Daily Medieval

Why were two of the compounds for legal training in London named "Inner Temple" and "Middle Temple"? First, let's ex...

To my surprise, I have used "law" or "laws" (should really get around to combining them) as keywords in 43 posts (out of...

Christians and Jews living in Muslim-controlled lands in the Iberian Peninsula were subject to Sharia Law...to a point. Sharia ( sharī'a...

A few days back, Ladino was mentioned in the first post about the Toledo School of Translators. I described it parenthetically as Judaeo-Spa...

King Alfonso X's son, Fernando de la Cerda, requested that the Toledo School of Translators produce a Castilian version of a Book of Fab...

The previous post refers to John of Seville being the chief translator from Arabic into Castilian; this is an important linguistic distincti...

In the beginning of the 12th century, European science lagged behind Arabic scholarship, in many ways because early Greek texts had not made...

Gerard of Cremona (1114-1187CE) was an important translator of Arabic texts into Latin. Born in Cremona in northern Italy, he went to Toledo...

De Gradibus  (Latin: Concerning degrees) was written by the Father of Arab Philosophy, Al-Kindi (801-873CE). In it, he applies mathematics t...

Abu Yūsuf Yaʻqūb ibn ʼIsḥāq aṣ-Ṣabbāḥ al-Kindī (801-873CE) is called the Father of Arab philosophy. Born in Kufa and educated in Baghdad, he...

Roger Bacon was born about 1219 into a wealthy family in England. He attended classes at Oxford University, where he learned a love of scien...

Gui Foucois was born November 1190 in the Languedoc region of France to a lawyer. He became a soldier at the age of 19 to fight the Moors in...

First, let's talk about the name. He was born Moses ben Nachman. He sometimes called himself Ramban , an acronym for Rabbi Moses ben Nac...

James I of Aragon (2 February 1208 - 27 July 1276) reigned longer than any Iberian monarch. The Iberian Peninsula contained several differen...

The rounding up and burning of the Talmud and other important Jewish works, and the Disputation of Paris, in France in the early 1240s were ...

The Disputation of Paris, a debate between four rabbis and a Jew-turned-Franciscan, began on 12 June 1240. There were 35 charges against the...

This blog made a reference to the Disputation of Paris years  ago , but never got around to any details. The Disputation was a debate betwee...

Blanche of Castile was born on 4 March, 1188, in Palencia in north-central Castile (Spain). Her father was King Alfonso VIII; her mother was...

I mentioned yesterday that Orleans University had its start in 1230 with teachers and students who fled from turmoil at the University of Pa...

The city of Orleans is in north-central France, in the Loire Valley. In the very early Middle Ages it had been the capital of the Kingdom of...

Somehow, in 770 posts on this blog, I never talked about Eustache Deschamps before. He was an extremely prolific poet who lived from 1346 un...

The 14th century French poet Eustache Deschamps said “at royal courts everyone wants to play the trumpet, gittern, and rebebe.” You know wha...

The Peasants Revolt of 1381 was an uprising against...let's say "government overreach." It was not a simple protest, however. ...

The Peasant's Revolt of 1381 was the result of several factors , first enumerated and named in A Short History of the English People (J...

A medieval peasant—for this term, we mean an agricultural laborer—could be free or un free. Although serf  would seem to be a useful term (d...

The phrases "feudal system" and "feudalism" were not used in the Middle Ages. They were coined in the 1700s by scholars ...

I'll admit: I'm not a lawyer; I don't understand current legal terms (most of which are Latin holdovers from the Middle Ages). I...

Ranulph de Glanvill is the reason I started dailymedieval.com , to pay some attention to the countless people, places, and paraphernalia of ...

The Treatise of Glanvill was the earliest comprehensive treatise on English Law. It's full name is Tractatus de legibus et consuetudinib...

Henry II was king of England from 1154 (when he was 21) until his death in 1189. His mother, Matilda, fought to get the throne of England aw...

In 1184, Glastonbury Abbey was devastated by a fire in the monastic buildings. A new Lady Chapel was consecrated in 1186, after which progre...

Glastonbury Abbey in Somerset may be the best-known of English abbeys. Originally founded in 712 with the construction of a stone church, it...

Speaking of ailments caused by elves and other supernatural beings, "elf shot" was a concern in the Middle Ages, caused by invisib...

I want to talk about  Wið færstice , an Old English medical text whose title is pronounced (roughly) "with fair-stitch-uh" and mea...

I mentioned previously that St. Æthelwold had a single church dedicated to him in England. It is in Alvingham, in the East Lindsey district ...