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Yvonne Seale

@yvonneseale.bsky.social
1.4K followers 269 following 453 posts

Historian of medieval women, especially the nuntastic kind; lover of tea; associate professor of history at SUNY Geneseo. yvonneseale.org

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Reposted by Yvonne Seale
Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 06/12/2025
“…some of the most compelling women characters you’re likely to find in print. [… Dorothy] Dunnett’s female characters have both feet firmly planted in a sixteenth-century world” Historian @yvonneseale.bsky.social on the women of THE LYMOND CHRONICLES #BookWormSat 💙📚 yvonneseale.org/blog/2019/05...
yvonneseale.org
The Women of the Lymond Chronicles
Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles may be one of the most influential series of novels that most people have never heard of. The books follow nobleman Francis Crawford of Lymond on his high-stakes ad...
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
I'm so glad we treated you well, and that the tea was plentiful!
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
Thank you kindly! :D
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
Something to keep in mind the next time you tuck into a croque-monsieur :D
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
(As for how many severed foreskins of the infant Jesus: somewhere between 8 to 18, housed in churches across a wide swathe of western Europe, depending on how you count them.)
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
In class today, a student asked me how many Holy Prepuces (the supposed circumcised foreskin of the infant Jesus, venerated as a relic) were floating around in medieval Europe. I didn't know the exact number, looked it up, and stumbled across this fun fact. Surely one of history's weirder jobs?
Screenshot containing the text "This was not the only test of the relic's legitimacy: as anthropologist Eric Silverman writes, "A common test for foreskinned authenticity [in medieval times] was taste. A physician, supervised by a priest, sampled the skin for the flavor of genuine holiness. The taster was called a croque-prépuce, or 'foreskin cruncher.'""
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
So pleased to have contributed to this article in the latest issue of JMMS on cartulary editing and analysis! doi.org/10.1484/J.JM...
doi.org
The Past, Present, and Future of Cartulary Studies: JMMS at IMC 2024: Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies: Vol 14
This joint article presents in published form papers delivered at the Leeds International Medieval Congress in 2024 as well as expanding on aspects of the roundtable discussion that complemented the p...
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
Watching Mary Robinson's inauguration in 1990—her purple suit vivid amid a sea of black-clad male dignitaries on the dais in Dublin Castle—is one of my earliest memories. www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2...
rte.ie
How Mary Robinson's inauguration suit became a piece of history
Amid the crowd of male politicians in dark suits, Robinson stood out as a confident, powerful figure ready to change social norms
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
My current (Catherine Connolly, second from left) and former presidents (Mary McAleese, Michael D. Higgins, Mary Robinson) displayed a real commitment to colour coordination at today's presidential inauguration.
Four people standing side by side. From left to right: Mary McAleese, a woman with blonde hair in a purple dress; Catherine Connolly, a woman with grey hair in a purple pant suit; Michael D. Higgins, a man with white hair in a dark suit and purple tie; Mary Robinson, a woman in a deep red blazer over a black turtleneck and trousers.
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
Thrilled to have written something for "Childhood and the Irish" (ed. @salvadorryan.bsky.social), a collection which explores so many aspects of growing up in Ireland over the centuries. My contribution is about piecing together the life of a foundling ancestor. wordwellbooks.com/index.php?ro...
Front cover of a book, with "Childhood and the Irish: A Miscellany" in dark font against a cream background. There is a black and white cover photo of a young boy on roller skates.
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 08/11/2025
Would you say that in Ireland we have a "tea-ceful" transfer of power? ... I'll see myself out.
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
Something I do at least once a year, before I teach a class on a specific topic in the history of antisemitism in medieval Europe: check to see if a certain archdiocese's website still has a page stating that one of the blood libel myths is a historical event. Yup, still there! It's November 2025.
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
Thank you, Liz! :)
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
Built in the early 13th century for the Conti di Segni (the family of Pope Innocent III), the Torre has survived multiple earthquakes—will it survive this? I very much hope the injured and trapped workers are all rescued and recover speedily. The video is so unnerving to watch.
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
Autocorrect: saving you from a dire fate at the hands of the scribe-tormenting Tutivillus? "Tutivillus complains that “I muste eche day [...] brynge my master a thousande pokes full of faylynges, & of neglygences in syllables and wordes… else I must be sore beten." daily.jstor.org/tutivillus-i...
daily.jstor.org
Tutivillus Is Watching You - JSTOR Daily
For medieval scribes, mistakes couldn’t be easily shrugged off, as Tutivillus, the stickler demon, was always looking over their shoulders.
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 26/10/2025
Das nennt sich einfach Unhöflichkeit und Herablassung. Auf Wiedersehen.
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 26/10/2025
Und nochmal: ich teile nur den Link. Warum glauben Sie, dass ich für dieses Projekt verantwortlich bin?
