'tis but a scratch: fact and fiction about the Middle Ages

Epizode

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  Agincourt: The Battle (with Michael Livingston) 18.10.2026 1h 6min

  Send us Fan Mail In the previous episode, Michael Livingston and I talked about the historical context of Henry V's Agincourt campaign, Henry's costly siege of Harfleur, and his desperate, and ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to elude the French army as he marched to Calais. Along the way, we talked about how Shakespeare shaped how Agincourt and Henry V are remembered in the popular mind. But we never actually got to the battle. This episode does. In it, we also talk about depictions of the B...
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  King Henry V and the Agincourt Campaign (with Prof. Michael Livingston) 14.10.2026 1h 26min

  Send us Fan Mail In the previous episode, I chatted with Kelly DeVries about Joan of Arc as a military leader. One of her greatest contributions to the ultimate victory of France in the Hundred Years War was to restore French morale, which, after fourteen years, had still not recovered from the crushing defeat the French had suffered at Agincourt in 1415. In the next two episodes, I will be discussing Henry V's Agincourt campaign and battle with Professor Michael Livingston, Kelly's cohost on...
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  Joan of Arc: Military Commander or Holy Cheerleader? 29.09.2026 1h 13min

  Send us Fan Mail Today’s episode concerns one of the most celebrated medieval people, Joan of Arc. She is among the best-known saints of the Middle Ages, especially among non-Catholics, and one of the most unusual. She is the only saint to my knowledge to have been condemned by the Church as a heretic and turned over to secular authorities to be burnt at the stake. That took place in 1431. It wasn’t until 1920 for the Catholic Church to formally recognize her sanctity. She is also an atypical...
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  Thucydides' Melian Dialogue: "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must" 18.09.2026 1h 4min

  Send us Fan Mail Caveat auditor!. Listener beware! This episode is NOT about the Middle Ages, although it does touch upon medieval massacres toward the end. Rather, it focuses on a text I taught for years at the U.S. Naval Academy, the “Melian dialogue” in Thucydides’ "History of the Peloponnesian War". If you are not interested in Classical Greek warfare, Thucydides, or political theory, you may want to give this a pass. Otherwise, please join Ellen and me as we explore one of th...
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  The Bayeux Tapestry: History and Interpretations 10.09.2026 57min

  Send us Fan Mail As our regular listeners know, I am an Anglo-Saxon historian. Previously, I did several episodes with my good friend Dr. Jennifer Paxton on the Norman Conquest of my beloved Anglo-Saxon England. In them we mentioned one of the most famous sources for that event, the so-called Bayeux Tapestry. Today marks the opening of the British Museum’s exhibition of the Bayeux Tapestry, the culmination of eight and a half years of intense negotiations with the Bayeux Museum. British...
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  The Evolution of Castles and Siege Warfare in medieval Britain, part 2 (conversation with Paul Remfry) 18.08.2026 1h 13min

  Send us Fan Mail This is the second episode of a two-part series on the evolution of castle-building and siege warfare in Britain from the Norman Conquest through the fifteenth century. My very special guest for both is Paul Remfry, a world renowned expert on castles whom Ellen and I met during a Scholarly Sojourn tour of castles associated with the Albigensian Crusade. Part one concluded with two sieges that marked the reign of King John: his loss of Richard the Lionheart's great Norman cast...
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  The Evolution of Castles and Siege Warfare in medieval Britain, part 1 (conversation with Paul Remfry) 07.08.2026 1h 29min

  Send us Fan Mail This is the first of a two part series on the evolution of castle-building and siege warfare in Britain from the Norman Conquest through the middle of the fifteenth century. My very special guest is Paul Remfry, one of the world’s leading experts on castles. Although this series focuses on castles in England and Wales, the idea for it came from a tour of the castles of Occitanie that Ellen and I took last June. Listeners of this podcast may remember an earlier episode ...
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  Medieval Fairs and Modern Renaissance Faires and Festivals (with Dr. Larissa "Kat" Tracy) 10.07.2026 1h 11min

  Send us Fan Mail Each year about three million Americans visit Medieval and Renaissance Faires and Festivals. Among the largest is the annual Maryland Renaissance Festival, about a half hour drive from my home. In this episode I talk with a veteran of this podcast, Dr. Larissa "Kat" Tracy, about the appeal of the Renaissance Faire and Festivals. It turns out that Kat is not only a renowned scholar of medieval literature but is also a devotee of Renaissance Faires, which she has been attending...
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  The Crusades and the Wars for the Middle East (with Prof. Nicholas Morton) 20.06.2026 1h

  Send us Fan Mail In this episode Dr. Nicholas Morton returns to discuss his newest book, The Crusader Storm: A Global History of the Wars of the Middle East (Basic Books, 2026). With some rare exceptions, histories of the Crusades and the Crusader States have been viewed from a Western perspective. What is missing is the Middle Eastern context of the Crusades to the East, how the crusades and the establishment of these Latin states in the Levant interacted with and impacted the multiple rival...
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  A Model Pre-Gregorian Reform Bishop: St. Ulrich of Augsburg 27.05.2026 20min

  Send us Fan Mail Back in September Ellen and I did an episode on Popes Leo IX and Gregory VII and their promotion of the Gregorian Reform of the Church. Because my hosting platform informed me that I have 21 minutes left to post a new episode this month, I decided to use that time to do a short episode on the "Church" before it was reformed. Rather than focus on a "bad" bishop like Gaudry of Laon, I chose to examine the career of a saintly bishop, Ulrich of Augsburg (890 – 4 July 973), someti...
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  Offa of Mercia: Laying the Foundations of a Kingdom of England (with Prof. Rory Naismith) 21.05.2026 1h 18min

