Wikipedia:WikiProject Middle Ages/General

kernel of an article, idea at least
Can any of you kind folks suggets where this idea might find fruition? I have been thinking of an article or subsection on the geographic etymology of medieval trade goods, (it's horrible, but I haven't come up with a better title) what I mean is the practice where we even today call objects by where things were made locally or the trade cities that were sources for them at the time, vide
 * Tangerine=Tangier
 * Ginger=Zanzibar
 * Cashmere=Kashmir
 * Afghan blankets=Afghanistan
 * Angora=Ankara
 * Muscadine=Masqat
 * Damask cloth=Damascus
 * Turquoise=Turkey

as well as that some considered to be such a name is in fact a false etymology, vide
 * Alabaster=not really from Halab
 * Persimmon=not being related to Persia

Please let me know your thoughts. :) Chris 18:53, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Manumission
This article has almost no content relating to the rituals and realities of manumission in the MA, which was a fairly common practice both in the north (at least up to the twelfth century) and in the Mediterranean (where something akin to ancient "slavery" continued in places like Genoa, inter alia, for centuries). I'm swamped at the moment, but perhaps someone with a social history Jones could have a go at this?? SGilsdorf 13:33, 21 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Slavery and History of slavery have virtually zero mention of medieval slavery...we could write a whole big article about it! I am also swamped but I would be happy to collaborate on that topic. Adam Bishop 15:57, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I do not believe I have a great deal of sources for this topic on hand, but I would be happy to begin a (stubby) section at those articles soon in hopes that one of you can beef it up. Srnec 17:46, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Adam--there is in fact Slavery in medieval Europe, although it's pretty sparse and could use some TLC. Maybe this is where medieval manumission belongs, in the end... SGilsdorf 20:18, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
 * By the same token, rather than adding new material to Slavery and History of slavery, couldn't we just add an annotated link to Slavery in medieval Europe at the appropriate points in both articles, and then focus on the latter one? SGilsdorf 20:21, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Right, I didn't know we had that article until now. Let's add to that one. Adam Bishop 20:25, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I too had no idea such an article existed until today. I found it discussed higher up on this very page! Srnec 04:52, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I've been going over what sources I have immediately available, and I can add an outline of slavery and manumission in Roman/Byzantine law (as used in the middle ages, of course), as well as in canon law; justifications for slavery by various jurists and canonists; and an outline of various aspects of slavery in the crusader states. I hope that's not too specific...I found a lot of general books about medieval slavery when I was working on this for a class, which I didn't need at the time, so I will have to track them down again. Adam Bishop 00:47, 23 June 2007 (UTC)


 * If I remember correctly, the British Library has some Anglo-Saxon manuscripts that have manumissions included as marginalia. I will try to find images of them in the coming week and put them on Commons. Dsmdgold 02:47, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Deletion preposed: Medieval life
Members of this wikiproject would be intersted to know that the article above is listed for deletion at: Articles for deletion/Medieval life. CaveatLectorTalk 15:53, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Anglo-Saxon task force?
Is anyone interested in joining a task force to work specifically on Anglo-Saxon articles? I'm thinking it would be good to take one of the kingdoms -- probably Wessex, Northumbria or Mercia, or maybe Kent to keep the scope small to start with -- and try to bring every related article up to featured standard. There are the individual kings to do, though several are already done; and also battles and an overall history article. There might be scope for specific articles on coinage, archaeology, or historiography too, though those are more likely to live up at the Anglo-Saxon level. I'm sure there could be other articles too. If anyone's interested, let me know here or on my talk page, and I'll put together some kind of task force page so we can figure out what to tackle first. Mike Christie (talk) 13:25, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Medieval economy
We quite desperately need an article on that subject.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:52, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Treaty of Devol
Treaty of Devol has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. --OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 13:14, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Courtier and Favourite
Are both virtually dic-def stubs. Can anyone expand these rather important articles? Johnbod 16:12, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

