'tis but a scratch: fact and fiction about the Middle Ages

Mar 26 2025 56 ep. 58 mins 52
'tis but a scratch: fact and fiction about the Middle Ages Podcast artwork

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.

  History  Education  Society & Culture
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From Bishop of Rome to the Papal Monarchy: the early centuries

Mar 26 2025 83 mins  
Send us a text 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 venera

El Cid, From History to Legend

Feb 25 2025 63 mins  
Send us a text 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

Tne Norman Conquest (with Dr. Jennifer Paxton), part 2

Feb 15 2025 61 mins  
Send us a text 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

The Norman Conquest, part one: From Cnut to the Death of Edward the Confessor

Jan 30 2025 66 mins  
Send us a text 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 th

Fall of the Roman Republic, part 3: From Octavian to Augustus

Dec 23 2024 48 mins  
Send us a text 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. Je

Fall of the Roman Republic: From Sulla's March on Rome to Caesar's Assassination

Dec 20 2024 85 mins  
Send us a text 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 Repub

The Fall of the Roman Republic, Part 1: The Late Roman Republic in Theory and Practice

Dec 15 2024 72 mins  
Send us a text 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

A medieval election

Nov 10 2024 50 mins  
Send us a text 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

Con games, scams, and deceits of the medieval Near East exposed: "The Book of Charlatans"

Oct 18 2024 55 mins  
Send us a text 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 t

Crusaders and Settlers in the Holy Land: Who Went and Why

Aug 03 2024 64 mins  
Send us a text 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 Pre