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Big books, high praise and tiny queries
(Written substantially offline on the East Coast main line between Edinburgh and Newcastle, 23rd May 2011.) My current job is quite luxurious, there’s no point in denying it (and you know, I don’t...
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If I were inclined to argue with Chris Wickham…
Well, no, hang on, I am inclined to do that, no subjunctive necessary. I do it about the salt trade and about aristocrats and I do it more or less in sport, because ultimately Chris has read about two...
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Finally, Kalamazoo 2011 can be told, Part I
Yes, I know, it’s September and I’m dealing with things that happened in May, it bodes badly, but I’m doing the best I can and since there were complaints from venerable parts of the blogosphere that...
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At last, Kalamazoo 2011… Part III
On the third day of the 46th International Congress on Medieval Studies, I appear to have followed almost exactly the same trajectory through sessions as the Medieval History Geek,1 and of course he...
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At last, Kalamazoo 2011… Part IV
(Written offline on trains between Oxford and London, 17-18/09/2011) On the morning of the last day of the International Congress on Medieval Studies, as habitués know, the civilized start time of the...
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Leeds 2011 report 3: Catalans, coins, churches and computers
[Edit: hideously mixed-up footnotes now all match up and exist and so on.] Looking back at it, it does seem rather as if the 2011 International Medieval Congress was fairly intense for your humble...
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Conferring in Naples, II: papers in the p. m.
Sala Conferenze in the Palazzo degli Uffici, Università degli Studi Federico II, Naples The reason I had all the time I had to go sight-seeing in Naples was that the conference I was at didn’t start...
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Feudal Transformations XV: two fields or three?
Diagram of a three-field agriculture system As with so many of the best bits of learning, a while ago I came up against something in a book that I was reading, for completely different reasons, that...
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Leeds 2012 Report 1
I have to say that I wonder exactly what the point of writing up blog on the International Medieval Congress at Leeds of 2012, on the very day that early registration closes for the 2013 one. I will...
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Leeds 2012 Report 2
My notes from last year’s International Medieval Congress seem to be pretty good, but I’m disturbed by how little of what I apparently attended I recall in any detail without them. I suppose this is...
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Seminar CXLV: Gregory of Tour’s F-word
I’m sorry it is taking so long to get momentum up again here. The arrival of Internet at home only occurred quite recently and all my teaching is on new courses so weekly maintenance of them is taking...
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Seminars CXLVII-CXLIX: Chroniclers, Kilwa and Vikings In Normandy
With the usual apologies for backlog taken as read, today’s first post under the new new dispensation should get me slightly more caught up with seminar reports; people keep saying how even the old...
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Feudal Transformations XVIII: who wants that third field?
My academic endeavours seem to come round in cycles. I spent a good chunk of later 2012 working my way through Jean-Pierre Devroey’s book L’Économie rurale et société en l’Europe franque I in pursuit...
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Any Old Iron (in which I am behind the times on medieval technical change)
This post is probably more a note to myself than anything, and comes again apropos of my having a while back read Jean-Pierre Devroey’s L’Économie rurale et société en l’Europe franque.1 It relates to...
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Seminar CLXXVIII: comparing post-Roman European uplands
May 2013 seems to have been a busy month in Oxford for seminars and the like, despite my attempt at daily posting I seem still to be fourteen months behind and possibly even falling back. Though this...
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Gregory of Tours and the Demons of Alternative Medicine
When I started off this post it was towards the end of some weeks re-reading Lewis Thorpe’s translation of the Ten Books of Histories of Bishop Gregory of Tours.1 This is obviously from a bit earlier...
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How to protect yourself from feudal violence, and other links
Today there is only time for a links post, I’m sorry about that. But happily I had most of one ready in the backlog drawer, and they’re all of reasonable moment. The refuge site at Bléré Val-de-Cher,...
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Seminar CLXXXI: things missing from the Miracles of Saint Faith
Somehow my seminar report backlog is still in May 2013, which was clearly a very busy month, but this was the last thing in it, 29th May when Dr Faye Taylor came to the Institute of Historical...
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Leeds 2013 report part 2
Sorry, this has taken a couple of days to find the time to write. But, as with the conference experience itself, the only way out of the backlog is through! Or something. So, resuming the Leeds 2013...
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Letting in the lowly in Lournand
In the first chapter of his controversial little book, The Transformation of the Year 1000, Guy Bois mentions a church in the tiny area of Burgundy that he chose for his micro-study, a “tiny,...
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