moot hill
Has the opposite problem— it's a quite long parthenogenetic article with much more material than trustworthiness. Considered purely as an encyclopedia article, its problems are obvious— it's full of plagarism and copyvios; it's rambling and poorly organized; it's frequently not encyclopedic in style. I'm making a few attempts to fix all that. But there's also a general feeling of untrustworthiness to it which I'm having a much harder time putting my finger on; I feel that it draws too heavily on a few specific sources (some of which don't look very reputable) and lacks the 'broader picture' which somebody really at home with early medieval society could give it. Could anybody stop by and lend expertise? Thanks, Doops | talk 14:44, 11 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Also— why don't we currently have an article on moot (it's just a dab page now), or thingemote, or folkmoot, or the like? Doops | talk 14:45, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Application of Project Banners
The project banner has recently been added to a great many articles which probably do not really fall under the definition of "medieval" or "Middle Ages". .. The Japanese medieval period is generally considered to extend from roughly 1180 (the beginning of the Genpei War which ended in the establishment of the first shogunate) to roughly 1600 (the end of the Sengoku period of feudal civil war). ... While I realize the difficulties of applying each individual country/culture's notions and dating of their own medieval period, and keeping it all straight, I think this is something that the project needs to figure out.

Having a project banner on an article isn't a big deal - it doesn't affect the content of the article, and is (at least in my opinion) less important than categories in terms of being appropriately placed. Even so, a number of topics have been labeled under the Middle Ages Project which quite assuredly fall under the rubrics of "antiquity", "classical", "ancient" or the like. I'm going to go remove a number of the more blatant ones.

What do you suppose we should do about this? Shall we establish a rubric for what counts as "medieval" in various parts of the world? LordAmeth 01:19, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Lists of religious leaders
For some insane reason I thought it would be a good idea to make List of religious leaders in 1220 as comprehensive as possible. And then I thought it would be a good idea to organize the page according to archdiocese-diocese structure as of 1220. The only problem with that is that the vast majority of pages (on Wikipedia, the Catholic encyclopedia, and catholic-hierarchy.org) do not say who is a suffragan of whom, especially back then. I find that this is especially a problem in Italy (where there seems to have been a vast reorganization post-Reformation) and Spain. Does anyone know where I can find more information about this, aside from searching through Wikipedia? I am only working on the Roman Catholics for now. Adam Bishop 03:14, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Deacons of Clairvaux
I hate to say that just because I have never heard of something, it didn't exist, but in this case I think I might be right! This article doesn't make any sense to me, the author has never contributed anything else, and it doesn't appear on Google (which is odd for anything secretive in the middle ages). Anyone ever heard of them? Adam Bishop (talk) 19:04, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The words in this odd little essay that give me pause include "secretive monastic order", & "Knights Templar". Further, since the remains of St. Mark were critically important to the Venetians, I find it surprising that some mention of them couldn't be found. In short, I too am highly suspicious of this group, which sounds like what someone who has read The Da Vinci Conspiracy might come up with. Time to nominate at AfD as a hoax? -- llywrch (talk) 21:04, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Names of early British historical figures
Editors here may be interested in this discussion about the correct names to use in these articles. Mike Christie (talk) 21:05, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

1345
This is an article a couple of us have completely revamped in an experiment to see if it was possible to make a year article an FA. Obviously, it's a middle ages article, so any help you could lend would be wonderful. Wrad (talk) 02:04, 31 December 2007 (UTC)


 * That is an impressive feat, nice job! Adam Bishop (talk) 22:24, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Crusades project
Do you think there would be enough interest in creating a separate crusades Project, or can the multitude of ever-increasing crusade articles be handed well enough by the general Middle Ages project? I've been planning to create one specifically for the crusades for some time so I thought I would mention it here first. I think there are enough crusade-minded editors to keep it going. Adam Bishop (talk) 23:23, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I think this project is getting big enough that we need to split it into task forces. I think a Crusades task force would be nice, as would a medieval literature task force. Wrad (talk) 18:30, 22 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I notice that fr: has a nice fr:Projet:Croisades. They have tons of stubs but it's organized pretty well. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:44, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Medieval Names
Does anyone know if there is already a Wikipedia policy for naming medieval writers? If not, I would like to suggest we try to form one. I am thinking of people like Paul the Deacon who is traditionally and more commonly named Paulus Diaconus, but our article is - I think rightly - headed by the English form. I am only talking about writers in Latin here: there is no question about, say, Chrétien de Troyes, who belongs to French literature and should be cited in French; renaming him Christian of Troyes would be daft. But we have so many little-known Latin authors whose name is made up of a personal name and a toponym, and the toponym has become obscure: Iohannes Haugustaldensis / John of Hexham. People no longer no which town is meant when it is cited in Latin. Besides, I am not sure that Haugustaldensis is really a personal name form: in medieval thinking it is a place name adjective, not a surname, and we certainly never cite places in Latin first.

