5.24

Thomas Kozachek (1995): The repertory of chant for dedicating churches in the Middle Ages: Music, liturgy, and ritual

Noël Bisson (1998): English polyphony for the Virgin Mary: The votive antiphon, 1430-1500

Michael Cuthbert (2006): Trecento fragments and polyphony beyond the codex

Christina Linklater (2006): Popularity, presentation and the Chansonnier Saint-Germain-des-Prés

Evan MacCarthy (2010): Music and learning in early Renaissance Ferrara, c. 1430-1470

Anna Zayaruznaya (2010): Form and idea in the Ars Nova motet

Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Barbara Croken (1990): Zabîd under the Rasulids of Yemen, 626-858 AH/ 1229-1454 AD

Ghada Qaddumi (1990): A medieval Islamic book of gifts and treasures: Translation, annotation, and commentary on the Kitāb al-Hadāyā wa al-tuḥaf

Pauline Eskenasy (1991): Antony of Tagrit's Rhetoric book one: Introduction, partial translation, and commentary

Jeffrey Woolf (1991): The life and responsa of Rabbi Joseph Colon b. Solomon Trabotto (Maharik)

Lisa Wurtele (née Karp) (1992): Sahl b. Hârǔn: The man and his contribution to 'adab

Daphna Ephrat (1993): The Sunni ʻulama ʾ of eleventh-century Baghdad and the transmission of knowledge: A social history

Eric Lawee (1993): "Inheritance of the fathers": Aspects of Isaac Abarbanel's stance towards tradition

Adena Tanenbaum (1993): Poetry and philosophy: The idea of the soul in Andalusian Piyyut

Michael Cooperson (1994): The heirs of the prophets in classical Arabic biography

Mark Sendor (1994): The emergence of the Provençal kabbalah: Rabbi Isaac the Blind's Commentary on Sefer Yeẓirah

Tahera Qutbuddin (1999): Al-Mua̓yyad fī al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī: Founder of a new tradition of Fatimid Dawa poetry

Nargis Virani (1999): "I am the nightingale of the merciful": Macaronic or upside-down? The mulammaʻāt of Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī

Angela Jaffray (2000): At the threshold of philosophy: A study of al-Fārābī's introductory works on logic

Stephen Ryan (2001): Studies in Bar Salibi's commentary on the Psalms

Rahim Acar (2002): Creation: A comparative study between Avicenna's and Aquinas' positions

James Robinson (2002): Samuel Ibn Tibbon's Commentary on Ecclesiastes

Bruce Fudge (2003): The major Qurʼān commentary of al-Ṭabrisī (d. 548/1154)

Gidon Rothstein (2003): Writing Midrash Avot: The change that three fifteenth century exegetes introduced to Avotinterpretation, its impact and origins

Aisha Musa (2004): A study of early and contemporary Muslim attitudes toward Hadīth as scripture with translation of al-Shāfi ʹ ī's Kitāb Jimāʹ al-ʹIlm

Ahmad Ahmad (2005): Structural interrelations of theory and practice in Islamic law: A study of Takhrīj al-Furūʻ ʻalá al-Uṣūl literature

Sinān Antūn (2006): The poetics of the obscene: Ibn al-Ḥajjāj and Sukhf

Hikmet Yaman (2008): The concept of hikmah in early Islamic thought

Yaron Klein (2009): Musical instruments as objects of meaning in classical Arabic poetry and philosophy

Erez Naaman (2009): Literature and literary people at the court of Al-Ṣāḥib Ibn 'Abbās

Elisha Russ-Fishbane (2009): Between politics and piety: Abraham Maimonides and his times

Gabriella Berzin (2010): The Medieval Hebrew version of psychology in Avicenna's Salvation ( Al-Najāt )

Committee on the Study of Religion

Dianne Bazell (1991): Christian diet: A case study using Arnald of Villanova's De esu carnium

Rosemary Hale (1992): Imitatio Mariae : Motherhood motifs in late medieval German spirituality

Gregg Stern (1995): Menahem Ha-Meiri and the second controversy over philosophy

Claire Sahlin (1996): Birgitta of Sweden and the voice of prophecy: A study of gender and religious authority in the later Middle Ages

Anne Thayer (1996): Penitence and preaching on the eve of the Reformation: A comparative overview from frequently printed model sermon collections, 1450-1520

Luis Girón Negrón (1997): Alfonso de la Torre's Visión deleytable : Philosophical rationalism and the religious imagination in fifteenth-century Spain

Lisa Lawrence (2002): The Irish and the incarnation: Images of Christ in the Old Irish poems of Blathmac

Christian Lang (2006): Executing justice in Sunnī Islam: Historical, poetical, eschatological and legal dimensions of punishment under the Saljūqs (1055-1194 CE)

Raquel Ukeles (2006): Innovation or deviation: Exploring the boundaries of Islamic devotional law

Mary Dunn (2008): Sainte-Anne-du-Petit-Cap: The making of an early modern shrine

Zachary Matus (2010): Heaven in a bottle: Franciscan apocalypticism and the elixir, 1250-1360

F. Dominic Longo (2011): Spiritual grammar: A comparative theological study of Jean Gerson's Donatus moralizatus and Abd al Karim al-Qushayri's Nahw al-qulub

Romance Languages and Literatures

Gary Cestaro (1990): The whip and the wet nurse: Dante's De vulgari eloquentia and the psychology of grammar in the Middle Ages

Carol Dover (1990): Nature, nurture and the hero: Narrating identity in the old French prose Lancelot

Roberto Gonzalez-Casanovas (1990): Predicación y narrativa en Ramón Llull: De imagen a semejanza en Blanquerna

William Cole (1991): Romance to tragedy: A comparative study of the Tristan poems of Béroul and Gottfried

Gregory Hutcheson (1993): Marginality and empowerment in Baena's Cancionero

Maria Roglieri (1994): "Uror, et in uaco pectore regnat amor": The influence of Ovid's amatory works on Dante's Vita nuova and Commedia

Mark DeStephano (1995): Feudal relations in the Poema de mío Cid : Comparative perspectives in medieval Spanish and French epic

Leyla Rouhi (1995): A comparative typology of the medieval go-between in light of Western-European, Near-Eastern, and Spanish cases

Kathryn Karczewska (1996): In days of future past: Prophecy and knowledge in the French vulgate grail legends

Benjamin Liu (1996): Equivocal poetics and cultural ambiguity in the Cantigas d'escarnho e de mal dizer

Maria Romagnoli (1996): Andreas Capellanus: Issues of identity, reception and audience

Lynn Ramey (1997): Christians and Saracens: Imagination and cultural interaction in the French Middle Ages

Elizabeth Mozzillo-Howell (1998): Dante 's art of reason: A study of medieval logic and semantics in the Monarchy

Marilina Falzarano (1999): Il volgarizzamento dei seitte salmi penitenziali di Simone Da Cascina

Horacio Chiong Rivero (2002): Maker of masks: Fray Antonio de Guevara's pseudo-historical fictionalizations

Elisabeth Hodges (2002): City views: Writing and the topography of Frenchness and the Renaissance

Simone Pinet (2002): Archipelagoes: Insularity and fiction in medieval and early modern Spain

Irit Kleiman (2003): Traitor, author, text: Four late medieval narratives of betrayal

Timothy Tomasik (2003): Textual tastes: The invention of culinary literature in early modern France

Paolo de Ventura (2003): Dramma e dialogo nella Commedia di Dante

Phillip Usher (2004): The Holy Lands in early modern literature: Negotiations of Christian geography and textual space

Ji-Hyun Kim (2005): For a modern medieval literature: Gaston Paris, courtly love, and the demands of modernity

James McMenamin (2008): The sequence "beginning-middle-end," Dante and Petrarch

Catherine Adoyo (2011): The order of all things: Mimetic craft in Dante's Commedia

Slavic Languages and Literatures

Giorgio DiMauro (2002): The furnace, the crown, and the serpent: Images of Babylon in Muscovite Rus'

• Undergraduate Studies
• Ph.D. Secondary Field in Medieval Studies
• Special Graduate Program in Byzantine Studies
• Graduate Students in Medieval Studies

Medieval History

This strand of our one-year MSt or two-year MPhil in History  is the equivalent of a free-standing Master’s in Medieval History before 1500. 

This strand offers a unique balance of breadth and depth in the study of the medieval history of Britain and Europe.  It can be taken either as a free-standing degree course or as the first step towards doctoral study.  Its emphasis is on historical skills and knowledge; applicants interested in a developing their knowledge of medieval languages or acquiring a greater level of expertise in medieval palaeography and manuscript studies are advised also to consider applying for the separate MSt programme in Medieval Studies or the MSt/MPhil programme in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies , both of which are also proven routes to a doctorate in Medieval History.

Oxford is home to probably the largest community of medieval historians in the world, including scholars whose research interests range from the fourth to the sixteenth century, and from Ireland to Iran.  The resources for study are equally exceptional, including the largest university library collection of medieval manuscripts, college collections of manuscripts and archives, and the fine holdings of the Ashmolean Museum.  Many of these are available digitally .  The MSt is not prescriptive about what topics you choose to study, but instead insists on intellectual rigour and excitement, whatever your choices.  You will also attend seminars given by leading experts, and have the opportunity to meet medievalists from all over the world.

Course Organisation

Alongside the Theory and Methods   course, students spend their first term studying Sources and Historiography .  As well as training you to work with medieval sources in their original format, this course addresses the distinctive interpretive challenges they pose.  It also invites you to reflect on how historians’ approaches to medieval history have changed over the past two generations or so, influencing the questions, techniques and source bases used to study the Middle Ages, and how the study of the Middle Ages is situated with respect to scholars’ own times.  In Trinity Term, students will be asked to make a presentation about their own dissertation, explaining their choice of approach and how it  responds to wider questions within the historiographical landscape.

Skills Provision:

You are expected to take Latin (at beginners, intermediate or advanced level, depending on previous experience) and will be introduced to the study of medieval handwriting, books and documents (Palaeography and Diplomatic).  You will not be formally examined on these skills, but will be helped to take them seriously, and will have plenty of opportunity to practise them.  You will be encouraged to put them to use in an assessed essay and/or your dissertation, and will also have the opportunity to work on original manuscript books and documents from Oxford’s many collections, and elsewhere, if you wish.  In consultation with your supervisor and depending on your choice of topic, instruction in Old English and other medieval languages is available, and also in modern languages such as French, German or Italian.

