New Books in Medieval History

About New Books in Medieval History

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork

Publisher

New Books Network

Category

history

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

18 Sept 2009

Latest episode

15 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

1 of 591 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   15 Oct 2026

   The Kennicott Bible: A Masterpiece of Jewish Book Art with Katrin Kogman-Appel (Bodleian Library, 2023)

   Katrin Kogman-Appel is a professor of Medieval Jewish history with research focusing on book culture, readers, and reading practices in medieval Europe and beyond. In The Kennicott Bible: A Masterpiece of Jewish Book Art (Bodleian Library, 2023) she discusses the text of the 24 canonized books of the Bible that is paired with David Kimchi's grammatical treatise “Sefer Miklol”. Katrin discussed the Kennecott Bible, a medieval Hebrew manuscript that contains unique illustrations and Masoretic text annotations. She explained that the manuscript draws inspiration from various sources including the Severa Bible and playing cards from the Rhineland and Netherlands, with some illustrations depicting animals in unusual positions and a political allegory involving hares, wolves, cats, and mice. Katrin described the Masoretic text as a lexical apparatus designed for precision in transmitting the canonical Hebrew text, and emphasized that the Bible served as a status symbol and public art piece for Jewish elites despite having no public art in synagogues. A collection of reproduced images from the Kennicott Bible, a remarkable artifact from the Middle Ages. The Kennicott Bible is one of the most celebrated Hebrew Bibles that survives today, having delighted readers since its creation in 1476. Originating from La Coruña in northern Spain, it features lavish carpet pages, gold leaf silhouettes, and abundant marginal decorations. This extraordinary manuscript is a treasure trove of history, culture, devotion, art, and cross-cultural collaboration. This book features reproductions of the decorated pages of the stunning manuscript, accompanied by four chapters authored by experts in the fields of Bible study, book history, and medieval Jewish art. The authors discuss the Bible from several perspectives, explaining the Hebrew text of the Bible, the scribe who created the pages, the layout and paleography, and the illuminator who produced the Bible's decoration and its imagery. This volume also includes an analysis of the early medieval commentary on the Old Testament, the Masorah. Richly illustrated throughout, this beautiful book makes a treasure of Jewish art available for a new audience, alongside the latest scholarship on its origins, provenance, and creation. Analyzing these ancient texts in historical context helps to enrich our understanding of the effects and reactions to historical and cultural events. Be sure to follow Jewish Tapestry for more on Jewish history and culture.

2. 

   10 Oct 2026

   Europe in the Eleventh Century: Beyond Revolution and Reform with Charles West (Oxford UP, 2025)

   Eleventh-century Europe was diverse and fast-changing. Historians have often debated this change through two sets of competing arguments, one about the shifting role of the Church and the Papacy, and the other about the rise of castellan lords and a proliferation in violence. Yet these arguments about 'Church Reform' and 'Feudal Revolution' only really apply to one part of Europe, the Latin West. Europe in the Eleventh Century: Beyond Revolution and Reform (Oxford University Press, 2025) by Professor Charles West takes its cue from contemporary perceptions of Europe, and includes Byzantium (or East Rome) and Muslim al-Andalus in scope. In doing so, it presents a new perspective on Europe in the period. Its chapters assess different scales of action and interaction within this wide space. They take from the reader from the peasants living in small village settlements, via the great city of Constantinople, the taifa emirates, kingdoms from Ireland to Hungary, and the two universal empires, up to contemporary ideas, cosmologies, and representations of the wider world. Viewed in this broad setting, the Latin West's remarkable expansion during this period, dramatically illustrated by the First Crusade at the century's end, can best be understood as the poorly controlled overspilling of internal dynamics, as the established public order was disrupted. Elsewhere in Europe, existing structures proved more resilient and better able to accommodate internal economic and social development, though remaining vulnerable to aggression from outside. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

3. 

   5 Oct 2026

   The Crusader Storm: A Global History of the Wars for the Middle East with Nicholas Morton (Pegasus, 2026)

   From their foundational era in 1097 to Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem almost a century later, the Crusader States transformed the Middle Eastern world. In an era shaped by many conflicts, this was not simply a war between Christianity and Islam, but an epic contest among multiple rival empires, dynasties, and cultures. Nicholas Morton's The Crusader Storm: A Global History of the Wars for the Middle East (Pegasus, 2026) unfolds through a kaleidoscope of perspectives: a Byzantine renegade, a crusader princess, a Turkish matriarch, a young Arab nobleman, a Syriac archbishop, Saladin's leading commander, and the vizier of Egypt. Between them, information, technologies, and ideas—as well as weapons—crossed borders at astonishing speed as their societies fought, allied, and traded. Their entangled fates reshaped not only the Middle East, but the medieval world itself. Drawing on sources from Arabic, Greek, Syriac, Armenian, Latin, and Hebrew traditions, Nicholas Morton's enthralling panorama transforms our understanding of the Crusades, revealing these wars not as a single clash of faiths, but as a dynamic era of war, commerce, innovation, and exchange that defined the course of history.

Inside a recent episode

Thomas Smith, "Rewriting the First Crusade: Epistolary Culture in the Middle Ages" (Boydell & Brewer, 2024)

Published 16 Oct 2025 · Transcript excerpt

[…] But one of the main concerns that the authors of the letters actually have is for their souls and the spiritual efficacy of the army. So their main concern in these letters that are sent back to genuine letters and actually the ones that are infected is for people to pray on behalf of the crusade army. They're really, really interested and concerned to secure batteries of prayers from religious communities in the west because they want people to pray for their souls to pray for the fallen crusaders, their fallen comrades who have died but also to pray for the success of the crusade itself. So it's really interesting because it helps to show that right from the very beginning, even during the campaign of the first crusade, they see it as being actually crusading on a home front as well that people at home play a role in affecting the outcome and performance of the crusade. […]

Who has been a guest on New Books in Medieval History

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Craig E Bertolet
• Susan Nakley
• Julie Singer
• John Eldevik
• Richard D Oram

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

243

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.7 / 5

11 ratings

Spotify

4.7 / 5

9 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 76 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

89

Social presence

0

YouTube

72

Engagement

85

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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