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This is the second of our two part series on the Norman Conquest. In it Jenny and I discuss the military challenges faced by King Harold Godwinson and Duke William of Normandy and the battles of Fulford Gate and Stamford Bridge, before turning to look closely at the Battle of Hastings (which did not actually take place at Hastings). I hope you will join us.

There is a host of books on the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest, but academic and popular. I would glad to recommend some. Feel free to email me. Meanwhile, I'd recommend a couple of good collections of primary and secondary sources:

Stephen Morillo, ed., The Battle of Hastings: Sources and Interpretations (The Boydell Press, 1996).

R. Allen Brown, ed., The Norman Conquest. Documents of Medieval History 5 (Edward Arnold, 1984).

The magazine "Medieval Warfare" devoted a special edition in 2017 to "1066: The Battle of Hastings." I highly recommend it for those interested in the military aspects of the battle.

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Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com

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This is the first half of a two part series on the Norman Conquest of England. My cohost for both parts is a veteran of this podcast, Dr. Jennifer Paxton of the Catholic University of America. Jenny is one of the very best historians of Anglo-Norman England, so this is a subject right up her alley. In this episode we explore the historical background leading up to the Norman Conquest and the claims of the three rivals who fought for the English throne in 1066: Earl Harold Godwinson, King Harald Hardrada of Norway, and Duke William of Normandy.

This is an episode that cries out for genealogical tables connecting the main claimants to the English throne in 1066. Fortunately, there are a number of useful and reliable ones online:

For the family relations of the main claimants to the English throne in 1066, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_the_Conqueror#/media/File:Tree_of_William's_struggle_for_England.svg

There is a nice table of the family of Earl Godwin at:
https://achallengeforthethronebygeorgina.weebly.com/harold-godwinson.html

And for Harald Hardrada, check out:
https://www.medievalists.net/2021/08/harald-hardrada-exemplar-age/

I'm pleased to say that 'Tis But A Scratch recently was recognized by Feedspot as one of the 25 best Viking Age Podcasts and one of the top 100 podcasts on the history of Europe:

https://podcast.feedspot.com/viking_age_podcasts/
https://podcast.feedspot.com/europe_podcasts/

This episode includes an audio clip from Walt Disney's animated "Alice in Wonderland." To understand why, you will just have to listen to the episode.

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Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com

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Yes, I know that Octavian IS Augustus, but this episode is about how Gaius Octavius became Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus, and in doing so replaced the old Roman Republic with a military autocracy masquerading as a republic. This is the conclusion of our three part series on the fall of the Roman Republic. My cohost for all three episodes has been my good friend Dr. Jennifer Paxton of the Catholic University of America.

This episode includes two audio snippets:
Mark Antony's funeral oration for Caesar, from the 1953 film version of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" (with Marlon Brando as Brutus)

"What have the Romans done for us?" from "Monty Python's The Life of Brian"

Quotations from:
Appian on Caesar's Funeral, trans. John Carter (https://www.livius.org/sources/content/appian/appian-caesars-funeral/)
Res Gestae Divi Augusti ("the achievements of the deified Augustus"), trans. F.W. Shipley (https://www.livius.org/sources/content/augustus-res-gestae/)
Tacitus Agricola. Translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb (1877)
Tacitus, Annals. Loeb Classical Library edition of Tacitus, 1931

For another take on the story, I recommend listening to "Marc Antony vs. Octavian Caesar: Ancient Rome's Ruthless Rivals," a two part series on the podcast "Beef with Bridget Todd."

As I am posting this a couple of days before Christmas and Hanukkah, I would like to wish you all Happy Holidays. And if you haven't yet listened to it, you might want to try our episode on how Hanukkah and Christmas were celebrated in the Middle Ages (with detours into how Hanukkah became the Jewish Christmas in the United States and why the Puritans tried to suppress Christmas).

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Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com

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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 long and detailed, so we thought that three would be best. In episode one, Jenny and I explained the workings of the Roman Republic and the military, economic, and cultural factors that undermined its stability in the late second and first century B.C.. In it we examined how and why Rome's acquisition of a Mediterranean based empire undermined the foundations of its republican constitution. Among the topics covered in that episode are: the Roman class system and how it shaped Roman political institutions; the patron-client relationship; Roman just war theory; the land reform program of the Gracchi brothers; Marius' unprecedented six consulships; and the fracturing of the ruling elite in the Optimates, supporters of senatorial privilege, and the Populares, who sought to check the senate by appealing to the popular assemblies; This episode picks up where the last one left off, beginning with Sulla's march on Rome in 99 B.C. and ending with the assassination of Julius Caesar on the idea of March, 44 B.C.. The third and final episode completes the story, culminating in the establishment of the "Principate" by Octavian Augustus, an autocracy masquerading as a republic.

