Daily Medieval

The past few days have been filled with discussion about the Lombards, aka the Langobards, and their origin according to medieval texts. Th...

Paul the Deacon (c.720s – 13 April c.796-799) has many writings attributed to him (some probably erroneously, like a life of Gregory the Gr...

Winfrid was born about 720 in the Duchy of Friuli, the northern part of the Italian Peninsula that was the kingdom of the Lombards. His pare...

There was a rebellion against Charlemagne in 792 by a handful of Frankish nobles headed by Charlemagne's eldest son, Pepin the Hunchback...

Charlemagne's first son was named Pepin. Shortly after his birth he developed a spinal deformity that has caused historians to refer to...

In 600 CE, the Patriarch of Jerusalem Sophronius visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a 4th-century church in Jerusalem supposedly bui...

I outlined yesterday the complicated relationship between the Franks under Charlemagne, the Lombards in Italy, and the Byzantine Empire. Th...

When the report of the Second Council of Nicaea  (in 787 CE) was written up approving the use of icons for religious purposes, it mentioned ...

Mosaic art—arranging pieces of stone, glass (called  tesserae ), or other material to make shapes and pictures—has existed since the 3rd mil...

Widukind (seen here as a memorial in Hereford, Germany) was a Saxon leader who organized the chief opposition to Charlemagne's conquest...

The Saxon Wars (see Part 1 ) were a series of campaigns led by Charlemagne to incorporate and Christianize Saxony. A first phase was complet...

In January of 772CE, a church in Deventer in the Netherlands was sacked and burned by Saxons who objected to missionary work in their lands....

This post referred to the Song of Roland  as foundational to of the Matter of France. The Matter of France, also known as "The Carolin...

In 778, Basques ambushed the rearguard of Charlemagne's army as it was going northward through the Ronceveaux Pass in the Pyrenees. They...

Charlemagne thought trying to retake parts of the Iberian Peninsula back from the Moors was a good idea, so he accepted an invitation from S...

I have mentioned before the disagreements, after the death of Muhammad, over which direction the faith should go. The Rashidun Caliphate wa...

When speaking of the Carolingian Renaissance, the most common name mentioned is Alcuin, but there were many other scholars involved. One of ...

The  Opus Caroli regis contra synodum  ("The work of King Charles against the Synod"), also known as  Libri Carolini  ("Charl...

Charlemagne made sure all of his children had decent careers, even those who were illegitimate. By his concubine Gersuinda, he had a daughte...

Charlemagne believed strongly in education for all his children; his daughters learned to read and write as well as his sons. He was also cl...