Daily Medieval

Once Mehmed II had taken Constantinople  in 1453, absorbing it into the Ottoman Empire , he declared himself Roman Caesar. His thinking was...

In 1451, Mehmed II , sultan of the Ottoman Empire , chose as his first self-imposed task that he would conquer Constantinople. To prepare, h...

The Trebizond Empire  (the orange slice on the southern shore of the Black Sea illustration), founded in 1204 on the shores of the Black Sea...

Robert de Clari, a knight from Picardy, was a member of the Fourth Crusade, and wrote an account [ link ] of what he saw. Although his knowl...

Remember Geoffrey de Villehardouin ? He was one of the leaders of the Fourth Crusade who negotiated with Venice to get the Crusaders across ...

We saw yesterday that hostility between Byzantines and the Fourth Crusade came to a head when the new(est) emperor, Alexios V, ejected all ...

We saw yesterday that very early in 1204 Isaac and Alexios were holed up in the Palace of Blachernae against the upset citizenry, who held ...

King Louis II of Italy was the emperor of the Carolingian Empire. He did not have a son to succeed him, but only a single surviving daughter...

Emperor Leo VI "the Wise" became Byzantine emperor in 886. He had married, in 883, the daughter of a dynasty that had been emperor...

Others may dispute it, but I call Nicholas V the Last Medieval Pope because he saw the Fall of Constantinople to the Turks and the end of th...

As the eldest son of Emperor Alexios I Comnenos , John had the status of Porphyrogenitus , "born to the purple." He had an older a...

Nikephoros Bryennios the Younger (1062 - 1137) was a Byzantine noble. As a general, he defended Constantinople when the army of Godfrey of B...

Alexios I Comnenos (1057 - 1118) was the Byzantine emperor during the start of the Crusades. Since the Byzantines were a part of the old Rom...

Although his grandmother, the cruel and vicious Olga , is considered by some to be the reason the Kievan Rus became Christian, Vladimir the ...

Vladimir the Great (also Vladimir I, also St. Vladimir/Volodymyr) was Grand Prince of Kyiv and ruler of Kievan Rus from 980 to 1015. He was ...

The Varangian Guard  were personal bodyguards for Byzantine emperors from the 10th to 14th centuries. The guards were primarily hired from N...

Although the early popes had no temporal power or property, as the Roman Catholic Church grew in popularity and influence, they accrued terr...

"Volcanic winter" is a frightening phrase. It is the result of a volcanic eruption that spews so much ash and dust into the atmosp...

This is the story of Philip of Courtenay (1243 - 15 December 1283). He was one of the Latin Emperors of Constantinople—the empire was establ...

Godfrey (c.1060 - 18 July, 1100) was the second son of Eustace II, Count of Boulogne, and therefore was not in line for much inheritance. Hi...