Tag Archive: Christianity

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Exploring the relationship between climate and witches

Witch killings are something that has happened in multiple cultures and periods. Innocent people, traditionally women, were blamed for bad harvests, unfaithful spouses, and accidents at home and then ostracised or executed. In recent years, a new paradigm in history, archaeology, and anthropology proposes that climate change and climatic shifts led to an uptick in witch persecutions. This article examines, even briefly, the evidence for such a theory. This very interesting article was submitted to the 2024/2025 Women’s History Competition.
AUTHOR: LEON CORNEILLE-COWELL

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Illegitimacy and Infanticide in Early Modern England

The crime of infanticide was something closely associated with illegitimate births throughout Early Modern England and was a cause for public anxiety. However, this article explores how many women actually resorted to infanticide as a result of illegitimate pregnancies. Olivia Boyle compares the presence of infanticide in popular culture to real cases to see how far it truly was the fate for infants at the time, or if there was a more prevalent threat at play for them.
AUTHOR OLIVIA BOYLE

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Medieval leprosy in Western Europe: contemporary understandings of the disease

When we think about the disease of leprosy, this conjures up in the popular imaginary images of groups of wandering and forcibly isolated people; nameless faces horribly scarred, targeted often with prejudice by society. But, what is (and was) leprosy in fact? And how did late medieval people understand it? Find out more about the medical and religious ideas from were these understandings drawn in this very interesting and thought-provoking article.
AUTHOR: SACHA BROZEL

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The Life of St. Gerald of Aurillac and Secular Sanctity in the Carolingian Empire

How did Gerald of Aurillac reconcile his roles as both a secular aristocrat and a cleric? This article explores that dilemma by analysing Odo of Cluny’s ‘Vita Geraldi’.
AUTHOR: LIAM GREENACRE

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“High Ruler of the Storm-Tents”: The Christianization of Iceland

The Christianization of Iceland was not straightforward. It was distinctly Icelandic, as this article explores.
AUTHOR: VANIA BUSO