Typical Options include :

Saints and Sanctity in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages

Saints, alive and dead, played a central role in medieval society. This course examines the emergence of the cult of the saint in late Antiquity, and its remarkable spread over subsequent centuries. Live saints reinforced the Christian message and helped the faithful with the travails of daily life, but also represented a challenge to the authority of the established Church. Dead, their cults and their relics spread through the Christian world, encouraging, in a few notable cases, a steady stream of visitors to their graves.

This course is centred around the rich, diverse, and often beautifully written hagiography of the fourth to ninth centuries, both from the Mediterranean region and from northern Europe. It offers an opportunity to examine, across several centuries, a wide range of themes: the fascination with martyrdom; different types of sanctity (such as those available only to bishops, or to women); the role of the saint within society and within the Church; the emergence of different styles of asceticism and spirituality, from Byzantium to Ireland; how a saint was acclaimed and accepted in a period without formal processes of canonization; the extraordinary power of relics, and the attraction of pilgrimage; the often underhand ‘translation’ of holy bodies; and, finally, even the existence of doubters.

The Twelfth-Century Renaissance

The Twelfth-Century Renaissance is an interdisciplinary paper in intellectual history designed to give students a broad overview of the content and applications of learning in the twelfth century. It therefore covers a wide range of different curricular subjects from the perspective both of their sources (the classical textual tradition of ninth-century learning; the impact of newly translated texts; the consequences of personal contact with Muslim and Jewish scholars in Sicily and the Iberian peninsula; the influence of empirical discovery) and of their application through cathedral schools and royal courts to society at large. The course comprises eight classes, organised around the seven liberal arts (the trivium and the quadrivium) and the three higher faculties of the medieval schools.

The Global Middle Ages

This course is structured around two key questions: what can the study of global history bring to our understanding of the Middle Ages, and what can the study of medieval history bring to the evolving field of global history? Those taking the paper will be able to enhance their understanding of medieval history by thinking more about the history and culture of regions beyond Europe during medieval centuries, about parallels and contrasts between the approaches and evidence bases used by scholars of extra-European and European history in the centuries between 500 and 1500, and about the most productive ways to conceptualise that thousand-year period in global terms.  

Throughout the degree, students work towards a dissertation.  Recent topics have included: 

• Pagans and Christians in late Roman North Africa
• From Roman-Briton to Anglo-Saxon: changing conceptions of fourth- to sixth-century identity
• Marriage and family in Gregory of Tours
• Saxon monastic life and Carolingian politics
• The Apocalypse in eighth and ninth century Iberia
• Virginity and female sanctity in late Anglo-Saxon England
• Lordship and the evidence of charter diplomatic in twelfth-century Normandy
• Jews, blood, Christians, and privies in medieval England
• Gendering the common voice in later medieval England
• Marriage as resolution in Rape Cases
• The translation of saints' relics as political ritual
• The Order of St John and the problem of sovereignty in Outremer
• Images of self and others in medieval Serb, Ragusan and Bosnian sources
• The logic of political conflict in late medieval Tournai
• Images of community and the question of urban estate in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Poznan
• Material culture and the creation of meaning in late medieval wills

Faculty and Research Culture

Oxford’s medieval history community is led by Professor Julia Smith , a specialist in the early medieval west.  There are particular concentrations of expertise in late antique and early medieval history; Byzantine history; medieval political cultures, especially Britain and France; intellectual history; material culture; religious and cultural history; women and gender.  Thinking about the global dimensions of medieval history has been a growing focus of interest in recent years.

Faculty postholders in these fields include:

Late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Medieval political cultures, intellectual history, material culture, religious and cultural history, women and gender, global middle ages.

More information on our academics and their subjects, please search within our people section.

In addition to our own research, graduate students come together with teaching and research staff in research seminars to hear speakers including doctoral students, external and internal to the university.  The weekly Medieval History research seminar is enhanced by a dozen other seminars or workshops in Medieval History and/or Medieval Studies (for example, there are seminars in Medieval Church and Culture, Late Antique and Byzantine Art and Archaeology, Medieval English).  A termly booklet provides a convenient roundup of the many seminars, workshops and conferences within Oxford.

Major research projects further enhance Oxfords research culture, including:

• The Cult of Saints  
• Medieval Libraries of Great Britain  
• Dirhams for Slaves   
• ‘Towards a Global Middle Ages’  

Admissions Questions

We normally take about c.12 MSt students and one or two MPhil students in this area, but numbers vary from year to year and we are able to be flexible.  If you have any questions about our admissions procedure, please check the University admissions pages  and/or contact Graduate Admissions . You can also contact any of the academics in your relevant area of study. You can filter the Academics page  by period, region or specialism. 

Medieval Studies and Research: Home

• Medieval Manuscripts at USC
• Antiphonaries, Breviaries, & Psalters: Connections to Books of Hours & other Liturgical Texts
• Antiphonaries, Breviaries, and Psalters at USC
• Anthologies, Archives, Catalogues, Collections & Digital Projects
• Incunabula at USC - Getting Started
• Incunabula at USC - Listing by Name of Author: A-J
• Incunabula at USC - Listing by Name of Author: K-Z
• Dictionaries and Glossaries: Getting Started
• Getting Started: Databases & Journals
• Getting Started: Associations, Blogs, Handbooks
• Manuscript Studies
• Illuminated Manuscripts - Studies, History
• Manuscripts - Published Catalogs
• Medieval Liturgy and Devotional Texts
• Books of Hours and The Medieval Calendar
• Books of Hours - Resources for Research
• Manuscripts: Art & Techniques
• Medieval Society: Women, Gender, and Family Life
• Medieval World: Economy, History, Law, Politics
• Atlases & Maps
• Teaching & Learning with Manuscripts & Other Rare Materials

Welcome! This Research Guide focuses on Medieval and Manuscript Studies and Research

Medieval studies is an interdisciplinary and multifaceted field which includes the history of Europe from the fall of the Western Roman Empire until the emergence of the Renaissance in northern Europe in the early sixteenth century.

This Research Guide includes information about the Western European medieval world, and it touches upon an array of topics, for example: art, history, law, liturgy, music, philosophy, and many others.

It aims to provide an entry into various resources that the University of Southern California (USC) has to offer in medieval studies, as well as links to relevant databases and sources, including digitized manuscripts here at USC. It also spotlights our collection of incunabula in the USC Libraries Special Collections Department. Updates will be added on a regular basis, so as to reflect evolving research on any topic presented in this Guide.

Be sure to explore our companion project USC Illuminated Medieval Manuscripts now published as a Scalar e-Book : 

https://scalar.usc.edu/works/usc-illuminated-medieval-manuscripts/index  

This work (extensive research and uploading of the various multi-modal materials in this Scalar publication) was started in July 2020, and it will continue to progress thanks to the close collaboration of our Project’s team members and affiliates.

Scalar , from the University of Southern California 's Alliance for Networking Visual Culture, is an open source, authoring and publishing platform designed for media-rich, born-digital scholarship.

Danielle Mihram, Ph.D. University Librarian

Related Research Guides at USC

Ancient Art and Archeology , by Stacy Williams

Digital Humanities , by Danielle Mihram

E-books@USC , by Caroline Muglia

Hoose Library of Philosophy: Collections, History, Art & Architecture, Digital Humanities Projects & Resources , by Melissa Miller

Primary Sources by Michaela Ullmann

Reading Early Printed Books , by Melinda Hayes

Additional Related Research Guides

Fordham University Libraries :  

Medieval Studies , by Jeannie Hoag.

Medieval Book Facsimile and Manuscript Studies by Kevin Vogelaar and Vivian Shen.

Saint Louis University Libraries :

Medieval Trade and Travel , by Debra Cashion.

Medieval Vernacular Literature , by Debra Cashion,

The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens

Incunabula at The Huntington by Stephen Tabor

Duke University Libraries

Teaching Materiality Online with the Rubenstein Library

https://guides.library.duke.edu/materiality

USC Illuminated Medieval Manuscripts Project

Medieval Studies at USC

USC's Center for the Premodern World , opened in Fall 2019, "[...] creates space and offers resources for the study of cultures and civilizations, beginning with the earliest historical eras up to the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern world." 

USC's Early Modern Studies Institute  (ESMI) "supports advanced research and scholarship on human societies between 1450 and 1840. The Institute's range is global."

Interesting faces in the Marginalia

GAULTERUS BURLAEUS (Walter Burley) Incipit libellus De vita et moribus philosophorum et poetarum ,

USC Libraries Call # Z241 1477 .B96

How to Use this Guide

To facilitate both research and study, this guide includes many titles in our USC collections that are available online. However many of these titles are also available in print form. This information may be verified by consulting our online USC Libraries' Catalog.

• If you are an instructor you can direct students to a specific page for a listing of pertinent primary sources and information for their course readings.
• If you are a student you can browse individual pages to learn about existing significant research on a variety of topics, and also identify topics and sources for research projects or presentations.

For tips about Catalog searching, and how to find additional resources, take a look at: USC Libraries Search, Users' Guide , by Christal Young.

Use this recommendation request form to recommend a book, journal, CD, DVD or other resource that is not currently in the USC Libraries collections.

Dr. Melissa Miller, Head, Hoose Library of Philosophy

Ongoing Digital Humanities Scalar Project

Dr. Danielle Mihram & Dr. Melissa Miller's ongoing Digital Humanities Scalar Project:

USC Illuminated Medieval Manuscripts

Our team of grant funded Information Specialists:

• Stephanie Geller
• Kathryn Brunet
• Micaela Rodgers
• Sabino Zonno

Creative Commons License

• Next: Medieval Manuscripts at USC >>
• Last Updated: Jun 27, 2024 2:14 PM
• URL: https://libguides.usc.edu/MedRenMSSandRareMatStudies

Medieval History Research Guide

• Getting Started
• Gathering Background Information
• Finding Primary Sources
• Finding Secondary Sources
• Citing Guides This link opens in a new window
• Writing Guides

European/World History Librarian

Welcome to the Medieval History Research Guide! This guide will help you find primary sources, books, manuscripts, reference materials, databases, journal articles, and internet resources pertinent to your research and study. The tabs listed on the left will guide you to specific resources.

Book of Hours by an unknown miniaturist, Flemish (second half of 15th century in Bruges). Image Source: Wikimedia Commons .

News and Events

Please click on the following links to obtain Information about news and events on our campus. 

