leidenmedievalistsblog — page 7

Legal History · Architecture · Economic History

The Measure of Things: on the Size of a Loaf or the Length of a Poniard

Although easily overlooked, the facades of many churches and public buildings show up iron rods or studs, carved shapes like the contours of feet or daggers, and even representations of bricks and floor tiles. These signs hark back to a time when standard measures differed from place to place.

Magnus, Marriage, Mortality: Unexpected Connections between Early Medieval England and Poland

A visit to a Polish castle leads to some unexpected connections between England and Poland in the early Middle Ages.

Manuscript Studies · Music

Singing along in the margin

In the early medieval books of Fleury, neumes (an early form of music notation) are a regular occurrence in the margins. Who wrote these neumes and why?

Cicero’s Life Reconsidered: Late Medieval and Early Humanistic Approaches

Details about Cicero’s life – well attested through many documents from antiquity – were almost forgotten during the Middle Ages. Substantial interest in his biography reemerged in the fourteenth century in the context of the North-Italian city-states (comuni).

A World in the Back of a Book

Why was a medieval note on the world's regions added on a scrap of parchment at the end of a Roman geographic work (Leiden UB, BPL 68)? From India to Ireland, Cappadocia to cannibals, the note's mixture of fact and fiction showcases a reader's interest in the bounds of their known world.

Hidden in Plain Sight: Mosquitoes, Malaria and Herbs in the Medieval Low Countries

Medical sources shine a light on the presence and awareness of mosquito-borne malaria in the medieval Low Countries. At the same time, these sources allow an insight into past human-environmental interactions.