'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
Each year about three million Americans visit Medieval and Renaissance Faires and Festivals. Among the largest is the annual Maryland Renaissance Festival, about a half hour drive from my home. In this episode I talk with a veteran of this podcast, Dr. Larissa "Kat" Tracy, about the appeal of the Renaissance Faire and Festivals. It turns out that Kat is not only a renowned scholar of medieval literature but is also ...
In this episode Dr. Nicholas Morton returns to discuss his newest book, The Crusader Storm: A Global History of the Wars of the Middle East (Basic Books, 2026). With some rare exceptions, histories of the Crusades and the Crusader States have been viewed from a Western perspective. What is missing is the Middle Eastern context of the Crusades to the East, how the crusades and the establishment of these Latin states ...
Back in September Ellen and I did an episode on Popes Leo IX and Gregory VII and their promotion of the Gregorian Reform of the Church. Because my hosting platform informed me that I have 21 minutes left to post a new episode this month, I decided to use that time to do a short episode on the "Church" before it was reformed. Rather than focus on a "bad" bishop like Gaudry of Laon, I chose to examine the career of a ...
Offa, king of Mercia from 757 to 796, was the most powerful and successful Anglo-Saxon ruler of pre-Viking England. Today Offa is probably best remembered for Offa's Dyke, a massive 150 mile long earthwork that runs along the border of England and Wales. But Offa's contribution to the creation of the kingdom of England goes far beyond that. Offa was the heir to more than a century of Mercian military success that es...
As I did with the episode I scripted for the podcast BEEF about the conflict between King Philip the Fair of France and Pope Boniface VIII, today I am posting an episode from another podcast, "Medieval Mayhem and Mischief with Dr. Larissa Tracy". You probably remember Dr. Tracy (Kat to her friends) from this podcast's episodes on Chretien de Troyes' "Yvain, the Knight with the Lion," and the four part series w...
This is our third and final episode on the crusading order of the Knights Templar. In today's episode, my cohost Dr. Steve Tibble and I talk about the "afterlife" of the Templars, and how and why a military order suppressed in the early fourteenth century has become the go-to for so many conspiracy theorists. Among the topics discussed in this episode are: Templars and Freemasonry; Sir Walter Scott's shaping of thei...
Today’s episode is the second in a three part series on the Crusading military order of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, more commonly known as the Templars. My cohost for this series is Dr. Steve Tibble, one of the foremost military historians of the crusades, whose most recent book is Assassins and Templars: A Battle in Myth and Blood (Yale University Press, 2025).
In...
Today’s episode is the first of a two-part series on the notorious Christian military order, The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, more commonly known as the Knights Templar. This first episode deals with the historical Templars; the second, with the Templar legend My cohost for both is a veteran of this podcast, Dr. Steve Tibble whose newest book is Assassins and Templar...
Until now, "'Tis But A Scratch: Fact & Fiction About the Middle Ages" has dealt with medieval Europe and the Middle East. In this episode, we branch out to a more global perspective by comparing medieval European knights with the samurai of "feudal Japan." And, yes, we will once again be talking about the medievalist's F-word.
I am fortunate to have as my cohost my good friend Stephen Morillo. Stephen...
It has been several months since I posted the first half of a two part series on the significance and consequences of the Norman Conquest with my good friend and colleague Dr. Jennifer Paxton of the Catholic University of America. Despite a number of challenges--not the least being a snow storm--we finally got together to record the second episode. In that first episode, Jenny and I reviewed how historians have inte...
And now for something completely different! In this episode, we are not going to be talking about kings or popes, crusades, wars, or political events. Instead, we will be examining the life experiences of ordinary medieval people uncovered through analysis of their skeletal remains.
This field of historical research is known as osteobiography. Osteobiography is the reconstruction of an individual's life story f...
Ironically, the most famous date in Anglo-Saxon history is that of its demise, 1066, which is why when in 1930 W. C. Sellar, a former schoolmaster, and his classmate at Oxford, the humorist R. J. Yeatman, decided to send up English history as taught in schools with a parody survey, they called it 1066 and All That. In a previous episode Dr. Jenny Paxton and I discussed why 1066 is such a significant date in En...
This is an addendum to my previous episode with Peter Konieczny. One of my listeners sent me an email asking why we never covered Frescobaldi's, Gucci's, and Sigoli's accounts of their experiences in Jerusalem. As she pointed out, when asked by the Sultan's representative in Alexandria the purpose of their trip, they said that it was to visit the Holy Sepulcher. And she is absolutely right. We ought to have talked a...
In the year 1384 a company of six wealthy merchants from Florence, each accompanied by a servant, went on a ten-month long pilgrimage to Mameluke Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. Upon returning to Florence, three of them--Leonardo Frescobaldi, Giorgio Gucci, and Simone Sigoli--wrote narratives of the journey. Although there are hundreds of accounts of pilgrimages to the East during the Middle Ages, this is the only pilg...
To celebrate my birthday—yes I was a Halloween baby—I decided to do a short episode recounting my one up-close and personal experience with a ghost. No, it was not a ghost of some one who died in the Middle Ages. In fact, I don’t know who it was. But since ‘Tis But A Scratch” is a medieval podcast, I start with three ghost stories from the Middle Ages.
It probably comes...
Yes, we have finally come to the end of our series "From Bishop of Rome to the Papal Monarchy." In this episode, Ellen and I talk about the pontificate of Innocent III, which historians see as the apex of the papal monarchy. Among the topics we cover are Innocent III's ideology of Caesaropapism, his contribution to the crusading movement, his combat against heresy, his defense of the papal states, and his dedication...
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 form...
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 interp...
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 hu...
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 ...
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