Daily Medieval

When Byzantine Emperor Alexios I sent his general Boutoumites to secretly negotiate with the city of Nicaea in order to have them surrender...

When the First Crusade was on their way to free the Holy land from the "infidel," they passed through Constantinople and asked for...

The Unified Kingdom of Georgia in the Middle Ages stretched from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea. When it was conquered by the Byzantine Em...

Alexios I Comnenos might not have made it to the position of Byzantine emperor if not for the behind-the-scene actions of his mother, Anna D...

"Behind every great man is a woman" was never more apt than in the case of the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Comnenos  and his mothe...

Alexios I Comnenos (1057 - 1118) was the Byzantine emperor during the start of the Crusades. Since the Byzantines were a part of the old Rom...

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

It can be argued that the First Crusade, announced in 1095, could not or would not feasibly have been undertaken much earlier than the end o...

Pope Paschal II speaking to Anselm of Canterbury On 13 August 1099, a Cluniac monk from northwest of Rome named Ranierius was named Pop...

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

Anna Comnena in Byzantine mosaic Anna Comnena (1083-1153) was the daughter of an emperor ( Alexios I ), the wife of a Caesar, and the mo...

To be thorough: there was more to the plan. Emperor Alexios I of Byzantium had requested help from the pope against invading Turks, and the ...