I feel that the usual policy of choosing the most commonly used name is out of place here. For one thing, there are usually heaps of references for both forms, and counting google hits is not a good way to decide it. Then, we have to consider the fact that medieval scholarship has changed direction in the last 20 years here, using English names where older scholarship used the Latin ones. We don't want to stick with the old forms just because the volume of pre-1980 literature has not been overtaken by the volume of new stuff. Or because people outwith the field are still copying old material all over the net. I would plead for a consistent policy, and using English forms is logical here.--Doric Loon (talk) 19:21, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Images
Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but I haven't yet figured out the copyright status of medieval pictures (for example, from illuminated manuscripts, or paintings). I generally browse commons if I'm in need of pictures. Many are tagged "public domain" on the basis of their age (thus copyright has expired); yet sometimes in books/websites I see pictures identified as "British Library" (or whatever). Are the copyrights of some images held by organisation such as that, or are they all in the public domain? Or perhaps the image itself is free, but the copyright belongs to the person who scanned or photographed the original? Or something else? I would be grateful to anyone who can explain this to me! Thanks. Gwinva (talk) 22:09, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I had the same problem.  or  seem to cover it. Kind Regards, Mcewan (talk) 21:39, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, just noticed how old this question is, and all the good work you've done. Quite sure you don't any futher help on this topic :) Mcewan (talk) 21:48, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
 * In case anyone else is puzzled, the original works themselves are well out of copyright because of age, but under English & other countries laws the photographer or his employer have "derivative copyright", which however WP does not recognise because it does not exist in the US (Bridgeman v Corel case - for 2 dimensional images only) or other countries where the WP servers are located. So all medieval paintings or illuminations are ok, but sculptures, or even coins may not be - paradoxically these may be ok if on public view in the UK or Germany, but not if they are in the US ("Freedom of panorama") - you are supposed to get permission from the man on Flickr. There must be a link on this - anyone? Johnbod (talk) 23:18, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Medieval household
I've recently created an article on the medieval household. It was suggested in its GA review that it be included in the template Middle Ages wide 2. I thought I'd bring it up here for discussion first.  Lampman  Talk to me! 12:42, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Crusades task force
Based on the discussion above, I recognized that a task force might be preferable to a whole project, so I created User:Adam Bishop/Crusades task force. I thought I'd try to get some help setting it up before implementing it. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:54, 17 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Bleh, I put it at WikiProject Middle Ages/Crusades task force instead. Hopefully we can all work on it there. Adam Bishop (talk) 09:28, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Request for examination/help
I did some extensive work on Royal forest back in 2005. Unfortunately, a lot of that is based on the work of John Manwood, whose perspective is not entirely reliable. It needs a good going-over based on modern scholarship and secondary sources, to which my access is now much reduced. If anyone here is familiar with forest law, please take a look, even if it's only to strike some of the more egregious misconceptions. Choess (talk) 21:03, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Medieval peace treaties
I have begun move requests at Talk:Peace of Toruń (1411) and Talk:Peace of Toruń (1466). Further input would be appreciated. Olessi (talk) 15:04, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Medieval patricians, burghers and the like
I was shocked to see how little we seem to have on the city-governing medieval elites - nothing at all on those two until I added a sentence each, and bourgeoisie is no use here. Or am I missing articles? A translation of the Italian Patrizio (titulo) would be a start. Patricianship is currently all about upper-class Dutch popstars & the like. Johnbod (talk) 03:21, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

