'tis but a scratch: fact and fiction about the Middle Ages
Talking about popular conceptions of the Middle Ages and their historical realities. Join Richard Abels to learn about Vikings, knights and chivalry, movies set in the Middle Ages, and much more about the medieval world.
Podcasting since 2022 • 51 episodes
'tis but a scratch: fact and fiction about the Middle Ages
Latest Episodes
Fall of the Roman Republic: From Sulla's March on Rome to Caesar's Assassination
This is the second of a three part series about the fall of the Roman Republic. My cohost for all three episodes is Dr. Jennifer Paxton of the Catholic University of America. We actually had been planning only two episodes, but the story is lon...
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Season 3
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Episode 51
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1:25:52
The Fall of the Roman Republic, Part 1: The Late Roman Republic in Theory and Practice
For the fiftieth (!) episode of this podcast, I'm taking a few centuries detour from the Middle Ages to talk about the fall of the Roman Republic. In this episode, the first of a two part series, my cohost Dr. Jenny Paxton and I talk abou...
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Season 3
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Episode 50
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1:12:57
A medieval election
I know. Just what everyone needed, an episode about an election. To take a break from reading and watching election postmortems, I decided to return to one of my favorite teaching texts, the monk Jocelin of Brakelond’s Chronicle of the Abbe...
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Season 3
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Episode 49
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50:47
Con games, scams, and deceits of the medieval Near East exposed: "The Book of Charlatans"
This episode is devoted to a truly unique and pretty weird Arabic text, The Book of Charlatans by an obscure early thirteenth-century Arabic scholar, Jamal al-Din 'Abd al-Rahim al-Jawbari, commonly known simply as al-Jawbari. At ...
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Season 3
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Episode 48
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55:30
Crusaders and Settlers in the Holy Land: Who Went and Why
In this episode I talk with the distinguished historian of the crusades Dr. Steven Tibble about the motivations of crusaders and of those Europeans who settled in the Crusader states of Outremer. Steve is the author of five books dealing with t...
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Season 3
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Episode 47
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1:04:50