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Middle Ages

Forbidden Fruit: Male-Female Relations in the Medieval Cloister

Medieval monks and nuns lived by rules that demanded three vows: chastity, obedience and poverty. Problems arose with all three at times, and oft...

Women and Romances: Medieval Women and their Books

With its intertwined episodes and challenging hurdles, romance literature of the Middle Ages gave birth to modern romance novels, but it was not exactly...

Making a Women’s Manuscript: Medieval Women and their Books II

Although many manuscripts survive from the Middle Ages, there are comparatively few that reveal certain signs of female participation in their production. One of...

Coping with the Pen: Women Writers of the Middle Ages

The lives of most medieval women were not easy, particularly in the tumultuous the first few centuries of the medieval period. Such women enjoyed...

Medieval English Books for Children: Reading to Succeed

Many parents in medieval England were as concerned about teaching their children to read and write as parents are today. Literacy was not as...

Northumbria 600-768

Æthelfrith († 616) was the king of Bernicia (from 592/593) and Deira, which merged into Northumbria. Æthelfrith was the son of Æthelric and the...

Universities and Students in the High Middle Ages

In the early 14th-Century, Alvarius Pelagius, a Franciscan, described some of the university students of that age. Pelagius commented that, “They attend classes but...

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