Daily Medieval

It was Ignaz Semmelweis in the 1840s in Vienna who noticed a link between illness (and death) and unsanitary conditions, specifically a link...

Speaking of surgery recently, we need to take a look at Theodoric Borgognoni, who pioneered some practices that were ahead of their time. B...

In the middle of the 14th century, the centers of medical knowledge were the universities at Bologna, Montpellier, and Paris. One of the pro...

Successful surgery benefits from knowledge of the body's interior, and the study of anatomy was not always easy to come by. Dissecting ...

The Middle Ages saw illness as an imbalance in the humors of the body. Sometimes that could be treated by changing the diet. In the case of...

Trying to understand biology had many false starts. You probably have some idea of "humors" and the adjectives cold, hot, wet, and...

The modern Italian word for a notebook is taccuino . It comes from the medieval (and later) popularity of the Tacuinum Sanitatis . That name...

Our teeth would no doubt be better off if this had never been discovered, but Pandora's box was opened long ago. Different species of su...

Besides sweet concoctions like dragges , medieval cooks prepared things like mincemeat  and apple pie . Some cook books survive from early o...

When Margery Kempe (c.1373 - c.1438) dictated the story of her mystic experiences , she had no idea that someone would append a recipe to t...

Margery Kempe (c.1373 - c.1438) was a middle-class woman who went through a traumatic eight months after bearing her first child, after whic...

Once Margery Kempe decided to dedicate her life fully to religious devotion, she decided a pilgrimage to the Holy Land was in order, inspir...

Margery Brunham was born about 1373 in Bishop's (now King's) Lynn, Norfolk. Her father was mayor for a short time and a member of Pa...

St. Bridget of Sweden (c.1303 - 23 July 1373) began her life as Birgitta Birgersdotter. Her childhood might have been quite normal as the d...

Sweden's most celebrated saint was Birgitta Birgersdotter, the daughter of a magnate, knight, privy councilor, and the first law speaker...

Double monasteries, such as the one mentioned in this post , was a monastery that combined two communities, one of men and one of women. The...

“There is a mountain very high and bare…whereon it is given out that witches hold their dance on Walpurgis night.” (Jacob Grimm, 1883) There...

In the 1930s, two Benedictine abbeys were formed from the original in Eichstätt, Bavaria. One was in Thanet, where the nuns of Eichstätt bou...

The mother of Saint Mildred was Domne Eafe—also Domneva, or Lady Eva—a great-granddaughter of King Æthelbert of Kent. She married King Mere...

Well, that is what a modern world would call her. To the Anglo-Saxons, she was Mildrith (also Mildthryth or Mildryth). Her father was a king...

When Augustine came to England in 597 to begin the process of turning its inhabitants to Christianity , one of his first acts was to found (...

Bishop Liudhard, who followed Bertha to Kent when she married King Æthelbert, is treated like a footnote in the story of Christianizing Eng...

Saint Augustine gets a lot of credit for the Gregorian Mission to the court of King Æthelbert of Kent and the mass conversions to Christian...

Augustine's mission to Christianize King Æthelbert of Kent in 597 was clearly successful, but we cannot discount the fact that he had he...

Augustine (early 6th century - c.26 May 604) was a prior of the Abbey of St. Andrew in Rome when he was chosen by Pope Gregory to travel to ...

One of the anecdotes about Pope Gregory "the Great" that is most often repeated is how it came about that he sent missionaries to...

Saint Gregory the Great (c.540 - 12 March 604) started as Pope Gregory I in 590. Earlier than that he started as a prefect of Rome, though ...

Theodoric as King of Italy did not just want to be king of the land; rather, he wanted to be seen as king or custodian of or successor to th...

Long after the death of Theodoric in 526, legends rose of the Germanic warrior who led his people to conquer various armies. (Theodoric eve...