• Calendar of Events Find out what events and exhibitions are happening at the Emory Libraries.
• Latest News Here you'll find press releases from the current academic year as well as an archive of releases back to 2009.
• Next: Getting Started >>
• Last Updated: Mar 27, 2024 11:50 AM
• URL: https://guides.libraries.emory.edu/main/medievalhistory

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• Library & Digital
• Collections

Medieval History Collections

Find out more about the extensive Medieval History Collections in the IHR Wohl Library. We collect historical sources, reference works and guides to finding and using sources. This page shows examples from the collections.

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Introduction

The collections on medieval history are one of the strengths of the IHR library. The collections focus on editions of primary sources, alongside complementary aids to study such as reference works, guides and historiography. 

There are sections on medieval history across the library. Collections are both geographically-arranged (for example within the French collection, works on Medieval France are at classmark EF.2) and thematically-arranged (for example Medieval Military history at W.41). The local and regional history sections (e.g., ENL Low Countries, ESR Spain) also contain particularly rich sources on medieval history. Material is collected both in language of origin and translations, and language dictionaries and guides are available. Online resources are included within the relevant sections of this guide and as a separate section at the end. 

For the purposes of this guide, we are using an end date of around 1500 varying from region to region based on political changes and dynasties. There is a complementary guide covering Early modern history [to link here]. This guide is arranged in three sections: Primary sources with subsections on types of source, Selected themes such as Medieval Women and Travel writing and Secondary Works including bibliographies, guides and historiography.  

The collections are complemented by material at Senate House Library and the Warburg Institute Library . For the very early middle ages readers will also find useful material in the  Institute of Classical Studies Library which covers late antiquity. 

Image credit: "a miniature depicting a family by the Seder table with the master of the house placing the basket of unleavened bread on the head of one of his children", from British Library Additional 14761 f. 28v , Spain c. 1340.

Finding within the Library

Collection arrangement.

Collections within the library each have a letter, followed by a numerical sequence (decimal numbers are used, arranged as if after a decimal point, so for example ER.53 comes after ER.504). Each national collection has a sequence of local and regional material following the general sequence. The main areas with medieval sections and the corresponding classmarks are as follows: 

• Austria  (to 1556): EA.291
• Britain and England : General sections with medieval material: B.0 Bibliographies/guides, B.2 Biography, B.3-4 Law and Parliament, B.5 England to 1485, BC English local history 
• Byzantium : EV 
• Crusades : EU 
• France ( to 1483): EF.2
• General history : E.1 Historiography and Methodology, E.2 Reference works, E.41-46 Carolingian and Holy Roman Empire, E.6 Sources and Secondary works Medieval 
• Germany  to 1517: EG.2  
• Italy  to c. 1494: EI.2
• Ireland to 1540: BI.4  
• Jewish history : EY.092 and EY.2 
• Low Countries to 1555 : EN.31-37  
• Mediterranean world : EM 
• Military : W.41 History of Naval and Military operations Ancient and Medieval
• Portugal to 1580: EP.2
• Religious history : ER. Includes sections on Patristics ER.2, Saints and Hagiography ER.4, Theology ER.4, Papacy: ER.5, Medieval Papacy ER.504, Papal Letter and Registers ER.53, Monasticism ER.6-7, Aspects of Religious life: liturgy, pilgrimage, Heresy and the Inquisition ER.8. Source material on religious establishments is also found in the relevant national collections. 
• Scandinavia : ED arranged by country 
• Scotland : BS.2 to 1542 
• Spain to 1516: ES.2 
• Wales to 1536: BW.2

Further Help

Contact us  if you would like help on finding or using our collections, or if you have any comments or suggestions about the content of this guide. We are happy to help.

You can also join the library and book a  help session .

Highlights from the Collections: Primary Sources

General collections of sources.

Included here are some freely available online collections as well as print editions. Examples are:

• English Historical Documents
• Oxford Medieval Texts
• British History Online  (mostly free and access to subscription content within library)
• Internet medieval sourcebook  (online)
• EuroDocs: Online Sources for European History  (online)
• Monumenta Germaniae Historica shelved at classmark EGM, organized by series. Further information can be found on the MGH guide .
• Collection de documents inédits sur l’histoire de France.
• Deutsches Archiv für Geschichte des Mittelalters
• Fonti per la storia d’italia
• Regesta Imperii and online version
• Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France
• Rerum Italicarum scriptores
• Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de España
• Textos medievales

Church Records

Examples are:

• Patrologia Latina print and electronic  
• Acta Sanctorum print and electronic
• Corpus Christianorum  
• Regesta pontificum Romanorum  
• Papal Letters, various editions including  Ut per litteras apostolicas
• English episcopal acta
• Papsturkunden in Frankreich : Neue Folge 
• York's Archbishops Registers Revealed  (online) Free access to over 20,000 images of Registers produced by the Archbishops of York, 1225-1650
• Rolls Series Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores  
• Annals of Ulster  
• Chroniken der deutschen städte vom 14. bis in's 16. Jahrhundert  
• Les grandes chroniques de France  
• Collection de chroniques belges inédites  
• Colección de crónicas españolas  

British and Irish Law and Government

• Statutes of the Realm
• Parliament Rolls of Medieval England
• Inquisitions post mortem
• Calendar of the charter rolls . Further information
• Calendar of Close Rolls . Further information
• Calendar of the Patent Rolls . Further information: National Archives website ; IHR blog post
• Calendar of the Fine Rolls and Henry III Fine Rolls Project
• Selden Society Publications
• Curia Regis rolls
• The acts of Welsh rulers 1120-1283
• Regesta Regum Scottorum
• Register of Edward, the Black Prince
• Giraldi Cambrensis Opera
• English Medieval Legal Documents Database  (online)

Charters and other Landholding Sources

Some examples:

• Domesday: Various editions including  Alecto edition of Domesday book  and  Exon: The Domesday Survey of South-West England  (online)
• Anglo Saxon charters
• Early Yorkshire charters
• The Electronic Sawyer: Online catalogue of Anglo-Saxon charters  (online)
• Scripta: Database of Norman Medieval documents "a large corpus of medieval norman charters dating from the 10th to the 13th Century" (online)
• El llibre de privilegis de Castelló de la Plana, 1245-1470
• Diplomatarium islandicum
• Urkunden und Regesten zur Geschichte des Templerordens im Bereich des Bistums Cammin und der Kirchenprovinz Gnesen

The collections include editions of letters, both of individuals and compilations. There are also some secondary works about medieval letter-writing. Examples include:

• Letters of medieval Jewish traders  
• Lost letters of medieval life : English society, 1200-1250  
• Christ church letters : A volume of mediaeval letters relating to the affairs of the priory of Christ church Canterbury  
• Calendar of the letters of Arnaud Aubert, Camerarius Apostolicus 1361-1371 
• Calendar of letters from the Mayor and Corporation of the City of London, circa A.D.1350-1370 
• The Cely letters, 1472-1488  
• Epistolari de la València medieval  
• The letter collections of Nicholas of Clairvaux  
• The letters of the queens of England, 1066-1547  
• The letters and poems of Fulbert of Chartres  
• The letters of Catherine of Siena  
• Letters of Margaret of Anjou  
• Merovingian letters and letter writers  
• Paston letters and papers of the fifteenth century  
• The Plumpton letters and papers  
• The letters of the Rožmberk sisters : noblewomen in fifteenth-century Bohemia  
• Epistolae: Medieval Women's Letters  (online)

Local and Regional History

These are a rich source of medieval history. Examples include:

• Business contracts of medieval Provence : selected notulae from the cartulary of Giraud Amalric of Marseilles, 1248  
• Medieval Bruges, c. 850-1550  
• De Oorkonden van de Sint-Baafsabdij te Gent (819-1321)  
• Zwolse regesten 
• De heren van de kerk : de kanunniken van Oudmunster te Utrecht in de late middeleeuwen 
• Victoria County History . Full text of many of the volumes available on British History Online . 
• The court rolls of the Manor of Wakefield : from September 1348 to September 1350
• Calendar of Antrobus deeds before 1625  
• Surveys of the estates of Glastonbury Abbey, c. 1135-1201  

Place-names

The library collections include place name reference works which document place-names and allow their origins to be traced. Some examples:

• English Place-Name Society volumes
• Key to English Place-Names (online)
• Toponymie générale de la France : etymologie de 35,000 noms de lieux
• Diccionario de topónimos españoles y sus gentilicios
• De Vlaamse waternamen : verklarend en geïllustreerd woordenboek

Military History

This includes items in the main miltary section W.41 and also in the crusades section EU 

• Medieval warfare sourcebook  
• Encyclopedia of the hundred years war  
• Records of the medieval sword  
• Anglo Norman warfare  
• The Battle of Hastings : sources and interpretations  
• Alfred's wars : sources and interpretations of Anglo-Saxon warfare in the Viking age  
• Baldric of Bourgueil 'History of the Jerusalemites' : a translation of the 'Historia Ierosolimitana'  
• Bayeux Tapestry (online)

Highlights from the Collection: Secondary Works

Bibliographies, catalogues, guides.

Ranging from general to subject specific they are a good way of locating publications and learning more about how to use sources. Each section of the library has sections for bibliographies and guides to sources near the beginning. 

• International Medieval Bibliography  
• Bibliography of British and Irish History
• Medieval Cartularies of Great Britain and Ireland  
• Makers and users of medieval books : essays in honour of A. S. G. Edwards  
• Literature of the crusades
• Corpus catalogorum Belgii : the medieval booklists of the southern Low Countries  
• Understanding medieval primary sources : using historical sources to discover medieval Europe  
• Introduction aux sources de l'histoire médiévale
• Ruling the script in the middle ages : formal apsects of written communication (books, charters, and inscriptions) 
• Le catalogue médiéval de l'abbaye cistercienne de Clairmarais et les manuscrits conservés 
• A critical companion to English 'Mappae Mundi' of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
• L'atelier du médiéviste
• Archives Portal Europe (online) 

Biographical Works

Most of the library’s sections include biographical listings, both general resources such as National Biographical dictionaries, and themed listings such as by trade, religious office holders or listings of aristocratic households. Examples are: 

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (both print and online ) 
• Dictionary of Welsh Biography (online)
• Dizionario biografico degli Italiani  
• Neue Deutsche Biographie
• Who's who in the Middle Ages
• Extraordinary women of the medieval and Renaissance world : a biographical dictionary  
• An annotated index of medieval women 
• History of Parliament 1386-1421  and online  
• Religious office holders, e.g. Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae , The heads of religious houses, England and Wales  
• Registers of students within histories of universities, see Culture and Learning section . 
• Dictionnaire des sculpteurs français du Moyen Age  
• The Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England (online) 
• England’s Immigrants 1330-1550 (online) 
• A handlist of the Latin writers of Great Britain and Ireland before 1540 

The collections also include some biographies of individuals e.g. B.58 British collection

Dictionaries and Reference Works

Within the library, dictionaries are available at the beginning of the general and other sections. Online versions of medieval language dictionaries are also listed below. 

