'tis but a scratch: fact and fiction about the Middle Ages Richard Abels

This is the second of a three part series with my very special co-host, Dr. Larissa 'Kat' Tracy, about adultery in the Middle Ages. In the previous episode, Kat and I talked about the Lancelot and Guinevere story. In this episode, we tackle the other great medieval tale of adulterous love, Tristan and Iseult. We begin, however, with a possible contemporary historical analogue, a scandal involving Countess Elizabeth of Vermandois, wife of Count Philip of Flanders, and a very unfortunate household knight.  If true, the adultery of the countess and the vengeance taken by her husband emphasizes the difference between literature and reality--but, the "if" is very much in question. 

In the third and concluding episode, we will look at how the stories of Lancelot and Guinevere and Tristan and Iseult have been used in modern literature and movies.

If you are enjoying this podcast, please share it with friends and family who might be interested in things medieval. And if you are listening on a platform that allows ratings and reviews, such as Apple podcasts, please take the time to rate and review it. I am told that is the best way of spreading the good news.

This episode includes an orchestral snippet of Arturo Toscanini conducting the Liebestod  from Richard Wagner's opera "Tristan und Isolde" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBFcDGTzgAI)
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Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com

In this episode, my very special guest Dr. John Hosler draws upon the research he undertook for his book Jerusalem Falls: Seven Centuries of War and Peace (Yale University Press, 2022) to discuss what Jerusalem meant in the thought and imagination of Christians and Muslims in the twelfth century, and the role the city played in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. As John is a professor at the Army's Command and General Staff College, we also chat a bit about teaching military history to military officers. 

This episode contains a short sound bite from the movie "Kingdom of Heaven"
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Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com

In this episode my co-host Dr. Jennifer Paxton and I explain the principles and personal grievances that led to the martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket and the significance of that event for Church-State relations in medieval England. We also talk about T.S. Eliot’s and Jean Anouilh’s plays about Thomas’ martyrdom, and the movies based on those plays. This is the second of a two part series. If you haven’t already done so, you might want to listen to the first episode in which Jenny and I talk about Becket’s background, his career leading up to his election as archbishop of Canterbury, and his contribution to Henry II’s efforts to restore royal authority in England after a generation of civil war.

This episodes contains audio clips from: 
"Becket" (released by Paramount, directed by Peter Glenville, starring Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole, and adapted by Edward Anhalt from a play by Jean Anouilh)

The 12th century song lamenting the exile of Thomas Becket,  "In Rama sonat gemitus," performed by Lumina Vocal Ensemble  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c30K1rQsaiI)

The Trim Jeans Theater's adaptation of T.S. Eliot's "Murder in the Cathedral" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYvz1-ThCHY)


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Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com

This is the first of a three part series about adultery in the Middle Ages.  My co-host for both is Dr. Larissa 'Kat' Tracy. Last month Kat and I talked about my favorite medieval romance, Chretien de Troyes' late twelfth-century French poem "Yvain: The Knight with the Lion."  Unlike the more famous medieval romances of Lancelot and Guinevere and Tristan and Isolde,  "Yvain" celebrated marital love. That led me to ask Kat about attitudes toward adultery in medieval literature. In this episode we focus on the evolution of the Lancelot and Guinevere story, and how it relates to societal and clerical attitudes toward adultery. The second part will be about Tristan and Isolde, and how medieval adultery has been dealt with in movies.
Listen on Podurama https://podurama.com
Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com

