Daily Medieval

Recent posts on the Tutbury Hoard led to a discussion about Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, who is the likeliest candidate for losing such an ...

This is about Thomas, the 2nd Earl of Lancaster. He was born about 1278 to Edmund Crouchback (the second son of King Henry III). His life...

Some of the pieces from the Anglo-Saxon Staffordshire Hoard. The largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver coins was uncovered in St...

Part of the Tutbury Hoard The sudden acquisition of wealth can change people. When coins started to be found in. the River Dove in 1831...

The coins were found in casks in the River Dove Workers in 1831, while repairing a mill-race on the Dove River, found a chunk of mud-ca...

Edward I penny from the Colchester Hoard Among the treasures found accidentally by digging or deliberately by people wielding metal det...

Roman hoard found at St. Albans Speaking of digging up old things... Every once in awhile we hear of someone finding a hoard of coins...

Tollund Man, found in a bog in Denmark You have no doubt seen articles of bodies and artifacts found in peat bogs, such as the Gundestr...

On 28 May, 1891, a worker digging in a peat bog near Gundestrup in Denmark made an extraordinary find: a shallow bowl holding a dozen cur...

From the Gundestrup Cauldron The figure to the left—a man with antlers, often holding or wearing a torc, often holding a snake—is not u...

The figure shown here is called Cernunnos. He is  the "horned god" of ancient Celtic culture, representing fertility, the natur...

Artist's conception on what buttresses would have looked like early on. On 15 April, 2019, a fire ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral in P...

7th c. Asturian Church of Santa Cristina de Lena, Spain This will be a brief introduction to the styles of medieval architecture that e...

One purpose of the Daily Medieval blog is to bring to light knowledge of characters and events that do not reach the mainstream culture....

Recent posts about the differences between Irish Christianity and other practices in the early medieval church are due largely to the wor...

The previous post discussed some aspects of Celtic Christianity found in the British Isles that differed from the "mainstream" ...

We have discussed the Synod of Whitby in 664, which debated whether Roman-based or Iona-based Christianity should prevail. "Celtic C...

Easter is the "floatiest" of floating holidays in the Western calendar. The 7th century saw a very serious debate over how the da...

The oath of frankpledge (mentioned here ) was a promise of mutual aid between members of a community, used throughout several centuries of ...

[Mindful of the tragedy at Notre Dame of Paris on 15 April, 2015, I re-present this post from 2012.] In the post on the  Las Huelgas Code...

Dick Whittington buying his cat A popular figure from English folk tales is Dick Whittington. He is based on Lord Mayor of London Richa...

One of the most prominent mayors of the City of London in the Middle Ages (and perhaps of all other eras) was Richard Whittington. He...

The Liber Albus or White Book was the first compilation of the laws of the City of London. It was assembled in 1419 by one John Carpente...

A modern Aleconner [ link ] We know that, in medieval London, an alderman held an assembly  called a Wardmote every other year, at whi...

A village meeting. What was the level of communication between the typical medieval citizen and the authorities? What role did the citi...

In the Middle Ages, how many people lived in how much space? An economist who writes about cotton, migration and other topics (and has wr...

After the previous post on impetus, I wanted to introduce you to Albert of Saxony, who took Avicenna's idea a step further. Albert ...

1582 woodcut demonstrating impetus with artillery Impetus is the force or energy with which a body started to move. The term itself ent...

This is a slightly different tack for DailyMedieval, but many fans of his fiction are unaware of his career as a medievalist. John Rona...

A 1537 rendition of Thule On New Year's Eve 2018, a NASA probe transmitted pictures of Ultima Thule, an object 4 billion miles fro...

From a feast at the University of Rochester Most readers of this blog will be familiar with the Boar's Head Carol. The version we...

Statue in Nottingham We have established that the first mention of Robin Hood is in the 1370s. And in the mid 1400s, someone places him...