leidenmedievalistsblog — page 15

Social History

"Horribiles vultus": race and racism in Byzantine Africa

A passage in a sixth-century epic narrative ‘On the Libyan War’ reveals the role of race and racism in defining communities in Byzantine North Africa.

Farrowed futures: Prognostic pigs and pig prognostics in the Middle Ages

Could medieval pigs foretell the future? The answer may surprise you.

'Op Romereis' met Alfred de Grote in de vroege Middeleeuwen

Koningszoon Alfred reisde op jonge leeftijd naar Rome; een reis met grote politieke gevolgen!

Automated Reading of Medieval Manuscripts: An Alternative for Palaeography Classes?

New technologies may well blow the ‘dust’ off traditional scholarly skills such as palaeography, which risk being scratched from curriculums. In the ‘Digital Editing’ class in Leiden University’s Dutch department, students helped train a computer to automatically read medieval manuscripts.

The maze of meaning: Interpreting Job through imagery in Leiden, UB, BPL 100 A

Leiden, UB, BPL 100 A, a glossed (annotated) copy of the biblical Book of Job dating from the twelfth century contains a number of sketches. What can these tell us about the interpretation of Job’s suffering in the Middle Ages?

Arabian Monotheism before Islam: Some Reflections on the Pagans of the Qurʾan

The religious and philosophical landscape in Arabia before the advent of Islam remains, for the most part, uncharted territory. This post sheds light on how the new Islamic dispensation of the seventh century AD came to see the Arabian pagans and their worldview.