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PODCAST

New Books in Medieval History

New Books Network

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow

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All Episodes

42:38

Katherine Harvey, "The Medieval Guide to Healthy...

New Books in Medieval History ·

2026/04/01

We often think of medieval medicine as strange, unhygienic and unscientific, but The Medieval Guide to Healthy Living (Reaktion, 2026) by Dr. Katherine Harvey reveals a far richer story. Long before modern wellness trends, people in the Middle Ages were actively thinking about how to live well. They followed detailed health regimens, balanced diet with exercise, considered the effects of emotions and sought to avoid illness through environmental awareness and routine care. This book sheds light on

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53:25

Elisheva Baumgarten, "Beyond the Elite: Everyday...

New Books in Medieval History ·

2026/03/28

What can we learn about Jewish history when we stop focusing on great rabbis and turn instead to ordinary people? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz speaks with historian Elisheva Baumgarten about the groundbreaking volume she edited, Beyond the Elite: Everyday Jewish Lives in Medieval Northern Europe (Cornell UP, 2026).Beyond the Elite invites readers into the everyday world of Jews in medieval northern and central Europe—not through the voices of famous scholars, but through the lives of

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53:19

Craig Perry, "Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt:...

New Books in Medieval History ·

2026/03/21

What did slavery actually look like in the everyday lives of Jews in the medieval Middle East? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with historian Craig Perry to discuss his groundbreaking book Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt: A History (Princeton UP, 2026).Drawing on the extraordinary archive of the Cairo Geniza, Perry reconstructs a hidden world of enslaved people, merchants, and households in medieval Egypt. These fragments—letters, contracts, and legal questions preserved for

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74:24

Karima Moyer-Nocchi, "The Epic History of Macaroni...

New Books in Medieval History ·

2026/03/20

Today, macaroni and cheese is the ultimate comfort food, a staple of weeknight dinners, family gatherings, and Soul Food restaurants. Humble though the dish may seem, its history is filled with surprising twists and turns. Renaissance cardinals and popes dined on elaborate pasta-and-cheese concoctions laced with costly spices. In the eighteenth century, wealthy young Englishmen made macaroni a symbol of continental sophistication. Black women, whose contribution has long been overshadowed, played a

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43:48

Lynneth Miller Renberg, "Women, Dance and Parish...

New Books in Medieval History ·

2026/02/14

In Women, Dance and Parish Religion in England, 1300-1640: Negotiating the Steps of Faith (Boydell & Brewer, 2022) Dr. Lynneth Miller Renberg presents a lively exploration of the medieval and early modern attitudes towards dance, as the perception of dancers changed from saints dancing after Christ into cows dancing after the devil.The devil’s cows, impudent camels, or damsels animated by the devil: late medieval and early modern authors used these descriptors and more to talk about dancers,

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68:10

Lucy Donkin, "Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle...

New Books in Medieval History ·

2026/02/09

Dr. Lucy Donkin’s Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages (Cornell University Press, 2022) illuminates how the floor surface shaped the ways in which people in Medieval Western Europe and beyond experienced sacred spaces.The ground beneath our feet plays a crucial, yet often overlooked, role in our relationship with the environments we inhabit and the spaces with which we interact. “The ground beneath our feet goes unnoticed for the most part. Yet it guides our steps and shapes our identity in

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60:05

A. Bagliani and N, Şenocak, "A People's Church:...

New Books in Medieval History ·

2026/02/07

A People's Church brings together a distinguished international group of historians to provide a sweeping introduction to Christian religious life and institutions in medieval Italy. Each essay treats a single theme as broadly as possible, highlighting both the unique aspects of medieval Christianity on the Italian peninsula and the beliefs and practices it shared with other Christian societies. Because of its long tradition of communal self-governance, Christianity in medieval Italy, perhaps more

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41:38

Yossef Rapoport, "Becoming Arab: The Formation of...

New Books in Medieval History ·

2026/01/29

Today, much of the Middle East is “Arab”—an identity that now extends across North Africa and up through the Near East to Syria. Yet how did this region become Arab? How did this identity spread? Was it due to migration, or conquest?Historian Yossef Rapoport, in his book Becoming Arab: The Formation of Arab Identity in the Medieval Middle East (Princeton UP, 2025), makes a different argument: That the region’s medieval peasants adopted the Arab identity in response to shifting political power,

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56:59

Adam Bursi, "Traces of the Prophets: Relics and...

New Books in Medieval History ·

2026/01/26

Adam Bursi’s Traces of the Prophets: Relics and Sacred Spaces in Early Islam (Edinburg University Press, 2024) uses writings by early Muslims to map a history of material objects, relics, and tombs of prophetic figures as they were conceptualized in the 8th and 9th centuries. The book draws from various genres of writings, including biographies and hadith of the Prophet Muhammad and Qur’an commentaries and juristic compilations to capture the tensions and practices around tomb and relic veneration

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42:10

Nena Vandeweerdt, "Women and Work Through a...

New Books in Medieval History ·

2026/01/25

Women and Work Through a Comparative Lens: Gender and the Urban Labor Markets of Premodern Brabant and Biscay explores women's economic roles in late medieval and early modern Europe, particularly through the lens of craft guilds and regional comparisons with the aim emphasising the visibility of women’s economic activities in premodern Europe. The book explains the nature of guilds at this period, emphasising their male-dominated nature that limited women's formal participation while still

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76:26

Christopher J. Bonura, "A Prophecy of Empire: The...

