The thirteenth century saw such a proliferation of new encyclopedic texts that more than one scholar has called it the "century of the encyclopedias". Variously referred to as a "speculum", "thesaurus", or "imago mundi" – the term encyclopedia was no...

When eight-year-old Lucrezia Orsina Vizzana (1590-1662) entered one of the preeminent convents in Bologna in 1598, she had no idea what cloistered life had in store for her. Thanks to clandestine instruction from a local maestro di cappella – and des...

Henry, archdeacon of Huntingdon, England (1088-1154) has been admired for centuries as the author of the monumental "Historia Anglorum". The recent discovery of the Anglicanus ortus opens a new window onto this important English author as well as ont...

"Authoring the Past" surveys medieval Catalan historiography, shedding light on the emergence and evolution of historical writing and autobiography in the Middle Ages, on questions of authority and authorship, and on the links between history and pol...