  Send us Fan Mail Offa, king of Mercia from 757 to 796, was the most powerful and successful Anglo-Saxon ruler of pre-Viking England. Today Offa is probably best remembered for Offa's Dyke, a massive 150 mile long earthwork that runs along the border of England and Wales. But Offa's contribution to the creation of the kingdom of England goes far beyond that. Offa was the heir to more than a century of Mercian military success that established a Mercian hegemony over England between the Humber ...
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  Sieges, Chivalry, and Medieval Warfare: Dr. Larissa Tracy's podcast, "Medieval Mischief and Mayhem" (with Dr. Richard Abels) (E23 2026)) 13.05.2026 1h 20min

  Send us Fan Mail As I did with the episode I scripted for the podcast BEEF about the conflict between King Philip the Fair of France and Pope Boniface VIII, today I am posting an episode from another podcast, "Medieval Mayhem and Mischief with Dr. Larissa Tracy". You probably remember Dr. Tracy (Kat to her friends) from this podcast's episodes on Chretien de Troyes' "Yvain, the Knight with the Lion," and the four part series we did about medieval adultery in history, literature, and mod...
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  The Knights Templar, Part 3: From History to Legend (with Steve Tibble) 30.04.2026 50min

  Send us Fan Mail This is our third and final episode on the crusading order of the Knights Templar. In today's episode, my cohost Dr. Steve Tibble and I talk about the "afterlife" of the Templars, and how and why a military order suppressed in the early fourteenth century has become the go-to for so many conspiracy theorists. Among the topics discussed in this episode are: Templars and Freemasonry; Sir Walter Scott's shaping of their image in his novels, Ivanhoe and The Talisman; the (m...
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  The Knights Templar: The Trial and Suppression of the Order (with Steve Tibble) 16.04.2026 1h 7min

  Send us Fan Mail Today’s episode is the second in a three part series on the Crusading military order of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, more commonly known as the Templars. My cohost for this series is Dr. Steve Tibble, one of the foremost military historians of the crusades, whose most recent book is Assassins and Templars: A Battle in Myth and Blood (Yale University Press, 2025). In our previous episode Steve and I talked about the origin, mission...
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  The Knights Templar, Part 1: the Templars in History (with Steve Tibble) 15.03.2026 1h 7min

  Send us Fan Mail Today’s episode is the first of a two-part series on the notorious Christian military order, The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, more commonly known as the Knights Templar. This first episode deals with the historical Templars; the second, with the Templar legend My cohost for both is a veteran of this podcast, Dr. Steve Tibble whose newest book is Assassins and Templars, A Battle in Myth and Blood (Yale University Press, 2025). ...
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  Knights, Samurai, and the Myth of Japanese Feudalism: A Conversation with Professor Stephen Morillo 04.03.2026 1h 8min

  Send us Fan Mail Until now, "'Tis But A Scratch: Fact & Fiction About the Middle Ages" has dealt with medieval Europe and the Middle East. In this episode, we branch out to a more global perspective by comparing medieval European knights with the samurai of "feudal Japan." And, yes, we will once again be talking about the medievalist's F-word. I am fortunate to have as my cohost my good friend Stephen Morillo. Stephen is professor emeritus of History at Wabash College, where h...
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  1066 And All That: The Significance of the Norman Conquest (with Dr. Jennifer Paxton), part 2 12.02.2026 1h 27min

  Send us Fan Mail It has been several months since I posted the first half of a two part series on the significance and consequences of the Norman Conquest with my good friend and colleague Dr. Jennifer Paxton of the Catholic University of America. Despite a number of challenges--not the least being a snow storm--we finally got together to record the second episode. In that first episode, Jenny and I reviewed how historians have interpreted the Norman Conquest through the ages, and broadly out...
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  Episode 70: What we can learn about medieval people from their bones and teeth. A conversation with Professor Alison Beach 23.01.2026 1h 5min

  Send us Fan Mail And now for something completely different! In this episode, we are not going to be talking about kings or popes, crusades, wars, or political events. Instead, we will be examining the life experiences of ordinary medieval people uncovered through analysis of their skeletal remains. This field of historical research is known as osteobiography. Osteobiography is the reconstruction of an individual's life story from his or her skeletal remains. It treats bones and teeth a...
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  The First King of England: Æthelstan (with David Woodman) 16.01.2026 1h

  Send us Fan Mail Ironically, the most famous date in Anglo-Saxon history is that of its demise, 1066, which is why when in 1930 W. C. Sellar, a former schoolmaster, and his classmate at Oxford, the humorist R. J. Yeatman, decided to send up English history as taught in schools with a parody survey, they called it 1066 and All That. In a previous episode Dr. Jenny Paxton and I discussed why 1066 is such a significant date in English history. My very special guest, David Woodman, Professo...
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  A Florentine Pilgrimage to Bethlehem and Jerusalem in 1384 28.12.2025 20min

  Send us Fan Mail This is an addendum to my previous episode with Peter Konieczny. One of my listeners sent me an email asking why we never covered Frescobaldi's, Gucci's, and Sigoli's accounts of their experiences in Jerusalem. As she pointed out, when asked by the Sultan's representative in Alexandria the purpose of their trip, they said that it was to visit the Holy Sepulcher. And she is absolutely right. We ought to have talked about the culmination of the pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Give...