Happy New Year, everyone. I’ve just emerged from quarantine in the Netherlands, having returned from the UK a few days ago. (The monotony of lockdown life means that it feels like it’s been a month or so since we got back. A look at my calendar suggests that it’s been…
This post contains writing in the Perso-Arabic script, which Medium formatting doesn’t handle well (at least in combination with other scripts), so do bear that in mind if you see any text appearing oddly. …
We’ve looked at quite a few references to cloves (dried flowers of Syzygium aromaticum) and nutmeg (seed of Myristica fragrans) in medieval texts on this blog. Both of these spices came from islands in eastern Indonesia, far in the southeastern corner of the medieval world. Some of these references appear…
It is sometimes claimed that the Italian priest John of Marignolli (aka Giovanni de’ Marignolli, Johannes Marignola) visited the island of Java in the middle of the fourteenth century and, while there, met the Javanese queen Tribhuwana (Tribhuwanā Wijayottunggadewī, aka Dyah Gitarja — before 1309?-1350? CE), who is believed to…
In previous posts on this blog I have outlined my thoughts on the ‘Middle Ages’ and on what the words ‘medieval’ and ‘Middle Ages’ can usefully be made to mean. …
This post is just a little add-on to the previous one on nutmeg and the Holy Grail. You may remember from that post that we looked at two early grail stories — Perceval by Chrétien de Troyes (1181–1190) and Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach (1200–1210) — and specifically at the…
There are many stereotypes of the Middle Ages in Europe — so many, in fact, that there are several competing typologies of the various medievalisms found in modern media. Some of these medievalisms, including the ones perhaps most familiar to TV audiences in 2021, emphasise barbarity and dirt, with gruff…
This post is the fourth in a series on the Old Sundanese language. For earlier posts in the series, see: · PART I · PART II · PART III ·
You may remember from the last post that the scripts used to write Old Sundanese are based on signs for…
