Like many viewers, I quite enjoyed the History Channelโs TV show Vikings. Despite the historical inaccuracies, the altered timelines and invented kinship bonds, in addition to the misrepresentations and adaptations of characters and events, I appreciated the intergenerational quality that seemed to translate that rare quality embedded within the Old Norse-Icelandic sagas. And, the version of รat mรฆlti mรญn mรณรฐir โMy Mother Told Meโ featured in their Season 4, Episode 9 (“Death All ‘Round”) burrowed into my mind like an ear-wyrm.
Like many, I looked into the origins of the song, and was delighted to learn about its genesis in Egils saga. The verse (lausavรญsa), attributed to the famous Icelandic warrior-poet Egill Skallagrรญmsson, comes from Egils saga (chapter 40), where a young Egill describes his youthful ambitions to become a Viking voyager. The saga survives in medieval Icelandic parchment and paper manuscripts (such as the 15th-century Mรถรฐruvallabรณk or later transcriptions housed in Icelandic manuscript collections).
As I read the Old Norse-Icelandic lyrics one thing caught my eye and demanded my attention. The line: fara รก brott meรฐ vรญkingum โfare away with the vikingsโ (4).
I wondered what made the Michael Hirst choose to translate that one line so differently? And, the decision to erase vikingum โvikingsโ from the song baffled me. This would be something to emphasize, in my mind, or at the very least keep in tact, rather than remove. And, like Dr. Jack Crawford, I was intrigued to think about how the original could be versified.
After singing this song with FaeGuild Wondersโ cast in both Old Norse-Icelandic and modern English (Vikings-version) for a number of years at Enchanted Orchard Renaissance Faire and the NorthFolk NightMarket, I was inspired to again team up with my twin brother, Tom Fahey (Totem Faehy). We cocreated a new project, Brothers Grimm, with the mission to bring the medieval into the modern imaginary, in collaboration with his neofolk band, Winds of Alluria, in order to bring my own version of the song to life that blended the Vikings-version, the Old Norse-Icelandic poem, and my original translation.
Accompanied by an imagined rowing rhythm, and with samples to create an aural texture, much like we did in our first Brothers Grimm collaboration on Deor. In order to hear the song, and to see the original Old Norse-Icelandic texts and both modern English translations, see รat mรฆlti mรญn mรณรฐir.
Richard Fahey, PhD Medieval Institute University of Notre Dame
My first interest in Byzantine studies was the hospital. In hindsight, I was influenced by the contemporary politics during my undergraduate years. In the midst of American debates on healthcare, I became fascinated by the medieval concern for the sick that was manifest in the Byzantine hospital.
I wrote my undergraduate thesis and MA thesis on Byzantine hospitals.[1] My doctoral work moved away from this interest in hospitals and into questions of landscape. However, sometimes things you stop looking for can find you instead. Hospitals kept showing up in my research on Byzantine landscapes, often in the guise of the lands in the provinces whose exploitation supported the efforts of healing in the imperial capital.
In this blog post, I want to highlight three Constantinopolitan hospitals, whose estates I have encountered in my research on the landscapes of Western Asia Minor. Linking the hospital with their estate lands reminds us that the charity of the capital often depended upon the labor of the provinces.
Myrelaion
The monastery of the Myrelaion was founded by the emperor Romanos Lepekanos around the year 920 from his own personal mansion. The main church of the monastery is found at Bodrum Camii, which was built upon a late antique rotunda (see photo 1 and 2).
Bodrum Camii from the far side of the platform created by the late antique rotunda (photo by author).Image of the columns within the late antique rotunda underneath Bodrum Camii (Photo by Author).
Its hospital is known from a Byzantine medical book, attributed to the Romanos, koukouleisios and protomenutes of the imperial hospital of the Myrelaion in Constantinople (Vind. Med. Gr. 48) who probably also lived during the tenth century.[2]
A dramatic account of the Myrelaion estates in western Asia Minor comes from the Life of Saint Nikephoros of Miletus. Here the managers of these estates are positioned as the villains of the tale, interested in stealing the lands which belong to the metropolitan of Miletus. The titular saint does his best to combat the aggressive growth of these estates, arguing before the emperor in Constantinople that the loss of the episcopal estates was a danger โto both the living and the dead.โ
Pantokrator
The monastery of the Pantokrator was founded by John II Komnenos and his wife, Eirene (formerly Piroska of Hungry) in the twelfth century. The monastery church survives in modern Istanbul as the Zeyrek Camii (see photos 3 and 4).
