Daily Medieval

The Black Death, estimated to have killed up to one-third of Europeans from 1347-1351, caused changes in society that we cannot imagine. Som...

A traveling baker, specializing in pies and pretzels Someone suggested to me recently that I should offer a recipe from the Middle Age...

The desirable treasure of wisdom and science, which all men desire by an instinct of nature, infinitely surpasses all the riches of the wor...

I have written about the Oxford Calculators , four men at Oxford University in the second quarter of the 14th century who made great strid...

One of the famous sites in Florence, Italy, is the Ponte Vecchio, the bridge over the River Arno. Ponte Vecchio means "old bridge,...

Matilda of Flanders (c.1031-1083), also called Maud, was the wife of William II of Normandy (later William the Conqueror). Their legendary a...

In a few parts of the world today, children are gorging on their haul of candy from trick-or-treating last night. The makers of candy out-do...

Like finding the origin of Mother Goose in Bertrada of Laon , or finding the origin of "Ring Around the Rosie" in the Bubonic P...

To round out the Merovingian/Carolingian week we've been having, let's take a look at some of the other women and children whose liv...

Bertrada of Laon, first introduced here , was the wife of Pepin the Short and mother of Charles (later Charlemagne) and Carloman.* She was...

Bertrada of Laon Properly speaking, the Carolingian Era started with Carolus Martellus, Charles "the Hammer" Martel (c.688-741...

Nicknames: so easy to get, so hard to get rid of. When Mayor of the Palace and military genius  Charles Martel presented his 12-year-old s...

Kings cannot run every administrative detail of their household themselves, so they appoint people to do it for them. Chamberlain, senescha...

What do you do when a dynasty seems to become useless? You name them Le Rois fainéants (The do-nothing Kings). The Merovingians are the...

Chilperic I speaking to Bishop Gregory Georgius Florentius (539-593) was born into a distinguished Gallo-Roman family in Arverni in s...

The announcement for the First Crusade was made from Clermont in France. The name "Clermont" came from the Latin clarus mons (cl...

Among the accomplishments of Hermann of Reichenau , he also provides us with the set of rules for one of Europe's oldest board games, ...

I have mentioned St.-Denis in Paris as the first church in the Gothic style. That project was a re -building of an earlier church—a churc...

To be thorough: there was more to the plan. Emperor Alexios I of Byzantium had requested help from the pope against invading Turks, and the ...

When Henry I (1068-1135) was king of England, the rule of the law was simple: someone had to pay for a crime. The philosophy was "...

Henry III (1207-1272) spent much of his reign of 56 years dealing with fallout from the reign of his father, King John. For one thing, ...

Tornadoes usually form when masses of warm, moist air and higher altitude cooler air meet. The cooler air descends, the warm air ascends, an...

In April 2013, near Meßkirch in southern Germany, construction will start on a monastery. It is expected to take 40 years to complete, ...

The name "Hedwig" is now familiar to millions as the name of Harry Potter's owl, but it has a long history that predates its u...