Daily Medieval

Wool is different from hair in that it has a natural "crimp" to it that allows the fibers to bind together. This, and the fact tha...

Emma of Normandy (c.984 - 6 March 1052) was queen of England, Denmark, and Normandy. As the daughter of Richard the Fearless of Normandy, sh...

Parchment from 1303 showing the three-part, Final Concord. [ source ] The word "fine" has many meanings, several of them der...

Ferdinand I, son of Pedro the Cruel Inheritance is never more complicated than when a throne is involved. The stakes are too high for a...

St. Mellitus, converter of Anglo-Saxons We have the story, handed down from Bede, that Pope Gregory I sent a mission to England in 597 t...

From a 14th century manuscript Since Æthelred keeps getting mentioned here (most notably the past two days, due to the contested inherit...

A naval battle, from a ms. dated late 13th/early 14th century We are accustomed to summing up the reign of King John (1199 - 1216) as a ...

In 1401, during the reign of King Henry IV of England, Parliament passed a law known by the phrase, De heretic comburendo ["Regardin...

When we think of the Viking invasions of England, we usually think of the destruction of villages and people's lives. This is understa...

Marketplace, from 16th c. Les Livres du gouvernement des Princes Yesterday we talked about the gold bezant and the difficulty in under...

Coins from Kingdom of Jerusalem in British Museum (l. to r.) dinar (1162-75), Arabic bezant (1140-80), Christian bezant (1250-) [ source ]...

King John I of Portugal weds Philippa of Lancaster, 1386 ( Chronique de France et d'Angleterre,  Jean Wavrin, 15th c .) When Edward ...

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

Henry III (1207-1272) spent much of his reign of 56 years dealing with fallout from the reign of his father, King John. For one thing, ...

Tornadoes usually form when masses of warm, moist air and higher altitude cooler air meet. The cooler air descends, the warm air ascends, an...

In 1307, on Friday the 13th of October, King Philip of France ordered the head of the Knights of the Temple, Jacques de Molay, arrested alo...

The Wash, with Norfolk on right and Lincolnshire on left King John of England (1166-1216) has so many misfortunes attached to him that i...

Why it happened, and why it happened the way it did, are still hotly contested. Also, there are no images for it that don't themselves ...

In the 12th century in England, the practice of writing histories was becoming relatively common. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and the Chro...

Henry, the young king. For a time, the Capetian Dynasty in France had the habit of naming and actually crowning the king's heir in t...