Staff profile

Len Scales studies the political culture of late medieval Europe, particularly the German-speaking lands. His current work is concerned with ideas about ‘German’ identity between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. His recent publications in this area have concentrated upon collective stereotypes (the ‘warrior’ Germans), the relationship between peoplehood and power, and the question of medieval German ‘exceptionalism’. He is also exploring the history of medieval ideas about ethnicity and common identity more broadly, across the whole of the c.500-c.1500 period. His current and forthcoming publications in this field examine medieval ideas about the destruction of peoples. For the future, he plans a comparative investigation of political communication and ‘propaganda’ in the late Middle Ages, concentrating on the development of popular and visual media. He would welcome the opportunity to supervise postgraduate research on late medieval German history, late medieval political culture, and medieval peoplehood and inter-ethnic and inter-cultural relations.

Areas of Postgraduate Supervision

• late-medieval Germany
• late-medieval European political culture
• pre-modern European ethnicity and nationhood

• politics, society and political ideas in later medieval Germany

• 2015: Studies in German History (German History Society / Oxford University Press): Series editor (with Professor Neil Gregor, University of Southampton)
• 2014: German History Society: Committee member

Authored book

• Scales, L. (2012). The Shaping of German Identity: Authority and Crisis, 1245-1414. Cambridge University Press

Chapter in book

• Scales, L. Court and control: Sigismund in England, 1416. In S. Bárta, & P. Elbel (Eds.), Hof und Kanzlei Kaiser Sigismunds als politisches Zentrum und soziales System. De Gruyter
• Scales, L. (in press). Image-making, image-breaking, and the Luxembourg monarchy. In K. Kügle, I. Ciulisová, & V. Žůrek (Eds.), Karl Kügle, Ingrid Ciulisová, and Václav Žůrek (eds.), Luxembourg Court Cultures in the Long Fourteenth Century: Performing Empire, Celebrating Kingship (404-428). Boydell
• Scales, L. (2024). Religion and the Medieval Western Empire (CE 919–1519). In J. Rüpke, M. Biran, & Y. Pines (Eds.), Empires and Gods: The Role of Religion in Imperial History (263-294). De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111342009-012
• Scales, L. (2023). The Holy Roman Empire. In C. Carmichael, M. D'Auria, & A. Roshwald (Eds.), The Cambridge History of Nationhood and Nationalism Volume 1: Patterns and Trajectories over the Longue Durée (54-75). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108655385.004
• Scales, L. (2022). Emperors of Rome: Italy and the 'Roman-German' monarchy, 1308-1452. In A. Huijbers (Ed.), Emperors and Imperial Discourse in Italy, c.1300-1500 (11-42). l'École français de Rome. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.efr.39550
• Scales, L. (2021). The Latin West: Pluralism in the Shadow of the Past. In C. Holmes, J. Shepard, J. Van Steenbergen, & B. Weiler (Eds.), Political Culture in the Latin West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, c.700-c.1500 (133-177). Cambridge University Press
• Scales, L. (2020). The Hohenstaufen and the shape of history. In S. Bowden, M. Eikelmann, S. Mossman, & M. Stolz (Eds.), Geschichte erzählen: Strategien der Narrativierung von Vergangenheit in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters (403-418). (XXV). Narr Francke Attempto
• Scales, L. (2016). The parchment imperialists: texts, scribes, and the medieval western Empire, c.1250-c.1440. In P. Crooks, & T. Parsons (Eds.), Empires and bureaucracy in world history : from late antiquity to the twentieth century (221-249). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781316694312.011
• Scales, L. (2016). The Empire in translation: English perspectives on Imperium and Emperors, 1220-1440. In P. Crooks, D. Green, & W. M. Ormrod (Eds.), The Plantagenet empire, 1259-1453 : proceedings of the 2014 Harlaxton Symposium (49-71). Shaun Tyas
• Scales, L. (2015). Purposeful pasts: Godfrey of Viterbo and later medieval imperialist thought. In T. Foerster (Ed.), Godfrey of Viterbo and his readers : imperial tradition and universal history in late medieval Europe (119-144). Ashgate Publishing
• Scales, L. (2010). The illuminated Reich: memory, crisis and the visibility of monarchy in late medieval Germany. In J. Coy, B. Marschke, & D. Sabean (Eds.), The Holy Roman Empire, reconsidered (73-92). Berghahn Journals
• Scales, L. (2010). Central and late medieval Europe. In D. Bloxham, & A. D. Moses (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of genocide studies (280-303). Oxford University Press
• Scales, L. (2005). Late medieval Germany: an under-Stated nation?. In L. Scales, & O. Zimmer (Eds.), Power and the nation in European history (166-191). Cambridge University Press

Edited book

• Given-Wilson, C., Scales, L., & Kettle, A. (Eds.). (2008). War, Government and Aristocracy in the British Isles, c.1150-1500: Essays in Honour of Michael Prestwich. Boydell
• Scales, L., & Zimmer, O. (Eds.). (2005). Power and the Nation in European History. Cambridge University Press

Journal Article

• Scales, L. (2022). Ever closer union? Unification, difference, and the 'Making of Europe', c.950-c.1350. The English Historical Review, 137(585), 321-361. https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/ceac061
• Scales, L. (2019). Wenceslas looks out: monarchy, locality, and the symbolism of power in fourteenth-century Bavaria. Central European History, 52(2), 179-210. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0008938919000141
• Whaley, J., & Scales, L. (2018). Rewriting the history of the Holy Roman Empire. German History, 36(3), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1093/gerhis/ghy040
• Scales, L. (2015). Before and after Nationes: accounting for medieval peoples in twenty-first-century Germany. German History, 33(4), 624-645. https://doi.org/10.1093/gerhis/ghv099
• Scales, L. (2012). Re-staging the Reich: the life and times of the Golden Bull (1356). Bulletin of international medieval research, 17/18, 84-106
• Scales, L. (2009). Rose without thorn, eagle without feathers: nation and power in late medieval England and Germany. Bulletin - German Historical Institute London, 31(1), 3-35
• Scales, L. (2007). Bread, cheese and genocide: imagining the destruction of peoples in medieval western Europe. History, 92(307), 284-300. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-229x.2007.00396.x
• Scales, L. (2003). Germen militiae: war and German identity in the later middle ages. Past & Present: A Journal of Historical Studies, 180(1), 41-82. https://doi.org/10.1093/past/180.1.41
• Scales, L. (2001). Monarchy and German identity in the later Middle Ages. Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 83(3), 167-200. https://doi.org/10.7227/bjrl.83.3.10
• Scales, L. (2000). Identifying 'France' and 'Germany': medieval nation-making in some recent publications. Bulletin of international medieval research, 6, 21-46
• Scales, L. (1999). At the margin of community: Germans in pre-Hussite Bohemia. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 9, 327-352. https://doi.org/10.2307/3679408
• Scales, L. (1998). The Cambridgeshire ragman rolls. The English Historical Review, 113(452), 553-579. https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cxiii.452.553
• Scales, L. (1995). France and the Empire: the viewpoint of Alexander of Roes. French History, 9(4), 394-416. https://doi.org/10.1093/fh/9.4.394