“Nothing comes from nothing”. The phrase is classic, originating from the Greek Parmenides, it found its way through the famous Aristotle and Lucretius – in Latin – , finally to more modern protagonists, such as Shakespeare or – very modern – Stephen Hawking, as well as others.

Applied to our apprehension of the middle-age 13th century events, we must say therefore that everything we perceive as being historical has an origin in some kind of trace or traces. Not necessarily “documents” in our modern sense, these traces are sometimes archeological or deriving from an artefact or from music. And even bare hearesay may serve as a probable hint to a reality otherwise forelorn.

A selection of this “Basic Material” is rendered in our “Basic Material Blog”. It contains both materials available for study or even academic purposes and material the author of the “abstracts”, Pierre Maurice” has used to specifiy and concretize the background of the tales he wrote.