Daily Medieval

Yesterday's post claimed that there were few medical treatises about women as compared to those on men's health. We do have a few t...

Yesterday's post about menstruation left with the question: How did women deal with it? Well, it was pretty much the same way they deal...

Hamlet referred to the "thousand natural ills that flesh is heir to." Throughout the history of humankind, headaches and tiredness...

One of the earliest discovered (so far) forgeries was the 9th-century Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals. A decretal is a papal decree concerning a ...

In Parts One and Two we get the feeling that forgeries were quite common, and used to "alter history" to the benefit of an insti...

Yesterday's post started the discussion of forgeries and mentioned the Abbey of Saint-Denis. Forging documents was an attempt to re-cre...

Everything written is written for a reason. That reason could be to persuade, to entertain, to outrage—authors always have a purpose. Someti...

Yesterday I teased information about Prester John. I wrote about him long ago ( here and here ), and he got mentioned in other contexts (mo...

The Tribe of Dan, one of the 12 Tribes of Israel, was compared to a lion's whelp by Moses, signifying strength (Deuteronomy 33:22). Numb...

Beta Israel (Ge'ez for "House of Israel") is the name for Jews who established a presence in the Kingdom of Aksum, supposedly ...

After the Christian conversion of the Kingdom of Aksum, and before the asylum given to some of the first Muslims , there were Jews in Aksu...

In the first part , we looked at the introduction of Christianity into what became Ethiopia during the 4th century. The Muslim presence in t...

Ethiopia was a fiercely Christian country in the Middle Ages, long before European colonization brought Christianity to Africa. To be fair, ...

The Emperor of Ethiopia, Amda Seyon I, was surrounded by threats from Muslims who were opposed to Ethiopia's Coptic Christianity . Each...

Emperor of Ethiopia  Amda Seyon  (reigned 1314 - 1344) was a Christian whose constant focus was fighting the surrounding Muslims and trying ...

When Christians and Muslims were burning down each other's houses of worship in Egypt during the reign of Sultan  al-Nasir Muhammad (li...

Once he was firmly established as Sultan of Egypt in 1310 (after two previous reigns), al-Nasir Muhammad became more aggressive to his neig...

Al-Nasir Muhammad (1285 - 1341) had three different periods of his life when he was Sultan of Egypt. The first two are laid out here and he...

Al-Nasir Muhammad survived his first ousting, when the pre-teen was replaced by his advisor Zayn-al-Din Kitbugha. Now a teenager, he was re...

The current structure referred to as the Tower of David was built by Al-Nasir Muhammad, a Mamluk sultan who lived from 1285 to 1341. He re...

Yesterday's post mentioned that the first queen of Jerusalem, Melisende, was besieged in the Tower of David by her son, Baldwin III, wh...

One of the reasons King Amalric of Jerusalem wanted Philip of Milly to be Grand Master of the Templars, especially after the death of Bertr...

After the death of Templar Grand Master  Bertrand de Blanchefort , King Amalric I of Jerusalem saw a chance to help himself out. Bertrand ha...

Formed about 1120 by Hugues de Payens and eight others—including André de Montbard, the uncle of St. Bernard of Clairvaux —the Poor Fellow-S...

After Bernard of Clairvaux wrote a long statement endorsing the new order at the request of his uncle André de Montbard , the Knights Temp...

When André de Montbard's new order of monks/knights intended to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land was suffering due to lack of donation...

André de Montbard (5 November c. 1097 – 17 January 1156) was the other child of Count Bernard I de Montbard (1040–1103) of Burgundy and his ...

Count Bernard I de Montbard (1040–1103) of Burgundy and his wife Humberto de Roucy had several children. Sadly, most of them died very young...