Giles Constable, Professor Emeritus in the School of Historical
Studies, has authored Medieval Monasticism (Routledge,
2017), a collection of his key articles on medieval monastic and
ecclesiastical history, which provides a comprehensive view
of...
Few twentieth-century historians deserve a full-scale biography
more than Ernst Kantorowicz (1895–1963) on the basis both of “work”
and “life.” More than fifty years after his death Kantorowicz
remains one of the most influential of all medieval...
Early this December, newspaper headlines made the sensational
claim that recent DNA evidence had called into question the
legitimacy of the British monarchy: scientists had identified what
is known as a false-paternity event. Genetic analysis of the...
The Institute is a remarkably modest place. Like all Members of
the School of Historical Studies, I was provided a lovely
apartment, a simple office (with computer), access to both the
Institute’s libraries and those of Princeton University,
lunch...
Dumbarton Oaks has published
How to Defeat the Saracens by William of Adam in a new
translation and critical edition (2012) by Giles Constable, Professor Emeritus in the School
of Historical Studies. How to Defeat the Saracens presents a
five...
A natural starting point for any attempt to know a past society
is its histories—the texts with which its members recorded what had
happened and was happening in their world. Many precious witnesses
of this kind have survived from medieval Europe...
Material objects play a role in all religions. Jewish women
light candles for the Sabbath; Christians sprinkle or douse bodies
with water to baptize; Hindus offer coconuts and clarified butter
to images of the gods and goddesses; the ancient Incas...
Reliquaries were designed as receptacles for tiny bundles of
sacred stuff such as handfuls of dust, pebbles from Biblical sites
in the Holy Land, tiny fragments of the hair, clothing, and even
bone of those deemed to be saints and martyrs by the...
The hundred and fifty years before the Protestant Reformation
used to be seen as a period of religious decadence. More recently,
they have been understood as an era of rather anxious piety, in
which the faithful purchased indulgences, went on...
