What's a bishop to do? The obscure but fascinating letter collection of the late ninth century Bishop Herfrid of Auxerre gives us special insight into bonds of patronage, protection, and poetry: salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2024/06/04/s...
A major loss when the calendar flips over from the ninth century into the tenth are letters. Yes, I know, there are some really big and important ones, such as the letters of Gerbert of Aurillac and R...
A roving army of mercenaries is in a troubled land and a political vacuum. Do they start a new kingdom? Some vikings did but we have little insight into why - except that provided by an ancient Greek under remarkably similar circumstances: salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2024/01/04/x...
About eighteen months ago, I discovered that capital-C Classical Penguin Classics cost basically nothing on Kindle (other e-readers are available), and so, thinking that I should gain a background in ...
Between c. 850 and c. 1050, being a count became a matter of inheritance rather than appointment. This was one of the most crucial changes of the period - but was it the result of grasping nobles, or was it more principled? I examine this question in: salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2024/02/01/p...
The transformation of office into property is one of *the* big socio-political changes of the Late Carolingian and Post-Carolingian periods. The model in question is roughly this: under Charlemagne, i...
Tenth-century France meets global history, as pre-crusade travel to Jerusalem ramps up in the _Life_ of a millennial traveler to the Holy Land, Archdeacon Adrald of Troyes (the only Latin account of the Holy Land for many decades either side): salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2024/07/02/s...
It’s fair to call the Vita Aderaldi an obscure text. It’s not unknown – I dream of finding a completely unknown text, with the closest I’ve come so far my redating of the Vita Amabilis – but it rarely...
Hello new followers! If you're interested in medieval history, you might like the blog I run with @samottewillsoulsby.bsky.social#middleages. Here are five of my best blog posts from this year:
Today on the blog, What I Did on my Holidays (answer: think even more about Charlemagne’s elephant). (Also hello new followers! This is honestly alarmingly representative of the sort of thing I write about). salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2024/09/19/c...
The Bibliothèque nationale de France normally makes appearances on this blog as a repository for written material. But in addition to 21,000 manuscripts, it also contains treasures of a different sort...
This week on the blog, @samottewillsoulsby.bsky.socialsalutemmundo.wordpress.com/2024/09/19/c...
The Bibliothèque nationale de France normally makes appearances on this blog as a repository for written material. But in addition to 21,000 manuscripts, it also contains treasures of a different sort...
There's a Voynch Manuscript guy? He emailed the entire IMS at Leeds when I was there
This week's Charter A Week: Robert the Pious' Cluniac kingship: salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2024/09/17/c...
I think we can only get a very fractured sense of the promise of the early reign of Robert the Pious. Part of me has been tempted to wonder whether Hugh Capet would even have been chosen as king if Ro...
Of note is that something thinking about these issues is one of the promised outputs from the project, so if you have thoughts or reading suggestions, please let me know!