| Abstract | Paper -a:
It was Plato who wrote that dance should be taught to every citizen. He also wrote that there are ignoble types of dances that should be excluded from the society. This kind of thinking survived in medieval Europe: not every dance and/or dancer was perceived as equal. It is however possible to spot this distinction in dance depictions appearing in medieval manuscripts. The difference between noble and ignoble dance lays mostly in dance dynamics. How to read this dynamics? How does recognizing this distinction can help us learn more about medieval understanding of the dance? In this paper I will try to answer aforementioned questions in a broad context of medieval dance and culture.
Paper -b:
In later medieval England, injury was an ever-present risk that could manifest in various life-threatening forms. With care by a professional physician rare, if not eschewed, injuries were largely treated domestically. A significant yet understudied feature of this domestic healing culture was the invocation of those saints believed to have intercessory healing abilities based on their own experience of trauma. By examining invocations and charms that were recorded into various forms of household literature, this paper reveals the domestic response to injuries such as bleeding wounds, burns, infections, and broken bones before pinpointing those invocatory treatments considered to be most efficacious.
Paper -c:
An investigation into a 'medieval myth' present in scientific handbooks and papers. As church organs deteriorated due to the allotropic nature of tin, it would not go unnoticed. New understanding of this phenomenon in the 19th century meant that new research in the fields of chemistry and physics has since proliferated and, incidentally, through a strange game of telephone, perpetuated an anecdote involving Devil-fearing people of the Middle Ages. But where did this belief originate? To what extent does it concern pre-modern Europe? And what role does the Devil really play in all of this?
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