Daily Medieval

After the populist mayor of London John Northampton was defeated in the election of 383 by Nicholas Brembre , Brembre worked to overturn al...

Proving that "what goes around comes around"—although we should probably just allude to the medieval concept of the  Wheel of Fort...

Despite his past as a troublemaker being involved in public brawls, even being imprisoned in the Tower for a time because of one in 1371, Jo...

1376 was a time of unrest in England under King Edward III. The court was considered corrupt, the wealth gap was increasing, the common peop...

John Northampton was a citizen of London his whole life, from a decent-sized family (two brothers and two sisters). He became a cloth mercha...

When the Mayor of London says you have to dress for dinner, you dress for dinner . On the Feast of Pentecost in 1382, the Mayor of London an...

Sometimes the "punishment" was more of a restriction. Take the case of Thomas Welford, who sold salted herring. He had a ship dock...

We've talked about death and destruction in war, and all sorts of dangerous and aggressive behavior that is not seen in modern day-to-da...

William of Malmesbury tells us that William the Conqueror fell from his horse in summer of 1087 while fighting on the continent and suffer...

We started a conversation yesterday on the use of urine by medieval Western European physicians to determine health. I thought today we...

Last post mentioned that a medieval illustrator indicated a physician by showing him holding a flask. There was a very specific substance i...

We've been talking about blood as food , and some recipes using blood in cooking, but now let's talk about health-related blood. Bl...

We talked yesterday about preparing and preserving blood for culinary use, now let's look at some more specific uses in medieval cuisin...

There's a scene early in The Name of the Rose  involving barrels of pigs' blood. It was autumn, and time to slaughter the pigs, but ...

One of the most famous cases of anti-semitism took place in Lincoln in 1255. On 31 July 1255, a nine-year-old named Hugh disappeared in Linc...

The  Lindum Colonia fell into decline after the departure of Roman Legions from Britain, but remained a viable community with a church dedi...

After 1066 there was more fighting to do. Once William the Conqueror took over England, he had to go about the island defeating various resi...

In the pipe rolls (the records of royal finances in Medieval England) for 1166 is a mention of £616 12s 8d owed to Aaron of Lincoln by King ...

The Exchequer of the Jews was created in 1194 by King Richard I of England in order to keep track of all records of debts owed to Jewish mon...

The catalyst for the 1189  tragedy in York after the coronation of King Richard I was three men who wanted to criminally erase the debts t...

Licoricia of Winchester, the second wife of David of Oxford  (one of the wealthiest financiers in England in the 13th century), was a succes...

When David of Oxford declared that he was divorced from his wife, Muriel, little did he know the furor it would cause. In Jewish law, a wif...

Asher of Lincoln had a son, David, who married a local woman, Muriel, and at some point moved to Oxford, where he lived in a house on St. Al...

Moses of Oxford was one of the most prominent scholars and legal minds in Anglo-Jewry of the 13th century. Born in Oxford to a four-generati...

Just as London had a Jewish presence after the arrival of William and the Norman French, Oxford started to see a significant Jewish popula...

In the City of London there is a street still called Old Jewry, currently dominated mostly by financial offices. In 2001 the remains of a mi...

The difference between different groups of Jews starts with the Jewish Diaspora, the displacement of Israelites outside of the Southern Leva...

The first book printed in Hebrew with a date on it was printed in Italy and dated 18 February 1475. It was a commentary by Rashi on the Chu...

An exegete is someone who interprets a text, especially religious texts. One of the leading Jewish exegetes in the Middle Ages was Shlomo Yi...