About

by Carl Pyrdum

Got Medieval* is a blog. You may have heard of them. The blog was originally conceived as a place to gripe about how the mainstream media does not understand the Middle Ages, but it has drifted evolved to include discussions of medieval marginalia, Angelina Jolie, and <strike>-tag jokes. The posts are often punctuated with superfluous Pratchettesque footnotes.**

Got Medieval is written by Carl S. Pyrdum, III, a graduate student in Medieval Studies at Yale University, who is currently living in Atlanta, GA, while he finishes his dissertation and looks for a proper academic job. Carl has a Bacon Number of 4, easily the lowest Bacon number of any proper academic medievalist.***

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*Note the lack of a question mark after the blog’s title. It is not a play on the American milk commercials, but rather refers to the fact that the blog’s bloggist does not need to get medieval on anyone, as he has already got sufficient quantities of medieval, which he is happy to share.
**But you knew that already.
***Carl was once in a home movie, “Christmas, 1998″ with his father, Carl S. Pyrdum, Jr., who was “Security” in Invasion U.S.A., starring Chuck Norris, who was in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story with Julie Gonzalo, who was in Saving Angelo with Kevin Bacon.

  • http://bluesman2001.blogspot.com Tom

    I have your blog on my blogroll at Blues Historian. However, when I updated your url in my blog roll for some reason blogger wants to change your URL back to the blogger site. I am saving it after I update it, but it still changes back. I suppose as long as you have the referral page it should work and send people to the wordpress site, but it is strange that blogger is doing that.

  • http://www.mushroomthejournal.com Leon Shernoff

    And here I thought that “Bacon number” was a reference to Francis Bacon, as with mathematicians’ Erdos number (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdos_number). And I was trying to figure out how you could get from his lifespan to the present in only four generations…

  • http://www.touchmyennui.com Jen Warner

    Thanks to Got Medieval, I no longer hide the fact that I was a Medieval Studies major in college, but wear it like the badge of honor it is. This despite the fact that the only other person who shared my major that year (or in the decade prior) was, though brilliant, also completely insane and one day threw a hefty cinnamon bun in my direction after a particularly heated debate about feudalism. Thank you anyway.

  • Sarah

    I don’t really consider myself a medievalist per se. I’m an art historian who studies late medieval Italian art.

    My Bacon number however is 2 ;)
    I was in Bringing Out the Dead with John Goodman who was in Beyond All Boundaries with you know who…

    In any case I very much enjoy your blog! The Marginalia in particular!

  • http://pearvert.blogspot.com/ greenpear

    As one who loves 13th-14th century manuscripts I find a lot to like here. Especially since you seem to love posting pieces from Douce 6 [my favorite manuscript].

    Thanks for some interesting perspectives on marginalia I’ve seen before but hadn’t taken notice of.

  • http://twitter.com/TheGatekeep The Gatekeeper

    Thanks for following @BattleCastle on Twitter, I read your concerns re: “how the mainstream media does not understand the Middle Ages” and I wanted to point out for your readers that http://battlecastle.tv/ prides itself on historical detail. I invite all to join our community.