Cinzia Grifoni

January 15, 2019 | Cinzia Grifoni | HI Research Blog |

The actual meaning and every-day implications of words like "people", "nation" and "democracy" have increasingly become the subject of general reflection. Indeed, it is a common experience to participate in or come across debates about the nature, purpose and cohesiveness of present-day political communities, be they local,...

Lena Kornprobst

January 1, 2019 | Lena Kornprobst | HI Research Blog |

It is not true what their brother Piero is saying. They, Antonio and Simone, are not obliged to support him in his financial hardships caused by the high rents due for a tax farm, which he purchased by action alone and was thus the only person responsible for. Contrary to Piero’s claims, his brothers deny the existence of a f...

Ingrid Hartl

December 15, 2018 | Ingrid Hartl | HI Research Blog |

The current blog entry is dedicated to the latest volume of our open-access e-journal Medieval Worlds edited by Walter Pohl and Andre Gingrich.

On 1 December, Medieval Worlds 8.2018, entitled Transcultural Contacts and Literary Exchanges, was published online. This issue follows a strong interest in recent submissions in dealing...

Bernhard Zeller

December 1, 2018 | Bernhard Zeller | HI Research Blog |

Completion of the facsimile-edition of the 9^th-century charters from St Gall within the framework of the Chartae Latinae Antiquiores

More than 800 early medieval charters dating from before 1000 have been preserved up to the present day in the archive of the abbey of St Gall. This is an extraordinary – north of the Alps,...

Pavlína Rychterová

November 15, 2018 | Pavlína Rychterová | HI Research Blog |

Oldest extant texts in vernacular and their histories of identity

Historical narratives of medieval peoples very often start with the first texts written in their alleged languages, emerging across Europe from the fifth to the sixteenth centuries. The oldest extant texts stood at the beginning of modern...

Richard Corradini

November 1, 2018 | Richard Corradini | HI Research Blog |

In Augustine of Hippo’s (354-430) dramatic cosmos Rome was a place full of dichotomies. As a vital icon the capital symbolised a complex semantic field that incorporated lots of aspects − political and historical notions of the Roman Empire, antique literature, grammar and rhetoric, philosophy and erudition, the social...

Clemens Gantner

October 15, 2018 | Clemens Gantner | HI Research Blog |

The current blog entry is dedicated to the relations of Louis II of Italy (840-875) with the Byzantine Empire in the earliest phase of his reign in Italy.

Louis¹ was the oldest son of Emperor Lothar I (840-855) and thereby a great-grandson of Charlemagne. He was born in approximately 825: It is indeed strange that we know...

Walter Pohl

October 1, 2018 | Walter Pohl | HI Research Blog |

Thirty years ago, my first book came out: it was about the Avars, written in German and had a good 500 pages, about 150 of which were footnotes. In spite of that, the book still sells.¹  In many respects, writing it had been a venture into the unknown: far beyond the Latin and Greek world with which I was familiar, into the Central...

Patrick S. Marschner

September 15, 2018 | Patrick Marschner | HI Research Blog |

The Case of Post-Conquest Christian-Iberian Historical Writing

Throughout the entire European Middle Ages, biblical texts not only prescribed laws or told stories about hope, salvation and the history of God’s Chosen People. The Bible was also a guide to interpret, understand and depict the post-biblical history of...

Katharina Winckler

September 1, 2018 | Katharina Winckler | HI Research Blog |

Early Medieval Bavaria is a peculiar case in the studies of sixth- to ninth-century Europe: the region disappears almost completely from our written sources at the beginning of this period, but re-emerges from the middle of the eighth century onwards with a sudden (and astonishingly large) amount of written evidence,...