Daily Medieval

While discussing how England tried to control the movement of laborers after the Black Death  yesterday , I mentioned something about what w...

“Whereas late against the malice of servants, which were idle, and not willing to serve after the pestilence, without taking excessive wages...

As seen yesterday , the significant population loss resulting from the Black Death had a positive effect on laborers' wages. Reduction i...

Although the cause of the Black Death has been questioned, what we know as the Bubonic Plague is the likeliest culprit, causing widespread ...

The greatest impact on European culture was not the Fall of Rome, the mass (forced) adoption of Christianity, the creation of the Holy Roman...

After the Battle of Curzola in 1299, in which Venice lost dozens of ships and thousands of men against Genoa, Venice was subdued for decade...

John Arderne (1307 - 1392), of whom I first wrote many years ago , has been called the father of English surgery. He earned this by producin...

It was Ignaz Semmelweis in the 1840s in Vienna who noticed a link between illness (and death) and unsanitary conditions, specifically a link...

The Bubonic Plague , also called the "Black Death," first hit the European Middle Ages primarily in 1348-1351, but that wasn't...

The Bubonic Plague's first appearance in medieval Europe from 1348-1351, and it was terrifying. At least one-quarter to one-third of the...

Because there are no "hard and fast" dates for cultural eras (although I nominate 1453CE for one), the Italian Renaissance painti...

Giovanni Boccaccio's best known work to modern readers is his Decameron , a Greek word that means "Ten Days." In it, seven yo...

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 - 1375) was eight years old when Dante died, but he revered the man and wrote a biography about him. He even gave ...

Dick Whittington 's cat might have made his reputation according to the legend , but cats were not always a welcome sight in the Middle ...

Catherine of Siena is an example of how one can be connected to a religious order and still influence events "in the world." She w...

(If you want to see parts one and two .) The second part of the Hundred Years' War was the Caroline Phase, named after Charles V of Fra...

Richard Rolle (c.1300 - 30 September 1349) was born to a North Yorkshire farming family. He showed promise as a young man and was sponsored ...

The Plague, also called the Black Death, spread across Sicily shortly after the arrival of a fleet of a dozen Genoese galleys bringing go...

Here is a description of a medieval cult: At length, when the novice has come forward, [he] is met by a man of wondrous pallor, who has b...

The walled town of Nördlingen in Bavaria Henry of Nördlingen was an interesting character. We don't know when he was born, nor when...