Project MUSE®: The Medieval Globe - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/749
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in The Medieval Globe.daily12026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (2015) through current issueLatest Articles: The Medieval GlobeTWOProject MUSE®The Medieval Globe2377-3553Latest articles in The Medieval Globe. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Why Europe? Why the Nation?
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975884
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THE PAST DECADE'S revolution in medieval studies has often been described as a turn to "the global Middle Ages." This formulation has the unfortunate effect of re-instantiating a problematic periodizing schema, allowing the Middle Ages to remain essentially intact and Eurocentric within a (merely optional) global penumbra.1 By contrast, compassing "the medieval globe" is an empirical, methodological, and ethical imperative. This ongoing process, however partial and imperfect, is intended to destabilize the temporal and geographical configurations that have, for centuries, predetermined the medium ævum ways we study it. Even more urgently, insisting on the existence of a medieval globe exposes the racist
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/749/image/coversmallWhy Europe? Why the Nation?2025-12-05text/htmlen-USWhy Europe? Why the Nation?2025-12-052025TWOProject MUSE®187692026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-12-05Community, Identity, Individuals: Shaping the (Political) Nation in Premodern Europe
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975885
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THE CONCEPT OF the nation and its relevance to the political landscape of medieval Europe remains a matter for debate among historians. However, this is nothing new; the nation was already a political reality, as well as a topic of dispute, in the medieval period. Neither the nation nor the nation-state appeared ex nihilo at the end of the eighteenth century. Although it was not yet the dominant referent of the geopolitical order and the clear object of a nationalist discourse, the concept of the nation had become one of the main sources of legitimization in political struggles from at least the twelfth century onwards.1 Its capacity to express or embody the interests of a community, variously defined, was a useful
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/749/image/coversmallCommunity, Identity, Individuals: Shaping the (Political) Nation in Premodern Europe2025-12-05text/htmlen-USCommunity, Identity, Individuals: Shaping the (Political) Nation in Premodern Europe2025-12-052025TWOProject MUSE®1281562026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-12-05Natio and lingua: Revisiting a Semantic Couplet (Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975886
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IN THE VAST debate on the origins of modern nationalism, and the existence of forms of proto-nationalism that could be linked to it as early as the Middle Ages, semantic investigations into the terms used to name political communities and/or ethnolinguistic groups have already occupied a notable place for a generation.1 The impetus given to historical research by the linguistic turn has had a particularly beneficial effect. It has, indeed, radicalized the deconstruction of teleological analyses of the past, which too easily saw the medieval Latin usage of syntagms such as natio anglicana or natio gallicana as proof that clerics were already conceptualizing the nation in a manner close to that of the nineteenth
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/749/image/coversmallNatio and lingua: Revisiting a Semantic Couplet (Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries)2025-12-05text/htmlen-USNatio and lingua: Revisiting a Semantic Couplet (Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries)2025-12-052025TWOProject MUSE®1359322026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-12-05Ex linguis gentes: The Etymological Method and the Roman Theory of Lithuania's Origins
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975887
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THIS ESSAY GREW out of a book project on how the etymological method was used by medieval and early modern historians, in the Latin learned tradition and in vernacular historiographies shaped by it: not only to uncover or prove historical truths, but also as a powerful storytelling device. Here, I focus on the historiographic theory of Lithuania's Roman origins, and of the Baltic peoples more broadly, tracing its development from the intellectual circles of the Teutonic Order and of medieval Poland to its narrative enactment in the Chronicle of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Samogitia, composed in Ruthenian Cyrillic in the early sixteenth century. I explore how the etymological method not only lends weight to
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/749/image/coversmallEx linguis gentes: The Etymological Method and the Roman Theory of Lithuania's Origins2025-12-05text/htmlen-USEx linguis gentes: The Etymological Method and the Roman Theory of Lithuania's Origins2025-12-052025TWOProject MUSE®2141392026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-12-05Ethnicity and Statehood in the First Bulgarian Empire (681–1018): From Bulgars to Bulgarians
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975888
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THIS ARTICLE APPLIES selected aspects of contemporary academic discourse around ethnic identity to the source material of the First Bulgarian Empire (680/81–1018), assessing to what extent that broader discussion can be meaningfully applied to this specific regional context. It argues that one can observe a gradual and continuous transformation in the conception of identity within this empire. Initially, ethnic identifiers appear to have been restricted to specific groups—such as the Bulgars—and defined by ethnic and/or social characteristics. From the ninth century onward, however, there is evidence of a more integrative understanding of Bulgarian identity, increasingly tied to the political structure of the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/749/image/coversmallEthnicity and Statehood in the First Bulgarian Empire (681–1018): From Bulgars to Bulgarians2025-12-05text/htmlen-USEthnicity and Statehood in the First Bulgarian Empire (681–1018): From Bulgars to Bulgarians2025-12-052025TWOProject MUSE®1490482026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-12-05Nature, Gender, and the Medieval Origins of the Polish Self-Stereotype
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975889
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PERCEPTIONS OF ONESELF, one's own community, and the stereotypes that emerge from these perceptions are quite rarely addressed in historical research, despite the fact that they continue to influence the construction of specific historical narratives and nationalist claims. Even in recent historical writing, one can sometimes see the subconscious influence of such stereotypes.1 This article examines the medieval birth of a Polish autostereotype, analyzes its features, and briefly traces its presence in medieval historiography. The sources on which this discussion relies considered only the nobility, whether warriors or clergy, as belonging to their nation. Peasants were treated as an element of nature subject to
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/749/image/coversmallNature, Gender, and the Medieval Origins of the Polish Self-Stereotype2025-12-05text/htmlen-USNature, Gender, and the Medieval Origins of the Polish Self-Stereotype2025-12-052025TWOProject MUSE®1169332026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-12-05Between Region and Nation: Shifting Communities and Identities in Medieval Catalonia, Silesia, and Transylvania
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975890
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WHY DID SOME regional communities become relatively autonomous nations or sovereign medie val states, while others were dependent on—or contested among—other states? The discussion of the origins of medieval states and the functioning of regions within them has an extensive literature.1 For the purposes of the comparative analysis presented in this article, I define a state as a coherent organization of people living in a specific territory considered to be particularly related to them (the homeland), subject to a centralizing authority, accepting the ruling group's control over the rightful use of violence, and sharing a common version of their past.2 I define a regional community as a group of people united by
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/749/image/coversmallBetween Region and Nation: Shifting Communities and Identities in Medieval Catalonia, Silesia, and Transylvania2025-12-05text/htmlen-USBetween Region and Nation: Shifting Communities and Identities in Medieval Catalonia, Silesia, and Transylvania2025-12-052025TWOProject MUSE®1566362026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-12-05Brothers, Cousins, and Strangers: Scandinavian Political Identities, ca. 1400–1600
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975891
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TRYING TO FIND the origin of this proverb just proved its ubiquity. The phenomenon of conflict within smaller units becoming less important, and maybe even abandoned, as soon as these units as a whole come into conflict with other units can be traced in several contexts from historical examples all over the world up to the longstanding rivalries of sports clubs today. For Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, together known as Scandinavia or the Scandinavian kingdoms, this has been true as well.1 This article will introduce the reader to late medieval and early modern Scandinavian political identities, and argue that these identities were complex, overlapping, entangled, and at times paradoxical. They appear even more so
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/749/image/coversmallBrothers, Cousins, and Strangers: Scandinavian Political Identities, ca. 1400–16002025-12-05text/htmlen-USBrothers, Cousins, and Strangers: Scandinavian Political Identities, ca. 1400–16002025-12-052025TWOProject MUSE®964792026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-12-05