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 26/10/2025
Und wann war Heidelberg eine Hansestadt? Ich teile nur den Link. Wenn Sie Kommentare machen möchten, können Sie Viabundus kontaktieren: www.landesgeschichte.uni-goettingen.de/handelsstras...
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 25/10/2025
And with a bigger percentage of first-preference votes than even Dev managed back in the '50s.
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 25/10/2025
I presumed so, yes, but couldn't find out the exact connection. Col. Pine-Coffin's Wiki page is quite the read—a British officer on the WW2 battlefield in cowboy boots?
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
A neat tool I just came across: Viabundus, a digital road map of northern Europe 1350-1650, that lets you calculate contemporary travel routes/times. In 1500, going Amiens → Köln by horse took almost 7 days and 13 toll payments. #medievalsky www.landesgeschichte.uni-goettingen.de/handelsstras...
Screenshot of the Viabundus website.
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 17/10/2025
Sometimes a translator's name will make you pause and blink at the title page.
Part of a title page of a book, showing the text "Saint Augustine Confessions, Translated with an Introduction by R.S. Pine-Coffin."
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
A heads up: the platform I've been using to host my searchable database of #medieval Premonstratensian sisters is ending its free hosting plan on short notice. Since I can't justify spending $100/month (!) on this, or find a viable alternative, it'll go away on Oct 1. yvonneseale.org/atlas/sisters
yvonneseale.org
The Sisters of Prémontré: A Prosopographical Database
A Premonstratensian Atlas is a directory of communities and properties relating to the Premonstratensian Order in the Middle Ages (ca. 1120-ca. 1550). Entries may be filtered by country, diocese, circ...
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
One of my all-time favourite series of books!
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Reposted by Yvonne Seale
Lisa Fagin Davis @lisafdavis.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
It was always a "real thing," it just turns out to be a little bit older - and therefore more important - than originally thought. This article demonstrates how the word "copy" can be misinterpreted, especially in the context of medieval manuscript studies. 1/2
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
"The papal privilege issued in 1195 by Pope Celestine III is one of the few sources that allows for an insight into the history of St Mary’s, Clonard, and Agnes Ní Máelshechlainn’s tenacity in defending her monastery from expropriation during the English conquest of Ireland."
rte.ie
Meet 'The Great Nun' who won papal protection in Medieval Ireland
Agnetha Ní Máelshechlainn was a clever political negotiator who defended her monastery from expropriation during the English conquest of Ireland
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
Oh my god, there is an extended scene in which we see and hear Cardinal and future Pope BRIAN BLESSED pooping in front of the other cardinals of the conclave. 🫣 What is this movie. Cardinal Lawrence would never.
Brian Blessed as Piccolomini in profile, seated on the toilet while other cardinals react with embarrassment and disgust.This scene went on for such an ungodly length of time. Why are there so many lit candles in the toilet?
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
And since it is BRIAN BLESSED, a man who's always playing to the back of the house, you get scenes like this one in which Piccolomini openly throws his hat into the ring. I am agog.
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
I cannot objectively recommend this movie, but what I can say about it is that it features BRIAN BLESSED as Enea Silvio Piccolomini, i.e. the future Pope Pius II. (Does it count as a spoiler if it's for a medieval conclave?)
Brian Blessed in a truly distressing bowl cut wig which, though not visible here, is also tonsured.Pinturicchio's fresco portrait of Enea Silvio Piccolomini (Pope Pius II), 1502-07. It shows an older man wearing the papal tiara and a blue coak trimmed with gold, seated on a wooden chair draped in red fabric.
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
Going down a series of rabbit holes following yesterday's events led me to the discovery that as well as the more well known "Conclave" (2024) there is also "The Conclave" (2006), an intensely early 2000s made-for-TV-on-a-shoestring-budget movie about the papal conclave of 1458.
Movie poster for "The Conclave" (2006)
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
I don't think anyone had Prevost very high on the lists of the papabili—wow. What a moment to get to witness, the first pope from the United States. (The first pope to be a baseball and/or American football fan?)
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
I've updated my " #Premonstratensian Order in the Middle Ages" bibliography site. It now contains 6,250 entries & covers: — Secondary lit on the order, 1480s-2025 — 22 languages from Basque to Swedish — Array of digital & print sources — Themes, houses & individuals www.geneseo.edu/researchweb/...
Screenshot of the Premonstratensian Order in the Middle Ages Bibliography website, showing a searchable bibliographic database.
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
Today at Geneseo, a community rally in support of science and higher ed in general—3:30-6pm in Bailey Hall! History Department faculty will be there.
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
"Switzerland’s Abbey of Saint Gall has agreed to lend 17 manuscripts to the National Museum of Ireland ... for a landmark exhibition that will combine artefacts and parchments to recreate a sense of Ireland’s golden age as the “land of saints and scholars." #medievalsky On my summer to-see list!
irishexaminer.com
Millennium-old monks’ manuscripts return to Ireland for exhibition
Books include religious scriptures and scribbled jokes, giving glimpse of daily lives of early medieval Irish monks
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
The May 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine @historyextra.bsky.social is out, and includes a piece by me on the famed relationship of Abelard and Heloise, and why it can't just be simply summed up as a love affair. www.historyextra.com/magazine/cur...
