Leiden Medievalists Blog

Cultural History · Manuscript Studies · Religious history

Coming out of the cave: monks in society in seventh and eighth century Egypt

Starvation, solitude and saintliness. These are not the first words that come to mind when looking at the lives of Egyptian monks in the seventh and eighth century. At least, not when you look at their letters and documents on papyrus and potsherds.

Eline Scheerlinck • 28-06-2019

Art History

Devouring the church

Setting your teeth in the church was not as implausible an act in medieval times as we might think today. Different creatures nibbled and scraped away at the church’s fabric: sculpted monsters, pillar-biting hypocrites, and even the faithful themselves.

Elizabeth den Hartog • 14-06-2019

Cultural History · Art History · Literature

Medieval piggyback rides: Riding boars in the Middle Ages

With their ferocious characters, daunting tusks and relatively bulky statures, boars make unlikely steeds. Nevertheless, the Middle Ages feature various examples of boar riding.

Thijs Porck • 17-05-2019

Manuscript Studies · Book History

Following French Fashion: The Dutch Book of Hours in Print

On 16 August 1491, the most prolific printer of the Low Countries at the time, Gerard Leeu (d. 1492) published his only edition of a Book of Hours in Dutch. The book itself, however, looks French. Why was Leeu swayed by French fashion?

Anna Dlabacová • 17-05-2019

Military History

Op kruistocht tegen de Turken! ...en te laat aankomen

In 1532 vertrok een legertje huurlingen onder leiding van de Duitse Orde vanuit Utrecht richting Wenen ter bestrijding van de Ottomanen. Ze kwamen te laat.

Jerem van Duijl • 03-05-2019

Cultural History

Poltergeist pranks: More tales about the supernatural in medieval Italy

In this blog post we will look into a number of clever, but often cruel, practical jokes in which gullible victims, through a mix of staging and theatre, are made to believe that a ghost or demon is after them.

Marlisa den Hartog • 19-04-2019

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