Daily Medieval

Available 2015(?) In honor of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), DailyMedieval is going on hiatus for the month of November so ...

Władysław III of Poland was born on 31 October 1424. He was named King of Poland when he was 10 years old and King of Hungary at the age ...

Henry challenging the power of the church Little is known of the figure called Bruno the Saxon, except that he was a monk attached to t...

The ruins of Kaiserswerth in Dusseldorf In 1062, Archbishop Anno II of Cologne and several princes decided that the 11-year-old Henry I...

We have mentioned more than a few Holy Roman Emperors, but not any Holy Roman Empresses. Carving of Agnes Agnes of Poitou was born ab...

The Ulugh Beg Observatory Museum, built in 1970 Ulugh Beg is the more familiar name of Mīrzā Muhammad Tāraghay bin Shāhrukh (22 March 1...

A 12th-century depiction of the Wheel of Fortune from the "Garden of Delights" book by Herrad of Landsberg The Wheel of Fortu...

Boethius (left, with numbers from India) debating Pythagoras (right, with an abacus) while Arithmetic looks on Boethius has been mentio...

Ferdinand I, son of Pedro the Cruel Inheritance is never more complicated than when a throne is involved. The stakes are too high for a...

Bohemia, the home of  Wenceslaus  and where Jan Hus found support, was named from a Roman account. The names of both Bohemia and its nei...

Edmund Ironside meets King Canute (Matthew Paris) Fifty years before the Norman Invasion changed the culture of Britain, the island (or...

Late medieval woodcut representing destruction in Basel Earthquakes have been in the news lately, but one of the biggest earthquakes k...

There were many Khans in the Mongol Empire, but none quite like Tëmur. Tëmur was a grandson of Kublai Khan, born on 15 October, 1265; his...

Popes Formosus & Stephen VII, by Jean Paul Laurens, 1870 The Synod of Whitby was just mentioned a few days ago, and right now in 20...

Best guess arrangement of opposing troops The Battle of Hastings gets remembered on 14 October; that's when the forces of William o...

The Synod of Whitby is a familiar name to fans of medieval history (and this blog ). What is not widely known is that it was first manage...

Afonso III looked like the savior for Portugal after his brother's kingship, but Afonso fell afoul of the pope himself and was remov...

Afonso (1210 - 1279) was the second son of Afonso II of Portugal, and so never expected to inherit the throne. It was supposed to go to h...

Saint Hugo persuades Bruno of Cologne to found the Carthusian Order (cathedral window in Grenoble, France) The Carthusians have been me...

A page at work Lionel, the son of King Edward III of England and Queen Philippa, was born in Antwerp in Flanders in 1338 during the s...

Ermentrude and Charles Let us call this the story of a marriage, and a coincidence. Charles the Bald (823 - 877), a grandson of Charlem...

Statues of the two Ewalds, in the church at Cologne. Although the Saxons were not converted to Christianity until Charlemagne did it by...

One of the re-creations of the Battle of Largs [ source ] King Haakon Haakonsson of Norway refused to sell islands off the Scottish coa...

If you look at the top of the globe, you realize how seafarers from Norway could easily dip south to Scotland on their way to colonize Ic...

Excerpt from the Taxatio; see the word "Census" upper-right Today is the birthday of  Pope Nicholas IV; you can read a brief ...

To Froissart she was "the most beautiful woman in all the realm of England, and the most loving"; in her own right she was the ...

The first part is here . Death of Harald Hardrada, illustration from Matthew Paris King Harold Godwinson of England, hearing th...

In the absence of historical photographs, I give you Lego Stamford Bridge ! In the competition for the throne resulting from the death ...

17th century knife and fork There is a point in the movie Becket (taken from the play of the same name by Jean Anouilh) that introdu...

The Virgin of Miracles The Virgin of Miracles is a statue in a monastery in Huelva, Spain.  It is 54 centimeters (21 inches) tall. By l...

The border separating England from Scotland almost became a little thicker last week, and this week is the anniversary of its creation, w...

St. Joseph of Cupertino levitating In the United States these days (and probably elsewhere in the world), the name Cupertino evokes the...

...is a big topic these days. Today, in fact, Scotland is voting whether to stay in the United Kingdom or strike out on its own. If it did,...