'tis but a scratch: fact and fiction about the Middle Ages
Talking about popular conceptions of the Middle Ages and their historical realities. Join Richard Abels to learn about Vikings, knights and chivalry, movies set in the Middle Ages, and much more about the medieval world.
Episodes
In this, the fourth--and penultimate--episode of our continuing series on the medieval papacy, my wife Ellen and I examine the establishment of the papal monarchy in the twelfth century. We discuss how the Investiture Controversy transformed the papacy and the Church; how the growth of papal governance and business along with its need for increased revenues made it a target for the same Church reformers who had former...
About eight months ago, Jenny and I released a couple of episodes dealing with the historical context of the Norman Conquest. I am delighted to have Jenny back to talk with me about the significance of the Norman Conquest and the Norman Settlement in English history. In this, the first of two episodes, Jenny and I look at the events following the Battle of Hastings and examine how the Norman Conquest has been interpre...
The subject of today’s episode, the pontificate of Pope Gregory VII and the Investiture Controversy, is a staple of undergraduate medieval surveys. The first episode I posted after our summer hiatus was actually one that I wrote for a different podcast, “BEEF With Bridget Todd.” It told of the feud between Pope Boniface VIII and King Philip the Fair of France that culminated in that pope’s humiliation at the hands of ...
After a summer hiatus, we are finally back with a new episode, the third in our series on the medieval papacy, “From Bishop of Rome to the Papal Monarchy.” The previous covered the tenth-century nadir of the papacy, when it was dominated by powerful Roman families and used to enhance their power and control over the city and the papal states. In this episode, my favorite co-host Ellen Harrison Abels and I explain how ...
After a summer hiatus “’Tis But A Scratch: Fact & Fiction About the Middle Ages” is back—well, not actually quite yet. I am busily working on the final two episodes of our series on the medieval papacy, “From Bishop of Rome to the Papal Monarchy.” I should have episode three on the Gregorian Reform and the Investiture Controversy out in a week or so. But to tide you over, here is an episode on a related subject f...
Now for something completely different from tracing the development of the papacy from bishop of Rome to the papal monarchy--but, don't worry, I will be completing that series soon. In this episode, I chat with author Garry J. Shaw about his fascinating new book from Yale University Press, Cryptic: From Voynich to the Angel Diaries, the Story of the World's Mysterious Manuscripts. The book tells the stories...
I finally saw the movie "Conclave," and really enjoyed it. As you probably know, it is about the contentious election of a pope in a conclave of the college of cardinals. The movie, however, never explains what the word conclave actually means or how and why that papal electoral procedure began. This episode will remedy that omission.
The intro music is from the Academy Award nominated overture to the mo...
In this second episode of a three part series, my favorite cohost Ellen and I survey the development of the papacy from the eighth through the early eleventh century. Among the topics we discuss are who and what the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties of Francia were; Pope Zacharias' legitimization of Pepin the Short's deposition of a puppet Merovingian king and his elevation to the throne; the "donat...
In this first episode of a three part series, my favorite cohost Ellen and I survey the development of the papacy over its first seven centuries. I have to confess that along the way I got somewhat off topic talking about the Roman persecution of the Christians. But it is an interesting subject in itself and worth exploring, and as 31 of the first 32 popes are venerated as martyrs--some with more reason than others--i...
In this episode I interview Professor Nora Berend of the University of Cambridge about her new book El Cid; The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Mercenary (Pegasus Books, 2025). We discuss how the historical Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, a ruthless and ambitious mercenary who served both Christian and Muslim rulers in the violent and chaotic political world of late eleventh-century Iberia was transformed into the national he...
This is the second of our two part series on the Norman Conquest. In it Jenny and I discuss the military challenges faced by King Harold Godwinson and Duke William of Normandy and the battles of Fulford Gate and Stamford Bridge, before turning to look closely at the Battle of Hastings (which did not actually take place at Hastings). I hope you will join us.
There is a host of books on the Battle of Hastings and the Nor...
This is the first half of a two part series on the Norman Conquest of England. My cohost for both parts is a veteran of this podcast, Dr. Jennifer Paxton of the Catholic University of America. Jenny is one of the very best historians of Anglo-Norman England, so this is a subject right up her alley. In this episode we explore the historical background leading up to the Norman Conquest and the claims of the three rivals...
Yes, I know that Octavian IS Augustus, but this episode is about how Gaius Octavius became Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus, and in doing so replaced the old Roman Republic with a military autocracy masquerading as a republic. This is the conclusion of our three part series on the fall of the Roman Republic. My cohost for all three episodes has been my good friend Dr. Jennifer Paxton of the Catholic University of Ame...
This is the second of a three part series about the fall of the Roman Republic. My cohost for all three episodes is Dr. Jennifer Paxton of the Catholic University of America. We actually had been planning only two episodes, but the story is long and detailed, so we thought that three would be best. In episode one, Jenny and I explained the workings of the Roman Republic and the military, economic, and cultural factors...
For the fiftieth (!) episode of this podcast, I'm taking a few centuries detour from the Middle Ages to talk about the fall of the Roman Republic. In this episode, the first of a two part series, my cohost Dr. Jenny Paxton and I talk about the political and cultural institutions of the Roman Republic in the late second and first centuries B.C.E.*. We explain how and why a republic designed to govern an Italian c...
I know. Just what everyone needed, an episode about an election. To take a break from reading and watching election postmortems, I decided to return to one of my favorite teaching texts, the monk Jocelin of Brakelond’s Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds. This is more of a personal memoir of what Jocelin saw and experienced as a monk than it is the standard monastic chronicle. It contains the fullest account of...
This episode is devoted to a truly unique and pretty weird Arabic text, The Book of Charlatans by an obscure early thirteenth-century Arabic scholar, Jamal al-Din 'Abd al-Rahim al-Jawbari, commonly known simply as al-Jawbari. At the behest of a Turkman sultan, al-Jawbari composed an encyclopedic guide to the scams, con games, and trickery practiced in the cities of the medieval Middle East. Al-Jawbari not only c...
In this episode I talk with the distinguished historian of the crusades Dr. Steven Tibble about the motivations of crusaders and of those Europeans who settled in the Crusader states of Outremer. Steve is the author of five books dealing with the crusades, the most recent of which is Crusader Criminals: The Knights Who Went Rogue in the Holy Land (Yale University Press, 2024). We examine the roles played by religiou...
On 3-4 July 1187 the Sultan of Egypt and Syria Saladin enjoyed the greatest military victory of his career. The Battle of Hattin, a two-day battle fought along the road leading to the town of Tiberias and, on the following day, on the Horns of Hattin, an iron-age hillfort above that road, is one of the few decisive battles of the Middle Ages. (In this episode, Richard explains why there were so few battles.) The battl...
Yes, Kristin Lavransdatter is the highest-grossing Norwegian film of all time. That isn't as impressive as it might sound, as the movie only brought in $3.7 million in box office receipts, but virtually all of that came from domestic sales. Pretty much unknown outside Scandinavia, the movie was a sensation when released in Norway in 1995. An estimated two-thirds of the country's population have viewed it. ...
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