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Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com

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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 about the political and cultural institutions of the Roman Republic in the late second and first centuries B.C.E.*. We explain how and why a republic designed to govern an Italian city-state fell victim to its own success as Rome rose to empire, despite all of its built in checks and balances. In the second episode, Jenny and I relate how a series of ambitious political generals--Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, Mark Antony, and Octavian Augustus--plunged the Republic into two generations of civil war that culminated in the establishment of a military autocracy disguised as a republic.

(Note: B.C.E. stands for "Before the Common Era"; C.E. for "The Common Era." They are the secular equivalents of B.C. and A.D.. Be warned, we weren't consistent in our use of these dating conventions. I also noticed that sometimes we called the Roman legislative and judicial body known as the consilium plebis the plebeian assembly and sometimes the council of plebeians. Sorry for any confusion this might cause.)

This episode includes an audio clip from Universal Picture's 1993 film "Jurassic Park"

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Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com

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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 Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds. This is more of a personal memoir of what Jocelin saw and experienced as a monk than it is the standard monastic chronicle. It contains the fullest account of the process by which English monasteries in the High Middle Ages elected an abbot, and I thought that would be a fun and a far less stressful subject than our recent election—at least for our listeners if not for the monks of Bury St. Edmunds in 1182. My co-host for this episode is my partner for life and inspiration for all things medieval, my wife Ellen. This episode is especially for those of our listening audience who regard the U.S. election results with fear and trembling and a sickness unto death.

[This is a corrected version of the episode. The first posting had some glitches which I corrected. Sorry about that.]

Quotations are from
Jocelin of Brakelond, Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, trans. Diane Greenway and Jane Sayers. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

This episodes includes a musical interlude:
Orbita Solaris (Short Version) Gregorian Chant
Chant group Psallentes, directed by Hendrik Vanden Abeele, singing from a 12th century antiphoner, prepared for the Mariakerk in Utrecht. Semi-live recording by Jo Cops at Heverlee, Belgium, May 2009. Singers are: Conor Biggs, Pieter Coene, Lieven Deroo, Paul Schils, Philippe Souvagie and Hendrik Vanden. Abeele.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo-yb-UDBHA

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Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com

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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 the behest of a Turkman sultan, al-Jawbari composed an encyclopedic guide to the scams, con games, and trickery practiced in the cities of the medieval Middle East. Al-Jawbari not only catalogues the various scams and trickery but also explains how they were pulled off. The book warns its readers to be vigilant against these scams, but it also reads like a "how to" manual. What makes it such a "good read" are the many anecdotes that al-Jawbari includes based on his own experiences during his travels throughout the Islamic east. My co-host for this episode is Peter Konieczny, the owner of the website medievalists.net, the leading online platform for all things medieval. In an earlier episode, Peter explained to me how and why the Mongols devastated Abbasid Baghdad. Frankly, I had not even heard of The Book of Charlatans until Peter approached me with the idea of doing an episode on it. I am so glad that he did because this really is an interesting work that sheds light on the criminal underbelly of the medieval Islamic world. It is also just fun. Please join us as we talk about the many scams practiced by medieval Muslim--and Christian--con artists in the thirteenth-century Middle East.

The Book of Charlatans, translated by Humphrey Davies and edited by Manuela Dengler. New York Univesity Press, 2020.

(If you have questions about this--or any episode of the podcast--feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com.)

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Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com

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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 the crusades, the most recent of which is Crusader Criminals: The Knights Who Went Rogue in the Holy Land (Yale University Press, 2024). We examine the roles played by religious zeal, the promise of remission of sin, feudal obligation, the hope of material gain, and the benefit of temporal privileges in motivating those who took the cross. In considering the relationship between crusaders and settlers, Steve explains why the rulers and European residents of Outremer developed a culture of religious and ethnic toleration that surprised and appalled Crusaders just off the boat. And because I couldn't resist, I have Steve explain why the Crusader States became hotbeds of crime and violence. I hope you will join us.

Audio clips in this episode:
The movie trailer for the 1948 re-release of Cecil B. DeMille's 1935 epic, The Crusades.
A snippet from "The Crusades" episode of the 1989 PBS series "Timeline."

Listen on Podurama https://podurama.com

Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com