"The king's name is a tower of strength": Richard III's (Possible) Bones, Roundup

Detail from a late 16th century painting
of Richard III, artist unknown.

.
"Richard III dig: Results expected in January," BBC, November 19, 2012

The remains were found underneath a Leicester car park on the former site of the Greyfriars church in September.

Prof Lynn Foxhall, from the University of Leicester, said the team has got to be sure of its facts before it confirmed whether it was the monarch.>>>

Anthony Faiola, "Unverified remains dig up the twisted legacy of England’s Richard III," Washington Post, November 24, 2012

Underneath a drab parking lot 90 miles northwest of London, archaeologists have unearthed what may become one of this nation’s finds of the century — half-a-millennium-old bones thought to be the remains of the long-lost monarch. But if the discovery has touched off a feverish round of DNA tests against his closest living descendants, it has also lurched to the surface a series of burning questions in a country where even arcane points of history are disputed with the gusto of modern-day politics.>>>

"History could be rewritten if remains of Richard III have been discovered, say Leicester historians," University of Leicester News and Events, November 9, 2012

For Professor Norman Housley and Dr Andrew Hopper of our School of Historical Studies, if the remains found by the University of Leicester are Richard III's, it would rewrite history by bringing closure to the fate of the mysterious king. In addition, by observing that Richard's deformity may have been a result of scoliosis, the idea of him being a 'hunchback' will fade away.>>>

Martin Hickes, "Should Richard III - the last Yorkist king - be reburied in Yorkshire?" Guardian, September 18, 2012

Two major organisations which have exhaustively researched and promoted the 'true' name and history of Richard, which they assert is at odds with the traditional Shakespearean 'evil hunchback' depiction, are expecting much debate at their forthcoming conferences.>>>

Medieval History Roundup

.
Emma Sykes, "History buffs who know their stuff: Re-enacting history," ABC Brisbane, June 8, 2011

It's the closest you'll ever come to Knights, Roman Legionaries, and Napoleon's men in the 21st century, and its big business in Queensland. Each year thousands of people in Queensland alone transport themselves back to their century of choice to re-enact history.>>>

Liam Sloan, "Latin dictionary is a lifetime career," Oxford Mail, June 8, 2011

FOR 32 years, Dr David Howlett has been scouring medieval Latin texts, picking out unusual words and compiling them in one of the world’s most extraordinary dictionaries.

But, if that sounds like a lifetime’s work, it’s just a fraction of the time spent by scholars on a monumental effort to record the definitions of every Latin word used in Britain for more than 1,000 years.>>>

Karen Rosenberg, "Medieval Style Files: Tailored Artistry," NYT, May 26, 2011

Can you judge a hunter by his houpeland, or a prince by his pouleines? You certainly can in “Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands” at the Morgan Library & Museum. This lively show will teach you to scrutinize centuries-old manuscripts as you would a style magazine. (For the uninitiated: a houpeland is a high-waisted, drapey gown; pouleines are shoes with long, pointy toes.)>>>

Tom Payne, "Dante in Love by A N Wilson: review," Telegraph, June 6, 2011

Let me confess immediately that I haven’t read The Divine Comedy. Not much of it, anyway. I feel terrible about it, and should be punished, but, as Lucifer says somewhere, it comforts the wretched to have companions in their pain. And what companions there are. In Small World, David Lodge gives us Philip Swallow, who has had a copy of the poem with him on trips “for the last 30 years without ever having made much progress in it”.>>>

Medieval History Roundup

.
"Binham Priory discovery of giant medieval graffiti," BBC, January 20, 2011

Thousands of years of history at a remote priory in Norfolk could be unearthed after the discovery of giant medieval graffiti on its walls. The Norfolk Medieval Graffiti Survey (NMGS) group claims to have found 8ft (2.4m) building plans etched into the stonework of Binham Priory, near Wells. . . . "It was difficult to believe what I was seeing," said NMGS's Matthew Champion. "Most graffiti inscriptions tend to be relatively small and modest. This was just so big that it wasn't really possible to see exactly what it was until we had surveyed the whole wall surface.>>>

David Abel, "Below the Western Wall, passage to a cherished history," Boston Globe, February 13, 2011

JERUSALEM — The giant slabs of limestone, which have remained standing for two millennia despite repeated efforts to demolish them, make up the most sacred structure in the world for Jews, the ancient wall that once protected the Temple Mount. . . . The painstaking work of exploring the underworld along the hidden portion of the Western Wall has led to perhaps the most interesting and controversial tour in Jerusalem, one that has to be made by appointment.>>>

Arminta Wallace, "Time travel with an app," Irish Times, February 12, 2011

The iPhone app Dublin City Walls is a virtual tour guide of a kind that could transform our experience of historical sites YOU KNOW the way you sometimes go to visit a historical site and when you find it there’s just a bump in the ground or a pile of stones – and that, pretty much, is that? Those who are trained in matters historical can get their imagination into gear and fill in some of the gaps. But for the rest of us it can be a somewhat underwhelming experience. A new iPhone app promises to revolutionise the way we interact with our heritage sites. Dublin City Walls uses high-resolution graphics, 3D imaging, video and GPS technology to bring the marvels of medieval Dublin right into the palm of your hand.>>>

Helen Castor, "The death-throes of the Wars of the Roses," TLS, January 26, 2011

Historical explanation is a tricky business. The reality of the past is lost to us, and all historical writing is an act of re-creation, in which the historian has a bewildering number of choices to make. One approach – adopted here by Desmond Seward – is to take a single thread and trace its path through the fabric of history. His theme in The Last White Rose is the precariousness of the Tudor title to the throne, and the repeated challenges the fledgling dynasty faced during the reigns of the first two Tudor kings.>>>

How did They Perceive the World?

Randall Stephens

A recent BBC documentary explores the world of Medieval Europe. Among other things the program asks: How did they live, think, and behave?

Watching it, I wondered why more history documentaries don't explore the day-to-day lives of regular people in the past. It would be terrific to have a film on 17th-century colonial America, which looked at the mindset of Puritans and Native Americans. (The first installment of We Shall Remain was ok on this. PBS's Colonial House had a fun take on daily life in the 1600s.) A similar program on what it was like to live poor and destitute in mid 19th-century New York City would be illuminating. In fact, one could think of a number of eras that could do with a "lived history" documentary.

Of course, the BBC program embedded here, Inside the Medieval Mind, is not without its baroque hyperboles. (New BBC docs make heavy use of lighting effects and deep contrast/saturation tricks.) But, I'd take that over our History Channel's parade of ancient aliens, Nostradamus, and Mayan apocalypse any day. Here's part of the description of Inside the Medieval Mind.

Robert Bartlett of St Andrew's University, investigates the intellectual landscape of the medieval world.

In the first programme, Knowledge, he explores the way medieval man understood the world - as a place of mystery, even enchantment. The world was a book written by God. But as the Middle Ages grew to a close, it became a place to be mastered, even exploited.