The Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast

In this episode, art historians Sarah Frisbie and Rachel Quist discuss the advent and proliferation of relics and reliquaries in early Japan. Grappling with tensions between material and immaterial, visible and invisible, they discuss how these objects channeled and, indeed, became the Buddha, preserving the Buddha’s sanctity while also rendering Buddhism accessible across the Japanese archipelago.Episode corrections:13:45—The story of the pious woman who gifted a relic to one of her relatives appears in Hokkeji shari engi 法華寺舎利縁起 (Karmic origins of Hokkeji). The woman's name was Shu-amidabutsu, and in the story, she actually gifted a relic to her son (rather than her brother). Interested English speakers can find a translation of this story in Paul Groner, “Icons and Relics in Eison’s Religious Activities,” in Living Images: Japanese Buddhist Icons in Context, ed. Robert H. Sharf and Elizabeth Horton Sharf (Stanford University Press, 2001), 130.36:55—The ritual manual is often addressed by its abbreviated name Jishi nenju hō 慈氏念誦法 (Jishi incantation ritual)—Jishi (Compassionate One) is another title by which Miroku (Skt. Maitreya, Ch. Mile) is addressed. The name derives from Chinese, in which the same pair of characters (慈氏) is used. The portion of Jishi nenju hō discussed in this episode explains that if a person enshrines seven grains of relics in the peak (chōjō 頂上) of a Miroku sculpture, the sculpture's eyes will move, and the person will be granted future benefits, including enlightenment and an audience to Miroku’s conferral of the Dharma (juki seppō 授記説法) when he descends to earth to become the Buddha of the next age.For more information, visit www.multiculturalmiddleages.com.

Sam Lasman (University of Oregon) and Samantha Pellegrino (University of Chicago) discuss monster-making in the medieval and modern Islamic world. Drawing on examples from Persian epic, modern Iranian cinema, ancient alchemy, and Iraqi fiction, they discuss encounters with supernatural beings, the creation of “artificial” life, and the politics of fantasy. For more information, visit www.multiculturalmiddleages.com.

In this episode, Dr. Paola Rodriguez takes us into Dante’s Divine Comedy, exploring four characters within their historical context. She examines them as micro-historical episodes used by Dante to criticize and denounce certain societal mores of his time. The theory of micro-history itself functions as a central device in Dante’s narratorial structuring, lending itself to the process of historical redressing of injustices.For more information, visit www.multiculturalmiddleages.com.

In this episode, we chat with Dr. John Kee about his contribution to Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, in which Kee explores the intersections of ecology, aesthetics, and human relationships to the natural world in the context of Byzantine representations of snakes in text and imagery.For more information, visit www.multiculturalmiddleages.com.

What did it mean to have a voice in the Middle Ages? And why is music essential for understanding the medieval voice? Join musicologists Saagar Asnani and Flannery McIntyre as they discuss how the voice can reveal the relationship between music and identity.For more information, visit www.multiculturalmiddleages.com.

In 2019, the discovery of ultramarine pigment in the dental calculus of a medieval woman provided the first physical evidence of female scribes, challenging the widespread assumption that manuscript copying was an exclusively male activity. In this episode, scholar Estelle Guéville draws on her doctoral research to explore the overlooked history of medieval women scribes and show how they played a far more significant role in literacy and book production than traditionally believed.For more information, visit www.multiculturalmiddleages.com.

As a saint caught between the Italian and Iberian worlds, Saint Louis of Toulouse (d. 1297) is an important yet often forgotten piece of the religious and political history of Iberian expansion. In this episode, PhD candidate Jessica Minieri and MMA Pod producer Loren Cantrell trace the long history of the theft, movement, and translation of the relics of Louis of Toulouse—a saint associated with the House of Anjou in the Kingdom of Naples. Between his death and 1800, Louis’s relics were split between cities in Iberia, southern France, the Philippines, and California all in connection with Spanish conquest worldwide.For more information, visit www.multiculturalmiddleages.com.

In this episode, Loraine Enlow chats with Pilar Rivett about Rivett’s research on ninth-century baptismal and exorcistic rites and Jewish–Christian relations under Charlemagne and Louis the Pious. Their conversation challenges scholarly assumptions about a decline in the culture of diasporic Judaism in the Latin West in pre-Rabbinic times (4th–9th centuries). Instead, they argue in favor of a Latin Jewish textual tradition.For more information, visit www.multiculturalmiddleages.com.

In this episode, Mourad Tadghout explores how manuscript cultures shaped intellectual exchange across medieval Eurasia and the Mediterranean. Focusing on the transmission of texts such as Ibn Sina’s Canon of Medicine, Tadghout traces the movement of knowledge from Baghdad to Toledo and beyond. The episode highlights the collaborative nature of translation, commentary, and scholarly exchange, challenging narratives of isolation and rethinking the medieval world as deeply interconnected across cultures and languages.For more information, visit www.multiculturalmiddleages.com.

In this episode, producer Reed O’Mara sit down with Georgetown professor Sarah McNamer about her contribution to Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, in which McNamer explores the provenance and purpose of the Bodley Alexander manuscript (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 264 [Part A, fols. 3–208]). McNamer’s article suggests that the manuscript can be read as a medieval version of a children’s search-and-find activity book and that it was made for a young prince.For more information, visit www.multiculturalmiddleages.com.