• Logeion Includes The Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources  
• Anglo-Norman Dictionary
• Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary
• Middle English Compendium

Reference works and encyclopedias

• Dictionary of the Middle Ages
• Lexikon des Mittelalters print and online
• The new Cambridge medieval history
• A dictionary of medieval terms and phrases
• Medieval France : an encyclopedia
• The encyclopedia of the medieval chronicle
• Encyclopedia of the hundred years war
• Encyclopedia of medieval pilgrimage
• Medieval Ireland : an encyclopedia
• Medieval Iberia : an encyclopedia
• Medieval Jewish civilization : an encyclopedia
• Trade, travel and exploration in the middle ages : an encyclopedia
• The Blackwell encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England

Historiography and Methodology

There are general works at classmark E.1 and subject-specific works within other collections. They range from historiography, methodology, works about individual historians, medievalism and the interpretation of medieval history. Examples are:

• What is medieval history?
• Writing medieval history
• Medievalisms in the postcolonial world : the idea of the "Middle Ages" outside Europe
• The Vikings reimagined : reception, recovery, engagement (on order)
• Chronicling history : chroniclers and historians in medieval and Renaissance Italy
• In their own words : practices of quotation in early medieval history-writing
• Arabische Historiographie der Gegenwart
• Universal chronicles in the high middle ages
• Bede's Historiae : genre, rhetoric and the construction of Anglo-Saxon church history
• A woman in history : Eileen Power, 1889-1940
• Anna Komnene : the life and work of a medieval historian

Secondary Texts

The library doesn’t generally collect secondary material but some works are held where they are considered useful guides to the sources or have source-based appendices. We actively collect Festschriften. A few examples:

• The medieval world / edited by Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson
• Freedom of movement in the middle ages : proceedings of the 2003 Harlaxton Symposium
• The Cambridge history of medieval political thought c. 350-c. 1450
• Domesday : book of judgement
• Writing medieval biography, 750-1250 : essays in honour of Professor Frank Barlow
• Album Helen Maud Cam

Periodicals

The most recent years of most of our journals are on open shelves in the Current Periodicals room. Earlier issues can be ordered from the stack. Many are also available online within the building via the links on the catalogue. Bibliography of British and Irish History and JSTOR are examples of the online databases that can be used to locate journal articles. Examples of medieval history periodicals are listed below, but articles will be found across periodicals on many subjects:

• Anglo Norman studies
• Cambrian medieval celtic studies
• Anglo-Saxon England
• Early medieval Europe
• Journal of medieval history
• The journal of medieval military history
• Journal of the Haskins Society : studies in medieval history
• Medieval prosopography
• Fourteenth century England  

Selected Themes

Medieval women.

Insights about the lives of medieval women are found within many primary sources across the collections. There are also compilations of sources on the subject, and some secondary works. Finding items in sources require some digging and knowledge of the likely places. Secondary works and collections of sources on the subject can be found using subject and keyword searches on the catalogue. Some examples: 

Collections of writings

• The writings of medieval women : an anthology  
• Women's lives in medieval Europe : a sourcebook
• Medieval writings on secular women  
• The letters of the queens of England, 1066-1547

Individual women or families

• Letters of Margaret of Anjou
• The Paston women : selected letters  
• A companion to The book of Margery Kempe  

Women and religion

• Guidance for women in twelfth-century convents  
• Women's Books of hours in medieval England  
• Saints Edith and Æthelthryth : princesses, miracle workers, and their late medieval audience : the Wilton Chronicle and the Wilton Life of St Æthelthryth  
• The white nuns : Cistercian abbeys for women in medieval France
• Religious women in medieval East Anglia : history and archaeology c1100-1540  

Spaces and objects

• Gender in medieval places, spaces and thresholds  (open access) 
• Medieval women and their objects  
• Dress accessories c.1150 - c.1450
• "For the salvation of my soul": women and wills in medieval and early modern France  (online)
• Frauenstimmen in der spätmittelalterlichen Stadt? : Testamente von Frauen aus Lüneburg, Hamburg und Wien als soziale Kommunikation
• The will of Aethelgifu : a tenth century Anglo-Saxon manuscript

Secondary works

• Ale, beer and brewsters in England : women's work in a changing world, 1300-1600  
• Motherhood, religion, and society in medieval Europe, 400-1400 : essays presented to Henrietta Leyser  
• Popular memory and gender in medieval England : men, women and testimony in the church courts, c.1200-1500  
• Medieval Italy, medieval and early modern women : essays in honour of Christine Meek  
• Medieval women : texts and contexts in late medieval Britain : essays for Felicity Riddy
• The Welsh law of women : studies presented to Professor Daniel A. Binchy on his eightieth birthday, 3 June 1980
• Queen Emma and Queen Edith : queenship and women's power in eleventh-century England  
• Women in the medieval English countryside : gender and household in Brigstock before the plague  

Travel Writing

These can be found both within the general travel and exploration sections (classmark C) and within the collections for the place being described. They include textual sources, maps and other trade and travel sources. Examples include: 

• A traveller in thirteenth-century Arabia : Ibn al-Mujāwir's Tārīkh al-mustabṣir  
• Mandeville’s travels (several editions) 
• The voyages of the Venetian brothers, Nicolò & Antonio Zeno, to the northern seas in the XIVth century  
• Quellen zur Geschichte des Reisens im Spätmittelalter  
• Marco Polo’s Le devisement du monde: Edition and Simon Gaunt’s Marco Polo's Le devisement du monde : narrative voice, language and diversity  
• The travels of Ibn Jubayr : a medieval journey from Cordoba to Jerusalem  
• Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages : a reader   
• Cathay and the way thither : being a collection of medieval notices of China  
• Trade, travel and exploration in the middle ages : an encyclopedia  
• Historical atlas of the Islamic world
• A critical companion to English 'Mappae Mundi' of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries  
• Local maps and plans from medieval England  

Clothing and Textiles

Examples include sources on clothing, laws on clothing and the textile trade, archaeological sources and secondary works. There will also be many examples within more general sources. See also the Fashion history guide .

• The medieval clothier  
• The right to dress : sumptuary laws in a global perspective, c. 1200-1800  
• Cloth and clothing in medieval Europe : essays in memory of Professor E.M. Carus-Wilson  
• Advance contracts for the sale of wool, c. 1200-c. 1327  
• The Merchant Taylors of York : a history of the crafts and company from the fourteenth to the twentieth century  
• Registre des délibérations et ordonnances des marchands merciers de Paris, 1596-1696  
• Statuti dell'Arte dei rigattieri e linaioli di Firenze (1296-1340)  
• Fleming, R, Acquiring, flaunting and destroying silk in late Anglo-Saxon England in Early Medieval Europe (2007)

Examples of descriptions from within sources:

• Descriptions of the prescribed apparel for Servants, Esquires and Gentlemen, Merchants, Knights, the Clergy and Ploughmen in Statutes of the Realm , 37 Edward III c.8-15 1363
• "A statute was approved during the parliament to prohibit the export of wool, while seeking to encourage the manufacture of cloth in England... No one was to use foreign made cloth, except the king, queen and their children" ( Parliament Rolls of Medieval England , 1337 March, Vol. 4 p.230)

Building and Households

The collection includes both primary sources such as estate and building records and secondary works. See also the separate Architectural History collections guide . Examples are:

Primary sources

• The building accounts of Tattershall castle : 1434-1472
• Building accounts of King Henry III
• Building accounts of All Souls College Oxford, 1438-1443
• London plotted : plans of London buildings c.1450-1720
• The Plan of St. Gall : a study of the architecture & economy of & life in a paradigmatic Carolingian monastery
• The medieval household : daily living c.1150-c.1450
• Norwich households : the medieval and post-medieval finds from Norwich Survey excavations, 1971-1978
• Household accounts from medieval England. Part 1, Introduction, Glossary, Diet Accounts

Reference and secondary works

• The Pevsner Buildings of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales series
• English mediaeval architects : a biographical dictionary down to 1550
• The elite household in England, 1100-1550 : proceedings of the 2016 Harlaxton Symposium
• Anglo-Saxon architecture
• A gazetteer of medieval houses in Kent
• The medieval peasant house in Midland England
• Scottish abbeys : an introduction to the mediaeval abbeys and priories of Scotland
• Jewish heritage in England : an architectural guide
• The English Mediaeval House
• Greater medieval houses of England and Wales 1300-1500
• The early Norman castles of the British Isles
• Arts of the medieval cathedrals : studies on architecture, stained glass and sculpture in honor of Anne Prache  
• Mainz and the middle Rhine Valley : medieval art, architecture and archaeology

Education and Learning

There are sections within individual areas on this theme, also a large collection on the history of universities (including biographical listings) and, within the Religious history collection , works on monasticism and religious orders. 

Examples of Histories of universities and alumni listings 

• Die Matrikel der Universität Wien  
• Die Matrikel der Universität Köln  
• Die Matrikel der Universität Heidelberg von 1386 bis 1870  
• A biographical register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500  
• History of the University of Oxford  
• A history of the University of Cambridge  
• Alumni cantabrigienses: a biographical list of all known students, graduates and holders of office at the University of Cambridge, from the earliest times to 1900 print and online version . 

Examples of other works:

• University records and life in the Middle Ages 
• The universities of Europe in the Middle Ages  
• English schools in the Middle Ages  
• Teaching and learning in medieval Europe : essays in honour of Gernot R. Wieland  
• The church and learning in later medieval society : essays in honour of R.B. Dobson  
• Writing history in the Anglo-Norman world : manuscripts, makers and readers, c. 1066-c. 1250  
• Medieval libraries of Great Britain : a list of surviving books  
• The Cambridge history of libraries in Britain and Ireland  

Food and Drink

There are references to food in many of the primary sources in the collections. Listed below are some examples of secondary works on the subject. See also the Guide to Food History Collections

• Food and eating in medieval Europe  
• Food, craft, and status in medieval Winchester : the plant and animal remains from the suburbs and city defences  
• The book of Sent Soví : medieval recipes from Catalonia 
• Medieval cookery : recipes and history  
• A medieval capital and its grain supply : agrarian production and distribution in the London region c.1300  
• Medieval masterchef : archaeological and historical perspectives on eastern cuisine and western foodways  
• Agrarian history of England and Wales

Online Resources

Subscription online resources  are available within the building. See also the medieval section in  Open and Free Access Materials for Research . Free online resources are also included in the relevant sections above.

