Medievalists.net

I had a brief look around Orderic. It looks splendid, and I joined the facebook group 

Sounds great - but where do you count "Medieval" from? Do you include "late antiquity" - Charglemane, Harun-Al-Rashid, Heraclius, etc?

6th century? That's a little bit early for me - Justianian in the 6th century re-codified Byzantine law to take on a Hadriannic feel, and many areas were still practicing Greek paganism and non-abrahamic religions. For much of the 5th century, Latin was still spoken in the Byzantine empire, and culturally, they were far closer to the Rome of antiquity that the Rome of, say, Urban III, Alexander VI or other famous medieval popes. I'd have to say from the Arab conquests (which I mark as properly kicking off at the battle of Yarmuk in 636). The crowning of Charlemaine by Leo III in 800 AD and his rescue of pope Hadrian against the Lomard King in Pavia, Desiderius, could be considered a starting point, but I prefer the breakup of the three kingdoms of Charlemaine's sons - Lothar, Charles the Bald and Louis the German - and the succession of the Ottonian dynasty in the 8th-9th centuries, as when looking at a political map of the period, the political boundaries of Europe in the medieval period are still begining to take place. One can't just say that the medieval period begins as soon as Romulus Augustulus is deposed by Odracer in 476 AD - it's not that overt - I believe it would have to be in a period that was post-Heracliean, Abbasid and Ottonian for us to consider it "medieval" - I'm thinking about 850-900 AD

Edited by Aster Thrax Eupator - 13-Dec-2008 at 20:08

This is a great site - I added it to my favourites list and will take a read from time to time...

Some might even say that the whole idea of the "medieval" Period is obselete - the idea that there is a period of non-progress and ignorance between the end of the classical era and the begining of the modern has to be re-evaluated. I'd question whether it's a viable term to even use!

I watched the crusades series with Terry Jones, though didn't watch the last episode because I didn't want to install veoh. Keep up the good work, I will continue to check the site from time to time.

More updates to the website:

I just wanted to let you know that we have now started adding videos to our site - mostly interviews we shot at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, that was held earlier this month.  You can find them find them at our Youtube channel, and on the main Medievalists.net website too.  We are up to 650 articles on the site as well.