Daily Medieval

Paganism is a catch-all term to refer to countless religions that existed during the Classical Era and the Middle Ages (and experiencing a r...

Lorenzo Valla was born about 1407 in Rome. His father was a lawyer for the pope. Lorenzo studied under Leonardo Bruni (sometimes called the ...

Although the early popes had no temporal power or property, as the Roman Catholic Church grew in popularity and influence, they accrued terr...

With the recent posts on rival popes and antipopes, it may be worthwhile to examine the title "pope" a little. From the start, St....

Let us talk about coinage, specifically the solidus . Its plural was solidi ; also known as the bezant  (named for Byzantium, the earlier na...

St. Martin of Tours as a young man was a cavalryman, and likely a member of the  Equites cataphractarii.  Of all the cavalry styles Rome use...

The winds of change blew quickly for christians in the Mediterranean in the early 4th century. Emperor Diocletian had persecuted christians ...

The Shrine of the Three Kings The Three Kings, or Magi, appear suddenly in the Gospel of Matthew and just as quickly disappear. That pa...

Relic of True Cross at Cortona, near Florence Yesterday's post told of Empress (later Saint) Helena, the mother of the Emperor Const...

Yesterday's post mentioned a nail from Christ's cross that had been possessed by the Emperor Constantine (c.272-337), the first Chri...

The Eastern Emperor Justinian's (482-565 CE) attempt to conquer the Western Empire left it bruised and open to invasion. The Lombard Kin...

15th century woodcut of Nicholas In the introduction to Arian Christianity I mentioned how discussion at the Council of Nicaea in 325 b...

In the theological free-for-all of the first few centuries after Jesus of Nazareth, different theories as to the nature of God and the divin...

The simplest form of acrostic is a poem or other writing in which the first letter of each line spells out a word (presumably on that is...