A few examples: 

• International Medieval Bibliography
• Acta Sanctorum
• British History Online
• Gatehouse: A comprehensive gazetteer and bibliography of the medieval castles, fortifications and palaces of England, Wales and the Islands
• The Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture  
• Historic England Archive
• Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources
• The Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England
• England’s Immigrants 1330-1550
• Logeion  includes The Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources  
• English place-names
• English medieval coins
• Portable Antiquities Scheme database

Other Collections

• ​​​​​​British Library
• National Library of Scotland
• National Library of Wales
• National Archives
• Bodleian Libraries
• Warburg Institute
• Senate House Library
• Institute of Classical Studies

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Medieval Studies: A guide to library research at Cornell: Published Primary Sources

• Published Primary Sources
• Manuscripts
• Citation Styles & Management
• Ask a Librarian

Primary Sources in English Translation

• Translated Texts for Historians Classical and Medieval primary sources in translation.
• Manchester Medieval Sources Translated texts on a wide variety of topics published in part or in full as print books and ebooks: Manchester Medieval Sources print books Manchester Medieval Sources ebooks
• Loeb Classical Library A fully searchable, virtual library of Greek and Latin literature with English translations. Includes epic and lyric poetry; tragedy and comedy; history, travel, philosophy, and oratory; the great medical writers and mathematicians; and, those Church Fathers who made particular use of pagan culture.
• CELT, the Corpus of Electronic Texts Online corpus of multilingual texts of Irish literature and history and the arts. Includes Old, Middle, Classical and Early Modern Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Latin, English and German, French, and English translations of Irish texts. It is Ireland's longest running Humanities Computing/Digital Humanities project.
• British History Online Core printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles.
• Icelandic Saga Database The Icelandic Saga Database is an online resource dedicated to publishing the Sagas of the Icelanders — a large body of medieval Icelandic literature. The sagas are prose histories describing events that took place amongst the Norse and Celtic inhabitants of Iceland during the period of the Icelandic Commonwealth in the 10th and 11th centuries CE.
• Internet Medieval Sourcebook Selected excerpts of sources translated into English full-text online arranged chronologically and geographically. Helpful for getting a sense of the types of medieval sources and for bibliography.

For a selection of the writings of the Church Fathers in English full-text online, see The Catholic Encyclopedia online's new Fathers section or Early Church Fathers

• Bibliography of English translations from medieval sources Call Number: Olin Library Graduate Study Center, Room 501 and Olin Reference Z6517 .F24 Outdated and superseded, but can still be useful on occasion, especially for brief works (a single letter or poem) or excerpts of longer works contained within books or articles.
• Bibliography of English Translations from Medieval Sources, 1943-1968 by Mary A. Ferguson (Compiled by) Call Number: Olin Library Graduate Study Center, Room 501 and Olin Reference Z6517 .F35 Publication Date: 1974 Outdated and superseded, but can still be useful on occasion, especially for brief works (a single letter or poem) or excerpts of longer works contained within books or articles.
• Online Medieval Primary Source Bibliography A guide to translated sources. Geography and type features particularly useful.
• More primary sources ... Many in English.

Digital Primary Source Collections in Original Language

• Acta Sanctorum The complete texts of the sixty-eight printed volumes, from the two January volumes published in 1643 to the Propylaeum to December published in 1940. Print volumes .
• Patrologia Latina Database A complete electronic version of the first edition of Jacques-Paul Migne's Patrologia Latina (1844-1855 and 1862-1865). Index volumes are 218-221. Texts from AD 200 through the 13th century plus later ecclesiastical and humanistic scholarship. Print volumes: Patrologia Cursus Compeletus. PDF of print volumes in HathiTrust .
• Library of Christian Latin Texts: CLCLT Incomplete and in progress. Selected works from the classical period, the most important patristic works, a very extensive corpus of Medieval Latin literature. Volumen 1: Antiquity, Patristic period up to 500, Vulgate Bible; Volumen II: Second Patristic Period, 501-735; Volumen III: 736-1500 and Neo-Latin period 1501-present. Includes texts from the beginning of Latin literature (Livius Andronicus, 240 BC) through to the texts of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), as well as the complete works of writers such as Cicero, Virgil, Augustine, Jerome, Gregory the Great, Anselm of Canterbury, Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas a Kempis. Includes many volumes published in the Corpus Christianorum, both the Series Latina and the Continuatio Mediaeualis, and the opera omnia of major authors. Helpful Guide to Searching, from Berkeley
• Bibliotheca Teubneriana Latina Latin literature from the Roman Republic to the Imperial Period and Late Antiquity. The database is the electronic version of the Bibliotheca scriptorum Romanorum Teubneriana. Complete, except for prefaces or critical apparatus, from the standard editions (editions maiores) of about 800 works spread over eleven centuries (c. 300 BC/BCE to c. 800 AD/CE).
• Gallica Includes many digitized classic medieval collections of primary sources originally published in the 19th century such as the multi-volume Recueil des historiens des croisades. Use the [challenging] Gallica catalog to find the fulltext.
• Primary Sources for the Study Of Liturgy, Hagiography and Other Aspects Of Medieval Studies Helen Davis, Special Collections, Boole Library, University College Cork.
• ARTFL A Cooperative Project of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and the University of Chicago, ARTFL is a research tool for scholars and students in all areas of French Studies. Full-text online of nearly 2000 French texts, ranging from classic works of French literature to various kinds of non-fiction prose and technical writing. The eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries are about equally represented, with a smaller selection of seventeenth century texts as well as some medieval and Renaissance texts. A Provençal database that includes 38 texts in their original spellings has recently been added. The Web interface allows one to search the corpus easily for words, stems, phrases and co-occurrences.
• Brepols cross-database search tool Allows searching across all the medieval and classical digital corpora produced by Brepols.
• Archive of Celtic-Latin literature Incomplete and in progress. Contains the texts processed thus far from the corpus of Celtic-Latin literature from the period 400-1200 as part of the Royal Irish Academy’s Dictionary of Medieval Latin from Celtic Sources project.
• Monumenta Germaniae historica (MGH). Sources in Latin 500-1500 A.D. from or about medieval Germany, the Franks, and areas of Germanic influence in medieval Europe. Print volumes of the MGH newer series can be located by a title or keyword search in the Cornell online catalog. Contents of each volume of the MGH original older series as well as an index by author and title/subject can be found in "Indices eorvm qvae Monvmentorvm Germaniae historicorvm temis hvcvsqve editis continentvr." Scripservnt O. Holder-Egger et K. Zevmer. Hannoverae, Impensis bibliopolii Hahniani; [etc., etc.] 1890. Call Number: Olin Room 404 +DD3.M81 Z5). For a comprehensive online catalog of the all the print volumes, try: Monumenta Germaniae Historica For a good overview of this complex series, try "Guide to the Sources of Medieval History," Call number: Olin Reference Z6517 .C12, pp. 220-.
• Monumenta Germaniae Historica online (eMGH) Incomplete. Selected texts from the five divisions of Monumenta Germaniae Historica (Scriptores, Leges, Diplomata, Epistolae, Antiquitates). As of fall 2007 only includes 800 texts.

Dictionaries

• Database of Latin Dictionaries Incomplete and in progress. The aim of the database is not only to integrate different types of Latin dictionaries, whether modern, medieval or early-modern, but also to build in links between these different tools. Where the dictionaries provide Latin terms and vernacular equivalents or explanations (whether in contemporary or historic forms of English, French or German), searches will be possible on both the Latin lemmata and the English, French or German lemmata.
• The Dictionary of Old English Corpus Also on CD-Rom in Olin Library. Call number: Reference Disk PE279 .D53 2003 Incomplete and in progress
• Middle English Compendium The MEC provides access to and interconnectivity between three major Middle English electronic resources: an electronic version of the Middle English dictionary; a "hyperbibliography" of Middle English prose and verse, based on the MED bibliographies; and an associated network of electronic resources.
• Vetus Latina database: Bible versions of the Latin Fathers German interface. Comprehensive patristic records of the Vetus Latina Institute in Beuron. Complete information about the project

Guides to Sources

• Répertoire des sources historiques du moyen âge Call Number: Olin Reference Z6203 .C52 + Formerly of first importance for the literature of medieval history, still useful for its biographical orientation. The first part is arranged alphabetically by personal name (in the French form), the second by place and topic. Under each name, references are given to sources. An immense mass of material is indexed, but without critical indication of value.
• Typologie des sources du Moyen Age occidental Call Number: Olin Library Graduate Study Center, Room 501 Z6203 .T99 Samples: Les statuts synodaux.--fasc. 12; Letters and letter-collections.--fasc. 18; Les "Libri paenitentiales".--fasc. 28; Local and regional chronicles -- Fasc. 75.
• Medieval studies: an introduction Call Number: Olin Reference Z6517 .M48 1992 Essays on all aspects of medieval studies with bibliographies.
• A guide to the study of medieval history Call Number: Uris Library and Library Annex Z6203 .P12 1931 A classic, prepared under the auspices of the Medieval Academy of America; concentrates on Western Europe and excludes England.
• Guide to the sources of medieval history Call Number: Olin Reference Z6517 .C12 Five sections--1. Typology of the sources of medieval history, 2. Libraries and archives, i.e. repositories of medieval manuscripts, 3. Great collections and repertories of sources, 4. Reference works for the study of medieval texts, 5. Bibliographical introduction to the auxiliary sciences of history.
• Literature of medieval history, 1930-1975: a supplement to Louis John Paetow's A guide to the study of medieval history Call Number: Library Annex Z6203 .P12 1931 Suppl. As the title suggests, an expanded, updated version of Paetow's Guide.
• Repertorium fontium historiae Medii Aevi, primum ab Augusto Potthast digestum, nunc cura collegii historicorum e pluribus nationibus emendatum et auctum Call Number: Olin Reference Z6203 .P86 1962 + The first volume is an alphabetical listing of sets of chronicles, miscellanies, and other collections, together with their contents of sources of medieval history up to 1500. The "Fontes" section offers a repertory of medieval writings arranged by individual author's name or anonymous title of the chronicle or document treated. (Balay, 1996).
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• Last Updated: Jan 31, 2024 3:59 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.cornell.edu/medieval

• Library of Congress
• Research Guides
• Main Reading Room

Medieval Studies: A Resource Guide

Electronic resources.