A view of Zeyrek Camii from the north and below on Ataturk Boulevard (Photo by author).Inside of the Zeyrek Camii looking south (Photo by author).
The Pantokrator hospital is well known due to the detailed account of its operation in its typikon, a type of monastic charter which lays out the liturgical rules and administrative needs of the monastery at its foundation. For those interested in Byzantine hospitals, the English translation of this typikon is a great primary source to start reading.[3] In fact, the monastery operated four hospitals: a leper hospital, a nursing home, a monastic infirmary, and a medical hospital. I had argued for a relationship between the Unkapanฤฑ cistern and the hospital, due to the prescription of bathing in the hospital shown in the typikon (see photo 5).
Unkapanฤฑ Cistern from below (photo by author).
The typikon also lists the lands given to the monastery. However, my interest is a property given to the monastery after the typikon was composed. The Pantokrator monastery owned the Bare estate in region of Smyrna before the chaos of the Fourth Crusade (1204). Bare is known from the Lembos cartulary, whose new edition and translation should whet the curiosity of anyone interested to learn more.[4]
Sampson
The date of the foundation of the Sampson hospital is less than straightforward.[5] The hospital burned down in the Nika Riots of the sixth century. The hospital, with a wing designated entirely for eyecare, appears in the seventh-century Miracles of Saint Artemios.[6] In another miracle collection, the hospital is the true stage of the action: tenth-century Miracles of Saint Sampson the Hospitable recorded by Symeon Metaphrastis as part of his larger project of rewriting hagiography.
The ruins between Hagia Sophia and Hagia Eirene have been excavated roughly where the hospital is known to be located, although this identification is not certain.
The imperial estate known as Sampson was responsible for renaming the city of Priene in western Asia Minor in the twelfth century (see photo 6). The inhabitants of these estates were bad neighbors; three different thirteenth-century monastic archives preserve documents of court cases against them. The Sampson estates may have originated as imperial support for the Sampson hospital, but the estate was under the control of a relative of the emperor in the twelfth century.
A view of the acropolis of Priene from below within the city ruins (photo by author).
Tyler Wolford, PhD Byzantine Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship Medieval Institute University of Notre Dame
[1] Tyler Wolford, Healing on the Fourth Hill: Searching for the Pantokrator Hospital. Ungraduated Honors Thesis, Ball State University, 2012. Partially published as ibid., โTo Each According to their Need: Medical and Charitable Institutions in the Pantokrator Monastery.โ In Piroska and the Pantokrator: Dynastic Memory, Healing, and Salvation in Komnenian Constantinople. Edited by Marianne Sรกghy and Robert G. Ousterhout, 195-224. Budapest, 2019. Ibid., The Hospitals of the Monastery: Contextualizing the Nosokomeion and Xenodocheion in the Monasteries of Late Antique Egypt and Palestine. Masterโs Thesis, Koรง University, 2014. Partially published as Tyler Wolford, โSeparate Places for the Sick in the Monastery: The Late Antique Palestinian Infirmary and Guesthouse.โ In Places of Illness, Spaces for Healing: The Built Environment of Healthcare in Anatolia Through the Ages. Edited by Luciene Thys-ลenocak and Inge Uytterhoeven, 133-154. Istanbul, 2025.
[2] Peregrine Horden, โMedieval hospital formularies: Byzantium and Islam Compared.โ In Medical Books in the Byzantine World. Edited by Barbara Zipser. Bologna 2013. 150-151.
[3] Robert Jordan. โ28. Pantokrator. Typikon of Emperor John II Komnenos for the Monastery of Christ Pantokrator in Constantinople.โ In Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents (BMFD), edited by John Philip Thomas and Angela Constantinides Hero, 725-781. Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2000.
[4] Alexander Daniel Beihammer and Despoina Ariantzi. The Cartulary of the Lembos Monastery Near Smyrna: A Thirteenth-Century Monastic Archive of Byzantine Asia Minor. De Gruyter, 2026.