1345
An admin moved the summary version of this article to 1345 (summary) from the main 1345 spot. This article is in the scope of this project. Commentary is needed on whether summaries in the main year articles should be encouraged or not. Discussion is here. Wrad (talk) 00:04, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Paladin
We're trying to sort out some issues at the paladin article. It's mostly over terminology; one user holds that the terms "paladin" and "palatine" are synonyms and has written the article as such; however, this is not borne out in any reliable source. I'm working on it, but additional input would be appreciated.--Cúchullain t/ c 20:05, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Blanche of France
I was just cleaning up after a disambiguation move, and I was rather disturbed to see that none of the articles linking to Blanche of France (1282–1305) agreed on birth and death dates. Can anyone verify the correct dates so we can make this consistent? Thanks.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:24, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Florence of Worcester to John of Worcester
I would like to bring your attention to this discussion and would be happy to hear of any opinions that people might have (whether it be to keep it as it is, or if possible to find more info about Florence; to have his own article). Kind regards.Calaka (talk) 07:56, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Migration Period
I have written a comment on the introduction to 'Migration Period', and also tried to submit a rephrasing, which unfortunately got reverted. Even though the article is not listed on the 'WikiProject Middle Ages', it does however overlap in matter of periodization and geography, with Early Middle Ages. Hopefully I have raised your curiosity. The comment is at the talk-page Talk:Migration_Period, and a draft is here -> User:Sechinsic/migration01. Sechinsic (talk) 11:06, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Peer review Otto I
An article about Otto I, one of the most influential (and fascinating) early German kings, is up for peer review. Feedback from interested editors would be greatly appreciated. (If this is the wrong page to post this, please feel free to move the notice, thank you). GermanJoe (talk) 14:22, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Wanted articles
Is there a list anywhere of articles that are wanted but have not yet been writen? Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi  16:53, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
 * FFS-! Fortuna  Imperatrix Mundi  11:58, 18 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Perhaps not, but such lists are very rarely any good in my experience. As with the rest of WP, what we need is more articles on major topics, rather than ones on individual people, places, events and things, where coverage is pretty good.  Anything to do with economic history is normally very thinly covered indeed. Of course we also need updating in the huge numbers of articles that have hardly changed since they were started with a big dollop of century-old PD stuff. Hope that helps. Johnbod (talk) 15:05, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Infobox folk song
You are welcome to discuss the newly created Infobox folk song and its future here. --Tamtam90 (talk) 07:27, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Medieval England Project Deadlink
Hi everyone, I've been editing Manorialism and found this wikiproject. I was about to look into WikiProject Medieval England and found it is a weird link to a draft article about an Irish Republican muralist (???) thought you might want to resurrect the project or at least remove it from your sister projects links. Jtrrs0 (talk) 17:17, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Crusades
There is a general discussion ongoing about how to organise the aforementioned topic (which does not solely revolve about its military aspect). Being previously uninvolved, I closed two RfCs, at Talk:Crusades and at Talk:Crusading, since they were pretty much about the same fundamental issue. A further discussion is ongoing at Talk:Crusades. Your participation is naturally welcome. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 18:33, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Genealogy
I am looking for some discussion on what Wikipedia accepts as reliable sources. Working extensively on Eleanor of Aquitaine, it has been a bit frustrating that people keep deleting sources as "unreliable". for instance this is my question to the last person to delete sources:
 * "What is your source for dismissing FMG as a reliable source for medieval genealogy? It does have a number of academics and receives funding from the UK Government. I am aware of the discussions on Wikitree, which could be summed up by saying no source on its own is infallible and all should be read critically and compared. You may be aware that someone else just removed Wikitree as unreliable, which seems a bit unfair since its medieval project is not only tightly controlled but also pretty critical of sources. Which of course leaves us with the burning question of what exactly does Wikipedia accept as "reliable"? Imperfect sources are sometimes better than none. Maybe that is a question for further discussion by the project."

Michael Goodyear ✐ ✉  02:51, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * If you mean this FMG, it isn't a source. Its journal is Foundations. Whether that counts as 'reliable' depends on the importance of the article (Eleanor of Aquitaine was arguably the 2nd most pivotal figure in the medieval history of people speaking the English language) and how arguable the point your making is, which you aren't mentioning. If it's about her genealogy, that should be referenced to fairly rock solid historians, not random websites or their inhouse journals. Wikitree—and any other wikified project—will never be a reliable source for anything on its own. Use their sources instead.


 * All of this is covered in detail by WP:RS, which I'm sure others have already linked. Go ahead and actually read it. If you just want a bright line to look for, (a) avoid anything that uses the website template; (b) use things where you can fill out the  and   part of the citation or cite book templates; (c) aim to have things that say Cambridge, Oxford, etc. in that first field for major figures like Eleanor that surely have good sources from reliable researchers. Alternatively, help out by adding articles on more minor figures. People won't remove your work then; they'll just slowly improve it by using better sources like Eleanor's article already does, 16+ years in. —  Llywelyn II   13:54, 10 May 2024 (UTC)