Daily Medieval

I mentioned that Cosimo de' Medici was named for Saint Cosmas, as in Cosmas and Damian. They were two Arabian physicians of the 3rd cen...

The Medici family name is known to many casual readers of history. Let's talk about the man who started it all. Born on 27 Septembe...

We have talked about the Council of Nicaea before, but always the First Council in 325. There were several ecumenical councils. The seventh...

When Catholic missionaries in the Middle Ages went to a new land, how did they deal with language barriers? They had to make their own lexi...

There were many reasons why someone would become a pirate, I suppose. It was probably rare that a monk would do so, however. Eustace Bu...

Piracy on the seven seas goes back a long way. Think of fairly small ships roughing it on the open sea with little defense, not the row...

Medieval philosophers categorized several logic puzzles as insolubilia , unsolvable things. Probably the most common of these was (and stil...

I have mentioned The Forme of Cury  [Forms of Cooking] a few times before. It's the cookbook that gathers the best recipes from the c...

Yesterday's post mentioned Cassiodorus (c.485-c.585), a contemporary of Boethius, and his description of the relationship between Ari...

Much of the medieval attitude about music and its forms came from Boethius (c.480-524 CE). In his de institution music [Latin: "On th...

When Gerard Segarelli was rejected by the Franciscans, he took matters into his own hands and formed the Apostolic Brethren in 1260. The B...

Mendicants In the later part of the 13th century, a new order was founded in northern Italy. Sort of. The founder, Gerard Segarelli...

The Roman Severan family, with Geta "erased" from lower left by orders of Caracalla [ link ] Memory is a tricky thing: it can...

rom a 14th century Welsh Book of Hours, this is thought to depict Maximus [ link ] Yesterday we introduced Magnus Maximus, a general wh...

Yesterday's post on St. Illide mentioned that he cured the daughter of Roman Emperor Magnus Maximus. Although Maximus was Emperor of We...

Yesterday's post featured a picture of the chapel of Saint Illide, belonging to the Château d'Alleuze. The chapel was built in th...

The picture below was posted on Facebook a few days ago by a long-time friend. (That's his daughter seen to the right of it. Hi, Kyrie!...

The wren, O the wren, is the King of All Birds. On St. Stephen's Day he got caught in the furze. So goes a medieval carol. But why w...

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

Christine de Pizan and her dog [ link ] In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales , the Prologue describes the Prioress as having small lapdogs...

Among the groups in history that have long since disappeared, there are the Pechenegs. They were a semi-nomadic group that spoke a Turkic l...

St. Fructuosus on Braga Cathedral It is not unknown for rulers who have been harsh to try to "buy their ay into Heaven" near ...

In the 7th century, the Kingdom of the Visigoths covered much of the Iberian peninsula and a good chunk of what is now southern France. A G...

Recent posts have talked about the sons of William the Conqueror: how he left the kingdom to his second son, William Rufus; how the eldest,...

A copy of the Coronation Charter of Henry I/Charter of Liberties When William Rufus died, his younger brother Henry assumed the throne....

The Battle of Tinchebray When Ralph Flambard escaped from the Tower of London, he fled to Normandy to the court of its duke, Robert Cur...

Ralph Flambard was born in Bayeux, Normandy six years before William the Conqueror crossed the English Channel and became King of England. ...

When William the Conqueror died in 1087, he decided to leave the throne of England to his second eldest, William Rufus. To his eldest, Robe...

Yesterday's post mentioned Henry becoming king of England upon the death of his brother, William Rufus. Their father was William the C...

The phrase "Father of His Country" is usually reserved for George Washington, first President of the United States, for his role ...

Saluzzo, a town and principality in northern Italy, had some interesting connections to England. It was a simple tribal city-state in Roman...

Bread has all the characteristics of a staple food: the plant is easy to grow, the product is relatively easy and cheap to produce, and it ...

Memorial to Battle of Näfels Military engagements between England and France were a large part of the 14th century in Europe, but those...

It is the first of April, and while you might expect something about pulling pranks and acting the fool, instead we are going to talk about...