Unity, diversity and the past, 1100-1300 (Historical Writing

Once more into the breach, my friends?

It is time to enter the breach once more. This time, to answer a piece by Kit Kowohl in the most recent issue of the Political Quarterly,...

Björn Weiler

Jun 13, 20234 min read

On the Education of Kings

The following is a - very short - extract from Paths to Kingship in medieval Latin Europe, which is due to be published in October. In...

Björn Weiler

Sep 25, 20218 min read

Reclaiming History

Once again, shots have been fired in the UK’s culture wars. This time, via the website History Reclaimed, introduced by one of its...

Björn Weiler

Sep 1, 202111 min read

History, heritage and nationhood

The main news in the academic twittersphere has been an article in the UK’s Daily Telegraph (14 February 2021) that the government’s...

Björn Weiler

Feb 14, 20219 min read

History & the Holy

In 1111/12, Sigebert of Gembloux, by then well over 80, completed what proved to be his final work: the Catalogus de viris illustribus...

Björn Weiler

Oct 22, 202010 min read

How to read history around the year 1200

Writing history did not occur in a vacuum. Chroniclers and others writing about the past interacted directly with their brethren, peers...

Björn Weiler

Sep 26, 202014 min read

Playing with numbers: Latin v. the Vernacular, and the transformation of the year 1200

Some of the recurring questions about this project, posed by historians as well as by colleagues in literary studies, relate to numbers....

Björn Weiler

Sep 2, 20208 min read

Scholars, Gluttons and Builders

The trawl through chronicles continues. One of its great benefits is the number of texts I encountered that I didn’t know before, or of...

Björn Weiler

Aug 8, 20209 min read

In Praise of Angry Dwarves

Like others, I have had my plans overturned by the pandemic. The manuscript hunting envisaged for this spring and summer had to be...

Björn Weiler

Jul 31, 202010 min read

Giants, dwarves and crooks (iii)

Now back to the nineteenth century. Muratori’s emphasis on Italian sources set the tone for the major editorial projects of the...

Björn Weiler

Jul 24, 20209 min read

Giants, dwarves and crooks (ii)

When Migne started compiling the Patrologia Latina, he did no editing himself. Nor would his business model allow him to hire anyone to...

Björn Weiler

Jul 24, 20208 min read

Giants, dwarves and crooks (i)

Trawling through nineteenth- and twentieth-century editions of texts has made me realise just how indebted my generation is to the labour...

Björn Weiler

Jul 17, 20208 min read

The monk, the chronicle, and the greedy archbishop

For the last few days I have been reading my way through the Chronicon Epternacense, or Chronicle of Echternach (in modern Luxembourg)....

Björn Weiler

Jul 10, 20206 min read