• Introduction
• Print Resources
• Incunabula at the Library of Congress

This page provides a list of key electronic resources for the study of the medieval period. The subscription databases listed here are licensed by the Library of Congress and available for use onsite. Depending on the database, the content may include citations to book chapters, articles, and books or furnish full-text articles directly. The external websites tab provides links to freely available internet resources.

• Subscription Databases
• External Websites

• Victorian Literature

Below are some websites that serve as good places to begin for learning about the medieval period. These websites contain primary sources in Latin and in English translation, bibliographies, and other source materials.

• Abréviations paléographiques External Provides a basic overview of medieval French manuscript abbreviations.
• British Library Digitised Manuscripts External The British Library Digitised Manuscripts contains digitized manuscripts from many different periods of British history including the middle ages, renaissance, manuscripts from British colonies, music manuscripts, and even Thai and Malay manuscripts. Users can search by year, manuscript name, author, and provenance. Use the date range slider to limit your search to the medieval period.
• Dictionnaire des abréviations françaises External Searchable online list derived from the Manuel de paléographie latine et française by Maurice Prou.
• Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (ISTC): the International Database of 15th-century European Printing External The ISTC is the international database of 15th-century European printing created by the British Library with contributions from institutions worldwide. You can perform a simple search using different kinds of keywords or find items by browsing author, title, dates, and other headings. The database records nearly every item printed from movable type before 1501, but not material printed entirely from woodblocks or engraved plates. 30,518 editions are listed as of August 2016, including some 16th-century items previously assigned incorrectly to the 15th century.
• Internet Medieval Sourcebook External This website serves as a sourcebook of links and resources assessed by the Fordham University Medieval Studies department.
• The Latin Library (Medieval section) External The Latin Library contains the major works of major Latin authors. What is unique about this site is that it contains texts from authors of all time periods beginning in antiquity up to the nineteenth century. There is a substantial medieval Latin section which contains the works of dozens of authors. All texts are unannotated. There are no footnotes to resources or supplementary glosses.
• Online Medieval Sources Bibliography External The Online Medieval Sources Bibliography provides detailed information about modern editions - both in print and online - of medieval primary sources. The goal of this resource is to help users find the sources and editions that are most suited to their needs.
• Perseus Digital Library External The Perseus Digital Library, developed and maintained by Tufts University’s classics department originally contained only Ancient Greek texts but has expanded in recent years to include Latin and Arabic texts. Texts are interactive, meaning that all words are clickable and link to a new window which displays grammatical information on the word clicked such as declension, verb conjugation, definition, noun gender, and mood. This feature makes the Perseus Digital Library an incredibly useful resource for those studying Greek and Latin texts. While the majority of the Greek and Latin texts are from antiquity, some medieval and Byzantine authors are represented.
• Project Gutenberg External Digital Library containing works in the public domain. Some of the items are editions of primary texts from the middle ages whose copyright protection has expired.
• UK National Archives Palaeography External Online tutorial acquainting viewers with medieval Latin scripts and abbreviations.
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• Last Updated: Jul 21, 2022 1:15 PM
• URL: https://guides.loc.gov/medieval-studies

Articles on Medieval history

Displaying 1 - 20 of 98 articles.

Modern surgery began with saws and iron hands – how amputation transformed the body in the Renaissance

Heidi Hausse , Auburn University

2 knights, 1 horse − how a legendary Knights Templar symbol has puzzled and fascinated since the Middle Ages

Andrew Latham , Macalester College

How the Middle Ages are being revisited through Indigenous perspectives

Brenna Duperron , Dalhousie University

For 600 years the Voynich manuscript has remained a mystery. Now we think it’s partly about sex

Keagan Brewer , Macquarie University

Medieval Europe was far from democratic, but that didn’t mean tyrants got a free pass

Joelle Rollo-Koster , University of Rhode Island

How medieval chroniclers interpreted solar eclipses and other celestial events

Giles Gasper , Durham University and Brian Tanner , Durham University

Medieval women used informal social networks to share health problems and medical advice – just as we do today

Pragya Agarwal , Loughborough University

Hispanic health disparities in the US trace back to the Spanish Inquisition

Margaret Boyle , Bowdoin College

Letters and embroidery allowed medieval women to express their ‘forbidden’ emotions

Modern medicine has its scientific roots in the Middle Ages − how the logic of vulture brain remedies and bloodletting lives on today

Meg Leja , Binghamton University, State University of New York

Why a Southampton FC fan took their town to a historical ‘leet’ court over the colour of a bridge’s lights

Ben Jervis , University of Leicester

From Luna Park to neo-Nazis – why the Middle Ages still matters to middle Australia

Miles Pattenden , Australian Catholic University

A ‘recently discovered’ whale feeding strategy has turned up in 2, 000-year -old texts about fearsome sea monsters

John McCarthy , Flinders University ; Erin Sebo , Flinders University , and Matthew Firth , Flinders University

St David’s Day: how the sixth century monk inspired centuries of devoted followers and poets

Helen Fulton , University of Bristol and Jonathan M. Wooding , University of Sydney

Newport ship: after 20 years’ work, experts are ready to reassemble medieval vessel found in the mud

Evan Jones , University of Bristol

Medieval great halls were at the heart of the festive season – here the community kept warm by staying together

Giles Gasper , Durham University

Why so many medieval manuscripts feature doodles – and what they reveal

Madeleine S. Killacky , Bangor University

Manuscripts and art support archaeological evidence that syphilis was in Europe long before explorers could have brought it home from the Americas

Marylynn Salmon , Smith College

What archaeology can tell us about the lives of children in England 1,500 years ago

Kirsty Squires , Staffordshire University

First English sighting of ‘ball lightning’: a 12th century monk’s chronicle reveals all

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Professor in High Medieval History, Durham University

Senior Lecturer in History, University of Aberdeen

Teaching Fellow in Medieval Studies, University of Leeds

Visiting Professor of Social Inequities and Injustice, Loughborough University

Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Department of Physics, University of York

Professor and Tutorial Fellow in English, University of Oxford

Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History, Queen Mary University of London

Emeritus Professor of Physics at Durham University, Durham University

Senior Research Fellow and Associate Director of the Medieval and Early Modern Centre, University of Sydney

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Sydney

Associate Professor in Experimental Psychology (Perception), University of Oxford

Associate Professor in History of Art, University of Nottingham

Lecturer in History, University of Leicester

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Historians generally use the Chicago Style format. For more citation info see Citing Sources .

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Starting Points: Books & eBooks

Advanced Search | FAQ | Known Issues

See the  eBook FAQ  for directions to limit your search to ebooks only.

• By Topic  - Type in the keywords that broadly describe your topic.  For example: violence medieval france  
• By Title  - Type in the first few words of the book title in quotations.  For example:  "dark speech the performance" .  
• By Author  - Type in the last name followed by the first name of the author in quotations.  For example:  "urbanski charity"

Starting Points: Journal Articles

The following research databases will help you identify articles on medieval history. Additional research databases are listed under Articles . 

Starting Points - Primary Sources

This is a small sampling of primary sources dealing with medieval history. Additional sources are listed under Primary Sources .

• Digital Scriptorium
• Epistolae: Medieval Women’s Letters
• Monumenta Germaniae Historica

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• URL: https://guides.lib.uw.edu/research/history-medieval

Professor Whalen’s Medieval Research Page

At the start of a research paper, rather than “forming a thesis” or an argument, really what you’re doing is “asking a question.” After all, how can you form a proper argument  before  you’ve read the materials?

Let’s say that you’re interested in the First Crusade and Christian attitudes toward Muslims. What you are essentially asking is a basic research question: What was the importance of the First Crusade for Christian attitudes toward Muslims? How did the crusade change (or not) Christian views of Islam? From here, you might develop an entire set of related questions: How did Christians view Islam before the First Crusade? Did the clergy on the crusade view Muslims in a different way from the laity? Did crusader views of Muslims inform their perceptions of other non-Christians, such as Jews?

To find some answers, you might investigate some Christian chronicles of the First Crusade. Unless you know Latin, you’ll need to read them in translation. Thus the search begins.

Reference Works(Davis Library Reference Section)

Dictionary of the Middle Ages.  Ed. Strayer. 13 vols. 1982–1988. D114 .D5 1982

Encyclopedia of Early Christianity.  Ed. Ferguson. 2 vols. 1997. BR162.2 .E53 1997

Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages.  Ed. Vauchez. 2 vols. 2000. CB351 .E53 2000

Women in the Middle Ages.  Ed. Wilson and Margolis. 2004. HQ1143 .W643 2004

You might also start out by looking at a survey of your topic. In this case, for example, you could find a lot of basic information in Jonathan-Riley Smith,  The Crusades:A Short History  (New Haven, 1987).

Medieval Sources in Translation (Davis Library Stacks)

• Author’s name (Guibert of Nogent / Fulcher of Chartres / etc.)
• Genre (e.g. sermons / chronicles / theology / apologetics / polemics / etc.)
• Subject (e.g. crusades / predestination / resurrection / marriage / etc.)
• Series titles (Medieval Texts and Studies / Medieval Texts in Translation / Oxford Medieval Texts / Crusade Texts in Translation / etc.)
• Some helpful tags: early works to 1800 / sources / translated / translation / English

If you’re searching for primary sources, you might also try the following site at Fordham, the Medieval Sources Bibliography .

After clicking on “Search the Site,” pay special attention to the search parameters: If you already know the name of your author (e.g. Guibert of Nogent), you can search that way. Be sure to click on the box “Translated into English.” There is an option to limit your dates (for example, onoy primary sources written between the years 1000–1200); and a menu for Subject Headings (which includes the Crusades).

