Department of History
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Research
Lifelong Learning
Professor Marcus Bull
Professor of Medieval History
Office: 1.39, 13 Woodland Rd: Consultation hours
Tel: 0117 928 8879
Email: M.G.Bull@bristol.ac.uk
Research Interests
Professor Bull specialises in medieval history-writing and in the narratology of historiographical texts. More generally he works on the history of the Church and of aristocratic society in western Europe (principally France) between the tenth and twelfth centuries. He has also published on the early crusade movement, in particular the reasons why men and women went on crusade. He is currently preparing a revised edition of the Gesta Francorum, a first-hand account of the First Crusade, for Oxford Medieval Texts. Professor Bull is the principal investigator on a major four-year (2007-11) research project on the Historia Iherosolimitana of Robert the Monk, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The outputs of this project will include a new edition of Robert’s Historia, the most widely copied and read contemporary account of the First Crusade, and a monograph study of the narratology of early crusade narratives.
Professor Bull is co-organizer of the 2008 Colston Research Society Symposium on Tudorism: Historical Imagination and the Approprition of the Sixteenth Century.
Research Supervision
Professor Bull would especially welcome proposals from prospective research students on the following topics:
- The writing of history and medieval historiographical culture
- Medieval narratology and modern critical theory
- Aristocratic culture between the tenth and twelfth centuries
- The early crusade movement, including crusading in Spain
- Popular religion, especially pilgrimage
- Miracle stories and the cult of the saints
- Medievalism - the post-medieval reception of images and ideas. about the Middle Ages in learned and popular culture
Selected Publications
Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade: The Limousin and Gascony c.970-c.1130 (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1993).
'The Roots of Lay Enthusiasm for the First Crusade', History, 78 (1993), 353-72.
'The Confraternity of La Sauve-Majeure: A Foreshadowing of the Military Order?', in M. Barber (ed.), The Military Orders: Fighting for the Faith and Caring for the Sick (Variorum: Aldershot, 1994), 313-19.
'Origins', in J. Riley-Smith (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1995), 13-33.
'The Capetian Monarchy and the Early Crusade Movement: Hugh of Vermandois and Louis VII', Nottingham Medieval Studies, 40 (1996), 25-46.
'The Diplomatic of the First Crusade', in J. P. Phillips (ed.), The First Crusade: Origins and Impact (Manchester University Press: Manchester, 1997), 35-54.
'Overlapping and Competing Identities in the Frankish First Crusade', in Le Concile de Clermont de 1095 et l'appel à la croisade: Actes du colloque universitaire international de Clermont-Ferrand, 23-25 juin 1995 (Collection de l'École Française de Rome, 236: Rome, 1997), 195-211.
'The Pilgrimage Origins of the First Crusade', History Today, 47(3) (March 1997), 10-15.
The Miracles of Our Lady of Rocamadour: Analysis and Translation (Boydell: Woodbridge, 1999).
'The French Aristocracy and the Future, c.1000-c.1200', in J. A. Burrow and I. P. Wei (eds.), Medieval Futures: Attitudes to the Future in the Middle Ages (Boydell: Woodbridge, 2000), 83-100.
(ed), France in the Central Middle Ages (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2002).
'The Church', in Bull (ed.) France in the Central Middle Ages, 134-66.
(ed. with N. J. Housley), The Experience of Crusading: Western Approaches. Presented to Jonathan Riley-Smith on his 65th Birthday (Cambridge, 2003).
‘Views of Muslims and of Jerusalem in Miracle Stories, c.1000-c.1200: Reflections on the Study of First Crusaders’ Motivations’, in Bull and Housley (eds.), The Experience of Crusading, 13-38.
(ed. with C. E. Léglu), The World of Eleanor of Aquitaine: Literature and Society in Southern France between the Eleventh and Thirteenth Centuries (Woodbridge, 2005).
Thinking Medieval: An Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages (Basingstoke, 2005).
‘Criticism of Henry II’s Expedition to Ireland in William of Canterbury’s Miracles of St Thomas Becket’, Journal of Medieval History, 33 (2007), 107-29.
Full Publications
Full list of Dr Bull's publications since 1990 as held in the University's IRIS publications database.