Medieval World Culture & Conflict Magazine

Medieval World: Culture & Conflict picks up where its sister magazines – Ancient Warfare and Ancient History – leave off. The publication features the rich history and material culture of the Middle Ages – broadly conceived geographically and temporally – expanding on the contents of the popular Medieval Warfare magazine. Through well-researched and lavishly illustrated articles, this accessible publication brings to light cultural activities in local and global contexts, historical figures and events, as well as political, religious, economic, and artistic facets of the Middle Ages..

Medieval World Culture & Conflict Magazine

Editorial

Cathedral of Monreale unveils stunning new look after renovation

Portrait of the last Byzantine emperor found

Medieval manuscript sells for €4.5 million

Medieval document exposed as eighteenth-century forgery

50 Viking skeletons discovered in Denmark

Corfe Castle tower reopens after 378 years

Silk seal bag links Westminster Abbey to Charlemagne’s shrine

THE BATTLE OF ALJUBARROTA • On a hillside in central Portugal in the height of the summer of 1385, the kingdoms of Portugal and Castile met in battle. Near a village called Aljubarrota, the Portuguese (and a small contingent of English mercenaries), though greatly outnumbered by the army of Castile, fought a shrewd and determined action, reduced their enemy to rout, and so vouchsafed their nation’s independence. And telling the story was the foremost chivalric chronicler of the day: Jean Froissart.

THE CHIVALRIC CODE • We are very used to talking about the ‘chivalric code’ as if it was some uniform regulation, agreed upon internationally, unchanging across the centuries, and followed religiously by all good and virtuous knights. The truth is that there was no single definition of what it meant to be chivalrous (or, indeed what it took to be a knight).

HARLECH CASTLE • Modern historians have asserted that Harlech castle was one of the wondrous new castles constructed for Edward I (r. 1272-1307). A close examination of the surviving records shows that this hypothesis does not stand up to scrutiny. Harlech rock’s history already spanned over a thousand years by the time Edward I arrived.

Revisiting sources

FROM MONASTERY TO UNIVERSITY • Western Europe’s customs of teaching and learning are perhaps the most enduring legacy of the Latin Middle Ages. The familiar methods, tools, and timing of education at every level are founded on a medieval tradition.

Teaching women

How many people were literate in the Middle Ages?

LEARNING A TRADE • If you were living in the Middle Ages, what employment might you have chosen? Baking? Weaving? Or maybe the art of swordsmithing? To be trained in these trades, apprenticeship was a necessity. This article lifts the veil on medieval apprenticeship in Western Europe, from the identity of the trainees to the conditions of their hiring.

Learning to farm

A SCHOOLHOUSE FOR THE SWORD • Far from being the preserve of the knightly class, fighting with a sword was also the sport of the middle classes, and one of the accomplishments of a gentleman. We are accustomed to thinking of knights practising with swords from an early age, learning as squires from a grizzled veteran sergeant. As always, there was some truth in this, but there was another culture of swordsmanship — one of middleclass sportsmanship; one of the accomplishments of a gentleman.

A German fencing master

MEDIEVAL ISLAMIC EDUCATION • There are many traditions of the Prophet Muhammad in praise of the pursuit of knowledge or learning, especially religious, which was at the heart of the Muslim system of education in the Middle Ages. He is reported to have said, for example, “(Acquiring) ‘Ilm (knowledge) is a religious duty incumbent...