Daily Medieval

John Scotus Eriugena (c.815 - c.877) was a philosopher, theologian, poet, and master of the palace school of Aachen under the Carolingians....

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...

The concept was simple: be good and go to Heaven, be bad and go to Hell. Each of these outcomes was eternal: you either had bliss or torment...

I wrote two parts about this topic previously ( Part 1  and  Part 2 ), but the research for yesterday's post on just plain hair led me ...

Let's talk about hair in the Middle Ages; not hairstyles, but hair itself. Hairstyles were important, of course, because there was cultu...

Now that we've talked about rushes on the floors in the Middle Ages and whether they were sanitary , what about attitudes to cleanlines...

In The Forme of Cury  cookbook from Richard II's court, there is a recipe for "Rapes in Potage," "rapes" meaning tu...

Madonna of the Recommended, Lippo Memmi (c.1291 - 1356) Cosmetics were known as far back as early Egyptian culture, so it is no surprise...

Hildegard of Bingen (1098 - 1179) has been discussed here before , and many know her as a nun and composer of devotional music. Her compos...

Hildegard of Bingen shown with a psaltery. One of the oldest known composers of liturgical music—and perhaps the earliest medieval drama...