'tis but a scratch: fact and fiction about the Middle Ages
Richard Abels
67 episodes
2 weeks ago
Send us a text In the year 1384 a company of six wealthy merchants from Florence, each accompanied by a servant, went on a ten-month long pilgrimage to Mameluke Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. Upon returning to Florence, three of them--Leonardo Frescobaldi, Giorgio Gucci, and Simone Sigoli--wrote narratives of the journey. Although there are hundreds of accounts of pilgrimages to the East during the Middle Ages, this is the only pilgrimage that produced three independent narratives. What makes t...
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Send us a text In the year 1384 a company of six wealthy merchants from Florence, each accompanied by a servant, went on a ten-month long pilgrimage to Mameluke Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. Upon returning to Florence, three of them--Leonardo Frescobaldi, Giorgio Gucci, and Simone Sigoli--wrote narratives of the journey. Although there are hundreds of accounts of pilgrimages to the East during the Middle Ages, this is the only pilgrimage that produced three independent narratives. What makes t...
'tis but a scratch: fact and fiction about the Middle Ages
1 hour 5 minutes
10 months ago
El Cid, From History to Legend
Send us a text In this episode I interview Professor Nora Berend of the University of Cambridge about her new book El Cid; The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Mercenary (Pegasus Books, 2025). We discuss how the historical Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, a ruthless and ambitious mercenary who served both Christian and Muslim rulers in the violent and chaotic political world of late eleventh-century Iberia was transformed into the national hero of Francoist Spain and the hero of the 1961 movie starring...
'tis but a scratch: fact and fiction about the Middle Ages
Send us a text In the year 1384 a company of six wealthy merchants from Florence, each accompanied by a servant, went on a ten-month long pilgrimage to Mameluke Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. Upon returning to Florence, three of them--Leonardo Frescobaldi, Giorgio Gucci, and Simone Sigoli--wrote narratives of the journey. Although there are hundreds of accounts of pilgrimages to the East during the Middle Ages, this is the only pilgrimage that produced three independent narratives. What makes t...