Finally, there are two somewhat dated bibliographies of English sources in translation, both available in the David stacks:

Farrar, Clarissa Palmer. Bibliography of English translations from medieval sources. New York, Columbia university press, 1946. Z6517.F3 c. 2 Ferguson, Mary Anne. Bibliography of English translations from medieval sources, 1943–1967. Series: Records of civilization, sources and studies ; no. 88. New York, Columbia University Press, 1974. Z6517.F47. Finally, one can get started searching for sources consulting the Medieval Internet Sourcebook, which includes citations to print versions of the primary sources on the website (typically, in my assignments, students cannot rely exclusively on the Medieval Internet Sourcebook, but it might get you started in your hunt).

Search Engines for Scholarly Articles

The International Medieval Bibliography (IMB): a top-notch search engine for secondary literature, updated to include all but the most recent articles. NOTE: unlike JSTOR, the site does not include actual articles, but provides citations that will need to be tracked down in Davis Library. In terms of content, this site is far superior to JSTOR. Access the IMB via the Electronic Resources section on the Davis Library homepage.

Bibliography of the History of Art: similar to the IMB, but for art history. Also accessed through the Electronic Resources section on the Davis Library homepage.

Feminae – Medieval Women’s and Gender Index: search engine and resources with an emphasis on women’s and gender history.

L’Année philologique: search engine for secondary literature dealing with the patristic era and early Christianity, materials too early for the IMB. Also accessed through the Electronic Resources section on the Davis Library homepage. When using, start with the “full text” search mode (essential a k-word search option).

Again, be patient! If you search for “Guibert of Nogent” on the IMB in the “all index terms” line, you get zero hits. If you type “Nogent,” you get 134 hits. If you type “Nogent” and “crusade” in the subject line, you get 12 hits. If you look closely at the entries for those citations, you’ll see that the IMB generally lists his name as “Guibert de Nogent.” Now try that search in the “all index terms.” While “Guibert of Nogent” results in zero hits, “Guibert de Nogent” yields 105.

Please note: these sites do not include articles, just citations. Sometimes there is a link to the digital version of the text, sometimes not. If not, you need to find the volume or journal in the Davis library by searching the Davis catalog. JSTOR, of course, can be helpful and includes actual Pdf files of the articles, but JSTOR only offers a limited selection of the possible scholarship. Trust me—JSTOR does not cover all of your bases for a research paper.

Online Resources

The Internet simply has not supplanted the library as a source for research projects, not yet anyway. That’s why I generally forbid my students from using Internet resources for their research papers. However, it would be foolish not to admit that the Internet provides a possible starting point and source of inspiration for formulating research questions and finding materials. Not to mention, it’s convenient. Some helpful sites:

UNC Libraries Guide to Medieval & Early Modern Studies Online: If you want to explore resources beyond this homepage, this would be a good starting point.

The Labyrinth : A vast online resource at Georgetown with links to numerous other websites, including secondary literature and sources in translation.

Internet Medieval Sourcebook: An extensive site of sources in translation, often from older (frankly outdated) collections (with links to online Ancient History, Women’s History, Saints Lives Sourcebooks and more). Offers a starting point for research but NOT appropriate for your average research paper.

The Douay-Rheims Bible : If you’re using a Bible for a medieval paper, use this one, which includes both English and the Vulgate Latin text.

Christian Classics Ethereal Library : Collection of sources in translation for early Christian history, many from the Ante-Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (see above under Early Christian Sources in Translation).

This style sheet provides simplified examples of the format used for annotation and bibliographies in the Chicago Manual of Style.

Annotation Format

Book (Primary Source)

Robert of Clari, The Conquest of Constantinople, trans. E. H. McNeal (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936).

Book (Secondary Source)

Peter Brown, The Cult of Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).

Article, Journal

Peter Brown, “A Dark-Age Crisis: Aspects of the Iconoclastic Controversy,” English Historical Review 88 (1973): 1–34.

Article, Edited Volume

Robert Lerner, “The Medieval Return to the Thousand-Year Sabbath,” in The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Bernard McGinn (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), pp. 234–55.

Note: Please use the “article, edited volume” format for a primary source that is translated and excerpted in a source-book or collection of primary source documents, including the medieval author and the title of their work, along with the title of the source collection, the modern editor and/or translator, publisher, date, etc. If your medieval work does not have an author, list the author as “anonymous,” and be sure to include the editor and/or translator of the text.

Citations should be in footnotes (not endnotes or internal citation). Footnotes should be consecutively numbered. Insert footnotes at the end of the sentence in question (using the “reference” option on the menu for Word documents). Cite a work the first time that you make any reference to it (including but not limited to direct quotations), providing a full citation of the work. Subsequent references to that work such use an abbreviated form of citation. Provide page numbers when quoting a source, or even when summarizing an important point from the text (play it safe and cite more rather than less).

AVOID multiple notes per sentence, and place notes at the end of the sentence.

For example:

Bibliography Format

When applicable, divide your bibliography into two sections, one for primary sources and one for secondary sources. PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE FORMAT FOR ANNOTATION AND BIBLIOGRAPHIES.

Follow this example:

Primary Sources

Robert of Clari. The Conquest of Constantinople. Trans. E. H. McNeal. New York: Columbia University Press, 1936.

Secondary Sources

Brown, Peter. The Cult of Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.

Brown, Peter. “A Dark-Age Crisis: Aspects of the Iconoclastic Controversy.” English Historical Review 88 (1973): 1–34.

Lerner, Robert. “The Medieval Return to the Thousand-Year Sabbath.” In The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Bernard McGinn, 234–55. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002.

NOTE: As a rule of thumb, provide your reader with more and not less information: Include volume numbers, edition numbers, editors and translators etc. Precise formats for more complicated works can be found in the Chicago Manual of Style.

The Bible does not have to be included in your Bibliography. In your text, you can use standard biblical abbreviations and internal citation (2 Thess. 4:3; Gen. 14:13–25, etc.).

If you use JSTOR, please don’t include the link in your citation or bibliography: this is simply not necessary. The original journal is the “real” citation.

Ancient & Medieval History (to 1450)

• Primary Sources
• Citing Sources This link opens in a new window

Use reference sources to define or narrow a research topic, place it in context, or clarify a point of confusion. Reference books often provide lists of books and articles for further reading in sections titled Suggested Reading, Further Reading, Sources, or Bibliography.

• Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World: Antiquity This multi-volume print encyclopedia covers the 2nd millennium BC to the formation of modern Europe (AD 600 to 800). Very scholarly, with good bibliographies.
• Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilization "The Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations (DARMC) makes freely available on the internet the best available materials for a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) approach to mapping and spatial analysis of the Roman and medieval worlds."
• Digital Encyclopedia of the Hellenic World Jointly funded by the EU and Greece, this scholarly online reference work seeks to offer a view of Hellenic culture through all time periods and geographical locations. Currently, it includes encyclopedias covering Asia Minor, the Black Sea, and Constantinople.
• Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages Online access to articles on all aspects of the Middle Ages from the fifth to the fifteenth century.
• Measuring Worth Tools to aid in comparing the worth of wages, goods, etc.. Coverage for England and the UK begins with 1270. Excellent essays and examples.
• Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium The best English-language encyclopedia on the Byzantine Empire. A survey of the Byzantine world, with entries often covering unexpected topics (e.g., blood, crown, beverages). Short bibliographies.
• World History Encyclopedia An online encyclopedia with articles reviewed by an editorial team. Formerly known as the Ancient History Encyclopedia .
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Global Medieval Studies

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Published Primary Sources

Primary source databases, archives & special collections, related research guides.

• Find Background Information
• Research Languages
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• Cite Sources

A lot of primary sources are published in books and you can use library catalogs like HoyaSearch to locate them.

This link will take you to a list of published primary sources about the medieval period.>

The Library of Congress tags every book that is published in the US with subject headings. There are several subject headings that are used for primary source materials, such as

• Description and travel
• Personal narratives
• Correspondence

A more complete explanation is listed here . When you do a search in HoyaSearch (or another library catalog like  WorldCat ), try using one of these terms as a SUBJECT search and then adding in a keyword. Your keywords might have to be pretty broad, as you are only searching a very small amount of information about the books - NOT the full text of them.

If you find a book that is relevant for your topic, make sure you look at the subject headings by clicking on the full record tab in HoyaSearch. This will give you other good search terms. The Library of Congress often uses strange vocabulary, and you'll get better results if you can use it effectively.