New Books in Medieval History ·

2026/01/19

The Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius was one of the medieval world’s most popular and widely translated texts. Composed in Syriac in Mesopotamia in the seventh century, this supposed revelation presented a new, salvific role for the Roman Empire, whose last emperor, it prophesied, would help bring about the end of the ages. In this first book-length study of Pseudo-Methodius, Christopher J. Bonura uncovers the under-appreciated Syriac origins of this apocalyptic tract, revealing it as a remarkable

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74:58

Thomas J. Mazanec, "Poet-Monks: The Invention of...

New Books in Medieval History ·

2026/01/05

Poet-Monks focuses on the literary and religious practices of Buddhist poet-monks in Tang-dynasty China to propose an alternative historical arc of medieval Chinese poetry. Combining large-scale quantitative analysis with close readings of important literary texts, Thomas J. Mazanec describes how Buddhist poet-monks, who first appeared in the latter half of Tang-dynasty China, asserted a bold new vision of poetry that proclaimed the union of classical verse with Buddhist practices of repetition,

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93:18

Youshaa Patel, "The Muslim Difference: Defining the...

New Books in Medieval History ·

2026/01/04

According to a famous prophetic report, “Whoever imitates a people becomes one of them.” What does “imitation” here mean? Rather, what does this statement really mean at all, and how have Muslims historically understood it? How did this simple report become a doctrine in the Islamic tradition? What does this hadith mean for Muslims today, in an increasingly interreligious atmosphere and especially for those living in the West or in other non-Muslim-majority contexts? Finally, why do humans invest so

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36:20

Gillian Adler and Paul Strohm, "Alle Thyng Hath Tyme:...

New Books in Medieval History ·

2025/12/30

Alle Thyng Hath Tyme: Time and Medieval Life (Reaktion, 2023) recreates medieval people’s experience of time: as continuous and discontinuous, linear and cyclical, embracing Creation and Judgement, shrinking to ‘atoms’ or ‘droplets’ and extending to the silent spaces of eternity. They might measure time by natural phenomena such as sunrise and sunset, the motion of the stars or the progress of the seasons, even as the late medieval invention of the mechanical clock was making time-reckoning more

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49:26

Marion Gibson, "Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen...

New Books in Medieval History ·

2025/12/30

Witchfinder General, Salem, Malleus Maleficarum. The world of witch-hunts and witch trials sounds archaic and fanciful, these terms relics of an unenlightened, brutal age. However, we often hear ‘witch-hunt’ in today’s media, and the misogyny that shaped witch trials is all too familiar. Three women were prosecuted under a version of the 1735 Witchcraft Act as recently as 2018.In Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials (Simon & Schuster, 2023), Professor Marion Gibson uses thirteen significant

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51:22

Andrea Maraschi and Francesca Tasca, "Food, Heresies,...

New Books in Medieval History ·

2025/12/24

In Food, Heresies, and Magical Boundaries in the Middle Ages (Amsterdam UP, 2024) by Dr. Andrea Maraschi & Dr. Francesca Tasca, readers will find stories about medieval heresies and “magic” from an unusual perspective: that of food studies. The time span ranges from Late Antiquity to the Late Middle Ages, while the geographical scope includes regions as different as North Africa, Spain, Ireland, continental Europe, the Holy land, and Central Asia.Food, heresies, and magical boundaries in the

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49:57

Judith Jesch, "The Saga of the Earls of Orkney"...

New Books in Medieval History ·

2025/12/21

In The Saga of the Earls of Orkney (Birlinn, 2025), Professor Judith Jesch presents a fascinating history of the Earldom of Orkney, which was established in the Viking Age, records the adventures, feuds and battles of powerful Norsemen during its first three centuries. The medieval earls of Orkney owed allegiance to the kings of Norway but their influence ranged from Britain and Ireland to Sweden and Russia, and they travelled as far as Narbonne, Crete and Jerusalem. Advised by bishops and

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42:55

Arthur Bahr, "Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript:...

New Books in Medieval History ·

2025/12/20

A unique study of the only physical manuscript containing Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as both a material and literary object.In this book, Arthur Bahr takes a fresh look at the four poems and twelve illustrations of the so-called “Pearl-Manuscript,” the only surviving medieval copy of two of the best-known Middle English poems: Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript, Bahr explores how the physical manuscript itself enhances our perception of the poetry,

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33:47

Gian Piero Persiani, "Poets, Patrons, and the Public:...

New Books in Medieval History ·

2025/12/19

Waka poetry was all the rage in tenth-century, courtly Japan. Every educated person composed it, emperors and consorts sponsored it, and societal interest in it was at an all-time high. Poets, Patrons, and the Public: Poetry as Cultural Phenomenon in Courtly Japan (Brill, 2025) offers an unprecedentedly broad and vivid portrayal of this season of literary flourishing, revealing the multitude of factors that contributed to it, as well as the social, political, and cultural reasons behind waka’s

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59:14

Anne Lawrence-Mathers, "The Magic Books: A History of...

New Books in Medieval History ·

2025/12/12

Medieval Europe was preoccupied with magic. From the Carolingian Empire to Renaissance Italy and Tudor England, great rulers, religious figures, and scholars sought to harness supernatural power. They tried to summon spirits, predict the future, and even prolong life. Alongside science and religion, magic lay at the very heart of culture.In this beautifully illustrated account The Magic Books: A History of Enchantment in 20 Medieval Manuscripts (Yale UP, 2025), Anne Lawrence-Mathers explores the

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