How did Anglo-Saxons reflect on the experience of growing old? Was it really a golden age for the elderly, as has been suggested?

According to a number of British historians, the elderly had a particularly high status in the early Middle Ages. A new book by Leiden cultural historian Thijs Porck sheds a different light on the matter: elderly people had to earn that respect first, and old age was often described in negative terms…

How did the medieval manuscript develop as a physical object during the Twelfth Century Renaissance and what do these changes tell us about the intellectual culture of the period?

Introduction to Medieval Europe 300–1500 provides a comprehensive survey of this complex and varied formative period of European history, covering themes as diverse as barbarian migrations, the impact of Christianisation, the formation of nations and states, the emergence of an expansionist commercial…

Early Modern Medievalisms: The Interplay between Scholarly Reflection and Artistic Production

In collaboration with Vlogboek, a number of videos about publications by LUCAS employees have been produced. Jörgen Apperloo (founder of Vlogboek) discusses the content of some works under the heading "Vlogboek Science". All the videos can be found on this page.

This research cluster aims to analyse and interpret the creation, function, dissemination, and conservation of medieval and early modern culture by exploring the relationships between cultural products (texts, objects, practices) and their societal and historical contexts.

Politically speaking, the Frisian coastal area constitutes a special case in late medieval Europe since it was not subject to an overlord as it withstood feudalization in the 13th century. Its many sub regions, which were dominated by elites of small noblemen and freeholders, long time succeeded in…

Mapping sanitary infrastructure in large urban societies in the Low Countries, 1200–1900

From 17 to 19 September, the University of Granada organized the 27th International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature (SELIM).

Due to the fact that the Frisian lands lacked major political centers in the Middle Ages and also because most of its monasteries suffered complete destruction in the second half of the 16th century, relatively few written documents concerning medieval Frisian history have survived. To analyze them…

This research project focuses on the thoughts of ethnicity and political orthodoxy in Medieval China by investigating Wang Tong’s works.

This thesis attempts to establish a dialogue between the modern and the medieval traditions in logic, by means of ‘translations’ of the medieval logical theories into the modern framework of symbolic logic, i.e. formalizations.

The Corfu Papers

How can the importance of the image in late medieval spirituality be understood in the context of the love mysticism inspired by the imagery of the Song of Songs?

This collection brings into conversation several kinds of scholarship on medieval authorship which have tended to remain separate over the last two to three decades, a period of steadily increasing scholarly interest in this topic.

Ariadne Schmidt, Isabelle Devos and Julie de Groot provide you with refreshing insights concerning the study on urban singles in the period between 1200 and 1900.

This book is a result of the collective research project Urban Societies in the Port Towns of Atlantic Europe in the Late Middle Ages. It studies the connections between diplomacy and trade from a comparative and transnational perspective throughout medieval Atlantic Europe.

This research project aims to investigate the development, construction and creation of a present-day performance practice of late medieval plainchant, based partly on his work with the Belgian chant group Psallentes.

This book is witness to Hendrik Vanden Abeele’s research into the development, construction and creation of a present-day performance practice of late medieval plainchant, based partly on his work with the Belgian chant group Psallentes.

Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on Eastern Cuisine and Western Foodways

Interview for National Public Radio sparks media frenzy.

Recently, archeologists of Leiden University made an excavation in Oegstgeest, where they found a unique silver bowl from the first half of the seventh century as well as imported pottery and winebarrels. Thijs Porck, lecturer in Old English language and culture at Leiden University, places the Oegstgeest…

Anyone who thinks that #MeToo is a new phenomenon, can think again. Subjects such as sexual intimidation, female self-defence and subjection to male desires can be found as early as in Medieval Islamic literature. Senior lecturer Asghar Seyed-Gohrab explains further on the Leiden Medievalists Blog,…

What can a doodle tell us about the person who drew it? Erik Kwakkel is a Dutch book historian at Leiden University who searches for the secret meanings of doodles and scribbles in medieval manuscripts. He talks to BBC World Service about his passion for books.

Leiden University Libraries and Brill publishing house have digitised one of the University's top collections. The collection is now available as an online publication: Codices Vossiani Latini Online.

The central aim is to systematically study differences in gendered crime patterns in the records of different types of courts in various English and Dutch cities in the early modern period.

Humanities, Institute for History

Within the Dutch Research School for Medieval Studies, medievalists from six Dutch universities work together. The school (together with the local graduate schools of the universities) takes care of the training of researchers focussed on the Middle Ages and provides educational activities…

The research themes and projects of this research cluster demonstrate the interest in the creation, conservation and dissemination of the literary and visual arts and their roles in society as outlined in the framework of the Institute’s research agenda and interests.

This research project studies the distribution and impact of medieval malaria in the Netherlands.

The English Language and Culture programme focuses on four areas, namely: philology, literature, linguistics and language acquisition. It also offers several specialisation options, ranging from renaissance literature to the use of metaphors.

Erik Kwakkel, researcher at the Faculty of Humanities, has found an extraordinary manuscript in the University Library’s extensive collection of medieval books. The book in question dates back to the first half of the eleventh century and is made entirely out of waste left over from the production of…

This book is a celebration of the work of Professor Frans Theuws and was published in conjunction with the symposium held at the University of Leiden, June 29, 2018. It comprises of 38 archaeological papers from over 50 authors. They range from the Roman period, Early Medieval, Early medieval in the…

Proceedings of the First International Conference on Byzantine and Ottoman Archaeology, Amsterdam, 21-23 October 2011

In Voices on Birchbark Jos Schaeken explores the major role that writing on birchbark – an ephemeral, even ‘throw-away’ form of correspondence and administration – played in the vibrant medieval merchant city of Novgorod and other cities in the Russian Northwest.

The Journal of the LUCAS Graduate Conference was founded in 2013 to publish a selection of the best papers presented at the biennial LUCAS Graduate Conference, an international and interdisciplinary humanities conference organized by the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). The…

The contributions in this volume seek to highlight the atypical features of the Hanse, and place them in a wider context of common roots, influences and parallel developments.

One of the three long-term research interests of our group concerns the Transformation of the Roman World (c AD 450-900).

The archaeology of food is in all sorts of ways ‘hot’. To illustrate this, recently the book Medieval MasterChef was published, focusing on cuisine and foodways in the Mediterranean and north-western Europe during Medieval and Post-Medieval times.

The transformation of the myriad of medieval kingdoms, principalities, local lordships, city-‘states’ and peasant ‘republics’ into ‘modern’ states, claiming some measure of sovereignty, remains one of the core themes of European history, because it gets down to the very root of the (idea on the) Europe…

Leiden University is home to over a hundred specialists studying the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. From 2017-2018 onwards, they will join forces to offer two new options for specialisation within existing MA programmes: Medieval Studies and Early Modern Studies.

Symposium