By PROPOLI87 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109894846
After exploring Rome, the next stop in Italy for a lover of Dante needs to be Florence, his birthplace and home until he was exiled for being a White Guelf in 1302. In Danteโs time, it was a flourishing cultural center at the intersection between ancient trade and pilgrim routes that connected the city to most of the known world. Pilgrims travelling from as far away as England might stop through Florence on their way to Rome, and to this day, the city is associated with a modern pilgrimage route that traces the steps of St. Francis of Assisi to Rome. This centrality not only fostered an immense cultural heritage, but it also positioned Florence at the center of a new European banking industry that made the florin (the coin of Florence) one of the standard currencies throughout Europe. To leave Florence, for Dante, must have felt like leaving not merely his world but the center of the known world itself.
Visitors to Florence today will find an abundance of Dante related things to do from understanding the history of the city at the Museo Storico Topografico Firenze Comโera,the origins of Dante the man at the Museo Casa di Dante, and the cenotaph of Dante in Santa Croce. In the early twentieth century, a team of historians and Dante scholars identified important locations in Florence for understanding the Commedia and marked these locations with white Carrera marble plaques, each containing quotations from Dante. With the aid of this website or Riedesserโs guidebook, Dante lovers can follow the path of the many places and people mentioned by Dante.
While Florence is full of many places for Dante lovers to visit, two particular places in Florence, the Uffizi and the Baptistery of St. John, contain essential pieces of art that help to illuminate some comments made in Purgatorio 11.93โ95 given here in the Mandelbaum translation:
In painting Cimabue thought he held
the field, and now itโs Giotto they acclaimโ
the former only keeps a shadowed fame.
Although Giotto was an exact contemporary of Dante, Cimabue was about fifteen years older than both of them and Florenceโs most important 13th c. painter. Growing up, Cimabue would have been the โnewest thingโ for Dante and the Florentines, but as he ages, Dante will witness Giotto, who was only two years younger than him, rise to fame throughout Italy. Appreciating the way these two artists constantly tried to improve their art and compete with other artists is essential for understanding Danteโs own self-conception as a poet.
The Uffizi is one of the few museums in the world where it is possible to see the constant struggle that many artists have to achieve their own ideals and the way many artists, including both Cimabue and Giotto, return to the same subjects again and again in attempts to both imitate and out-do the other. This kind of collection allows viewers to see artistic development over time in the life of individual artists and not merely time periods.
Two particular examples of this stand out, paintings by Cimabue and his student, Giotto depicting the Virgin and Child Enthroned.
In his Santa Trinita Maestร ,Cimabue takes a favorite subject of artists and approaches it in a fresh way. In Giorgio Vasariโs โLife of Cimabue,โ he comments upon this piece, noting, โIn that work, at great pains to respond to the fame already attributed to him, he showed more invention, and a fine approach to the disposition of Our Lady, who he shows with her Son in her arms, surrounded by many angels who venerate her in a field of gold.โ This painting illustrates both Cimabueโs excellence in applying Byzantine techniques while also responding to the rising naturalism of his younger pupils, Duccio and Giotto. In his day, Cimabue was considered one of the best, and in this painting in particular, he demonstrates his constant attempts to grow in skill throughout his career, competing not only with himself but even with up and coming artists.
And yet, when this painting on a similar subject is placed alongside Giottoโs Ognissanti Maestร , the innovation of Cimabue begins to look old fashioned.
Giotto manages to continue with the Byzantine use of damascene (gold decoration) while using chiaroscuro (light and shade) to create much more realistic faces. His figures also have a kind of weight and proportion to them that gives the viewer a sense that their bodies are much more realistic than Cimabueโs figures. He surrounds the thrown of the Madonna and child with a realistically proportioned tabernacle that is in a fashionable gothic architectural style employing different colors of marble. For years, Giottoโs painting hung in Ognissanti in Florence and became a model for artists working after him.
One thing that Dante will have to learn along his journey through Purgatorio is the flipside of artistic striving. Artists and poets of all sorts in Florence saw constant improvement as an inherent aspect of pursuing high craftsmanship, but inherently, this striving means that those who are great in their day will likely have those who come after them that will surpass them. A truly great artist will both strive to out-do what came before while also humbly recognizing that the fruits of that striving will have their day and pass away.
For Dante, however, the competition will not only be with other poets, but with craftsman of other sorts like the painters, Cimabue and Giotto. To see this more clearly, we will need to visit two other places, the Baptistery of St. John in Florence and the Scrovegni Chapel in Paduaโฆ
