In this week’s post, Alun Williams, Honorary Research Fellow in the Centre, shares recollections from the recent launch event for his new monograph. I am grateful to those who came to the launch of my recent book, Narrative, Piety and Polemic in Medieval Spain: Biblical Rhetoric in the Reconquest Chronicles of León-Castile, published by Bloomsbury […]
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 […]
As many of you will know by now, our former colleague Simon Barton died suddenly just before Christmas. Simon had been at Exeter for many years, first in Modern Languages and then in History, before leaving in December 2016 to take up a chair at the University of Central Florida. Simon will probably need no […]
Commenting on the inability of human societies to predict forthcoming calamities, the Los Angeles Times recently ran a comment piece headed ‘No-one expects the Spanish Inquisition – or Donald Trump’. There have been some dire predictions about the baleful impact that the new President might have not only in the US, but across the world. […]
When Isabel of Castile and Fernando of Aragon took Granada from the Moors in 1492, their propaganda claimed it as a heroic victory marking the culmination of an 800 year struggle against Muslim invaders. Arabic and Jewish accounts, of course, reported it differently, but one Christian account is exceptional in presenting an alternative take on […]
Every year, on the Sunday before 5 October, the feast day of St Froilán, the inhabitants of the Spanish city of León celebrate a popular festival known as Las Cantaderas. The fiesta, which has been in existence for almost 500 years, commemorates the decision supposedly taken in the late eighth century by the Christian kings […]
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