• Acta Sanctorum This link opens in a new window Electronic version of the complete printed text of Acta Sanctorum, from the edition published in sixty-eight volumes by the Société des Bollandistes in Antwerp and Brussels. It is a collection of documents examining the lives of saints, organised according to each saint's feast day, and runs from the two January volumes published in 1643 to the Propylaeum to December published in 1940. The Acta Sanctorum Database contains the entire Acta Sanctorum, including all prefatory material, original texts, critical apparatus and indices. Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina reference numbers, essential references for scholars, are also included.
• Angelica: Art and Culture This link opens in a new window More than 90,000 textual descriptions and 8,000 digital images of thousands of art slides in the collection of the department of Art, Music and Theater. Database will eventually include other humanities-based images found in the University community (e.g., archaeology slides in the Classics department collection). The database is for the exclusive educational use only of faculty and students at Georgetown University. A NetID is required for access. Materials, text and image are copyrighted.
• JSTOR Images Search This link opens in a new window Comprehensive digital library containing images of artworks, photographs, architecture, decorative arts, rare books, and items from popular culture. Includes images from the Artstor collection, as well as other collections.
• ATLA Historical Monographs Collection: Series 1 This link opens in a new window E-books on religion curated by the American Theological Library Association (ATLA), covering the 13th century through 1893.
• Bloomsbury Medieval Studies This link opens in a new window Bloomsbury Medieval Studies is an interdisciplinary digital resource with a global perspective which opens up the medieval world for students and scholars. It brings together high-quality secondary content with visual primary sources, a brand new reference work and material culture images into one cross-searchable platform, to support this rich field of study.
• British History Online A "digital library containing some of the core printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles."
• Catalogue of Digitzed Medieval Manuscripts Search or browse for digitized medieval manuscripts from archives and libraries worldwide.
• Digital Index of Middle English Verse (DIMEV) The DIMEV provides transcriptions of the first two and last two lines of each witness of each Middle English verse text (i.e., for all witnesses for which this data has thus far been collected).
• Digital Library of Classic Protestant Texts This link opens in a new window Full-text collection of theological writings, biblical commentaries, confessional documents and polemical treatises written by more than 300 Protestant authors.
• Digital Library of the Catholic Reformation This link opens in a new window Full-text collection of 16th- and 17th-century Catholic papal and synodal decrees, catechisms and inquisitorial manuals, biblical commentaries, theological treatises and systems, liturgical writings, saints' lives and devotional works.
• Early English Books Online (EEBO) This link opens in a new window Features page images of almost every work printed in the British Isles and North America, as well as works in English printed elsewhere from 1470-1700. From the first book printed in English through to the ages of Spenser, Shakespeare and of the English Civil War, EEBO's content draws on authoritative and respected short-title catalogues of the period and features a substantial number of text transcriptions.
• Epistolae Epistolae is a collection of letters to and from women dating from the 4th to the 13th century AD. These letters from the Middle Ages, written in Latin, are presented with English translations and are organized by the women participating. Biographical sketches of the women and descriptions of the subject matter or the historic context of the letter is included where available.
• EuroDocs: History of Medieval and Renaissance Europe European primary historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated.
• Europeana This link opens in a new window Online access to paintings, music, films and books from Europe's galleries, libraries, archives and museums.
• Gallica This link opens in a new window Digital library of French and francophone culture maintained by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Contains electronic texts, images, maps, animation, and sound files of French and other publications in history, literature, science, philosophy, law, economics, and political science. Almost all "classic" works of French literature are represented.
• Global Medieval Sourcebook An open-access, digital repository of Medieval texts from Stanford University. It offers a flexible online display for the parallel viewing of medieval texts in their original language, in new English translations, and in their digitized manuscript form.
• Global Middle Ages An international collaborative effort to visualize the world, c. 500 to 1500 CE, the stories of lives, objects, and actions in terms of dynamic relationship and change across time. From the University of Texas at Austin.
• Internet Medieval Sourcebook Full-text primary sources on a variety of topics.
• Labyrinth: Resources for Medieval Studies An extensive directory of links in medieval studies, covering graphics, texts, manuscripts, and other forms of media. Describes medieval culture in the British Isles, France, Germany, Iberia, Italy, and Scandinavia. Addresses archaeology, arts and architecture, general medieval history, Latin, manuscripts, music, philosophy and theology, social and religious history, and the sciences.
• Medieval and Early Modern Sources Online This link opens in a new window Medieval and Early Modern Sources Online (MEMSO) is an essential resource for the study of Britain and its place in the world during the medieval and early modern period (c. 1100-1800).
• Medieval Family Life This link opens in a new window Medieval Family Life contains full-color images of the original medieval manuscripts that comprise the Paston, Cely, Plumpton, Stonor, and Armburgh family letter collections, along with full-text searchable transcripts from printed editions. Also includes family trees, chronology, a map, and a glossary.
• Medieval Travel Writing This link opens in a new window Provides an extensive collection of manuscript materials for the study of medieval travel writing in fact and in fantasy. The main focus is accounts of journeys to the Holy Land, India and China. The core of the material is a magnificent collection of medieval manuscripts from libraries across Europe and dating from the 13th to the 16th centuries.
• Middle English Compendium This link opens in a new window Provides links among three major Middle English electronic resources: an electronic version of the Middle English Dictionary (MED), a HyperBibliography of Middle English prose and verse (based on the MED bibliographies), and other related electronic resources including a collection of more than 50 Middle English texts. more... less... Middle English Dictionary: The print version (LAU Stacks and Cataloging PE679 .M54), now nearing completion, has been described as "the greatest achievement in medieval scholarship in America," offering a comprehensive analysis of lexicon and usage for the period 1100-1500. HyperBibliography of Middle English: Includes all the Middle English materials cited in the MED. Titles were adopted from A Manual of the Writings in Middle English (LAU Ref PR255 .S4). Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse: A growing collection of Middle English electronic texts eventually to include all editions of Middle English texts used in the MED and the more recent scholarly editions that may have superseded them.
• Online Medieval and Classical Library Provides online access to authoritative modern English translations of some of the most famous and studied medieval texts.
• Parker Library Digitized manuscripts spanning from the sixth-century Gospels of St. Augustine to sixteenth-century records relating to the English Reformation.
• Past Masters This link opens in a new window Provides scholarly complete editions of classics (or selections from classics) in philosophy, literature, political science and economics. Examples of authors include Aristotle, Machiavelli, Shelley, Mill, Hume, Nietzsche, Bronte and Adam Smith. In English translation and/or the original language.
• Post-Reformation Digital Library The Post-Reformation Digital Library (PRDL) is a select database that organizes the vast array of publicly available digital sources on the development of theology and philosophy during the early modern era (late 15th-18th c.).
• Vatican Library: Digitized Collections
• Witchcraft in Europe and America This link opens in a new window The earliest texts in this comprehensive collection on witchcraft date from the 15th century and the latest are from the early 20th century. The majority of the material concerns the 16th to 18th centuries, the so-called "classic period." In addition to these classic texts, the collection includes anti-persecution writings, works by penologists, legal and church documents, exposés of persecutions, and philosophical writings and transcripts of trials and exorcisms. Part of Archives Unbound .
• ArchiveGrid A searchable collection of finding aids to primary source material held in archives, special collections, and manuscript collections around the world. Includes historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more.
• GU Special Collections in European History Overview of materials that relate to European History in the Booth Family Center for Special Collections.
• GU Special Collections in the Book Arts Overview of materials that relate to the Book Arts, including medieval manuscripts, in the Booth Family Center for Special Collections..
• Booth Family Center for Special Collections
• Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts at Georgetown by Ted Jackson Last Updated Aug 15, 2022 88 views this year
• Hand-written Manuscripts: Learn to Read Guide by Special Collections Staff Last Updated Mar 1, 2021 101 views this year
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Humanities: Ancient to Medieval

Developing a topic.

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You may start with a broad topic, and not be sure how to focus it. By exploring background information you can learn about a topic and its parts. As you read through background information, consider if you can focus your topic in the following ways:

• Geographically - limit by a region, country, state, or city like Athens or Mediterranean
• Chronologically - limit by a time period like The Middle Kingdom or medieval
• People or Groups - limit to a specific person or group such as Alexander the Great or the Knights Templar
• Current or Historical Events - limit to a particular event such as the Crusades or the Norman Conquest
• Specific Examples - limit to specific examples of a broad topic. For example, instead of art , consider triptychs or cave painting .

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Background information can help you learn about the history, scope, depth, and breadth of your topic. It can be useful to help you understand a subject, as well as give you information to help you narrow a topic.

Credo Reference

Access Credo  |  Video Tutorial  |  How to Cite

Credo Reference  is a online database that contains the full text of more than 900 online reference books. The results in this database will give you brief information about subjects and help you learn more as you narrow your topic. You can also use the mind map feature to explore related topics.

Reference Books

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Some books are available online. Look for the word 'eBook' in the call number to identify eBooks. To read the eBook, click the title and then log in.

Use your Office 365 login This link opens in a new window to access online resources. Username: [email protected] (e.g., [email protected]) Password: your eSantaFe/eStaff password

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From Medical to Health Humanities: Evolving Interventions (NeMLA 2025 Roundtable)

The fields of medical and health humanities often aim to intervene in socially embedded systems of care and advance health justice. This roundtable explores ways to work toward that goal through pedagogy, research, and community partnership.

In recent years, 'medical humanities' has increasingly been shifted into the broader conceptual scope of 'health humanities.' Dynamic scholarship continues to be done under both interdisciplinary umbrellas, bringing humanistic approaches and epistemologies to bear on the discourses of medicine, biotechnology, and public health. A central underlying—sometimes explicit—aim of this work is to improve provider-patient communication; cultural competencies; and ethical, equitable treatment in contemporary systems of medicine, within a society that urgently needs to advance health justice on the national and global scale. Kairos thus infuses how the medical and health humanities strive to help healthcare evolve in theory, representation, training, and hands-on embodied practice.

This roundtable invites talks on specific humanistic interventions in health and medicine that you have created or are developing, whether in the context of a course or as an extension of community-engaged research. What texts, projects, and initiatives enable this field to contribute to a growing culture of health advocacy and activism in academia and beyond? What limitations in impact can medical/health humanities scholars face, perhaps due to the multidisciplinary nature of these enterprises and their reception by students, colleagues, or professionals from bioscience and social science backgrounds? What other critical spheres of influence are evolving through allied subfields that likewise offer a humanistic perspective on care, such as the history of medicine and the rhetoric of health and medicine? What collaborations exist or could be cultivated to relate scholarship in medical/health humanities to support for mental and physical wellness within our institutions and wider society?

Please submit short (250-350 word) abstracts for 5-10 minute talks at https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/CFP by September 30th, 2024. The roundtable format prioritizes the exchange of ideas, so participants should present brief 'overview' talks that will lead into our full-group discussion.

For more information, please contact Natalie Mera Ford at [email protected] . 

The 56th Annual NeMLA Convention, sponsored by La Salle University, will be held on March 6-9, 2025, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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1500-year sedimentary records of the east asian summer monsoon and yellow sea warm current from the muddy area of the north yellow sea, china.

1. Introduction

2. materials and methods, 2.1. cores b13 and b60, 2.2. laboratory analyses, 2.3. statistical methods, 3. results and analyses, 3.1. grain-size analyses of core b13, 3.2. changes in sediment color, 3.3. changes in sediment elements, 4. discussion, 4.1. sedimentary environment evolution, 4.2. variability of the easm and yswc, 4.3. the relationships between the easm and yswc, 5. conclusions, supplementary materials, author contributions, data availability statement, acknowledgments, conflicts of interest.

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Lyu, W.; Chen, G.; Wang, Y.; Cui, Z.; Su, Q.; Fu, T.; Xu, X. 1500-Year Sedimentary Records of the East Asian Summer Monsoon and Yellow Sea Warm Current from the Muddy Area of the North Yellow Sea, China. Atmosphere 2024 , 15 , 869. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos15080869

Lyu W, Chen G, Wang Y, Cui Z, Su Q, Fu T, Xu X. 1500-Year Sedimentary Records of the East Asian Summer Monsoon and Yellow Sea Warm Current from the Muddy Area of the North Yellow Sea, China. Atmosphere . 2024; 15(8):869. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos15080869

Lyu, Wenzhe, Guangquan Chen, Yancheng Wang, Zhen Cui, Qiao Su, Tengfei Fu, and Xingyong Xu. 2024. "1500-Year Sedimentary Records of the East Asian Summer Monsoon and Yellow Sea Warm Current from the Muddy Area of the North Yellow Sea, China" Atmosphere 15, no. 8: 869. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos15080869

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