David Bates, who received his PhD from the University of Exeter in 1970, has been awarded the prestigious Prix Syndicat national des Antiquaires du Livre d’Art 2020 for the book La Tapisserie de Bayeux published in 2019 and co-authored with the art historian Xavier Barral i Altet. The book gained the prize against competition from twenty-three […]
It’s the start of a new academic year at Exeter and many things are different. We can’t teach, research, or meet together as a community in quite the same way as before. But we’ve adapted and found workarounds – and it’s no different for the Centre’s Medieval Research Seminar! We have a full programme of […]
Vestez vos dras, biau douz enfaunz, Chaucez vos brais, soulers, et gaunz. […] De une corroie vous ceintez — Ne di pas ‘vous enceintez’, Car femme est par home enceinte Et de une ceinture est ele ceinte. Put on your clothes, my sweet child: don your breeches, shoes, and gloves. Lock up your belt-buckle — but do not say ‘knock up’, for a woman is knocked up by a man, but is locked up within a belt. This somewhat risqué passage of French […]
As my colleagues at Exeter know, I have spent the past few years looking at the concept of news in the Middle Ages. I’ve been considering what the idea of ‘news’ meant in the medieval world, what sources remain for news, and what studies of news in the Middle Ages might tell us about news […]
University of Exeter, 30 April — 1 May 2019 The traditional—and still popular—image of the ‘feudal’ political order of the Middle Ages is one of anarchic knights and overmighty barons pursuing selfish ends to the detriment of peace and justice. Our teleological narrative thus explains the emergence of the modern state by the rise of […]
This week marks the 750th anniversary of the last translation of the relics of Edward the Confessor at Westminster Abbey, in 1269, to the new shrine created at the direction of Henry III. The new shrine was the centrepiece of the scheme for the elaboration and beautification of the abbey church in which King Henry […]
Alun Williams reports on the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean conference, held in the Institut d’Estudis Catalans (IEC), Barcelona. The 2019 Conference of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean took place in the historic centre of Barcelona between 8 and 11 July in the beautiful and (mostly) neo-classical surroundings of the Casa de Convalescència, a […]
We’re happy to announce that the new Warhorse project in Archaeology, led by Prof. Oliver Creighton, now has a website and blog up and running. ‘Warhorse: the Archaeology of a Military Revolution?’ is a three-year project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. For the project the team of archaeologists and historians will be conducting the […]
We’re pleased to announce that two books with medieval themes written by Exeter academics have been shortlisted for the 2019 Current Archaeology Awards, in the ‘Book of the Year’ category – see here. Nick Holder (Honorary Research Fellow, History, and English Heritage) has The Friaries of Medieval London, a survey of these important religious houses; […]
Exeter will be hosting the Fifteenth Century Conference this September, an annual conference for anyone with interests in the Fifteenth Century. This has come about mainly because of the hard work of PhD student Des Atkinson, assisted by me, James Clark, Eddie Jones and our Hon Research Fellow Jonathan Hughes. The theme will be ‘England and Mainland […]