This is the first of two episodes on the career, historical context, and "afterlife" of England's most famous--and controversial--saint and martyr, St. Thomas Becket. My co-host for both is a veteran of this podcast, Dr. Jennifer Paxton of the Catholic University of America. In this episode we set the historical scene for Becket's martyrdom. Among the topics that Jenny and I discuss are Becket's childhood and family, his service as a cleric in the household of Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury, and the legal and administrative reforms undertaken by Henry II to restore--and enhance--royal authority and social order after fifteen years of civil war in England. The last leads to a discussion of English "Common Law" and the rise of administrative kingship in England.  The episode also  deals with the rival claims of sovereignty over the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church by a rising papal monarchy that conceived of the Church as a supranational state and by kings, who, citing custom and tradition, viewed the bishops and clergy within their kingdoms as their 'men,' subject to their will. We touch on the central issue of the Becket Controversy: Becket's claim that clergy are subject only to canon law and exempt from punishment by the state, a topic will be explored in greater detail in the next episode. That episode will deal with Thomas Becket's martyrdom; his emergence as England's most famous martyr and his tomb as the destination for numerous pilgrimages, most famously that of Chaucer's pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales; and the continued fascination that his story holds for writers and movie makers. I hope that you will join us for both.

This episode includes:
Neville Coghill reading from the Prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (which can be found online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN3JA1IfbVM

Short audio clips from the 1964 movie "Becket," starring Richard Burton as Thomas Becket and Peter O'Toole as King Henry II

(If you are enjoying this podcast, please let your friends know about it, and, if you have the time and inclination, rate it and review it wherever you get your podcasts. I'm told that is the best way to spread the good word.)



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Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com

In this episode Ellen and Richard talk about what a "crusade" was in the Middle Ages. Richard explains what modern historians mean by the term "crusade"--and why there is so little agreement. He also offers a response to a question posed by Nicholas Morton in the previous episode: How did the medieval Church reconcile its doctrine of love of enemy and its pacifistic underpinnings with papal sponsorship of crusades?


Recommended reading:

Western Historiography of the Crusades 
Riley-Smith, Jonathan. What Were the Crusades? 4th edition, Ignatius Press, 2009. When this was first published in 1977, it represented the first serious effort to explain what historians mean when they refer to crusades, and remains a key work. It is also short, 177 pages, and clearly written. As I took the title for this episode from this book, it is only fair that it is listed first. Riley-Smith's The Crusades: A History and the volume of essays he edited, The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades are good introductions to the subject.


Constable, Giles. Crusaders and Crusading in the Twelfth Century. Routledge, 2020. Constable is responsible for the categorization of modern crusading historiography into four schools, Traditionalists, Pluralists, Generalists, and Popularists. He is also the scholar most responsible for recognizing the importance of charters as source material for crusading history. Giles, who passed away in 2021, was a welcoming and generous scholar who helped me appreciate the importance of culture in medieval warfare.



Housley, Norman. Contesting the Crusades. Blackwell Publishing, 2006. A survey of the key historiographical debates over key crusading issues (defining the crusade, origins of the First Crusade, Intentions and Motivations, etc.).  


Tyerman, Christopher. The Debate on the Crusades. Manchester University Press, 2011. From the blurb on the back cover: “This is the first book-length study of how succeeding generations from the First Crusade in 1099 to the present day have understood, refashioned, moulded and manipulated accounts of these medieval wars of religion to suit changing contemporary circumstances and interests.” It is a bit idiosyncratic—Tyerman has strong opinions about the work of fellow scholars--but the author clearly knows his stuff. Tyerman also has the distinction of being the author of one of the longest single volume histories of the Crusade (God’s War, Harvard U. Press, 2009) and one of the shortest (The Crusades: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford U. Press, 2006).


 
Muslim views of the Crusades


Hillenbrand, Carole, The Crusades: The Islamic Perspectives. Edinburgh University Press, 1999. This is a monumental (704 pages), groundbreaking study of how Muslims viewed the crusaders and the West in the era of the crusades, and later. 


Niall Christie, Muslims and Crusaders: Christianity’s Wars in the Middle East, 1095-1382, from the Islamic Sources. Routledge, 2014. This is a concise and well thought out survey of the crusades from the contemporary Muslim perspective, with a well-chosen selection of excerpts from medieval Arabic sources.


Sivan , Emmanuel.  "The Crusaders described by modern Arab historiography". Asian and African Studies , 8 ( 1972 ): 104-49. One of the few studies of modern Arab historiography of the Crusades (written, interestingly, by an Israeli scholar).


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Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com