Daily Medieval

Recent posts have talked about different individual's attitude toward Maimonides and what they did about it—sometimes with radical conse...

Yonah Gerondi had an Italian student in Barcelona named Hillel ben Samuel (c.1220 - c.1295) The grandson of a known Talmudic scholar, Hillel...

Yonah Gerondi, or Jonah ben Abraham Gerondi (c.1200 - 1263), was a 13th century rabbi from Catalonia in Spain. He was a cousin of Nachmanide...

Born in 1235 in Barcelona, Shlomo ben Avraham ibn Aderet became known as the Rabbi of Spain because of his reputation for knowledge and wisd...

Yesterday we started looking at some of the predictions about the Jewish Messiah appearing in the 12th century. The 13th century had its ow...

Yesterday's post explained how Abner of Burgos ' conversion to Christianity from Judaism may have started with doubts after treating...

Abner of Burgos (c.1270 – c.1347) converted to Christianity from Judaism around 1320, taking on the name Alfonso of Valladolid or "Mast...

Scholars and philosophers of the later Middle Ages became interested in the mysticism found in the Jewish Kabbalah and tried to blend it wit...

The mention of Jewish mysticism likely evokes the Kabbalah, but there were other forms. I suppose you could argue that it begins with Adam, ...

Technically, the title of this post is the same as yesterday's , because Sefer Yetzirah translates as "The Book of Formation....

There is a much-studied document in Jewish literature whose origin is unknown. It has been considered the work of a 1st-century Rabbi Akiva,...

An Andalusian Arab named Ibn Juljul wrote  Ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbā’ w’al-hukamā’ ("Generations of Physicians and Wise Men") in the late ...

I've talked before about John of Gaddesden , a late-13th-century doctor who wrote a compendium of medical knowledge. A little before him...

What you are looking at here is a "pelican," so-called because it resembles a pelican's beak. It was used to extract teeth and...

People lived so differently centuries ago that it is difficult to know exactly what life was like in the pre-Industrial Era. Some scholars, ...

When learning about people in the Middle Ages, you can only go so far with records and archaeology. Sometimes you have to go to the people t...

While discussing how England tried to control the movement of laborers after the Black Death  yesterday , I mentioned something about what w...

“Whereas late against the malice of servants, which were idle, and not willing to serve after the pestilence, without taking excessive wages...

As seen yesterday , the significant population loss resulting from the Black Death had a positive effect on laborers' wages. Reduction i...

Although the cause of the Black Death has been questioned, what we know as the Bubonic Plague is the likeliest culprit, causing widespread ...

The greatest impact on European culture was not the Fall of Rome, the mass (forced) adoption of Christianity, the creation of the Holy Roman...

Aristotle called the Greek philosopher Hippodamas the father of city planning because Hippodamas supposedly designed the right-angled grid l...

Enea Silvio Bartolomeo Piccolomini (18 October 1405 - 14 August 1464) had a very simple origin. He was born to the very large family of a si...

In a surprising turn in 1439, during a time when the papacy was in turmoil and rival popes were almost commonplace, the Council of Basel cho...

Amadeus VIII (1383 - 1451) took on the title Count of Savoy at an early age after the death of his father, Amadeus VII. His grandmother, Bon...

After numerous engagements to find the right bride, Amadeus VI of Savoy finally married Bonne of Bourbon (1341 - 19 January 1402). They we...

Like all rulers, Amadeus VI, Count of Savoy  (1334 - 1383), was going to need an heir. He was only nine years old when his father died and p...

When he was 32-years-old, Count of Savoy Amadeus VI started a mini-Crusade. He sent 1700 men on 15 ships to aid Byzantine Emperor John V Pa...

When Aymon, Count of Savoy, died in 1343, his successor, his son Amadeus, was only nine years old. Two cousins were assigned as co-regents. ...