The cover of the May 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine, showing a black and white photo of a cheerful woman on VE Day.
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
Agree with the author at a minimum that a Battle of Clontarf movie or miniseries would be wonderful, but I feel like so much would depend on whether they truly get that Beard looking Silken.
rte.ie
Why Sitric Silkenbeard is the greatest Dubliner of all time
He may be seen as one of the baddies of Irish history thanks to the Battle of Clontarf, but Silkenbeard built Dublin into a cosmopolitan city
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
We're a ways away from you, but we'd happily welcome new students at Geneseo, if your students are willing to consider Western NY weather. (Currently 5% of our student body are History or History Ed majors, we've got a History MA program, we've got a newly renovated library, etc.)
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Reposted by Yvonne Seale
Emily McGovern @emilyscartoons.bsky.social · 19/01/2025
Get thee to a nunnery ✝️
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
A good chorus of "Oh no he isn't"/"Oh yes he is" or something is needed every so often! (Not that I've done that specifically, but I have e.g. made my survey course sing rounds to underscore a point re: medieval society—they learn something & also bond through shared mortification/resentment of me)
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
Which is fine and has a useful purpose! But surely not what we're trying to do at uni level? Storytelling is good but I think it's better when you get a call-and-response going. I'll do mini-lectures but I'm always trying to get students talking back to me during, even en masse. Like a panto :D
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
... plus what I retain is most often the "huh! interesting!" fact or anecdote rather than a long-term understanding. Something like IOT models how to back-and-forth question, which is good, but podcasts are generally trying to inform/entertain rather than educate.
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
I will regularly listen to a podcast like "In Our Time" because I like hearing about knowledgeable experts being pushed to explain a broad array of topics by an interested layperson—but I'll also listen while cooking or cleaning so I can zone out for stretches...
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
I've had the same experiences this semester when showing students that their "citations" are hallucinated, and obviously so to anyone with any knowledge of the field—the reflexive *anger* directed at me has been startling and new. Like, unnerving levels of anger.
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Reposted by Yvonne Seale
Elizabeth Boyle @thecelticist.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
"The 15th-century Arma Christi was found in a shoebox filled with leaflets from the 1980s at Bar Convent, by Dr Hannah Thomas, while she was cataloguing the religious order's collection." www.bbc.com/news/article...
bbc.com
Rare medieval scroll found in shoebox goes on display in York
The 15th-century Arma Christi, one of only 11 copies, is the focus of a new gallery at Bar Convent.
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 06/04/2025
While working on slides for my classes this week, I came across this portrait of the 13th-c. pope John XXI, and I am both agog at and charmed by the luxuriant mustachios that the artist bestowed on him. Poirot is envious! (Portrait: Unknown artist, 16th c., now Gallery of the Archbishops of Braga.)
A half-length portrait of a man in profile. He's wearing a white zucchetto and an embroidered brown robe studded with pearls that is held together with a gold brooch. He is rocking a very luxuriant dark brown moustache. Behind him is the papal tiara and over his head is text in Portuguese/Latin that reads in translation "Pope John 21. Dom Pedro Juliano. In the year 1272."
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Reposted by Yvonne Seale
Tomi Oladipo @tomioladipo.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
Sad sad story about the ransacking of Sudan's national museum by RSF fighters. Thousands of artefacts are gone. The museum "held mummies dating from 2500BC, making them among the oldest and archaeologically most important in the world." www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...
theguardian.com
New images reveal extent of looting at Sudan’s national museum as rooms stripped of treasures
Only a few statues remain, with thousands of priceless artefacts from Nubian and Kushite kingdoms missing
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Reposted by Yvonne Seale
Catharine Cellier-Smart | Smart Translate @smart-translate.bsky.social · 30/03/2025
Elizabeth Elstob: the pioneering first female Anglo-Saxonist historytoday.com/first-female... by @yvonneseale.bsky.social [Feb 2016]
historytoday.com
The First Female Anglo-Saxonist
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
Thanks James, but it's a different one! The one I'm looking for was a look back at the excavations from the point of view of the guy who was the head archaeologist and it was definitely a TG4 show.
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Yvonne Seale @yvonneseale.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
"It may come as a surprise [...] that one of the world's rarest pieces of Chinese porcelain resides permanently in Dublin. Made in China around 1300AD, it is the earliest example of Chinese porcelain known to have reached Europe and was owned by royalty for centuries."
rte.ie
'A flukey purchase': the curious story of the Fonthill vase
Here's how one of the rarest pieces of Chinese porcelain in the world ended up in the National Museum of Ireland
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