Welcome to the St Andrews Institute of Mediaeval Studies

The study of the Middle Ages has long been a major research and teaching interest at the University of St Andrews. The Department of Mediaeval History was founded in 1955, expanding to be the largest of its kind in the world, with a long and illustrious history of excellence in the field. The inter-disciplinary Institute of Mediaeval Studies brings together over thirty full-time academic staff of international standing and a number of research associates. Subjects taught include History (political, religious, social, cultural, legal), Mediaeval languages and Literatures (Arabic, French, Old and Middle English, German, Greek, Italian, Latin, Old Norse and Welsh), Art History and Theology. Students can also take modern language classes as needed for their research.

On Wednesday 13 February 2008 the Institute was formally launched with a lecture given by Prof Gerd Althoff of the University of Münster: Forms and Functions of Irony in Medieval Politics. Building on a long tradition of research and teaching on the Middle Ages at St Andrews, the new inter-disciplinary Institute of Mediaeval Studies brings together over thirty full-time academic staff of international standing and a number of research associates.

View Pictures from the launch of the Institute of Mediaeval Studies

News

2013-2014 Donald Bullough Fellowship Application

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2012-13 Donald Bullough Fellowship

The St Andrews Institute of Medieval Studies has appointed Dr Warren Brown as the Donald Bullough Fellow for 2012-13

Dr. Warren Brown has taught medieval history at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, since 1997, where he currently holds the rank of Professor. His research interests, which are primarily focused on the early Middle Ages but have extended beyond it, range from conflict resolution and violence to document use and archiving. He has published a monograph on conflict resolution and royal power in the Carolingian period, Unjust Seizure: Conflict, Interest, and Authority in an Early Medieval Society (Cornell University Press, 2001), and has coedited a collection of essays entitled Conflict in Medieval Europe (Ashgate, 2003). He has most recently published Violence in Medieval Europe (Longmans, 2010); in addition, he has contributed to and coedited Documentary Culture and the Laity in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 2013). At St. Andrews he will be completing research on a new monograph, provisionally titled World in a Book: Lay Society in Early Medieval Europe. This project starts from the conclusion reached by the Documentary Culture volume, namely that a lively culture of document use persisted among the laity as well as the clergy throughout the early Middle Ages. It uses the evidence provided by the surviving traces of this documentary culture to explore lay society itself during the period. Central to the project are eighth and ninth century collections of document models and templates, most of which concern the business of lay men and women from a variety of walks of life. Working outwards from the formulas, the book will add another dimension to pictures of early medieval society that have traditionally been dominated by clergy and monks and by the secular elites. When not working on this monograph, Dr. Brown will be exploring a possible second book project on the instrumental use of terror in medieval Europe.

Jamie Page

Jamie Page, a PhD student in the Institute of Mediaeval Studies supervised by Professor Frances Andrews and Dr Bettina Bildhauer, has appeared in a documentary on prostitution in the Middle Ages entitled "Käufliche Liebe im Mittelalter," made by the Munich-based production company Bilderfest for German terrestrial television channel SAT. 1. Jamie acted as historical consultant and was interviewed for the programme in the municipal archive of Nördlingen, where he spent part of last year conducting research for his thesis on prostitution in later mediaeval Germany.

The documentary describes living and working conditions in mediaeval brothels on the basis of archival evidence from Nördlingen, and focuses in particular upon the career of Els von Eystett, a prostitute at the centre of an abortion trial conducted in the town in the late fifteenth century. The programme was aired on 28.02.12 and ties in with the popular Die Wanderhure series of TV films.

Further information on the documentary can be found at: http://www.sat1.de/film/die-rache-der-wanderhure/kaeufliche-liebe-im-mittelalter

Fernando Arias Guillén

Fernando Arias Guillén was awarded his doctorate from the University of Castilla-La Mancha in December 2010, for a thesis on royal power in the kingdom of Castile in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. He was supervised by Dr Ana Rodriguez. He has been involved in the continuing collaborations between mediaevalists at St Andrews and at the CSIC in Madrid, and also spent some months in St Andrews during his doctorate. He is now undertaking postdoctoral research funded by a Spanish government scholarship, with the intention of writing a book comparing the development of royal power in France, Castile and England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Chris Given-Wilson is acting as his mentor during his post-doctoral time in St Andrews.